Chapter VI

Ladies and gentlemen, all the changes I have described run together into one and lead our minds in the same direction. They are driving the thoughts of the nation to the roots of things. They are forcing us to question the whole basis of our civilization. With the war before our eyes we are prepared to find that there is something _radically_ wrong. We are beginning to suspect that the mischief is deep-seated. It is true that these suspicions had often been roused before this war broke out. A visit to the slums will rouse them any day. But the war has made this difference: it has brought us _all together_ into a suspicious frame of mind; so that if anybody could make clear to us what the driving forces of civilization really are, the mind of the nation would at once challenge these forces to give an account of themselves and hold them under suspicion until they could prove their innocence.

Now there are two great forces which as everybody knows have been mightily at work in European history for the last hundred years. One is militarism, the other is industrialism. The mind of the nation is thinking deeply about both of them. Militarism we have always suspected: industrialism has borne a better character, though some of us have had our doubts. But recently there have been signs—and they have been especially prominent in Germany—that these two forces are much more intimately connected than once seemed possible. What have militarism and industrialism to do with one another? How are they related? The war has thrown a new light on that question and I will try to express some of our thoughts.

On a superficial view we are tempted to describe the relation of industrialism to militarism as one of antagonism. The two principles are simply opposed the one to the other. Industrialism, we think, makes for peace; militarism for war. Whence follows the simple conclusion that the destruction of militarism will leave the peace-making principle in control of civilization and fighting will be at an end.

I believe that thoughtful people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with this simple account of the matter.

To begin with, there is the fact staring us in the face that an age which is saturated with industrialism has given birth to the bloodiest and most destructive war the world has ever seen. We have no need, at this point, to assert the disputable proposition that industrialism has caused the war. Let us content ourselves with the indisputable proposition that industrialism has not prevented the war.

If industrialism were essentially pacific this failure to prevent the war would be hard to understand. As the dominant interest of nations and individuals, and as making always for peace, how has it come to pass, we may well ask, that industrialism has been unable to restrain the forces which make for war, and for war on the most stupendous scale? We had flattered ourselves that commerce by multiplying and strengthening the ties between nations, would make it impossible for these to tear themselves asunder and engage in mutual destruction. The event has proved we were in error.

Reflecting more deeply on its failure to keep the peace, a suspicion gains ground that industrialism when unchecked by other forces may be a positive cause of war. By increasing the wealth, the ostentation, and the pride of the peoples, does it not serve to accentuate their rivalries, to deepen their jealousies, and to inflame their predatory passions? Is it not true that wherever great treasure-chests exist, there will robbers be found also; and is the treasure less provocative of covetousness when gained by commerce, than when extorted from the labour of slaves or exacted by the ransom of conquered cities? Are two nations, rich and happy in the sort of happiness that comes from riches, more likely to be friends than two poor nations each possessing nothing which tempts the cupidity of the other?

For example, is not one of the chief causes of the present hostility between Germany and Great Britain to be found in the fact that both of them, as we say, ‘have done so well in business’? Is it of no significance that war broke out at the very time when each was ‘doing better than ever’? Eliminate, from the complex of conditions out of which the war arose, the circumstance that industry had made both these nations rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and may we not say without hesitation that war between them would not have taken place?

What answer shall we give to these questions? Shall we take refuge in the argument that industrialism shows these baleful tendencies only because it is imperfectly developed, and has not yet become truly international in character? Shall we plead for a finer articulation of the commercial tie, and for more industrialism rather than less? Will our dream of the millennium be the conversion of the whole human race into a Universal Joint Stock Company? Are we, in a word, to content ourselves with the suppression of militarism and trust the weal of the race to the working out of the industrial principle, unhampered by the interference of its military yoke-fellow?

Such answers show, I cannot help thinking, that we are legislating for mankind without reckoning with man, as we so often fail to do. They leave untouched the tap-root of war—that primitive instinct which the old legislation sought to restrain by the command ‘Thou shalt not covet’.

Let us assume the extreme case and suppose that on the conclusion of the war the nations of Europe, convinced of their folly and wickedness, abandon every form of armament and determine for the future to spend not one farthing of the national wealth on armies or fortresses or fleets. What would follow?

The immediate result would be the liberation of an enormous amount of wealth hitherto set aside for military purposes. The greater part of this wealth would flow into industrial channels. It is fair to assume that industrialism would be the gainer annually to the extent of five hundred million sterling and of a labour force represented by twenty millions of men. This is a prospect that ought to make the mouths water of those who think that industrial wealth is the foundation of human good.

Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, the United States—to speak of no others—rich as they now are, would then grow enormously richer. The natural resources of the earth would be exploited to an extent of which the present economic development, vast as it is, affords no measure. The mere circumstance that each nation might pursue its gains undisturbed by the risk of aggression from the others would bring a vast accession of confidence, and therefore of efficiency, to the labour and capital employed. The total population of the earth would grow by leaps and bounds. And under any fairly equitable scheme of distribution there would be enough wealth in the world to render every member of the human race well-off.

