The Fruits of Victory / A Sequel to The Great Illusion

by Norman Angell

The following is a passage from one of the last important speeches made by Colonel Roosevelt—twice President of the United States and one of the out-standing figures in the world in his generation:—

‘Friends, be on your guard against the apostles of weakness and folly when peace comes. They will tell you that this is the last great war. They will tell you that they can make paper treaties and agreements and guarantees by which brutal and unscrupulous men will have their souls so softened that weak and timid men won’t have anything to fear and that brave and honest men won’t have to prepare to defend themselves.

‘Well, we have seen that all such treaties are worth less than scraps of paper when it becomes to the interests of powerful and ruthless militarist nations to disregard them.... After this War is over, these foolish pacifist creatures will again raise their piping voices against preparedness and in favour of patent devices for maintaining peace without effort. Let us enter into every reasonable agreement which bids fair to minimise the chances of war and to circumscribe its area.... But let us remember it is a hundred times more important for us to prepare our strength for our own defence than to enter any of these peace treaties, and that if we thus prepare our strength for our own defence we shall minimise the chances of war as no paper treaties can possibly minimise them; and we shall thus make our views effective for peace and justice in the world at large as in no other way can they be made effective.’[69]

Let us dispose of one or two of the more devastating confusions in the foregoing.

First there is the everlasting muddle as to the internationalist attitude towards the likelihood of war. To Colonel Roosevelt one is an internationalist or ‘pacifist’ because one thinks war will not take place. Whereas probably the strongest motive of internationalism is the conviction that without it war is inevitable, that in a world of rival nationalisms war cannot be avoided. If those who hate war believe that the present order will without effort give them peace, why in the name of all the abuse which their advocacy brings on their heads should they bother further about the matter?

Secondly, internationalism is assumed to be the alternative to the employment of force or power of arms, whereas it is the organisation of force, of power (latent or positive) to a common—an international—end.

Our incurable habit of giving to homely but perfectly healthy and justifiable reasons of conduct a high faluting romanticism sometimes does morality a very ill service. When in political situations—as in the making of a Peace Treaty—a nation is confronted by the general alternative we are now discussing, the grounds of opposition to a co-operative or ‘Liberal’ or ‘generous’ settlement are almost always these: ‘Generosity’ is lost upon a people as crafty and treacherous as the enemy; he mistakes generosity for weakness; he will take advantage of it; his nature won’t be softened by mild treatment; he understands nothing but force.

The assumption is that the liberal policy is based upon an appeal to the better side of the enemy; upon arousing his nobler nature. And such an assumption concerning the Hun or the Bolshevik, for instance (or at an earlier date, the Boer or the Frenchman), causes the very gorge of the Roosevelt-Bottomley patriot to rise in protest. He simply does not believe in the effective operation of so remote a motive.

But the real ground of defence for the liberal policy is not the existence of an abnormal if heretofore successfully disguised nobility on the part of the enemy, but of his very human if not very noble fears which, from our point of view, it is extremely important not to arouse or justify. If our ‘punishment’ of him creates in his mind the conviction that we are certain to use our power for commercial advantage, or that in any case our power is a positive danger to him, he will use his recovered economic strength for the purpose of resisting it; and we should face a fact so dangerous and costly to us.

To take cognisance of this fact, and to shape our policy accordingly is not to attribute to the enemy any particular nobility of motive. But almost always when that policy is attacked, it is attacked on the ground of its ‘Sunday School’ assumption of the accessibility of the enemy to gratitude or ‘softening’ in Colonel Roosevelt’s phrase.