Addresses in America, 1919

by John Galsworthy

It is a far cry to the third new factor: Exploitation of the air. We were warned, by Sir Hiram Maxim about 1910 that a year or so of war would do more for the conquest of the air than many years of peace. It has. We hear of a man flying 260 miles in 90 minutes; of the Atlantic being flown in 24 hours; of airships which will have a lifting capacity of 300 tons; of air mail-routes all over the world. The time will perhaps come when we shall live in the air, and come down to earth on Sundays.

I confess that, mechanically marvellous as all this is, it interests me chiefly as a prime instance of the way human beings prefer the shadow of existence to its substance. Granted that we speed up everything, that we annihilate space, that we increase the powers of trade, leave no point of the earth unsurveyed, and are able to perform air-stunts which people will pay five dollars apiece to see—how shall we have furthered human health, happiness, and virtue, speaking in the big sense of these words? It is an advantage, of course, to be able to carry food to a starving community in some desert; to rescue shipwrecked mariners; to have a letter from one’s wife four days sooner than one could otherwise; and generally to save time in the swopping of our commodities and the journeys we make. But how does all this help human beings to inner contentment of spirit, and health of body? Did the arrival of motor-cars, bicycles, telephones, trains, and steamships do much for them in that line? Anything which serves to stretch human capabilities to the utmost, would help human happiness, if each new mechanical activity, each new human toy as it were, did not so run away with our sense of proportion as to debauch our energies. A man, for instance, takes to motoring, who used to ride or walk; it becomes a passion with him, so that he now never rides or walks—and his calves become flabby and his liver enlarged. A man puts a telephone into his house to save time and trouble, and is straightway a slave to the tinkle of its bell. The few human activities in themselves and of themselves pure good are just eating, drinking, sleeping, and the affections—in moderation; the inhaling of pure air, exercise in most of its forms, and interesting creative work—in moderation; the study and contemplation of the arts and Nature—in moderation; thinking of others and not thinking of yourself—in moderation; doing kind acts and thinking kind thoughts. All the rest seems to be what the prophet had in mind when he said: ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!’ Ah! but the one great activity—adventure and the craving for sensation! It is that for which the human being really lives, and all his restless activity is caused by the desire for it. True; yet adventure and sensation without rhyme or reason lead to disharmony and disproportion. We may take civilisation to the South Sea Islands, but it would be better to leave the islanders naked and healthy than to improve them with trousers and civilisation off the face of the earth. We may invent new cocktails, but it would be better to stay dry. In mechanical matters I am reactionary, for I cannot believe in inventions and machinery unless they can be so controlled as to minister definitely to health and happiness—and how difficult that is! In my own country the townsman has become physically inferior to the countryman (speaking in the large), and I infer from this that we British—at all events—are not so in command of ourselves and our wonderful inventions and machines that we are putting them to uses which are really beneficent. If we had proper command of ourselves no doubt we could do this, but we haven’t; and if you look about you in America, the same doubt may possibly attack you.

But there is another side to the exploitation of the air which does not as yet affect you in America as it does us in Europe—the destructive side. Britain, for instance, is no longer an island. In five or ten years it will, I think, be impossible to guarantee the safety of Britain and Britain’s commerce, by sea-power; and those who continue to pin faith to that formula will find themselves nearly as much back-numbered as people who continued to prefer wooden ships to iron, when the iron age came in. Armaments on land and sea will be limited; not, I think, so much by a League of Nations, if it comes, as by the commonsense of people who begin to observe that with the development of the powers of destruction and of transport from the air, land and sea armaments are becoming of little use. We may all disarm completely, and yet—so long as there are flying-machines and high explosives—remain almost as formidably destructive as ever. So difficult to control, so infinite in its possibilities for evil and so limited in its possibilities for good do I consider this exploitation of the air that, personally, I would rejoice to see the nations in solemn conclave agree this very minute to ban the use of the air altogether, whether for trade, travel, or war; destroy every flying-machine and every airship, and forbid their construction. That, of course, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished. Every day one reads in one’s paper that some country or other is to take the lead in the air. What a wild-goose chase we are in for! I verily believe mankind will come one day in their underground dwellings to the annual practice of burning in effigy the Guy (whoever he was) who first rose off the earth. After I had talked in this strain once before, a young airman came up to me and said: “Have you been up?” I shook my head. “You wait!” he said. When I do go up I shall take great pains not to go up with that one.

