LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 NORMAN ANGELL
 
 THE WORLD'S 
 HIGHWAY 
 
 SOME NOTES ON AMERICA'S RELATION TO SEA 
 
 POWER AND NON-MILITARY SANCTIONS 
 
 FOR THE LAW OF NATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN ANGELL 
 
 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE GREAT ILLUSION 
 
 "ARMS AND INDUSTRY," "AMERICA AND 
 
 THE WORLD STATE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1915 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE notes have certainly no pretension of 
 treating exhaustively the questions with 
 which they deal ; still less of being a lawyer's dis- 
 cussion of details of international law: prize, 
 blockade, contraband, search. However impor- 
 tant those things may be, this country's final 
 policy will be, or should be, settled by considera- 
 tions that go rather beyond them. 
 
 What I have attempted, therefore, in the selec- 
 tion and arrangement of these notes, is to bring 
 into relief the more important aspects of the gen- 
 eral principles that underlie international polity 
 in so far as it affects Americans. The book in 
 fact may be regarded as an attempt to furnish 
 an introduction to the study of American foreign 
 policy ; a contribution to national preparedness in 
 that respect. 
 
 A country can as little dispense with pre- 
 paredness in policy as in arms. The idea that 
 the former can be neglected if only the latter are 
 efficient, that we can attain security by military 
 force alone, is one of those errors against which 
 Bismarck warned his countrymen vainly 
 thirty years ago. He then pointed out that mili-
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 tary efficiency, coupled with an absence of definite 
 policy means finally the triumph of the wrong 
 policy; and consequent disaster. 
 
 America is not exempt from this rule. The 
 idea that American military force can have no 
 relation to anything but the repulsion of preda- 
 tory raids upon American territory is only made 
 possible by ignoring certain very patent facts 
 in modern politics. Every great nation de- 
 fends, and is compelled to defend with its armed 
 forces, not merely its territory, but a policy. And 
 this is particularly true of America where the 
 policies that she seems to be developing are likely 
 to come into contact with other, if not rival 
 policies, throughout the world. 
 
 The elasticity of the Monroe Doctrine, pos- 
 sible intervention in Mexico, some sort of suze- 
 rainty over Central America, Pan-Americanism, 
 the future status of the Panama Canal, of the 
 Philippines, the attitude of Japan thereto, Japan- 
 ese immigration, the integrity of China, the Open 
 Door in Asia, America's relation to the Asiatic 
 races generally and to the three great Asiatic 
 powers, including the greatest, Britain ; the ques- 
 tion of the future freedom of the seas, and the 
 protection of American lives and trading rights 
 as against naval belligerency these are only a 
 few of the questions concerning which she will 
 have to frame a policy to be defended in the last
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 resort by her military power. If it is ill framed, 
 swayed first in one direction, then in another, 
 according to the nature of the passing incident 
 of foreign intercourse, these things will become 
 sources of recurring conflict which the very fact 
 of possessing large forces makes dangerous. That 
 is not an argument against military preparedness ; 
 it is an argument for knowing just what the pre- 
 paredness is for, to what general policy the coun- 
 try stands committed; who its allies are to be, 
 what role it is to play in the community of nations. 
 To leave these things to chance, to the influence 
 of passing catch words, remnants of ill defined 
 prejudices, is to make military power an instru- 
 ment for the creation of muddle and disaster; 
 and to expose the country to the risk of duplicat- 
 ing the bad instead of the good side of European 
 experience. 
 
 If that experience is to warn us, it is obvious 
 that we must subject certain accepted doc- 
 trines of European statecraft to pretty ruth- 
 less interrogation. Certainly the fruits which 
 Europeans are now gathering, are not the result 
 of mere errors of detail in policy: consequences 
 so vast can only arise from defects somewhere 
 in the foundations. 
 
 I have tried, therefore, to go to the founda- 
 tions and provoke examination of them. In cer- 
 tain cases these notes are notes mainly of inter-
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 rogation as in the discussion of the doctrine of 
 neutrality, where I suggest that possibly a solu- 
 tion of our difficulty may be found in a fulfilment 
 of the anticipation of Grotius on that subject. It 
 is neither unscientific nor futile to be prepared 
 to push investigation into channels that may pos- 
 sibly prove barren: indeed that is at times an 
 essential part of the scientific method. It is in 
 this spirit also that I have enquired how far in 
 certain circumstances the policy of resistance by 
 other than military means might not prove a 
 remedy for evils that seem otherwise irremediable. 
 With grave doubts in my own mind as to the 
 morality of non-resistance as a general principle 
 in politics, however much may be said for it in 
 certain international cases on the ground of prac- 
 tical expediency, it is at least possible that con- 
 certed social and economic pressure may prove 
 in many cases superior to military means, both 
 on grounds of morality and effectiveness. It is 
 a proof of how little original thinking and re- 
 search is brought to the field of international 
 politics that the possibilities of this form of 
 pressure as a means of international coercion 
 have been so little investigated. I have attempted 
 to give a hint of some of those possibilities. 
 
 Possibly the method of ruthless interroga- 
 tion may give to some of these pages an air of 
 pro-Germanism. Yet I happen to have written
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 against Prussianism long before it was fash- 
 ionable so to do; when, for instance, Mr. 
 Joseph Chamberlain was advocating an Anglo- 
 German alliance. At that time, 1 writing from 
 Paris, I found, to my cost, that it was not per- 
 mitted to an author or journalist to say anything 
 good of France which I tried hard to say or 
 anything bad of Germany. Times change. 
 
 I still preserve my anti-Prussianism ; which this 
 war has justified. I think that Germans must 
 carry the main burden of blame for an extent 
 not merely of suffering which sometimes may 
 dignify and ennoble men, and which is not the 
 highest cost of war but for implanting seeds 
 of evil and wickedness of which even distant 
 generations will gather the fruit. 
 
 But one wants to understand this thing; 
 because we can't deal with it unless we do. 
 And while believing the Germans to be en- 
 tirely wrong in this matter I realise that they 
 may honestly believe themselves to be entirely 
 right. And this simple distinction surely not 
 very intricate or abstruse very many, perhaps 
 most, who deal with this subject refuse to make. 
 Certain critics have insisted upon accusing me 
 of pro-Germanism because I recognise the quite 
 evident truth that even wicked people may be mis- 
 Cowards the close of the Dreyfus case and beginning of the 
 Boer War.
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 taken ; and that the wrongness of a conviction has 
 nothing whatever to do with the obstinacy or 
 sincerity with which it may be held. It is not 
 sufficient, apparently, to believe that the Germans 
 are wrong; one must also believe that they know 
 themselves to be wrong. Which is to underesti- 
 mate altogether man's capacity for self-deception 
 and ignore some of the simplest facts concerning 
 the working of human nature. 
 
 I can hardly hope, however, that mere prefa- 
 tory caution of this kind will suffice to save a 
 book from misunderstanding or misrepresenta- 
 tion. In an earlier work, 2 anticipating the con- 
 fusions to which that kind of literature seems 
 subject in the minds of some critics, I wrote in the 
 preface these words : "The argument of this book 
 is not that war is impossible, but that it is futile." 
 The first paragraph of the first chapter was a 
 forecast of the inevitable collision between Eng- 
 land and Germany unless there were a change in 
 European policy; in the last paragraph of the 
 book the warning as to recurring disasters in 
 Europe, unless the problem of policy were tackled, 
 was reiterated; three whole chapters were de- 
 voted to showing why the uselessness of war 
 would never of itself prevent war. And the 
 result of it all is that to-day most critical refer- 
 ences to the book imply its thesis to be the "im- 
 
 3 The Great Illusion,
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 possibility of war"; and that the present war dis- 
 proves its arguments. 
 
 This, parenthetically, not by way of personal 
 vindication. It rightly matters very little to the 
 serious reader whether this or that author should 
 have been misrepresented. It matters a very 
 great deal, if we are to do better than in the past 
 in the management of our society, whether dis- 
 tortion and misrepresentation are to continue to 
 fortify prejudices which already stand so strongly 
 in the way of any general realisation of certain 
 truths essential to that better management. 
 
 The nature of American influence on world 
 politics which in any case, good or bad, will 
 be enormous will be determined mainly by feel- 
 ing and opinion on general principles and broad 
 issues. Democratic judgment obviously cannot 
 be based on induction from a mass of detail. It 
 is to those broader issues that the discussion here 
 for the most part is directed. 
 
 The notes are in considerable part a reproduc- 
 tion of comment that has appeared in Europe and 
 America; and in some cases I could wish that 
 there had been time to recast the form for the 
 purposes of this book. But events in the inter- 
 national field are moving rapidly, and it is now, 
 within the next few months perhaps, that Amer- 
 ican opinion will crystallise on very essential 
 points of policy. It may be worth while therefore,
 
 Xll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 if the thing has value at all, to sacrifice something 
 in form to timeliness. If ever there is an excuse 
 for haste in workmanship I hope it may be ex- 
 tended to me on that ground. 
 
 I am indebted to the editors of "The North 
 American Review," "The Saturday Evening 
 Post," and "The New Republic" for permission 
 to reprint matter which has appeared in their 
 publications ; and to my excellent friend, Mr. C. E. 
 Fayle (author of "The Great Settlement"), for 
 helping me with the data used in chapter IV. 
 Indeed that chapter, mainly a summary of the 
 conclusions of modern strategists as to the 
 mechanism of command of the sea, rather than 
 conclusions of my own, is largely his work. 
 
 NORMAN ANGELL. 
 
 New York, September, 1915.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY 
 
 OF NATIONS 3 
 
 Why the world does not fear British "marinism" 
 and does fear German militarism. "Marinism" 
 does not encroach on social and political freedom 
 and militarism does. The difference between the 
 character of British and German political ex- 
 pansion. Is it in America's best interest to attempt 
 in defense of neutral trading right to limit British 
 Sea Power? Relative unimportance of the trade 
 interests out of which the dispute has arisen. The 
 alternative courses of action before the United 
 States. The course here suggested and an indica- 
 tion of the grounds upon which it will be defended 
 in this book. 
 
 II. AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN EU- 
 
 ROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT? 31 
 
 America could not achieve the objects for which 
 she is contending in her disputes with Germany and 
 Britain merely by ensuring the military victory of 
 the Allies since "the goods could not be delivered" 
 at the Peace. The mere destruction of Austro- 
 German military power could neither be permanent 
 nor give any assurance that future re-groupings of 
 European alliances would not take place, creating 
 a situation as unsatisfactory in the future as in the 
 past. The impermanence of the destruction of a 
 nation's military power and the mutability of mili- 
 tary alliances belong to the few unquestionable 
 lessons of history. 
 
 III. AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN 
 
 WORLD? 57 
 
 What are Anglo-Saxon and Prussian ideals? In . 
 setting out to destroy the one and protect the 
 other we must be able to recognize which is which. 
 Is Europe Prussianising itself as part of the pro-
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 cess of increasing its military efficiency? If mili- 
 tary conflict is to continue military efficiency 
 will determine its issue, and that implies the req- 
 uisite form of national organisation and code of 
 morals. The highest price of war is the Prus- 
 sianisation of the people who wage it, however 
 good their cause may be. The process is not the 
 result of race, but of doctrine acting upon human 
 qualities which are latent in all of us. Thus 
 though the flag may be Anglo-Saxon the society 
 of the future will be Prussianised if we have to 
 beat the Prussian at his own game. Is there any 
 other way of beating him? 
 
 IV. THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER.... 119 
 
 If "marinism" has not the special political and 
 social dangers connected with militarism (as in the 
 first chapter we saw that it has not), may not the 
 Anglo-Saxons find in sea power a means of extending 
 their influence without paying the moral price in- 
 volved in Prussianism? To answer that it is neces- 
 sary to realize how sea power works. This chapter 
 gives a summary of the general conclusions of 
 authoritative modern strategists on the operation 
 of sea power and the relation it must bear to 
 military power. 
 
 V. SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER.... 153 
 
 Is the assumption that by enlarging the belligerent 
 rights of sea power we shall ensure the predomi- 
 nance of the non-military, Anglo-Saxon, Liberal 
 type of society as against the continental military- 
 authoritative form, a valid assumption? The evi- 
 dence is all against it. Sea power being increasingly 
 dependent upon military allies for the exercise of 
 world influence is unable to pick and choose as to 
 the character of the nation it supports, as the box- 
 ing of the compass by a nation like England in her 
 alliances proves. The present war is repeating 
 and illustrating what past combinations have 
 abundantly shown. 
 
 VI. THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND 
 SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE 
 OP NATIONS 189 
 
 The whole history of the fight for neutral right is a 
 history of failure. The power which is politically 
 the freest and most liberal in the world has by its 
 practice tenaciously prevented any enlargement of
 
 CONTENTS xv 
 
 neutral right. Yet it has shown by its attitude in 
 peace time towards international law a desire to 
 respect those rights. This seems to indicate that 
 it is impossible to reconcile belligerent necessity at 
 sea with real observance of neutral right. In that 
 case would not neutrals better secure their larger 
 and more permanent interest by the modification 
 of the doctrine of neutrality as at present under- 
 stood in the direction of economic discrimination 
 as against the side that has refused to submit its 
 case to inquiry and so violated the international 
 conventions designed to protect the integrity of 
 states? This is a fulfillment of the Grotian antici- 
 pation concerning neutrality and will be in keep- 
 ing with future conditions if the guarantors of 
 neutrality treaties should be largely increased in 
 number. Would the assumption of limited inter- 
 national obligation of this kind expose states to 
 greater risk or cost, or surrender of sovereignty and 
 independence than is involved in their position in 
 war time under existing arrangements? 
 
 VII. THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM OF POWER. . 231 
 
 If the struggle for power is the struggle of rival 
 groups for sustenance in a world of limited space 
 and opportunity, if war is really, as in the prevail- 
 ing conception it is, a "struggle for bread," it is in- 
 evitable between men and will go on. If one of 
 two parties must eat the other the two cannot come 
 to a really amicable agreement about the matter. 
 Even if this is not the case, but mankind remains 
 persuaded that it is so, war will also continue. 
 But in that case it would be a struggle not of neces- 
 sity, but of misunderstanding which better think- 
 ing and adjustment could dispose of as it disposed 
 of religious wars, the cessation of which proves 
 clearly that some of man's deepest passions can be 
 redirected by a different interpretation of facts 
 knowledge. Is the "expansion" of states a real 
 need? Nearly all political philosophy and public 
 discussion avoid that question, but until we have 
 made up our mind on it all schemes of world 
 organization must necessarily be frustrated owing, 
 among other factors, to the elusive processes 
 of the psychology of fear. 
 
