An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation Part 2

Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.

The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, not something that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation to another, the allegiance may s.h.i.+ft from one nationality to another, but the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains. And it all argues also that no sensible change has taken effect in the hereditary endowment of the race, at least in this respect, during the period known by record or by secure inference,--say, since the early Neolithic in Europe; and this in spite of the fact that there has all this while been opportunity for radical changes in the European population by cross-breeding, infiltration and displacement of the several racial stocks that go to make up this population. Hence, on slight reflection the inference has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that this trait of human nature must presumably have been serviceable to the peoples of the earlier time, on those levels of savagery or of the lower barbarism on which the ancestral stocks of the European population first made good their survival and proved their fitness to people that quarter of the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view; so common as to pa.s.s for matter-of-course, and therefore habitually to escape scrutiny.

Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will show. All the European peoples show much the same animus in this respect; whatever their past history may have been, and whatever the difference in past experience that might be conceived to have shaped their temperament. Any difference in the pitch of patriotic conceit and animosity, between the several nationalities or the several localities, is by no means wide, even in cases where the racial composition of the population is held to be very different, as, e.g., between the peoples on the Baltic seaboard and those on the Mediterranean. In point of fact, in this matter of patriotic animus there appears to be a wider divergence, temperamentally, between individuals within any one of these communities than between the common run in any one community and the corresponding common run in any other. But even such divergence of individual temper in respect of patriotism as is to be met with, first and last, is after all surprisingly small in view of the scope for individual variation which this European population would seem to offer.

These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids compounded out of the same run of racial elements, but mixed in varying proportions. On any parallel of lat.i.tude--taken in the climatic rather than in the geometric sense--the racial composition of the west-European population will be much the same, virtually identical in effect, although always of a hybrid complexion; whereas on any parallel of longitude--also in the climatic sense--the racial composition will vary progressively, but always within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisation,--the variation being a variation in the proportion in which the several racial elements are present in any given case. But in no case does a notable difference in racial composition coincide with a linguistic or national frontier. But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples are one as good as another, whether the comparison be traced on parallels of lat.i.tude or of longitude. And the inhabitants of each national territory, or of each detail locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform in respect of their patriotic spirit.

Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, superficially, appear to run somewhat haphazard. There will, of course, be no traceable difference between social or economic cla.s.ses, in point of heredity,--as is visibly the case in Christendom. But variation--of an apparently haphazard description--will be large and ubiquitous among the individuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is a matter of course and of easy verification that individual variation within such a hybrid stock will greatly exceed the extreme differences that may subsist between the several racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid stock. Such is the case of the European peoples. The inhabitants vary greatly among themselves, both in physical and in mental traits, as would be expected; and the variation between individuals in point of patriotic animus should accordingly also be expected to be extremely wide,--should, in effect, greatly exceed the difference, if any, in this respect between the several racial elements engaged in the European population. Some appreciable difference in this respect there appears to be, between individuals; but individual divergence from the normal or average appears always to be of a sporadic sort,--it does not run on cla.s.s lines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at all consistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returns to the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animus are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the general proposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and the European Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the average endowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all differences of time, place and circ.u.mstance. It would, in fact, be extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in the ordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diverse samples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the diversity in visible physical traits may be quite p.r.o.nounced.

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respect the several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existing populations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one as another. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, that since there is, and has from the beginning been, no differential advantage favoring one racial stock or one fas.h.i.+on of hybrid as against another, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be no ground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account as between these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed and undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population, early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last; except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these Europeans, one with another.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf.

_Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, ch. i. and Supplementary Notes i. and ii.]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were an hereditary trait, something after the fas.h.i.+on of a Mendelian unit character. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; but the present argument scarcely needs a closer a.n.a.lysis. Still, in a measure to quiet t.i.tle and avoid annoyance, it may be noted that this patriotic animus is of the nature of a "frame of mind" rather than a Mendelian unit character; that it so involves a concatenation of several impulsive propensities (presumably hereditary); and that both the concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the response are a product of habituation, very largely of the nature of conventionalised use and wont. What is said above, therefore, goes little farther than saying that the underlying apt.i.tudes requisite to this patriotic frame of mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this point run with sufficient uniformity to bring a pa.s.sably uniform result. It may be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to be comprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression, home-sickness; so also an invidious self-complacency, coupled with a gregarious bent which gives the invidious comparison a group content; and further, commonly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation, self-abas.e.m.e.nt, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, that inclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to accept and serve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or by customary authority.

The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to the effect that under modern conditions the patriotic animus is wholly a disserviceable trait in the spiritual endowment of these peoples,--in so far as bears on the material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards the cultural interests more at large presumptively; whereas there is no a.s.sured ground for a discriminating opinion as touches its possible utility or disutility at any remote period in the past. There is, of course, always room for the conservative estimate that, as the possession of this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in the extinction of the race, so it may also in the calculable future continue to bring no more grievous results than a degree of mischief, without even stopping or greatly r.e.t.a.r.ding the increase of population.

All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as it goes. It must not be taken as intending to say any least word in derogation of those high qualities that inspire the patriotic citizen. In its economic, biological and cultural incidence patriotism appears to be an untoward trait of human nature; which has, of course, nothing to say as to its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its indispensability to a worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these respects deserving of all the esteem and encomiums that fall to its share. Indeed, its well-known moral and aesthetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited on any shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes of the present argument, nothing more than that the patriotic animus meets the unqualified approval of men because they are, all and several, infected with it. It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable presence of this quality in human nature; all the more since it continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of the fact that a modic.u.m of reflection should make its disserviceability plain to the meanest understanding. No higher praise of moral excellence, and no profounder test of loyalty, can be asked than this current unreserved commendation of a virtue that makes invariably for damage and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep-seated and indefeasible that drives men incontinently to do good that evil may come of it. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

In the light--and it is a dim and wavering light--of the archaeological evidence, helped out by circ.u.mstantial evidence from such parallel or a.n.a.logous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of early neolithic times and later.[5] And so one may form some conception of the part played by this patriotic animus among those beginnings, when, if not the race, at least its inst.i.tutions were young; and when the native temperament of these peoples was tried out and found fit to survive through the age-long and slow-moving eras of stone and bronze.

In this connection, it appears safe to a.s.sume that since early neolithic times no sensible change has taken effect in the racial complexion of the European peoples; and therefore no sensible change in their spiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of the spiritual elements that go to make up this patriotic animus the Europeans of today will be substantially identical with the Europeans of that early time.

The like is true as regards those other traits of temperament that come in question here, as being included among the stable characteristics that still condition the life of these peoples under the altered circ.u.mstances of the modern age.

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, as above.]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of these peoples resolves itself on a.n.a.lysis into a difference in the state of the industrial arts, together with such inst.i.tutional changes as have come on in the course of working out this advance in the industrial arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples have greatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples that now live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrial arts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that the fact of their having successfully come through the long ages of prehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not be taken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies of this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to a.s.sume that because these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture and its technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use and conducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of the modern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way of sanitation, police, compulsory education, charities,--all this and many other discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone who is inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created these conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of life for modern mankind.

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived in small and close groups. Control was close within the group, and the necessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to the common good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, on pain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimo villages may serve to ill.u.s.trate and enforce the argument on this head.

The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisite solidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survival in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded these early Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simply or most imperatively the joint prestige of the group, but rather the joint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual support and dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealous att.i.tude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of members within the group were in a position to turn this state of the common sentiment to their own particular advantage.

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; long enough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner of life,--longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed since history began. Special interests--e.g., personal and family interests--will have been present and active in these days of the beginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admit of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout the workday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small and feeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies in such pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount business of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a common livelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularist ambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the story of the group in question would have been ended, and another and more suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by its extinction.

