The Social Effects of the War

IN the presence of a unique catastrophe prophecy is vain, but speculation is interesting, and may even be useful. The European war is without parallel in history. Half the world is in arms, and men are fighting and territory is lost or won from Ypres to Kiao-Chao, from the Yser to the Shatt el Arab, from the Vistula to the Orange River. Three continents are engaged, contingents come from a fourth, and the cannon are heard off the shores of a fifth. In Europe the war is no longer an engagement of armies for a definite object. It is a struggle of populations for national existence. We are witnessing a reversion to the methods and in some ways to the standards of antiquity. The Darwinian struggle for existence, accepted in idea by so many schools of thought in the nineteenth century, is becoming the reality of the twentieth century, only for ‘nature red in tooth and claw with ravin ’ we must read the modern military state, the armed Moloch of the newer world. Of the results of this upheaval we can no more speak with certainty than the inhabitants of Pompeii when slumbering Vesuvius broke into eruption. How long it will last, what area it will submerge, no man can measure. The blow which civilization has sustained is staggering, and so far as Europe is concerned may be mortal. But we cannot yet measure its effects. We can only point to certain conditions of recuperation, and go on to consider the chances of their effective realization.

In the first place, of course, much must depend on the immediate issue of the war, and not only on the victory of one side, but on the temper in which that victory may be used. Should Germany succeed, we in England know very well what we have to expect. But I will not speak of merely material conditions. The essential fact would be the definitive triumph of the military state. It would be proved to the world that international right counts for nothing. Militarism would be justified, not indeed morally, but by success, the only standard to which it appeals. The beaten nations would use whatever liberty remained to them for the purpose of regaining military strength, and to this end every hope of internal reform would be ruthlessly and necessarily sacrificed. If they should come more completely under German domination, it would mean that Europe would become a vast military power on the Prussian model, and it would be for America to arm, since America and Australasia alone would carry on the torch of civilization.

To say this is not to disparage the contributions of Germany to civilized progress. It is merely to recognize that German ‘culture’ is under arrest by the military ideal. It ends in a blind alley, into which it threatens to carry all Europe along with it. Success in war implies many virtues, high intelligence, considerable advance in social organization. But in that it perverts all these qualities by subordinating them to the ideal of power and by using them to perfect the machinery of killing, — including in that machinery the ruthless sacrifice of its own men, — it can be erected into the supreme end of statesmanship only at the sacrifice of all the higher and more humane developments of civilized life in which, with painful effort and many setbacks, the nineteenth century made slow and partial advances.

It is not merely the sense of national danger but the perception of this supreme issue for European civilization which in England has swept the board of political controversy, and brought anti-militarists of long standing and proved sincerity into working harmony with official Liberals and militant Conservatives. The political observer is faced with an entirely new phenomenon in our history,—for no such thing was reached in the struggle with Napoleon, —a nation which is, for all practical purposes, unanimous. The reason is that the issue appeals with equal force to those who are first and foremost Nationalists and to those who are first and foremost Humanitarians. British Humanitarians may be wrong, — we are all liable to bias, particularly in wartime,— but there is no doubt of the prevailing opinion among them that certain causes essential to the future of humanity, in particular, the sanctity of treaties, the freedom of small peoples, and the immunity of peaceful nations from sudden attack, must stand or fall with the success of the Allied arms. These men may be prejudiced by patriotism, but many of them have given proofs in the past of the sincerity and tenacity with which they can withstand the clamor of Jingoism, Imperialism, or militarist policy in any form. They have incurred unpopularity by sustained opposition to wars and to threats of war, to increase of armaments, to extensions of territory. They have waged the battle for self-government within the Empire, and in particular they have worked in recent years to allay ill-feeling as between Germany and England. Such is the record of large numbers of men and women who, hating war in itself and all that pertains to it, have now to admit that in the interests of the very causes which they deem most sacred, this war has to be fought to the last ounce of the nation’s energy.

