CHAPTER VI[ToC]
"CAUSES" AS PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES IN WAR
The causes for which wars are fought, or which are asserted to be the causes, make one of the important psychological problems of war. Sometimes these causes are elusive, sometimes they may give occasion for cynicism and a pessimistic view of national morals; again we see self-deception, again ideals seeking for light, peoples trying to find something to live for or to die for. We see in the recent great war as in other wars, a great variety of causes for which men are said to be fighting. Some would say that the war was entirely a war of principles; some take a purely political point of view and say that principles are not involved at all, and others that nothing was displayed at all of motives except primitive passions which are equally devoid of moral issues or any principles.
It would be interesting from the psychological point of view to make, if possible, a complete collection and classification of the causes that have been brought forward as the fundamental things fought for in the late war. Many widely different and divergent views are held. The forms in which the issues of the war have been stated are almost innumerable. New definitions and new statements of old conventional ideas appear continuously. Every writer seems to see the war from a different point of view from all others. Eventually, we may suppose, all this will be clear, since these "causes" of the war will be one of the great themes of future philosophical history. At present we can only formulate such a view as may be suggestive with reference to general interpretations of the place of principles and causes in war.
Let us examine a few of the opinions about the issues fought for in the recent war. MacFall (56) says that the whole strategy of the civilized world is bent upon creating permanent peace. Many speak of the war as a war to overcome war; we are told that one of the most conscious motives of the soldiers in the field has been to make the great war the last war the world should ever see. Something of the same idea is involved in the view each nation has that it was attacked, and that the purpose of the war was to defeat and punish aggressors. Apparently every nation and every army engaged in the war has had the feeling that it was fighting in the interests of world peace.
The German explanations of the war and of its issues have been very numerous and widely varied. The German has had his own interpretation of the "white man's burden," Tower (57) calls attention to the German hybrid word "Sahibthum," expressing the mission of a people. Each nation has its essence, which becomes a deep impulse. The German's impulse is translatable in the words "Be organized." The German has been eager to organize the world. He-believed in all seriousness that he was fighting the fight of order against chaos. It was the fight of the spirit against that which is dead and inefficient. The German believed that the systematic exploitation of the world was his peculiar mission. Ostwald is the great apostle of this view. He said that the war was a battle of the higher life against the lower instincts. Germany represents European civilization. The German emperor said that Germany should do for Europe what Prussia had done for Germany—organize it. In the German philosophy of life this principle of order had become a serious principle. An inefficient and disorderly world had need of Germany. Everywhere there was waste and stupidity, and a want of reason in the world. System was to be the cure. The fundamental fault in all this disorder the German mind recognized as an excessive individualism. Individual instinct and the social order were in eternal conflict, as Dietzel expressed the issue, and Germany stood for the social order, for reason, since reason is precisely the denial of the instincts and the desires of the individual in the interest of a foreseen result.
Shortly after the beginning of the war, we remember, a manifesto appeared signed by three thousand German university professors and other teachers, saying that they, the signers, firmly believed that the salvation of the whole of European civilization depended upon the victory of German militarism. Hintze (49) said that Germany was fighting for the freedom of everybody, meaning presumably according to the German principle that freedom consists in voluntarily submitting to order. This freedom is also in Hintze's view a principle of freedom and equal rights for all nations, in so far as these nations have reached the necessary stage of civilization. The mission of the coming central management of mankind (Menschheitzentralverwaltung) implied in the most ideal theory of Germany's mission is the true German burden. Haeckel says that the work of the German people to assure and develop civilization gives Germany the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and to exclude from those countries the races that occupy them. Schellendorf says that Germany must not forget her civilizing task, which is to become the nucleus of a future empire of the west. Koenig says that the spiritual life of Europe is at stake, Germany's fight is the fight of civilization against barbarism—against Russian barbarism he means. This ought to be the cause of all Western Europe, but England and France have betrayed the western civilization into the hands of the East. This belief gave to Germany's cause a deep impulsion (12).