The general proposition embodied in this book⁠—that the world has passed out of that stage of development in which it is possible for one civilized group to advance its well-being by the military domination of another⁠—is either broadly true or broadly false. If it is false, it can, of course, have no bearing upon the actual problems of our time, and can have no practical outcome; huge armaments tempered by warfare are the logical and natural condition.

But the commonest criticism this book has had to meet is that, though its central proposition is in essence sound, it has, nevertheless, no practical value, because⁠—

1. Armaments are for defence, not for aggression.

2. However true these principles may be, the world does not recognize them and never will, because men are not guided by reason.

As to the first point. It is probable that, if we really understood truths which we are apt to dismiss as platitudes, many of our problems would disappear.

To say, “We must take measures for defence” is equivalent to saying, “Someone is likely to attack us,” which is equivalent to saying, “Someone has a motive for attacking us.” In other words, the basic fact from which arises the necessity for armaments, the ultimate explanation of European militarism, is the force of the motive making for aggression. (And in the word “aggression,” of course, I include the imposition of superior force by the threat, or implied threat, of its use, as well as by its actual use.)

That motive may be material or moral; it may arise from real conflict of interest, or a purely imaginary one; but with the disappearance of prospective aggression disappears also the need for defence.

The reader deems these platitudes beside the mark?

I will take a few sample criticisms directed at this book. Here is the London Daily Mail:

The bigger nations are armed, not so much because they look for the spoils of war, as because they wish to prevent the horrors of it; arms are for defence.111

And here is the London Times:

No doubt the victor suffers, but who suffers most, he or the vanquished?”112

The criticism of the Daily Mail was made within three months of a “raging and tearing” big navy campaign, all of it based on the assumption that Germany was “looking for the spoils of war,” the English naval increase being thus a direct outcome of such motives. Without it, the question of English increase would not have arisen.113 The only justification for the clamor for increase was that England was liable to attack; every nation in Europe justifies its armaments in the same way; every nation consequently believes in the universal existence of this motive for attack.

The Times has been hardly less insistent than the Mail as to the danger from German aggression; but its criticism would imply that the motive behind that prospective aggression is not a desire for any political advantage or gain of any sort. Germany apparently recognizes aggression to be, not merely barren of any useful result whatsoever, but burdensome and costly into the bargain; she is, nevertheless, determined to enter upon it in order that though she suffer, someone else will suffer more!114

In common with the London Daily Mail and the London Times, Admiral Mahan fails to understand this “platitude,” which underlies the relation of defence to aggression.

Thus in his criticism of this book, he cites the position of Great Britain during the Napoleonic era as proof that commercial advantage goes with the possession of preponderant military power in the following passage:

Great Britain owed her commercial superiority then to the armed control of the sea, which had sheltered her commerce and industrial fabric from molestation by the enemy.

Ergo, military force has commercial value, a result which is arrived at by this method: in deciding a case made up of two parties you ignore one.

England’s superiority was not due to the employment of military force, but to the fact that she was able to prevent the employment of military force against her; and the necessity for so doing arose from Napoleon’s motive in threatening her. But for the existence of this motive to aggression⁠—moral or material, just or mistaken⁠—Great Britain, without any force whatsoever, would have been more secure and more prosperous than she was; she would not have been spending a third of her income in war, and her peasantry would not have been starving.

Of a like character to the remark of the Times is the criticism of the Spectator, as follows:

Mr. Angell’s main point is that the advantages customarily associated with national independence and security have no existence outside the popular imagination.⁠ ⁠… He holds that Englishmen would be equally happy if they were under German rule, and that Germans would be equally happy if they were under English rule. It is irrational, therefore, to take any measures for perpetuating the existing European order, since only a sentimentalist can set any value on its maintenance.⁠ ⁠… Probably in private life Mr. Angell is less consistent and less inclined to preach the burglar’s gospel that to the wise man meum and tuum are but two names for the same thing. If he is anxious to make converts, he will do well to apply his reasoning to subjects that come nearer home, and convince the average man that marriage and private property are as much illusions as patriotism. If sentiment is to be banished from politics, it cannot reasonably be retained in morals.