But if the victory of Germany would mean the definitive triumph of militarism, what of her defeat? There are sanguine souls who, starting from the fact that to many minds this is undoubtedly a war against militarism, proceed to the conclusion that victory means the permanent displacement of militarism as the governing principle of European polity. I am afraid that they do not sufficiently distinguish between the weapons of the flesh and those of the spirit, or between a successful defense and a victorious aggression. It is perfectly true that in fighting Germany we are fighting militarism. But in fighting we are ourselves compelled to yield in a measure to military ideals. We are becoming an armed nation and a nation voluntarily subjecting itself in large measure to military rule. We accept these consequences lest a worse evil befall us. If we do not fight our best, German militarism will sweep us away, and peace, Liberalism, and international freedom are abolished for Europe.

We can, we believe, avert these disasters, and keep Western Europe free from Prussian military domination. That is to say, we can fight a successful defensive war against the militarism of the flesh. But it is quite another thing to carry the war into the enemy’s citadel and extirpate the militarism of the spirit. We may by victory avert the danger that militarism should dominate Europe, and nothing but victory can avail to this end. But it is quite another thing to predict that by victory we shall once and for all extirpate militarism from Europe. That is not a probable result. Rather the danger is that by winning in the flesh we may be beaten in the spirit, and that as conquered Greece took captor her conqueror, so beaten Germany may win the victory for her principles; with this sad difference, that whereas the achievement of captive Greece was to bring the arts to rustic Latium, that of conquered Germany would be to instil into the free nations the principles which they abhor.

We touch here on the main problem raised by the war. It is an ethical rather than a political or economic problem, although political forces will largely affect the issue. Will it be possible to establish a durable peace on a basis of mutual confidence and good-will, or will the war end in another armed truce like that which has governed Europe since 1870? There are certain considerations on either side which are worth setting out, and it will be seen that the event must turn largely on the degree of statesmanship which is applied in bringing the struggle to a conclusion. The question is of peculiar interest to the American public, since European statesmanship has not, to say the least, distinguished itself in these events, and much will depend on the reserve forces of wisdom and good-will which the public opinion of America can bring into play.

On the hopeful side of the account is to be written down first and foremost the discredit of militarism by actual war. The suffering in all nations is and will be on an unprecedented scale. Few can have seen the sufferings of Belgium and Northern France unmoved, and of those who do so lack imagination there will be few whose own lives have not been gravely disturbed by the war, who have not lost some brother or friend, or seen their business dislocated, and the ordinary amenities of life impaired. Mere thoughtless flag-waving militarism will be at a discount for some years to come. Moreover, if we are right in holding Germany to be the nursery of the militarist ideal, the defeat of Germany will be a source of discredit from which, it might be supposed, that ideal will not readily recover. Militarism as a principle is an appeal to success, and if it fails it is lost.

In this respect, merely as a matter of material strength, it is inferior to the principle of liberty which, as a principle, is impervious to failure and has often taken its deepest inspiration from defeat. But it must be remembered further that, if Germany is the nursery of militarism, the family has grown up and gone forth into all the world. The most noteworthy shift of thought in the last two generations has been the reaction from the belief in reason, law, and humanity, which dominated the nineteenth century, to the faith in impulse, self-will, and power, which have dominated our own time. I recollect turning over the pages of one of Mr. Max Beerbohm’s volumes of cartoons some time last July, and coming upon one which, ever since the war broke out, has seemed to me like a prophetic vision. It is a story of the centuries. The Twentieth Century, in the goggles and mask of a scorching motorist, is rushing blindly along, arms and legs working like a windmill, careless whither he is going or whom he knocks over in the rush. His father, the Nineteenth Century, mild, prosperous, protuberant of form, frock-coated, silk-hatted, bland and respectable, watches him with manifest dismay; and, just behind, his grandfather, the Eighteenth Century, looks on through his quizzing-glass with a cynical smile, seeming to say to his respectable son, ‘You thought yourself so much better than I was, my dear boy. Are you quite so satisfied with the education you gave your youngster?’ Perhaps the time for a companion picture showing the end of that young man is not yet, but I would hope that, when it comes, the cartoonist will not let the opportunity go by.

