War and Human Progress

I

THOSE who have studied the general principles that guide human conduct and the working out of these principles as recorded in history have noted two main streams of tendency. One of these tendencies shows itself in the power of Reason and of those higher and gentler altruistic emotions which the development of Reason as the guide of life tends to evoke and foster. The other tendency is associated with the less rational elements in man — with passion and the self-regarding impulses which naturally attain their ends by physical violence.

Thus two schools of philosophical thinkers or historians have been formed. One lays stress on the power of the former set of tendencies. It finds in them the chief sources of human progress in the past, and expects from them its further progress in the future. It regards man as capable of a continual advance through the increasing influence of reason and sympathy. It dwells on the ideas of Justice and Right as the chief factors in the amelioration of society, and therefore regards good-will and peace as the goal of human endeavor in the sphere both of national and of international life. Its faith in human nature — that is to say, in the possibility of improving human nature — makes it hopeful for the ordinary man, who may, in its view, be brought by education, and under a régime of beneficence, to a higher level than he has yet anywhere attained.

The other school is less sanguine. It insists on the power of selfishness and of passion, holding these to be elements in human action which can never be greatly refined or restrained, either by reason or by sympathy. Social order— so it holds — can be secured only by Force, and Right itself is created only by Force. It is past force that has made what men call Right and Law and Government; it is Force and Force alone that sustains the social structure. The average man needs discipline; and the best thing he can do is to submit to the strong man — strength, of course, consisting not only in physical capacity, but in a superiority of will and intellect also. This school, which used to defend slavery as useful and, indeed, necessary, — the older among us can remember a time when that ancient, time-honored institution was still so defended,—prefers the rule of the superior One or Few, monarchy or oligarchy, to the rule of the Many. Quite consistently, it has usually regarded war as a necessary and valuable form of discipline, because war is the final embodiment and test of physical force.

This opposition can be traced a long way back. It is already visible in the days of Plato, who combats the teaching of some of the Sophists that Justice is merely the advantage of the strong. From his time onward great philosophical schools followed his lead. The poets, from Hesiod onward, gave an ideal expression to the love of peace in their pictures of a Golden Age before the use of copper and iron had been discovered. Virgil describes the primeval Saturnia Regna, the time before war trumpets were blown or the anvil sounded under the strokes of the swordsmith’s hammer, —

This was the happy time of man, to which the Roman poet who acclaimed the restoration of peace by Augustus looked back, desiring a rest from the unending strife of the ancient world. Just after Virgil’s day, Christianity proclaimed peace as its message to all mankind. Twelve hundred years later, in an age full of strife, Dante, the most imaginative mind of the Middle Ages, hoped for peace from the universal sway of a pious and disinterested Emperor; and, nearly six hundred years after him, in the days of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Immanuel Kant, the greatest metaphysician of the modern world, produced his plan for the establishment of an everlasting peace.

These hopes and teachings of poets and philosophers, though they had little power in the world of fact (for few rulers or statesmen, even of those who rendered lip-service to pacific principles, ever tried to apply them to practice), continued to prevail in the world of theory, and seemed, especially after the final extinction of slavery fifty years ago and the spread of democracy from America to Europe, to be passing into the category of generally accepted truths.

Latterly, however, there has come a noteworthy reaction. A school of thinkers has arisen which, not content with maintaining war to be a necessary factor in the relations between states, as being the only ultimately available method of settling their disputes, declares it to be a method in itself wholesome and socially valuable. To these thinkers it is not an inevitable evil, but a positive good — a thing not merely to be expected and excused, but to be desired for the benefits it confers on mankind. This school challenges the assumptions of the lovers of peace and denounces their projects of disarmament and arbitration as pernicious. War, it seems, is a medicine which human society needs, and which must be administered at frequent intervals; for it is the only tonic capable of bracing up the character of a nation.

Such doctrines are a natural result of the system of thought which exalts the functions and proclaims the supremacy of the State. The State stands by Power. The State is Power. Its power rests upon force. By force it keeps order and executes the law within its limits. Outside its limits there is no law, but only force. Neither is there any morality. The State is a law unto itself, and owes no duty to other states. Self-preservation is the principle of its being. Its Might is Right, the only possible Right. War, or the threat of war, is the sole means by which the State can make its will prevail against other states; and where its interest requires war, to war it must resort, reckless of the so-called rights of others.

This modern doctrine, or rather this modernized and developed form of an old doctrine, bases itself on two main arguments. One is drawn from the realm of animated nature, the other from history. Both lines of argument are meant to show that all progress is achieved by strife. Among animals and plants, it is Natural Selection and the Struggle for Life that have evolved the higher forms from the lower, destroying the weaker species, and replacing them by the stronger. Among men, it is the same process of unending conflict that has enabled the higher races and the more civilized States to overcome the lower and less advanced, either extinguishing them altogether, or absorbing them and imposing upon such of them as remain, the more perfect type of the conquerors.