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operations would grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The margin between production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion that the collective interest of the group at large was placed in jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members from without. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in the defeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of any alien; and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group solidarity, whatever material hards.h.i.+p or material gain might so fall to individual members in their dealings with the alien would pa.s.s easy scrutiny as material detriment or gain inuring to the group at large,--in the apprehension of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed with a jealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige.

With continued advance in the industrial arts the circ.u.mstances conditioning life will undergo a progressive change of such a character that the joint interest of the group at large, in the material respect, will progressively be less closely bound up with the material fortunes of any particular member or members; until in the course of time and change there will, in effect, in ordinary times be no general and inclusive community of material interest binding the members together in a common fortune and working for a common livelihood. As the rights of owners.h.i.+p begin to take effect, so that the owners.h.i.+p of property and the pursuit of a livelihood under the rules of owners.h.i.+p come to govern men's economic relations, these material concerns will cease to be a matter of undivided joint interest, and will fall into the shape of interest in severalty. So soon and so far as this inst.i.tution of owners.h.i.+p or property takes effect, men's material interests cease to run on lines of group solidarity. Solely, or almost solely, in the exceptional case of defense against a predatory incursion from outside, do the members of the group have a common interest of a material kind.

Progressively as the state of the arts advances, the industrial organisation advances to a larger scale and a more extensive specialisation, with increasing divergence among individual interests and individual fortunes; and intercourse over larger distances grows easier and makes a larger grouping practicable; which enables a larger, prompter and more effective mobilisation of forces with which to defend or a.s.sert any joint claims. But by the same move it also follows, or at least it appears uniformly to have followed in the European case, that the acc.u.mulation of property and the rights of owners.h.i.+p have progressively come into the first place among the material interests of these peoples; while anything like a community of usufruct has imperceptibly fallen into the background, and has presently gone virtually into abeyance, except as an eventual recourse _in extremis_ for the common defense. Property rights have displaced community of usufruct; and invidious distinctions as between persons, sub-groups, and cla.s.ses have displaced community of prestige in the workday routine of these peoples; and the distinctions between contrasted persons or cla.s.ses have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly or indirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pecuniary standing rather than on personal affiliation with the group at large.

So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentiation of a new character sets in and presently grows progressively more p.r.o.nounced and more effectual, giving rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardless of those frontiers that divide one community from another for purposes of patriotic emulation. So far as it comes chiefly and typically in question here, this regrouping takes place on two distinct but somewhat related principles of contrast: that of wealth and poverty, and that of master and servant, or authority and obedience. The material interests of the population in this way come to be divided between the group of those who own and those who command, on the one hand, and of those who work and who obey, on the other hand.

Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons have any direct material interest in the maintenance of the patriotic community; or at any rate no such interest as should reasonably induce them to spend their own time and substance in support of the political (patriotic) organisation within which they live. It is only in so far as one or another of these interests looks for a more than proportionate share in any prospective gain from the joint enterprise, that the group or cla.s.s in question can reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the joint venture. And it is only when and in so far as their particular material or self-regarding interest is reenforced by patriotic conceit, that they can be counted on to spend themselves in furtherance of the patriotic enterprise, without the a.s.surance of a more than proportionate share in any gains that may be held in prospect from any such joint enterprise; and it is only in its patriotic bearing that the political community continues to be a joint venture. That is to say, in more generalised terms, through the development of the rights of property, and of such like prescriptive claims of privilege and prerogative, it has come about that other community interests have fallen away, until the collective prestige remains as virtually the sole community interest which can hold the sentiment of the group in a bond of solidarity.

To one or another of these several interested groups or cla.s.ses within the community the political organisation may work a benefit; but only to one or another, not to each and several, jointly or collectively. Since by no chance will the benefit derived from such joint enterprise on the part of the community at large equal the joint cost; in as much as all joint enterprise of the kind that looks to material advantage works by one or another method of inhibition and takes effect, if at all, by lowering the aggregate efficiency of the several countries concerned, with a view to the differential gain of one at the cost of another. So, e.g., a protective tariff is plainly a conspiracy in restraint of trade, with a view to benefit the conspirators by hindering their compet.i.tors.

