Chapter V: Part 5

There is a new peril in the world which is already becoming a bogey in the imagination of men. It is the “Rising Tide of Colour.” I do not believe in a world conspiracy of the coloured races to overthrow white rule. I do not believe in a new challenge of the Mohammedan peoples to Christendom. But I do believe that the massacre of the world war and some of its lessons and watchwords have aroused passions and ambitions among the dark-skinned races which will lead to many new problems and perils. The British Empire is face to face with these in India, Egypt and Asia. France, Italy and Spain will have to face them in Northern Africa. America will have to face them in her own southern states and on the Pacific coast. That ringing phrase, “the self-determination of peoples,” was translated into many tongues East as well as West. “A War for Liberty” was an ideal which was carried across the deserts and into the very jungles of the world. Young Indian students at Oxford or Cambridge or London University saw the war fever in Europe, read its rhetoric, thrilled to the words of President Wilson, saw the weakening of European power, the overthrow of dynasties, the setting up of new nations, the proclamation of independence for Poland, Ireland, Czecho-Slovakia, all sorts of states and races, the triumph of Turkey in Asia Minor. They asked themselves a whispered question: “How about India?” The young Egyptians said “How about Egypt?” The Arab race said: “Independence is good for us as well as for others.” The overthrow of “tyrannies” is very catching, even though one form of tyranny is substituted for another. The spirit of revolt travels far and is infectious, especially when it is carried by home-going soldiers who have fought in other people’s wars, as Indian troops in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and, for a time, against their will, in France.

INDIA, EGYPT, AFRICA

The British people are already confronted with grave troubles in India and Egypt and the Soudan. History has placed responsibilities on their shoulders which they cannot shrug off with a careless gesture of indifference or a splendid gesture of renunciation. That welter of races and religions in India cannot be abandoned by people who have ruled it, given it law, justice, internal peace, and protection from old cruelties, tyrannies, famine and disease. If the British lost their hold on India there would be a world of anarchy among all those races and creeds between which there is no tolerance, so that they cannot eat together, or mingle in a crowd, or touch without defilement. If the British lost India other powers would fight to take it and the world would be aflame again.

England will lose India if she grant self-government too quickly, or too generously, to native rulers who cannot hold the scales of justice, even as England has held them; who cannot control the native princes by any such allegiance as they have given to a white emperor; who could not keep Hindus and Moslems and other religious fanatics from each other’s throats, nor administer justice with commonsense and impartial judgment, as young magistrates from English public schools in remote districts, where they were law-makers, judges, administrators, in the midst of native populations obedient to their verdict and with faith in their honesty. But the agitators in India, the “holy men” like Ghandi, the students with Western education, are in revolt against this benevolent despotism. They believe that India is able to govern itself. They are refusing to buy British made goods. They use “Liberty” as their watchword, and those who believe in national liberty, as I do, can only answer their arguments by saying that India is not a nation but a collection of races, and that Western ideas of parliamentary government, “no taxation without representation” cannot be translated into an Oriental country before centuries of education and preparation, nor—failing that—without an anarchy in which a thousand horrors would happen. To the fanatical Indian student from King’s College, London, that answer is taken as an insult and as hypocrisy. And yet it is true.

So also in Egypt and the Soudan. The Egyptians ignore the benefits that have come to them from British rule, British engineering, British science, which dammed the Nile and fertilised their fields, gave a better chance of life to the peasants, brought peace from the passions, barbarities, slave-driving of the African races. They have a new sense of power because they know England’s need of peace. They are prepared to blot out all British benefits for the sake of that cry, “Egypt for the Egyptians!” shouted from Cairo across the deserts. They demand the Soudan as their province, although it was subdued by British troops, and its barbarism was tamed by British rule after a history of human cruelty in this black region hellish in its torture and diabolism, to which, beyond any doubt, it will return if by weakness of man power, hatred of war, or economic poverty, the British government releases its control.

England is the leader of world peace. Poverty is creeping closer to her. Her old Imperial spirit is deadened by war weariness and by new ideals of liberal policy from which military force is eliminated. Yet by their Imperial heritage the British people have responsibilities towards the coloured races which cannot be supported without force of arms, as military police for the order of the human race. If Great Britain, for reasons of economy or lack of strength, retires from these regions, as the Romans did from their own wide Empire, chaos and upheavals in Africa, India and Asia will let loose a world of human passion and revolt. Other powers will claim the succession, and another world war, on a more terrible scale, will begin.

THE FRENCH IN MOROCCO

France is storing up trouble for herself in North Africa by raising her Colonial Army from the dark-skinned races. She is training Arabs and negroes to handle machine-guns with great efficiency, to throw the latest type of bombs, to be familiar with field guns and heavy artillery, to shoot straight with the rifle and stab straight with the bayonet.