The theory I am describing has, in these latest years, acquired for us a more than theoretical interest. It has passed out of the world of thought into the world of action, becoming a potent factor in the relations of states. It has been used to justify, not. merely war itself, but methods of warfare till recently unheard of — methods which, though defended as promoting human progress, threaten to carry us back into the ages of barbarism. It deserves to be carefully examined, so that we may see upon what foundations it rests. I propose to consider briefly the two lines of argument just referred to, which may be called the biological and the historical.

II

Never yet was a doctrine adopted for one set of reasons which its advocates could not somehow contrive to support by other reasons. In the Middle Ages men generally resorted to the Bible, never failing to find a text which they could so interpret as to justify their views or their acts. Pope Gregory the Seventh, perhaps the most striking figure of the eleventh century, proved to the men of his time that his own spiritual powerwas superior to the secular power by citing that passage in the Book of Genesis which says that the sun was created to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. The reader may not see the connection, but his contemporaries did. The sun was the Popedom and the moon was the Empire. In our own time — I am old enough to remember the fact, and the reader will find it referred to in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (which I hope is still read, for its appearance was a great event in history) — the apologists of Negro slavery justified that ‘peculiar institution’ by quoting the passage in Genesis where Noah prophesies that Ham, or rather Canaan the son of Ham, shall serve his elder brother Shem. In the then current biblical ethnography, Ham was the progenitor of the black races of Africa, and the fact, that even that ethnography did not make Shem the progenitor of the Anglo-American race was passed over. This argument had no great currency outside the slave states. But another book besides the Bible was open, and to that also an appeal was made: the Book of Nature. It was frequently alleged by the defenders of slavery in Europe as well as in America, that the Negro was not really a man, but one of the higher apes, and certain points from his bone-structure were adduced to prove this thesis.

Less use is made of Scripture now for political purposes than in the days of Gregory the Seventh or even in those of Jefferson Davis. But attempts to press science into the service of politics are not unknown in our generation, so we must not be surprised that a nation which is nothing if not scientific should have sought and found in what is called the Darwinian doctrine of Natural Selection a proof of their view that the elimination of the weak by the strong is a principle of universal potency, the method by which progress is attained in the social and political no less than in the natural sphere.

Their argument has been stated thus: the geological record shows that more highly developed forms have been through countless ages evolved from forms simpler and more rudimentary. Cryptogamous plants—lichens, mosses, ferns — come first, and out of these the phanerogamous were developed. Animal life began with zoöphytes and molluscs; serpents and birds followed; then came the mammalia, these culminating in Man. Some species disappeared and were replaced in the perpetual struggle for existence by others that had proved themselves stronger. Every species fights to maintain itself against the others; there is not room enough for all; the weak disappear, the stronger prevail. So the earlier forms of man himself have succumbed to others superior in strength; and among these latter some races have shown a greater capacity, physical and mental, and have either displaced the weaker, or exterminated them, or conquered them, sometimes enslaving them, sometimes absorbing them. When the conquered survive, they receive the impress of the conqueror and are conformed to his more perfect type. Thus the white man has prevailed against the colored man. Thus the Teuton is prevailing against the Slav and the Celt, and is indeed fitted by his higher gift for intellectually creative, as well as practical organization to be the Lord of the World, as the lion is lord of the forest and the eagle lord of the air.

As progress in the animal creation is effected by a strife in which the animal organisms possessing most force prevail and endure, so progress in the political world comes through conflicts in which the strongest social organisms, that is, the states best equipped for war, prove themselves able to overcome the weaker. Without war this victory of the best cannot come about. Hence, war is a main cause of progress.

Lest this summary should misrepresent the view I am endeavoring to state, — and it is not easy to state it correctly, for there lurks in it some mental confusion, — I will cite a few passages from one of its exponents, who puts it in a crudely brief form convenient for quotation. Others have probably stated it better, but all that need be done here is to show how some, at least, of those who hold it have expressed themselves.

‘ Wherever we look in Nature we find that war is a fundamental law of development. This great verity, which has been recognized in past ages, has been convincingly demonstrated in modern times by Charles Darwin. He proved that Nature is ruled by an unceasing struggle for existence, by the right of the stronger, and that this struggle in its apparent cruelty brings about a selection eliminating the weak and the unwholesome.’

‘The natural law to which all the laws of nature can be reduced is the law of struggle.’

