The Lost Fruits of Waterloo

Especially perilous is the doctrine that “self-preservation is the first law of nature” as applied to nations. Times come when a man is not justified in preserving his life. So to nations come crises in which they are not permitted by the rules of morality to save themselves by what appear to be the only means left. In the present war Germany asserted that she was justified by this principle in adopting the ruthless war of the submarine, since it was the only thing that would save her from destruction. It is better for a state to go to destruction, just as it is better for a man to go to his death, with clean hands than to live foully.

It is but an extension of this doctrine for men of normal morality to say they may do things for the benefit of the state which they may not do for their own benefit. A statesman has no more right to make his state steal another state’s lands than he has to take his neighbor’s watch. It is not a virtue if he lies for his state. The state cannot speak of itself: it speaks through its agents. It is sullied, even as a man is sullied in his character, when its only voice, the words and acts of its servants, is not true. Judged by the standards here set up, the world’s diplomacy needs amendment, and if amended one of the obstacles to peace will be removed.

A false sense of patriotism may lead to acts that imperil peace. When France acquired Morocco her object was not wholly to extend her economic interests. To increase the national strength was also a motive. Likewise, Germany’s desire to establish control over the territory southeast of her was not entirely economic in its origin. She also wished to increase the glory and strength of the Fatherland. How much we are to condemn this desire of a citizen for the glory of his country it is hard to say; but it seems to be clear that such a desire may manifest itself in such a way as to become a serious obstacle to peace.

At the end of the present war the victorious nations will be in a position to abate national glory in the interest of enduring peace. Our own citizens are supposed to be particularly proud of the achievements of the United States. If our efforts should contribute as much as we wish to the triumph of our own side, we should be careful lest we forget that we entered the war with the modest purpose of making the world a fit place of habitation for all people. Likewise we should be justified in using our influence among our allies to see that the desire of no statesman to enhance the glory of his nation leads to action which may imperil peace in the future. When we shall have fought long and suffered greatly our hearts are likely to become harder than now, in the beginning of the war; and there is danger that we shall forget early resolutions if we are not firmly committed to them at the outset.

Another obstacle to enduring peace is the sense of nationality. The older men of this generation who were students in Germany in their youth acquired much respect for the passionate desire of Germans to build up unity among all German speaking people. It was a sacred idea to young men and imaginative writers. Long had North Germany been disunited, stumbling forward under the lead of the Hapsburgs. To be able to form a dominating group among all the Germans in the world seemed no more than was their just due. We did not realize in those days to what an end these people who lost so many opportunities through internal weakness would put their strength when they had at last developed it. And yet, it was the right of the Germans to unite themselves into as strong a nation as they might form. The wrong came in the improper extension of the idea. When men like Treitschke talk about including Holland in the German Fatherland we may well ask where nationality’s pretensions are taking us?

It was natural, also, that the sense of nationality should be manifested in many other European countries. Each of the Balkan states had its own phase of it. Russia had a large hope of uniting in her control all the peoples of Slavic blood. Italy demanded Trieste as a part of the Italian-speaking world. Greece lived for the acquisition of Macedonia and the Greek Islands, and France never diminished her pathetic longing for Alsace-Lorraine, where lived French-speaking peoples.

Often the desire for nationality runs directly counter to economic laws. For example, what are we to do when we have Austria holding on to her only great Adriatic seaport as the essential outlet of her trade to the sea, and nationality proclaiming that this port shall be handed over to Italy? Moreover, different peoples are so intermixed in some parts of Europe that it is impossible for any but a scientific specialist to say which states, or sections of states, are occupied by a majority of one race and which by a majority of another. If we are to set out to divide Europe according to nationality we shall have a large task on our hands. In the United States the principle of nationality is not to be pleaded, since we are so intimately intermixed that it would be hopeless to try to range us into racial groups. Moreover, we get along very well as it is, having once agreed that we shall have to get along together. Perhaps if the nationalizing propaganda ceased in Europe race antagonism would subside.

Autocratic classes in society constitute still another obstacle to peace. We have heard much on this subject of late, and some of the things that have been said have been so ill-established in truth that they must make the real autocrats smile. It will probably help us to understand the situation if we undertake to enumerate the good things an autocracy can do. For truth never profits by falsehood, and the most autocratic people in the world have sense enough to know when they are misrepresented.