The aggregate cost to the community at large of such an enterprise in r.e.t.a.r.dation is always more than the gains it brings to those who may benefit by it.

In so speaking of the uses to which the common man's patriotic devotion may be turned, there is no intention to underrate its intrinsic value as a genial and generous trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best and chiefly to be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies and enn.o.bles its bearer, and that endows him with the full stature of manhood, quite irrespective of ulterior considerations. So it is to be conceded without argument that this patriotic animus is a highly meritorious frame of mind, and that it has an aesthetic value scarcely to be overstated in the farthest stretch of poetic license. But the question of its serviceability to the modern community, in any other than this decorative respect, and particularly its serviceability to the current needs of the common man in such a modern community, is not touched by such an admission; nor does this recognition of its generous spiritual nature afford any help toward answering a further question as to how and with what effect this animus may be turned to account by anyone who is in position to make use of the forces which it sets free.

Among Christian nations there still is, on the whole, a decided predilection for that ancient and authentic line of national repute that springs from warlike prowess. This repute for warlike prowess is what first comes to mind among civilised peoples when speaking of national greatness. And among those who have best preserved this warlike ideal of worth, the patriotic ambition is likely to converge on the prestige of their sovereign; so that it takes the concrete form of personal loyalty to a master, and so combines or coalesces with a servile habit of mind.

But peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, it is said; and peaceable folk of a patriotic temper have learned to make the best of their meager case and have found self-complacency in these victories of the peaceable order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations look with complacency on their own peculiar Culture--the organised complex of habits of thought and of conduct by which their own routine of life is regulated--as being in some way worthier than the corresponding habits of their neighbors. The case of the German Culture has latterly come under a strong light in this way. But while it may be that no other nation has been so naive as to make a concerted profession of faith to the effect that their own particular way of life is altogether commendable and is the only fas.h.i.+on of civilisation that is fit to survive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to a.s.sert that in their own secret mind these others, too, are blest with much the same consciousness of unique worth. Conscious virtue of this kind is a good and sufficient ground for patriotic inflation, so far as it goes. It commonly does not go beyond a defensive att.i.tude, however. Now and again, as in the latterday German animation on this head, these phenomena of national use and wont may come to command such a degree of popular admiration as will incite to an aggressive or proselyting campaign.

In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind. The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his G.o.d.

There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual a.s.sets of self-complacency are, indeed, to be rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without afterthought. These aspirations and enthusiasms would perhaps be rated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bounded by the main chance; but they make up that substance of things hoped for that inflates those headlong patriotic animosities that stir universal admiration.

So also, men find an invidious distinction in such matters of physical magnitude as their country's area, the number of its population, the size of its cities, the extent of its natural resources, its aggregate wealth and its wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreign trade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phenomena of physical magnitude and pecuniary traffic are no better and no worse than such immaterial a.s.sets as the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections of the language. They are matters in which the common man is concerned only by the accident of domicile, and his only connection with these things is an imaginary joint interest in their impressiveness. To these things he has contributed substantially nothing, and from them he derives no other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He takes pride in these things in an invidious way, and there is no good reason why he should not; just as there is also no good reason why he should, apart from the fact that the common man is so const.i.tuted that he, mysteriously, takes pride in these things that concern him not.