‘From the first beginning of life, war has been the basis of all healthy development. Struggle is not merely the destructive, but the life-giving principle. The law of the stronger holds good everywhere. Those forms survive which are able to secure for themselves the most favorable conditions of life. The weaker succumb.’

Now, let us examine this so-called argument from the biological world and see whether or how far it supports the thesis that the law of progress through strife is a universal law, applicable to human communities as well as to animals and plants.

Several objections present themselves. First, this theory is an attempt to apply what are called natural laws to a sphere unlike that of external nature. The facts we study in the external world are wholly different from those we study in human society. There are in that society certain generally observable sequences of phenomena which we popularly call laws of social development: that is, individual men and communities of men show certain recurrent tendencies which may be compared with the recurrent sequences in the behavior of inanimate substances and in the animated creation. But the human or social sequences have not that uniformity, that generality, that capacity for being counted or measured, and thereby expressed in precise and unvarying terms, which belong to things in the world of external nature. Oxygen and sulphur always and everywhere behave (so far as we know) in exactly the same way when the conditions are exactly the same. Every oak tree and every apple tree, however different the individuals of the species may be in size, grow in the same way, and the laws of their growth can be so stated as to be applicable to all members of the species. But we cannot do more than conjecture, with more or less confidence, but never with certainty of prediction, how any given man or any given community of men will behave under any given set of conditions.

The human body no doubt consists of tissues, and the tissues of cells. But each individual in the species Homo Sapiens Europœus has, when considered as a human being, something peculiar to himself which is not and cannot be completely known or measured. His action is due to so many complex and hidden causes, and is therefore so incalculable by any scientific apparatus; he is played upon by so many forces whose presence and strength no qualitative or quantitative analysis can determine, that both his thoughts and his conduct are practically unpredictable. That which we call a general scientific law is therefore totally different from what it is in the world of external nature. Considerations drawn from that world are therefore, when applied to man, not arguments but, at best, mere analogies, sometimes suggestive as indicating lines of inquiry, but never approaching the character of exact science.

Secondly, that which is called the Darwinian principle of Natural Selection is a matter still in controversy among scientific men. A distinguished zoölogist, for instance, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, whose little book entitled Evolution and the War may be commended as full of interest and instruction, pronounces the principle to be only a highly probable hypothesis regarding the process by which the evolution of species has taken place, but still no more, as yet, than a hypothesis. The methods by which natural selection takes place are uncertain. Higher and more complex forms do certainly come out of lower and simpler forms; and the adaptability to environment would seem to be an extremely important factor in their development. More than that— so one gathers from the biologists — one is not entitled to assert.

Thirdly, the Struggle for Life in the Darwinian sense is not so much a combat between species as a combat between individuals of the same species, which, like the seeds of plants, dispute the same bit of soil, or, like the carnivorous animals, feed on the same creatures and find there is not enough to go round. In the animal world we find nothing really like the wars of human tribes or states. Tigers or other bellicose animals do not fight either with other tigers or with such other feline tribes as leopards. Individuals may fight in those occasional cases where the possession of the same female is disputed by two males; but groups do not fight each other. Tigers kill antelopes for food; they have no impulse to dominate or to extirpate, but only to support their own life. If zoölogy furnishes any analogy to the contests of nations, it is to be found, not in the clash of Teutonic and Slavonic armies, but where there is an appropriation, by individuals possessing superior industry and skill, of the means of livelihood and opportunities for amassing wealth which trade and civilized finance offer to all alike who will address themselves to the task. Here is not war, but a competition for means of livelihood.

Fourthly, the supersession of one species by another is certainly not effected, in the external world, by fighting, but apparently by the adaptation to its environment of the species which ultimately survives. Where an oceanic island like Hawaii is overrun by new species of plants whose seeds, or seedlings, are brought from another country, what happens is that some of the new species thus introduced find in the isle an environment of soil and climate which suits them so well that they multiply and crowd out, by their natural growth in the soil, the weaker of the native species established there, till at last a mixed flora results, representing both the old natives and other species from elsewhere. In 1883, when I saw it, Hawaii had thrice been thus overrun. You may see a somewhat similar process where the turf has been cut off a piece of land, leaving it bare for seeds to settle on. Various species appear, some perhaps hardly known before in the neighborhood; but after some years a few will be found in possession. Here we have a phenomenon to which there are parallels in the rapid growth of some trees in certain sections and the displacement of others. But there is nothing like this in human war. And on the other hand there is in the animal world no parallel to the fundamental fact that in human warfare it is not the weaker but the stronger part of the population that is drawn away to perish on the battle-field.

