A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist

by T. Baron Russell

It is stated that war is an inevitable feature of national life, and that it exercises a beneficent effect upon national character—that it fosters manliness and a respect for the virile attributes of courage, steadfastness and self-respect; that nations which have abandoned the art of war sink into effeminacy, slothfulness and destructive luxury; and that the peace of the nations, if it ever comes, will be associated with a terrible deterioration of the race. As to the notion that anything can prevent the abolition of armed conflict as a means of settling the differences of peoples, we may very well be satisfied to await the issue. No one who recognises the steady growth of humanitarian feeling; no one who remembers, even to deplore, our growing sentimentalism; no one who has insight enough to perceive that progress, at an ever-increasing speed, must inevitably be accompanied by advanced intellectuality, increased self-restraint and greater wisdom, can doubt that a process so illogical, barbarous and brutalising as battle must be banished, as well by the new humanity as by the economic necessities of our race. But the notion of deploring, on moral grounds, the assured coming of a reform so salutary, calls for more strenuous reprobation. One would have thought it evident, from the popular effect of the war in South Africa, that, so far from being a matter for self-congratulation, this highly necessary war was a terrible lesson in the brutalising effect of armed conflict, not alone on the men actually engaged, but also on the people who remained at home. Indeed, since it is only a comparatively small fraction of a community that can ever be personally active in military operations, the effect on the home-stayers is evidently what the upholders of war as a civilising influence must be thinking of. It would be ridiculous, and it is quite unnecessary to the argument, to deny the fine qualities of determination, of fortitude before national disaster, and of calm confidence in the prowess of the nation’s arms which, in the bulk of the English people, the Transvaal war called forth. It would be just as idle to deny the sublime exhibition of patriotism and self-abnegation which, on one side at least, was provoked by the Russo-Japanese war. But it would also be foolish not to recognise the quite evident brutalisation which has followed our war in South Africa, the remarkable increase in crimes of murderous violence, and especially of double crimes—murder and suicide—which has lately occurred. The true source of these increased evils is the reflex effect of familiarity (either at first hand, or more remotely through newspaper reading and through the personal narrative of returned soldiers) with the notion of violent slaying, and the diminished sense of the sanctity of human life which accompanies the spectacle of man-slaying by wholesale held up to popular admiration, and indeed necessitated and justified by the conditions of war and the duty of patriotism. No doubt it is true (as has been finely said) that there is one thing which is worse for a nation than war, and that is that a nation should be so afraid of war as to submit to aggression rather than fight in defence of its rights. But to subscribe to this doctrine, which no rational thinker will dispute, is a very different thing from agreeing that the nations would be otherwise than strengthened and civilised by the universal abandonment of battle. Probably we are as yet some decades from the time when we shall have sufficient nobility of sentiment to be entirely agreed, without a single dissentient, in recognising the enormous service to national and international morality which Mr Gladstone rendered when he had the courage to withdraw from the conflict with the Boers after Majuba. It will be long before we are logical enough to see that the fact of this magnanimity having been basely abused does not in the least detract from its moral weight and moral beneficence. But the influence of such an act cannot be without effect upon progress. It is by such acts, and the possibility of their glad acceptance by nations of sufficient moral elevation to perform them, that war will be banished.

In the meantime, while noble virtues can be displayed by nations in time of combat, and by civilians as well as soldiers, it is a new doctrine that we are asked to accept when we are told that there is anything individually elevating to the character in sitting at home while someone else goes out and fights for that home’s protection. One of the least satisfactory features of public interest in games of manly endeavour and endurance, games of danger and violent effort, like football and cricket, is that of the very greatly increased numbers who “follow” these games and watch the fortunes of selected teams in the Cup contests only a very small proportion play the games themselves. Thousands of young men hardly see a football match from September to April, though they keenly follow the admirable descriptions of them in their sporting papers. It is taking a very short-sighted view to applaud the growing interest in athletics, which, just now, we show, as a sign of our manliness. Not very much endurance is required in order to bet on the success of a favourite team: and to assist, as a contributor to gate-moneys, in paying selected athletes to endure risk and violent fatigue in a game which one does not play for oneself is exactly on a level with applauding the exploits of an army to which one contributes nothing but taxes.