 VIII. NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- 
 NATIONAL COERCION 297 
 
 Any method of defence in the modern world, in- 
 cluding the military, involves a large measure of
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 international agreement: the present war has neces- 
 sitated a military alliance between nine separate 
 and very diverse states and may finally number 
 more. Yet despite this large measure of agreement, 
 one force, that of economic pressure, which might 
 tell most effectively against Germany, may be 
 largely ineffective; partly because of "leakages" 
 owing to the position of neutrals, but much more 
 because the pressure will come to an end as soon as 
 the war is over. Yet much of the motive of aggres- 
 sive war the desire for "culture domination" and 
 commerical expansion could be neutralized and 
 even reversed if the cost of aggression were world- 
 wide exclusion of both the culture and the com- 
 merce of the aggressor, not merely during a war, 
 but until such time as the aggressive policy were 
 modified. Recent facts go to show that the very 
 highly developed means of co-ordinated effort 
 which nations now possess would make this method 
 effective where in the past it would not have been. 
 In any case its worth as a practical means de- 
 pends, not upon its absolute effectiveness as an 
 instrument of international coercion, but its rela- 
 tive effectiveness as compared to present methods, 
 or as an aid thereto.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY 
 OF NATIONS
 
 Why the world does not fear British "marinism" and 
 does fear German militarism. "Marinism" does not en- 
 croach on social and political freedom and militarism 
 does. The difference between the character of British 
 and German political expansion. Is it in America's best 
 interest to attempt in defence of neutral trading right 
 to limit the British Sea Power? Relative unimportance 
 of the trade interests out of which the dispute has arisen. 
 The alternative courses of action before the United States. 
 The course here suggested and an indication of the 
 grounds upon which it will be defended in this book.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AMERICA, THE SEA AND THE SOCIETY 
 OF NATIONS 
 
 ERTAIN German writers on international 
 questions have expressed their frank as- 
 tonishment that while the world has talked a 
 great deal of the menace of German militarism, 
 it has had relatively little to say of the menace of 
 British "marinism." The reason however is not 
 far to seek. British naval predominance, be its 
 effects what they may, is not in any case a "men- 
 ace" it is an accomplished fact. The world has 
 very long been subject to whatever is involved in 
 it. We know the worst about it and have learned 
 that in normal times in times of peace it does 
 not constitute a very grievous tyranny. 
 
 The "freedom of the seas" is a phrase very 
 loosely used. In the century which has been 
 marked by England's unquestioned naval pre- 
 dominance the ships of all nations have in peace 
 time sailed the seas without let or hindrance; 
 England's power has given England's commerce 
 no privilege not freely possessed by the com- 
 merce of all other nations. It is true that many 
 
 3
 
 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 who discuss naval policies and international affairs 
 generally, often assume that in some way "naval 
 supremacy" can secure for the nation possessing 
 it, trade that could not otherwise be secured, 
 can in some way, even in peace times, direct the 
 currents of trade in its favour. 1 And it is likely 
 that such a theory has played a large part in 
 the general competition for naval power. But 
 there are no facts to support it, and those who 
 give expression to it as though it were a self- 
 evident proposition have never explained in what 
 manner sea supremacy can operate in this way, 
 indicated how the alleged process is supposed 
 to work. One wonders, for instance, how they 
 would explain the fact that the great period of 
 expansion in German overseas trade a period in 
 which Germans were "capturing" British trade 
 in every quarter of the globe was a period in 
 which German naval power hardly counted ; when 
 the German came fourth or fifth upon the list of 
 the world's navies. England was simply unable to 
 use her naval supremacy in any way to prevent 
 this development, at least in so far as most of it 
 was concerned. In certain of her Asiatic pro- 
 tectorates doubtless she could have erected bar- 
 riers against foreign trade. But it is one of the 
 curiosities of the situation we are discussing that 
 it is the nations which are not very great sea 
 
 'See p. 246.
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 5 
 
 powers that exclude trade rivals most rigorously 
 from their overseas protectorates, colonies, and 
 coastal traffic. France, Holland, Italy, and even 
 Portugal all exact a certain measure of prefer- 
 ence for their trade with their overseas territories 
 and always have done so. Some of them, like 
 France, exclude foreign shipping from their 
 coastwise trade. These are evidently powers 
 therefore that do not depend upon the possession 
 of naval supremacy; of which British sea suprem- 
 acy has not robbed them and which the nation 
 possessing naval supremacy does not happen to 
 exercise. 
 
 Incidentally it may be worth while to point 
 out that German commercial men as a whole 
 have recognised the facts of this situation more 
 clearly perhaps than the statesmen, political doc- 
 trinaires, and admirals. The big navy agitation 
 of Germany, at least in its earlier stages, got 
 much more support from Pan-German newspaper 
 writers and Chauvinist publicists generally than 
 it did from Germans actually engaged in the busi- 
 ness of building up Germany's foreign trade. 
 Indeed we may say that however strenuously the 
 political doctrinaires may have urged the eco- 
 nomic advantage of sea power, the work-a-day 
 world never felt that England's supremacy in it 
 weighed upon them in any way; and would be 
 largely indifferent to it were not vague fears and
 
 6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 prejudices stirred by portentous political theories. 
 
 But there are further reasons why the world as 
 a whole has not placed British marinism upon 
 the same plane as German militarism. Militarism 
 of the modern continental type "the armed 
 nation" affects directly and heavily every 
 family in the nation; necessitates the shaping 
 to its ends the whole life and character, the 
 moral and social outlook of a people. Marinism 
 does not. German militarism means in fact the 
 moulding of the lives of individual Germans in a 
 certain way ; submitting each German to a certain 
 moral training and intellectual discipline. It 
 touches his conscience. For instance, it teaches 
 (not merely a certain class or profession but the 
 whole nation) that in certain circumstances the 
 individual does not possess a conscience : that the 
 State has taken it over for purposes that transcend 
 any personal question, even of right or wrong. 
 
 The prof oundest human values are thus changed 
 by submitting a whole nation to conscription, 
 especially when it is done with German thorough- 
 ness. Nor does the experience of France, Russia, 
 Austria or Italy invalidate this conclusion, 
 though for the moment it is convenient to over- 
 look it. Fifteen years ago, however, both in 
 England and America the Dreyfus affair was 
 taken as demonstrating that these moral results 
 had gone even deeper in France than they had in
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 7 
 
 Germany. But to the extent to which Germany 
 set the pace she had a responsibility in advance 
 of the others. 
 
 Marinism does not thus affect the whole 
 nation. The navy is not the nation in the sense 
 that the army is the nation; the whole manhood 
 is not passed through its mill. The navy, even 
 when it occupies the place that it does in the 
 British state, is a thing apart from the lives of 
 the people: it does not subject every man to a 
 uniform moral moulding nor is it compelled to 
 create a special social conscience affecting deeply 
 ultimate human valuations in such a way as to 
 touch every man's character and work-a-day 
 conduct. 
 
 It has been possible for England to ouild up a 
 great navy, to utilise it, to render it efficient, 
 without having to create a new doctrine of the 
 State, and a special organisation of the State for 
 the purpose. Political doctrine and political 
 organisation have developed irrespective of the 
 "needs of the navy." And though it may be true 
 that it is British sea power which has made North 
 America much more an English continent than a 
 Dutch, French, and Spanish one, it did not do so 
 by any process analogous to the process that 
 Germany has used in Alsace and Posen, and 
 Russia in Finland and Poland. The British navy 
 did not need the conscription of Canadian citizens
 
 8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 and so was not impelled either to centralise her 
 Imperial power in the way that, since Napoleon, 
 the military States of Europe have steadily 
 centralised theirs, nor to unify organisation, 
 language, and national outlook for military pur- 
 poses. Political power based mainly upon a navy 
 permits of much freer and looser national organ- 
 isation than does political power based mainly 
 upon an army. This has given us a type of 
 "Empire" never before known in the world a 
 political organisation which is indeed not an 
 Empire properly speaking at all, but a congeries 
 of what are in fact independent states linked by 
 a few but very powerful common social and po- 
 litical ideals; on the whole the most inspiring, as 
 it is certainly the most successful type of political 
 co-operation between separate national units that 
 the world has yet seen, furnishing what is prob- 
 ably the best model for the world state of the 
 future. 
 
 One of its outstanding features and this again 
 is one which it is essential to realise in estimating 
 the relative "menace" of militarism and marin- 
 ism, of British and German power is that 
 British Imperial authority is not, as a matter of 
 actual fact, imposed at all and does not reside upon 
 force. The self-governing parts of the British 
 Empire have passed to use the language of the 
 political schoolmen from a condition of "status"
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 9 
 
 to that of "contract." For all practical purposes the 
 independence of the self-governing British colo- 
 nies has been recognised, particularly in modern 
 English practice, over and over again. It is not 
 merely that the colonies have the full right to create 
 what tariff or exclusion laws against the Mother 
 country that they please, but that by a curious 
 anomaly, Great Britain has by established practice 
 surrendered in her own colonies rights which 
 under international law she would possess in for- 
 eign countries. This was illustrated, for instance, 
 in the conflict which arose between India and 
 Natal over the treatment of British Indians in the 
 latter country ; and by the action of General Botha, 
 Prime Minister of the South African Union, in 
 expelling certain Englishmen from the Trans- 
 vaal at the time of labour troubles there. It is 
 certain that if the acts of Natal and the South 
 African Union in these cases had been committed 
 by a foreign country, Britain would have taken 
 steps to protect the interests of her Indian sub- 
 jects in the one case and English ones in the 
 other, under the ordinary treaty rights which she 
 possesses. But the British government was 
 virtually helpless in the presence of the Colonial 
 government of Natal and of that of General 
 Botha. 2 This, and many similar instances, could 
 
 'For specific details on Colonial relationship see "The Great 
 Illusion" (Chap, vii, Part I), Putnams.
 
 io THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 be quoted to show that in reality, though perhaps 
 not by constitutional form, the British Empire 
 does not rest upon authority or force, but upon 
 agreement : it is an alliance of free states. 
 
 The point does not need labouring therefore 
 that as between the moral quality of that type 
 of political society which is the outcome of mili- 
 tarism on the one hand and marinism on the 
 other there are vast differences which justify the 
 world in declining to put the British menace in 
 the same category as the German one. 
 
 And yet, as I write these lines, the President of 
 the United States is busily engaged in asserting 
 as against Great Britain, and on behalf of Amer- 
 ican commercial interest, certain rights of neutral 
 trade which must result in limiting the effective- 
 ness of sea power as a weapon against Germany 
 and so adding to the final chances of German vic- 
 tory. Indeed in one communication to Germany 
 he implies that America has generally in the past 
 taken the German view of sea rights as against 
 the British (and even if that is not the implication 
 it happens to be the fact). In the passage I have 
 in mind the Secretary of State, speaking for the 
 American government, says : 
 
 The Government of the United States and the Imperial 
 German Government are contending for the same great
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 11 
 
 object, have long stood together in urging the very 
 principles upon which the Government of the United 
 States now so solemnly insists. They are both contend- 
 ing for the freedom of the seas. The Government of 
 the United States will continue to contend for that 
 freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without com- 
 promise and at any cost. It invites the practical co- 
 operation of the Imperial German Government at this 
 time, when co-operation may accomplish most and this 
 great common object be most strikingly and effectively 
 achieved. 
 
 The Imperial German Government expresses the hope 
 that this object may be in some measure accomplished 
 even before the present war ends. It can be. The 
 Government of the United States . . . feels obliged 
 to insist upon it, by whomsoever violated or ignored, in 
 the protection of its own citizens. 3 
 
 This passage and subsequently the energetic de- 
 fence of neutral right as against any extension 
 of belligerent right by Great Britain has puzzled 
 many Americans, as it certainly created uneasi- 
 ness in the minds of many Englishmen. It goes 
 some way to confirm the impression that on behalf 
 of commercial interest Americans are content to 
 harass the employment of that sea power which 
 for a hundred years has never threatened them 
 and which in the opinion of very many Amer- 
 icans themselves stands between them and a 
 dire military tyranny. 
 
 'Note of July 21, 1915.
 
 12 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 To put it at its lowest, has not the United States 
 a greater interest in the maintenance of belliger- 
 ent rights at sea, which means the effectiveness 
 of sea power? "If the German submarine cam- 
 paign should be successful," says one American 
 authority, 4 "and British sea power be rendered 
 ineffective for the protection of trade routes the 
 disaster which threatens the British Empire 
 would be in large measure shared by the United 
 States. The existing dependence of this country 
 on British Maritime supremacy for its prosperity 
 and even its safety is complete, and under the 
 present critical conditions appalling. American 
 exports and imports are carried almost entirely 
 in British bottoms. American citizens are obliged 
 to reach Europe on ships flying the British flag. 
 The Monroe Doctrine has been allowed to 
 flourish under the benevolent protection of 
 British sea power. The British fleet affords the 
 only real guarantee for the security of the 
 Panama canal." 
 
 Surely there are interests here greater than 
 the mere trade interests of certain exporters 
 whose goods happen to be held up or delayed? 
 
 Whatever our decision in this matter of sea 
 rights this much is clear: that the mere trade 
 interests under discussion between the American 
 
 *The New Republic, May 15, 1915.
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 13 
 
 and British governments are relatively a small 
 and temporary thing compared to the principles 
 of belligerent right involved in the discussion. 
 It is these which are the permanent and important 
 things: in which the future of civilisation is 
 involved. 
 
 This last phrase is so hackneyed and over- 
 worked that we lose its meaning. Yet it means 
 here just what it says. On the outcome of this 
 question an outcome which American action will 
 very largely determine for the world depend the 
 kind of lives that we shall lead in the future, the 
 objects which they will embody; our freedom per- 
 haps in disposing of them, the morality that will 
 guide them. 
 
