Chapter I: The Relation of Defence to Aggression

Necessity for defence arises from the existence of a motive for
attack--Platitudes that everyone overlooks--To attenuate the motive
for aggression is to undertake a work of defence.

The general proposition embodied in this book--that the world has passed out of that stage of development in which it is possible for one civilized group to advance its well-being by the military domination of another--is either broadly true or broadly false. If it is false, it can, of course, have no bearing upon the actual problems of our time, and can have no practical outcome; huge armaments tempered by warfare are the logical and natural condition.

But the commonest criticism this book has had to meet is that, though its central proposition is in essence sound, it has, nevertheless, no practical value, because--

1. Armaments are for defence, not for aggression.

2. However true these principles may be, the world does not
recognize them and never will, because men are not guided by
reason.

As to the first point. It is probable that, if we really understood truths which we are apt to dismiss as platitudes, many of our problems would disappear.

To say, "We must take measures for defence" is equivalent to saying, "Someone is likely to attack us," which is equivalent to saying, "Someone has a motive for attacking us." In other words, the basic fact from which arises the necessity for armaments, the ultimate explanation of European militarism, is _the force of the motive making for aggression_. (And in the word "aggression," of course, I include the imposition of superior force by the _threat_, or implied threat, of its use, as well as by its actual use.)

That motive may be material or moral; it may arise from real conflict of interest, or a purely imaginary one; but with the disappearance of prospective aggression disappears also the need for defence.

The reader deems these platitudes beside the mark?

I will take a few sample criticisms directed at this book. Here is the London _Daily Mail_:

The bigger nations are armed, not so much because they look for
the spoils of war, as because they wish to prevent the horrors
of it; arms are for defence.[111]

And here is the London _Times_:

No doubt the victor suffers, but who suffers most, he or the
vanquished?"[112]

The criticism of the _Daily Mail_ was made within three months of a "raging and tearing" big navy campaign, all of it based on the assumption that Germany _was_ "looking for the spoils of war," the English naval increase being thus a direct outcome of such motives. Without it, the question of English increase would not have arisen.[113] The only justification for the clamor for increase was that England was liable to _attack_; every nation in Europe justifies its armaments in the same way; every nation consequently believes in the universal existence of this motive for attack.

The _Times_ has been hardly less insistent than the _Mail_ as to the danger from German aggression; but its criticism would imply that the motive behind that prospective aggression is not a desire for any political advantage or gain of any sort. Germany apparently recognizes aggression to be, not merely barren of any useful result whatsoever, but burdensome and costly into the bargain; she is, nevertheless, determined to enter upon it in order that though she suffer, someone else will suffer more![114]

In common with the London _Daily Mail_ and the London _Times_, Admiral Mahan fails to understand this "platitude," which underlies the relation of defence to aggression.

Thus in his criticism of this book, he cites the position of Great Britain during the Napoleonic era as proof that commercial advantage goes with the possession of preponderant military power in the following passage:

Great Britain owed her commercial superiority then to the armed
control of the sea, which had sheltered her commerce and
industrial fabric from molestation by the enemy.

_Ergo_, military force has commercial value, a result which is arrived at by this method: in deciding a case made up of two parties you ignore one.

England's superiority was not due to the employment of military force, but to the fact that she was able to prevent the employment of military force against her; and the necessity for so doing arose from Napoleon's motive in threatening her. But for the existence of this motive to aggression--moral or material, just or mistaken--Great Britain, without any force whatsoever, would have been more secure and more prosperous than she was; she would not have been spending a third of her income in war, and her peasantry would not have been starving.

Of a like character to the remark of the _Times_ is the criticism of the _Spectator_, as follows:

Mr. Angell's main point is that the advantages customarily
associated with national independence and security have no
existence outside the popular imagination.... He holds that
Englishmen would be equally happy if they were under German
rule, and that Germans would be equally happy if they were
under English rule. It is irrational, therefore, to take any
measures for perpetuating the existing European order, since
only a sentimentalist can set any value on its maintenance....
Probably in private life Mr. Angell is less consistent and less
inclined to preach the burglar's gospel that to the wise man
_meum_ and _tuum_ are but two names for the same thing. If he
is anxious to make converts, he will do well to apply his
reasoning to subjects that come nearer home, and convince the
average man that marriage and private property are as much
illusions as patriotism. If sentiment is to be banished from
politics, it cannot reasonably be retained in morals.

