Peace and Pessimism
I AM not temperamentally an optimist. A man born into Scottish life and cradled in Scottish theology is hardly the best subject for membership in a sunshine club. He is inclined to have views about total depravity. He suffers from the sort of conscience which has close affinity to the New England variety. The hard, gray climate gets its work into the backbone rather than into the wishbone. I am an optimist, not by temperament, but by faith, and because I was trained to look at and interpret facts. A somewhat grim training taught us to distinguish sentiment from sentimentalism.
May such an one be allowed to strike a note of hope amid the universal lamentation of our day? It is not a fashionable attitude to take. The right thing is to speak from a platform of immense ethical height, and point out our failure. Many articles are appearing which paint the contemporary picture in gloomiest colors, like one in the November number of the Atlantic on ‘The Human Spirit in Shadow.’ They tell us that a jaded cynicism has taken the place of spiritual faith. They see nothing but cold materialism, with not even a dim aspiration toward better things. Everywhere we have the triumph of reaction, so we are told. They can see no spiritual striving anywhere. Our moral state reveals ‘the sloth, the vindictiveness, the submissiveness, the cynicism, the insensibility, the cruelty, the egotism of the post-war period.’
We probably need to be chastised with whips, — if not with scorpions, — to keep us humble. Dissatisfaction with the results of our long agony is natural. A great hope was born when the Armistice put out, as it seemed, the fires of hell in Europe. The nobler our dreams, the sadder seems the awakening. It was well to dream of a new world after the deluge had passed, and it is well to keep the dream. It should be at once a motive to inspire us, and a standard by which to test all achievement. Judged by that standard, we fall short dismally. Still, even our confession of failure carries some hope in its bosom. We seek to revive the courage and the faith that stirred our hearts in the brave days.
We do not forget that an ideal can be used to chill us and make us despair. The people who thought that a new heaven and a new earth would automatically emerge after the bloody conflict show no knowledge of history, and no experience of human nature. We are still the people we were, some coarsened and hardened by the war, some cleansed and ennobled. Like all great human experiences, it was only an occasion that produced diverse results. The victory and the subsequent peace test men as the previous state of war tested them, and produce good and evil, strength and weakness. Only amateur psychology would expect an immense revival of heroic religion from the unspeakably beastly incidents of battle. Only amateur psychology would expect a paradise regained from the mere cessation of war.
We can already point to the failure of some of the pessimists’ predictions. Not long ago they told us that our civilization was going to be engulfed by Bolshevism. If we did not accede to certain demands of Germany, all Europe would become an extension of Russia. The alarmists of last year informed us that, if we did not do something or other that they suggested, the world would dissolve in chaos and blue ruin. In spite of their predictions, there has been certain and steady progress in reconstruction. The situation is probably even better than we know; for we are in the game, and cannot see it as spectators might. It may be that aftergenerations will see triumph where we see defeat, and will measure as gains for the spirit of man what now we count loss. Mankind is merely swinging back to the normal. Life is more potent than theory. This is really the complaint of our pessimists, that the traditional is so rooted in human nature. They dreamed of great transformations of personal habit and of social organization, and they are annoyed that old ways of living are reasserting themselves. It may be good for us that the normal so persists and saves us from the greater dangers of too sudden change.
The weeping prophets do not really help us much. They engender a mood of despair. They create the very tone that they are criticizing. The average man listens, and if he accepts the pessimistic finding, he settles down to the level expected of him. If we have come out of such tragedy only to find the soul of mankind in desperate shadow, if we can see no ray of light in the gross darkness, then why spur us to the impossible, and why even complain? Better die in silence.
Most of these articles in our American magazines and newspapers, to which I refer, come from England, and I notice that the writers of some of them were strangely silent during the war. Certainly some of them assume the attitude of moral superiority taken in the struggle by some pacifists. They give the impression that they are sorry that we won the war; and we feel that, if it had been left to them to direct, we should never have won it.
I am writing on the anniversary of the Armistice. That suggests the contrast between to-day and a little more than two years ago. Had we been told then of all our problems and disappointments, we should have been willing to accept them all, even if the picture had been painted as black as our pessimists now paint it. We should have thought it a small price for the ending of the ghastly tragedy. It seems not ungenerous to say that there often appears to be a connection between pacifism and pessimism. The men who most protested against the war seem the men who most protest against the peace; and often the tone of both is dangerously allied to pharisaism. One feels that they are justifying their previous attitude. For me, two years ago, the defeat of Germany meant the dawn that broke the darkest night of human history; and in spite of everything, I for one live and work in sunshine, not shadow.