Moreover, this beneficent effect of actual war-in-progress could only exercise itself during limited and distressful periods. No nation is able to be seriously at war, in modern conditions, for very long, and great periods of recuperation must intervene between war and war; the combatant nations being meanwhile subject to aggressions from keepers of the peace, because they are not in a position to fight again with a fresh and an unexhausted adversary. Consequently, any beneficent effect must be expected to be exercised chiefly in time of peace. And, in practice, it does not seem to be the case that nations in which the military standard is high and the military class is exalted above the civil class, show always in any remarkable manner the virtues supposed to be fostered by the manly art of war. No one would contend that the average German is more self-reliant and self-respecting, quicker to decide on action in a moment of stress, braver, manlier, more enduring of reverses of fortune, than the average American. Yet Germany, where military officers are held in such esteem that they can behave with unrestrained arrogance and brutality towards civilians in public places without provoking any signs of popular indignation, unless when their acts are commented upon in the socialist newspapers; and can even inflict disgusting and degrading indignities upon private soldiers without being officially punished, except where they have carried brutality to the limit (and they are punished with the greatest tenderness even then): Germany, I say, ought to show the virtues of a military state at their best. Whereas in America, where there is practically no standing army, and where military titles, the residue of wars conducted almost entirely by volunteer and amateur soldiers, are so common that the very holders of them treat these titles as subjects of humorous depreciation, the people are conspicuous for manliness, for high endurance, for patience under the reverses of fortune, for temperance: and in the average of physical courage America far excels any military nation. There seems to be no reason at all for apprehending that the obsolescence of militarism will have a deleterious effect on the manhood of the race: while there are incontestable evidences that it will greatly foster the equally important virtues of gentleness, humanity, and respect for the weak. Thus, while, for reasons of sentiment and common sense, war is certain to become obsolete before the end of this century, we shall find in the release of the funds and of the labour hitherto employed in the organisation of war one of the greatest economies of an age which in all things will be thrifty: and there is no reason at all to apprehend difficulty in providing for the warrior who finds his occupation gone, when we have so reorganised (as we must reorganise) our social system, that no man will live in excessive luxury on the labour of his fellows, but that all will be contributors to a common frugality.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAW A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE

Using the figurative words, “the law,” in their widest possible sense, to mean the entire system which governs the relations of the individuals in a community with each other and with the community at large, we can easily see that in a century’s time many changes of law will have taken place. If it be true that legislative restraints are mostly necessitated by the ill-conceived energies of mankind, and that the right function of the law is to assure to each citizen the largest possible liberty that is consistent with the equal liberty of every other citizen and of all, then it will be right to believe that the great extension of general intelligence, and the equally great extension of general morality, anticipated for the next century, will render many forms of existing restraint obsolete because unnecessary. Regarding offences both against the person and against property as manifestations, for the most part, of unintelligence, we may expect that increased intelligence will lead to a diminution of their number. In applying statistics to an examination of the question whether and to what extent improvements in the general standard of education have in the past diminished crime, and consequently how far crime is likely to be still further diminished in the future, we must be careful to keep in sight two considerations—first, that an increased vigilance and elaboration on the part of authority may easily make it appear that crime has failed to diminish under educational influences, when it is only the detection and punishment of crime that have been rendered more perfect; and second, that if one kind of education have not had all the salutary effects expected of it, it does not follow that a different kind will not have all this expected efficacy and more. Manifestly, legislation against crimes formerly outside the reach of the law—that creation of “new offences” which one hears rather foolishly objected to—will increase statistics of crime, if we compute crime in terms of prison-admissions; and the fact that such increase, due entirely to legislation, has taken place concurrently with some other reform, such as the improvement of education, obviously does not entitle us to connect the increase with the reform. The latter may even be operating in exactly the opposite manner, despite the statistics. A number of new offences were created, for instance, by what is called in England the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and it would be easy for a shocked observer of prison statistics to observe, in a period of years during which the administration of that useful act was being perfected, dreadful increases in the crimes which it represses; whereas the fact probably is that crime of this sort has diminished, largely through the action of the very causes which would make it appear to have been increasing. Therefore, if anyone still argues that education as a means of diminishing crime has proved a failure, it is not upon judicial statistics that he must base his contentions. Probably that argument is obsolete: but if it were not, and if it were allowed all the validity of which it is capable, it would still furnish no ground whatever from which to throw doubt upon the expectation that in a hundred years’ time crime will have diminished very greatly, as a result of the improved education of the new era. For indeed, as education is at present conducted, it would be rather a remarkable thing that it should have any effect upon criminality at all. What influence increased intelligence may have in restraining one part of the population from the desire to commit crime might easily be neutralised by the effect, on another portion, of the increased craft and subtlety imparted by education. Knowledge can facilitate crime as well as deter from it. A man who has not learned to write, it has been shrewdly remarked, will not commit forgery: but that is not a reason for thinking that a knowledge of writing tends to promote criminality. The man who, being (perhaps unduly) proficient in it, becomes a forger, would not necessarily have remained blameless if he had continued illiterate. He would very probably have been a thief, which does not require penmanship: but on the other hand, the increased facility of obtaining employment when one can write might just as easily have saved him from some temptations to dishonesty. It is not very rational to expect a great moral effect upon character from the mere acquisition of knowledge. But from the moment we conceive that means and methods of education in the future will be valued in proportion to their influence in developing character, and especially intelligent self-control, it is impossible to doubt that the new teaching will be among the most potent of moral influences. One benefit derived from this will be the possibility of abandoning legislative restrictions whose effect is inimical to self-control and to intelligent self-protection. It will no longer be necessary to protect the people by law from the consequences of their own foolishness, and we shall have learned that it is much better for the public to be encouraged to safeguard its own interests than to be relieved of the necessity to do so.