Fifthly, we must note in this connection two other important factors in the extension and decline of species. One of them is liability to disease. The other is fecundity. Here an analogy between plants and animals, on the one hand, and the races or sub-races of mankind, may no doubt be traced. But there is here no conflict: the causes which make some species more susceptible to maladies than others, or make some more prolific than others, exist everywhere in animated nature. But they exist in the species, or race, being due to something in its peculiar constitution. They have nothing to do with conflict between one species, or one race, and another species or race. That these physical factors have more to do with the numerical strength of a species than has its capacity for fighting, when we compare the diffusion of some predatory with many non-predatory species, is so clear that it is not worth while to adduce instances. It may be noted. however, that in some of the most advanced races of man the birth-rate is so much lower than in the backward races as to threaten the ultimate supremacy of the former.

These considerations, which I have been obliged to state only in outline, seem sufficient to show how hollow is the argument which recommends war as the general law of the universe and a main cause of progress in the human as well as the natural world. It is not an argument at all, but an analogy, and an imperfect one at that. Let me add that the view which regards war as a useful factor in human development had no support from Darwin himself. So far from considering war a cause of progress, he wrote, in the Origin of Species, ‘In every country in which a large standing army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by conscription or enlisted. They are thus exposed to early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. On the other hand, the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently have a much better chance of marrying.’

III

So much for the first set of grounds on which the war theorists rely. Let us turn to the second, that is to say, the argument from history. It is alleged that the record of all that man has done and suffered is largely a record of constant strife — a fact undeniably true — and that thereby the races and nations and states which are now able to do most for the further advance of mankind have prevailed. They have prevailed by war; war therefore has been the means, and the necessary means, of that predominance which has enabled them to civilize the best parts of the globe.

Before beginning this part of the inquiry, let us see what progress means. It is a term which covers several quite different things.

There is Material progress, by which I understand an increase in wealth, that is, in the commodities useful to man, which give him health, strength, and longer life, and make his life easier, providing more comfort and more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physically efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want which hampers the development of his whole nature.

There is Intellectual progress — an increase in knowledge, a greater abundance of ideas, the training to think and think correctly, the growth in capacity for dealing with practical problems, the cultivation of the power to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of letters and art.

There is Moral progress — a thing harder to define, but which includes the development of those emotions and habits which make for happiness — contentment and tranquillity of mind; the absence of the more purely animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemperance and sensuality in all its other forms); the control of the violent passions; good-will and kindliness toward others — all the things which fall within the philosophical conception of a life guided by right reason. People have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and virtue, but these things are at any rate included in every such conception.

A further preliminary question arises. Is human progress to be estimated in respect to the point to which it raise the few who have high mental gifts and the opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is it to be measured by the amount of its extension to and diffusion throngh each nation, meaning the nation as a whole — the average men as well as the superior spirits? You may sacrifice either the many to the few, — as was done by slavery, — or the few to the many, or the advance may be general and proportionate in all classes.

Again, when we think of progress, are we to think of the world as a whole, or only of the stronger and more capable races and states? If the stronger rise upon the prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear gain to the world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for the world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be brought into the account? I do not attempt to discuss these questions; it is enough to note them as fit to be remembered; for perhaps all three kinds of progress ought to be differently judged if a few leading nations only are to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind.

Now let us address ourselves to history. Does history show that progress has come more through and by war or through and by peace? It would be tedious to pursue an examination of the question down through the annals of mankind from the days when authentic records begin; but we may take a few of those salient instances to which the advocates of the war doctrine and those of the peace doctrine would appeal as sustaining their respective theses. Let us divide these instances into four classes, as follows:

(1) Instances cited to show that War promotes Progress.

(2) Instances cited to show that Peace has failed to promote Progress.

(3) Instances cited to show that War has failed to promote Progress.

(4) Instances cited to show that Peace promotes Progress.

I begin with the cases in which war is alleged to have been the cause of progress.

It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied by an advance in civilization. If we were to look for progress only in times of peace there would have been little progress to discover, for mankind has lived in a state of practically permanent warfare. The Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs were always fighting. The author of the Book of Kings speaks of spring as the time when kings go forth to war, much as we should speak of autumn as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. Πóλϵμos ϕúσϵι ὑπáρχϵι 7TpOS àπàσas τàs πóυϵιs,¹ said Plato. The fact has been hardly less true since his day, though latterly men have become accustomed to think of peace as the normal, war as the abnormal or exceptional, relation of states to one another. In the ancient world, as late as the days of Roman conquest, a state of peace was the rare exception among civilized states as well as barbarous tribes. But Carthage, like her Phœnician mother-city, went on building up a mighty commerce till Rome smote her down, and the Hellenic people, in its many warring cities, went on producing noble poems and profound philosophical speculations, and rearing majestic temples and adorning them with incomparable works of sculpture, in the intervals of their fighting with their neighbors of the same and other races. The case of the Greeks proves that War and Progress are compatible. Whoever visits Sicily and the coasts of the Ægean cannot but be struck by the thought that it was in the midst of warfare that the majestic buildings of these regions were erected at enormous cost.