Since the Armistice I have spent a year and a half in Europe, most of it in Great Britain, with the exception of seven months with the American army in France and afterward in the occupied territory in Germany. I found in Great Britain many signs that, at least, make me wish to temper the extreme pessimism of some moralists. For instance, the schools and colleges there, like those in America, are crowded with eager students. I heard from the heads of universities the same testimony that President Hadley of Yale has given in his recent report. ‘Not only did these boys come back, but they came back with an interest in college life in all its sides. They were enlightened by the war, but not disillusioned.’ At Oxford teachers and tutors told me that the students were more serious, worked harder, and had finer ambitions than ever before. The picture cannot be all gloomy, if the future leaders are shaping themselves to nobler ends.
The impression of a single observer on the social state of a country can be only partial, and I give mine for what anybody may think it is worth. Frivolity, pleasure-seeking, selfishness were of course to be seen there, as elsewhere; but beneath the surface I saw many an evidence of a new spirit. When one got down to the serious places in men’s minds, it seemed that the tone of the average man was more earnest, and chastened, and modest. The old British attitude, which was distasteful to Americans, and which most can recall without having it described, had almost disappeared. The leaders in business displayed an amazing courage in facing the appalling tasks ahead of them. The peace was more difficult even than the war, but I felt that they were on the way to win the peace. They were confronted with troubles, which, however, they are surmounting. Time after time the labor difficulties were met with courage and kindliness. In spite of the cries of the Hotspurs, to have a fight to a finish and show the beggars who is the stronger, there was a spirit of compromise and a thought for the common weal.
Some of the complaint about extravagance is of course just, but even here it seems to me that the gloom is overdone. The burden of the complaint often made was that girls who had made money in munition plants were spending it on furs and similar luxuries. Everybody admitted that they had worked desperately, and had taken their share of the burden of winning the war. Well, think of a working-woman, who had often dreamed of possessing a fur coat, finding that at last she could afford it. Is it such a wonder that she should spend money on realizing her dream, instead of putting it all in the bank, as these mentors would have her do? As a fact, I found that millions of pounds went into the banks also. Some of these pessimistic idealists show extreme ignorance of human nature. I wonder if they never themselves take what William James called a moral holiday — or perhaps it is only other people who must be prevented from doing that.
When we make a close examination, we discover that the criticism is not the wail of disappointed moralists. It all goes back to condemnation of the terms of peace. Books and articles are written to convince us that the Treaty of Versailles was an act of war, not of peace. They tell us that it represents the absolute denial of all the moral aims of the war. They assure us that it is not a whit better than any previous settlement of peace; that, indeed, it is worse than any of them. They give us lurid pictures of intrigue, and debased compromise, and revenge. It was a debauch of materialism, and sounds the death-knell of all idealism.
In the first place, it is worth while to note how much worse it might have been, from the standpoint of the sentimentalists themselves. If they would judge it from the point of view of the fairness and mercy shown to the defeated, it is worth while to consider as an alternative what would have happened if the tables had been reversed. If Germany had won and had imposed terms, does anyone for a moment believe that there would have been a more ideal settlement? We need only remember what she did when she had the powder, and what she promised to do. In 1870 she simply took what she wanted, and imposed as indemnity three times what it cost her to make the war. It was all indemnity, not reparation; for then, as now, all the devastation was on French soil.
We know that she acted on the assumption that the same policy would be pursued in this case. When war broke out, Britain began imposing her colossal taxation to help pay for the war, while Germany excused herself by declaring that she did not mean to tax her people, but would make the enemy foot the bills. Even as late as 1918, at the time of the last drive, when they hoped to put it through, the Secretary of the Treasury declared that they intended to make the Allies pay every penny it cost to make the war. ‘ We will compel them to drag the chain for a hundred years.’ Who doubts it? They would have made their kind of peace as ruthlessly as they made their kind of war. If this had happened to the world, there would be good cause for the gloom that pervades the pessimist mind. Is there no satisfaction to be derived from the fact that our peace, imperfect as it may be, is something far removed from the kind of peace that Germany would have imposed? If it is said or implied that we have imposed a German peace on Germany, the answer is, that it is not true.
Taking the actual Treaty of Versailles, is there no sign of progress, from the standpoint of its pessimistic critics? It is open to all sorts of criticism, but the fact remains that never in the history of the world has there been made such a peace. It is time that someone said this. A short statement of how France waived her claim to military security is proof of it. One of the aims of the war, as stated at the beginning by Mr. Asquith, and accepted by all the Allies, was that France should be ‘adequately secured against the menace of aggression.’ She had suffered so much, and was left with lands blasted and towns wiped out and industries destroyed. She had the right to ask for military security for the future. Her military advisers declared that the Rhine must be her frontier, if she would have such security. From the purely military point of view, this is probably a just claim. It would have created a new wrong; but do not let us forget that the wrong was not committed. When before has a victorious nation consented to forego holding the frontier which her military men declared to be absolutely necessary for her safety? The whole civilized world recognizes the claims of France to security, after such witness of the malice and hate of her enemy; and for the first time in history the world has sought to give security by another sort of assurance.
