The Great Illusion Part 23

[54] Without going to the somewhat obscure a.n.a.logies of biological science, it is evident from the simple facts of the world that, if at any stage of human development warfare ever did make for the survival of the fit, we have long since pa.s.sed out of that stage. When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it: we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to be perpetuated by conquest by the higher.

If ever it happens that the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in India, Egypt, and Asia generally, and her action in China when she imposed commerical contact on the Chinese by virtue of military power. War between people of roughly equal development makes also for the survival of the unfit, since we no longer exterminate and ma.s.sacre a conquered race, but only their best elements (those carrying on the war), and because the conqueror uses up _his_ best elements in the process, so that the less fit of both sides are left to perpetuate the species. Nor do the facts of the modern world lend any support to the theory that preparation for war under modern conditions tends to preserve virility, since those conditions involve an artificial barrack life, a highly mechanical training favorable to the destruction of initiative, and a mechanical uniformity and centralization tending to crush individuality, and to hasten the drift towards a centralized bureaucracy, already too great.

[55] One might doubt, indeed, whether the British patriot has really the feeling against the German that he has against his own countrymen of contrary views. Mr. Leo Maxse, in the _National Review_ for February, 1911, indulges in the following expressions, applied, not to Germans, but to English statesmen elected by a majority of the English people: Mr. Lloyd George is a "fervid Celt animated by pa.s.sionate hatred of all things English"; Mr. Churchill is simply a "Tammany Hall politician, without, however, a Tammany man's patriotism." Mr. Harcourt belongs to "that particular type of society demagogue who slangs Peers in public and fawns upon them in private." Mr. Leo Maxse suggests that some of the Ministers should be impeached and hanged. Mr. McKenna is Lord Fisher's "poll-parrot," and the House of Commons is the "poisonous Parliament of infamous memory," in which Ministers were supported by a vast _posse comitatus_ of German jackals.

[56] Speech at Stationers' Hall, London, June 6, 1910.

[57] I have in mind here the ridiculous furore that was made by the British Jingo Press over some French cartoons that appeared at the outbreak of the Boer War. It will be remembered that at that time France was the "enemy," and Germany was, on the strength of a speech by Mr.

Chamberlain, a quasi-ally. Britain was at that time as warlike towards France as she is now towards Germany. And this is only ten years ago!

[58] In his "History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," Lecky says: "It was no political anxiety about the balance of power, but an intense religious enthusiasm that impelled the inhabitants of Christendom towards the site which was at once the cradle and the symbol of their faith. All interests were then absorbed, all cla.s.ses were governed, all pa.s.sions subdued or colored, by religious fervor. National animosities that had raged for centuries were pacified by its power. The intrigues of statesmen and the jealousies of kings disappeared beneath its influence. Nearly two million lives are said to have been sacrificed in the cause. Neglected governments, exhausted finances, depopulated countries, were cheerfully accepted as the price of success. No wars the world had ever before seen were so popular as these, which were at the same time the most disastrous and the most unselfish."

[59] "Be a.s.sured," writes St. Augustine, "and doubt not that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also little children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and there died, or who, having been just born, have pa.s.sed away from the world without the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire." To make the doctrine clearer, he ill.u.s.trates it by the case of a mother who has two children. Each of these is but a lump of perdition. Neither has ever performed a moral or immoral act. The mother overlies one, and it perishes unbaptized. It goes to eternal torment.

The other is baptized and saved.

[60] This appears sufficiently from the seasons in which, for instance, _autos da fe_ in Spain took place. In the Gallery of Madrid there is a painting by Francisco Rizzi representing the execution, or rather the procession to the stake, of a number of heretics during the fetes that followed the marriage of Charles II., and before the King, his bride, and the Court and clergy of Madrid. The great square was arranged like a theatre, and thronged with ladies in Court dress. The King sat on an elevated platform, surrounded by the chief members of the aristocracy.

Limborch, in his "History of the Inquisition," relates that among the victims of one _auto da fe_ was a girl of sixteen, whose singular beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she pa.s.sed to the stake she cried to the Queen: "Great Queen, is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother's milk."

[61] _Spectator_, December 31, 1910.

[62] See quotations, pp. 161-162, from Homer Lea's book, "The Valor of Ignorance."

