Perhaps no thesis is commoner with the defender of war than this: that, though one may not be able in a narrow economic sense to justify an enterprise like that of 1870, the moral stimulus which victory gave to the German people is accepted as being of incalculable benefit to the race and the nation. Its alleged effect in bringing about a national solidarity, in stimulating patriotic sentiment and national pride, in the wiping out of internal differences and Heaven knows what, are claims I have dealt with at greater length elsewhere, and I wish only to note here that all this high-falutin does not stand the test of facts. The two phenomena just mentioned—the extraordinary progress of Socialism and the enormous stimulus given to emigration during the years which immediately followed the war—give the lie to all the claims in question. In 1872-73, the very years in which the moral stimulus of victory and the economic stimulus of the indemnity should have kept at home every able-bodied German, emigration was, relatively to the population, greater than it has ever been before or since, the figures for 1872 being 154,000 and for 1873 134,000.[24] And at no period since the fifties was the internal political struggle so bitter—it was a period of repression, of prescription on the one side and class-hatred on the other—"the golden age of the drill-sergeant," some German has called it.
It will be replied that, after the first decade, Germany's trade has shown an expansion which has not been shown by that of France. Those who are hypnotized by this, quietly ignore altogether one great fact or which has affected both France and Germany, not only since the war, but during the whole of the nineteenth century, and that factor is that the population of France, from causes in no way connected with the Franco-Prussian War, since the tendency was a pronounced one for fifty years before, is practically quite stationary; while the population of Germany, also for reasons in no way connected with the war, since the tendency was also pronounced half a century previously, has shown an abounding expansion. Since 1875 the population of Germany has increased by twenty million souls. That of France has not increased at all. Is it astonishing that the labor of twenty million souls makes some stir in the industrial world? Is it not evident that the necessity of earning a livelihood for this increasing population gives to German industry an expansion outside the limits of her territory which cannot be looked for in the case of a nation whose social energies are not faced with any such problem? There is this, moreover, to be borne in mind: Germany has secured her foreign trade on what are, in the terms of the relative comfort of her people, hard conditions. In other words, she has secured that trade by cutting profits, in the way that a business fighting desperately for life will cut profits, in order to secure orders, and by making sacrifices that the comfortable business man will not make. Notwithstanding the fact that France has made no sensational splash in foreign trade since the war, the standard of comfort among her people has been rising steadily, and is without doubt generally higher to-day than is that of the German people. This higher standard of comfort is reflected in her financial situation. It is Germany, the victor, which is to-day in the position of a suppliant in regard to France, and it is revealing no diplomatic secrets to say that, for many years now, Germany has been employing all the wiles of her diplomacy to obtain the official recognition of German securities on the French Bourses. France financially has, in a very real sense, the whip hand.
That is not all. Those who point triumphantly to German industrial expansion, as a proof of the benefits of war and conquest, ignore certain facts which cannot be ignored if that argument is to have any value, and they are these:
1. Such progress is not peculiar to Germany; it is shown in an equal or greater degree (I am speaking now of the general wealth and social progress of the average individual citizen) by States that have had no victorious war—the Scandinavian States, the Netherlands, Switzerland.
2. Even if it were special to Germany, which it is not, we should be entitled to ask whether certain developments of German political evolution, which preceded the war, and which one may fairly claim have a more direct and understandable bearing upon industrial progress, are not a much more appreciable factor in that progress than the war itself—I refer particularly, of course, to the immense change involved in the fiscal union of the German States, which was completed before the Franco-German War of 1870 had been declared; to say nothing of such other factors as the invention of the Thomas-Gilchrist process which enabled the phosphoric iron ores of Germany, previously useless, to be utilized.
3. The very serious social difficulties (which have, of course, their economic aspect) that do confront the German people—the intense class friction, the backwardness of parliamentary government, the survival of reactionary political ideas, wrapped up with the domination of the "Prussian ideal"—all difficulties which States whose political development has been less marked by successful war (the lesser European States just mentioned, for instance)—are not faced with in the same degree. These difficulties, special, among the great European nations, to Germany, are certainly in a large measure a legacy of the Franco-German War, a part of the general system to which that war gave rise, the general character of the political union which it provoked.
The general ascription of such real progress as Germany has made to the effects of the war and nothing else—a conclusion which calmly ignores factors which have evidently a more direct bearing—is one of those a priori judgments repeated, parrot fashion, without investigation or care even by publicists of repute; it is characteristic of the carelessness which dominates this whole subject. This more general consideration, which does not properly belong to the special problem of an indemnity, I have dealt with at greater length in the next section. The evidence bearing on the particular question, as to whether in practice the exaction of a large monetary indemnity from a conquered foe can ever be economically profitable or of real advantage to the conqueror, is of a simpler character. If we put the question in this form, "Was the receipt of the indemnity, in the most characteristic and successful case in history, of advantage to the conqueror?" the reply is simple enough: all the evidence plainly and conclusively shows that it was of no advantage; that the conqueror would probably have been better without it.
Even if we draw from that evidence a contrary conclusion, even if we conclude that the actual payment of the indemnity was as beneficial as all the evidence would seem to show it was mischievous; even if we could set aside completely the financial and commercial difficulties which its payment seems to have involved; if we ascribe to other causes the great financial crises which followed that payment; if we deduct no discount from the nominal value of the indemnity, but assume that every mark and thaler of it represented its full face value to Germany—even admitting all this, it is still inevitable that the direct cost of preparing for a war and of guarding against a subsequent war of retribution must, from the nature of the case, exceed the value of the indemnity which can be exacted. This is not merely a hypothetical statement, it is a commercial fact, supported by evidence which is familiar to us all. In order to avoid repaying, with interest, the indemnity drawn from France, Germany has had to expend upon armaments a sum of money at least equal to that indemnity. In order to exact a still larger indemnity from Great Britain, Germany would have to spend a still larger sum in preparations, and to guard against repayment would be led into indefinite expenditure, which has only to go on long enough inevitably to exceed the very definite indemnity. For, it must be remembered that the amount of an indemnity extractable from a modern community, of the credit era, has very definite limits: an insolvent community can pay more. If the Statesmen of Europe could lay on one side, for a moment, the irrelevant considerations which cloud their minds, they would see that the direct cost of acquisition by force must in these circumstances necessarily exceed in value the property acquired. When the indirect costs are also considered, the balance of loss becomes incalculably greater.
Those who urge that through an indemnity, war can be made to "pay" (and it is for them that this chapter is written), have before them problems and difficulties—difficulties of not merely a military, but of a financial and social character—of the very deepest kind. It was precisely in this section of the subject that German science failed in 1870. There is no evidence that much progress has been made in the study of this phase of the problem by either side since the war—indeed, there is plenty of evidence that it has been neglected. It is time that it was scientifically and systematically attacked.
Those who wish well for Europe will encourage the study, for it can have but one result: to show that less and less can war be made to pay; that all those forces of our world which daily gain in strength make it, as a commercial venture, more and more preposterous. The study of this department of international polity will tend to the same result as the study of any of its facets: the undermining of those beliefs which have in the past so often led to, and are to-day so often claimed as the motives likely to lead to, war between civilized peoples.