Freedom Versus Organization, 1814-1914
By
[Norton, $3.50]
AFTER reading this book with considerable enjoyment — to which its excellent design and production contribute a great deal — I find myself wondering just why Mr. Russell wrote it. He says its purpose is to trace the interaction, during the pre-war century, between the liberal belief in freedom and the economic necessity of organization. Well, it certainly does this, through 4.50 pages of very lucid and engaging prose, in which the leading ideas, personalities, and social forces of modern Europe and modern America are critically reviewed. I do not know, in fact, that the job could be better done. There is no sense of hurry or compression; there is time for vivid detail and apt quotation; the temper is cool and reasonable; and even the analyses of economic theory cause no knitting of the eyebrows. At the end Mr. Russell puts a quiet finger on the core of our modern dilemma: —
‘By accepting national organization from the Socialists, and international freedom from the Liberals, the world brought itself to a condition threatening to the very existence of civilization. . . . The nineteenth century failed because it created no international organization . . . The same causes that produced war in 1914 are still operative, and, unless checked by international control of investment and of raw material, they will inevitably produce the same effect, but on a larger scale.’
It is true; most people would agree with it, and many of us have been saying the same thing for a long time. One cannot help wishing the author had something new to tell us about the way in which this international organization is to be brought about; the book, however, is primarily a history, and its period precludes any discussion even of the League of Nations.
But even as a history it leaves me wondering. It is perhaps a little too lucid, a little too far ‘above the battle.’ This may be in part because it is written almost entirely from secondary sources, and in part because it is so largely concerned with movements that can be described in more or less logical terms. The irrational, the dæmonic element in human affairs is missing — missing from these pages, and missing, I suspect, from Mr. Russell’s understanding of history. He reverts increasingly to the standpoint of the philosophic radicals — who did so much, and yet so far from enough, to make of industrial England a really humane society, lake them, Mr. Russell holds — or seems to hold — too simple a theory of human motivation; and some readers will find the later sections of his work a little irritating on account of the difficulty of discovering exactly what philosophy of history these epigrammatic pages conceal For example, Mr. Russell condemns the ‘old diplomacy’ and clearly regrets the fact that ‘every nation allowed its external affairs to be conducted by a small number of men.’ But does be really believe that a more democratic procedure would necessarily have been a more pacific one? We cannot tell. He remarks that national self-assertion ‘must continue to lead to wars until some super-national authority is strong enough to command obedience.’ Does he really desire an international armed force restoring security by ‘obedience’? One hesitates to say so.
It is perhaps better to have a book that raises such questions, even if it does not solve them, than one which raises no questions at all. The reviewer therefore finds himself enthusiastically recommending this work in the hope that it will fail to satisfy; for its surest value lies in the impetus to a deeper analysis of social forces than its own pages provide. Perhaps one day Mr. Russell will give us that deeper analysis himself.
WILLIAM ORTON