 In the pages that follow an attempt is made 
 to bring into relief some of the facts which must 
 be weighed in considering just what, for our 
 common welfare in the western world, is the best 
 course with reference to neutral and belligerent 
 right at sea, and the exercise of sea power. 
 
 We are faced by the possibility of three 
 courses: To confirm and fortify belligerent 
 right, leaving its exercise to the power command- 
 ing the sea for the time being, which would be 
 the result of accepting the British position in the 
 present dispute; to attempt to secure the limita- 
 tion of belligerent right and the protection of 
 neutral right by the strengthening of interna-
 
 14 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tional law; or to maintain or even enlarge bel- 
 ligerent right, but internationalise its exercise 
 in some form. This involves the abolition of 
 neutrality as now conceived. The rights of 
 nations as a whole would rest, not upon their 
 holding aloof from conflicts which may arise, but 
 upon their participation to the end of securing 
 respect for certain things like inviolability of ter- 
 ritory which represent needs that are common 
 to all. 
 
 I am suggesting tentatively that solution will 
 be found in the direction of the last course and 
 have in the pages that follow given the reasons 
 why. Just what that method means and how it 
 might be applied in certain circumstances even in 
 the present war can best be made clear by repro- 
 ducing the terms of a definite proposal made as 
 the reply to certain questions which Americans, 
 in the Lusitania affair were compelled to ask 
 themselves; the questions and reply being as 
 follows : 
 
 Must America either lamely accept with 
 humiliating inertia a gross violation of her 
 own right and dignity and of the common 
 interest, or else take part in a war which 
 however successful will not necessarily ad- 
 vance in the least degree the objects for 
 which she fights the future safety of her 
 citizens and respect of their rights in war 
 time, a better international law and its more
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 15 
 
 scrupulous future observance and which 
 conceivably might even render those objects 
 more remote than ever? 
 
 Is there no third course? 
 
 Events have already pointed to a possible 
 one. 
 
 Great Britain is at this moment engaged 
 in negotiating with the merchants of neutral 
 countries as to the conditions upon which 
 they shall be allowed to trade with one an- 
 other, the object of course being to prevent 
 Germany securing supplies of any kind 
 through neutral sources. This amounts ob- 
 viously to an attempt to control the inter- 
 national trade of the world in such a way as 
 to serve Great Britain's military purposes. 
 
 The United States government, as apart 
 from certain of her merchants, has of course 
 refused to take part in these negotiations 
 for obvious reasons: this right to lay down 
 the conditions of trade between neutrals, 
 irrespective of blockade and contraband as 
 heretofore understood, constitutes a very 
 pregnant development of belligerent rights 
 at sea. However much the American people 
 may approve England's general cause in this 
 war, the American government could not 
 allow such development to become by prece- 
 dent an accepted part of sea law, because in 
 some future war such functions might be 
 exercised by a power other than England on 
 behalf of a cause of quite other character. 
 Moreover, it is freely alleged by American 
 merchants that British control of neutral
 
 16 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 trade is not exercised impartially: that, 
 while on the ground of preventing supplies 
 reaching Germany, Great Britain has ex- 
 cluded American merchandise from neutral 
 ports, British goods of the same kind have 
 been going to those ports in increasing quan- 
 tities. Whatever of truth there may be in 
 this allegation it is evident that if ever bel- 
 ligerent right expanded into the formal 
 recognition of the kind of control over 
 neutral trade aimed at by Great Britain, it 
 is just such abuses as these from which 
 neutrals would in future suffer. 
 
 The whole matter is at this moment the 
 subject of very serious negotiation between 
 Washington and London and the cause of 
 some illfeeling between sections of the two 
 countries. 
 
 Yet this very situation might in the event 
 of rupture of diplomatic negotiations be- 
 tween the United States and Germany be so 
 handled as to become not merely a means of 
 solving the special and present American 
 difficulties concerning neutral rights and 
 interests, but of achieving the larger purpose 
 of developing a really civilized international 
 law and finding some means of enforcing 
 it more efficient than the very clumsy instru- 
 ment military force has proven itself so far 
 to be. Out of the Anglo-American negotia- 
 tions might develop an understanding afford- 
 ing means of avoiding the absurd stultifica- 
 tion which mere military co-operation with 
 the Allies would involve for America the
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 17 
 
 position that is of fighting a war to assure 
 the victory of one side, to find after the 
 war, perhaps, that that side is as much op- 
 posed to any form of international law at 
 sea which will really protect American and 
 neutral right and interest as is the beaten 
 side. 
 
 For, if the suggestion which follows 
 proves feasible, the constructive develop- 
 ment in international law of some sanction 
 enabling the community of nations to en- 
 force it, would not wait the end of war nor 
 be dependent upon a definite victory of one 
 side, but would take place during the war 
 and would later still be operative even though 
 the Allies were not decisively victorious in a 
 military sense. 
 
 Let us assume a rupture of diplomatic 
 relations between America and Germany 
 a contingency which recent events seem to 
 render not altogether impossible. America 
 would in such an event in any case put her 
 defences in as thorough order as possible, 
 though the likelihood of Germany sending an 
 army across the Atlantic at this juncture is, 
 to say the least, small. But American naval 
 force would probably prepare to be in a posi- 
 tion to convoy ships and so forth. 5 
 
 America should certainly make it plain to 
 Germany and to the Allies for that matter 
 
 "This was written during the acute phase of the negotiations 
 with Germany. Even though the crisis pass, the plan suggested 
 is best illustrated by applying it to an actual case. It has there- 
 fore been left in its original form.
 
 18 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 that the absence of American military co- 
 operation with the armies now fighting Ger- 
 many was not due to mere indifference to 
 the causes involved, still less to a desire self- 
 ishly to avoid the cost and suffering of war 
 in the achievement of her purpose, but be- 
 cause both her own and the larger and 
 ultimate general interest could be more 
 effectively achieved by another form of co- 
 operation, which would be as follows : 
 
 America would offer to settle the whole 
 contraband and blockade dispute with Eng- 
 land on the basis of making international that 
 virtual control of the overseas trade of the 
 world which England now exercises. That 
 is to say, all that international trade now 
 affected by British action should still be 
 subject to control for the definite purpose of 
 preventing Germany securing supplies; but 
 that control should be exercised, not arbi- 
 trarily by Great Britain but by all the Allies 
 plus the United States and with the unofficial 
 co-operation of the remaining neutrals as 
 well. Prize courts and courts of control 
 should not be British but representative of all 
 these powers. The arrangement would in 
 the circumstances amount to an inter- 
 national control of the world's supplies for 
 the purpose of withholding them from Ger- 
 many, and in such a way as to avoid diffi- 
 culty between the combatants and between 
 them and the neutrals, and as to render the 
 blockade or siege of Germany effective not 
 merely by sea power, but by co-operation
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 19 
 
 between the nations of the world as a 
 whole. 
 
 Such an international body made up of 
 representatives of America, Britain and her 
 colonies, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium, 
 Japan and, less officially, of the Scandinavian 
 and Balkan states, Holland, Switzerland and 
 Greece would not deal merely with matters 
 of exports and imports, with trade between 
 them, but with financial arrangements as 
 well with exchange and credit difficulties, 
 loans, censorship of mails and all the thorny 
 problems that have arisen during the war. 
 From these matters it might perhaps pro- 
 ceed to deal with such problems as the dis- 
 posal of German property interned ships, 
 businesses of various kinds, royalties on 
 patents, bank balances and so forth and, it 
 may be, more remote arrangements as to the 
 future control of German action in the 
 world: tariff arrangements, the conditions 
 upon which Germany should at the peace be 
 once more admitted to the community of 
 nations, whether on equal terms or not; 
 whether the most efficient means of exacting 
 some indemnification for damage done might 
 not be by sequestration of German property 
 throughout the world and possibly some sur- 
 tax by tariff, ship and mail dues, all of course 
 subject to due legal judgment of an inter- 
 national court. 
 
 In short, there would be in the bodies so 
 created, the beginnings of the world organ- 
 isation of our common resources, social,
 
 20 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 economical and political, for the purpose of 
 dealing with a recalcitrant member of inter- 
 national society, by other than purely mili- 
 tary means a starting point whence inter- 
 national law might be made a reality, a code 
 that is, not merely expressing the general 
 interest but sanctioning processes which fur- 
 nish means of enforcing respect for it. 
 
 This control would centre at first mainly in 
 America, since during the course of the war 
 the activities and resources of the existing 
 belligerent nations would more and more be 
 absorbed by military operations, thus making 
 America the largest single source of sup- 
 plies, money and ammunition. 
 
 If the war goes on a year or so, the finan- 
 cial drain upon England by reason of her 
 immense foreign purchase is likely to come 
 near crippling her credit ; whether the Allies 
 could go on indefinitely purchasing material 
 from outside sources, might well become the 
 determining question of the war's issue. If 
 the United States were to assume the respon- 
 sibility of furnishing munitions and material 
 upon such terms as to sustain British credit 
 and liberate an increasing proportion of the 
 European manufacturing population for 
 military service, this country could by purely 
 economic co-operation, make a decisive con- 
 tribution to the coercion of Germany. 
 
 But though America's economic position 
 would be dominant at such juncture, she 
 should deliberately internationalise the con- 
 trol it would imply, not using it to impose an
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 21 
 
 American view, but for the purpose of secur- 
 ing adherence to the common rules drawn up 
 for the common good. 
 
 Let us see how far the general method 
 here indicated might apply to a later situa- 
 tion of the war. 
 
 If Europe is to crush Germany within her 
 own borders, and keep her crushed, it will 
 be at the price of the Prussianisation of the 
 whole of Europe. To exact indemnities from 
 Germany will mean the military occupation 
 of her territories, and that means the main- 
 tenance perhaps for many years of large 
 armies by the Allies. To break up the German 
 Empire would mean the annexation of some 
 of her territory and the turning of the 
 western allies into conquerors and military 
 rulers of alien (German) populations. And 
 yet the alternative for Europe is to allow 
 Germany after the peace, to build up her 
 strength and wealth so involving the possi- 
 bility, five or ten or fifteen years hence, of a 
 recuperated Germany still dreaming of world 
 domination. That is to say that would be 
 the alternative if the action of the western 
 world were limited to military action. But 
 if we can assume the international control 
 of the world's wealth in some such a way as 
 that above indicated, well established, hav- 
 ing gone on for some time, you get a situa- 
 tion in which the channels of trade would for 
 prolonged periods have been turned away 
 from Germany and a situation also in which, 
 for instance, Germany's enemies would con-
 
 22 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 trol virtually every pound of cotton grown in 
 the world. And the needs of the war would 
 have engendered between those enemies 
 much mutual helpfulness in the way of loans, 
 credit arrangements, etc., and with their re- 
 sources organised and their action co-ordi- 
 nated by central international organs. If 
 such a situation existed, German aggression 
 would be faced by forces that military power 
 could not meet. 
 
 In applying the general principle underlying 
 this proposal to the normal international situa- 
 tion, I am suggesting that the economic action 
 in this case urged upon the non-Teutonic powers, 
 should in future be taken against any nation 
 which goes to war without submitting its case 
 at least to enquiry. The community of nations 
 would thus not be obliged to pass upon the 
 merits of any given dispute in order to decide 
 upon which side their economic aid should be 
 thrown: the anti-social nation, the offender 
 against the world's order, the aggressor would 
 be the one which, in any dispute, used its force 
 against another without submitting its case to 
 international examination. The international 
 community would be justified in coming to this 
 conclusion, irrespective of the ultimate merits of 
 the case, just as within the nation the law re- 
 strains an individual who, making himself judge 
 of his own case in a difference with another,
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 23 
 
 seizes the goods of that other in execution of his 
 own judgment. Even though the claim on be- 
 half of which the seizure was made prove well 
 founded, the act of force is nevertheless a chal- 
 lenge to all social order. If allowed as a principle 
 between men, law would disappear and society 
 would go to pieces. Thus, also, under the same 
 illustration, the group of nations resisting the 
 action of one using its force in defiance of inter- 
 national examination, represent the "community," 
 and although only a majority, their decisions may 
 have the sanctity of international law. This is 
 the ethical justification of the suggestions here 
 made. 
 
 Some of the more obvious objections thereto 
 are dealt with in the final chapter of this book. 
 Among the reasons which have prompted the sug- 
 gestions and which are discussed in greater detail 
 in the pages that follow are these: 
 
 (i) History reveals repeated and striking 
 failure of the attempt to limit belligerent right at 
 sea and enlarge neutral right. Even if we could 
 assume international law enforcible by neutral 
 against belligerent it would, unless radically en- 
 larged, offer but feeble protection. That law is 
 so far mainly case law, a matter of precedent. 
 And a neutral who goes to war to vindicate his 
 right becomes by that fact a belligerent and in 
 the attempt to make his action effective tends by
 
 24 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 his conduct to enlarge belligerent right. There is 
 thus a tendency for belligerents to secure practical 
 immunity for violation of neutral right as the 
 present war illustrates. 
 
 (2) In so far as the conception of neutrality is 
 based on the assumption that the nations not 
 actually participating in a war have no concern 
 therein; that they are without obligation to 
 either belligerent and can be partitioned off from 
 its effects, the conception is based on a series of 
 fictions. By the growth of their mutual relations 
 and the increase of interdependence between 
 them, the nations do in fact form a society, and 
 if they are to recognise the implications of that 
 fact neutrality in any real sense in the case of a 
 great war is no longer possible. An examination 
 of the process by which the largest degree of 
 freedom and independence has been secured for 
 the individuals of any human society as for in- 
 stance in the communities within the state re- 
 veals a gradual abandonment of the attitude of 
 "neutrality/' A community which is "neutral" 
 when one of its members is the victim of another 
 using his force to defy the law designed for the 
 protection of all is a community in which the free- 
 dom of all is in danger. Society within the State 
 has only been able to solve the problem of bel- 
 ligerent versus neutral rights by abolishing neu- 
 trality and becoming itself the belligerent.
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 25 
 
 (3) The application of this analogy to the case 
 of the nation does not necessarily imply the crea- 
 tion of an "International Police" or navy. One 
 of the most powerful weapons of sea power 
 perhaps in most cases likely to arise the most 
 powerful is that which in existing usage enables 
 the combatant that commands the sea to compel 
 neutrals to enter into economic alliance with him 
 and against his enemy by making it impossible 
 for the latter to secure ammunition supplies etc. 
 while being free to do so himself. Yet this power- 
 ful means of coercion in the last resort depends 
 upon the action of neutrals which they are free to 
 withhold if they will. Each nation is free to say 
 whether it will export supplies even to a power 
 in command of the sea. This option enables 
 neutrals as a whole to decide in large measure 
 the effectiveness or otherwise of command of the 
 sea by a belligerent. The exercise of such an 
 option in common would enable them to transfer 
 from individuals to the community much of the 
 power inherent in command of the sea. 
 