As the reply to this somewhat extraordinary criticism is directly germane to what it is important to make clear, I may, perhaps, be excused for reproducing my letter to the Spectator, which was in part as follows:

How far the foregoing is a correct description of the scope and character of the book under review may be gathered from the following statement of fact. My pamphlet does not attack the sentiment of patriotism (unless a criticism of the duellist’s conception of dignity be considered as such); it simply does not deal with it, as being outside the limits of the main thesis. I do not hold, and there is not one line to which your reviewer can point as justifying such a conclusion, that Englishmen would be equally happy if they were under German rule. I do not conclude that it is irrational to take measures for perpetuating the existing European order. I do not “expose the folly of self-defence in nations.” I do not object to spending money on armaments at this juncture. On the contrary, I am particularly emphatic in declaring that while the present philosophy is what it is, we are bound to maintain our relative position with other Powers. I admit that so long as there is danger, as I believe there is, from German aggression, we must arm. I do not preach a burglar’s gospel, that meum and tuum are the same thing, and the whole tendency of my book is the exact reverse: it is to show that the burglar’s gospel⁠—which is the gospel of statecraft as it now stands⁠—is no longer possible among nations, and that the difference between meum and tuum must necessarily, as society gains in complication, be given a stricter observance than it has ever heretofore been given in history. I do not urge that sentiment should be banished from politics, if by sentiment is meant the common morality that guides us in our treatment of marriage and of private property. The whole tone of my book is to urge with all possible emphasis the exact reverse of such a doctrine; to urge that the morality which has been by our necessities developed in the society of individuals must also be applied to the society of nations as that society becomes by virtue of our development more interdependent.

I have only taken a small portion of your reviewer’s article (which runs to a whole page), and I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that nearly all of it is as untrue and as much a distortion of what I really say as the passage from which I have quoted. What I do attempt to make plain is that the necessity for defence measures (which I completely recognize and emphatically counsel) implies on the part of someone a motive for aggression, and that the motive arises from the (at present) universal belief in the social and economic advantages accruing from successful conquest.

I challenged this universal axiom of statecraft and attempted to show that the mechanical development of the last thirty or forty years, especially in the means of communication, had given rise to certain economic phenomena⁠—of which reacting bourses and the financial interdependence of the great economic centres of the world are perhaps the most characteristic⁠—which render modern wealth and trade intangible in the sense that they cannot be seized or interfered with to the advantage of a military aggressor, the moral being, not that self-defence is out of date, but that aggression is, and that when aggression ceases, self-defence will be no longer necessary. I urged, therefore, that in these little-recognized truths might possibly be found a way out of the armament impasse; that if the accepted motive for aggression could be shown to have no solid basis, the tension in Europe would be immensely relieved, and the risk of attack become immeasurably less by reason of the slackening of the motive for aggression. I asked whether this series of economic facts⁠—so little realized by the average politician in Europe, and yet so familiar to at least a few of the ablest financiers⁠—did not go far to change the axioms of statecraft, and I urged reconsideration of such in the light of these facts.

Your reviewer, instead of dealing with the questions thus raised, accuses me of “attacking patriotism,” of arguing that “Englishmen would be equally happy under German rule,” and much nonsense of the same sort, for which there is not a shadow of justification. Is this serious criticism? Is it worthy of the Spectator?

To the foregoing letter the Spectator critic rejoins as follows:

If Mr. Angell’s book had given me the same impression as that which I gain from his letter, I should have reviewed it in a different spirit. I can only plead that I wrote under the impression which the book actually made on me. In reply to his “statement of fact,” I must ask your leave to make the following corrections: (1) Instead of saying that, on Mr. Angell’s showing, Englishmen would be “equally happy” under German rule, I ought to have said that they would be equally well off. But on his doctrine that material well-being is “the very highest” aim of a politician, the two terms seem to be interchangeable. (2) The “existing European order” rests on the supposed economic value of political force. In opposition to this Mr. Angell maintains “the economic futility of political force.” To take measures for perpetuating an order founded on a futility does seem to me “irrational.” (3) I never said that Mr. Angell objects to spending money on armaments “while the present philosophy is what it is.” (4) The stress laid in the book on the economic folly of patriotism, as commonly understood, does seem to me to suggest that “sentiment should be banished from politics.” But I admit that this was only an inference, though, as I still think, a fair inference. (5) I apologize for the words “the burglar’s gospel.” They have the fault, incident to rhetorical phrases, of being more telling than exact.

