With such a philosophy of human progress as this, German thinkers and statesmen look out into the future and behold nothing but conflict—eternal conflict between rival national "cultures," each seeking to impose its domination. "In the struggle between Nationalities," writes Prince Bülow,[1] in defence of his Polish policy, putting into a cruder form the philosophy of Wilamowitz, "one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the vanquished. It is a law of life and development in history that where two national civilisations meet they fight for supremacy."
[Footnote 1: Imperial Germany, p. 245 (1st ed.).]
Here we have the necessary and logical result of the philosophy of culture. In the struggle between cultures no collaboration, no compromise even, is possible. German is German: Flemish is Flemish: Polish is Polish: French is French. Who is to decide which is the "more civilised," which is the fitter to survive? Force alone can settle the issue. A Luther and Goethe may be the puppets pitted in a contest of culture against Maeterlinck and Victor Hugo. But it is Krupp and Zeppelin and the War-Lord that pull the strings. As Wilamowitz reminds us, it was the Roman legions, not Virgil and Horace, that stamped out the Celtic languages and romanised Western Europe. It is the German army, two thousand years later, that is to germanise it. It is an old, old theory; Prussia did not invent it, nor even Rome. "You know as well as we do," said the Athenians in 416 B.C. to the representatives of a small people of that day,[1] "that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"; and they went on, like the Kaiser, to claim the favour of the gods, "neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise amongst themselves." There is, in fact, to be no Law between Nations but the Rule of the Stronger.
[Footnote 1: Thucydides, Book v. 89 and 105.]
§6. The Principle of the Commonwealth.—Such seems to many the meaning of the present European situation—a stern conflict between nations and cultures, to be decided by force of arms. The bridges between the nations seem broken down, and no one can tell when they will be repaired. The hopes that had gathered round international movements, the cosmopolitan dreams of common action between the peoples across the barriers of States and Governments, seem to have vanished into limbo; and the enthusiastic dreamers of yesterday are the disillusioned soldiers and spectators of to-day. Nationality, that strange, inarticulate, unanalysable force that can call all men to her tents in the hour of crisis and danger, seems to have overthrown the international forces of to-day, the Socialists, the Pacifists, and, strongest of all, the Capitalists, as it overthrew Napoleon and his dreams of Empire a hundred years ago. What Law is there but force that can decide the issue between nation and nation? And, in the absence of a Law, what becomes of all our hopes for international action, for the future of civilisation and the higher life of the human race?
But in truth the disillusionment is as premature as the hopes that preceded it. We are still far off from the World-State and the World-Law which formed the misty ideal of cosmopolitan thinkers. But only those who are blind to the true course of human progress can fail to see that the day of the Nation-State is even now drawing to a close in the West. There is in fact at present working in the world a higher Law and a better patriotism than that of single nations and cultures, a Law and a patriotism that override and transcend the claims of Nationality in a greater, a more compelling, and a more universal appeal. The great States or Powers of to-day, Great Britain, the United States, France, and (if they had eyes to sec it) Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, are not Nation-States but composite States—States compacted of many nationalities united together by a common citizenship and a common law. Great Britain, the United States, the German Empire, and Austria-Hungary bear in their very names the reminder of the diverse elements of which they are composed; but France with her great African Empire, and Russia with her multitudinous populations, from Poland to the Pacific, from Finland to the Caucasus, are equally composite. In each of these great States nations have been united under a common law; and where the wisdom of the central government has not "broken the bruised reed or quenched the smoking flax" of national life, the nations have been not only willing but anxious to join in the work of their State. Nations, like men, were made not to compete but to work together; and it is so easy, so simple, to win their good-hearted devotion. It takes all sorts of men, says the old proverb, to make a world. It takes all sorts of nations to make a modern State. "The combination of different nations in one State is as necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society. … It is in the cauldron of the State that the fusion takes place by which the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be communicated to another…. If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those States are substantially the most perfect which, like the British and Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them." So wrote Lord Acton, the great Catholic historian, fifty years ago, when the watchwords of Nationality were on all men's lips, adding, in words that were prophetic of the failure of the Austrian and the progress of the British Commonwealth of Nations: "The coexistence of several nations under the same State is a test as well as the best security of its freedom. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and, as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism."[1]
[Footnote 1: Essay on Nationality, in The History of Freedom and other
Essays, pp. 290, 298.]
Of the Great Powers which between them control the destinies of civilisation Great Britain is at once the freest, the largest, and the most various. If the State is a "cauldron" for mingling "the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity" of the portions of mankind—or if, to use an apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection consists in the very variety of the functions of its several members—there has never been on the earth a political organism like the British Empire. Its 433 million inhabitants, from Great Britain to Polynesia, from India and Egypt to Central Africa, are drawn from every division of the human race. Cut a section through mankind, and in every layer there will be British citizens, living under the jurisdiction of British law. Here is something to hearten those who have looked in vain to the Hague. While international law has been brought to a standstill through the absence of a common will and a common executive, Great Britain has thrown a girdle of law around the globe.
§7. The Future of Civilisation.—What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, for the future of civilisation?
The great, the supreme task of human politics and statesmanship is to extend the sphere of Law. Let others labour to make men cultured or virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and the common man. The statesman's task is simpler. It is to enfold them in a jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their souls' choice. The State, said the Greek philosophers, is the foundation of the good life; but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. "There where the State ends," cries Nietzsche,[1] echoing Aristotle and the great tradition of civilised political thought, "there men begin. There, where the State ends, look thither, my brothers! Do you not see the rainbow and the bridge to the Overman?" Ever since organised society began, the standards of the individual, the ideals of priest and teacher, the doctrines of religion and morality, have outstripped the practice of statesmanship. For the polestar of the statesman has not been love, but law. His not the task of exhorting men to love one another, but the simpler duty of enforcing the law, "Thou shalt not kill." And in that simple, strenuous, necessary task statesmen and political thinkers have watched the slow extension of the power of Law, from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the city, from the city to the nation, from the nation to the Commonwealth. When will Law take its next extension? When will warfare, which is murder between individuals and "rebellion" between groups of citizens, be equally preventable between nations by the common law of the world?