Of the several groups or cla.s.ses of persons within the political frontiers, whose particular interests run systematically at cross purposes with those of the community at large under modern conditions, the cla.s.s of masters, rulers, authorities,--or whatever term may seem most suitable to designate that category of persons whose characteristic occupation is to give orders and command deference,--of the several orders and conditions of men these are, in point of substantial motive and interest, most patently at variance with all the rest, or with the fortunes of the common man. The cla.s.s will include civil and military authorities and whatever n.o.bility there is of a prescriptive and privileged kind. The substantial interest of these cla.s.ses in the common welfare is of the same kind as the interest which a parasite has in the well-being of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt, but there is in this relation nothing like a community of interest. Any gain on the part of the community at large will materially serve the needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument is only that their material or other self-regarding interests are of such a nature as to be furthered by the material wealth of the community, and more particularly by the increasing volume of the body politic; but only with the proviso that this material wealth and this increment of power must accrue without anything like a corresponding cost to this cla.s.s. At the same time, since this cla.s.s of the superiors is in some degree a specialised organ of prestige, so that their value, and therefore their tenure, both in the eyes of the community and in their own eyes, is in the main a "prestige value" and a tenure by prestige; and since the prestige that invests their persons is a shadow cast by the putative worth of the community at large, it follows that their particular interest in the joint prestige is peculiarly alert and insistent. But it follows also that these personages cannot of their own substance or of their own motion contribute to this collective prestige in the same proportion in which it is necessary for them to draw on it in support of their own prestige value. It would, in other words, be a patent absurdity to call on any of the current ruling cla.s.ses, dynasties, n.o.bility, military and diplomatic corps, in any of the nations of Europe, e.g., to preserve their current dignity and command the deference that is currently accorded them, by recourse to their own powers and expenditure of their own substance, without the usufruct of the commonalty whose organ of dignity they are. The current prestige value which they enjoy is beyond their unaided powers to create or maintain, without the usufruct of the community. Such an enterprise does not lie within the premises of the case.

In this bearing, therefore, the first concern with which these personages are necessarily occupied is the procurement and retention of a suitable usufruct in the material resources and good-will of a sufficiently large and industrious population. The requisite good-will in these premises is called loyalty, and its retention by the line of personages that so trade on prestige rests on a superinduced a.s.sociation of ideas, whereby the national honour comes to be confounded in popular apprehension with the prestige of these personages who have the keeping of it. But the potentates and the establishments, civil and military, on whom this prestige value rests will unavoidably come into invidious comparison with others of their kind; and, as invariably happens in matters of invidious comparison, the emulative needs of all the compet.i.tors for prestige are "indefinitely extensible," as the phrase of the economists has it. Each and several of them incontinently needs a further increment of prestige, and therefore also a further increment of the material a.s.sets in men and resources that are needful as ways and means to a.s.sert and augment the national honor.

It is true, the notion that their prestige value is in any degree conditioned by the material circ.u.mstances and the popular imagination of the underlying nation is distasteful to many of these vicars of the national honour. They will incline rather to the persuasion that this prestige value is a distinctive attribute, of a unique order, intrinsic to their own persons. But, plainly, any such detached line of magnates, notables, kings and mandarins, resting their notability on nothing more substantial than a slightly sub-normal intelligence and a moderately scrofulous habit of body could not long continue to command that eager deference that is accounted their due. Such a picture of majesty would be sadly out of drawing. There is little conviction and no great dignity to be drawn from the unaided p.r.o.nouncement:

"We're here because, We're here because, We're here because We're here,"

even when the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical benefit of a "Tenure by the Grace of G.o.d." The personages that carry this dignity require the backing of a determined and patriotic populace in support of their prestige value, and they commonly have no great difficulty in procuring it. And their prestige value is, in effect, proportioned to the volume of material resources and patriotic credulity that can be drawn on for its a.s.sertion. It is true, their draught on the requisite sentimental and pecuniary support is fortified with large claims of serviceability to the common good, and these claims are somewhat easily, indeed eagerly, conceded and acted upon; although the alleged benefit to the common good will scarcely be visible except in the light of glory shed by the blazing torch of patriotism.