 (4) The retention of predominant sea power in 
 the hands of Anglo-Saxon nations does not neces- 
 sarily imply the predominance of free and non- 
 military civilisation as against the military form. 
 Though sea power is still in certain circumstances 
 enormously efficacious, it cannot impose political 
 control save by co-operation with military allies ;
 
 26 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 and the relative importance of the military arm 
 in the combination tends to become greater. 
 The increasing need for military co-operation 
 may compel a sea power to support highly 
 militarised nations: it is not free to pick and 
 choose, as the present war and the history 
 of the last hundred years abundantly shows. 
 Obviously also there may be international con- 
 flicts in which sea power with all the belligerent 
 rights that Anglo-Saxon practice has given to it, 
 will be exercised by nations other than England 
 or America. If it becomes the recognised right 
 of any nation which can secure the command 
 of the sea to exercise over the rest the powers 
 now contained in that command if such control 
 over the affairs of the world is made contingent 
 merely upon preponderant naval power over some 
 rival nation or group then the struggle for 
 power between nations will go on in intensified 
 form and the anarchy which it connotes become 
 more acute. This implies the progressive mili- 
 tarisation of organised society. 
 
 (5) The alternative is some process by which 
 such power shall be transferred from rival units 
 to the community : internationalised. 
 
 The plan here discussed would bring that 
 about in large measure, without the creation of 
 such an instrument as an international navy 
 controlled by some central executive body. That
 
 AMERICA, SEA, AND NATIONS 27 
 
 may be a possibility of the future, but such 
 schemes must, until certain other changes moral 
 and political have taken place, remain paper 
 schemes. Nor is it proposed to limit the powers 
 exercised by Great Britain in the present war. 
 She already, in the exercise of those powers, acts 
 as the mandatory of a considerable international 
 body of eight nations at least. The proposal 
 is still further to internationalise the sanction 
 of that control and to systematise certain com- 
 mon action of the nations not necessarily 
 military action in such way as to make the 
 effectiveness or extent of sea power, or com- 
 mand of the sea, dependent upon the co-operation 
 of the nations as a whole. The mechanism 
 of such control is explained more fully in 
 chapter VIII. It constitutes a form of inter- 
 national action which, while less cumbersome and 
 artificial than the creation of an international 
 navy, would constitute at least a first step towards 
 the transfer of powers just referred to. Unless 
 some such process of transfer can be set in motion, 
 that freer civilisation which the British Empire 
 and the American Republic represent is likely to 
 be transformed into the Prussian type. The 
 menace of everything which German militarism 
 connotes will be increased, even though the 
 German flag disappear.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN 
 EUROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT?
 
 America could not achieve the objects for which she is 
 contending in her disputes with Germany and Britain 
 merely by ensuring the military victory of the Allies, since 
 "the goods could not be delivered" at the Peace, and the 
 mere destruction of Austro-German military power could 
 neither be permanent nor give any assurance that future 
 re-groupings of European alliances would not take place 
 creating a situation as unsatisfactory in the future as in 
 the past. The impermanence of the destruction of a 
 nation's military power and the mutability of military 
 alliances are among the few unquestionable lessons of 
 history. 1 
 
 lf This chapter was written shortly after the sinking of the 
 Lusitania, when America was confronted by the question : How 
 far will the fact of going to war vindicate the rights violated 
 by Germany's act?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION IN 
 EUROPE: WHAT WOULD RESULT? 
 
 WHAT would it mean, "a state of war" with 
 a country whose army cannot possibly 
 touch us, whose battleships dare not take the high 
 seas and whom we in our turn can only reach by 
 co-operating with some six European nations 
 not all of whom are fighting with the same 
 purpose ? 
 
 Does a declaration of war by ourselves or Ger- 
 many necessarily mean sending troops to France 
 or Turkey, becoming one of the Allies in a mili- 
 tary sense, and later, at the peace, in a political 
 sense, helping by that, whether we wished it or 
 not, certain political and territorial changes which 
 we might or might not approve: e. g., an ex- 
 change of Russian for Austro-German influence 
 in large areas? Should we become the ally of 
 Japan, constrained perhaps, like her other allies, 
 to tolerate a very broad interpretation of such 
 obligations as those to respect the integrity of 
 China ? And if our weight in the final settlement 
 is to be measured by our military contribution 
 
 31
 
 32 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the number of men who fight in the allied ranks 
 and not by non-military factors, will not the de- 
 mands of Servia (if not of Montenegro) by that 
 standard get greater consideration? 
 
 And how far would our military action in these 
 circumstances be effective in achieving what we 
 desire: The future safety of our citizens and the 
 security of their presumed rights at sea; the 
 respect of international agreements upon which 
 those rights are based ; freedom for ourselves and 
 others from the menace of unscrupulous military 
 ambition and the barbarism which accompanies 
 it? And how far would our military co-opera- 
 tion with the continental powers of Europe affect 
 ultimately our place in the world, and influence 
 our future development as a nation with a special 
 character of its own? Would it modify that 
 "American purpose" for which our state is pre- 
 sumed to stand? 
 
 Now these questions would be important if 
 there were no difficulty with Germany, for in 
 some form the issues that underlie them are going 
 to be permanent issues of American politics in 
 the future. Recent events have made it plain, 
 even if it was not plain before, that America 
 cannot achieve her purpose as a great society by 
 an indifferent standing aloof from the life of the 
 world as a whole. As our planet becomes a 
 smaller place and the contacts more numerous
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 33 
 
 and frequent, the nation becomes more and more 
 a part of the life of the universe. We should be 
 concerned with what is going on in Europe, 
 though no Lusitania had been sunk. In some 
 form or other we shall be obliged to co-operate 
 with the other peoples of Christendom for the 
 accomplishment of certain things necessary for 
 our life in common. The question for America 
 is whether she shall co-operate blunderingly, 
 rendering still more remote what she and civilisa- 
 tion as a whole desires to achieve; or co-operate 
 to good purpose. 
 
 What this chapter considers therefore is 
 whether in the light of known experience the fact 
 of joining in the military operations of the Allies 
 against the central powers will achieve for 
 America the ends that she has set before herself. 
 It deliberately disregards all considerations as 
 to the ethics of war, its cost or cruelty or justi- 
 fiability. It assumes that the accomplishment of 
 the ends in view which so far as America is 
 concerned are mainly moral ends would consti- 
 tute its justification. 
 
 I have used the phrase "joining in the military 
 operations of the Allies" instead of the word 
 "war" in the preceding paragraph because my 
 final object in these notes will be to show that a 
 state of war need not include military operations ; 
 that American statesmanship can, if it frees itself
 
 34 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 from the shackles of old conceptions that belong 
 to what may be termed the classic statecraft, 
 give a larger meaning to the term "war" and can 
 employ methods of enforcing a general right or 
 an international rule that are more effective than 
 the military method. 
 
 This present chapter will consider the effective- 
 ness of the old kind of war in the present circum- 
 stances. A later one will describe and examine 
 the possibilities of the new. 
 
 It is particularly important to realise just how 
 far America can achieve her present ends in the 
 old way, by conventional military methods, that is, 
 because the "natural" course for her, the course 
 which precedent, tradition, established habit of 
 thought, deeply grounded political conceptions, 
 bureaucratic inertia, the momentum of diplomatic 
 routine, all dictate, is military co-operation of the 
 old kind with the Allies. Only a general realisa- 
 tion of the ineffectiveness of these means can 
 present any check to those forces. An American 
 Ambassador, who happens also to be a scholar, has 
 told us that in no field perhaps are men so much 
 slaves of the past as in diplomacy and interna- 
 tional statecraft. Whether in this matter America 
 can give to international politics a little of that 
 imaginativeness and inventiveness which the 
 American manages to apply to other things will 
 depend upon the realisation of the need for so
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 35 
 
 doing. So long as we believe the old method 
 satisfactory no new ones will be found. 
 
 It is necessary to emphasise this : 
 
 If America does not go to war in the ordinary 
 sense with Germany over the sinking of the 
 "Lusitania" it will not be, let us hope, because 
 she takes lightly an act of that kind. 
 
 America's protest against that act derives 
 its real importance of course from the fact 
 that if the United States were guilty of inert 
 acquiescence in it she would be sanctioning 
 the establishment of a precedent which would 
 mark a definite step backward in the maintenance 
 of certain fundamental principles of human rela- 
 tionship. America would have a large part of 
 the blame for allowing to take place a re-barbar- 
 isation of international relations and for undoing 
 such small advance as we have made so slowly 
 and painfully in the past. 
 
 Now it will be noted that there is a suggestive 
 difference in the nature of what we want and the 
 respective demands of the Allies. With them 
 the goods can be delivered on the spot at the peace 
 settlement; with us they cannot. The Allies are 
 demanding either the transfer of territory 
 Alsace-Lorraine, in the case of France ; Trentino, 
 etc., in the case of Italy; Constantinople, say, 
 in the case of Russia, and so on; or the evac- 
 uation of occupied territory, like Belgium or
 
 36 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Northern France, which Britain is demanding, 
 because she believes that its permanent German 
 occupation might menace her. The execution of 
 these demands can precede the signature of the 
 peace treaty. The execution of American de- 
 mands cannot precede the treaty, for what 
 America demands is the future observance of 
 certain international rules mainly concerned 
 with rights at sea. The Allies can have their 
 respective satisfactions on the spot. America 
 can not. 
 
 A word or two more is necessary as to the 
 American issue in this war. 
 
 The issue is in its large conception the defense 
 of neutral right in war time. Innocent people 
 have been ruthlessly slain in a war that did not 
 concern them. American rights there represent 
 the general interest. But America will fail alto- 
 gether in the vindication of those rights, and her 
 efforts, military or otherwise, will be revealed as 
 a monstrous futility, if she emerges after the 
 war having secured merely the assurance that 
 ' 'passenger ships shall not be sunk by sub- 
 marines." 
 
 For to-morrow we may have an American ship 
 destroyed at sea by a mine laid by one of her 
 own allies, and by virtue of a right that belongs 
 to international law, which some of those allies 
 have in the past very strongly defended. In the
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 37 
 
 year that followed the war between Russia and 
 Japan (both of which countries would be our 
 allies) some three hundred Chinese ships were 
 destroyed by hitting mines in the Far Eastern 
 seas. Will America tolerate that in future 
 wars the combatants may sow the seas with 
 mines? If not, is not this a question that we 
 should settle with the Allies before we join them ? 
 Otherwise we might go into a war and incur 
 its various risks, and then find that, though we 
 had vindicated the immunity of Americans from 
 death by torpedo, we had left it open for them 
 to be blown up by mines. They would be just 
 as dead! 
 
 Take another detail of neutral right in which 
 we are in a special sense concerned: A merchant 
 in America sells a shipload of goods to a mer- 
 chant in Sweden, for purposes that both of them 
 believe to be and which may be innocent and 
 neutral. They are loaded on say an American 
 ship. Both America and Sweden are sovereign 
 and independent states, at peace with one an- 
 other and the whole world. Have their citizens 
 a right to trade together? Not in the least, as 
 the law stands, if a war happens to be raging. 
 Because the belligerent who happens to be 
 momentarily predominant at sea can absolutely 
 forbid that trade on grounds of which he, and 
 he alone, is the judge. If his prize court decides
 
 38 
 
 that, despite the declaration of the American and 
 the Swedish citizens, the goods in question are 
 destined for the enemy, or that they might ulti- 
 mately by some roundabout process of the 
 nature and likelihood of which the foreign court 
 is again the sole judge find their way to his 
 enemy, the transaction is not permitted. 
 
 The American ship may be boarded a few miles 
 outside New York by a foreign naval lieutenant, 
 who would instruct that, instead of proceeding to 
 Sweden, it go to some port at the other end of 
 Europe. There it may be held up for months 
 until the facts of the case can be examined and 
 passed upon, not by a court representing either 
 America or Sweden, but composed solely of the 
 citizens of the nation that has an admitted bias 
 against the contention of the two parties to the 
 transaction. 
 
 In this matter America stands for the rights 
 of the nations of the world on the highways 
 of the world. As things are now, the gravest 
 questions establishing precedents of international 
 law are not settled by an international court 
 but by a national court of the belligerent that 
 has a special interest in direct conflict with 
 neutral interest, which it should be the office of 
 international law to defend. These belligerent 
 "rights/' which have won recognition mainly be- 
 cause those they injured were weak and power-
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 39 
 
 less, may, and do, expose whole populations abso- 
 lutely innocent of unneutrality to want and ruin. 2 
 
 Nor is this all. The possession of such powers 
 by a momentarily predominant sea combatant en- 
 ables him to compel most other nations to become 
 his allies, whether they will or not. For so long 
 as he has command of the sea he can use his 
 credit to draw upon the resources of neutrals 
 and to prevent his enemies from so doing. We 
 may desire to help England in this war by fur- 
 nishing her supplies and by refusing them to 
 Germany. But assume, for the sake of argument, 
 something which, though it will not happen in 
 this war, may well happen in future wars: that 
 the Power which starts with naval predominance 
 loses that predominance to its rival. Then you 
 are compelled to change over your economic alli- 
 ance. If such a thing happened in this war we 
 should have to support Germany as we have been 
 supporting England. For it would be unneutral, 
 during the course of the war, to change inter- 
 national practice in respect to the export of arms 
 and munition, or supplies. 
 
 Now the great danger for America in this 
 matter of the future sea law resides in the 
 excellence of the Allied cause and in the in- 
 
 *The populations in certain Dutch and Scandinavian ports, 
 and in many districts of Switzerland, have suffered terribly in 
 this war.
 
