In the first place, Goethe is even more popular with the troops than Nietzsche, and, although Goethe too was a Pagan, his teaching was the very antithesis of crime, violence, injustice, or hypocrisy. No nobler human doctrine was ever set forth than in the pages of his Faust, the first on this list of favourite books. In the second place, this fact at once warns us of a circumstance which we might have taken for granted: in the knapsacks of the overwhelming majority of the soldiers there are no books at all. It is the minority who read; and it is quite safe to assume that this thoughtful minority are not the minority who have disgraced German militarism. Thirdly—and it should hardly be necessary to make this observation—the sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he had only disdain, and it is folly to suppose that his aristocratic philosophy has been accepted among them as a gospel.
Nietzsche has had a considerable influence on the more thoughtful reading public in Germany, yet even here one has to make reserves in charging him with a part in the preparation of the country for an aggressive war. His peculiar art and temperamental exaggerations make it impossible for any but a patient few to grasp his teaching accurately, and are peculiarly liable to mislead the less patient. When, therefore, he stresses—as most anti-Socialists do—the Darwinian struggle for existence, when he assails the humanitarian and Christian doctrine of helping the weak, when he calls into question the received code of morals, and when he extols self-assertion and strength of will, his fiery words do lend some confirmation, which he assuredly never intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching, which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von Bernhardi's admiring references to his philosophy sufficiently show this.
But Nietzsche's very limited influence on German thought cannot reasonably be quoted as justification of the common saying that Germany had deserted Christianity for Paganism. Had such a statement been made before the war began, our divines would have indignantly repudiated it. The truth is that all classes—Christian and non-Christian—have yielded fatally to the pernicious interpretation which interested politicians, soldiers, manufacturers, and Jingoistic writers have put on the real economic needs of the country. Of the Socialist and Catholic parties, in particular, the two most powerfully organised bodies in Germany, we may say that, in deserting their ideals, they have been partly deceived into a real belief that Russia and England sought their destruction, and they have partly yielded to that very old and familiar temptation—the desire to retain their numerical strength by compromising with their principles. In justice to the Socialists it should be added that that party has furnished the only men and journals in Germany to raise any protest against the madness of the nation. One of the most repulsive moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has transpired time after time that the Vorwärts has protested against this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian protest, from end to end of the campaign.
Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood, of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race. War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of civilisation.
The question of real interest is, therefore, the historical question. Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally persuading themselves that the action of their country is just and necessary. But from the day when we awoke to an adult perception of the life of the world we have been aware that the established system of settling international quarrels was barbaric and might in any year lead to just such a catastrophe. How comes it that such a system has survived fifteen hundred years of profound Christian influence? Whatever we may think of the clergy of to-day, with the more powerful clergy of yesterday we have a grave reckoning. The Rationalist is a new thing in Europe. The very name is little more than a century old, and until a few decades ago only a few thousand would accept it. Not from such a new and struggling movement do we ask why this military system has dominated Europe for ages and has only in recent times been seriously challenged. During those ages the Churches suffered none but themselves to pretend to a moral influence over the life of the nations, nor were there many bold and independent enough to make the claim. It is of the Churches we ask why this appalling system has taken such deep root in the life of Europe that it resists the most devoted efforts to eradicate it. It is not this war, but war, that accuses the Churches. We are entangled in a system so widespread and so subtle that, when a war occurs, each nation can persuade itself that it is acting on just grounds. It is the system which interests us.
CHAPTER II
CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
The day will come when the student of human development will find war one of the most remarkable institutions that ever entered and quitted history. Civilisation took it over from barbarism; barbarism from the savage; the savage from the beast. So we are accustomed to argue, but we must make a singular reservation. The lowest peoples of the human family, which seem to represent primitive man, do not wage war, and are little addicted to violence. They seem by some process of natural selection to have obtained the social quality of peacefulness and mutual aid. There was, in a sense, a stage of primitive innocence. As, however, these primitive peoples grew in numbers and were organised in tribes, as they obtained collective possessions—flocks and pastures and hunting grounds—they came into collision with each other, and all the old pugnacity of the beast awoke. Skill, and even ferocity, in war became a valuable social quality, and we get the stage of the savage. The barbarian, or the man between savagery and civilisation, was still compelled to fight for his possessions. He was usually surrounded by fierce savage tribes. The civilised man in turn was surrounded by savages and barbarians, and needed to fight. So through thousands of years of development of moral sentiment and legal procedure the primitive method of the beast has been preserved.
But I am not writing a history of warfare, and need not describe these stages more closely, or examine the new sentiment of imperialist expansion which gave civilisations a fresh incentive to develop methods of warfare. The point of interest is to determine at what stage it might have been possible for the moral element to intervene and bid the warriors, in the name of humanity, lay down their arms; at what stage the tribunal which men had set up to adjudicate between the quarrels of individuals might have been enlarged so as to be capable of arbitrating on the quarrels of nations.