The Great Illusion Part 24

[98] The following letter to the _Manchester Guardian_, which appeared at the time of the Boer War, is worth reproduction in this connection:

"SIR,--I see that 'The Church's Duty in regard to War' is to be discussed at the Church Congress. This is right. For a year the heads of our Church have been telling us what war is and does--that it is a school of character; that it sobers men, cleans them, strengthens them, knits their hearts; makes them brave, patient, humble, tender, p.r.o.ne to self-sacrifice. Watered by 'war's red rain,' one Bishop tells us, virtue grows; a cannonade, he points out, is an 'oratorio'--almost a form of wors.h.i.+p. True; and to the Church men look for help to save their souls from starving for lack of this good school, this kindly rain, this sacred music. Congresses are apt to lose themselves in wastes of words.

This one must not, surely cannot, so straight is the way to the goal. It has simply to draft and submit a new Collect for war in our time, and to call for the reverent but firm emendation, in the spirit of the best modern thought, of those pa.s.sages in Bible and Prayer-Book by which even the truest of Christians and the best of men have at times been blinded to the duty of seeking war and ensuing it. Still, man's moral nature cannot, I admit, live by war alone; nor do I say with some that peace is wholly bad. Even amid the horrors of peace you will find little shoots of character fed by the gentle and timely rains of plague and famine, tempest and fire; simple lessons of patience and courage conned in the schools of typhus, gout, and stone; not oratorios, perhaps, but homely anthems and rude hymns played on knife and probe in the long winter nights. Far from me to 'sin our mercies,' or to call mere twilight dark.

Yet dark it may become; for remember that even these poor makes.h.i.+ft schools of character, these second-bests, these halting subst.i.tutes for war--remember that the efficiency of every one of them, be it hunger, accident, ignorance, sickness, or pain, is menaced by the intolerable strain of its struggles with secular doctors, plumbers, inventors, schoolmasters, and policemen. Every year thousands who would once have been braced and steeled by manly tussles with small-pox or diphtheria are robbed of that blessing by the great changes made in our drains.

Every year thousands of women and children must go their way bereft of the rich spiritual experience of the widow and the orphan."

[99] Captain March Phillips, "With Remington." Methuen. See pp. 259-60 for Mr. Blatchford's confirmation of this verdict.

[100] And here as to the officers--again not from me but from a very Imperialist and militarist quarter--the London _Spectator_ (November 25, 1911), says: "Soldiers might be supposed to be free from pettiness because they are men of action. But we all know that there is no profession in which the leaders are more depreciated by one another than in the profession of arms."

[101] Professor William James says: "Greek history is a panorama of war for war's sake ... of the utter ruin of a civilization which in intellectual respects was perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen.

The wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves, excitement were their only motives."--_McClure's Magazine_, August, 1910.

[102] "Britain at Bay." Constable and Co.

[103] See quotation from Sir C.P. Lucas, p. 111-12.

[104] See details on this matter given in Chapter VII., Part I.

[105] London _Morning Post_, April 21, 1910. I pa.s.s over the fact that to cite all this as a reason for armaments is absurd. Does the _Morning Post_ really suggest that the Germans are going to attack England because they don't like the English taste in art, or music, or cooking?

The notion that preferences of this sort need the protection of _Dreadnoughts_ is surely to bring the whole thing within the domain of the grotesque.

[106] I refer to the remarkable speech in which Mr. Chamberlain notified France that she must "mend her manners or take the consequences" (see London daily papers between November 28 and December 5, 1899).

[107] Not that a very great period separates us from such methods.

Froude quotes Maltby's Report to Government as follows: "I burned all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found. In like manner I a.s.sailed a castle. When the garrison surrendered, I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their fellows that they could not tell where to bestow themselves." Of the commander of the English forces at Munster we read: "He diverted his forces into East Clanwilliam, and hara.s.sed the country; killed all mankind that were found therein ... not leaving behind us man or beast, corn or cattle ... sparing none of what quality, age, or s.e.x soever. Beside many burned to death, we killed man, woman, child, horse, or beast or whatever we could find."

[108] In "The Evolution of Modern Germany" (Fisher Unwin, London) the same author says: "Germany implies not one people, but many peoples ...

of different culture, different political and social inst.i.tutions ...

diversity of intellectual and economic life.... When the average Englishman speaks of Germany he really means Prussia, and consciously or not he ignores the fact that in but few things can Prussia be regarded as typical of the whole Empire."

[109] "International Law." John Murray, London.

[110] Lord Sanderson, dealing with the development of international intercourse in an address to the Royal Society of Arts (November 15, 1911), said: "The most notable feature of recent international intercourse, he thought, was the great increase in international exhibitions, a.s.sociations, and conferences of every description and on every conceivable subject. When he first joined the Foreign Office, rather more than fifty years ago, conferences were confined almost entirely to formal diplomatic meetings to settle some urgent territorial or political question in which several States were interested. But as time had pa.s.sed, not only were the number and frequency of political conferences increased, but a host of meetings of persons more or less official, termed indiscriminately conferences and congresses, had come into being."

[111] January 8, 1910.

[112] March 10, 1910.

[113] "The German Government is straining every nerve, with the zealous support of its people, to get ready for a fight with this country"

(_Morning Post_, March 1, 1912). "The unsatiated will of the armed State will, when an opportunity offers, attack most likely its most satiated neighbors without scruple, and despoil them without ruth" (Dr. Dillon, _Contemporary Review_, October, 1911).