In so far as it is of a material nature the benefit which the const.i.tuted authorities so engage to contribute to the common good, or in other words to confer on the common man, falls under two heads: defense against aggression from without; and promotion of the community's material gain. It is to be presumed that the const.i.tuted authorities commonly believe more or less implicitly in their own professions in so professing to serve the needs of the common man in these respects. The common defense is a sufficiently grave matter, and doubtless it claims the best affections and endeavour of the citizen; but it is not a matter that should claim much attention at this point in the argument, as bearing on the service rendered the common man by the const.i.tuted authorities, taken one with another. Any given governmental establishment at home is useful in this respect only as against another governmental establishment elsewhere. So that on the slightest examination it resolves itself into a matter of compet.i.tive patriotic enterprise, as between the patriotic aspirations of different nationalities led by different governmental establishments; and the service so rendered by the const.i.tuted authorities in the aggregate takes on the character of a remedy for evils of their own creation. It is invariably a defense against the concerted aggressions of other patriots. Taken in the large, the common defense of any given nation becomes a detail of the compet.i.tive struggle between rival nationalities animated with a common spirit of patriotic enterprise and led by authorities const.i.tuted for this compet.i.tive purpose.

Except on a broad basis of patriotic devotion, and except under the direction of an ambitious governmental establishment, no serious international aggression is to be had. The common defense, therefore, is to be taken as a remedy for evils arising out of the working of the patriotic spirit that animates mankind, as brought to bear under a discretionary authority; and in any balance to be struck between the utility and disutility of this patriotic spirit and of its service in the hands of the const.i.tuted authorities, it will have to be cancelled out as being at the best a mitigation of some of the disorders brought on by the presence of national governments resting on patriotic loyalty at large.

But this common defense is by no means a vacant rubric in any attempted account of modern national enterprise. It is the commonplace and conclusive plea of the dynastic statesmen and the aspiring warlords, and it is the usual blind behind which events are put in train for eventual hostilities. Preparation for the common defense also appears unfailingly to eventuate in hostilities. With more or less _bona fides_ the statesmen and warriors plead the cause of the common defense, and with patriotic alacrity the common man lends himself to the enterprise aimed at under that cover. In proportion as the resulting equipment for defense grows great and becomes formidable, the range of items which a patriotically biased nation are ready to include among the claims to be defended grows incontinently larger, until by the overlapping of defensive claims between rival nationalities the distinction between defense and aggression disappears, except in the biased fancy of the rival patriots.

Of course, no reflections are called for here on the current American campaign of "Preparedness." Except for the degree of hysteria it appears to differ in no substantial respect from the a.n.a.logous course of auto-intoxication among the nationalities of Europe, which came to a head in the current European situation. It should conclusively serve the turn for any self-possessed observer to call to mind that all the civilised nations of warring Europe are, each and several, convinced that they are fighting a defensive war.

The aspiration of all right-minded citizens is presumed to be "Peace with Honour." So that first, as well as last, among those national interests that are to be defended, and in the service of which the substance and affections of the common man are enlisted under the aegis of the national prowess, comes the national prestige, as a matter of course. And the const.i.tuted authorities are doubtless sincere and single-minded in their endeavors to advance and defend the national honour, particularly those const.i.tuted authorities that hold their place of authority on grounds of fealty; since the national prestige in such a case coalesces with the prestige of the nation's ruler in much the same degree in which the national sovereignty devolves upon the person of its ruler. In so defending or advancing the national prestige, such a dynastic or autocratic overlord, together with the other privileged elements a.s.sisting and dependent on him, is occupied with his own interest; his own tenure is a tenure by prestige, and the security of his tenure lies in the continued maintenance of that popular fancy that invests his person with this national prestige and so const.i.tutes him and his retinue of notables and personages its keeper.

But it is uniformly insisted by the statesmen--potentates, notables, kings and mandarins--that this aegis of the national prowess in their hands covers also many interests of a more substantial and more tangible kind. These other, more tangible interests of the community have also a value of a direct and personal sort to the dynasty and its hierarchy of privileged subalterns, in that it is only by use of the material forces of the nation that the dynastic prestige can be advanced and maintained.

