I
So that the development of the democratic principle requires the cessation of war and of preparedness for war. And this to begin with requires the disappearance of the dynastic tradition. But will the disappearance of the dynastic tradition necessarily carry with it the abolition of that preoccupation with national “prestige” and the like out of which it has always drawn its strength? The dynasty may vanish; but nationalism may remain; and the catchwords of national prestige and national honour may conceivably become a menace to peace and therefore to freedom as real as the dynastic tradition.
And at the present time there is, as has been previously shown, a very real possibility that the disappearance of the dynastic tradition may leave the door open to another type of predatory nationalism no less injurious to the cause of democracy. This is that “commercial imperialism” to which reference has already been made. The impression has been deeply made upon this generation that the accumulation of wealth constitutes the primary business of the community. It should aim to become the richest, wealthiest nation. It is not generally perceived that the distribution of this wealth is of a character which robs it of any right to be regarded as a “national” interest. It is the interest only of a comparatively small class within the nation. Yet so sedulously has this illusion of national prosperity been cultivated, and so feeble is the faculty of discrimination in the multitude, that it will yet be possible for commercial adventurers to invoke and receive national endorsement of their projects even to the extent of a guarantee of military support in case of need. The surplus capital of a nation will seek avenues of activity beyond its frontiers and it will move heaven and earth to secure that the nation shall be committed to the business of protecting it when it goes abroad. And it will do this by fostering the illusion that in some mysterious way its profitable foreign excursions bring prosperity to the home community. A moment’s reflection should be sufficient to show that operations of this kind will bring to no nation any compensation that is even remotely commensurate with the cost of guaranteeing them.
Nor is it for their foreign adventures alone that these particular interests will work up national pride and prejudice. They look upon the home market with the same avid eye as the foreign; and it is an affair of common knowledge that they have not hesitated to inflame national feeling in order to secure invidious protective tariffs against other nations. “Keep out the foreigner” is always an effective battlecry; it bears a certain immediate and obvious plausibility to the untutored and uncritical mind. The argument for free trade labours under the disadvantage of not possessing this kind of effective simplicity. Except in cases where free trade has been tried and is supported by experience, the argument for it has to lean upon postulates which are not so easily demonstrable to the crowd and which do not lend themselves to glib catchwords such as the protectionists delight in. It is easy for instance, to show that the prosperity of a particular industry depends upon its security against a foreign competition which apparently starts with the superior advantage of cheap labour; and a case may be fairly made for the protection of a young and struggling industry from unequal competition. The protectionist, however, extends his argument to cover all industry; his concern is not for the growth of a struggling industry but for a monopoly of the home markets—what time he is also actively invading foreign markets. The free trader has in reply to show that a protective tariff is a stranglehold upon all industry. Because, for instance, it renders the capitalist producer immune from foreign competition, it reduces the necessity on his part to improve methods of production; and in so much as his care is for his profits rather than the real development of industry for the good of the social whole, he will tend to remain content with obsolete and antiquated methods of production so long as improvement is not essential to the maintenance of profits. Moreover, it works in the direction of compelling the industries of the nation to utilise the raw materials available within its own borders even though these be inferior in quality to those obtainable elsewhere, with the result that the national industries are seriously handicapped in competition in foreign markets, even in some cases in the home markets. The problem of clothing oneself in the United States of America is a sufficient illustration of the fantastic illusion that a protective tariff makes for the common good. The tariff on woollen goods may be useful to the owners of the woollen industries in America; but the advantage is gained at the expense of the whole people, including the very operatives in woollen mills.