 40 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tegrity of British courts. It is because the 
 British cause is good and her courts are impar- 
 tial that we sanction action by Great Britain 
 that we could never dream of sanctioning in the 
 case of the belligerent fighting for a bad cause 
 and possessing unreliable courts. But, if we allow 
 present practice of the Allies to become the prece- 
 dent for international law, we shall have to accept 
 its operation when others apply that law, even 
 though we may believe the cause for which they 
 are fighting to be a bad or doubtful one. We 
 must accept it even in the cause in which we 
 do not believe, or place ourselves grievously in 
 the wrong. Japan, for instance, at war with 
 China, might, by virtue of rights that English 
 precedent establishes, place us in a position in 
 which our whole Pacific trade, whether with 
 China or not, would be under the absolute veto 
 of Japanese admirals and Japanese prize courts, 
 and we might, by reason of the very law that we 
 had previously sanctioned, become the economic 
 ally of Japan in some war of subjugation that we 
 might not approve. Again, we should be placed 
 in the position either of accepting that situation 
 or of making ourselves lawbreakers. 
 
 Now, the most strenuous opponent of any re- 
 form in sea law in that direction is Great Britain, 
 and very rightly so as things stand internationally, 
 and stood before the war. Opposition to the
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 41 
 
 recognition of neutral right at sea has been for 
 centuries her historic role. 3 From the days when 
 her admirals claimed salute from the ships of all 
 nations, as recognition of England as sovereign 
 of the seas and, parenthetically, when British 
 admirals fired upon and destroyed ships that 
 would not give such salute down through the 
 later time of the wars of armed neutrality, she 
 has withstood firmly all attempts to hamper 
 belligerent privilege at sea. She has always 
 claimed in justification that those privileges in 
 naval war are vital to her national life. I think 
 we must concede that. In a lawless world doubt- 
 less she had been justified in acting as she has 
 acted; but I state the facts. 
 
 In the long and weary conflict about rights at 
 sea America has on the whole taken one line and 
 England on the whole the contrary. The conflict 
 is in reality little nearer to solution than when 
 it led this country into war with England a 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 Indeed as the reader will have noted from the 
 previous chapter (and the argument is later de- 
 veloped) the present writer does not believe it 
 
 "One must distinguish between intention in peace time and 
 action in war. In the various conferences on international law 
 British representatives have often shown a desire to recognise 
 the neutral's position, but the desire is generally overborne 
 by war needs ; as witness the fate of the Declaration of 
 London.
 
 42 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 possible that neutral right can be respected where 
 war takes place on a world-wide scale ; and he ad- 
 vances the thesis that the real protection of such 
 interests as neutrals seek to protect in war time 
 will come more effectively by the abolition of the 
 doctrine of neutrality as at present conceived. 
 But if America is to stand for the enlargement 
 of the present conception of neutrality she will 
 by that fact be brought into collision more with 
 England than with any other nation. She will 
 find herself supporting, as the President's note to 
 Germany forecasts absurd as it makes the situa- 
 tion a doctrine which England has always 
 resisted and Germany upheld. 
 
 In any case if the American issue so much 
 obscured by the circumstance of the present con- 
 flict is really to be vindicated, America must 
 get certain assurances from her allies before she 
 joins them, since the future conditions of neutral 
 right will depend more upon the Allies' future 
 action than upon the mere defeat of Germany. 
 This conclusion will, I know, be resisted. It will 
 be said that, when the militarist menace, repre- 
 sented by Germany, is disposed of, and the ele- 
 ment in Europe that has been most hostile here- 
 tofore to international arrangements removed, it 
 will not be difficult to secure radical reform of 
 international law and some assurance of its 
 future observance,
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 43 
 
 Now that contention implies three things: 
 First, that the destruction of German military 
 power can be made permanent or relatively per- 
 manent; secondly, that the military alliance now 
 existing between Germany's enemies will also be 
 permanent; and thirdly, that a means of enforc- 
 ing international law that depends upon military 
 combinations of the great Powers will be depend- 
 able and efficient. 
 
 None of these assumptions can be accepted. 
 The destruction of the German state is a mere 
 phrase; nothing in history is more mutable than 
 military alliances like those framed for the prose- 
 cution of this war, and the very incidents that 
 have created our issues with Germany are them- 
 selves proof of how inefficient is military and 
 naval power, even when predominant, for the 
 protection of life and the enforcement of law. 
 
 To establish the first point I shall be compelled 
 to summarise certain historical facts that I have 
 dealt with elsewhere, and to some extent to quote 
 myself. 
 
 What does the "destruction" of Germany mean? 
 Certainly not, of course, the slaying of her popu- 
 lation. Does it mean the distribution of her ter- 
 ritory among the victorious Allies ? In that case 
 you will permanently militarise every state in 
 Europe, because each will be holding down un- 
 willing populations and creating military forces
 
 44 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 for that purpose. You will have created not one 
 Alsace-Lorraine which by itself has been so 
 fertile a cause among the various causes of this 
 war but you will have created five, or six, or 
 seven Alsaces; centers of ferment scattered over 
 the Continent. Obviously, that way peace cannot 
 lie, nor the permanence of any arrangement of 
 which that way is a part. 
 
 If it is deemed that the mere destruction of the 
 German army or navy would have any permanent 
 effect, Germany herself has supplied a dramatic 
 answer within the memory of fathers of men still 
 living. In the early years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury Prussia was annihilated as a military power 
 at Jena and Auerstadt. The whole country was 
 overrun by the French. By the Peace of Tilsit 
 she was deprived of her territory west of the 
 Elbe and of the larger part of her Polish prov- 
 inces; of the southern part of West Prussia, of 
 Dantzic, thus losing nearly a half of her popu- 
 lation and area; the French Army remained in 
 occupation until heavy contributions demanded 
 by France were paid; and by the subsequent 
 treaty the Prussian Army was limited to not 
 more than forty-two thousand men, and Prussia 
 was forbidden to create a militia. 
 
 She was broken apparently so completely that 
 even some five years later she was compelled to 
 furnish, at Napoleon's command, a contingent
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 45 
 
 for the invasion of Russia. The German States 
 were weakened and divided by all the statecraft 
 that Napoleon could employ. He played upon 
 their mutual jealousies, brought some of them 
 into alliance with himself, created a buffer king- 
 dom of Westphalia, Frenchified many of the 
 German courts, endowed them with the Code 
 Napoleon. Germany seemed so shattered that she 
 was not even a "geographical expression." It 
 seemed, indeed, as though the very soul of the 
 people had been crushed, and that the moral re- 
 sistance to the invader had been stamped out; 
 for, as one writer has said, it was the peculiar 
 feature of the Germany that Napoleon overran, 
 that her greatest men were either indifferent, like 
 Goethe, or else gave a certain welcome to the 
 ideas that the French invaders represented. Yet, 
 with this unpromising material, the workmen of 
 the German national renaissance labored to such 
 good purpose that, within a little more than five 
 years of the humiliation of the Peace of Tilsit, 
 the last French army in Germany was destroyed, 
 and it was thanks 'to the very condition imposed 
 by Napoleon with the object of limiting her 
 forces 4 that Prussia was able finally to take the 
 
 4 Napolcon exacted that the Prussian Army should be limited 
 to forty-two thousand men, but by making it a different forty- 
 two thousand each year there was initiated that system of 
 national conscription which made Germany triumphant in 1870.
 
 46 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 major part in the destruction of the Napoleonic, 
 and in the restoration of the German, Empire. 
 It was from the crushing of Prussia after Jena 
 that dates the revival of German national con- 
 sciousness and the desire for German unity, even 
 at the cost of Prussian predominance therein. 
 
 So with France in 1870. The German armies, 
 drawn from states that within the memory of 
 men then living had been mere appanages of 
 Napoleon and had, as a matter of fact, furnished 
 some of the soldiers of his armies, had destroyed 
 the armies of Louis Napoleon. Not merely was 
 France prostrate, her territory in the occupation 
 of German soldiers, the French Empire over- 
 thrown, and replaced by an unstable republic, but 
 frightful civil conflicts like the Commune had 
 divided France against herself. So distraught, 
 indeed, was she that Bismarck had almost to 
 create a French government with which to treat 
 at all. An indemnity at the time immense 
 had been imposed upon her, and it was generally 
 believed that not for generations could she again 
 become a considerable military or political factor 
 in Europe. 
 
 Her increase of population was feeble, tending 
 to stagnation; her political institutions were un- 
 stable; she was torn by internal dissensions; and 
 yet, as we know, within five years of the conclu- 
 sion of peace France had already sufficiently
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 47 
 
 recuperated to become a cause of anxiety to Bis- 
 marck, who believed that the work of "destruc- 
 tion" would have to be begun all over again. 
 And if one goes back to earlier centuries, to the 
 France of Louis XIV, and to her recovery after 
 her defeat in the War of the Austrian Succes- 
 sion, to the incredible exhaustion of Prussia in 
 wars like the Thirty Years' War, when her popu- 
 lation was cut in half, or to the Seven Years' 
 War, it is the same story a virile people cannot 
 be wiped from the map. 
 
 There are one or two additional factors. The 
 marvelous renaissance of France after 1871 has 
 become a commonplace ; and yet this France that 
 is once more challenging her old enemy is a 
 France of stationary population, not having, be- 
 cause not needing, the technical industrial capac- 
 ity that marks certain other peoples, like ourselves 
 and the Germans. The German population is 
 not stationary ; it is increasing at the rate of very 
 nearly a million a year; and if the result of this 
 war is to attenuate some of the luxury and 
 materialism that have marked modern Germany, 
 the rate of population increase will not be di- 
 minished but rather be accelerated, for it is the 
 people of simple life that are the people of large 
 families. 
 
 It is altogether likely that the highly artificial 
 Austrian Empire itself the work of the sword,
 
 48 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 not the product of natural growth embracing 
 so many different races and nationalities, will be 
 politically rearranged. This will result in giving 
 German Austria an identity of aim and aspiration 
 with the other German States, so that however 
 the frontiers may be rectified and whatever shuf- 
 fling may take place this solid fact will remain : 
 in Central Europe a body of seventy-five or 
 eighty millions speaking German and nursing, 
 if their nationality is temporarily overpowered, 
 the dream of reviving it when the opportunity 
 shall occur. 
 
 I have said that the annihilation of Germany is 
 a meaningless phrase. You cannot annihilate 
 sixty-five or seventy-five million people. You 
 cannot divide them up between France and 
 Russia, save at the cost of making those two 
 states highly militarised, undemocratic and op- 
 pressive Powers. If you break up those seventy- 
 five millions into separate states, there is no 
 reason why, if a Balkan league could be formed 
 as it was formed a year or two since to fight 
 successfully, a German league could not do 
 likewise. 
 
 And that brings me to the second point: That 
 the military and diplomatic combinations, by 
 which the German states of the future are to be 
 kept in subjugation, cannot be counted upon for 
 permanence and stability. Such combinations
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 49 
 
 never have been and, in their nature, cannot be 
 permanent or immutable. 
 
 This impermanence and mutability is inherent 
 in their nature and would inevitably be revealed if 
 there was a distribution of conquered territory 
 among the victors. They would then be attempt- 
 ing to cure the evils of conquest and military 
 domination by themselves becoming conquerors, 
 by expanding their military domination, by 
 creating all the machinery to effect those pur- 
 poses including the moral or immoral qualities 
 necessary thereto and by fostering the kind of 
 patriotism and national pride that go therewith. 
 It would then be open for two countries to give 
 satisfaction to the political passions so aroused 
 by despoiling a third. For, as Talleyrand most 
 wisely said, "There are few things upon which 
 two persons will so readily agree as the robbery 
 of a third." Let us look at quite recent history, 
 which happens to be particularly suggestive in 
 this connection. 
 
 The first Balkan War was won by a group of 
 separate states, not linked by any formal political 
 bond but thrown together by one common fear, 
 resentment, or ambition the desire to wrest 
 members of their race from Turkish tyranny. 
 To the general astonishment this combination 
 held together with extraordinary success for the 
 purposes of war. But immediately the military
 
 50 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 success was achieved, dissensions arose among 
 the allies over the division of the spoils. And the 
 first Balkan War was succeeded by a second 
 Balkan War in which the members of the league 
 fought one another, and the final settlement is 
 not yet. 
 
 Now just take the Allies in the present war. 
 A year ago Italy was in formal alliance with the 
 Powers that she is now fighting. Japan, a decade 
 since, was fighting with a Power of which she is 
 now the ally. The position of Russia shows 
 neverending changes. In the struggles of the 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Eng- 
 land was always on the side of Russia; then 
 after two generations Englishmen were taught 
 to believe that any increase in the power of Russia 
 was absolutely fatal to the continued existence of 
 the British Empire that statement was made by 
 a British publicist less than ten years ago. 
 Britain is now fighting to increase, both rela- 
 tively and absolutely, the power of a country 
 which, in her last war upon the Continent, she 
 fought to check. In the war before that one, 
 also fought upon the Continent, England was in 
 alliance with Germany against France. As to 
 the Austrians, whom England is now fighting, 
 they were for many years her faithful allies. So 
 it is very nearly the truth to say of all the com- 
 batants respectively that they have no enemy to-
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 51 
 
 day who was not, historically speaking, quite 
 recently an ally, and not an ally to-day who was 
 not in the recent past an enemy. 
 
 However, it may be said that Europe did at 
 least deal successfully with the French military 
 menace that arose at the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century, and that the problem of France 
 in 1815 successfully dealt with by Europe 
 resembles in its essentials the problem of Ger- 
 many, with which Europe has now to deal a 
 hundred years later. To which it is unhappily 
 necessary to reply that the German problem of 
 1915 does not resemble the French problem of 
 1815, and that Europe did not successfully settle 
 this latter problem a hundred years ago. 
 
 First, as to the difference between the two 
 cases. What the Allies were trying to do in 1815 
 and did very temporarily was to restore to 
 France the old government that had been 
 usurped by a non-French soldier for Napoleon 
 was not a Frenchman. The Allies of that day 
 were, in fact, in alliance with the legitimate ruler 
 of France, and were supported by a powerful 
 French party and by entire French provinces. 
 