In this matter of territory, do these weeping prophets mean that Alsace and Lorraine should not have been restored to France? They never actually say so, but their language cannot mean anything else. If they make that a cause for lamenting, we say frankly that to the rest of us it is a cause for profound thankfulness and hope. It means the assertion that Bismarckism has been rejected by our world. Bismarck was the evil genius of Germany, who taught the people to believe that war was a very profitable industry. One of the things that had to be done was to convince Germany, and incidentally every other nation, that Bismarckism does not pay.
We are told that an orgy of hate reigns in men’s hearts. We could afford to have more love and brotherhood, but I do not find that the general attitude in America can be truthfully described as an orgy of hate, nor did I find it so in Great Britain. There I found some practical attempt to clear things up, and a sincere desire to do what was wise, and even generous, in reconstruction. I notice that our sentimentalists, when they speak of the duty of love, always are thinking of the criminal, and never of the victims. But even from their exclusive point of view, there is much happening that ought to modify their pessimism. Last summer a great Scottish manufacturer told me that his firm had shipped machinery and raw material to Germany. He had no personal cause to love Germany, as he had lost his only son in the war. The British government had asked him to do this as part of their plan to set Europe on its feet. He had loyally supported them, though it will mean eventually strengthening the hands of his German competitors for the world’s export trade. The critics of to-day probably do not know of such quiet transactions.
Nobody can call the Treaty of Versailles perfect; but why should we expect this, of all human acts, to be perfect? Every one of us can criticize details of it, and could wish that some of the problems had been handled differently. Most of the sentimentalists, however, who now belabor us, have as their underlying complaint that it is too severe on Germany. They forget that there are millions of men and women, mostly silent, whose complaint is that it is not severe enough on Germany. These millions may be wrong, but the fact of their opinion was a factor in the settlement. Their conscience, their sense of justice, their ideas of fair play and of mercy, were outraged during the war by the brutal crimes of Germany. Even in the fighting they felt that they were not merely defeating an enemy, certainly not outwitting a rival, but were judging a criminal.
If they were sure that there was any sign of repentance, they would feel easier in their mind in accepting a full policy of conciliation. It is truly said that men cannot be judges of sincere repentance, which, after all, is a quality of the heart. But there are ‘outward and visible signs’ of any inward state. While nobody can ever be sure of the reality of repentance, everybody is sure that it cannot be without, at least, certain outward marks. All theology, from the time of the Schoolmen, has asserted that for repentance there must be these three elements — contrition, confession, and satisfaction. A man must express sorrow, admit guilt, and offer amendment as far as possible. The only regret expressed by Germany is for failure; the only confession is of mistake, not of crime; and there is a universal attempt to avoid all restitution.
We go over the details of the agreement to which Germany gave her signature. One was that the French flags were to be returned — and they were burned in Berlin to avoid the wound to pride. Another was that the fleet was to be handed over — and it was sunk at Scapa Flow. The stolen cattle were to be replaced, and it has not yet been done. And so with every requirement of the treaty. Nothing has been done except in response to the threat of force. Every possible evasion has been resorted to.
This may be an argument against the treaty. If so, it is an argument against all treaties, and we may as well deal with them as scraps of paper. It is arguable that the terms are too hard. If there were evidence of some honest attempt to fulfil the contract, it would be an easy matter to adjust such hardships. Many men throughout all the nations would be less fearful of the future, if they were convinced that the present German government has been purged of all militarist spirit. It is part of that government’s punishment that only time will remove such suspicions. It is to be noted that, so far, there is no information of a repeal of the obnoxious law of double allegiance, which authorizes a German to give pretended allegiance to another government while secretly remaining a German citizen. Frank assurance of the sincerity of German purpose, which would reëstablish confidence, would do much to make this earth a place where self-respecting nations could live.
Books like Mr. Keynes’s of course make points of valid criticism. It would be strange if, in such a vast settlement affecting the whole world, there were no weak spot on which we could put a finger. But such books are colored by their own prejudice. They are really anti-French, rather than proGerman, though the result is often the same. The very statistics are antiFrench. Great play is made of the hardship of Germany being called on to deliver so many cattle; but not a word is said about the cattle stolen from France, from 1914 on. One of the terrible things in that land of death in northern France, when I first visited it nearly two years ago, was that there was not a living thing except vermin and a few birds over those hundreds of miles. There was not a cow, or sheep, or goat, or chicken, or child. Only the callous can forget the wrongs of France, the unspeakable cruelties and deeds of malice perpetrated on her fair land. Only the ingrates will forget how she stood at the frontier of civilization, and bore the shock of attack. Only the foolish will forget that she still stands at that frontier, until the world can safely accept Germany into the family of nations.
