But also the medical scientist kept pace with other scientists and with invention. Sanitation and the preservation of life led to an amazing rapidity of increase in population. There were more mouths to feed and more people who must have work and share the tribute. Without the increase of population it is possible that we should not have had war. Biological necessity played its part in bringing on the struggle, along with economic pressure. The richest veins of the mines of other lands, the most accessible wood of the forests, were taken, and a higher rate of living all over Europe increased the demand of the numbers.
Most fortunate of all the European peoples were the British. Most significant in this material progress was the part of Germany. England had a narrow stretch of salt water between her and the other nations. They could fight one another by crossing a land frontier; to fight her, they must cross in ships. She had the advantage of being of Europe and yet separated from Europe. All the seas were the secure pathway for her trade, guaranteed for a century by the victory of Trafalgar. By war she had won her sea power; by war she was the mistress of many colonies. Germany’s increasing mercantile marine had to travel from a narrow sea front through the channel called British. Rich was England’s heritage beyond her own realisation. Hers the accumulated capital; hers the field of resources under her own flag to exploit.
But she had done more. Through a century’s experience she had learned the strength of moderation. What she had won by war she was holding by wisdom. If some one must guard the seas, if some one must have dominion over brown and yellow races, she was well fitted for the task. Wherever she had dominion, whether Bombay or Hongkong, there was freedom in trade and in development for all men. We who have travelled recognise this.
When the war began, South Africa had no British regular garrisons, but the Boers, a people who had lost their nation in war with her fifteen years before, took up arms under her flag to invade a German colony. India without a parliament, India ruled by English governors, sent her troops to fight in France. In place of sedition, loyalty from a brave and hardy white people of another race and from hundreds of millions of brown men! Such power is not gained by war, but by the policy of fair play; of live and let live. Measurably, she held in trust those distant lands for the other progressive nations; she was the policeman of wide domains. Certainly no neutral, at least no American, envied her the task. Certainly no neutral, for selfish reasons if for no other, would want to risk chaos throughout the world by the transfer of that power to another nation.
England was satiated, as Admiral Mahan said. She had gained all that she cared to hold. It is not too much to say that, of late years, colonies might come begging to her doorstep and be refused. Those who held her wealth were complacent as well as satiated—which was her danger. For complacency goes with satiation. But she, too, was suffering from having skimmed the cream, for want of mines and concessions as rich as those which had filled her coffers, and from the demand of the increased population become used to a higher rate of living. Her vast, accumulated wealth in investments the world over was in relatively few hands. In no great European country, perhaps, was wealth more unevenly distributed. Her old age pensions and many social reforms of recent years arose from a restlessness, locally intensified but not alone of local origin.
Another flag was appearing too frequently in her channel. A wedge was being forced into her complacency. A competitor who worked twelve hours a day, while complacency preferred eight or ten, met the Englishman at every turn. A navy was growing in the Baltic; taxes pressed heavily on complacency to keep up a navy stronger than the young rival’s. Who really was to blame for the clerks’ pay being kept down, while the cost of living went up? That cheap-living German clerk! What capitalist was pressing the English capitalist? The German! The newspapers were always hinting at the German danger. Certain interests in England, as in any other country, were glad to find a scapegoat. Why should Germany want colonies when England ruled her colonies so well? Germany—always Germany, whatever way you looked, Germany with her seventy millions, aggressive, enterprising, industrious, organised! The pressure of the wedge kept increasing. Something must break.
Does any one doubt that if Germany had been in England’s place she would have struck the rival in the egg? But that is not the way of complacency. Nor is it the way of that wisdom of moderation, that live and let live, which has kept the British Empire intact.
Germany wanted room for her wedge. In Central Europe, with foes on either side, she had to hold two land frontiers before she could start her sea wedge. She was the more readily convinced that England had won all she held by war because modern Germany was the product of war. By war Prussia won Schleswig-Holstein; by war Germany won Alsace-Lorraine, and welded the Germanic peoples into a whole. It was only natural that the German public should be loyal to the system that had fathered German success.
Thus, England reveres its Wellingtons, Nelsons, Pitts, and maintains the traditions of the regiments which fought for her. Thus, we are loyal to the Constitution of the United States, because it was drafted by the forefathers who made the nation. If it had been drafted in the thirties we should think it more fallible. It is the nature of individuals, of business concerns, of nations, to hold with the methods that laid the foundations of success till some cataclysm shows that they are wrong or antiquated. This reckoning may be sudden loss of his position in a crisis for the individual, bankruptcy for the business concern, war for the nation. One sticks to the doctor who cured him when he was young and perhaps goes to an early grave because that doctor has grown out of date.
The old Kaiser, Bismarck, and von Moltke laid the basis of the German system. It was industry, unity, and obedience to superiors, from bottom to top. Under it, if not because of it, Germany became a mighty national entity. Another Kaiser, who had the merit of making the most of his inheritance, with other generals and leaders, brought modern methods to the service of the successful system. A new, up-to-date doctor succeeded the old, with the inherited authority of the old.