The Great Illusion / A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage

by Norman Angell

Now, do these things constitute, as a national policy, an inspiring aim, or not? They are, speaking in terms of communities, pure self-interest—bound up with economic problems, with money. Does Admiral Mahan mean us to take him at his word when he would attach to such efforts the same discredit that one implies in talking of a mercenary individual? Would he have us believe that the typical great movements of our time—Socialism, Trades Unionism, Syndicalism, Insurance Acts, Land Reforms, Old Age Pensions, Charity Organization, improved Education—bound up as they all are with economic problems—are not the objects which, more and more, are absorbing the best activities of Christendom?

In the pages which follow, I have attempted to show that the activities which lie outside the range of these things—the religious wars, movements like those which promoted the Crusades, or the sort of tradition which we associate with the duel (which has, in fact, disappeared from Anglo-Saxon society)—do not, and cannot, any longer form part of the impulse creating the long-sustained conflicts between large groups which a European war implies. I have attempted roughly to indicate certain processes at work; to show, among other things, that in the changing character of men's ideals there is a distinct narrowing of the gulf which is supposed to separate ideal and material aims. Early ideals, whether in the field of politics or religion, are generally dissociated from any aim of general well-being. In early politics, ideals are concerned simply with personal allegiance to some dynastic chief, a feudal lord, or a monarch; the well-being of a community does not enter into the matter at all. Later the chief must embody in his person that well-being, or he does not obtain the allegiance of a community of any enlightenment; later, the well-being of the community becomes the end in itself, without being embodied in the person of an hereditary chief, so that the people realize that their efforts, instead of being directed to the protection of the personal interests of some chief, are as a matter of fact directed to the protection of their own interests, and their altruism has become communal self-interest, since the self-sacrifice of the community for the sake of the community is a contradiction in terms. In the religious sphere a similar development has occurred. Early religious ideals have no relation to the material betterment of mankind. The early Christian thought it meritorious to live a sterile life at the top of a pillar, eaten by vermin, just as the Hindoo saint to-day thinks it meritorious to live an equally sterile life upon a bed of spikes. But as the early Christian ideal progressed, sacrifices having no end connected with the betterment of mankind lost their appeal. Our admiration now goes, not to the recluse who does nothing for mankind, but rather to the priest who gives his life to bring a ray of comfort to a leper settlement. The Christian saint who would allow the nails of his fingers to grow through the palms of his clasped hands would excite, not our admiration, but our revolt. More and more is religious effort being subjected to this test: Does it make for the improvement of society? If not, it stands condemned. Political ideals are inevitably undergoing a similar development, and will be more and more subjected to a similar test.[50]

I am aware that very often at present they are not thus tested. Dominated as our political thought is by Roman and feudal imagery—hypnotized by symbols and analogies which the necessary development of organized society has rendered obsolete—the ideals even of democracies are still often pure abstractions, divorced from any aim calculated to advance the moral or material betterment of mankind. The craze for sheer size of territory, the mere extent of administrative area, is still deemed a thing deserving immense, incalculable sacrifices.

Even these ideals, however, firmly set as they are in our language and tradition, are rapidly yielding to the necessary force of events. A generation ago it would have been inconceivable that a people or a monarch should calmly see part of its country secede and establish itself as a separate political entity without attempting to prevent it by force of arms. Yet this is what happened, a year or two ago, in the Scandinavian peninsula. For forty years Germany has added to her own difficulties and to those of the European situation for the purpose of including Alsace and Lorraine in its Federation, but even there, obeying the tendency which is world-wide, an attempt has been made to create a constitutional and autonomous government. The history of the British Empire for fifty years has been a process of undoing the work of conquest. Colonies are now neither colonies nor possessions; they are independent States. England, which for centuries has made such sacrifices to retain Ireland, is now making great sacrifices in order to make her secession workable. To each political arrangement, to each political ideal, the final test will be applied: does it, or does it not, make for the widest interests of the mass of the people involved?

It is true that those who emphasize the psychological causes of war might rejoin with another distinction. They might urge that, though the questions dividing nations had more or less their origin in an economic problem, the economic question becomes itself a moral question, a question of right. It was not the few pence of the tax on tea that the Colonies fought about, but the question of right which its payment involved. So with nations. War, ineffective to achieve an economic end, unprofitable in the sense that the cost involved in the defence of a given economic point exceeds the monetary value of that point, will still be fought because a point, trifling in the economic sense, is all important from the point of view of right; and though there is no real division of interests between nations, though those interests are in reality interdependent, minor differences provoking a sudden and uncontrolled flash of temper suffice to provoke war. War is the outcome of the "hot fits" of men, "of the devil that is in them."

Although militarist literature on this, as on most similar points, shows flagrant contradictions, even that literature is against the view that war is the outcome of the sheer sudden temper of nations. Most of the popular, and all of the scientific, militarist writers take the contrary view. Mr. Blatchford and his school normally represent a typical militarist policy, like that of Germany, as actuated by a cold, deep, Machiavellian, unsentimental, calculated opportunism, as diverse from a wild, irrational explosion of feeling as possible. Mr. Blatchford writes:

German policy, based upon the teachings of Clausewitz, may be expressed in two questions, the questions laid down by Clausewitz: "Is it expedient to do this? Have we the power to do it?" If it will benefit the Fatherland to break up the British Empire, then it is expedient to break up the British Empire. Clausewitz taught Germany that "war is a part of policy." He taught that policy is a system of bargaining or negotiating, backed by arms. Clausewitz does not discuss the moral aspect of war; he deals with power and expediency. His pupils take his lead. They do not read poems on the blessings of peace; they do not spend ink on philanthropic theories.

All the more scientific writers, without an exception, so far as I am aware, repudiate its "accidental" character. They one and all, from Grotius to Von der Goltz, take the view that it results from definite and determinable laws, like all the great processes of human development.

Von der Goltz ("On the Conduct of War") says:

One must never lose sight of the fact that war is the consequence and continuation of policy. One will act on the defensive strategically or rest on the defensive according as the policy has been offensive or defensive. An offensive and defensive policy is in its turn indicated by the line of conduct dictated historically. We see this very clearly in antiquity by the example furnished us in the Persians and Romans. In their wars we see the strategical rôle following the bend of the historical rôle. The people which in its historical development has arrived at the stage of inertia, or even retrogression, will not carry on a policy of offence, but merely one of defence; a nation in that situation will wait to be attacked, and its strategy will consequently be defensive, and from a defensive strategy will follow necessarily a defensive tactic.