As the reply to this somewhat extraordinary criticism is directly germane to what it is important to make clear, I may, perhaps, be excused for reproducing my letter to the _Spectator_, which was in part as follows:

How far the foregoing is a correct description of the scope and
character of the book under review may be gathered from the
following statement of fact. My pamphlet does _not_ attack the
sentiment of patriotism (unless a criticism of the duellist's
conception of dignity be considered as such); it simply does
not deal with it, as being outside the limits of the main
thesis. I do _not_ hold, and there is not one line to which
your reviewer can point as justifying such a conclusion, that
Englishmen would be equally happy if they were under German
rule. I do not conclude that it is irrational to take measures
for perpetuating the existing European order. I do _not_
"expose the folly of self-defence in nations." I do _not_
object to spending money on armaments at this juncture. On the
contrary, I am particularly emphatic in declaring that while
the present philosophy is what it is, we are bound to maintain
our relative position with other Powers. I admit that so long
as there is danger, as I believe there is, from German
aggression, we must arm. I do _not_ preach a burglar's gospel,
that _meum_ and _tuum_ are the same thing, and the whole
tendency of my book is the exact reverse: it is to show that
the burglar's gospel--which is the gospel of statecraft as it
now stands--is no longer possible among nations, and that the
difference between _meum_ and _tuum_ must necessarily, as
society gains in complication, be given a stricter observance
than it has ever heretofore been given in history. I do _not_
urge that sentiment should be banished from politics, if by
sentiment is meant the common morality that guides us in our
treatment of marriage and of private property. The whole tone
of my book is to urge with all possible emphasis the exact
reverse of such a doctrine; to urge that the morality which has
been by our necessities developed in the society of individuals
must also be applied to the society of nations as that society
becomes by virtue of our development more interdependent.

I have only taken a small portion of your reviewer's article
(which runs to a whole page), and I do not think I am
exaggerating when I say that nearly all of it is as untrue and
as much a distortion of what I really say as the passage from
which I have quoted. What I do attempt to make plain is that
the necessity for defence measures (which I completely
recognize and emphatically counsel) implies on the part of
someone a motive for aggression, and that the motive arises
from the (at present) universal belief in the social and
economic advantages accruing from successful conquest.

I challenged this universal axiom of statecraft and attempted
to show that the mechanical development of the last thirty or
forty years, especially in the means of communication, had
given rise to certain economic phenomena--of which re-acting
bourses and the financial interdependence of the great economic
centres of the world are perhaps the most characteristic--which
render modern wealth and trade intangible in the sense that
they cannot be seized or interfered with to the advantage of a
military aggressor, the moral being, not that self-defence is
out of date, but that aggression is, and that when aggression
ceases, self-defence will be no longer necessary. I urged,
therefore, that in these little-recognized truths might
possibly be found a way out of the armament _impasse_; that if
the accepted motive for aggression could be shown to have no
solid basis, the tension in Europe would be immensely relieved,
and the risk of attack become immeasurably less by reason of
the slackening of the motive for aggression. I asked whether
this series of economic facts--so little realized by the
average politician in Europe, and yet so familiar to at least a
few of the ablest financiers--did not go far to change the
axioms of statecraft, and I urged re-consideration of such in
the light of these facts.

Your reviewer, instead of dealing with the questions thus
raised, accuses me of "attacking patriotism," of arguing that
"Englishmen would be equally happy under German rule," and much
nonsense of the same sort, for which there is not a shadow of
justification. Is this serious criticism? Is it worthy of the
_Spectator_?

