Chapter IX: German Culture and the British Commonwealth (2)

Will this new State have the other attributes of Government--a Common Legislature and a Common Executive--as well as a Common Judiciary? Let us go back to Professor Murray's words. He speaks of "outvoted minorities." Let us suppose the refractory country to be Great Britain, outvoted on some question relating to sea-power. Of whom will the outvoted minority consist? Of the British members on the "Common Council" of the Concert. But the question at once arises, what are the credentials of these British members? Whom do they represent? To whom are they responsible? If they are the representatives of the British people and responsible to the democracy which sent them, how can they be expected to "accustom themselves to giving way"--perhaps to a majority composed of the representatives of undemocratic governments? Their responsibility is, not to the Concert, but to their own Government and people. They are not the minority members of a democratically-elected Council of their own fellow-citizens. They are the minority members of a heterogeneous Council towards which they owe no allegiance and recognise no binding responsibility. There is no half-way house between Citizenship and no Citizenship, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. No man and no community can serve two masters. When the point of conflict arises men and nations have to make the choice where their duty lies. Not the representatives of Great Britain on the International Concert, but the people of Great Britain themselves would have to decide whether their real allegiance, as citizens, was due to the World-State or to their own Commonwealth: they would find themselves at the same awful parting of the ways which confronted the people of the Southern States in 1861. When at the outbreak of the Civil War General Lee was offered by Lincoln the Commandership of the Northern armies and refused it, to become the Commander-in-Chief on the side of the South, he did so because "he believed," as he told Congress after the war, "that the act of Virginia in withdrawing herself from the United States carried him along with it as a citizen of Virginia, and that _her_ laws and acts were binding on him." In other words, unless the proposed Common Council is to be made something more than a Council of the delegates of sovereign States (as the Southern States believed themselves to be till 1861), a deadlock sooner or later is almost inevitable, and the terrible and difficult question--so familiar to Americans and recently to ourselves on the smaller stage of Ulster--of the right of secession and the coercion of minorities will arise. But if the Common Council is framed in accordance with a Constitution which binds its representatives to accept its decisions and obey its government, then the World-State, with a World-Executive, will already have come into being. There will be no more war, but only Rebellion and Treason.

Such is the real meaning of proposals to give a binding sanction to the decisions of an Inter-State Concert. Anything short of this--treaties and arbitration-agreements based upon inter-State arrangements without any executive to enforce them--may give relief for a time and pave the way for further progress, but can in itself provide no permanent security, no satisfactory justification for the neglect of defensive measures by the various sovereign governments on behalf of their peoples. Mr. Bryan, for the United States, has within the last eighteen months concluded twenty-six general arbitration treaties with different Governments, and may yet succeed in his ambition of signing treaties with all the remainder. Yet no one imagines that, when the immunity of the United States from attack is guaranteed by the promise of every Government in the world, America will rely for her defence upon those promises alone.

In discussing proposals for a European Council, then, we must be quite sure to face all that it means. But let us not reject Professor Murray's suggestion off-hand because of its inherent difficulties: for that men should be discussing such schemes at all marks a significant advance in our political thought. Only let us be quite clear as to what they presuppose. They presuppose the supremacy, in the collective mind of civilised mankind, of Law over Force, a definite supremacy of what may be called the civilian as against the military ideal, not in a majority of States, but in every State powerful enough to defy coercion. They presuppose a world map definitely settled on lines satisfactory to the national aspirations of the peoples. They presuppose a _status quo_ which is not simply maintained, like that after 1815, because it is a legal fact and its disturbance would be inconvenient to the existing rulers, but because it is inherently equitable.[1] They presuppose a similar democratic basis of citizenship and representation among the component States. They presuppose, lastly, an educated public opinion incomparably less selfish, less ignorant, less unsteady, less materialistic, and less narrowly national than has been prevalent hitherto. Let us work and hope for these things: let us use our best efforts to remove misunderstandings and promote a sense of common responsibilities and common trusteeship for civilisation between the peoples of all the various sovereign States; but meanwhile let us work also, with better hopes of immediate if less ambitious successes, along the other parallel road of advance.