The case of Rome is still more often dwelt upon. Her material greatness was due to the conquests which made her mistress of the world. She also achieved intellectual greatness in her poets and orators and jurists, and by her literature and her laws contributed immensely to the progress of mankind. How far are these achievements to be credited to that long course of conquest?

The Temple of Janus had stood open as a sign of war for two hundred years, when it was closed by Augustus in B.C. 29 to indicate the general peace he had established. The spirit of the Roman people was sustained at a high level by military triumphs, as discipline and the capacity for organization and united national action were also engendered and sustained. But it is to be noted that, although the Romans had shown great political intelligence in creating and working their curiously complex constitution, their literary production attained no high level until Hellenic influences had worked upon it. To these influences, more than to any material causes, its excellence is due. Nor did the creative epoch last long. War continued; but production declined both in letters and in art after the days of the great warrior Trajan, though there was more fighting than ever. The waning strength of the Empire, as well as the economic decay of Italy, has been justly attributed in large measure to the exhaustion by warfare of the old Italian stock.

In the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when civilization had greatly advanced in southern and western Europe, the phenomena of ancient Greece were repeated. Incessant wars between the cities of Italy did not prevent the growth of a brilliant literature and an even more brilliant art. It is, however, to be noted that, while the fighting was universal, the literature was confined to comparatively few centres, and there were places like the Neapolitan South, in which high artistic talent was rare. There is nothing in Italian history to show any causal connection between intellectual activity and the practice of war. The same may be said of France. The best work in literature and art was done in a time of comparative tranquillity under Louis XIV, not in the more troubled days of the Hundred Years’ War with England and of the religious wars of the sixteenth century.

The capital instance of the association of war with the growth and greatness of a state is found in Prussia. One may say that her history is the source of the whole thesis and the basis of the whole argument. It is a case of what, in the days when I learned logic at the University of Oxford, we used to call the induction from a single instance. Prussia, then a small state, began her upward march under the warlike and successful prince whom her people call the Great Elector. Her next long step to greatness was taken by Frederick II, again by favor of successful warfare, though doubtless also by means of a highly organized, and, for those days, very efficient administration. Voltaire said of Frederick’s Prussia that its trade was war. Another war added to her territory in 1814-15. Three successful wars — those of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71 —made her the nucleus of a united German nation and the leading military power of the Old World.

Ever since those victories her industrial production, her commerce, and her wealth, have rapidly increased, while at the same time scientific research has been prosecuted with the greatest vigor and on a scale unprecedentedly large. These things were no doubt achieved during a peace of forty-three years. But it was what one may call a belligerent peace, full of thoughts of war and preparations for war. There is no denying that the national spirit has been carried to a high point of pride, energy, and self-confidence, which have stimulated effort in all directions and secured extraordinary efficiency in civil as well as in military administration. Here, then, is an instance in which a state has grown by war and a people has been energized by war.

But before drawing any conclusions from this solitary instance three questions must be asked: —

Will the present conflict be attended by such a success as to lead the Prussian people to approve the policy which this war spirit has inspired?

Even supposing that the nation is not defeated and humbled in the struggle, may not its material prosperity be thrown back and its internal tranquillity impaired?

May not the national character turn out to have suffered a declension which it will take long to cure?

Results cannot be judged at the moment. What people was ever prouder of its world-dominion than the Romans at the time of Augustus? Yet the seeds of decline were already sown. Within two generations, men like Tacitus had begun to note the signs of a slowly approaching dissolution, and within two centuries the dissolution was at hand. To this it may be added that the advance of any single state by violent methods may involve greater harm to the world than the benefits which that state expects to gain, or than those which it proposes to confer upon its neighbors by imposing its civilization upon them.

I pass to another set of cases, those in which it is argued that the absence of war has meant the absence of progress. Such cases are rare, because so few countries have enjoyed, or had the chance of suffering from, periods of long peace. Two, however, may be referred to. One is supplied by the Spanish dominions in America from the middle of the sixteenth till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when they threw off the yoke of the mother-country. These vast countries, stretching from California to Patagonia, lay lapped in a peace disturbed only by the occasional raids of Dutch or British sea-rovers, and by skirmishes, rarely severe, with native Indian tribes. The Spanish colonies certainly did stagnate, and made no sensible advance either materially or intellectually. Was peace the cause of their stagnation? It may be easily explained by the facts that they were ruled by a government at once autocratic and incapable, and that they lived so far from the European world of ideas as to be hardly affected by its vivifying influences. Such causes were amply sufficient to arrest progress.