 The Allies of our day, should they come to 
 their Vienna Congress, will not be dealing with 
 a usurper alien to the German people, nor one 
 that is opposed by Germans, as Napoleon was 
 opposed by certain of the French. There are no
 
 52 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 powerful and influential German classes in exile 
 and at home, ready to restore a government 
 desired by the Allies. The historic government 
 of Germany does not happen to represent the 
 political and dynastic preferences of the Europe 
 that may have the task of reconstructing the 
 German Empire. 
 
 So much for the resemblance. Now as to the 
 success of Europe, in 1815, in exorcising the 
 Napoleonic danger. The victory of the European 
 Allies of 1815 was presumed to have restored 
 permanently the old French dynasty and to have 
 destroyed permanently the Napoleonic usurpa- 
 tion. Yet, within three decades of the Congress 
 of Vienna, it was the old French dynasty that 
 had disappeared and the Napoleonic dynasty that 
 was once more installed. And so little did the 
 victories of the Allies exorcise the danger of 
 Napoleonic military ambitions that, within a 
 generation after the death of the first Napoleon 
 another Napoleon had entered into alliance with 
 England the jailer of the first and with her 
 was busy fighting wars the result of which 
 England and Europe are now attempting to undo 
 fighting, that is, to keep Russia from the Darda- 
 nelles and to "secure the permanent integrity of 
 the Turkish Empire"! For, while the Crimean 
 War was fought for the purpose of preventing 
 Russia from reaching Constantinople and for for-
 
 AMERICAN ACTION IN EUROPE 53 
 
 tifying Turkish power, the present war is being 
 fought, of course, among other things, for the 
 purpose of achieving the exactly contrary pur- 
 pose. The grim humour of the thing is complete 
 when we remember that the very object accom- 
 plished by the last war in which France and Eng- 
 land fought together is in no small part the cause 
 of the present war. For the result of the Crimean 
 War was to make large Balkan populations sub- 
 servient to Turkish rule, and the present war 
 began in an incident to which the intrigues and 
 struggles of that situation gave rise; it was a 
 part of the unrest which the Crimean War made 
 inevitable. 
 
 It was not, therefore, the Allies of 1815 who 
 got rid either of the Napoleonic dynasty or of 
 the tradition and evil fermentation that it repre- 
 sented. What finally liberated France and Europe 
 from the particular menace of French imperial- 
 ism was the German victory of 1870. 
 
 The lesson of 1815, of 1870, and the four or 
 five similar situations that have preceded it in 
 Europe at intervals of a century or so, is that the 
 menace that the two Napoleons represented was 
 not in a person, or even in a dynasty but in a 
 wrong ideal. For modern Germany has pro- 
 duced no Napoleon though it has produced 
 Napoleonism. 
 
 In all the facts that I have attempted to recall
 
 54 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 to the reader's memory there emerges this truth : 
 That the ideas and instincts, the traditions and 
 temper that underlie war grow out of the remedy 
 that is designed to cure it ; and if history has any 
 meaning at all, and like causes produce like re- 
 sults, the probable victory of the Allies will not 
 of itself bring about a settlement in Europe any 
 more effective or permanent than the settlements 
 that have preceded it. Indeed, pathetic as the 
 truth is, it is to be feared that a very complete 
 victory of nations with great military traditions 
 behind them and such nations form part of the 
 combinations now fighting against the Teutonic 
 Powers will set up just those moral and political 
 forces that victory has always set up in history. 
 And if America should add fifty thousand men 
 or a hundred thousand, or five hundred thousand 
 to the men already fighting in this war she 
 would not materially alter that fact.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN 
 WORLD?
 
 What are Anglo-Saxon and Prussian ideals? In 
 setting out to destroy the one and protect the other we 
 must be able to recognise which is which. Is Europe 
 busy Prussianising itself as part of the process of in- 
 creasing its military efficiency? If military conflict is to 
 continue in the world military efficiency will determine its 
 issue; and that implies the requisite form of national 
 organisation and code of morals. The highest price of 
 war is the Prussianisation of the people who wage it, how- 
 ever good their cause may be. That process is not a 
 matter of race but of doctrine acting upon human quali- 
 ties which are latent in all of us. Thus though the flag 
 may be Anglo-Saxon the society of the future will be 
 Prussianised if we have to beat the Prussian at his own 
 game. Is there any other way of beating him ?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 AN ANGLO-SAXON OR A PRUSSIAN 
 WORLD? 
 
 I SUPPOSE we are all quite sure that we know 
 the difference between the Anglo-Saxon and 
 the Prussian ideal of life and society? 
 
 I find on taking stock of my own ideas on the 
 matter, that my notion of the Prussian ideal is a 
 pretty definite one. It would have to be, perhaps, 
 since I have written in disparagement of it and 
 argued against it for very many years now. But 
 I find also in this stock-taking that I have rather 
 a hazy idea of the Anglo-Saxon ideal. 
 
 There is a story that I have just heard of a 
 little girl whose father was about to start for a 
 lecture, when this conversation took place: 
 
 Little Girl: What are you going to hear 
 
 about this evening, Father? 
 Father: Professor Brown is going to tell us 
 
 about the Aspirations of the Slavs. 
 Little Girl: What does Professor Brown 
 
 know about the Aspirations of the 
 
 Slavs ? 
 Father: Oh, he is a very great authority on 
 
 the subject. He has lived many years 
 
 in Russia and the Balkans, 
 57
 
 58 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Little Girl: Well, you have lived many years 
 in America. What are the Aspirations 
 of the Americans ? 
 
 Yes, indeed, what are the American aspira- 
 tions and ideals? 
 
 If they would stand still perhaps I could tell 
 you. But even in my own life, not a long one, 
 "Anglo-Saxon" political and religious feeling, 
 the character of the social life of the mass in large 
 areas in England and America, the external ex- 
 pression of its religious emotion, its forms of inter- 
 course even, have ebbed and flowed like the tides 
 and changed in colour like the sky at sunset. 
 Undoubtedly, for instance, there took place 
 during the Boer War, in England, a Prussianisa- 
 tion of English thought and feeling which had 
 nothing to do with German influence. It was 
 connected with the need for suppressing the 
 Dutch Republics in South Africa. But the 
 tendency received a check. The Pro-Boer agita- 
 tion, though it did not stop the Boer War, pro- 
 duced a reaction against the Prussian temper so 
 great on one side of English politics, that that 
 side, electorally triumphant, virtually restored to 
 the Republics their independence under the guise 
 of responsible colonial government. 
 
 And one of the minor difficulties of deciding 
 just what are the aspirations of the English is 
 that when one takes an aspiring achievement like
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 59 
 
 that and says: "There is Anglo-Saxondom ; that 
 is what England is now fighting to maintain," 
 one is met by the fact that the noted anti-Germans 
 of English politics or, if you will, those most 
 alive to the German danger during the last ten 
 years are precisely those who violently assailed 
 the Pro-Boers and the Liberals for doing what 
 they did in South Africa ; who declared that this 
 surrender to the Boers was not Anglo-Saxon in 
 its character at all, but very anti-English; and 
 that real statesmanship demanded "severe" treat- 
 ment of the conquered Republics a method of 
 government which in its general principles would 
 have resembled that employed by Germany in 
 Poland and Alsace. Moreover, the ideas of these 
 Prussian-like Englishmen with reference to the 
 government of the Boers were not an isolated 
 manifestation: one saw the same general feeling 
 in their attitude towards Ireland, India, Parlia- 
 mentary government, Imperial centralisation, 
 conscription, and a host of other questions. Tak- 
 ing the commonly accepted definition of "Prussian 
 ideals," one may say that many Englishmen now 
 most marked by their antipathy to Germany, and 
 who to-day, in some instances, are giving evidence 
 of their sincerity by preparing to lay down their 
 lives to resist Prussian influence in the world, 
 are precisely those who have stood, and will pre- 
 sumably stand in the future, for Prussian methods
 
 60 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 in government and politics and national organisa- 
 tion; for Prussian conceptions in thought and 
 morals. And their influence, since the war, has 
 become very much greater than it was before. 
 And yet they would be described as "typical 
 Englishmen" ; are themselves quite sure that they 
 stand for English ideals. 
 
 And when we get beneath the surface of poli- 
 tics to those things by which principalities and 
 powers should stand or fall the character of the 
 daily life that is lived under them one finds the 
 English ideal still more difficult to fix, changing 
 still more rapidly. The later Victorian period 
 was pre-eminently one we associate with the tri- 
 umph of English Liberalism; it was the golden 
 age of English parliamentary government. But 
 we now know also, alas, that it was one of the 
 darkest of Dark Ages for the great mass of the 
 English people not, it may be, for the few hun- 
 dred thousand of the middle and upper classes 
 who traded and grew rich, and whose orators 
 glowed in Parliament, and who managed to 
 secure something like half the total income of 
 the country, but for the thirty million or so 
 who had to manage as best they might on the 
 other half of the national income. We now 
 know just what the "freedom" of those thirty 
 millions meant when translated into terms of 
 daily life: Children of ten sent under ground
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 61 
 
 to be beasts of burden, women forging iron 
 for thirty cents a day; Poorhouse "brats" sold 
 to manufacturers as "apprentices" ("three idiots 
 to count as one" ) ; town and country slums, 
 such as writers from Kingsley to Whiting have 
 sketched for us; "picturesque villagers" in 
 "delightful cottages" living six in a room and 
 supporting a family on less than two dollars a 
 week, dependent even for that upon the good will 
 of the Squire; subject body and soul to the oli- 
 garchs of the Hall and Parsonage. And even 
 where the population was secure from sheer 
 starvation we know the sort of spiritual life that 
 Victorian English freedom meant for so many. 
 Writers like Mark Rutherford have made known 
 to us what the Non-Conformity of the lower 
 middle classes of the nineteenth century meant; 
 that atmosphere which cast a blight upon the hap- 
 piness of children ; that made men and women go 
 through life with a ghastly mask of primness, 
 restraint, and fear, suppressing spontaneity, 
 laughter, human nature; that associated religion 
 with ugliness, black coats and dreary Sundays, 
 and a hard dry dogma of fierce vindictiveness 
 that banished toleration, ruth and kindliness; 
 that made men as stilted in their speech as in 
 their souls. 
 
 Oh, that was Anglo-Saxon freedom all right! 
 For when the Anglo-Saxon left England to estab-
 
 62 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 lish freedom in the New England of the west, it 
 was just about that which he first established. Just 
 think of the life led during two hundred years in 
 the typical New England Puritan community. 
 For those who really loved freedom freedom to 
 speculate, to question, to bring their minds into 
 clash with others, to let their children develop 
 their varied impulses, to revel in nature, to be 
 sincere, to relish life the theological and moral 
 tyranny of the Puritan theocracy was a dreadful 
 terror that pursued them from birth to death. 
 
 Well, the particular ideal which this repre- 
 sented has disappeared, or is disappearing. If 
 one considers, say, the ordinary college girl of 
 twenty-five, in an English or American commun- 
 ity that still bears, perhaps, the Victorian stamp, 
 and compare her "aspirations and ideals," her 
 general outlook upon life, with those of her 
 mother, we shall see that the two beings belong 
 to different worlds. The difference between 
 them is far greater than that between the girl 
 from the English university and another from a 
 German. Yet the mother and daughter are both 
 Anglo-Saxon, and are supposed to stand in com- 
 mon for some common ideal as against that of 
 the foreigner. That is just one difficulty in fixing 
 very exactly what are the Anglo-Saxon ideals. 
 
 Here is another. 
 
 That Victorian England I have referred to
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 63 
 
 has been transformed in at least several outstand- 
 ing features. The laissez-faire of the nineteenth 
 century economists, has given place to a sense 
 of social responsibility on the part of the govern- 
 ing order that has made a beginning, at least, 
 with the abolition of the dreadful squalor of the 
 older industrial centres, and the creation instead 
 of garden cities, properly planned towns. The 
 chance and hazards of wage earning have been 
 eased for millions by such devices as Old-Age 
 Pensions and Insurance Acts. The Puritan terror, 
 with its dogmatic cruelties, has been eased at 
 least by a broader interpretation both of docu- 
 ments and of dogma. Best of all, perhaps, our 
 attitude to childhood has altered. The child has 
 now its charter; it has certain rights to happi- 
 ness; and we have certain obligations to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 Now, these are great changes. For millions 
 they have transformed the world. But they are 
 not mainly Anglo-Saxon changes, in the sense of 
 arising from Anglo-Saxon national ideas as op- 
 posed to rival national ideals, or having had their 
 origins in England. It is a dreadful thought, 
 but these four outstanding changes in the modern 
 life of the Anglo-Saxon world have come in very 
 large part from Germany. 
 
 The breaking down of laissez-faire in English 
 political economy and the successful assumption
 
 64 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 by the State of certain social responsibilities and 
 obligations, came straight from Germany, both 
 as to theory and to practice. 
 
 Town Planning, the Insurance Acts, the Old- 
 Age Pensions are German devices copied quite 
 frankly even in their details from German models. 
 
 And that wider interpretation of Christian 
 documents and dogma which played so large a 
 part in breaking down the more grievous forms 
 of the moral tyranny of English Protestantism, 
 in drawing the claws of English Puritanism 
 that came largely from Germany, too. Perhaps 
 but for the work of modern German biblical 
 criticism the Protestantism of millions of English 
 toilers would still be just an invisible terror added 
 to all the visible terrors of life; a narrow creed 
 would still be the instrument of a daily social 
 and intellectual tyranny, wielded by black-coated 
 fanatics stifling human feeling with fear-inspiring 
 texts. English and American children would still 
 cry themselves to sleep with thoughts of the worm 
 that dieth not. 
 
 And this Charter of Childhood to which I 
 have referred, our growing sense of obligation 
 to understand the child and train him otherwise 
 than with a rod that in large part comes from 
 Germany, too. Yet so quietly and naturally do 
 we place ourselves under Prussian tyranny in 
 this as in other things, that most of us hardly
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 65 
 
 realise even that "kindergarten" is a German 
 word ; and a German thing. 
 
