Endnotes

1. The True Way of Life (Headley Brothers, London), p. 29. I am aware that many modern pacifists, even of the English school, to which these remarks mainly apply, are more objective in their advocacy than Mr. Grubb, but in the eyes of the “average sensual man” pacificism is still deeply tainted with this self-sacrificing altruism (see Chapter III, Part III), notwithstanding the admirable work of the French pacifist school. ↩

2. The Matin newspaper recently made a series of revelations, in which it was shown that the master of a French codfishing vessel had, for some trivial insubordinations, disembowelled his cabin-boy alive, and put salt into the intestines, and then thrown the quivering body into the hold with the codfish. So inured were the crew to brutality that they did not effectively protest, and the incident was only brought to light months later by wine-shop chatter. The Matin quotes this as the sort of brutality that marks the Newfoundland codfishing industry in French ships.

   Again, the German Socialist papers have recently been dealing with what they term “The Casualties of the Industrial Battlefield,” showing that the losses from industrial accidents since 1871⁠—the loss of life during peace, that is⁠—have been enormously greater than the losses due to the Franco-Prussian War. ↩

3. The Interest of America in International Conditions. New York: Harper & Brothers. ↩

4. That is to say, all this was to have taken place before 1911 (the book appeared some years ago). This has its counterpart in the English newspaper feuilleton which appeared some years ago entitled, “The German Invasion of 1910.” ↩

5. See letter to the Matin, August 22, 1908. ↩

6. In this self-seeking world, it is not reasonable to assume the existence of an inverted altruism of this kind. ↩

7. This is not the only basis of comparison, of course. Everyone who knows Europe at all is aware of the high standard of comfort in all the small countries⁠—Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland. Mulhall, in Industries and Wealth of Nations (p. 391), puts the small States of Europe with France and England at the top of the list, Germany sixth, and Russia, territorially and militarily the greatest of all, at the very end. Dr. Bertillon, the French statistician, has made an elaborate calculation of the relative wealth of the individuals of each country. The middle-aged German possesses (on the established average) nine thousand francs ($1800); the Hollander sixteen thousand ($3200). (See Journal, Paris, August 1, 1910). ↩

8. The figures given in the Statesman’s Yearbook show that, proportionately to population, Norway has nearly three times the carrying trade of England. ↩

9. See citation. ↩

10. Major Stewart Murray, Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons. London: Watts and Co. ↩

11. L’Information, August 22, 1909. ↩

12. Very many times greater, because the bullion reserve in the Bank of England is relatively small. ↩

13. Hartley Withers, The Meaning of Money. Smith, Elder and Co., London. ↩

14. See text. ↩

15. See note concerning French colonial policy. ↩

16. Summarizing an article in the Oriental Economic Review, the San Francisco Bulletin says: “Japan at this moment seems to be finding out that ‘conquered’ Korea in every real sense belongs to the Koreans, and that all that Japan is getting out of her war is an additional burden of statesmanship and an additional expense of administration, and an increased percentage of international complication due to the extension of the Japanese frontier dangerously close to her Continental rivals, China and Russia. Japan as ‘owner’ of Korea is in a worse position economically and politically than she was when she was compelled to treat with Korea as an independent nation.” The Oriental Economic Review notes that “the Japanese hope to ameliorate the Korean situation through the general intermarriage of the two peoples; but this means a racial advance, and through it closer social and economic relations than were possible before annexation, and would probably have been easier of accomplishment had not the destruction of Korean independence embittered the people.” ↩

17. Spanish Four percents were 42½ during the war, and just prior to the Moroccan trouble, in 1911, had a free market at 90 percent.