The other case, often cited, is that of China. She is supposed to have become flaccid, feeble, immovably conservative, because her people, long unaccustomed to war, have contracted a pacific temper. In this statement there is some exaggeration, for there has always been a good deal of fighting on the outskirts of the Chinese Empire; and in the Tao Ping insurrection forty years ago millions of men are said to have been killed. It must also be remembered that in Art, at least, — one of the activities in which the Chinese hold a leading place, — there have been frequent changes and some brilliant revivals during the centuries of peace. China reached in comparatively early times a civilization very remarkable on its moral and intellectual as well as on its material side. That her subsequent progress was slow, sometimes hardly discernible, is mainly attributable to her complete isolation, with no nation near her from which she had anything to learn, because the tribes to the southwest and west—tribes constantly occupied in war — were far inferior to her. Lucky has it been for the rest of the world that her three hundred and fifty millions, belonging to a race both physically strong and capable of discipline, have been of a pacific temper, valuing trade and industry, artistic creation and skill in literary composition, as objects worthier of man than martial prowess.

Whoever travels among the Chinese sees that, peaceful as they are, they are anything but a decadent or exhausted race. Nor is it idle to remark that the Japanese, a really military people, had during many centuries made no more progress than their Chinese teachers, and for the same reason: that they had remained, down to our own time, cut off, by their own wish, from all the stimulating influences which the white races were exerting upon one another.

Next, let us take the cases which show that there have been in many countries long periods of incessant war with no corresponding progress in the things that make civilization. I will not speak of semi-barbarous tribes, among the more advanced of which may be placed the Albanians and the Pathans and the Turkomans, while among the more backward were the North American Indians and the Zulus. But one may cite the case of the civilized regions of Asia under the successors of Alexander, when civilized peoples, distracted by incessant strife, did little for the progress of arts or letters or government, from the death of the great conqueror till they were united under the dominion of Rome and received from her a time of comparative tranquillity.

The Thirty Years’ War is an example of long-continued fighting which, far from bringing progress in its train, inflicted injuries on Germany from which she did not recover for nearly two centuries. In recent times, there has been more fighting in South and Central America, since the wars of independence, than in any other civilized countries. Yet can any one say that anything has been gained by the unending civil wars and revolutions, or those scarcely less frequent wars between the several republics, like that terrible one thirty years ago in which Peru was overcome by Chile? Or look at Mexico. Except during the years when the stern dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz kept order and equipped the country with roads and railways, her people have made no perceptible advance, and stand hardly higher to-day than when they were left to work out their own salvation a hundred years ago. Social and economic conditions have doubtless been against her. All that need be remembered is that warfare has not bettered those conditions, or improved the national character.

Last of all we come to cases in which periods of peace have been attended by an increase in national prosperity and by intellectual development. These periods have been few and generally short, for (as already observed) war has been everywhere the rule and peace the exception. Nevertheless, one may point to instances like that of the comparative order and repose which England enjoyed after the Wars of the Roses. There were some foreign wars under the Tudors; there were brilliant achievements and adventures on the seas. There were some few internal revolts under Elizabeth. But the great bulk of the nation was left free for agriculture and trade and thought. It was the age that produced More and Bacon and Harvey, Sidney and Spenser and Shakespeare. Two similar instances are furnished by the rapid progress of Scotland after the Revolution of 168889 gave her internal peace, and the similar progress of Norway from 1814 till our own days. The annals of Switzerland since 1815 and those of Belgium since her creation in 1832 have shown that a peace maintained during two generations is compatible, not only with the rapid growth of industrial prosperity, but also with the preservation of a courageous and patriotic spirit, ready to face the dangers of war.

IV

If this hasty historical survey has, as I frankly admit, given us few positive and definite results, the reason is plain. Human progress is affected by so many conditions besides the presence or absence of fighting that it is impossible in any given case to pronounce that it has been chiefly due either to war or to peace. Two conclusions, however, we may claim to have reached, though they are rather negative than positive. One is that war does not necessarily arrest progress. Peoples may advance in thought, literature, and art while they are fighting. The other is that war cannot be shown to have been a cause of progress in anything except the wealth or power of a state which extends its dominions by conquest or draws tribute from the vanquished.