This is, however, not the place to state the whole case as between protection and free trade. Chiefly it is to our point here to emphasise the fact that the advocates of a protective tariff belong mainly to the capitalist class; and that they will plead for a protective tariff on the ground of national prosperity, and that national pride and prejudice will be invoked in support of the argument. They will be careful to abstain from calling undue attention to the point that a protective tariff will discriminate in favour of the classes that are already sufficiently prosperous, and their popular argument will have much to say about the high wages of the worker. “Make the foreigner pay” was the battlecry of the Chamberlainite fiscal reformer in England; and what the foreigner pays we all enjoy together. It sounds fair enough; until it is seen that by no chance whatsoever does the foreigner pay anything. He may lose something in the diminution of his trade; but he pays nothing. The payment is made by the domestic consumer in the higher prices which immediately prevail in respect of “protected” commodities; and this higher price brings an advantage to whom? To the worker? Not at all, if the capitalist can help it. Will the worker get higher wages? Only if he is strong enough to demand it. The empty hypocrisy of this talk about national prosperity should be evident from the fact that the very people who are interested in high prices are those who are equally interested in lowering wages. The increase of the wage rate during the war has not automatically or proportionately followed the rise in prices; it has always to be wrested by main force from those whose interest lies in keeping prices high and wages low. Under a protectionist régime, wages are rarely high enough to compensate for the higher cost of living, and the more dependent a country is upon importation from abroad, the truer is this statement. It is only in countries like the United States of America where the natural resources are large and more or less easily available that protection can effect any substantial appearance of social prosperity, and even in these cases it is scarcely doubtful that the general prosperity would be greatly increased by the removal of a protective tariff. The dividends upon invested capital would no doubt be lower; but the general level of material well-being would be appreciably raised.
Democracy must make up its mind upon this point. It must turn a cold and critical eye upon all plausible talk about national prosperity and ask whether this prosperity is in fact the thing it professes to be. National wealth is so inequitably distributed that the production of wealth as a national concern is a polity pour rire. Protection and commercial imperialism are devices which work in the interests of the already prosperous classes, a very small minority of the community. This is not to say that there are not advocates of protective tariffs who sincerely believe all they say so fluently about “national” prosperity; of these good people it is not the disinterestedness that is to be called into question but the intelligence. But it as sure as anything can very well be that if a statutory limit were set upon profits, incomes and fortunes, we should hear very little about protective tariffs and the need of protecting commercial interests “in partibus infidelibus.” To say that this would immediately crush the incentive to the commercial and industrial enterprise of the nation would be an unworthy reflection upon the patriotism of those who are at present directing the enterprise. In any case the point which is coming up for the decision of democratic communities is whether they are going to identify themselves with, and commit themselves to, the support of enterprises which primarily serve the interests of a class already well enough provided for and which can bring no advantage to the people at large commensurate with the risk involved in endorsing them. With the crumbling of the dynastic tradition, the one substantial cause still outstanding of international misunderstanding is commercial rivalry; but this commercial rivalry is in no sense a rivalry between peoples; it is purely a rivalry between the capitalist interests in the different countries. Are the democracies still prepared to suffer arrest of their own development by retaining a sort of potential war-footing in the interests of what are after all mainly class-adventures?[[45]]
[45]. The proposal to establish an International Labour Standard will, of course, do something to rob the protectionist argument of the force it borrows from playing up the “dumping” of goods produced by underpaid foreign labour.
But it may be urged that even in the event of the elimination of this type of commercial rivalry, the national feeling would still remain—intrinsically and without the adventitious aid of dynastic or commercial interests—a permanent ground of separation and possible dissension between peoples, even democratic peoples. We are told that there is such a thing as national “honour” which is a sacred trust and which the nation must be prepared to defend against all comers. It may be seriously questioned whether this conception of national “honour” is not an archaism which has lapped over from the age when men still talked of gambling debts as “debts of honour” and gentlemen adjusted their differences by means of “affairs of honour.” It should be evident that no nation has any kind of honour which is subject to real offence save at its own hands, or which can be forfeited save by its own act; and a nation in anything like a mature stage of ethical development should be (in a memorable phrase) “too proud to fight” merely because its amour propre had been pricked by some ill-behaved urchin among the nations. No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in order to avenge an insult; and the more self-respecting he is the more effectual is the interior constraint which forbids him to act in that way. And it is equally inconceivable that a self-respecting nation should think it worth while to assert itself in a retaliatory way against what after all can amount to no more than rudeness or impertinence. It is true that there is a good deal of residual superstition in this particular region which is apt to magnify out of all proportion the significance of such improprieties as disrespect to the flag; but a little good humoured realism is all the antidote that is required. Such things as these have no real meaning except where symbolic and formal punctilio still takes precedence over the actualities of life. For the rest, the only possible sources of offence to national honour lies in the region where national honour travels abroad in the persons of official and unofficial individuals of that nation. But at this time of day, it is inconceivable that any issues should arise in this region which are not capable of easy and friendly adjustment. In point of fact, that is what usually happens. Apologies are made; a formula is adopted; and the affair blows over. It will occur to the cynical that in recent times the point of honour has been chiefly insisted upon on such occasions as the pursuit seemed likely to eventuate in some material advantage; in any case the point of honour survives only as an affair of statesmen and diplomats and provokes no more than a languid interest in the remainder of the nation, which has more pressing concerns on hand. National “honour” seems on the whole to be but a frill left over from the day in which the divine right of kings was still a live dogma.