[Footnote 1: The same applies to proposals for ensuring permanent peace in the industrial sphere. Neither capital nor labour will abide by "scraps of paper" if they do not feel the _status quo (i.e._ the conditions under which wage-contracts are made) to be equitable and inherently just.]

The other road may seem, in this hour of dreams and disaster, of extremes of hope and disillusionment, a long and tedious track: it is the old slow high road of civilisation, not the short cut across the fields. It looks forward to abiding results, not through the mechanical co-operation of governments, but through the growth of an organic citizenship, through the education of the nations themselves to a sense of common duty and a common life. It looks forward, not to the definite establishment, in our day, of the World-State, but only to the definite refutation of the wicked theory of the mutual incompatibility of nations. It looks forward to the expression in the outward order of the world's government of what we may call "the Principle of the Commonwealth," of Lord Acton's great principle of the State composed of free nations, of the State as a living body which lives through the organic union and free activity of its several national members. And it finds its immediate field of action in the deepening and extension of the obligations of citizenship among the peoples of the great, free, just, peace-loving, supra-national Commonwealths whose patriotism has been built up, not by precept and doctrine, but on a firm foundation of older loyalties.

The principle of the Commonwealth is not a European principle: it is a world-principle. It does not proceed upon the expectation of a United States of Europe; for all the Great Powers of Europe except Austria-Hungary (and some of the smaller, such as Holland, Belgium, and Portugal) are extra-European Powers also. Indeed if we contract our view, with Gladstone and Bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to European issues alone, we shall be ignoring the chief political problem of our age--the contact of races and nations with wide varieties of social experience and at different levels of civilisation. It is this great and insistent problem (call it the problem of East and West, or the problem of the colour-line) in all its difficult ramifications, political, social, and, above all, economic, which makes the development of the principle of the Commonwealth the most pressing political need of our age. For the problems arising out of the contact of races and nations can never be adjusted either by the wise action of individuals or by conflict and warfare; they can only be solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship within the bosom of a single State, through the recognition by both parties of a higher claim than their own sectional interest--the claim of a common citizenship and the interest of civilisation.[1] It is here, in the union and collaboration of diverse races and peoples, that the principle of the Commonwealth finds its peculiar field of operation. Without this principle, and without its expression, however imperfect, in the British Empire, the world would be in chaos to-day.

[Footnote 1: The most recent example of this is the settlement of the very difficult dispute between India and South Africa.]

We cannot predict the political development of the various Great Powers who between them control the destinies of civilisation. We cannot estimate the degree or the manner in which France, freed at last from nearer preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion the great civilising principles for which her republic stands. We cannot foretell the issue of the conflict of ideas which has swayed to and fro in Russia between the British and the Prussian method of dealing with the problem of nationality. Germany, Italy, Japan--here, too, we are faced by enigmas. One other great Commonwealth remains besides the British. Upon the United States already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed and, except during a time of internal crisis,[1] successfully discharged, of securing peace from external foes for scores of millions of inhabitants of the American continent. Yet with the progress of events her responsibilities must yearly enlarge: for both the immigrant nationalities within and the world-problems without her borders seem to summon her to a deeper education and to wider obligations.

[Footnote 1: French occupation of Mexico, 1862, during the American Civil War, when the Monroe Doctrine was temporarily in abeyance.]