To the foregoing letter the _Spectator_ critic rejoins as follows:

If Mr. Angell's book had given me the same impression as that
which I gain from his letter, I should have reviewed it in a
different spirit. I can only plead that I wrote under the
impression which the book actually made on me. In reply to his
"statement of fact," I must ask your leave to make the
following corrections: (1) Instead of saying that, on Mr.
Angell's showing, Englishmen would be "equally happy" under
German rule, I ought to have said that they would be equally
well off. But on his doctrine that material well-being is "the
very highest" aim of a politician, the two terms seem to be
interchangeable. (2) The "existing European order" rests on the
supposed economic value of political force. In opposition to
this Mr. Angell maintains "the economic futility of political
force." To take measures for perpetuating an order founded on a
futility does seem to me "irrational." (3) I never said that
Mr. Angell objects to spending money on armaments "while the
present philosophy is what it is." (4) The stress laid in the
book on the economic folly of patriotism, as commonly
understood, does seem to me to suggest that "sentiment should
be banished from politics." But I admit that this was only an
inference, though, as I still think, a fair inference. (5) I
apologize for the words "the burglar's gospel." They have the
fault, incident to rhetorical phrases, of being more telling
than exact.

This rejoinder, as a matter of fact, still reveals the confusion which prompted the first criticism. Because I urged that Germany could do England relatively little harm, since the harm which she inflicted would immediately react on German prosperity, my critic assumes that this is equivalent to saying that Englishmen would be as happy or as prosperous under German rule. He quite overlooks the fact that if Germans are convinced that they will obtain no benefit by the conquest of the English they will not attempt that conquest, and there will be no question of the English living under German rule either less or more happily or prosperously. It is not a question of Englishmen saying, "Let the German come," but of the German saying, "Why should we go?" As to the critic's second point, I have expressly explained that not the rival's real interest but what he deems to be his real interest must be the guide to conduct. Military force is certainly economically futile, but so long as German policy rests on the assumption of the supposed economic value of military force, England must meet that force by the only force that can reply to it.

Some years ago the bank in a Western mining town was frequently subjected to "hold-ups," because it was known that the great mining company owning the town kept large quantities of gold there for the payment of its workmen. The company, therefore, took to paying its wages mainly by check on a San Francisco bank, and by a simple system of clearances practically abolished the use of gold in considerable quantities in the mining town in question. The bank was never attacked again.

Now, the demonstration that gold had been replaced by books in that bank was as much a work of defence as though the bank had spent tens of thousands of dollars in constructing forts and earthworks, and mounting Gatling guns around the town. Of the two methods of defence, that of substituting checks for gold was infinitely cheaper, and more effective.

Even if the inferences which the _Spectator_ reviewer draws were true ones, which for the most part they are not, he still overlooks one important element. If it were true that the book involves the "folly of patriotism," how is that in any way relevant to the discussion, since I also urge that nations are justified in protecting even their follies against the attack of other nations? I may regard the Christian Scientists, or the Seventh Day Adventists, or the Spiritualists, as very foolish people, and to some extent mischievous people; but were an Act of Parliament introduced for their suppression by physical force, I should resist such an act with all the energy of which I was capable. In what way are the two attitudes contradictory? They are the attitudes, I take it, of educated men the world over. The fact has no importance, and it hardly bears on this subject, but I regard certain English conceptions of life bearing on matters of law, and social habit, and political philosophy, as infinitely preferable to the German, and if I thought that such conceptions demanded defence indefinitely by great armaments this book would never have been written. But I take the view that the idea of such necessity is based on a complete illusion, not only because as a matter of present-day fact, and even in the present state of political philosophy, Germany has not the least intention of going to war with us to change our notions in law or literature, art or social organization, but also because if she had any such notion it would be founded upon illusions which she would be bound sooner or later to shed, because German policy could not indefinitely resist the influence of a general European attitude on such matters any more than it has been possible for any great and active European State to stand outside the European movement which has condemned the policy of attempting to impose religious belief by the physical force of the State. And I should regard it as an essential part of the work of defence to aid in the firm establishment of such a European doctrine, as much a part of the work of defence as it would be to go on building battleships until Germany had subscribed to it.

A great part of the misconception just dealt with arises from a hazily conceived fear that ideas like those embodied in this book must attenuate our energy of defence, and that we shall be in a weaker position relatively to our rivals than we were before. But this overlooks the fact that if the progress of ideas weakens our energies of defence, it also weakens our rival's energy of attack, and the strength of our relative positions is just what it was originally, with this exception: that we have taken a step towards peace instead of a step towards war, to which the mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the end inevitably lead.

But there is one aspect of this failure to realize the relation of defence to aggression, which brings us nearer to considering the bearing of these principles upon the question of practical policy.