Anticipating, therefore, that many existing forms of restraint will have become obsolete because unnecessary, we may very fairly ask ourselves whether, in an improved moral and intellectual atmosphere, it will not have been found advisable to abolish other restraints and requisitions as a directly remedial measure. The suggestion may, at the moment, appear chimerical, but so must every intelligent anticipation of a coming time appear to anyone who approaches the subject without allowing for the difference of conditions, and conceives of changes which will take place so gradually as to be almost unperceived, as if they were to occur per saltum, without any process of slow moral preparation. So would nearly every social condition of the present age have appeared individually to a citizen of the world of 1800, if, possessing intelligence to foresee it, he lacked the imagination necessary to foresee the accompanying and subservient conditions. That public opinion should be so shocked by the execution of capital punishment, that only the most atrocious murders are thus punished—the sentence, where there is any real extenuation at all, being habitually commuted nowadays—is a condition which would hardly have suggested itself even to the most alert imaginations in an age where small thefts were constantly punished by death. Our sense of what may be called the accidental influences of punitive measures is even yet so little developed that only a small minority of the public at the present day is able to perceive that the deterrent effect of flogging, as a punishment for violent robbery, is dearly purchased at the expense of the brutalising relish with which sentences of flogging are welcomed by the public, and even on the judicial bench, where expressions of regret that the same penalty cannot be inflicted for other crimes are still common. Yet it would seem obvious enough that the sanction given to acts of violence by the deliberate adoption of hanging and flogging by the law, which is supposed to be the exemplar of public morality, must tend nearly as much to perpetuate crimes of violence as fear of these chastisements to deter. In attempting to foresee the spirit of legislation in the future it is absolutely necessary to foresee concurrently the spirit of the communities by which the legislation will be adopted. Anticipating, as we cannot fail to anticipate, a sedulous care for moral effects in education, we must anticipate an equal care in legislation. It would be unworthy of the supremely logical age which assuredly is coming, to use all possible measures in the schoolroom to foster in childhood self-reliance and intelligent self-protection, while continuing by “grandmotherly” government of the people to remove as often as possible any need for self-reliance in the adult. The advantages attending little bits of protective law-making often blind us to their ill-effects. It is no doubt very useful to provide, as we do provide, that condensed milk, when deprived of its full proportion of cream, shall only be sold in packages notifying that deprivation. If we did not do this children would be starved by their parents’ ignorance. But the necessity for this enactment is at least in part created by the existence of a host of similar laws, the aggregate effect of which is to give a general impression that anything sold as food is good and useful unless it bears some warning to the contrary; and meantime every evasion of commercial morality which does not come under legislative restraint is naturally held to be perfectly justifiable—not at all a good thing for commercial morality. Now it would be a highly perilous measure to abolish, at a stroke, all protective legislation against adulterated or impoverished foods. We have built up a social condition in which every man thinks himself entitled to be protected against such frauds. But in a community which has been taught to take care of itself, and protect itself against frauds by its own intelligence, such protections would be retrograde and injurious. The aim of legislatures in the next century will be to foster all kinds of self-reliance. They will perceive that even the high importance of a reform which can be more or less easily enforced by law does not compensate for the bad effect of thus enforcing it, if it could be maintained by the spontaneous vigilance of a wisely-nurtured public; and the degrading effect of superfluous law will be more dreaded than the temporary dangers against which the law might protect the citizens.