The French military leaders are justly proud of their work in Morocco. Marshal Lyautey understands the Arab mind as no other man. The French colonial officers have a wonderful skill and sympathy with the legions under their command. But can France be sure that this army they have created will be loyal to French interests, and will fight eagerly, even gladly, against German shell-fire and poison-gas if ever France is again attacked by the same enemy? In the last war the coloured troops were sacrificed in many battles. They were led like sheep to the shambles, or rather like tigers to the pits of death. They did not like it. Those who escaped the slaughter and went home told frightful tales. Already there is a spirit of revolt stirring in Morocco below the surface of loyalty to France. Some of the Arab tribes in French Morocco are joining hands with those fighting against Spain. “Our time is coming,” said an Arab guide to a recent traveller. “We shall sweep the _Feringhi_ into the sea—like that!” He made an arrogant gesture and smiled, with ferocity in his eyes. France will have trouble with her Colonial troops, and it will be a dirty business in future history.

Those are some of the danger zones of our present state; and I have said nothing about Japan or China, in which there is no standing still in the Oriental quietude of ancient history. Japan has learnt to use modern weapons on sea and land. She has great ambitions. The white races have got to be careful lest they are weakened and exhausted by wars of their own, and let their own causes of quarrel blind them and make them mad.

THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE

Meanwhile the economic struggle between the white nations is threatening to develop with a severity of competition which is alarming to all students of international affairs. Great Britain and the United States of America are bound to be competitors in the world market against nations able to produce manufactured articles at far less cost owing to cheap labour. The United States will undoubtedly make a serious effort to overcome this difficulty by cutting into the international trade with surplus products on a small margin of profit, but whether they succeed or not does not matter very much to the life and prosperity of their people, who are self-supporting and self-contained. For Great Britain it is literally a matter of life and death as a great power. To feed their population England, Scotland and Wales have to import more than nine months’ food supplies, which can only be paid for by the export of raw material and manufactured goods. In the same way they must pay for the essential services of the nation, including the Army, Navy, and Civil Service. At the present time Great Britain has succeeded in regaining her export trade to over seventy per cent. of its pre-war standard of money values; but that is not nearly enough now that her population, ten years after, has increased by nearly two millions, and now that the cost of life and production is very much higher than in 1913 owing to the burden of taxation, the higher rate of wages, and the lower purchasing power of English money.

There is no certainty that Great Britain will be able to maintain her present standard of export trade, apart altogether from increasing it. In various classes of goods, in which for half a century the British people had something like a monopoly in foreign markets, there is no longer that advantage. India is boycotting cotton fabrics made in Lancashire and has her own mills hard at work. Italy is producing cotton goods at much lower prices than she could formerly buy them in England, owing to the development of water power which relieves her of the price of British coal—a severe loss to the Welsh coalfields—and cheap labour. In steel and iron England is losing her supremacy. Germany and France separately have eaten into this big industry. Together, by a working arrangement between the Ruhr and Lorraine, they will put up a combination of power which may deal a knock-out blow to British steel works. Already, owing to the cheapness of German contracts, many British blast furnaces are closing down and the ugly notice is going up: “No hands wanted.” It is discouraging to read the statistics of British trade each month recording “stagnation” or “quietude” or “a gloomy outlook” in many great industries. It is alarming to an Englishman to have a vision of future years when conditions may be worse than this owing to the conditions of labour in competing nations.

THE PRICE OF LABOUR

The price of labour is at the root of the problem. Even before the war the rate of wages in England, as calculated in purchasing power, were far higher than in Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, and most other continental nations, though very much less than in the United States. During the war Labour, seeing its chance, demanded fantastic rates of pay and received them. During the last two years there has been a readjustment to the cost of living so that wages have been reduced, but they still stand in nearly all trades, except that of agriculture, at a higher level than in 1913.

But the men are not satisfied. During the war they learnt their power and their value. Since the war they have become intensely class-conscious and demand better wages, shorter hours, decent conditions of housing, security in sickness and unemployment, old-age pensions from sixty years on, more money to be spent on their education, and a bigger margin beyond the bare needs of life for leisure and amusement. I am not one of those who blame them. I am all—or nearly all—on their side. The conditions of the slums in England and Scotland are still a disgrace to civilisation. The housing accommodation of working men in villages as well as in cities is often abominable. I do not believe in a great Empire or a luxurious civilisation built on the wreckage of men’s lives, on slave labour, on the killing of souls, as the British Empire was built during the industrial period after the Napoleonic Wars, when the manufacturers of Great Britain grew rich out of sweated labour in factories and homes before the Trades Unions, the Factory Acts, and democratic reform blotted out the black shame of 1830 to 1850. I think it good and right that men who help to save their country should be given the reward of good wages for good work and some chance of joy in life. The point of trouble is not the justice of that but its possibility. Is it possible for these labouring classes in England, Scotland, and Wales to get high wages and work for shorter hours when their export trade is diminishing, when the competition of cheap labour will become more and more severe during the next few years, and when the taxation of the wealthy classes is already extinguishing their wealth?