Let us remember that under favorable conditions an autocracy is composed of the more capable people in the community in which it exists. They are more capable because they have been brought up most carefully, that is, because they have the best trained minds. There is no law of nature by which more fools are born in an aristocracy than in a proletariat. In fact, the tendency is the other way; for since the aristocrats are in a position to cultivate themselves in a given generation, it is natural that a comparatively large portion of their children shall be well endowed mentally. To this gift of nature add the influence of better educational training, and you see how natural it is to expect an autocracy to be stronger mentally than those who would have to replace it if it were overthrown.

Again, an autocracy is not necessarily unpatriotic. Of course, it has its own idea of what patriotism is, but so have the classes below the autocracy. Its patriotism usually embraces an honestly held opinion that the autocratic state is the best form of society. On this basis it is willing to sacrifice much for the state. We see it putting “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” literally at the entire command of the state. No man can do more than give his all for that which he holds right.

An autocracy may be composed of men of the best private manners and principles. They frequently include the best poets, historians, novelists, philosophers, and teachers of the nation. It is they who encourage art, and set standards of taste in architecture, landscape gardening, and general culture. Compared with the leisure class of a prosperous industrial country they may be more courteous, more unassuming, and less given to offensive use of their wealth. They are the kind of men whom any of us could love if we knew them personally. These words do not, of course, apply to all members of the class, but to the group as a whole in ordinary conditions.

Of the German autocracy most of these things can be said, and more. It is a hard working group and generally speaking it is honest. In the service of the state it has a record of efficient government that few democratic countries can show. The officials of German towns and cities, provinces and states, taken from the hereditary upper classes, are well trained, faithful, and free from the suggestion of corruption. It will take New York or Chicago many years to develop the state of good government that exists in Berlin. Moreover, the German autocracy has the respect of the German people.

Up to last winter the Russian autocracy was an obstacle to peace. Many who looked forward to a reign of reason wondered how they were going to make the theory work while the largest Entente nation was in the hands of an autocracy that was less tolerable than the German autocracy. Fortunately, fate has settled the question, for the time at least. So uncertain is the condition of affairs in Russia, that no one can say what will be the outcome. It is by no means certain that the peasants, workers, and soldiers, will not make actual war against the former autocrats, leading to a state of chaos like the worst phases of the French Revolution. If such a thing happens, a reaction in favor of the former ruling class may well follow. If the war ends before the newly established government is firmly seated in power some such upheaval may be expected. Certainly the time of danger is not yet passed.

The German autocracy is better than that which ruled Russia. In fact, it would be less dangerous if it were less serviceable. Its sins are not the patent sins of peculation, cruelty, laziness, or despotism. It offends in that it takes away the confidence of nation in nation. It offends because it is filled with unfortunate purposes. It is possible to think of an autocracy that would be no menace for the peace of the world, an autocracy filled with no ambition for world conquest. It is true that most autocratic governments have not been of this kind, and they seem militarists by nature, whence arise the ideals with which they trouble the world.

When Hegel preached the philosophy of war that underlies the German’s devotion to war, he was largely right from the Prussian standpoint. He held that the mind becomes sluggish through inactivity and that war burns up its waste matter and leads to energy of character. This doctrine would not be essentially true in any normally organized society; for there are as many opportunities for self-expression in commerce, finance, manufactures, art, and other peaceful occupations as in war. But a century ago Prussia was filled, even more than today, with a mass of small nobles, unaccustomed to any ordinary form of labor, and with slender incomes. They were just the class that would fall into the effete vices of an aristocracy. To them the military life was an avenue of steady and moral employment. They took places in the great machine, and by 1870 they had been bred into its very spirit. The process saved the German nobles from vapidity. At the same time, as a class, they preserved their political privileges, and it has happened that they, with their official heads, the kaiser, kings, and princes, have been able to unite political power and military purposes until they have made of their country the most military state of modern times. If Germany has fought the present war with great ability, it is the organized autocracy that deserves the credit.

It is, therefore, the union of the political and military power in the hands of a privileged class in Germany that now constitutes the greatest obstacle to peace. It enables a small and efficient portion of the German population to wield the rest of the people for the ends they have decided are best. If this union of functions could be broken up, and if political power could be distributed as in the countries governed by the people, the obstacle would be reduced in size. It is not necessary to suppose that it would be removed altogether; for even if equal suffrage were established in Germany, and if autocracy were shorn of its preponderating electoral power, the nobles would still be the most capable class in the empire. Their personality would go a long way in perpetuating their influence. If they played the game of trying to lead the people they might remain rulers of Germany for a long time after losing their present electoral advantages.