But upon the vast, ramifying, and inchoate Commonwealth of Great Britain lies the heaviest responsibility. It is a task unequally shared between those of her citizens who are capable of discharging it. Her task within the Commonwealth is to maintain the common character and ideals and to adjust the mutual relations of one quarter of the human race. Her task without is to throw her weight into the scales of peace, and to uphold and develop the standard and validity of inter-State agreements. It is a task which requires, even at this time of crisis, when, by the common sentiment of her citizens, the real nature and purpose of the Commonwealth have become clear to us, the active thoughts of all political students. For to bring home to all within her borders who bear rule and responsibility, from the village headman in India and Nigeria, the Basutu chief and the South Sea potentate, to the public opinion of Great Britain and the self-governing Dominions, the nature of the British Commonwealth, and the character of its citizenship and ideals, and to study how those ideals may be better expressed in its working institutions and executive government--that is a task to which the present crisis beckons the minds of British citizens, a task which Britain owes not only to herself but to mankind.

_Note_.--A friendly critic who saw this chapter in MS. remarked: "I think the author has been very successful in ignoring some of the shady methods by which the British Empire has been extended." The criticism is not strictly relevant to the subject of the chapter, but as it may occur to other readers it may be well to deal with it in a brief note. I would answer:

(1) The "shady methods" of which he speaks were not the result of British Imperialism, or of a desire for conquest on the part of the British State. They were the result, melancholy but inevitable, of the contact of individuals and races at different levels of development. This contact between the stronger and the weaker (which can be illustrated from what is said about the sandalwood traders in the New Hebrides on p. 215 above) was the direct result of the explorations of the sixteenth century, which threw the seas of the world open to Western pioneers and traders. The extension of the authority of Western _governments_ (Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British), and the collisions between them, followed inevitably on the activities of their citizens, as has been pointed out on p. 216 above. All the Western governments have made mistakes in dealing with this unfamiliar situation; but the wise course for democratic public opinion, instead of railing at "Imperialism," would seem to be to familiarise itself with its problems and control its injurious tendencies.

(2) In any case, the mistakes of the past do not entitle us to wash our hands of responsibilities in the present. This war has shown that the non-self-governing parts of the Commonwealth are not, as our enemies supposed, a weakness to Great Britain in time of trouble, but a strength. In other words, whatever may have happened in the past, Great Britain has now won the consent of the ruled to the fact--not necessarily to the methods--of British rule. To use what is doubtless unduly constitutional language, we are now faced in India and elsewhere, not with a Revolutionary Movement, but with an Opposition. That is a great incentive to further development.

BOOKS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF VIOLENCE

BERNHARDI, _Germany and the Next War_ (2s.), has become familiar. But this is only one _application_ of a doctrine which has found expression in many spheres, as, for example, in the writings of the French Syndicalists, who claim to be copying the _methods_ of Capitalism, and the _principles_ of Bergson's philosophy--with what justification must be left to the reader to determine. See G. SOREL, _Reflexions sur la Violence_ (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1910, 5 francs), and Sorel's other writings. "Bernhardi-ism" is, in fact, not a German product: it has been before the public for some years under the name of "militancy," in connection with various causes, though it has never been put into execution on so tremendous a scale as by the Prussian Government. Nor is its philosophical basis to be found only, if at all, in Nietzsche.

KULTUR

The insistence on "Culture" as the main factor in the life and development of peoples is to be found in practically every German history, and in a great many non-German writers. It has received an additional vogue from the development of the study of _Sociology_, which naturally seeks out, in tracing the development of societies in the past, the elements which lend themselves to measurement and description, and these are inevitably, from the nature of the evidence, rather "cultural" than moral. It would be invidious to mention instances.

EDUCATION

For Dr. SADLER'S articles see p. 119, above. See also PAULSEN, _German Education: Past and Present._ 1908. 5s. net.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH

The best philosophical book on the relations of advanced and backward races is _The Basis of Ascendancy: a Discussion of certain Principles of Public Policy involved in the Development of the Southern States,_ by EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY (a clergyman living at Montgomery, Alabama) (1909, 6s. net). Though written with reference to the peculiar American problem, the book has a far wider significance. There is no good book which covers the ground either on India or the British Empire. E.R. BEVAN'S little volume on _Indian Nationalism_ (2s. 6d. net) may be mentioned. An article on _India and the Empire_ in the _Round Table_ for September 1912 is also worth mention (and worth reprinting).