Labour in the mass, especially the political extremists who accuse Ramsay MacDonald of being a “bourgeois” and Philip Snowden a “reactionary,” believe that it is possible. They believe that there is still a vast source of untapped wealth in England which should be redistributed in their favour. They believe that they would get far higher wages and work much less if they owned and controlled the machinery and material of labour by some system of nationalisation or communism. They believe that it is only the selfishness of the “upper classes” and the greed of the great employers and Trusts which prevent them from receiving far greater rewards in return for their toil. They have not yet realised, or refuse to believe, that England is not in possession of inexhaustible wealth, that the rich people in the country—with only few exceptions—are already taxed beyond their power to pay without crippling industry itself and slowing down the adventure of trade, and that if a nation loses its markets for the only goods it can produce no amount of social legislation or social revolution will benefit the individual.

The awful failure of the Russian Communism, its abandonment by its own leaders, is either unknown or ignored by many British working men. Some of them would like to try the experiment in Great Britain. They do not understand the extreme delicacy of that machinery of international trade and credit by which the industrial life of Great Britain has been maintained. Russia lost its international trade, but its life was secure from the soil, apart from drought. All factories might close down in Petrograd, as they did, but the workers returned to the land and scraped along. In Great Britain if the factories close for lack of markets or credit or capital, the population will surely die unless America comes to the rescue with the A.R.A.

I don’t think it will be as bad as that. Before such things could happen madness would have to overtake the British people and they are, as a nation, remarkably sane. Communism is not a spreading disease in the heart of England, though it lurks in cities where trade is worst. But even with full sanity, the moderation of such a Labour Government as that led by Ramsay MacDonald, and a gradual redistribution of wealth already taking place, there is bound to be trouble ahead. In my judgment England must steel herself to endure lean years, heavier burdens, fiercer competition, less luxury all round, harder work for less pay.

GERMAN COMPETITION

It is uncertain yet whether the London Agreement embodying the Dawes Report will actually be fulfilled by Germany. In my belief it will not be fulfilled. It is impossible for me to believe that Germany is capable of paying a hundred and twenty-five million pounds sterling and more in a rising scale for an indefinite number of years. England could not do so, and England is richer than Germany. The American debt, which is being paid off at the rate of £35,000,000 a year, is a burden which makes Great Britain breathe hard. That is hardly more than one quarter of what the German people are expected to pay, and I do not think they can do so for more than a few years. They can only do so, as I have pointed out, in one way: by creating a trade balance in their favour which would enable them to transfer that sum to their creditors after paying for the essential services of their own nation. If they are able to get such a trade balance it will mean that they are overwhelming the world markets with German goods. Who is going to let them do so? The United States would surely put up barriers against their manufactured articles. Great Britain will not admit them in such an overpowering quantity, whatever her theoretical allegiance to Free Trade. In other markets these cheap German goods will oust British and American competitors. The factories of Great Britain will be producing articles at a price which other nations will refuse to pay when Germany is canvassing for contracts. Germany will default again, I am certain, unless by a miracle of industry her people, on slave wages, capture the world’s trade, which would be worse than default to British manufacturers and in a less degree to those in America.

Whatever happens it is a serious outlook, because default would mean a new political crisis in Europe—all the old wounds open again—and success would ruin those who have imposed the Agreement. The horns of that dilemma were seen years ago by M. Loucheur, the greatest expert of economics in France. Speaking before the Senate he said: “Germany cannot pay these indemnities. If she were able to pay it would make her master of the world’s trade. Let us therefore insist on security rather than on reparations.”

The revival of Germany, limited by these enormous reparations, will undoubtedly increase the general prosperity of all European nations. The restoration of German purchasing power by a loan of £40,000,000 from Great Britain and the United States, stabilising her monetary system, will help world trade everywhere to the extent that Germany buys raw material for her industries and additional luxuries and comforts in foreign countries. Australia and Canada will benefit by purchases of wool and meat. They will buy more from the Mother Country in consequence. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and France will exchange more products. The wheel of world trade will turn more rapidly. Great Britain and the United States will find Germany a better customer. But Great Britain will also find Germany a stronger competitor, and the advantages which may come to the British people by the recovery of prosperity in Europe may be outweighed by that competition owing to the difference between dear labour and cheap labour. Already, ten years after the beginning of the war, Germany is able to offer steel to Middlesbrough at thirty shillings a ton less than it costs to manufacture steel in Middlesbrough itself! I have the greatest sympathy with organised labour in England which is endeavouring to maintain its standard of life and wages and even to improve them. But the Socialists who are legislating for shorter hours, more pay, larger doles for unemployed, national subsidies in the building trade, and national money for providing work, are up against the industry of German labour which is working nine and ten hours a day, instead of the eight hours in England, at less than half the rate of pay. In great industrial cities like Sheffield something like a third of the working population is living on charity or the official dole. It is impossible for a nation to maintain its economic life on such a tragic basis. It must be put upon sounder foundations or come down with a crash.

ILLUSIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS

The peril in England at the present time is the illusion of political leaders in the Socialist Party that the prosperity of the working classes may be increased without any regard to the economic conditions in other countries. The painful truth is that these conditions of cheap labour and long hours, better organisation and greater mechanical skill, will come smashing into the dreams of the social idealists with heavy blows of abominable reality.

I do not believe that in our time Great Britain will regain the old standards of her world trade. It is my firm belief that the next period of history will see a slowing down in the international exchange of manufactured goods, and that most countries will have to restrict their imports because their exports are not wanted on the same scale. That is to say the nations will become more self-contained, relying more than ever upon their own supplies of food and the internal exchange of their own industries. The English people must get back to agriculture, instead of relying almost exclusively on manufactures and buying most of their food abroad, and large numbers of their overcrowded populations in the great cities must get back to the fields at home, or in the Dominions, where there is room for all. Otherwise they will surely perish in pauperdom.

Before that happens there is bound to be political strife and social unrest on a serious and perilous scale. Not only in Great Britain but all over the world, the intensity of this new competition, the gravity of this readjustment to new and restricted conditions of economic life, will provide an excuse for agitators and revolutionaries who desire to overthrow the whole structure of our present system of Capital and Labour in the hope of obtaining greater prosperity for the labouring folk and a broader control of the sources of wealth. Communism, defeated in Russia, will seek victories in other countries more highly organised, and the Fascisti, who are in all countries under different names, will seek to protect their property, privileges and principles by violent action against this challenge. The bitterness and the need of nations threatened with economic poverty, unable to support their industrial populations, thwarted in their attempt to enlarge their boundaries, will lead to new international jealousies which will tempt their militarists and their hot-heads to risk again the adventure of war. The spectre of revolution has not been exorcised from Europe, and all these pressures of populations, passions, trade interests, industrial rivalries, and social ambitions, are full of explosive forces which may lead to another world conflict, unless there is a new vision at work in the heart of humanity. It is all very difficult!

IV.—THE HOPE AHEAD

It seems like pessimism to deal so much with the difficulties and dangers of our present state. But one would be guilty of cowardice if one’s mind shirked these unpleasant facts, and of extreme folly if one pretended to oneself that peace and prosperity are bound to come. They will only come if the evil forces that are active beneath our present uncertain peace and in the minds of men in many groups are checked, if not killed, by increasing knowledge, by counsels of international goodwill, by a spiritual revolt against the dark powers among masses of the common folk, and by wise and noble leadership.

In spite of all that I have put down on the black side of the picture, I am optimistic enough to believe, or at least to hope, that good may possibly prevail over ill will, that knowledge and wisdom are beginning to tell, just a little, against ignorance and insanity, and that after the frightful lessons of the last ten years a majority of people in many countries are eager to find some settlement of old causes of quarrels, old hatreds, new hostilities and future conflict, by friendly compromise and good statesmanship. That, after all, is a very great hope indeed. If we have moved as far as that, and I think we have, we are some way along the road to a better kind of world.

Not all the goodwill in the world will cure some of the troubles to which I have alluded. It will not eliminate the competition between cheap labour and dear labour. It will not restore the wealth wasted in the war nor the youth that died with splendid quality of blood and spirit. It will not relieve the pressure of enormous populations seeking, and not finding, their old markets or new fields of trade. Not quickly, anyhow. But knowledge and goodwill, a higher sense of spiritual values, and a determination to limit the areas and occasions of conflict, will at least ease the burdens and anxieties of mankind, and prevent another world war, or a series of spasmodic wars, until in a more distant future folly and force or some natural irresistible struggle for existence may play the devil again.

THE SPIRIT OF PEACE

There are many hopeful signs in the world to-day which counteract the evil elements. The peace spirit is spreading between nations, if not between classes. The British people, in the Mother Country and in the sister nations of the Empire, stand solidly and almost passionately for peace in the world. It is true, as cynics point out, that the material interests of the British Empire are safeguarded by peace, and that poverty in gold and man-power and military strength has brought about this dove-like attitude. That is true, but not all the truth, nor the best part of it.

It is also true that in most of the homes in England, Scotland and Wales the memory of dead boys sacrificed to the war spirit has produced a loathing of war which compels these people to seek for some new leadership, some new philosophy of statesmanship, some new system of international agreement, which will prevent another sacrifice like that among their children and children’s children. They may not regret with passionate revolt the call which caused those boys of ours to die—though many do—and they may believe with unchanging faith that if it happened again in that way the duty of youth would be to fight as they fought and die as they died in a righteous cause and in defence of that country. There are not many pacifists in England or Scotland who think that all war is wrong, or even that the last war was wrong. But they are all pacifists in believing that another war must be prevented by eliminating the causes of quarrel. They are all League of Nations men—and women—in allegiance to the spirit of the League, even if they deplore its weakness and futility. In the vast majority they would refuse now to follow any leadership which involved them in war, beyond military police work on far frontiers, unless the safety of the Empire or civilisation itself were utterly at stake.

