The devastation caused by the tyrants and conquerors of the middle ages and of antiquity has been reproduced in our times by the rush to obtain wealth. Even the lust of conquest, in order to obtain slaves and tribute and great estates, by means of which the ruling classes could live in boundless luxury, so characteristic of the earlier civilization, is reproduced in our time.
Witness the recent conduct of the nations of Europe toward Crete and Greece, upholding the most terrible despotism in the world because each hopes for a favorable opportunity to obtain some advantage, leading ultimately to the largest share of the spoil.
Witness the struggles in Africa and Asia, where millions of foreign people may be enslaved and bled for the benefit of their new rulers.
The whole world, says Wallace, is but a gambling table. Just as gambling deteriorates and demoralizes the individual, so the greed for dominion demoralizes governments. The welfare of the people is little cared for, except so far as to make them submissive taxpayers, enabling the ruling and moneyed classes to extend their sway over new territories and to create well-paid places and exciting work for their sons and relatives.
Hence, says Wallace, comes the force that ever urges on the increase of armaments and the extension of empire. Great vested interests are at stake, and ever-growing pressure is brought to bear upon the too-willing governments in the name of the greatness of the country, the extension of commerce, or the advance of civilization. This state of things is not progress, but retrogression. It will be held by the historian of the future to show that we of the nineteenth century were morally and socially unfit to possess the enormous powers for good and evil which the rapid advance of scientific discovery has given us, that our boasted civilization was in many respects a mere superficial veneer, and that our methods of government were not in accord with either Christianity or civilization.
Comparing the conduct of these modern nations, who call themselves Christian and civilized, with that of the Spanish conquerors of the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, and making some allowances for differences of race and public opinion, Wallace says there is not much to choose between them.
Wealth and territory and native labor were the real objects in both cases, and if the Spaniards were more cruel by nature and more reckless in their methods the results were much the same. In both cases the country was conquered and thereafter occupied and governed by the conquerors frankly for their own ends, and with little regard for the feelings or the well-being of the conquered. If the Spaniards exterminated the natives of the West Indies, we, he says, have done the same thing in Tasmania and about the same in temperate Australia. Their belief that they were really serving God in converting the heathen, even at the point of the sword, was a genuine belief, shared by priests and conquerors alike—not a mere sham as ours is when we defend our conduct by the plea of "introducing the blessings of civilization."
It is quite possible, says Wallace, that both the conquest of Mexico and Peru by the Spaniards and our conquest of South Africa may have been real steps in advance, essential to human progress, and helping on the future reign of true civilization and the well-being of the human race. But if so, we have been and are unconscious agents in hastening the "far-off divine event." We deserve no credit for it. Our aims have been for the most part sordid and selfish, and our rule has often been largely influenced and often entirely directed by the necessity of finding well-paid places for young men with influence, and also by the constant demands for fresh markets by the influential class of merchants and manufacturers.
More general diffusion of the conviction that while all share the burdens of war, such good as comes from it is appropriated by the few, will no doubt do much to discourage wars; but we must ask whether there may not be another incentive to war which Wallace does not give due weight—whether love of fighting may not have something to do with wars.
As we look backward over history we are forced to ask whether the greed and selfishness of the wealthy and influential and those who hope to gain are the only causes of war. We went to war with Spain because our people in general demanded war. If we have been carried further than we intended and are now fighting for objects which we did not foresee and may not approve, this is no more than history might have led us to expect. War with Spain was popular with nearly all our people a year ago, and, while wise counsels might have stemmed this popular tide, there can be no doubt that it existed, for the evil passions of the human race are the real cause of wars.