In those cases, however, where the victorious state has gained materially, there are two other things to be considered. One is the possible loss to the victorious state of the good-will of other nations who may reprobate its methods or fear its aggressive tendencies. Another is the political injury it may suffer by sacrificing, as usually happens with military states, its domestic freedom to its achievements in war, or the moral injury which the predominance of warlike ideals is apt to bring to national character. And if we extend our view to take in the general gain or loss to world-progress, the benefits reaped by the victorious state may be more than counterbalanced by the harm inflicted on the vanquished. When the Macedonian kings destroyed the freedom of Greece, did not mankind lose far more than Macedon gained?

The weakness of the argument which recommends and justifies war by the suggestion that it is by war that the foremost races and states have established their position may be very briefly stated. War has been practically universal. All the races and states have fought, some better, some worse. The best fighters have not always succeeded, for they may have been fewer in number. There is no necessary connection between fighting quality and intellectual quality. True it is that some of the intellectually gifted peoples have also been warlike peoples. The Greeks were; so are the French and the Germans. But the Turks, who are good fighters, are good for nothing else; and the dull Spartans fought better on land, at least, than the bright Athenians. Where the gift for fighting goes with the gift for thought, the success achieved by the intellectual race in war is not a result but a symptom, an indication or evidence of an exceptional natural force. Those races and states that are now in the front rank of civilization have shown their capacity in many other fields besides that of war. All that can safely be said to be proved by history is that a race which cannot fight or will not fight when a proper occasion arises, as, for instance, when it has to vindicate its independence, is likely to go down, and be subjected or absorbed. Yet the fact that a state is subjected or absorbed does not prove its inferiority. There is no poetical justice in history. The highly gifted race may be small, like Israel, or too much divided to maintain itself, like the Hellenes of antiquity. From 1490 to 1560 Italy was the prey of foreign invaders; but she was doing more for human progress in art and letters than all the other European nations put together.

So far, then, our inquiry has shown two things. One is the worthlessness of the biological analogy — for it is only an analogy — between animated nature and human society, based upon what is called the Struggle for Life and the Survival of the Fittest. The other is the weakness of the arguments drawn from history to prove war necessary to progress.

V

Let us now, in conclusion, try to approach the question in another way. Let us ask what are the consequences which seem naturally to flow from the devotion to war of a nation’s gifts and powers, whether physical or intellectual. Reverting to the distinction already drawn between Material, Intellectual, and Moral progress, let us see what are the consequences to be expected in each of these spheres from that process of killing an enemy and capturing or destroying his property which we call war, and how far they will make for the general progress of mankind?

Materially regarded, war is destruction. It is the destruction of those who are killed, and the reduction of the physical working power of the combatants who survive, by maiming or disease. It is thus a diminution of the wealth-producing capacity of the combatant nations, whether they be victors or vanquished. It is also the destruction of articles of value, such as crops, railways, bridges and other buildings, and the contents of buildings, including works of art and libraries. It is an interruption of international trade as well as of production, and therefore a cutting-off, for the time being, of that other source of gain which consists in an exchange of commodities produced better or more cheaply in one country than they can be in another. It involves a further lessening of wealth by the withdrawal from their productive activities of a large number of workers, not only during the actual fighting, but during the time spent in being trained to fight. All these results mean waste of resources and the impoverishment of a nation, with a corresponding shock to its credit.

Against these losses there may be set, in the case of a conquering country, what it acquires by seizure of property, annexation of territory, levying of contributions and of indemnities, although these forcibly gotten gains do not always prosper. There may also be new openings to foreign trade, and victory may evoke an enterprising spirit which will push that trade with new vigor. But such possible indirect benefits are usually far outweighed by the direct loss.

Another loss is also to be considered in estimating the effects of war on a nation — not only the diminution of the population by death in battle, but also the reduced vigor and efficiency of the next generation. Those who are killed are presumably the strongest and healthiest men, for it is these who are the first to be drafted into the fighting forces; and it is the best regiments that suffer most, because they are selected for the most critical and perilous enterprises. Thus, that part of the nation which is best fitted to have a vigorous progeny perishes, and the births of children during, and long after, the war will be chiefly from a male parenthood of a quality below that of the average as it stood before the war. The physique of the French people is said to have suffered palpably from the tremendous drain of the strongest men into the armies of the Revolution and of Napoleon.

In the sphere of intellectual life, the obvious effect of war is to turn the thoughts of a large part of the nation toward military and naval topics. Inventors busy themselves with those physical and chemical researches which promise results profitable for war. Such researches may incidentally lead to discoveries of value in other fields, just as the practice of military surgery in the field may advance surgical science in general. But the main effect must be to distract from pure science, and from the applications of science to industry, minds that might have done better work for the world in those fields of activity. In general, the thoughts of a people that delights in war will be occupied with material considerations; and while the things of the body will be prized, the things of the mind will be disparaged, save in so far as they make for military success. A fighting caste will be formed, imposing its peculiar ideals on the people; the standards of value will become more and more practical, and the interest in pure truth and in thought and art for their own sake may decline.

