§ 4
The Manufacture of Hatred
But if there is no natural hatred between the two belligerent protagonists, there is a feverish production of the artificial variety. Indeed this diligent manufacture of hatred is probably the most demoralising result of warfare, particularly disastrous in its ethical effect on the individual. It proceeds by the ordinary methods of deceit, suppression of the true and suggestion of the untrue, and by means of the newspapers this process of moral degeneration is sometimes actively directed, sometimes only permitted or encouraged by the Governments concerned. The London press is always ready to swallow the pathetic fabrications of unscrupulous refugees, and publishes with joy any Rotterdam rumour about German bestiality; but refuses to print any report however authentic which ventures to suggest that the Germans are as human as ourselves. There was, for instance, a Canadian woman, Dr. Scarlett-Synge, who under the aegis of her medical diploma, returned from Serbia through Germany, and discovered that some of the German internment camps are not as bad as they are commonly believed to be. Whatever her qualifications and opportunities for forming a correct opinion, and they happen to have been particularly good, there is no doubt that this woman's report was of the highest interest. Yet not a single daily paper in England would consider its publication, on the ground presumably that it might reduce the national inflammation and thereby "prejudice recruiting." As if true patriotism, sane and lovely, had anything to do with the pathological condition of hatred. "Recruiting be damned," says the patriotic philosopher, "odium nunquam potest esse bonum."[76] The method of distortion is also abundantly used by journalists of both parties. German hatred of England has often been stoked up by isolated mistranslations of sentences from The Times, and English and French journalists have not been slow in following the German example. It is said that after the fall of Antwerp the Koelnische Zeitung announced that "as soon as the fall of Antwerp was known the church bells in Germany were rung," a harmless message which was successively distorted by the Matin, the Daily Mail, and the Corriere della Sera, until it finally reappeared in the Matin in the following form: "According to the information of the Corriere della Sera from London and Cologne it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers to the bells with their heads downwards."[77]
The Manufacture of Hatred is unfortunately become a part of the Nationalist Movement in nearly all modern European States. The spurious Nationalism which is the result not of race but of education, depends for its existence almost entirely on so-called ethnological propaganda and continues to thrive by the cultivation of two propositions, neither of which is true: that all the members of one national group are racially different from all the members of the neighbouring group; and that this racial difference naturally and necessarily and properly implies the mutual hatred of the two nations. They proclaim, in fact, that certain nations are the "natural enemies " of certain others, by hating which they are only fulfilling the national function of self-realisation. By such arguments, which have no genuine ethnological foundation, the false prophets of nationalism are filling Europe with the racial prejudice of artificial Kelts, artificial Poles, and artificial Teutons. Of course race hatred between Slav and Teuton is no more "natural" than family hatred between Jones and Robinson; and even if it were, even that is if the cultures of two neighbouring races were mutually exclusive, it could still be argued—as it must in any case be argued—that no nation is racially pure. The last "Pole" I met proudly professed that the hatred of Russia was in his blood. Yet he was born in Bessarabia, and it was therefore not surprising that his facial type was distinctly Roumanian; he came, that is, if race means anything at all, of a Græco-Latin stock, and his hatred of Russia, which seemed to be the beginning and the end of his programme of "Polish nationalism," was the result of a few years of neglected education. Half the conflicting "Nationalisms" of Europe are programmes of artificial hatred, the propagandists of which may actually be of the same blood as their opponents; a single generation suffices for the manufacture of the racial enthusiast, which is often completed by a modification of the family name. Even Greeks and Bulgars are frequently of common descent. When a Macedonian village changes hands the Greek Karagiozes has been known to develop into the Bulgarian Karagiozoff; and a Mazarakis will boast a racial incompatibility with his second cousin Madjarieff. The same process for the manufacture of nationalism may be detected at the other end of Europe: at Mons of glorious memory there was a Walloon with the good old Walloon name of Le Grand, whose grandfather had been an equally enthusiastic Fleming with the good old Flemish name of De Groodt.
True nationalism may indeed be differentiated by the absence of this artificial element of ethnological hatred. True nationalism is simply the feeling for the small independent community, a movement for the autonomy of the local group. No true manifestation of the nationalist movement in Europe is ever opposed to other nationalisms; but all alike are involved in a desperate political conflict with their common enemy Imperialism.
§ 5
Imperialism the Enemy
Imperialism, on the other hand, is the feeling for large dominions and is very often only an unreasoning lust for the possession of territory:[78] surviving perhaps from the time when the land of the community was regarded as the reserved hunting-ground of the tribal chief, or at least as the private estate of the national monarch. But in so far as this passionate desire for extending the superficial territory under the central government is a reasoning desire, in so far that is as attempts have been made to justify by retrospective theories the almost instinctive achievements of painting the map red, it is fairly clear (although the issues have been confused by altruistic and Kiplingesque but not by any means unfounded views about the White Man's Burden) that Imperialism is based on the insatiable claims of over-productive commerce. Commerce at any rate is the ex post facto excuse for the foundation of the British Empire, and if it can no longer be pleaded as a reason for the maintenance of the British Empire, it is simply because the British Empire is no longer an empire, but for the most part a federation of autonomous states.[79] But Imperialism has only been scotched by the unconscious wisdom of English political development. It still unhappily survives not only in the intermittent demand for the acquisition of fresh colonial territory, but also, in its crudest form, without even the shadow of an excuse commercial or altruistic, in the continued subjection of Ireland to English rule. We must not be surprised if the imperialistic elements of the State receive after the war a new lease of life from the mutual encouragement of commerce and militarism.