But would there be _peace_?

Long before the pleasing process we have imagined could work itself out every one of the great communities would be torn to pieces by civil wars. This, I mean, is what would assuredly happen if we suppose the economic process to go on without some fundamental change in the ethos of mankind.

The peace of nations depends only in part on the suppression of militarism. In yet larger measure it depends on the absence of disruptive tendencies in the nations themselves.

What these disruptive tendencies can do, or at least what they can threaten, was made sufficiently clear in Great Britain during the few months which preceded the outbreak of war. Nor were we alone in this danger. I need not enter into particulars, for the facts are well known. France, Germany, Austria, Russia—even the United States—were seething with discontent. I recall the remark made to me by an American statesman in 1912. Speaking of the prevalent social unrest he said, ‘We are on the eve of a greater crisis than that of our Civil War.’

Internal disruption is the inevitable fate of every nation whose ethos, or ideal, rests upon a purely industrial creed. The larger the scope for pure industrialism and the fewer the checks which hold it in restraint, the more rapidly do the disruptive tendencies gather head and the more destructive do they become. It is not the poorest nations which reveal the maximum of social discontent. It is the richest. And the prime cause of this does not lie in the sense of inequality between individuals who have more and individuals who have less; that, no doubt, is a cause, but secondary. The root evil is, that a community which makes wealth its object, and pursues it on the terms laid down by the economic machine, is living under conditions which satisfy nobody and against which all men are, by the higher human nature, born rebels. From this point of view success in the economic enterprise is even worse for a nation than failure. The greater the accumulation of wealth the more dissatisfied do men become with the conditions of a merely economic life. Industrial communities are always more restless when trade is good than when trade is bad, as though the rottenness of the system could only be revealed by its triumph. Seldom, however, does the restless spirit penetrate to the true cause of the trouble. Unaware that the trouble comes from the original vice of the whole enterprise on which we are engaged, we throw upon our fellow victims the blame for the common lot, thinking that because these suffer less than ourselves therefore they are responsible for our sufferings—like the emigrants in the sinking ship who in the blindness of their despair fell upon the first-class passengers and tore them to pieces.

In short, the common pursuit of wealth is not a _human_ bond. It leads to the invention of schemes and machinery of every kind—material, political, and social; but, of itself, it can never lead to the vital organization of mankind. Nay rather, in spite of all that has been said of its unifying tendency, we cannot doubt that its final working is to disintegrate the community. Seekers of buried treasure invariably quarrel among themselves, for reasons which are manifest to a child. They may arrange the most equitable scheme for the division of the spoils, and seal their mutual loyalty with fearful oaths, but before the voyage is over the captain will be at the yardarm and the deck will be slippery with the blood of half the crew. Whether they sail under the Jolly Roger, or under the red ensign of industrial civilization, makes little difference. Whether the spoil be buried in a pirate’s cavern or in the unexploited resources of the earth, it all comes to the same thing.

Nor must we forget that the disruptive tendencies of pure industrialism have hitherto been largely held in check by militarism itself. There can hardly be a doubt that for many years past the common fear of foreign aggression and the common need of being prepared for it have played a very considerable part, against contrary forces working from within, in maintaining the cohesion of every one of the great States now at war. And if the question were raised, in which of the great communities of the modern world have the signs of economic disruption been most abundant, should we not have to point for answer to that country which is at once the wealthiest and the least menaced by foreign war, and where all classes have the largest share of this world’s goods—the United States?

By this time we are all agreed about one thing: militarism—I mean the kind of militarism in which Germany has set the example—must go. Whether a nobler militarism may arise hereafter is a question: but of this kind we have had enough and more than enough. But let us be under no delusion as to the sequel. When militarism goes the check will be removed which has so far prevented industrialism from producing its bitterest fruits. If, therefore, the war merely yields the negative result of destroying militarism, we may lay our account with the certainty that there are yet greater troubles in store for the world.

But there is ground for hope in the very magnitude of the present calamity. Let me remind you of something I have already mentioned in another connexion: I mean the way in which the lessons of the war are coming simultaneously to vast multitudes of persons. Apply that to the mind of Europe as a whole. All the nations involved in the struggle are learning the same lesson _at the same time_. All are engaged _together_ in the bitter but salutary process of discovering their souls. A piecemeal repentance of the nations, following a series of partial conflicts, might effect very little; a simultaneous repentance, imposed by a world-war, may effect a great deal.

Whatever new wisdom, whatever vision of the weak spot in civilization are coming to ourselves as a result of the war, we may be very sure that the same wisdom, the same vision, are coming, in the same way, to our allies and to our enemies. Realizing this, may we not believe that beneath the fierce and bloody oppositions of the hour a profound principle of unity is at work?