[114] I have shown in a former chapter (Chapter VI., Part II.) how these international hatreds are not the cause of conflict, but the outcome of conflicts or presumed conflicts of policy. If difference of national psychology--national "incompatibility of temper"--were the cause, how can we explain the fact that ten years since the English were still "hating all Frenchmen like the devil," and talking of alliance with the Germans? If diplomatic shuffling had pushed England into alliance with the Germans against the French, it would never have occurred to the people that they had to "detest the Germans."

[115] The German Navy Law in its preamble might have filched this from the British Navy League catechism.

[116] In an article published in 1897 (January 16) the London _Spectator_ pointed out the hopeless position Germany would occupy if England cared to threaten her. The organ, which is now apt to resent the increased German Navy as implying aggression upon England, then wrote as follows: "Germany has a mercantile marine of vast proportions. The German flag is everywhere. But on the declaration of war the whole of Germany's trading s.h.i.+ps would be at our mercy. Throughout the seas of the world our cruisers would seize and confiscate German s.h.i.+ps. Within the first week of the declaration of war Germany would have suffered a loss of many million pounds by the capture of her s.h.i.+ps. Nor is that all. Our Colonies are dotted with German trading-houses, who, in spite of a keen compet.i.tion, do a great deal of business.... We should not, of course, want to treat them harshly; but war must mean for them the selling of their businesses for what they would fetch and going home to Germany. In this way Germany would lose a hold upon the trade of the world which it has taken her many years of toil to create.... Again, think of the effect upon Germany's trade of the closing of all her ports. Hamburg is one of the greatest ports of the world. What would be its condition if practically not a single s.h.i.+p could leave or enter it?

Blockades are no doubt very difficult things to maintain strictly, but Hamburg is so placed that the operation would be comparatively easy. In truth the blockade of all the German ports on the Baltic or the North Sea would present little difficulty.... Consider the effect on Germany if her flag were swept from the high seas and her ports blockaded. She might not miss her colonies, for they are only a burden, but the loss of her sea-borne trade would be an equivalent to an immediate fine of at least a hundred million sterling. In plain words, a war with Germany, even when conducted by her with the utmost wisdom and prudence, must mean for her a direct loss of a terribly heavy kind, and for us virtually no loss at all." This article is full of the fallacies which I have endeavored to expose in this book, but it logically develops the notions which are prevalent in both England and Germany; and yet Germans have to listen to an English Minister of Marine describing their Navy as a luxury!

[117] Here is the real English belief in this matter: "Why should Germany attack Britain? Because Germany and Britain are commercial and political rivals; because Germany covets the trade, the Colonies, and the Empire which Britain now possesses.... As to arbitration, limitation of armament, it does not require a very great effort of the imagination to enable us to see that proposal with German eyes. Were I a German, I should say: 'These islanders are cool customers. They have fenced in all the best parts of the globe, they have bought or captured fortresses and ports in five continents, they have gained the lead in commerce, they have a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade of the world, they hold command of the seas, and now they propose that we shall all be brothers, and that n.o.body shall fight or steal any more,'" (Robert Blatchford, "Germany and England," pp. 4-13).

[118] "Facts and Fallacies." An answer to "Compulsory Service," by Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, V.C., K.G.

[119] Discussing the first edition of this book, Sir Edward Grey said: "True as the statement in that book may be, it does not become an operative motive in the minds and conduct of nations until they are convinced of its truth and it has become a commonplace to them"

(Argentine Centenary Banquet, May 20, 1910).

[120] Lecky, "History of the Progress of Rationalism in Europe."

[121] I do not desire in the least, of course, to create the impression that I regard the truths here elaborated as my "discovery," as though no one had worked in this field before. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as priority in ideas. The interdependence of peoples was proclaimed by philosophers three thousand years ago. The French school of pacifists--Pa.s.sy, Follin, Yves Guyot, de Molinari, and Estournelles de Constant--have done splendid work in this field; but no one of them, so far as I know, has undertaken the work of testing in detail the politico-economic orthodoxy by the principle of the economic futility of military force; by bringing that principle to bear on the everyday problems of European statecraft. If there is such an one--presenting the precise notes of interrogation which I have attempted to present here--I am not aware of it. This does not prevent, I trust, the very highest appreciation of earlier and better work done in the cause of peace generally. The work of Jean de Bloch, among others, though covering different ground from this, possesses an erudition and bulk of statistical evidence to which this can make no claim. The work of J.

Novikow, to my mind the greatest of all, has already been touched upon.

[122] "Turkey in Europe," pp. 88-9 and 91-2.

It is significant, by the way, that the "born soldier" has now been crushed by a non-military race whom he has always despised as having no military tradition. Capt. F.W. von Herbert ("Bye Paths in the Balkans") wrote (some years before the present war): "The Bulgars, as Christian subjects of Turkey exempt from military service, have tilled the ground under stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions, and the profession of arms is new to them."

"Stagnant and enfeebling peace conditions" is, in view of subsequent events, distinctly good.

[123] I dislike to weary the reader with such d.a.m.nable iteration, but when a British Cabinet Minister is unable in this discussion to distinguish between the folly of a thing and its possibility, one _must_ make the fundamental point clear.

[124] This Appendix was written before the Balkan States fell to fighting one another. It is scarcely necessary to point out that the events of the last few days (early summer 1913) lend significance to the argument in the text.

[125] See p. 390.

[126] _Review of Reviews_, November, 1912.

[127] In the _Daily Mail_, to whose Editor I am indebted for permission to reprint it.