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that, during a period more or less extended, material progress will be accompanied by numerous legal enactments such as a perfect state would dispense with, and possibly the end of all of them will not have been reached even in a century’s time. How invention tends to promote legislation has recently been noticeable in the new laws affecting automobile traffic on roads. In a perfect state it would doubtless be unnecessary to provide legal machinery to compel the owners of powerful and rapid vehicles to respect the rights of their fellow-citizens and to abstain from running away without identifying themselves when they had caused an accident. In proportion as the moral condition of the next century approximates to perfection, such ordinances as the motor-car laws will be unnecessary. But for a long time new laws will always be coming into necessity as a result of new inventions. For instance, when, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, business is carried on largely through the medium of recording telephones, wirelessly actuated, special laws will have to be devised to protect trade against the various kinds of fraud which this method of transaction would otherwise facilitate, and some methods will have to be devised for giving legal force to arrangements made by telephony, akin to the methods which now give legal force to written contracts. Similarly, various by-laws will have to be enacted to protect the public against the accidents incidental to the various methods of rapid transit that will have come into use. Probably it will no longer be necessary, and it will have been perceived to be injurious, to protect travellers against their own rashness.

It is a well-known phenomenon that periods of material prosperity and high wages are fruitful in crime. Probably increased consumption of alcohol in prosperous times is the sole cause of this. There can be no direct connection between wealth and criminality; the bulk of the criminal population is, on the contrary, poor. It would be idle to speculate as to whether the next century will or will not continue to legislate against intoxicants, because it is morally certain that intoxicants will have been legislated out of existence already, without waiting for the period when it would no longer be necessary to abolish them forcibly. For at present, and in the more immediate future, there is no ground whatever for anticipating that the legislative hand will be withheld wherever law-making appears the simplest and most obvious method of getting rid of any crying evil: and there can be no doubt that the abuse of alcohol is an evil of precisely the sort that legislature will be active in suppressing. Some changes in the method of government will have to take place before Parliament can legislate against alcohol: but that it will so legislate before the middle of this century is morally certain. In what country the alcohol law is first likely to be passed is immaterial. Every country which adopts it will thereby assist in forcing the same measure upon other countries, because, with international travel constantly becoming cheaper and more easy, it is certain that numerous people who object to being deprived of stimulants and intoxicants in one country will migrate to others where their appetite can have full play, and will intensify the drink problem in those countries until these, too, are forced, or will think themselves forced, to legislate in self-protection. Thus such laws will become universal. No doubt this condition will be reached gradually, measures of restriction preceding measures of prohibition. But the end will be the same, and it will be forced upon the world as much by the increased evils inflicted by alcohol on nerves increasingly susceptible to its influence, as by any other consideration. Anyone who has taken the trouble to observe the nervous and physical condition of men and women in the average, during even so short a period as the last quarter of a century, must have been impressed by the marked increase of neurotic states, not merely in exceptional individuals, but in all the people. The neurotic temperament is much more adversely affected by alcohol than any other; and we are all growing more neurotic. All the conditions of modern life tend that way: and it is not alcohol alone that will have to go, but all sorts of habit-inducing drugs, such as morphine, cocaine, and the rest, all of which, like alcohol itself, will soon be so restricted in regard to their sale that their abuse will be rendered practically impossible, and their use restricted to a purely medical employment. It is even quite possible, and I have already ventured to predict,[1] that when the progress of neurotism has worked itself out, even such mild exhilarants as tea and coffee will have to be made the subjects of legal restriction. There exist many individuals at the present moment upon whom coffee acts as a stimulant nearly as powerful as alcohol, moderately employed, upon the rest of us—that is to say, they experience the same mild exhilaration after a cup of strong coffee as a moderate man does after a glass of burgundy or a whisky-and-soda. These effects are no more injurious, at present, than those of a moderate use of wine or spirits: but they can become perilous, and may develop in all sorts of ways, when the nervous organisation becomes more delicate. Thus, the abolition of alcoholic beverages, at present the fad of a minority not always very respectable in the methods of its propaganda, will presently be an indispensable feature of social progress.