This rejoinder, as a matter of fact, still reveals the confusion which prompted the first criticism. Because I urged that Germany could do England relatively little harm, since the harm which she inflicted would immediately react on German prosperity, my critic assumes that this is equivalent to saying that Englishmen would be as happy or as prosperous under German rule. He quite overlooks the fact that if Germans are convinced that they will obtain no benefit by the conquest of the English they will not attempt that conquest, and there will be no question of the English living under German rule either less or more happily or prosperously. It is not a question of Englishmen saying, “Let the German come,” but of the German saying, “Why should we go?” As to the critic’s second point, I have expressly explained that not the rival’s real interest but what he deems to be his real interest must be the guide to conduct. Military force is certainly economically futile, but so long as German policy rests on the assumption of the supposed economic value of military force, England must meet that force by the only force that can reply to it.

Some years ago the bank in a Western mining town was frequently subjected to “holdups,” because it was known that the great mining company owning the town kept large quantities of gold there for the payment of its workmen. The company, therefore, took to paying its wages mainly by check on a San Francisco bank, and by a simple system of clearances practically abolished the use of gold in considerable quantities in the mining town in question. The bank was never attacked again.

Now, the demonstration that gold had been replaced by books in that bank was as much a work of defence as though the bank had spent tens of thousands of dollars in constructing forts and earthworks, and mounting Gatling guns around the town. Of the two methods of defence, that of substituting checks for gold was infinitely cheaper, and more effective.

Even if the inferences which the Spectator reviewer draws were true ones, which for the most part they are not, he still overlooks one important element. If it were true that the book involves the “folly of patriotism,” how is that in any way relevant to the discussion, since I also urge that nations are justified in protecting even their follies against the attack of other nations? I may regard the Christian Scientists, or the Seventh Day Adventists, or the Spiritualists, as very foolish people, and to some extent mischievous people; but were an Act of Parliament introduced for their suppression by physical force, I should resist such an act with all the energy of which I was capable. In what way are the two attitudes contradictory? They are the attitudes, I take it, of educated men the world over. The fact has no importance, and it hardly bears on this subject, but I regard certain English conceptions of life bearing on matters of law, and social habit, and political philosophy, as infinitely preferable to the German, and if I thought that such conceptions demanded defence indefinitely by great armaments this book would never have been written. But I take the view that the idea of such necessity is based on a complete illusion, not only because as a matter of present-day fact, and even in the present state of political philosophy, Germany has not the least intention of going to war with us to change our notions in law or literature, art or social organization, but also because if she had any such notion it would be founded upon illusions which she would be bound sooner or later to shed, because German policy could not indefinitely resist the influence of a general European attitude on such matters any more than it has been possible for any great and active European State to stand outside the European movement which has condemned the policy of attempting to impose religious belief by the physical force of the State. And I should regard it as an essential part of the work of defence to aid in the firm establishment of such a European doctrine, as much a part of the work of defence as it would be to go on building battleships until Germany had subscribed to it.

A great part of the misconception just dealt with arises from a hazily conceived fear that ideas like those embodied in this book must attenuate our energy of defence, and that we shall be in a weaker position relatively to our rivals than we were before. But this overlooks the fact that if the progress of ideas weakens our energies of defence, it also weakens our rival’s energy of attack, and the strength of our relative positions is just what it was originally, with this exception: that we have taken a step towards peace instead of a step towards war, to which the mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the end inevitably lead.

But there is one aspect of this failure to realize the relation of defence to aggression, which brings us nearer to considering the bearing of these principles upon the question of practical policy.