That may seem like “hedging.” It leaves a loophole for wars in India, Africa, Egypt. To some extent it is “hedging,” for even the Labour Party, most vowed to peace, is prepared to use the regular army for the protection of the Soudan or the crushing of rebellion in India. But with certain mental reservations and irresistible exceptions, which I think all nations would make (the greatest pacifists in the United States would advocate force against a Black rebellion in the Southern States) the British people, apart from a very small minority, will give an eager support to any plan for general disarmament down to the irreducible minimum for maintaining the military police work of the world, and will be hostile to any power or leadership which is convicted of warlike policy and designs. It is not a negligible fact in world history when an assembly of nations like the British Empire is dedicated to the spirit of international peace, at least within the confines of the white races of the world, and, if possible, of liberal forms of government, gradual relaxation of direct control in its Eastern world. It is the first time that it has happened with such spiritual conviction in the minds of millions.

THE AMERICAN SLOGAN FOR PEACE

The United States is also pacific in purpose and in spirit. The American people have already in some ways taken up the leadership in the plan of peace. It was Mr. Secretary Hughes who carried through the Washington Agreement for naval disarmament and suggested the calling of the Dawes Committee. There is no doubt that the American Government will throw its weight of influence on behalf of a reasonable scheme for the general disarmament. It is, however, by the efforts of individuals and societies in the United States that public opinion in that country is being educated in the ideals of international peace. A great tide of pacifist emotion is beating up from the women’s clubs and all that vast number of idealistic groups which find expression in Summer Schools, Chatauqua lectures, literary societies, and political institutions which form a highly organised system of propaganda and “uplift” throughout the States by which mass opinion is formed and stimulated.

One can hardly exaggerate the power of this educative force in the minds of a hundred and ten million peoples. In no other country in the world is there such means of swaying public opinion towards a single ideal by emotional appeal. That is not without danger, because it might swing violently to some passionate impulse in response to some real or imaginary danger, challenge, or insult to the honour or interests of the American people. But at the present time they are “out” for world peace. Whatever administration is in power it will be subject to the pressure and insistence of a vast majority eager to subscribe to some plan which will demilitarise the civilised nations to a reasonable minimum of strength, and substitute international arbitration and law for the old argument and ordeal of battle, while maintaining the independence of the United States from all alliances and “entanglements.” It seems to me a national policy, not only wise and justified in its reservations, but immensely helpful to the progress of the peace idea. A close alliance with the United States would be tempting to Great Britain and France. But in my opinion it would be a calamity, because it would create a new “Balance of Power” so formidable that the other nations of the earth would either have to obey its dictates, just or unjust, or resist it by force. It will be far better for the world if the United States remains an arbitrator, and does not become an ally of any group of powers.

THE OLD ENEMIES

The peace spirit which is pervading the mentality of the British Empire and the United States is beginning to work in the mind of individuals and groups even among those European peoples who are closest to the danger zone and most tempted by reactionary tendencies in favour of force for defence or vengeance.

Even in France, which is reasonably afraid of what may happen when Germany gets strong again, there is an increasing desire to obtain security by justice and conciliation rather than by military domination and a policy of coercion.

Even in Germany, resentful, bitter, brooding over “injustice,” inflamed to dreams of vengeance by old and new leaders who believe only in force and hatred, there are groups of idealists, societies of youth, bodies of working men, who are putting up a spiritual resistance to their Junkers and Nationalists. In spite of all their military parades in Bavaria, their secret drillings, their harking back to the sentiment of the old Imperialism, their hatred of France—most dangerous, as I have said—millions of working men and women in Germany have a loathing of war (its horror is in their souls) which would make them revolt against any attempts to prepare for a war of vengeance. Those people—convinced pacifists—are, I think, in a minority. The French adventure in the Ruhr weakened and almost destroyed, for the time, pacifist sentiment in Germany by causing an outburst of fury which has left smouldering fires of resentment and rage. But some of that will pass if the London Agreement is carried out by France in a generous spirit, and especially if the Ruhr is evacuated before another year has gone. It is my personal belief that the Nationalists will not have general support in the country for a revival of militarism if France relieves the pressure on Germany and makes a working agreement with her industrialists for their mutual benefit.

If Germany asks for war again she will get revolution first.

LIBERAL THOUGHT IN FRANCE

The hope of Europe—one good hope at least—is the new attitude of France under the Herriot Government. In his great speech defending the acceptance of the London Agreement it was significant that loud cheers were raised when he said that an end had been put to “the romantic idea that in order to make certain of the fruits of victory Germany must be ruined.” France, he said, must no longer count only on force and ultimatums. At present she needed to rest, to restore her finances, to build up her population. “Reassure the mothers!” he cried amidst passionate applause from the Left. “That also is patriotism.” Those words to the mothers of France found an echo in the hearts of all those women who have lost their sons. France above all, dreads a new sacrifice of youth, and the policy of Poincaré failed because it seemed to lead to that necessity, and aroused the fear of the peasant farmers and small shopkeepers who remember their dead sons.