[63] Thus Captain d'Arbeux ("L'Officier Contemporaine," Gra.s.set, Paris, 1911) laments "la disparition progressive de l'ideal de revanche," a military deterioration which is, he declares, working the country's ruin. The general truth of all this is not affected by the fact that 1911, owing to the Moroccan conflict and other matters, saw a revival of Chauvinism, which is already spending itself. The _Matin_, December, 1911, remarks: "The number of candidates at St. Cyr and St. Maixent is decreasing to a terrifying degree. It is hardly a fourth of what it was a few years ago.... The profession of arms has no longer the attraction that it had."

[64] "Germany and England," p. 19.

[65] See the first chapter of Mr. Harb.u.t.t Dawson's admirable work, "The Evolution of Modern Germany." T. Fisher Unwin, London.

[66] I have excluded the "operations" with the Allies in China. But they only lasted a few weeks. And were they war? This ill.u.s.tration appears in M. Novikow's "Le Darwinisme Social."

[67] The most recent opinion on evolution would go to show that environment plays an even larger role in the formation of character than selection (see Prince Kropotkin's article, _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1910, in which he shows that experiment reveals the direct action of surroundings as the main factor of evolution). How immensely, therefore, must our industrial environment modify the pugnacious impulse of our nature!

[68] See citations, pp. 161-166, notably Mr. Roosevelt's dictum: "In this world the nation that is trained to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound to go down in the end before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities." This view is even emphasized in the speech which Mr. Roosevelt recently delivered at the University of Berlin (see London _Times_, May 13, 1910). "The Roman civilization," declared Mr. Roosevelt--perhaps, as the _Times_ remarks, to the surprise of those who have been taught to believe that _latifundia perditere Romam_--"went down primarily because the Roman citizen would not fight, because Rome had lost the fighting edge." (See footnote, p. 237.)

[69] "The Valor of Ignorance." Harpers.

[70] See M. Messimy's Report on the War Budget for 1908 (annexe 3, p.

474). The importance of these figures is not generally realized.

Astonis.h.i.+ng as the a.s.sertion may sound, conscription in Germany is not universal, while it is in France. In the latter country every man of every cla.s.s actually goes through the barracks, and is subjected to the real discipline of military training; the whole training of the nation is purely military. This is not the case in Germany. Very nearly half of the young men of the country are not soldiers. Another important point is that the part of the German nation which makes up the country's intellectual life escapes the barracks. To all practical purposes very nearly all young men of the better cla.s.s enter the army as one year volunteers, by which they escape more than a few weeks of barracks, and even then escape its worst features. It cannot be too often pointed out that intellectual Germany has never been subjected to real barrack influence. As one critic says: "The German system does not put this cla.s.s through the mill," and is deliberately designed to save them from the grind of the mill. France's military activities since 1870 have, of course, been much greater than those of Germany--Tonkin, Madagascar, Algeria, Morocco. As against these, Germany has had only the Hereros campaign. The percentages of population given above, in the text, require modification as the Army Laws are modified, but the relative positions in Germany and France remain about the same.

[71] _Vox de la Nacion_, Caracas, April 22, 1897.

[72] Even Mr. Roosevelt calls South American history mean and b.l.o.o.d.y. It is noteworthy that, in his article published in the _Bachelor of Arts_ for March, 1896, Mr. Roosevelt, who lectured Englishmen so vigorously on their duty at all costs not to be guided by sentimentalism in the government of Egypt, should write thus at the time of Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan message to England: "Mean and b.l.o.o.d.y though the history of the South American republics has been, it is distinctly in the interest of civilization that ... they should be left to develop along their own lines.... Under the best of circ.u.mstances, a colony is in a false position; but if a colony is a region where the colonizing race has to do its work by means of other and inferior races, the condition is much worse. There is no chance for any tropical colony owned by a Northern race."

[73] June 2, 1910.

[74] See an article by Mr. Vernon Kellogg in the _Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1913. Seeley says: "The Roman Empire perished for want of men."

One historian of Greece, discussing the end of the Peloponnesian wars, said: "Only cowards remain, and from their broods came the new generations."

Three million men--the elite of Europe--perished in the Napoleonic wars.

It is said that after those wars the height standard of the French adult population fell abruptly 1 inch. However that may be, it is quite certain that the physical fitness of the French people was immensely worsened by the drain of the Napoleonic wars, since, as the result of a century of militarism, France is compelled every few years to reduce the standard of physical fitness in order to keep up her military strength, so that now even three-feet dwarfs are impressed.