 You see I am just trying to get at the reality 
 behind certain words that we use so readily: 
 "Rival ideals of Prussian and Anglo-Saxon," 
 "Anglo-Saxon freedom," "Prussian tyranny," 
 and so on. These phrases have a meaning, and 
 there are great realities in those meanings. But 
 to-morrow we shall be called upon to take definite 
 action with reference to them. If we are then as 
 vague as we have been in the past about them we 
 shall not know really what we are doing. The 
 whole thing will be hazard, drift, obedience to 
 indefinite fears; and possibly we shall hit in the 
 wrong place and fail to hit in the right. We shall be 
 slaves of words and so not masters of our action. 
 
 And there are just one or two other points we 
 might consider in order to be sure that we get at 
 the realities that underlie the outside form of 
 politics. 
 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw has in his "Common Sense 
 About the War" written at some length on the 
 English Junker. In what he had to say there was, 
 curiously enough, no reference to the fact that at 
 least some German Socialists do honestly believe 
 that English politics in their internal realities as 
 apart from their external forms are in fact more 
 Junker-ridden than the German; and still less 
 did Mr. Shaw give any comparison of that
 
 66 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 phase of English and German political develop- 
 ment which, in the German opinion aforesaid, 
 supports this view. Such a comparison I heard 
 made on the morrow of the declaration of 
 war by an educated Prussian turned Socialist 
 (nothing less) who had spent some years at an 
 English university. He made it in reply to the 
 usual English contention that Germany stood for 
 Nietzscheanism, the philosophy of Power, and 
 that her defeat would involve the definite defeat 
 of European reaction. As against this view my 
 Socialist Prussian submitted a case which, in so 
 far as it may help us to understand certain Ger- 
 man feeling on this matter and later on when 
 the time comes to deal with it it will be necessary 
 to understand it in some degree may be worth 
 a little consideration. He put it in about these 
 terms : 
 
 "This fight of the democratic elements of 
 Europe against the philosophy of power was, 
 before the war, going on all over Europe. 
 It was an uphill fight, but had been steadily 
 gaining ground in Germany, and losing 
 ground in England. In Germany, Junker- 
 dom was a threatened institution, in ob- 
 vious danger ; in England it was not threat- 
 ened at all, but successfully masked behind 
 the forms of freedom. In England, Parlia- 
 mentary government had become a brilliant 
 sham, an entertaining historical masquerade
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 67 
 
 of political processes and methods that once 
 represented a means of checking power, but 
 by a subtle transformation have since come 
 to mean a method of preserving power in 
 the hands of a small clique. A landless 
 peasantry, an endowed and established 
 church, the open sale of the seats of its 
 Senate, the growth of the caucus, the stiffen- 
 ing of the methods of the party system, the 
 secrecy of its funds, the shaving down of 
 the privileges of the private member, the 
 political inefficiency of labour representation, 
 the increase of power in the Executive, the 
 creation of a Cabinet within the Cabinet act- 
 ing in secret, all diplomatic work confined to 
 one small social class, the growth of the 
 power of a plutocratically owned press 
 within the hands of two or three individuals 
 had practically placed the government of 
 England, especially in such issues as war 
 and peace, within the absolute control of ten 
 or fifteen men. In the things that matter, 
 the power of this little Junta a form of 
 control, a power frightfully difficult to fight 
 because so elusive, much more difficult to 
 grapple with than the definite and public posi- 
 tion of the bureaucracy of Germany was far 
 in excess of that of the Junker party in Ger- 
 many which for some years had been fight- 
 ing a losing battle, retaining merely rights 
 which appealed most to its militarist sense of 
 dignity, the right to push ladies off the pave- 
 ment and cut open the heads of unarmed 
 cripples, But it was so obviously threatened
 
 68 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 an institution (which English Junkerdom 
 obviously was not), that for twenty years 
 the Prussian had been steadily yielding very 
 nearly all the points in the policy of the party 
 that opposed him. The Social Democrat 
 Party had got so much farther with its pro- 
 gramme than had the corresponding party 
 in England that the latter's most daring 
 social experiments were but clumsy imita- 
 tions of it. The swaggering, but not very 
 rich nor powerful Junkerdom, had become 
 cordially detested by the proletariat of the 
 whole of the Empire, and in all the southern 
 half of it by the bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, 
 and the aristocracy as well. Its position was 
 definitely threatened and it could not much 
 longer have resisted political developments 
 that would have nullified its power. It 
 had shown neither the shrewdness nor 
 the duplicity which enabled English Jun- 
 kerdom so to transform all the machinery 
 of democracy Parliament, the universities, 
 the endowed schools, the church, the 'free' 
 (but plutocratic) press as to make that ma- 
 chinery but a means of entrenching its posi- 
 tion of real domination and control. This, 
 indeed, has been the story from the time that 
 the English country gentleman of the 
 eighteenth century true type of the Junker 
 though he, more than any other, 'made Eng- 
 land what it is' created somehow by his 
 Parliamentary rhetoric the general impres- 
 sion that he was dying on the altar of popu- 
 lar liberties and giving his life for the
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 69 
 
 defence of the nation's freedom when, as a 
 matter of fact, he was in reality busily en- 
 gaged by his Enclosure Acts in robbing the 
 English peasantry of their land, and so of 
 their real freedom. During this same period, 
 or a little later, the Prussian Junker, with no 
 democratic oratory at all, was engaged in 
 turning serfs into peasant proprietors; so 
 that to-day in Germany, in oppressed and 
 autocratic Prussia even, most of the pea- 
 santry own their land; while in Britain, 
 after so many brilliant victories for polit- 
 ical freedom, the peasant has lost his land. 
 In Germany the universities and higher 
 education, the ministry of the church, are 
 for all alike, rich and poor; in England the 
 'public' schools (I don't need to remind you 
 that Eton was established for charity boys), 
 the universities both established for the 
 poor have been annexed for the exclusive 
 use of the rich; and even the ministry of 
 the national church is the preserve of the 
 Junker class and its proteges. In fact, 
 the English State is the absolute possession 
 of a class; all that it really accords to those 
 outside the Junker pale is to choose between 
 two parties in that class. Beside such real 
 efficiency in the maintenance of autocracy, 
 as all this shows, I am obliged to admit 
 that the Prussian Junker is a simpleton, 
 a country bumpkin. He should come to 
 England to learn his business. He knows 
 nothing of that astute manipulation of the 
 lower orders which obtains the plaudits of
 
 70 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the very men it robs. All that this yokel 
 of a Prussian can do is to flourish his 
 sword and retain some semblance of author- 
 ity by retaining the military type of organ- 
 isation ; for this purpose he works the danger 
 of Russian absolutism for all it is worth with 
 the democratic elements and the danger of 
 British politico-economic domination with 
 the middle classes, and as the result has 
 enabled the English Junker to use the Ger- 
 man danger for a similar political end in 
 England, it comes about that the democracies 
 of the two countries, instead of fighting to- 
 gether the common enemy of which they are 
 the victims, are in every sense playing the 
 game of that common enemy by fighting one 
 another. 
 
 "You don't believe that the English upper, 
 or upper-middle, or middle-middle classes 
 have devised a plot to deprive the population 
 of its property and of any real control in 
 the government and destinies of his country ? 
 Neither do I; but it is what has happened. 
 I don't suppose there was a deliberate plot 
 on the part of the militarist either in Eng- 
 land or in Germany to use the war as a 
 means of strengthening one form of society 
 as against a rival form. None of us knows, 
 perhaps, the real nature of the motives he is 
 obeying. We can no more trace all the 
 operations of mind which produce a given 
 result in conduct and opinion than we can 
 follow with our eye the passage of a rifle 
 bullet to its mark. Our instinct often tells
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 71 
 
 us that our actions are in tune with our 
 fundamental beliefs when we are quite un- 
 able to explain the harmony, just as the 
 child or the unlettered gypsy or negro can 
 detect false note or rhythm in a song without 
 knowing that such things as time, or crotch- 
 ets and quavers exist. Do you suppose the 
 publican who is almost certain to be a flam- 
 boyant jingo, or the shoemaker a burning 
 radical, could explain the connection between 
 beer and patriotism or shoe leather and 
 republicanism? Yet there are quite definite 
 reasons for that connection or it would not 
 work in ninety-nine per cent of cases. You 
 remember the 'Punch' butler, who, in order 
 properly to provide for his master's clergy- 
 men guests, wanted to know their ecclesi- 
 astical colouring, because 'the 'Igh they 
 drinks more wine, and the Low they eats 
 more victuals/ That butler showed a highly 
 developed gift for generalisation. It was so 
 correct that you could almost write the his- 
 tory of the Reformation in its terms. But 
 he could not have given you a single reason 
 for it or explained it in any way. 
 
 "Neither can English Junkerdom explain 
 the connection between belief in armaments 
 and disbelief in Parliamentary government, 
 or the connection between the protection of 
 privilege at home and the prosecution of 
 aggression abroad; or what a liking for the 
 House of Lords has got to do with a dislike 
 of foreigners, or why a man who feels sym- 
 pathy for the poor should feel an antipathy
 
 72 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 to jingoes. Yet the Junker, English and 
 German alike, knows perfectly well that these 
 apparently disconnected things are very inti- 
 mately related, as he knows that war and 
 international mistrust are the natural but- 
 tresses of reaction and privilege. Neither 
 the English nor the Prussian militarist has 
 concocted any plot against the democracy. 
 Both have followed a very sound instinct 
 which leads them to fight democracy by the 
 same means. And whatever happens, which- 
 ever side wins, Junkerdom will come out on 
 top." 
 
 My Prussian was quite honest. One wonders 
 whether there is anything in his case. 
 
 Again I am prompted to anticipate, by a word 
 of explanation, the reader's irritation at having 
 it presented at all. 
 
 Why should a man who has made up his mind, 
 as this present writer happens to have done, that 
 Prussianism is a monstrous evil and threatens the 
 world, indulge in what appears at first sight an 
 apology for Prussianism ? 
 
 Well, precisely because the enemy happens to 
 be a very redoubtable one, and if we are to van- 
 quish him we must understand him; his strong 
 points and his weak ones ; just where he is danger- 
 ous, and where he is beneficent. And this duty 
 falls particularly upon those, who, standing apart 
 for the time being from the present military
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 73 
 
 struggle, do not have to take part in a process of 
 self-deception which is, perhaps, a necessary part 
 of active war. 
 
 Is it necessary to labour the point that difficult 
 and complex crises in human affairs, and our 
 own relation to them, are not likely to be settled 
 by misunderstanding them, by a blindness to 
 many of the facts in them ? Is it necessary either, 
 to labour the point that nations at war will not, 
 perhaps cannot, take the pains to see and under- 
 stand all the facts ? 
 
 It is, of course, much more easy and much more 
 pleasant to resort in this matter to what M. Sorel 
 has called the "social myth": to regard the 
 struggle as one of two absolutes all the right 
 and good on one side, all the wrong and evil on 
 the other. The only problem then left is the 
 triumph of the good side and the defeat of the 
 bad. 
 
 That particular myth certainly does achieve a 
 certain peace of soul in war time, of which Dr. 
 Jacks, of Oxford, 1 has recently been writing. He 
 tells us that before the war the English nation, 
 regarded from the moral point of view, was a 
 scene of "indescribable confusion; a moral chaos." 
 But there has come to it "the peace of mind that 
 comes to every man who, after tossing about 
 among uncertainties, finds at last a mission, a 
 
 'Editor of Hibbert's Journal.
 
 74 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 cause to which he can devote himself." For this 
 reason, he says, the war has actually made the 
 English people happier than they were before: 
 "Brighter, more cheerful. The Englishman wor- 
 ries less about himself. . . . The tone and sub- 
 stance of conversation are better. . . . There is 
 more health in our souls and perhaps in our 
 bodies." And he tells how the war cured a friend 
 of insomnia. 
 
 Unhappily for all this as a cure for the evils of 
 our society, the war will soon have to come to an 
 end. It can last a year or two at most ; and then, 
 with our young men the best and the bravest, 
 those in whom lay the great hope of the future 
 dead, while the diseased and degenerate remain, 
 we shall be faced by very hard and difficult moral 
 and material problems that the war itself has 
 created ; and in those conditions it is unlikely that 
 the peace of mind and unity of purpose which the 
 war has created will last very long ; and we shall 
 go back to those divisions and conflicts which 
 existed before. 
 
 Mr. Graham Wallas, to whom the world owes 
 so great a debt for his illuminating work in the 
 domain of political and social psychology, has 
 made a comment on Dr. Jacks' reflections, which 
 seems to me to carry a very clear message to 
 Americans on this subject at this time. Wallas 
 says :
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 75 
 
 Non-combatants, like Dr. Jacks and myself, who are 
 in the habit of observing our own states of mind, and 
 can therefore to some extent control them, have to come 
 to a deliberate choice. If I too am to make a personal 
 confession, I may say that I believe that the war was 
 mainly the result of German and Austrian aggression, 
 that I intensely desire victory for the Allies, and that a 
 decisive victory for the German governing caste in the 
 present temper would be, in my view, a disaster to all that 
 I most value in civilisation. I also recognise that an 
 absolute surrender of consciousness to the single purpose 
 of victory even by non-combatants has a certain military 
 value. But although my choice means that I sleep not 
 better but worse in time of war than in time of peace, I 
 cannot myself make, or desire to make, that surrender, 
 because to do so would be to abandon as far as I am con- 
 cerned any attempt to control by reasoned thought the 
 policy of my nation. I should choose the unrest of thought 
 because I desire that the war should come to an end the 
 instant its continuance ceases to be the less of two mon- 
 strous evils and because I believe that our national policy 
 should even during .the fighting be guided not only by the 
 will to conquer but also by the will to make possible a 
 lasting peace. 
 
 For the young men who fight, it may be best to 
 abandon the effort of thought, though that fact consti- 
 tutes not the least of the evils of war; but those who 
 are too old to fight owe to their nation the duty of calcu- 
 lating all the consequences of national policy, however 
 painful and uncertain the process of calculation may be. 
 It is that which Bismarck meant when he insisted on the 
 supreme importance of controlling, even during a war, 
 military action by political thought. Now that whole 
 nations with their parliaments, and churches, and univer-
 
 7 6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 sities, and industries, are "mobilised," and the intellectual 
 life of Europe is put under military censorship, such a 
 control is less easy than in 1870 but not less vitally im- 
 portant, and it can only be attained if politicians prefer 
 the struggle for truth to the peacefulness of self- 
 surrender. 
 