The London Agreement, based on the Dawes Report, may break down in its financial operations. I believe it will, for the reasons I have given. But those words of Herriot renouncing the romantic idea of Germany’s ruin as the fruits of victory for France promise a way of further compromise and conciliation if the burden of the London Agreement cannot be fulfilled, literally, by the German people, or if the effect of fulfilment is disastrous to other nations.

The London Agreement, after all, is only the first step towards the pacification of Europe, and its greatest benefit will be its clearing the way for other steps along the road to stable conditions and general security. The first of these is the demilitarisation of Europe, a relief from the crushing costs of great standing armies, preceded by absolute guarantees to prevent the re-arming of Germany. “The central fortress of Europe,” said Herriot, “must be demolished, and the German democrats must aid us.” That was a figure of rhetoric, for at the present time the “fortress” of Germany is dismantled of great artillery and under the power of French guns. But the French Premier was holding out a new hope for the world when he promised that France would base her security upon the moral guarantee of the world powers acting through the military control of Germany by the League of Nations in a general scheme of disarmament.

One other Conference and attempt at settlement will arise out of the London Agreement. That is the question of inter-allied debts, overshadowing the financial relations of the world and the cause of grave anxiety and much antagonism. At the present time Great Britain is the only country paying off her war debts. In spite of payments to the United States which are weighing heavily upon her financial health, she is not receiving a penny from France or other countries to which she lent far more than she borrowed from the United States. If Germany is able to pay substantial reparations to France, Belgium and Great Britain, it will be an easy matter of arithmetic to write off many of these debts all round. I do not think it is going to be as easy as all this, because the future of German reparations is vastly uncertain. Nevertheless it is impossible for England to demand her “pound of flesh” from France if Germany is reprieved. I think England will act more generously than she can afford for the sake of good will all round, and I hope the United States will help her to be generous....

If all that could be cleared away, Europe and the whole world would indeed be in possession of a fair field of hope in which we could sow and reap new harvests in the security of peace. There is bound to be much trouble, argument, friction, heart-burning, before that work is accomplished, yet we are moving slowly along to that endeavour, and there is a light in the sky beyond the jungle of all the undergrowth in which international relations are entangled.

THE MACHINERY OF DESTRUCTION

They are, after all, details. The spirit matters more than the letter. I think that in the spirit of the world, almost everywhere, there is a growing consciousness that the perils of new conflict are so frightful that civilisation might actually go down in chaos if the forces of evil are not subdued. At the back of many minds is the awful thought that machinery threatens to become the master of men and that science threatens to destroy humanity unless it is controlled. What were human valour, spiritual courage, superb physique, in that last war, up against long-range guns, aerial torpedoes, high explosives in concentrated fire, poison gas? At a distance of forty miles a platoon of men might be wiped out by a casual shell loosed from a fifteen-inch howitzer. What was the value of discipline, ardour, human strength, centuries of character building to produce the fine flower of civilisation, in the face of that explosive force which tore men’s bodies to bits far from the sight of their enemy, without means of resistance on their part, with no more defence than if a thunderbolt had struck them? That is not war between human forces. It is war with engines constructed by men but overpowering. Or, of what use were fair physique, athletic youth, soldierly qualities, heroic human stuff, when suddenly they were enveloped in a vapour which choked them, burnt their lungs, blinded them, stupefied them? All the discoveries of science which made men proud of the knowledge they had wrested from nature’s most hidden secrets, like gods, were used for this devilish purpose of increasing the efficiency of human slaughter. Even the victory of flight which had baffled humanity since men first walked on earth and envied the birds for their liberty of the sky was achieved in time to increase the terrors and range of war.

Yet we know that if there is a next war it will be worse than the last because the poison gases are more deadly, the guns have longer range, the aeroplanes will be more crowded in the sky, the cities will be more at the mercy of falling bombs. In many laboratories scientists are searching for new forms of destruction which may even make those weapons obsolete because so limited in their power of slaughter. It is not only possible but likely that some “death ray” projecting wireless force may sweep a countryside with a heat that would turn everything to flame and then to dust and ashes. Is mankind going to risk such an infernal ending to all its dreams of beauty and order and more perfect life? Is it going to allow its stupid brawls, its national ambitions, its little points of honour and argument, to be settled by this latest type of warfare which does not spare women or children, but, indeed, makes them the victims of its worst cruelties? With all its passionate follies, humanity can hardly be as mad as that.