[75] I think one may say fairly that it _was_ Sydney Smith's wit rather than Bacon's or Bentham's wisdom which killed this curious illusion.

[76] See the distinction established at the beginning of the next chapter.

[77] M. Pierre Loti, who happened to be at Madrid when the troops were leaving to fight the Americans, wrote: "They are, indeed, still the solid and splendid Spanish troops, heroic in every epoch; one needs only to look at them to divine the woe that awaits the American shopkeepers when brought face to face with such soldiers." He prophesied _des surprises sanglantes_. M. Loti is a member of the French Academy.

[78] See also letter quoted, pp. 230-231.

[79] "Patriotism and Empire." Grant Richards.

[80] "For permanent work the soldier is worse than useless; his whole training tends to make him a weakling. He has the easiest of lives; he has no freedom and no responsibility. He is, politically and socially, a child, with rations instead of rights--treated like a child, punished like a child, dressed prettily and washed and combed like a child, excused for outbreaks of naughtiness like a child, forbidden to marry like a child, and called "Tommy" like a child. He has no real work to keep him from going mad except housemaid's work" ("John Bull's Other Island"). All those familiar with the large body of French literature, dealing with the evils of barrack-life, know how strongly that criticism confirms Mr. Bernard Shaw's generalization.

[81] September 11, 1899.

[82] Things must have reached a pretty pa.s.s in England when the owner of the _Daily Mail_ and the patron of Mr. Blatchford can devote a column and a half over his own signature to reproaching in vigorous terms the hysteria and sensationalism, of his own readers.

[83] The _Berliner Tageblatt_ of March 14, 1911, says: "One must admire the consistent fidelity and patriotism of the English race, as compared with the uncertain and erratic methods of the German people, their mistrust, and suspicion. In spite of numerous wars, bloodshed, and disaster, England always emerges smoothly and easily from her military crises and settles down to new conditions and surroundings in her usual cool and deliberate manner.... Nor can one refrain from paying one's tribute to the sound qualities and character of the English aristocracy, which is always open to the ambitious and worthy of other cla.s.ses, and thus slowly but surely widens the sphere of the middle cla.s.ses by whom they are in consequence honored and respected--a state of affairs practically unknown in Germany, but which would be to our immense advantage."

[84] "Der Kaiser und die Zukunft des Deutschen Volkes."

[85] See also the confirmatory verdict of Captain March Phillips, quoted on p. 291.

[86] "My Life in the Army," p. 119.

[87] I do not think this last generalization does any injustice to the essay, "Lat.i.tude and Longitude among Reformers" ("Strenuous Life," pp.

41-61. The Century Company).

[88] See for further ill.u.s.tration of the difference and its bearing in practical politics Chapter VIII., Part I., "The Fight for the Place in the Sun."

[89] See Chapter VII., Part I.

[90] Aristotle did, however, have a flash of the truth. He said: "If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary."

[91] "Facts and Comments," p. 112.

[92] Buckle ("History of Civilization") points out that Philip II., who ruled half the world and drew tribute from the whole of South America, was so poor that he could not pay his personal servants or meet the daily expenses of the Court!

[93] I mean by credit all the mechanism of exchange which replaces the actual use or metal, or notes representing it.

[94] Lecky ("Rationalism in Europe," p. 76) says: "Protestantism could not possibly have existed without a general diffusion of the Bible, and that diffusion was impossible until after the two inventions of paper and printing.... Before those inventions, pictures and material images were the chief means of religious instruction." And thus religious belief became necessarily material, crude, anthropomorphic.

[95] "Battles are no longer the spectacular heroics of the past. The army of to-day and to-morrow is a sombre gigantic machine devoid of melodramatic heroics ... a machine that it requires years to form in separate parts, years to a.s.semble them together, and other years to make them work smoothly and irresistibly" (Homer Lea in "The Valor of Ignorance," p. 49).

[96] General von Bernhardi, in his work on cavalry, deals with this very question of the bad influence on tactics of the "pomp of war," which he admits must disappear, adding very wisely: "The spirit of tradition consists not in the retention of antiquated forms, but in acting in that spirit which in the past led to such glorious success." The plea for the retention of the soldier because of his "spirit" could not be more neatly disposed of. See p. 111 of the English edition of Bernhardi's work (Hugh Rees, London).

[97] See quotations, pp. 161-166.