We come now to the fourth great new factor—Bolshevism, and the social unrest. But I am shy of saying anything about it, for my knowledge and experience are insufficient. I will only offer one observation. Whatever philosophic cloak may be thrown over the shoulders of Bolshevism, it is obviously—like every revolutionary movement of the past—an aggregation of individual discontents, the sum of millions of human moods of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things; and whatever philosophic cloak we drape on the body of liberalism, if by that name we may designate our present social and political system—that system has clearly not yet justified its claim to the word evolutionary, so long as the disproportion between the very rich and the very poor continues (as hitherto it has) to grow. No system can properly be called evolutionary which provokes against it the rising of so formidable a revolutionary wave of discontent. One hears that co-operation is now regarded as vieux jeu. If that be so, it is because co-operation in its true sense of spontaneous friendliness between man and man, has never been tried. Perhaps human nature in the large can never rise to that ideal. But if it cannot, if industrialism cannot achieve a change of heart, so that in effect employers would rather their profits (beyond a quite moderate scale) were used for the amelioration of the lot of those they employ, it looks to me uncommonly like being the end of the present order of things, after an era of class-struggle which will shake civilisation to its foundations. Being myself an evolutionist, who fundamentally distrusts violence, and admires the old Greek saying: “God is the helping of man by man,” I yet hope it will not come to that; I yet believe we may succeed in striking the balance, without civil wars. But I feel that (speaking of Europe) it is touch and go. In America, in Canada, in Australia, the conditions are different, the powers of expansion still large, the individual hopefulness much greater. There is little analogy with the state of things in Europe; but, whatever happens in Europe must have its infectious influence in America. The wise man takes Time by the forelock—and goes in front of events.

Let me turn away to the fifth great new factor: The impetus towards a League of Nations.

This, to my thinking, so wholly advisable, would inspire more hopefulness, if the condition of Europe was not so terribly confused, and if the most salient characteristics of human nature were not elasticity, bluntness of imagination, and shortness of memory. Those of us who, while affirming the principle of the League, are afraid of committing ourselves to what obviously cannot at the start be a perfect piece of machinery, seem inclined to forget that if the assembled Statesmen fail to place in running order, now, some definite machinery for the consideration of international disputes, the chance will certainly slip. We cannot reckon on more than a very short time during which the horror of war will rule our thoughts and actions. And during that short time it is essential that the League should have had some tangible success in preventing war. Mankind puts its faith in facts, not theories; in proven, and not in problematic, success. One can imagine with what profound suspicion and contempt the armed individualists of the Neolithic Age regarded the first organised tribunal; with what surprise they found that it actually worked so well that they felt justified in dropping their habit of taking the lives and property of their neighbours first and thinking over it afterwards. Not till the Tribunal of the League of Nations has had successes of conciliation, visible to all, will the armed individualist nations of to-day begin to rub their cynical and suspicious eyes, and to sprinkle their armour with moth-powder. No one who, like myself, has recently experienced the sensation of landing in America after having lived in Europe throughout the war, can fail to realise the reluctance of Americans to commit themselves, and the difficulty Americans have in realising the need for doing so. But may I remind Americans that during the first years of the war there was practically the same general American reluctance to interfere in an old-world struggle; and that in the end America found that it was not an old-world but a world-struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike snatching chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and to shun departure from the letter of cherished tradition; but things do not stand still in this world; storm centres shift; and live doctrine often becomes dead dogma.

The League of Nations is but an incorporation of the co-operative principle in world affairs. We have seen to what the lack of that principle leads both in international and national life. Americans seem almost unanimously in favour of a League of Nations, so long as it is sufficiently airy—perhaps one might say ‘hot-airy’; but when it comes to earth, many of them fear the risk. I would only say that no great change ever comes about in the lives of men unless they take risks; no progress can be made. As to the other objection taken to the League, not only by Americans—that it won’t work, well we shall never know the rights of that unless we try it. The two chief factors in avoiding war are Publicity and Delay. If there is some better plan for bringing these two factors into play than the machinery of a League of Nations, I have yet to learn of it. The League which, I think, will come in spite of all our hesitations, may very likely make claims larger than its real powers; and there is, of course, danger in that; but there is also wisdom and advantage, for the success of the League must depend enormously on how far it succeeds in riveting the imaginations of mankind in its first years. The League should therefore make bold claims. After all, there is solidity and truth in this notion of a Society of Nations. The world is really growing towards it beneath all surface rivalries. We must admit it to be in the line of natural development, unless we turn our back on all analogy. Don’t then let us be ashamed of it, as if it were a piece of unpractical idealism. It is much more truly real than the state of things which has led to the misery of these last four years. The soldiers who have fought and suffered and known the horrors of war, desire it. The objections come from those who have but watched them fight and suffer. Like every other change in the life of mankind, and like every new development in industry or art, the League needs faith. Let us have faith and give it a good ‘send-off.’

I have left what I deem the greatest new factor till the last—Anglo-American unity. Greater it is even than the impetus towards a League of Nations, because without it the League of Nations has surely not the chance of a lost dog.