The Fruits of Victory / A Sequel to The Great Illusion

by Norman Angell

They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others (German naval competition is assumed to be the expression of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the world, a need which will find a realisation in the conquest of English Colonies or trade, unless these were defended); it is assumed, therefore, that a nation’s relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.

The author challenges this whole doctrine.

[113] See chapters The Psychological Case for Peace, Unchanging Human Nature, and Is the Political Reformation Possible?

‘Not the facts, but men’s opinions about the facts, is what matters. Men’s conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.’

In another pre-war book of the present writer (The Foundations of International Polity) the same view is developed, particularly in the passage which has been reproduced in Chapter VI of this book, ‘The Alternative Risks of Status and Contract.’

[114] The cessation of religious war indicates the greatest outstanding fact in the history of civilised mankind during the last thousand years, which is this: that all civilised Governments have abandoned their claim to dictate the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right tenaciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there is an immense deal to be said. It was held that as belief is an integral part of conduct, that as conduct springs from belief, and the purpose of the State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to go about our business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the State to protect those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to undermine the foundations of conduct. I do not believe that this case has ever been completely answered.... Men of profound thought and profound learning to-day defend it, and personally I have found it very difficult to make a clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which every civilised Government in the world is to-day founded. How do you account for this—that a principle which I do not believe one man in a million could defend from all objections has become the dominating rule of civilised government throughout the world?

‘Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not because every argument, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which led to it, have been answered, but because the fundamental one has. The conception on which it rested has been shown to be, not in every detail, but in the essentials at least, an illusion, a misconception.

‘The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a world which had a quite definite conception of the relation of authority to religious belief and to truth—as that authority was the source of truth; that truth could be, and should be, protected by force; that Catholics who did not resent an insult offered to their faith (like the failure of a Huguenot to salute a passing religious procession) were renegade.

‘Now, what broke down this conception was a growing realisation that authority, force, was irrelevant to the issues of truth (a party of heretics triumphed by virtue of some physical accident, as that they occupied a mountain region); that it was ineffective, and that the essence of truth was something outside the scope of physical conflict. As the realisation of this grew, the conflicts declined.’—Foundations of International Polity, p. 214.

[115] An attempt is made, in The Great Illusion, to sketch the process which lies behind the progressive substitution of bargain for coercion (The Economic Interpretation of the History of Development ‘From Status to Contract’) on pages 187-192, and further developed in a chapter ‘the Diminishing Factor of Physical Force’ (p. 257).