But pacificists should not press their momentary advantage beyond the bounds of common sense. There is already a fanatical tendency to denounce war as such, instead of seeking out and denouncing those who have made war without just cause. Of course war abstractly is just as much and just as little moral or immoral as a cyclone. It would be quite as logical to meet and pass resolutions against the earthquake that filled peaceful Messina with human carrion, as to denounce wholesale this or any war. The case of Belgium suggests that it is not the moment for any sensible person to waste his time in working for complete disarmament. Had she trusted solely to the treaties that protected her, how complete would have been her humiliation! Belgium also shows most instructively that the maintenance of an effective military morale does not imply militarism. None of the Belgian officers who held the cordon of Liege had been taught that his honor as a soldier might at any moment require him to sabre an unarmed civilian. Yet the Belgian officers gave a sufficiently good account of themselves against those who had been trained in the bullying tradition. With Belgium still in view, and recalling what would have been her fate had she trusted solely in the treaties that protected her, no sensible person could now advise any nation to disarm below the reasonable requirements of defense. It is possible however that these limits may be greatly reduced by right thinking among nations. Already the individual is measurably free to criticise his own country when engaged in a war that he deems unjust. How great a liberty that is few of us realize. The next step is freedom for large bodies of individuals to refuse to serve their country in a war waged without popular consent and palpably unjust. A people thus minded would be the greatest check on that interested bureaucracy that any military establishment, however, moderate, involves. How far we still are from that, the rallying of the socialists to all the colors shows plainly.
Perhaps the most fertile notion arising from the situation is that of an international police function to be exercised by the most enlightened nations. Something of this there was, though motives were badly mixed, in the Spanish-American war; the notion has plainly governed President Wilson’s Mexican policy. Indeed this police right has at all times been pretty freely claimed by strong powers against weak. It is a tremendous moral gain to see the principle asserted against strong powers who are imperilling the good order of the world,—and this irrespective of the outcome of the war.
A most valuable demonstration has been made of the validity of the principle of neutralization. Since small neutralized states are not for the future to be abandoned to any strong aggressor, they may safely be multiplied. Here may be a solution of the problem of racially varied central Europe. Everything depends upon England and France holding their representative function loyally to the end, and avoiding the national egotism that war in the past has usually aroused. If they are faithful to the charge they have explicitly undertaken, a new era may open for humanity.
The part of pacificists is to avoid phrases, and deal with facts. In the long run there can be no peace so long as individuals put their lives at the disposal of any kind of leader who waves the flag in any kind of cause. So long as nations are unreasoning mobs the moment the trumpet sounds, it will be idle to depose military castes; others will promptly form, and in their turn prevail. Accordingly the educational campaign of the pacificists must continue,—continue, however, with the frank admission that the sword has often in the past been drawn for ulterior righteousness and peace, and that if the time ever comes when from mere horror of war men decline to draw the sword in a clearly righteous cause, so exanimate a world will enjoy precisely the peace it deserves. We must beware of considering peace and war as respectively bonum and malum in se. In the present case, to have yielded to Germany would, in the lowering of the moral tone of Europe, have been more disastrous than the unhappy war that has resulted from a single outrageous move: for submission would have meant that the world was content to continue in the twentieth century the ethics of Metternich and Bismarck, while the fact of the war means that the twentieth century world is prepared, at whatever cost, to repudiate the neo-mediævalism that paradoxically imposed itself upon the international politics of the nineteenth century—prepared to work out a better ethics and politics, looking to a more peaceful future. Meanwhile the present task of civilization is to avert an imminent Prussian Peril, and to humble the new Tamerlane who has thrust a continent into war. Should he win, no nation is safe.
THE WAR
BY AN ECONOMIST
It is early to hold inquest upon European civilization. But to attempt to forecast the findings of the historian-crowners of the next period of peace, is neither presumptuous nor premature. Experience has taught us much of the evolution of the written record of a war. After our Civil War we had two distinct historical traditions, Northern and Southern. Nearest the event, personalities, deified and damned, loomed portentously. “If Lincoln’s character had been different—if Jeff Davis had been more forceful”—why, perhaps there might have been no war, or its issue might have been other than it was. In a later stage, Civil War history, though still sectional, accepted the obligation to set forth and make plausible the motives animating either side. Finally, sectionalism is fading from Civil War history, at least in so far as the work of the trained writer is concerned. Whether we are Northerners or Southerners, we see in the great war the natural outcome of the irreconcilable conflict between two economic and social systems, each seeking expansion to the detriment of the other. A particular personality may have worked to bring some of the contending forces to a focus; a particular political movement may have hastened, another may have retarded, the final appeal to arms. Given, however, the underlying social economic situation, given, too the existing limitations upon the political intelligence, North and South, and the appeal to arms was inevitable. Neither party, to be sure, can be absolved from the charge of wrong-doing, or even of crime. But it is not now so important to strike a balance of guilt as it is to determine the conditions that made wrong seem right in the eyes of otherwise moral men.
When the present war is over there will be a flood of nationalistic histories. The literary representatives of each party will endeavor to roll the whole blame upon the enemy. Vast significance will be attached to personalities; emperors and kings, statesmen, prelates, journalists, will stand forth in light supernal or infernal, according to the point of view. Were the Servian authorities in league with the assassins of the Archduke? Did the German emperor dictate the terms of the Austrian ultimatum? Was the Czar preparing war while pretending peace? Was Sir Edward Grey watching for an opportunity to crush the German fleet? In a later stage impersonal political forces will assert their claim to the foreground of history: the expansive tendencies of Russia; the fatal pride of armed Germany; the pretensions of England to the empire of the seas. Ancient antagonisms of race and nationality, of culture and religion, will aid in explaining what would otherwise remain inexplicable.
No one will dispute the fact that certain individuals in positions of power worked actively to bring on the present crisis, nor that acts were committed that deserve the execration of mankind. It will not be denied that ancient political and cultural antagonisms essentially conditioned the present war; but for such antagonisms the peace would have remained unbroken. Still, these forces are, in a sense, static, and hence not adequate to explain change. The Russian is not more aggressive, the German is not more arrogant, nor the Englishman more intent upon naval dominance, than they were twenty years ago. Pride of race and intolerance of religion have been with us always, and there is no evidence of their recent intensification. What chiefly needs explanation is that for a generation the consciousness of Europe has been filling up with fighting concepts. The fact has been noted by all serious students of European international relations. It is forcibly demonstrated by the enthusiasm with which the several nations, each with a reason of its own, has entered the present conflict. Desperate efforts have been making, for years, to prepare for the struggle that was regarded as inevitable.