For this argument it is not necessary to assume that France is spotless, and that she has no temptation to a dangerous imperialism. Indeed, to maintain our common attitude of suspicion of her motives and of aloofness from her problems is the way to drive her into fighting for her own hand. She has suffered so much that her demand for security is irresistible. If we will not give her that by international agreement, can we wonder if she tries to get it by some kind of force? She is sometimes amazed at her own moderation, and she has given us abundant cause to be amazed at her patience. Naturally, all the English-speaking peoples find French life and standards a little alien. The enemies of the Entente, who in America fan the flame of anti-English prejudice, in England work upon the anti-French prejudice as being the easier field to cultivate.
The pessimists of peace use their most lurid language when they speak of our leadership. There it seems that we have had, and have, a mixture of fool and knave. The possibility is never suggested that they might be honest men striving to deal with a tremendous situation. Why must we assume, in a democracy, that our leaders and statesmen are always weak where they are not wicked? Even this is no new thing. Every generation has been sure of the bankruptcy of its political leadership. Take the constant criticism of Mr. Lloyd George, which the English Jeremiahs send over to our American press. They evidently do not like him; but that is not so serious, as it is difficult to find out whom they do like. They grudgingly admit his services, and as grudgingly admire his ability. But — oh, damning ‘but’! — he is not always the Simon-pure idealist. He is too clever to be quite good.
It is a strange superstition that a true man ought to be rather stupid. He ought not to be able to play the game with the best, and perhaps beat them at the game. There were always detractors of Mr. Gladstone, because he was so agile in fence, and so able to hold up his end. He confessed that he was ‘an old Parliamentary hand,’ and knew the ropes of politics. This was looked on as a sign of insincerity, or worse. It is part of the weird expectation that a good man should be a fool, easily tricked. There is a great word that calls on disciples to be ‘ wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’
It seems to be counted an offense that Mr. Lloyd George is no fool; that he can meet difficulties in politics with unsurpassed adroitness; that in attack he is rapier-like with his thrusts; that he takes up subject after subject, and solves them as far as conditions permit. This, of course, subjects him to the charge of being a mere opportunist; and yet the other sort of man, who has no eye for the practicable, who stands unbending for a policy, gets swept aside as an impossible theorist. I believe that Mr. George remains a true idealist, but one who conforms to Lincoln’s definition of such in his quaint remark that a man’s legs should be long enough for his feet to touch the ground. I believe that the central heat of him is, as of old, a sincere passion for the poor and the ‘under-dog.’ I, having practically no means of judging beyond the record of events, think that Great Britain and the world have cause to thank God for the gift of such a man at such a time.
The fallacy underlying much modern pessimism is due to a form of what may be called the static illusion. The ideal of the pessimists is always a state, never a becoming. They seem to have thought that the world could issue out of such a tempest into a simple and placid peace. They were victims of the millennium mirage; and, when the mirage evades them, they rage at the world.
We never solve a problem permanently. The old defeated foes come back to us with a new face, and test our metal again. The wise man is content to clear up a situation as it presents itself. He goes for the ideal, and supports
everything that goes his way. He is glad to have enough light to walk by, and enough truth to live by.
Is it nothing that in our day, out of the distress and anguish, there has come to birth an actual League of Nations, organized for the express purpose of preserving the world’s peace? True, our pessimists are not pleased with it. It is still weak and puny, and may be snuffed out of life. The attitude of America toward it may decide its fate. Nevertheless, whatever its destiny, it is the most significant and tremendous happening of history. It was born of desperate need; but the age that seeks to realize the vision cannot be a time of unmitigated gloom for the moral life of man. Obviously we are not going to get much help from our pessimists in making this new organization of human society a reality. Our true attitude surely should be one of resolute endeavor to do the best we can in our distressful situation, and encourage each other in good. If ever there was a hopeful sign in our world of strife, it is the practical attempt to get the nations together, in order to eliminate war.
No one who has sought to speak to the soul of man can ever be satisfied with attainment. At the best, achievement lags lamely after aspiration. I too could make an indictment of my generation. Only I feel that courage and patience are more needed to-day than any other qualities. It would not be amiss, either, if we showed a little sympathy for the men to whom we have given the settlement of such vast problems. They too, like us, are doubtless often groping in darkness. It is good to have an alert public opinion to correct and check, and, if need be, to chastise them; but the mere wail of pessimism gives no guidance. To sit in the scorner’s chair is the easiest, and on the whole the most futile, pose to assume.