    F. C. Penfold writes in the December (1910) North American Review as follows: “The new Spain, whose motive force springs not from the windmills of dreamy fiction, but from honest toil, is materially better off this year than it has been for generations. Since the war Spanish bonds have practically doubled in value, and exchange with foreign money markets has improved in corresponding ratio. Spanish seaports on the Atlantic and Mediterranean teem with shipping. Indeed, the nature of the people seems changing from a dolce far niente indolence to enterprising thrift.” ↩

18. London Daily Mail, December 15, 1910. ↩

19. Traité de Science des Finances, vol. II, p. 682. ↩

20. Die Wirtschafts Finanz und Sozialreform im Deutschen Reich. Leipzig, 1882. ↩

21. “La Crise Économique,” Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1879. ↩

22. Maurice Block, “La Crise Économique,” Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1879. See also Les Conséquences Économiques de la Prochaine Guerre, Captaine Bernard Serrigny. Paris, 1909. The author says (p. 127): “It was evidently the disastrous financial position of Germany, which had compelled Prussia at the outbreak of the war to borrow money at the unheard-of price of 11 percent, that caused Bismarck to make the indemnity so large a one. He hoped thus to repair his country’s financial situation. Events cruelly deceived him, however. A few months after the last payment of the indemnity the gold despatched by France had already returned to her territory, while Germany, poorer than ever, was at grips with a crisis which was to a large extent the direct result of her temporary wealth.” ↩

23. Das Deutsche Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks. ↩

24. The figures of German emigration are most suggestive in this connection. Although they show great fluctuation, indicating their reaction to many factors, they always appear to rise after the wars. Thus, after the wars of the Duchies they doubled, for the five years preceding the campaigns of 1865 they averaged 41,000, and after those campaigns rose suddenly to over 100,000. They had fallen to 70,000 in 1869, and then rose to 154,000 in 1872, and what is more remarkable still, the emigration did not come from the conquered provinces, from Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace or Lorraine, but from Prussia! While not for a moment claiming that the effect of the wars is the sole factor in this fluctuation, the fact of emigration as bearing on the general claim made for successful war demands the most careful examination. See particularly, “L’Émigration Allemande,” Revue des Deux Mondes, January, 1874. ↩

25. The Montreal Presse, March 27, 1909. ↩

26. Speech, House of Commons, August 26, 1909. The New York papers of November 16, 1909, report the following from Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Dominion Parliament during the debate on the Canadian Navy: “If now we have to organize a naval force, it is because we are growing as a nation⁠—it is the penalty of being a nation. I know of no nation having a seacoast of its own which has no navy, except Norway, but Norway will never tempt the invader. Canada has its coal-mines, its goldmines, its wheat-fields, and its vast wealth may offer a temptation to the invader.” ↩

27. The recent tariff negotiations between Canada and the United States were carried on directly between Ottawa and Washington, without the intervention of London. Canada regularly conducts her tariff negotiations, even with other members of the British Empire. South Africa takes a like attitude. The Volkstein of July 10, 1911, says: “The Union constitution is in full accord with the principle that neutrality is permissible in the case of a war in which England and other independent States of the Empire are involved.⁠ ⁠… England, as well as South Africa, would best be served by South Africa’s neutrality” (quoted in Times, July 11, 1911). Note the phrase “independent States of the Empire.” ↩

28. Times, November 7, 1911. ↩

29. The London World, an Imperialist organ, puts it thus: “The electoral process of reversing the results of the war is completed in South Africa. By the result of last week’s contests Mr. Merriman has secured a strong working majority in both Houses. The triumph of the Bond at Cape Town is no less sweeping than was that of Het Volk at Pretoria. The three territories upon which the future of the subcontinent depends are linked together under Boer supremacy⁠ ⁠… the future federated or uniformed system will be raised upon a Dutch basis. If this was what we wanted, we might have bought it cheaper than with two hundred and fifty millions of money and twenty thousand lives.” ↩

30. A Bill has been introduced into the Indian Legislative Council enabling the Government to prohibit emigration to any country where the treatment accorded to British Indian subjects was not such as met with the approval of the Governor-General. “As just treatment for free Indians has not been secured,” says the London Times, “prohibition will undoubtedly be applied against Natal unless the position of free Indians there is ameliorated.” ↩