The interest of such const.i.tuted authorities in the material welfare of the nation is consequently grave and insistent; but it is evidently an interest of a special kind and is subject to strict and peculiar limitations. The common good, in the material respect, interests the dynastic statesman only as a means to dynastic ends; that is to say, only in so far as it can be turned to account in the achievement of dynastic aims. These aims are "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory," as the sacred formula phrases the same conception in another bearing.

That is to say, the material welfare of the nation is a means to the unfolding of the dynastic power; provided always that this material welfare is not allowed to run into such ramifications as will make the commonwealth an unwieldy instrument in the hands of the dynastic statesmen. National welfare is to the purpose only in so far as it conduces to political success, which is always a question of warlike success in the last resort. The limitation which this consideration imposes on the government's economic policy are such as will make the nation a self-sufficient or self-balanced economic commonwealth. It must be a self-balanced commonwealth at least in such measure as will make it self-sustaining in case of need, in all those matters that bear directly on warlike efficiency.

Of course, no community can become fully self-sustaining under modern conditions, by use of the modern state of the industrial arts, except by recourse to such drastic measures of repression as would reduce its total efficiency in an altogether intolerable degree. This will hold true even of those nations who, like Russia or the United States, are possessed of extremely extensive territories and extremely large and varied resources; but it applies with greatly accentuated force to smaller and more scantily furnished territorial units. Peoples living under modern conditions and by use of the modern state of the industrial arts necessarily draw on all quarters of the habitable globe for materials and products which they can procure to the best advantage from outside their own special field so long as they are allowed access to these outlying sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation on this freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much harder, and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the community by that much.

National self-sufficiency is to be achieved only by a degree of economic isolation; and such a policy of economic isolation involves a degree of impoverishment and lowered efficiency, but it will also leave the nation readier for warlike enterprise on such a scale as its reduced efficiency will compa.s.s.

So that the best that can be accomplished along this line by the dynastic statesmen is a shrewd compromise, embodying such a degree of isolation and inhibition as will leave the country pa.s.sably self-sufficient in case of need, without lowering the national efficiency to such a point as to cripple its productive forces beyond what will be offset by the greater warlike readiness that is so attained. The point to which such a policy of isolation and sufficiency will necessarily be directed is that measure of inhibition that will yield the most facile and effective ways and means of warlike enterprise, the largest product of warlike effectiveness to be had on multiplying the nation's net efficiency into its readiness to take the field.

Into any consideration of this tactical problem a certain subsidiary factor enters, in that the patriotic temper of the nation is always more or less affected by such an economic policy. The greater the degree of effectual isolation and discrimination embodied in the national policy, the greater will commonly be its effect on popular sentiment in the way of national animosity and spiritual self-sufficiency; which may be an a.s.set of great value for the purposes of warlike enterprise.

Plainly, any dynastic statesman who should undertake to further the common welfare regardless of its serviceability for warlike enterprise would be defeating his own purpose. He would, in effect, go near to living up to his habitual professions touching international peace, instead of professing to live up to them, as the exigencies of his national enterprise now conventionally require him to do. In effect, he would be _functus officio_.

There are two great administrative instruments available for this work of repression and national self-sufficiency at the hands of the imperialistic statesman: the protective tariff, and commercial subvention. The two are not consistently to be distinguished from one another at all points, and each runs out into a multifarious convolution of variegated details; but the principles involved are, after all, fairly neat and consistent. The former is of the nature of a conspiracy in restraint of trade by repression; the latter, a conspiracy to the like effect by subsidised monopoly; both alike act to check the pursuit of industry in given lines by artificially increasing the cost of production for given individuals or cla.s.ses of producers, and both alike impose a more than proportionate cost on the community within which they take effect. Incidentally, both of these methods of inhibition bring a degree, though a less degree, of hards.h.i.+p, to the rest of the industrial world.