In the fact of nationality itself there is nothing which necessarily tends to a breach of the peace. We know that it represents no fact of organic inheritance which is bound to perpetuate divisions of an unfriendly or unneighbourly kind between peoples. There is no modern “nation” which can claim homogeneity of racial origin, of language, of religion. It describes a political unity within which a people by the simple process of living together has developed and is continuing to develop a particular way of life and quality of culture. The peculiar colour of national life is due of course to some extent to its geographical location, to the circumstances of its history, and to its natural resources, but national unity is achieved in the evolution of a common tradition and a common culture. Nor is it possible to fix any real bounds to the growth of a nation. It is a historical commonplace how the small primitive groupings of man have steadily grown in extent until we have reached the stage of vast aggregations of polyglot peoples comprehended under a single national name—like the British Empire and the United States. The “nation” possesses no fixity, and national feeling undergoes continual change and modification as the result of changing circumstances. There are many like the present writer whose early schooling left them with the impression that there was a necessary and permanent antagonism of interest between the British and French; but since then the Entente Cordiale and other momentous happenings have completely banished that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is, moreover, not open to question that the increase and improvement of means of communication have done much to dispel the ignorance from which national prejudice and international suspicion drew their strength. The biological judgment upon nationality is pertinent to this point: “All the most important agencies producing the divergent modification of the nations are human products and can be altered.”[[46]] These agencies are presumably the factors which constitute what Mr. Benjamin Kidd called social heredity; and he has shown with great force how possible it is to “impose the elements of a new social heredity” on a whole people and to change its character accordingly.[[47]] The sum of the matter is that nationality is a fluid and changing entity; and its intrinsic nature and its history appear to point to the conclusion that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of human society, by which the caveman is to become at last a citizen of the world. There is nothing to justify the expectation that present national characters and national frontiers will remain as permanent factors in the life of the world.
[46]. Chalmers Mitchell, Evolution and the War, p. 90.
[47]. Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power, p. 305.
This does not mean that the world will not continue to be organised on the basis of nationality; it means only that the present national divisions are not permanent. The law of natural variation will operate in producing diversity in the complexion and culture of communities; and the race will contain to the end an infinite variety of social types. Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition decays, the tendency to induce uniformity among the peoples brought under a common rule will disappear; and the free play of variation will probably be more evident in the future than it has been, at least in the near past. The emphasis upon the rights of small nations and the disruption of Russia and of the Dual Monarchy into their constituent nations both alike indicate that we shall have a considerable accentuation of distinctive national types in the years ahead of us. But this is not in any sense a matter for misgiving; for the larger the variety of typical national cultures, the more varied and rich will the life of the race become. As Lord Bryce said in the early days of the war, the world was already too uniform and was becoming more uniform every day; and a reaction from uniformity is a sign of renewed life.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that without some balancing principle there are dangers inherent in nationality. It has been justly observed that nationality is an admirable thing when it is being struggled for, but that once achieved it is apt to become a peril. The passion for nationality may overshoot its mark. National self-consciousness may breed national self-conceit; and out of this temper especially under the conditions of modern commerce may grow the spirit of aggression. It is useless to hide this fact from ourselves; the recent history of Italy gives ample demonstration of it. The Italy of Garibaldi was hardly recognisable in the Italy of the Tripoli adventure. It is therefore necessary that the nations that have come to new birth in the world-travail of these last five years, should be preserved from the danger of becoming aggressive at the expense of their neighbours, and in this necessity is contained in little the entire problem of international integration which is likely to occupy the minds of statesmen and political thinkers in the coming century. At the same time the ultimate security of the peace which is necessary to the progress of the democratic principle must lie not in external safeguards and checks but in the increasing democratisation of national life. The elimination of those residual predatory interests which still dog the steps of democracy and are still able to pervert it to their own ends may be helped by the creation of international machinery which will limit the area of their opportunities; but it depends most of all upon the progressive disappearance of class and sectional privileges within the nations. For privilege is always predatory; and so long as there still remain privileged classes within the nations no international machinery of adjustment and restraint can do more than preserve a highly precarious equilibrium between conflicting interests.