31. Britain’s total overseas trade for 1908 was $5,245,000,000, of which $3,920,000,000 was with foreigners, and $1,325,000,000 with her own possessions. And while it is true that with some of her Colonies Britain has as much as 52 percent of their trade⁠—e.g., Australia⁠—it also happens that some absolutely foreign countries do a greater percentage even of their trade with Britain than do her Colonies. Britain possesses 38 percent of Argentina’s foreign trade, but only 36 percent of Canada’s, although Canada has recently given her a considerable preference. ↩

32. West Africa and Madagascar. ↩

33. It is a little encouraging, perhaps, for those of us who are doing what we may towards the dissemination of saner ideas, that an early edition of this book seems to have played some part in bringing about the change in French colonial policy here indicated. The French Colonial Ministry, for the purpose of emphasizing the point of view mentioned in Le Temps article, on two or three occasions called pointed attention to the first French edition of this book. In the official report of the Colonial Budget for 1911, a large part of this chapter is reprinted. In the Senate (see Journal Officiel de la République Française, July 2, 1911) the Rapporteur again quoted from this book at length, and devoted a great part of his speech towards emphasizing the thesis here set out. ↩

34. A financier to whom I showed the proofs of this chapter notes here: “If such a tax were imposed the output would be nil.” ↩

35. A correspondent sent me some interesting and significant details of the rapid strides made by Germany in Egypt. It had already been stated that a German newspaper would appear in October, 1910, and that the official notices of the mixed courts have been transferred from the local French newspapers to the German Egyptischer Nachrichten. During the years 1897⁠–⁠1907, German residents in Egypt increased by 44 percent, while British residents increased by only 5 percent. Germany’s share of the Egyptian imports during the period 1900⁠–⁠1904 was $3,443,880, but by 1909 this figure reached $5,786,355. The latest German undertaking in Egypt was the foundation of the Egyptische Hypotheken Bank, in which all the principal joint-stock banks of Germany were interested. Its capital was to be $2,500,000 and the six directors included three Germans, one Austrian, and two Italians.

    Writing of “Home Sickness among the Emigrants” (the London World, July 19, 1910), Mr. F. G. Aflalo said:

    “The Germans are, of all nations, the least troubled with this weakness. Though far more warmly attached to the hearth than their neighbors across the Rhine, they feel exile less. Their one idea is to evade conscription, and this offers to all continental nations a compensation for exile, which to the Englishman means nothing. I remember a colony of German fishermen on Lake Tahoe, the loveliest water in California, where the pines of the Sierra Nevada must have vividly recalled their native Harz. Yet they rejoiced in the freedom of their adopted country, and never knew a moment’s regret for the Fatherland.” ↩

36. According to a recent estimate, the Germans in Brazil now number some four hundred thousand, the great majority being settled in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, and Santa Catharina, while a small number are found in Sao Paulo and Espirito Santo in the north. This population is, for the most part, the result of natural increase, for of late years emigration thither has greatly declined.

    In Near Asia, too, German colonization is by no means of recent origin. There are in Transcaucasia agricultural settlements established by Würtemberg farmers, whose descendants in the third generation live in their own villages and still speak their native language. In Palestine, there are the German Templar Colonies on the coast, which have prospered so well as to excite the resentment of the natives. ↩

37. London Morning Post, February 1, 1912. ↩

38. North American Review, March, 1912. See also citation. ↩

39. April, 1912. ↩

40. Germany and the Next War, by Gen. Friedrich von Bernhardi. London: Edwin Arnold, 1912. ↩

41. See, notably, the article from Admiral Mahan, “The Place of Power in International Relations,” in the North American Review for January, 1912; and such books of Professor Wilkinson’s as The Great Alternative, Britain at Bay, War and Policy. ↩

42. The Valor of Ignorance. Harpers. ↩

43. For an expression of these views in a more definite form, see Ratzenhofer’s Die Sociologische Erkenntniss, pp. 233, 234. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1898. ↩

44. Speech at Stationer’s Hall, London, June 6, 1910. ↩

45. The Strenuous Life. Century Co. ↩

46. McClure’s Magazine, August, 1910. ↩

47. Thomas Hughes, in his preface to the first English edition of The Bigelow Papers, refers to the opponents of the Crimean War as a “vain and mischievous clique, who amongst us have raised the cry of peace.” See also Mr. J. A. Hobson’s Psychology of Jingoism, p. 52. London: Grant Richards. ↩