THE REVOLT AGAINST WAR

I believe that before it is likely to happen the common folk of all countries will revolt from such a method of argument and demand some other means of settlement. The memory of the last war endures among those who realised its agony. Its futility is understood even by those who directed its forces. In Great Britain the generals—or many of them—are most convinced of the need of peace. In France Marshal Foch and many of those who led France to a victory at frightful cost wish to avoid another conflict beyond any other consideration. Some of them may believe in a supreme army as the only defence of peace, but it is peace and security which dominate their minds, not military adventures for ambition’s sake. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand the Generals of the Dominion forces are peace propagandists. In the United States the commanding officers who went to France are most in favour of generosity to Germany, within the limits of justice.

“What have we gained by the world war?” asked _The America Legion Weekly_ ten years after that war began. The answers came from many great people and with few exceptions they saw more loss than gain, and in most cases all loss and no gain. I was most struck by the answer of General Sir Arthur Currie who commanded the Canadians many times in great battles. I met him often and prophesied his military genius. His strength of character, his stubborn will power, his clear-cut judgment, marked him out as a man of great generalship and his record proved it I think. He was not popular with his men. They thought him ruthless. He was ruthless, while the war went on, but this was his message to the American Legion, founded to perpetuate the memories of the war, and rather prone, it was thought, for a time, to perpetuate the memories of hate and the use of force.

“By the world war we gained a truer appreciation and a better realisation of war’s unspeakable waste, its dreadful hardships, its cruel slaughter, and its aftermath of loneliness, sorrow and broken hearts. We now know that as a means of solving the world’s problems and removing international discord, war is a delusion and a lie. We know that no matter how much a nation may desire to hold itself aloof and to keep apart from the struggle it cannot escape war’s terrible effects.

“An appreciation of even these two things should influence nations to leave nothing undone that would help in even the slightest degree to lessen the possibility of international strife.

“We know that there is no glory in war, either in its methods or in its results, and that its only glory is the glory of a sacrifice for the ideals which are involved.”

When views like that are put before the minds of great bodies of men by such as General Currie there is a hope that reason will prevail over unreason, and that we may exorcise that infernal spectre of another world war which lurks in our bad dreams.

CLASS WARFARE

But we must first kill the idea of force and violence between classes as well as nations. There will be no world peace if those who preach the virtues of international brotherhood are at the same time organising a class warfare in a spirit of intolerance that is abominable. In many countries of the world—and the most civilised—at this present date, the nations are being divided by a passionate opposition between ideas roughly labelled as Capital and Labour, Liberty and Tyranny, Bolshevism and Fasciscism. In England the Left Wing of the Labour Party is using wild and whirling words which are a disgrace to civilised men and women. They are advocating “an orgy of blood” to overthrow the capitalist system and establish equality of labour in all countries. At a meeting in the Memorial Hall, London, last August, the Communists put forward a programme of violence which was an outrageous defiance of the moderate counsels of Ramsay MacDonald and his colleagues, and proposed a charter of labour “rights,” including a thirty-hours working week, which would bring Great Britain to the depths of ruin in a very short time. On the other side the English “Die-hards” are organising a secret society of Fascisti on the Italian lines, for the defence of property, national discipline, and resistance to all liberal ideas. Intolerance, the spirit of violence, are at work among the extremists on both sides, both narrow-minded and ignorant, both asking for trouble, both believing in force rather than in argument, arbitration, and law. In England, by the grace of God and long tradition, there is between these two extremes a great body of middle class, moderate, reasonable, and steady opinion which is the safeguard of the nation against all violent revolution. The aristocracy as a whole is liberal, kindly and self-sacrificing, and by no means disposed to play into the hands of its own extremists represented by the Duke of Northumberland and that remarkable lady, Mrs. Nesta Webster. The Labour Party as long as it is led by its present chiefs is contemptuous of Mr. Tom Mann and his loud-throated “comrades.” Nevertheless the devil of intolerance is making disciples on both sides.

Not only in England. There are many little Mussolinis about the world who are in favour of tyranny under the name of discipline and prefer hammering their political opponents in a physical way rather than converting them by arguments and beating them at the polls. There are many little Lenins skulking about factory yards or drawing good salaries as labour agitators who have an equal scorn for the old traditions of Parliamentary Government and the Common Law of the land, and advocate short cuts to the equality of men by “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”—which allows no equality to those who disagree with their point of view—and by violent assault upon the lives and property of the middle classes.