THE GREAT SOCIETY

WALLAS, _The Great Society_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), and NORMAN ANGELL, _The Great Illusion_ (1910, 2s. 6d. net), are the standard works--the former as a psychologist and a philosopher, the latter as a pamphleteer with a very acute vision within a limited field.

INTERNATIONAL LAW

See LINDSAY, _The War against War_ (Oxford pamphlets, 2d.), a model of clear argument, so far as it goes. Also ALISON PHILLIPS, _The Confederation of Europe: A Study of the European Alliance, 1813-1823, as an Experiment in the International Organisation of Peace,_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), the best book on the Congress of Vienna and the problems connected with it, especially on the subject of an International Tribunal and Universal Peace. The Prime Minister's speeches will be familiar. See also Mr. Roosevelt's pamphlet on the United States and the Hague Convention (Newnes, 2d.).

MONROE DOCTRINE

See an article by L.S. ROWE in the _Political Quarterly,_ October 1914.

INDEX

Accepting houses Acton, Lord Adalia Adrianople Adriatic, Serb access to Aegean Aehrenthal, Count Agadir crisis Agram Agriculture, German Albania Albion, perfidious Alexander I., Tsar Alexander II. Alexander III. Alexander, King of Serbia Alexandretta Alsace-Lorraine American Jews Angell, Mr. Norman Antivari Arab movement Armaments Army, Austro-Hungarian Arnold, Matthew Asia Minor Asquith, Mr. Athenians Auffenberg, General Australia Austria, genesis of Austrian Note to Serbia Austrian Question Azev

Baden Balance of Power Balkan League situation wars Ballads, Serb Ballplatz Banat of Temesvár Bank of England Baring, Maurice Bebel, August Belgium Belgrade Berchtold, Count Berlin, Congress of Bernhardi, General Bessarabia Bethmann-Hollveg Bismarck Bobrikoff, General Bohemia Bojana river Bosnia Bosnian annexation Brandenburg Britain, aims of Britain and Germany Brunswick Brussa Bucarest, Treaty of Budapest Bukovina Bulgaria Bülow, Prince Bund, Jewish Byzantium

Cabrinovic Canadian trade Carbonari Carinthia Carlyle Carniola Castlereagh Catherine II. Catholic Church Cattaro Cavour Centre party Cetinje Charlemagne Charles Albert Charles V. Charles the Bold Charles, King of Roumania Cilicia Civil War, American Coalition, Serbo-Croat Cobden Coleridge Colonies, German Comenius Committee of Union and Progress Commonwealth, a European Concert of Europe Conscription Constantine, King Constantinople Constitution, German Consular service Cotton industry Cramb, Professor Credit Crimean War Croatia Culture Cuvaj Cyprus Czechs

Dalmatia Danzig Dardanelles Debreczen Delegations Democracy Denmark Diplomatic Service Disraeli Dmowski, M. Dobrudja Dostoieffsky Downing Street Draga, Queen Dual System Duma Dvorák

Economic policy Education Enver Pasha Epirus Eucken, Rudolf Eugene, Prince Europe, map of

Federalism in Austria Fénelon Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria Fichte _Finance, Haute_ Finland Flemings Flensburg Florence Foreign Office Foreign Policy Forgách, Count Förstner, Lieutenant von Francis Ferdinand, Archduke assassination, Francis Joseph Frankfurt, Diet of Frederick III. Frederick the Great _Fremdenblatt_, article French Revolution Constitution Friedjung Trial

Galicia Garibaldi German Confederation Germanisation German Navy Germans in Austria Goethe Gogol Gold reserve Gore, Bishop Graham, Stephen Greece Grey, Sir Edward Grosswardein