It is fair to assume that a democracy will be less likely to go to war than an autocracy. It is the middle and lower classes that bear the chief burdens of war. They fight for no promotions. Generally the happiest thing that can come to one of them is a disabling wound to send him home with his head safely on his shoulders. Kings and their sons are rarely killed in battle. When this war began the kaiser was one of the proud Germans who had five tall sons of military age. After nearly four years of fighting none of them have been seriously injured. It would be interesting to know if there is another German father of five sons who has been so gently treated by fortune. Report says that fifty thousand schoolmasters were killed in Germany during the first two years of the war. It would be interesting to learn whether or not the titled class has given up so large a proportion of its members for the cause of the Fatherland.

And yet, it must not be thought that wars cannot exist in democratic countries. When Rome was a republic war was a constant thing. Athens in her republican days had many wars. In the region that is now the United States of America have been several wars. The war for independence was essentially popular. It was organized by that part of the population which resented British aristocratic institutions, the class we should today call “the plain people.” In the civil war the demand that slavery be destroyed did not come from the wealthy men of the North, the class that stood for the American aristocracy, but from the middle classes, men who filled the churches and who followed the common impulses of the heart. It was resisted by the South, as democratically organized as Germany would be with the Junkers turned out of power, and the struggle was as bitter as any the world had seen up to the fatal year 1914. Democratic states can fight, and they do fight, but they are less likely to go to war than autocratic states.

If it seems to any of us a necessary thing that autocracy must be removed from the earth, it is well to remember that autocracy can be removed only through the operation of a long and slow process. It can be reduced by some great catastrophe, but it cannot be smitten out in a day. Take away its political power, and perhaps its financial power will be left. Undermine that by raising up a rich bourgeoisie, and its social influence will perhaps still exist. You do not abolish it by decree; you banish it only when you have substituted a better thing.

What force exists in Germany with which the autocracy can be supplanted? Next to the radicals, a small faction at best, we have the socialists, numerous enough to have great influence, but committed to a theory of society which cannot be established until humanity has gone through centuries of development in the principles of equality. Then we find the national liberals, whose name is likely to mislead liberals in other parts of the world. They would be called the stand-pat, capitalistic portion of society in the United States, men who believe first of all in the protection of their large interests. In the present struggle they are committed to the Pan-Germany policy since it means the expansion of markets for German wares. Next come the centrists, Catholics in their primary interests, and fundamentally opposed to the doctrines for which the socialists stand. Finally we come to the conservatives, who believe in the autocracy. What magician can fuse these parties into a solid movement for the establishment of really parliamentary government?

Last obstacle of all that I shall mention here is the accumulated machinery of war that has been built up in modern states. I do not refer to ideas but to materials and men. Much has been written to show that munition makers have deliberately fostered a belief in war, so as to make a market for their products. Probably some exaggeration exists in most of these arguments and statements. The Krupps and their brethren have plausible grounds for saying that war is inevitable, and that they serve it but do not promote it. But giving them as much benefit of the doubt as they can expect, it must be true that their very existence, and their fine application of science to their business, have led states to count on war as a matter of course. These great aggregations of capital have vast influence in political circles. They have so many stockholders that they affect a large number of influential men. So much are they committed to the cause in which their fortunes and hearts are enlisted that they ought not to have the opportunity to wield their peculiar influence. When this war is over, it would be a real service if every munitions factory as such were taken into government hands and its capital stock closed out as a business enterprise. It is only the state, and the state in the hands of the people, that can safely be trusted with this powerful weapon for the creation of war sentiment.

The professional soldiers are also a part of the war machinery which stands in the way of an enduring peace. They can hardly be expected to become pacifists. They are trained to regard war as a necessity. All their ideas of virtue are wrapped up in the fine qualities of a brave soldier. Any other standard is strange to them. They may be expected to throw all their weight of influence in favor of recurring wars. Not that they wish wars to recur, but that they consider it improper to contemplate anything else in the natural order of events. This is a hard problem to deal with. A few professional soldiers may be brought to set their faces against war; but as to the great majority, I fear that those who try to abolish war will have to count on the opposition of the professional warriors until the end of the chapter.

This array of obstacles to enduring peace, is it not formidable? Economic competition, the actual if false sense of patriotism, the desire for nationality – which is liable to run into extreme assertions and sometimes to run counter to the strongest economic interests – the existence of autocratic government, and the powerful influence of munition makers and professional warriors – these are some of the obstacles against which those must contend who try to convince the world that peace is the better way. They may well appal the stoutest hearted friend of enduring peace.