THE CHALLENGE OF INTOLERANCE

The old liberal principles of free speech, religious liberty, racial equality before the law and obedience to the law itself until it is altered by the will of the majority, is being attacked from both wings on the Left and Right. The Swastika or “Hackenkreuz” societies in Germany and Austria, becoming very powerful and aggressive, have declared war against the Jews, and vengeance against France. In Hungary the persecution of Jews is a passionate article of faith among those who support the present dictatorship. In the United States of America the Ku Klux Klan defies the very spirit of liberty and law which inspired the American constitution and preaches Intolerance as its creed—intolerance of Jews, intolerance of the Negro Race, intolerance of Catholics, intolerance of political labour. It is a secret society which seems to me in violent conflict with all the idealism stirring in the soul of America. If it is not checked or killed by public opinion it will certainly lead to social conflict in the United States of very grave consequences. The argument of the Ku Klux Klansmen that they stand for purity in politics, the old traditions of American character menaced by the tyranny and corruption of Irish politicians, Jewish financiers and Labour revolutionaries, seems to me no defence of their methods or their principles. It is not by defiance of the law that they will exact obedience to the law. It is not by setting up a secret government that they will destroy Tammany which is also a secret government. It is not by spreading a propaganda of hate against the Jewish race—which has been greatly loyal to American ideals and by its genius has brought great wealth in art, music and literature as well as in dollars to the United States—that the gospel of Christianity will be more faithfully observed. It is not by burning Catholic Churches that Christ will be served. It is not by lynch law against negroes or any other class of American citizens that the United States is going to give a spiritual lead to the world or improve its own state of civilisation. All that is a hark-back to barbarity and not a stride forward to a more civilised world. It is the revival of cruelty which we want to slay with other qualities of the beast in us. It is the spirit of “Prussianism” against which we were supposed to be fighting in the great war.

It is true of course that tolerance cannot be carried to extreme limits. One cannot tolerate obscenity, incitements to murder, or to “orgies of blood” in the cause of “liberty,” or revolutionary attacks upon the ordinary rights of citizenship and the common law of the land. There comes a point when tolerance must become intolerance unless it makes an abject surrender to the forces of evil and anarchy. That is the argument of those who justify Mussolini and his Fascisti, the Ku Klux Klan, the Swastika societies in Germany, and the “Die-hards” in England. It is a sound argument when that point of conscience is reached. But the danger of intolerance is far greater than that of tolerance, and it is apt to encourage and inflame the very evils which it is opposing. Free speech is a great safety valve for overheated air as the English people have found through centuries of history, and are finding now. Revolution is most dangerous when it is driven underground by autocracy and tyranny. Above all, religious and racial equality before the law is the foundation of all civilised states. Without that a state is not only uncivilised but its form of government is doomed to destruction, as history has shewn a thousand times.

THE SACRED REMEMBRANCE

Ten years after the beginning of the world war, fought on our side with a high appeal to such great words as “Liberty,” “Justice,” “a world made safe for democracy” and “the overthrow of militarism,” one is dismayed to find the beginning of a class warfare with appeals to force, and denials of liberty and justice, on both sides. Surely the one sacred remembrance worth keeping, the only glory that belonged to that war, is the spiritual emotion which for a time exalted our common clay above self-interest, above the fear of death itself, and united all classes in the nation in a comradeship of sacrifice and service. It was so in Germany as well as in England, in the United States as well as in France. Each side believed itself to be in the right, prayed God for aid with no sense of blasphemy.

Never before in history, at least in France, England and the United States, was there such a “sacred union” of all ranks and classes under the first impulse of that immense emotion for a single purpose. All political differences were blotted out, all prerogatives of caste and wealth, all hatreds between groups of men, all intolerance were waived. In those days, as I have written, the society women went down on their knees to scrub floors for the wounded, or serve as drudges in wayside canteens. In those days, ten years ago, the young aristocrat marvelled at the splendour of his men—“nothing was too good for them.” In those days before the time of disillusion the men were uplifted by the love of the nation that went out to them. There was no spirit of class warfare, no Bolshevism, no hatred of “Labour.” The dirtiest soldier in the trenches, covered with mud and blood, was our national hero. Our soul did homage to him. And between the wounded soldier lying in his shell-hole beside his wounded officer there was no hostility, no gulf of class. They were crucified together on the same cross. They were comrades in agony and death.

It was for war. The service which united all classes was the slaughter of men on the other side of the line drawn across the map of the world, or the provision of means of slaughter. That intense impulse of devotion, sacrifice and duty which in its first manifestations had something divine in its carelessness of self—in all countries—was in its effects destructive of the best human life in the world. Is it too much for humanity to get that same impulse for the cause of peace, to get back to that comradeship and co-operation within those nations for other purposes than that of war, to rise above self-interest for the commonwealth of civilisation?

It is very difficult, almost impossible I think, without tremendous leadership which we cannot yet perceive. War is a shock which thrills every soul by its terrific portent. Peace is a state in which the smaller interests of life seem more important than great issues. War provides the people with a single dominating purpose, inspired by passion. Peace has no definite goal to capture or defend, and human intelligence is divided by a million views in its gropings for the ideals of peace. It is only danger that rallies the human tribes in self-defence. In safety they scatter and are hostile to each other.

Well, the danger ahead is great enough in my judgment to provide the impulse again, and to recreate the passion which united classes and nations ten years ago. If we have that “next war” it is going to thrust us all into deep pits of ruin. If we have social warfare within the civilised nations we shall not emerge from it until tides of blood have flowed. If we have an unrestricted commercial war, a savage and ruthless competition between great powers out for world trade at all costs against each other, the other things will happen. The human tribes in the next phase of history, now approaching, must co-operate or perish.