The Fruits of Victory / A Sequel to The Great Illusion

by Norman Angell

Those who have dealt with the world’s food resources point out that there are great sources of food still undeveloped. But the difficulties do not arise from a total shortage. They arise from a mal-distribution of population, coupled with the fact that as between nations the Ten Commandments—particularly the eighth—do not run. By the code of nationalism we have no obligation towards starving foreigners. A nation may seize territory which it does not need, and exclude from it those who direly need its resources. While we insist that internationalism is political atheism, and that the only doctrine fit for red-blooded people is what Colonel Roosevelt called ‘intense Nationalism,’ intense nationalism means, in economic practice, the attempt, even at some cost, to render the political unit also the economic unit, and as far as possible self-sufficing.

It serves little purpose, therefore, to point out that one or two States in South America can produce food for half the world, if we also create a political tradition which leads the patriotic South American to insist upon having his own manufactures, even at cost to himself, so that he will not need ours. He will achieve that result at the cost of diminishing his production of food. Both he and the Englishman will be poorer, but according to the standard of the intense nationalist, the result should be a good one, though it may confront many of us with starvation, just as the intense nationalism of the various nations of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe actually results in famine on soil fully capable, before the War, of supporting the population, and capable of supporting still greater populations if natural resources are used to the best advantage. It is political passions, anti-social doctrines, and the muddle, confusion, and hostility that go therewith which are the real cause of the scarcity.

And that may forecast the position of Europe as a whole to-morrow: we may suffer starvation for the patriotic joy of seeing foreigners—Boche or Bolshevist—suffer in still greater degree.

Given the nationalist conception of a world divided into completely distinct groups of separate corporate bodies, entities so different that the binding social ties between them (laws, in fact) are impossible of maintenance, there must inevitably grow up pugnacities and rivalries, creating a general sense of conflict that will render immeasurably difficult the necessary co-operation between the peoples, the kind of co-operation which the Treaty of Versailles has, in so large degree, deliberately destroyed. Whether the hostility comes, in the first instance, from the ‘herd,’ or tribal, instinct, and develops into a sense of economic hostility, or whether the hostility arises from the conviction that there exists a conflict of interest, the result is pretty much the same. I happen to have put the case elsewhere in these terms:—

If it be true that since the world is of limited space, we must fight one another for it, that if our children are to be fed others must starve, then agreement between peoples will be for ever impossible. Nations will certainly not commit suicide for the sake of peace. If this is really the relationship of two great nations, they are, of course, in the position of two cannibals, one of whom says to the other: ‘Either I have got to eat you, or you have got to eat me. Let’s come to a friendly agreement about it.’ They won’t come to a friendly agreement about it. They will fight. And my point is that not only would they fight if it really were true that the one had to kill and eat the other, but they would fight as long as they believed it to be true. It might be that there was ample food within their reach—out of their reach, say, so long as each acted alone, but within their reach if one would stand on the shoulders of the other (‘this is an allegory’), and so get the fat cocoa-nuts on the higher branches. But they would, nevertheless, be cannibals so long as each believed that the flesh of the other was the only source of food. It would be that mistake, not the necessary fact, which would provoke them to fight.

When we learn that one Balkan State refuses to another a necessary raw material, or access over a railroad, because it prefers the suffering of that neighbour to its own welfare, we are shocked and talk about primitive and barbarous passions. But are we ourselves—Britain or France—in better state? The whole story of the negotiations about the indemnity and the restoration of Europe shows that we are not. Quite soon after the Armistice the expert advisers of the British Government urged the necessity, for the economic safety of the Allies themselves, of helping in the restoration of Germany. But they also admitted that it was quite hopeless to go to Parliament with any proposal to help Germany. And even when one gets a stage further and there is general admission ‘in the abstract’ that if France is to secure reparations, Germany must be fed and permitted to work, the sentiment of hostility stands in the way of any specific measure.

We are faced with certain traditions and moralities, involving a psychology which, gathering round words like ‘patriotism,’ deprives us of the emotional restraint and moral discipline necessary to carry through the measures which intellectually we recognise to be indispensable to our country’s welfare.

We thus see why it is impossible to speak of international economics without predicating the nation as a concept. In the economic problems of nations or States, one is necessarily dealing not only with economic facts, but with political facts: a political entity in its economic relations (before the War inconsiderable, but since the War very great); group consciousness; the interests, or what is sometimes as important, the supposed interests of this group or area as distinct from that; the moral phenomena of nationalism—group preferences or prejudices, herd instinct, tribal hostility. All this is part of the economic problem in international politics. Protection, for instance, is only in part a problem of economics; it is also a problem of political preferences: the manufacturer who is content to face the competition of his own countrymen, objects to facing that of foreigners. Political conceptions are part of the economic problem when dealing with nations, just as primary economic need must be taken into account as part of the cause of the conflict of nationalisms.

One very commonly hears the argument: ‘What is the good of discussing economic forces in relation to the conflict of Europe when our participation, for instance, in the War, was in no way prompted by economic considerations?’

Our motive may not have been economic, yet the cause of the War may very well have been mainly economic. The sentiment of nationality may be a stronger motive in European politics than any other. The chief menace to nationality may none the less be economic need.