48. North American Review, March, 1912. ↩

49. The Interest of America in International Conditions. New York: Harper & Brothers. ↩

50. It is related by Critchfield, in his work on the South American Republics, that during all the welter of blood and disorder which for a century or more marked the history of those countries, the Roman Catholic priesthood on the whole maintained a high standard of life and character, and continued, against all discouragement, to preach consistently the beauties of peace and order. However much one may be touched by such a spectacle, and pay the tribute of one’s admiration to these good men, one cannot but feel that the preaching of these high ideals did not have any very immediate effect on the social progress of South America. What has effected this change? It is that those countries have been brought into the economic current of the world; the bank and factory and railroad have introduced factors and motives of a quite different order from those urged by the priest, and are slowly winning those countries from military adventure to honest work, a thing which the preaching of high ideals failed to do. ↩

51. Today and Tomorrow, p. 63. John Murray. ↩

52. Since the publication of the first edition of this book there has appeared in France an admirable work by M. J. Novikow, Le Darwinisme Social (Felix Alcan, Paris), in which this application of the Darwinian theory to sociology is discussed with great ability, and at great length and in full detail, and the biological presentation of the case, as just outlined, has been inspired in no small part by M. Novikow’s work. M. Novikow has established in biological terms what, previous to the publication of his book, I attempted to establish in economic terms. ↩

53. Cooperation does not exclude competition. If a rival beats me in business, it is because he furnishes more efficient cooperation than I do; if a thief steals from me, he is not cooperating at all, and if he steals much will prevent my cooperation. The organism (society) has every interest in encouraging the competitor and suppressing the parasite. ↩

54. Without going to the somewhat obscure analogies 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 passed 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 massacre 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 passionate 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 classes were governed, all passions 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 assured,” 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 passed 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 illustrates 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 fé 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 fêtes 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 fé was a girl of sixteen, whose singular beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she passed 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 from Homer Lea’s book, The Valor of Ignorance. ↩

63. Thus Captain d’Arbeux (L’Officier Contemporaine, Grasset, Paris, 1911) laments “la disparition progressive de l’idéal 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. Harbutt 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 illustration 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, 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 (annex 3, p. 474). The importance of these figures is not generally realized. Astonishing as the assertion may sound, conscription in Germany is not universal, while it is in France. In the latter country every man of every class 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 class 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 class 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. Voz de la Nación, Caracas, April 22, 1897. ↩

72. Even Mr. Roosevelt calls South American history mean and bloody. 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 bloody 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 circumstances, 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. ↩

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 pass 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 classes, and thus slowly but surely widens the sphere of the middle classes 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. ↩

86. My Life in the Army, p. 119. ↩

87. I do not think this last generalization does any injustice to the essay, “Latitude and Longitude among Reformers” (Strenuous Life, pp. 41⁠–⁠61. The Century Company). ↩

88. See for further illustration 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 today and tomorrow is a sombre gigantic machine devoid of melodramatic heroics⁠ ⁠… a machine that it requires years to form in separate parts, years to assemble 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. ↩

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, prone 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 worship. 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 passages in Bible and Prayerbook 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 makeshift schools of character, these second-bests, these halting substitutes 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 smallpox 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 Rimington. Methuen. See 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. ↩

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

105. London Morning Post, April 21, 1910. I pass 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 assailed 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 harassed 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 sex 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 institutions⁠ ⁠… 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, associations, 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 passed, 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 ships would be at our mercy. Throughout the seas of the world our cruisers would seize and confiscate German ships. Within the first week of the declaration of war Germany would have suffered a loss of many million pounds by the capture of her ships. Nor is that all. Our Colonies are dotted with German trading-houses, who, in spite of a keen competition, 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 ship 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 seaborne 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 nobody 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—Passy, 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 nonmilitary 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 damnable 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 text. ↩

126. Review of Reviews, November, 1912. ↩

127. In the Daily Mail, to whose Editor I am indebted for permission to reprint it. ↩