The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife

by Edward Carpenter

The attitude of the peasant, however, or agriculturist, all over the world, is the same. He does not deal in romantic talk about St. George and the Dragon. He sees too clearly the downright facts of life. He has no interest in fighting, and he does not want to fight. Being the one honest man in the community—the one man who creates, not only his own food but the food of others besides, and who knows the value of his work, he perceives without illusion the foolery of War, the hideous waste of it, the shocking toll of agony and loss which it inflicts—and if left to himself would as a rule have no hand in it. It is only occasionally—when ground down beyond endurance by the rent-racking classes above him, or threatened beyond endurance by an enemy from abroad, that he turns his reaping-hook into a sword and his muck-fork into a three-pronged bayonet, exchanges his fowling-piece for a rifle, and fights savagely for his home and his bit of a field.

England, curiously enough, is almost the only country in the world where the peasant or ordinary field-worker has no field of his own[22]; and I find that in the villages and among the general agricultural population there is even now but little enthusiasm for the present war—though the raid on our coasts at Scarborough and other places certainly did something to stimulate it. Partly this is, as I have said, because the agricultural worker knows that his work is foundational, and that nothing else is of importance compared with it. [At this moment, for instance, there are peasants in Belgium and Northern France ploughing and sowing, and so forth, actually close to the trenches and between the fighting lines.] Partly it is because in England, alas! the countryman has so little right or direct interest in the soil. One wonders sometimes why he should feel any enthusiasm. Why should men want to fight for their land when they have no land to fight for—when the most they can do is to die at the foot of a trespass-board, singing, "Britons never, never shall be slaves!"

If the War is ever finished, surely one of the first things to be insisted on afterwards, with regard to England, must be the settlement of the actual people (not the parasites) on the land. Else how, after all that they have gone through, can it be expected that they will ever again "fight for their country"? But that this vast landless population in the villages and country districts—hungering as it is for some sure tenure and interest in the soil—should actually, as now, be berated and scolded by superior persons of the "upper" classes, and threatened with conscription if it does not "come forward" more readily, is a spectacle sufficient to gratify the most hardened cynic.

Certainly it is remarkable that such numbers of the great working masses of this country (including villagers) should come forward in connexion with the war, and join the standard and the ranks of fighting men—as they do—and it is a thing for which one must honour them. But in that matter there are not a few considerations to be kept in mind.

In the first place a large number are not really very enthusiastic, but simply join because pressure to do so is put upon them by their "masters." The press-gangs of old exist no longer, but substitutes for them revive in subtler form. Many large landlords, for instance, have given notice to a percentage of their gamekeepers, gardeners, park employees, and the like, to the effect that their services are no longer required, but that if they enlist in the ranks now they will be reinstated in their masters' service again when the war is over ("if still alive" is, we presume, understood). Large numbers of manufacturing and other firms have notified their workmen and clerks in similar terms. This means pretty serious economic pressure. A man in the prime of life, suddenly ousted from his job, and with no prospect either of finding a similar job elsewhere or of learning any new one, is in a pretty fix. His only certain refuge lies in the fact that he can be taught to use a rifle in a few weeks; and in a few weeks perhaps it becomes clear to him that to accept that offer and the pay that goes with it—poor as it is—is his only chance.

There are others, again—perhaps a very large number—who do not care much about the war in itself, and probably have only the vaguest notion of what it is all about, but for them to join the ranks means adventure, comradeship, the open air—all fascinating things; and they hail the prospect with joy as an escape from intolerable dullness—from the monotony of the desk and the stuffy office, from the dreary round and mechanical routine of the factory bench, from the depressing environment of "home" and domestic squalor.

I must confess—though I have no general prejudice in favour of war—that I have been much struck, since the outbreak of the present one, by the altered look of crowds of young men whom I personally know—who are now drilling or otherwise preparing for it. The gay look on their faces, the blood in their cheeks, the upright carriage and quick, elate step—when compared with the hang-dog, sallow, dull creatures I knew before—all testify to the working of some magic influence.

As I say, I do not think that this influence in most cases has much to do with enthusiasm for the "cause" or any mere lust of "battle" (happily indeed for the most part they do not for a moment realize what modern battle means). It is simply escape from the hateful conditions of present-day commercialism and its hideous wage-slavery into something like the normal life of young manhood—a life in the open under the wide sky, blood-stirring enterprise, risk if you will, co-operation and camaraderie. These are the inviting, beckoning things, the things which swing the balance down—even though hardships, low pay, and high chances of injury and death are thrown in the opposite scale.

Nevertheless, and despite these other considerations, there does certainly remain, in this as in other wars, a fair number of men among those who enlist who are bonâ fide inspired by some Ideal which they feel to be worth fighting for. It may be Patriotism or love of their country; it may be "to put down militarism"; it may be Religion or Honour or what not. And it is fine that it should be so. They may in cases be deluded, or mistaken about facts; the ideal they fight for may be childish (as in the mediaeval Crusades); still, even so it is fine that people should be willing to give their lives for an idea—that they should be capable of being inspired by a vision. Humanity has at least advanced as far as that.

I suppose patriotism, or love of country—when it comes to its full realization, as in the case of invasion by an enemy, is the most powerful and tremendous of such ideals, sweeping everything before it. It represents something ingrained in the blood. In that case all the other motives for fighting—economic or what not—disappear and are swallowed up. Material life and social conditions under a German government might externally be as comfortable and prosperous as under our own, but for most of us something in the soul would wither and sicken at the thought.