These are conditions not favorable to progress in the higher forms of literary or scientific work. Against them is to be set that stimulus which a great war is held to give to the whole life of a people. When it rouses them to the maximum of effort, and gives them the strongest consciousness of national unity, it may also — so we hear it argued — invigorate them for intellectual creation. It would be rash to deny this possibility, but no one seems to have succeeded in tracing any causal relation between war and the production of great work in art and letters. They have often coincided, but each has often appeared without the other.

As respects the ethical side of life, soldiering and the preparation for soldiering produce a type of character marked by discipline and the habit of obedience. The Spartans were in the ancient world the example of a people who excelled in these qualities, uniting to them, however, an equally marked insensibility to the charms of poetry and art. They produced no literature, and seemed to value none except martial songs. Discipline is valuable, but it implies some loss of individuality; obedience is useful, but (except with the highly intelligent) it involves some loss of initiative. If it increases physical courage, it may depress that moral courage which recognizes allegiance to Right rather than to the Might of the state. War gives opportunities for the display, by those serving in the field, of some exalted virtues, as courage, self-sacrifice, devotion to the common cause. So, likewise, does religious persecution. Tennyson, writing his Maud at the beginning of the Crimean War, seems to have expected these virtures to be evoked by that war, to pervade the whole people, and to effect a moral regeneration of Britain. Did that happen? And if it happened, did it endure? Did it happen in other countries where it was expected, as, for instance, in the United Stales after the Civil War? Is such regeneration a natural fruit of war?

The courage and the patriotism of those who fight are splendid, but we have to think of the nation as a whole, non-combatants as well as combatants. May not much depend on the causes which have brought about an appeal to arms and the motives which inspire the combatants? A war of oppression, stimulated by national pride and ambition, may have a different moral effect from one that is undertaken to repel a wanton attack, to defend an innocent neutral state, to save peaceful peoples from a danger to their liberties, and protect the whole world from a menace to the sacred principles of justice and humanity.

Believing the war we are now waging to be such a war, we cannot but hope that the unspeakable sufferings and sorrows it has brought to nearly every home in Britain may be largely compensated by a purifying of the heart, an increased spirit of self-sacrifice, and a raising of our national and personal ideals.

On a review of the whole matter, it will appear that war, since it is destruction,does not increase, but reduces, national wealth, and therefore cannot be a direct cause of material progress. As it exalts physical strength and the principle of Force as against the mind and the love of truth and the pleasures of thought and knowledge, war, except so far as the particular department of military science is concerned, cannot be deemed a cause of intellectual progress. As it depresses the individual and exalts the State, the thing we call Militarism places the conception of Might above that of Right, and creates a type of character in which the harsher, and what one may call the heathen, virtues are exalted above those which the Gospel has taught and through which the moral elevation of the world has been secured.

What, then, are the causes to which the progress of mankind is due? It is due partly, no doubt, if not to strife, to competition. But chiefly to thought, which, as we have seen, is more often hindered than helped by war. It is the races that know how to think, rather than the far more numerous races that excel in fighting rather than in thinking, that have led the world. Thought, in the form of invention and inquiry, has given us those improvements in the arts of life and in the knowledge of nature by which material progress and comfort have been obtained. Thought has produced literature, philosophy, art, and (when intensified by emotion) religion— all the things that make life worth living. Now, the thought of any people is most active when it is brought into contact with the thought of another, because each is apt to lose its variety and freedom of play when it has worked too long upon familiar lines and flowed too long in the channels it has deepened. Hence, isolation retards progress, while intercourse quickens it.

The great creative epochs have been those in which one people of natural vigor received an intellectual impulse from the ideas of another, as happened when Greek culture began to penetrate Italy, and, thirteen centuries later, when the literature of the ancients began to work on the nations of the mediæval world.

Such contact, with the process of learning which follows from it, may happen in or through war, but it happens far oftener in peace; and it is in peace that men have the time and the taste to profit fully by it. A study of history will show that we may, with an easy conscience, dismiss the theory of Treitschke— that war is a healthgiving tonic which Providence must be expected constantly to offer to the human race for its own good. Apart altogether from the hopes we entertain for the victory in this war of a cause which we believe to be just, we may desire in the interests of all mankind that its issue should discredit by defeat a theory which is noxious as well as baseless. The future progress of mankind is to be sought, not through the strifes and hatreds of the nations, but rather by their friendly coöperation in the healing and enlightening works of peace and in the growth of a spirit of friendship and mutual confidence which may remove the causes of war.