Be that as it may, the trinity of Impulse, Self-Will, and Power has been firmly enthroned in the literature, the art, the philosophy, and the sociology of our time. It is not the peculiar possession of one people, but has become the god of the intellectual world. Now Germany has worshiped this triune god in one of its major incarnations, that is to say, in the shape of a dominant military caste, with a sincerity and an efficiency not matched elsewhere. Did she suddenly invade a peaceful neutral state? Yes, but it was necessary to hew a way through. Did she tear up a scrap of paper? Yes, but she had the longrange guns. Did she, from the first week of war, burn villages and shoot non-combatants? Yes, but it was necessary to make terrible examples. Was she inflicting the horrors of war on peaceful Europe? Yes, but only on foreign nations, for she was armed for the aggressive and her maxim was always to wage war in the enemy’s country. Did she devastate the land? Yes, for it was a maxim of success to leave the conquered people nothing but their eyes to weep with. Did she risk bringing in England by invading Belgium? Yes, but she got in the first blow, and in the gospel of force it is the first blow that counts. Does she propose to blot out a little state? Yes, because little states have no place in a world that is governed by Power. Is all her armament adapted to the aggressive, and are all her theories of war adapted to the hypothesis of her immediate and continued success? No other assumption is worthy of a sincere worshiper of her god.

Now, this god does not promise his worshipers domestic peace or freedom, sweetness or light, comfort at home, or the admiring love of mankind. He promises them success, and again success, and always success; and if the methods which his oracle has prompted prove methods of failure, will they continue to burn incense at his shrine? If the invasion of Belgium cost many men and opened no road to Paris; if the method of terror failed to intimidate but only nerved Belgians, French, and English to resist; if the whole policy of the aggressive should be proved to have broken down, so that it would have been better in mere tactics to have awaited the shock upon the frontiers; if the ‘preventive’ war was after all unduly timed and to force it on was to combine Europe against the aggressor, — then the prophets prophesied falsely and the god was an image of clay. If Germany is defeated, will this be the view of the people who have given their sons in millions to the slaughter which mass tactics impose? Will they say that the Junker has defrauded them of the power which he promised in return for the discipline which he exacted, and will they insist on peace and liberty at home and no more adventures abroad? This is a possible outcome, and it is the one hope of a better future left to us to cherish.

But let it be observed that the escape from German militarism depends on a state of mind to be induced in the Germans themselves. Europe will have to live with her Germans after the war as before. There will still be some hundred millions of them compactly seated in the centre of her continent; and should the Slav portions of the Austrian Empire fall away, the only probable result is a closer and a strong union of the two branches of the German peoples. No combination of powers could ever hold such a people down, unless at the cost of a more burdensome militarism than that of the past forty years, and eventually of a war not less deadly than that which is now being waged. We may conceivably conquer German militarism, but only by discrediting it in the minds of the German people and gaining over the mass of them to belief in international faith and good will. We cannot change the German political system any more than the Holy Alliance could succeed in restoring the Ancien Régime in France. The most we can do is to discredit the present system and leave the German people to reflect upon the possibilities of a change.

But herein lies our greatest danger. Defeat may have quite the contrary effect to that desired. It may weld a people together and make them set the desire for the revanche above every other consideration. The ruling caste may say, ‘You did not give us power enough. We wanted more men and more arms. We told you so, and we are proved right by the event. If you would be safe for the future you must give yourself to us even more unreservedly than in the past. There must be no exemptions and no distraction of national energy from the single object of regaining the position of Germany among the nations and realizing her ambition as the world-power of the future.’ It is the common argument of militarism, which is nothing if not insatiable. Whether the Germans will listen to it or not must depend in large measure on the use that the Allies make of the victory which we are hypothetically assigning to them. If Germany should be dismembered we may be sure that this will be the result, and that the future of Europe will turn on the struggles of the dissevered parts to come together again.

Unfortunately it is not possible to contemplate a victory of the Allies which will not involve some loss of territory by Germany, for she has forcibly incorporated more than one province which she has failed to win to her allegiance, and these provinces remain in sympathy with other peoples. Yet there is a possible way of escape. If the Allies proclaim the right of each population to choose its own allegiance or independence, as the case may be, would the average German feel himself either outraged or humiliated? I do not touch on the practical difficulties in applying this principle, for it will be difficult enough to get the principle itself consistently maintained. I think for the moment only of the psychological effect of the forbearance which it would involve, and I ask myself whether its intrinsic reasonableness might not convert Germany to the view of J. R. Green, that Will and not Force is the true basis of the state. Might not the German on these lines have the sufficient answer to the militarist: ’We have been defeated, it is true, but after all what has defeat meant? It means only that we, and others, including the people of Alsace-Lorraine, are free to choose our own government. Is it worth fighting to avoid that which in their right senses all men desire for themselves?’