Habsburg, House of Haeckel Hague Congress Conventions Hanotaux, Gabriel Hanover Hanseatic League Harnack Harvey, T.E. Hauptmann, Gerhart Heine Hermannstadt Herzl, Theodor Hohenzollern, House of Holland Holy Alliance Synod Humboldt, Wilhelm von Hungarian Constitution electoral system Hungary, kingdom of Hurban, Svetozar Hus, John

Ibsen Industry and war Inter-State Law Ionian Islands Ipek Ireland Irredentism, Italian Islam Istria, Italian culture in Dalmatia Italy Ivan the Terrible Izvolsky

Jena, battle of Jerusalem Jews Joseph II. Jugoslavia Junkers

Kara George Karageorgevitch dynasty Karlowitz Kavala Kennard, Dr. Khalifate Kiel Canal Konieh Königgrätz Königsberg Konrad von Hoetzendorf Kosovo, battle of Kossuth Kosziusko

_Landmarks_ Lebanon Legitimacy Leipzig, battle of Leopold I., Emperor Leopold II Leopold I. of Belgium Lessing Lloyd George, Mr. Lodz Louis XIV. Luxemburg

Macara, Sir Charles Macedonia Magyarisation Magyars Maria Theresa Marienburg Marx, Karl Masaryk, Professor Maximilian I Mazurian lakes Mazzini Metkovic Metternich Metz Michael, Prince Milan, King Militarism Military Frontiers Mill, _On Liberty_ Milosh Obrenovitch Mohács Moltke Monastir Montenegro Moscow Murray, Gilbert

Napoleon Napoleon III. Napoleonic Wars Nationalities, Hungarian Law of Nationality, idea of false conceptions of Nazim Pasha Nemanja dynasty Neusatz (Novi Sad) New Guinea Nicholas II. Nicholas, Grand Duke Nietzsche Nihilism Norway Novara

Obrenovitch dynasty Orthodox Church

Palermo Palestine Pan-Germans Panslavism Peter the Great Peter, King of Serbia Petrograd Piedmont Pig War Pius IX. Plevna Pobiedonostsev Pola Poland Poles, Austrian Prussian Police state Polish Partition Ponsonby, Mr. A. Posen Prague Princip, murderer Protestantism in Germany Prussia Prussian education Pushkin

Radicalism Radkersburg Ragusa Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Reichstag, German Relief Fund, National Revolution, French of 1848 Russian Reynolds, Rothay Rhodes Rolland, Romain Roosevelt, President Roumania Roumanians of Hungary Rousseau Russia and Prussia Russian Church Russification Russo-Japanese War Ruthenes

Sadler, Dr. Salonica Samoa Sarajevo Sarolea, Dr. Savoy, House of Saxons in Transylvania Schleswig-Holstein School strikes Schurz, Carl Scotland Scott Serbia Serbo-Croat unity Serb Patriarchate Sicilies, Two Silesia Silistria Slav and Teuton Slavophilism Slavs of Austria Slovak Academy Slovaks Slovenes Smyrna Social effects of war Socialism, State Socialists, German Sombart, Professor Southern Slavs State aid Stephen Dushan Stock Exchange Stolypin Sugar Commission Sweden Swinburne Switzerland Sybel Syria Szekels

Teutonic Knights Tirol Tisza, Count Tomanovic, Dr. Trade effects of war Traders, South Sea Trade Unions and war Transylvania Treitschke Trentino Trieste Triple Alliance Entente Tripoli Tschirschky Turkification Turks

Ukraine Ulster Unemployment Ungvár Uniate Church Universal Suffrage

Valona Vardar valley Vatican Venice Victor Emanuel II. Vienna Congress of Violence, Philosophy of Virginia Vistula Voltaire

Wallas, Graham Walloons Warsaw, Grand-Duchy of Weimar Wells, H.G. Westphalia Wied, William of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff William I. William II. William I. of Holland W.E.A. World-Policy, German Wordsworth Würtemberg

Young Turks

Zabern Zionism Zollverein Zvonomir

THE END