Peace Theories and the Balkan War

by Norman Angell

And just as most of us are certain that the underlying causes of this conflict are "inevitable" and "inherent in unchanging human nature," so are we certain that so _un_human a thing as economics can have no bearing on it.

Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating and heretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it is because the drift of those forces has in such large part left the Balkans, where until yesterday the people lived the life not much different from that which they lived in the time of Abraham, to one side that war is now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kind form a large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a better understanding mainly of certain economic facts of their international relationship on the part of the great nations of Europe is essential before much progress towards solution can be made.

But then, by "economics," of course, I mean not a merchant's profit or a moneylender's interest, but the method by which men earn their bread, which must also mean the kind of life they lead.

We generally think of the primitive life of man—that of the herdsman or the tent liver—as something idyllic. The picture is as far as possible from the truth. Those into whose lives economics do not enter, or enter very little—that is to say, those who, like the Congo cannibal, or the Red Indian, or the Bedouin, do not cultivate, or divide their labour, or trade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitive passions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who have no economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate. But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men must divide their labour, which means that they must put some sort of reliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and the attitude towards it changes. And as this life becomes more complex, as the daily needs and desires push men to trade and barter, that means building up a social organisation, rules and codes, and courts to enforce them; as the interdependence widens and deepens it necessarily means disregarding certain hostilities. If the neighbouring tribe wants to trade with you they must not kill you; if you want the services of the heretic you must not kill him, and you must keep your obligation towards him, and mutual good faith is death to long-sustained hatreds.

You cannot separate the moral from the social and economic development of a people, and the great service of a complex social and industrial organisation, which is built up by the desire of men for better material conditions, is not that it "pays" but that it makes a more interdependent human society, and that it leads men to recognise what is the best relationship between them. And the fact of recognising that some act of aggression is causing stocks to fall is not important because it may save Oppenheim's or Solomon's money but because it is a demonstration that we are dependent upon some community on the other side of the world, that their damage is our damage, and that we have an interest in preventing it. It teaches us, as only some such simple and mechanical means can teach, the lesson of human fellowship.

And it is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some measure, within its respective political frontiers, learnt that lesson. Each has learnt, within the confines of the nation at least, that wealth is made by work, not robbery; that, indeed, general robbery is fatal to prosperity; that government consists not merely in having the power of the sword but in organising society—in "knowing how"; which means the development of ideas; in maintaining courts; in making it possible to run railways, post offices, and all the contrivances of a complex society.

Now rulers did not create these things; it was the daily activities of the people, born of their desires and made possible by the circumstances in which they lived, by the trading and the mining and the shipping which they carried on, that made them. But the Balkans have been geographically outside the influence of European industrial and commercial life. The Turk has hardly felt it at all. He has learnt none of the social and moral lessons which interdependence and improved communications have taught the Western European, and it is because he has not learnt these lessons, because he is a soldier and a conqueror, to an extent and completeness that other nations of Europe lost a generation or two since, that the Balkanese are fighting and that war is raging.

But not merely in this larger sense, but in the more immediate, narrower sense, are the fundamental causes of this war economic.

This war arises, as the past wars against the Turkish conqueror have arisen, by the desire of the Christian peoples on whom he lives to shake off this burden. "To live upon their subjects is the Turks' only means of livelihood," says one authority. The Turk is an economic parasite, and the economic organism must end of rejecting him.

For the management of society, simple and primitive even as that of the Balkan mountains, needs some effort and work and capacity for administration, or even rudimentary economic life cannot be carried on. And the Turkish system, founded on the sword and nothing else ("the finest soldier in Europe"), cannot give that small modicum, of energy or administrative capacity. The one thing he knows is brute force; but it is not by the strength of his muscles that an engineer runs a machine, but by knowing how. The Turk cannot build a road, or make a bridge, or administer a post office, or found a court of law. And these things are necessary. And he will not let them be done by the Christian, who, because he did not belong to the conquering class, has had to work, and has consequently become the class which possesses whatever capacity for work and administration the country can show, because to do so would be to threaten the Turk's only trade. If the Turk granted the Christians equal political rights they would inevitably "run the country," And yet the Turk himself cannot do it; and he will not let others do it, because to do so would be to threaten his supremacy.