There is then, we may concede, a possible line of escape for Europe from a future of perpetual militarism and recurrent warfare. But to follow it with success involves a combination of qualities and circumstances such as fortune rarely grants. There must, to begin with, be success in war for the Allies, and success means the strengthening in every country of the military principle. There must supervene an exercise of wisdom and self-control for which the intensity of passion provides no very favorable conditions, and there must be a harmonization of interests which are diverse and complicated in a high degree.

Meanwhile, even preliminary discussion is hushed. People are too intent upon the immediate event. Their eyes are on the Yser, the Vistula, or the North Sea, and their ears open only for news of victory or defeat. In the end the settlement is as likely as not to come about without clear plan or reasoned design, in the rough and tumble of forces, or through a give and take imposed at the last by common exhaustion. There is no religion to calm or guide, no voice of any leader of men to recall a lost world, no authority — personal or impersonal — to make men hear reason. Few and far between are the men whose words reach a wide audience, and of these there is not one who can speak as Gladstone or Tolstoï could speak now and again to the public of their time.

On the economic side much will depend on the length of the war. Hitherto the blow to industry and commerce has been far less severe than many of us anticipated. It was doubted if the sensitive and complex machinery of credit in a modern industrial nation could survive the dislocation, and it was feared that England, as the greater financial centre, might suffer even more than Germany from this cause. So far, the event has happily belied anticipation. No British industry is seriously affected except the cotton trade, and there the trouble is not exclusively due to the war, and is likely, if conditions at sea remain as at present, to right itself. For the rest, unemployment on the average is no worse than in a normal winter.

It is indubitably less general than in many seasons of bad trade arising from the ordinary fluctuations of industry. Short time in certain industries is balanced by extreme activity in everything directly or indirectly connected with war, wherein British firms are busy in supplying, not our own government alone, but those of our allies as well. This activity will probably continue while the war lasts, and it is on the morrow of peace that a great economic dislocation must be expected.

But in one respect at least we have made a great advance since the old days of warfare. The responsibilities of government are more adequately recognized. There will be no question of the sudden discharge of a million or two of men into the industrial world without any attempt to reorganize the conditions of employment. The situation in August, which for the moment was alarming, was saved by state intervention carried through with great promptitude and with a sweeping disregard of precedent. There will be a corresponding call for state control when the war ends. Indeed, the most remarkable economic effect of the war hitherto has been the impetus given to State Socialism. To take only two instances : the government has assumed complete control of the sugar trade and of the railways. In the former case its policy is open to challenge and would have given rise to lively controversy if men had time to think of anything but the emergencies of the day. In the latter, the assumption of state control has involved so little dislocation and has proved so efficacious in placing the railway system at the disposal of the public service, that it may be doubted if it will ever be abandoned. There is a strong case on grounds of economy for the unification of the British railway system, and it may be that it needed only the stimulus of a sudden necessity to overcome the prejudice and inertia which were the main obstacles to its adoption. On the whole it is probable that one legacy of the war will be a permanent enlargement of the sphere of public control over industries and perhaps over social life in general.

On the other hand, even if the war were to cease to-morrow, we should all be a good deal poorer than we were. The margin available for taxation has been reduced; and it will be proportionately more difficult to finance the schemes of social reform with which our minds were occupied down to last July. England ought to spend money on education, on land-reform, and on housing, and it is to be feared that, for lack of means, many a beneficent scheme will be hung up for a generation to come. Of course, if militarism is really crushed, the situation will clear itself; but this, for reasons given, I can only regard as a dim and remote possibility. The more probable alternative is a reversion to the armed peace in which, after the first two or three years of exhaustion, the actual proportion of available income expended on the preparations for a fresh calamity will be not less but greater than before. An atmosphere that previously was darkened by mutual suspicion will now be sultry and stifling with hatred and lust for revenge. Europe definitely took the wrong turn last summer, and the progress of mechanical invention has overcome England’s isolation and made her in a new sense a member of Europe and a partner in the fortunes of the Continent. We must hold Western Europe for freedom, but in doing so we forfeit much of our own hope, only yesterday so buoyant, of peaceful progress and social reconstruction.