 ... I know that there are men in Germany who are 
 in like case with myself. They are in a minority, but as 
 the war goes on, and even more when the war shows 
 signs of coming to an end, their number will increase. 
 Should any one of them read this, I send him greeting, 
 and assure him of my conviction that if ever that imper- 
 fect community of nations is to be reconstituted, of which 
 England and Germany once formed part, there will be 
 work for those who during the war have denied them- 
 selves the luxury of mental peace. 2 
 
 There is one phrase in Graham Wallas' article 
 which is particularly apposite as bearing upon 
 the question with which I have headed this chap- 
 ter: "An Anglo-Saxon or a Prussian World?" 
 Dr. Jacks had spoken of "this feeling of being 
 banded together which comes over a great popu- 
 lation in its hour of trial," as a very wonderful 
 thing. "It produces a spirit of exhilaration which 
 goes far to offset the severity of the trial. ... It 
 is comparatively easy to love one's neighbour 
 when we realise that he and we are common 
 servants and common sufferers in the same cause. 
 A deep breath of that spirit has passed into the 
 
 *The New Republic, September u, 1915.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 77 
 
 life of England. No doubt the same thing has 
 happened elsewhere." Now, with reference to 
 this, Mr. Wallas points to the evidence as showing 
 that : "the state of mind which Dr. Jacks describes 
 is rather more general and more continuous in 
 Germany than in England. Among the French 
 and Belgian non-combatants whom I know it 
 seems to be a good deal less general." 
 
 I think we must admit that this national unity 
 is more general in Germany than in the Western 
 democracies of Europe. It was more general 
 before the war. Indeed, Dr. Jacks has been 
 describing a very subtle part of the process of 
 Prussianisation of the English people: the fact 
 that because a given purpose happens to be the 
 nation's purpose, that of itself tends to close all 
 discussion as to its Tightness or wrongness, 
 utility or uselessness; or to the degree to which 
 it attains to those things. On behalf of a national 
 purpose the English, as Wallas implies, surrender 
 the effort of thought except within the limits of 
 that particular purpose. 
 
 Now it is unhappily precisely such a process 
 which in the case of Germany has made the man- 
 ifestations of Prussianism Louvain and the 
 Lusitania possible. Where criticism of national 
 action is abandoned for fear of producing 
 division within the nation, the capacity for 
 any real judgment is inhibited. And thus it
 
 78 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 comes that a nation of scientists and thinkers, 
 men who have contributed abundantly to every 
 phase of the highest human activities, can look 
 upon the massacre of Belgian civilians and call 
 it good. 
 
 To such a process Anglo-Saxon communities 
 have been in the past, on the whole, rebellious. 
 These divisions, and conflicts of ideals, to which 
 Dr. Jacks refers as moral chaos, are of the essence 
 of Anglo-Saxondom. If any generalisation, as 
 to the real difference between the Prussian and 
 Anglo-Saxon type of society is possible at all, 
 it is perhaps this : for the Anglo-Saxon the state 
 was made for man; for the German, man was 
 made for the state. The first conception neces- 
 sarily involves real divisions of belief and feel- 
 ing, discussion, self-criticism, government as 
 a controversial task. The German type, on the 
 other hand, has been marked, not merely by 
 physical submission to authoritatively imposed 
 discipline, but moral submission to the aim of the 
 state. Individual development and personal 
 freedom have been more and more subservient 
 to the needs of collective organisation and state 
 discipline. 
 
 Now, whatever defects this last form of society 
 may embody, it is obviously better suited to the 
 needs of war than the first. The Anglo-Saxon 
 type, with its necessary divisions, that clash of
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 79 
 
 varying opinion which Parliamentary govern- 
 ment not merely tolerates but needs, gives a 
 national instrument by no means well adapted to 
 the purposes of the military commander. 
 
 And the question whether European society is 
 to take more and more of the Prussian and less of 
 the Anglo-Saxon qualities will depend simply 
 upon whether its main need is to be that of mili- 
 tary efficiency. If survival in the struggle of 
 the various communities of Europe with one 
 another depends upon the element of military 
 efficiency there will be a progressive tendency to 
 Prussianisation and away from that type which 
 we have called Anglo-Saxon. Whether Euro- 
 pean culture can escape Prussianisation will de- 
 pend upon whether European peoples can find 
 some means of fighting out their differences other 
 than as soldiers; are able to resist militarism 
 other than with more militarism. So long as 
 this last is our only recourse the very measures 
 which we take in resistance to Prussianism are 
 precisely those which will impose it and its 
 morality upon us. 
 
 The future tendency will depend not alone upon 
 the defeat of Germany in this war but upon 
 the possibility afterwards of finding some means 
 of restraint without adopting Germany's own 
 method. 
 
 If after the war we pin our faith to the military
 
 8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 method, or can find no other, the Prussian will 
 have conquered us though not a soldier of his 
 remain. 
 
 The process, as we know, has already begun in 
 England. Quite apart from such definite mea- 
 sures as Conscription, now so powerfully sup- 
 ported, some of the acutest and alertest minds are 
 asking whether the basic conceptions of English 
 political organisation have not to be recast in 
 favour of the Prussian form in order to give a 
 better military instrument. 
 
 Mr. H. G. Wells holds that "an immense note of 
 interrogation hangs over the theory that the prin- 
 ciple of free co-operation can secure for democ- 
 racy the highest degree of efficiency." Criticising 
 some of the conclusions of Professor van Gennep 
 as to the effectiveness of that form of national 
 organisation which has marked the Western 
 democracies of Europe, Mr. Wells says: 
 
 "There can be little doubt which side has achieved 
 the higher collective efficiency. It is not the Western 
 side. ... It is no use denying that the Central Powers 
 were not only better prepared for this war at the 
 outset, but that on the whole they have met the occa- 
 sions of the war as they have so far arisen with much 
 more collective intelligence, will power, and energy 
 than any of the Allies, not even excepting France. 
 They have succeeded, not merely in meeting enormous 
 military requirements better, but in keeping the material 
 side of their national life steadier under greater stresses.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 81 
 
 It is idle for this writer to pretend to think that the 
 United States would make any better showing in this 
 matter than Great Britain. The British Government has 
 been excellent in argument and admirable in rhetoric, 
 but it has been slack, indolent, and unready in all matters 
 of material organisation; it has muddled and wasted 
 national feeling, and it has been manifestly afraid of the 
 press and over-sensitive to public clamour. It has shown 
 all the merits and failures one might have expected from 
 a body of political lawyers, trained in the arts of making 
 things seem right, wary and prepared to wait and see 
 what chances the adversary will give, and as incapable 
 of practical foresight, as remote from the business of 
 making real things go right, as enclosed nuns. If the 
 present governments of Great Britain and the United 
 States are the best sort of governments that democracy 
 can produce, then Professor Ostwald is much more right 
 than Professor van Gennep is prepared to confess, and 
 democracy is bound, if not this time, then next time or 
 the time after, to be completely overcome and superseded 
 by some form of authoritative State organisation." 3 
 
 Now the most significant thing about this is the 
 complete change of attitude toward German cul- 
 ture, which it involves. I said just now that the 
 competition for military efficiency in Europe will 
 compel its democracies to adopt the very morality 
 which it was the original object of their effort to 
 fight. Mr. Wells is merely illustrating one phase 
 of that transposition; the process that is going 
 on in the minds of the nation as a whole, though 
 
 *The Nation (London) July 24, 1915.
 
 82 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 more slowly than in his very acute and alert one. 
 He justified this war at the beginning because 
 it was a crusade to destroy the German concep- 
 tion of human society. He now tells us that we 
 have to adopt that conception. Just after the 
 war began he wrote: 
 
 This is a conflict of cultures and nothing else in the 
 world. All the worldwide pain and weariness, fear and 
 anxieties, the bloodshed and destruction, the innumerable 
 torn bodies of men and horses, the stench of putrefac- 
 tion, the misery of hundreds of millions of human beings, 
 the waste of mankind are but the material consequences 
 of a false philosophy and foolish thinking. We fight not 
 to destroy a nation, but a nest of foolish ideas. . . . The 
 real task of mankind is to get better sense into the heads 
 of these Germans. 4 
 
 He now tells us that the task is to get better 
 sense into our own; and, instead of destroying 
 their ideas, to adopt them. 
 
 I am aware, of course, that he distinguished 
 between the Germany of Bernhardi and the Ger- 
 many of Ostwald. But does not even Ostwald 
 accept a moral docility for the sake of discipline 
 which alone makes the Germany of Bernhardi 
 and it is that Germany which violated Belgium 
 and sank the Lusitania possible? 
 
 It is quite possible to watch the process at 
 
 *The Nation (London), Aug. 29, 1914.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 83 
 
 work, to note the change that is taking place in 
 the public temper, and the general attitude toward 
 Prussianism. 
 
 Anyone reading an English paper at the out- 
 break of the war and in the case of some of 
 them for months and years before the war would 
 have found that European civilisation was 
 threatened by a new and dangerous barbarism, 
 a dreadful and immoral tyranny, in resistance to 
 which the last drop of blood of a free people 
 should be shed. Certain eminent Englishmen, 
 like Mr. Frederic Harrison, and Frenchmen, like 
 M. Flammarion, professed to find that this con- 
 flict between Prussia and Europe had been going 
 on for two thousand years. These two, between 
 them, manage to quote Velleius Paterculus, Julius 
 Csesar, Tacitus, Seneca, Strabo, and Froissart to 
 prove that the conflict we now witness between 
 barbarism on the one hand, and civilisation on 
 the other, is merely the continuation of the irre- 
 pressible conflict that has been raging for two 
 thousand years. Mr. Harrison quotes Tacitus to 
 prove that German courage is not real courage, 
 and M. Flammarion Velleius Paterculus to prove 
 that the "German character" has always been "in 
 its very nature a companion of ferocity, falsehood 
 and servility." 5 
 
 'From an address delivered to the Assemblee generate de la 
 Societe astronomique de France.
 
 84 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 An English Liberal publicist, Mr. A. G. Gard- 
 iner, at the outbreak of the war, writes : 
 
 As this great tragedy proceeds it becomes increas- 
 ingly clear that the issue that is being fought at this 
 moment in the trenches of the Aisne is not this or that 
 national gain or loss but the spiritual governance of the 
 world. Someone I think it was Sir Robertson Nicoll 
 has expressed it in the phrase, "Corsica or Calvary." I 
 think that is more true than picturesque phrases ordi- 
 narily are, for the cause for which the Allies fight is more 
 vast than any material motive that inspires them. They 
 are the instruments of something greater than themselves. 
 
 If the phrase is unjust, it is unjust to Corsica, for 
 behind the militarism of Napoleon there was a certain 
 human and even democratic fervour; but behind the 
 gospel of the Kaiser there is nothing but the death of 
 the free human spirit. ... If he were to triumph the 
 world would have plunged back into barbarism. . . . 
 We stand for the spirit of light against the spirit of 
 darkness. 6 
 
 And now Mr. Wells and others tell us that this 
 people of anti-Christs, whose national system of 
 morals and organisation threaten humanity, are 
 the people who have found and developed at least 
 in large degree the true method of civilisation, 
 and that the world must follow their lead. 
 
 An exactly similar transformation of attitude 
 is true with reference to the political objects which 
 the war was to accomplish, the policy which is 
 
 'Daily News (London), Sept. 28, 1914.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 85 
 
 supposed to have inspired it and the British 
 attitude towards militarism generally. 
 
 At the beginning of the war we find even the 
 Conservative press, as exemplified in the Times, 
 declaring that the war was "a war against war." 
 It arose from 
 
 ". . . That love of peace, and of arbitration as means 
 of peace, which is amongst the highest and most cher- 
 ished ideals of the British democracy at home and in 
 the Dominions. That is one of the ideals which the 
 militarism of the German Junker class regards with 
 hatred and scorn. General von Bernhardi, as a corres- 
 pondent showed the other* day, pours contempt and 
 derision upon British and American devotion to it as a 
 sign of our common decadence. But the two democ- 
 racies see in it the bright promise of the future." 7 
 
 Mr. Asquith was just as positive. The war 
 meant, he said, 
 
 ". . . first and foremost the clearing of the ground 
 by the definite repudiation of militarism as the govern- 
 ing factor in the relations of States and of the future 
 moulding of the European world. ... It means finally, 
 or ought to mean, perhaps by a slow and gradual process, 
 the substitution for force, for the clash of competing 
 ambitions, for groupings and alliances, and a precarious 
 equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on the 
 recognition of equal right and established and enforced 
 by the common will." 8 
 
 'Aug. 10, 1914. 
 
 "At Dublin, Sept. 25, 1915.
 
 86 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Some months later (March 8) we find the 
 Times, as embodying British governmental 
 opinion, proclaiming: 
 
 ". . . we do not set up to be international Don Quix- 
 otes, ready at all times to redress wrongs which do us 
 no hurt. . . . We joined the Triple Entente because we 
 realised, however late in the day, that the time of 'splendid 
 isolation' was no more. We reverted to our historic 
 policy of the balance of power, and we reverted to it for 
 the reasons for which our forefathers adopted it. They 
 were not, either for them or for us, reasons of sentiment. 
 They were self-regarding, and even selfish, reasons. . . . 
 In the event of war we saw, as our fathers had seen, Eng- 
 land's first line of attack and of defence in her Continental 
 Alliances." 
 
 Anyone who had argued this in August or 
 September would have come near to being 
 lynched. 
 
 And, at about the same time, we find the Morn- 
 ing Post, an influential Conservative paper, repre- 
 senting a very large class in the governing order, 
 rejoicing as follows: 
 
 "The absurd talk about this being a war against 
 militarism has now subsided; the British people see that 
 only by the intelligent use of military power can they 
 hope to defeat their arrogant and overweening neighbour. 
 After all, the British Empire is built up on good fighting 
 by its army and its navy; the spirit of war is native to 
 the British race, and as we have an excellent cause 
 nothing less than the national existence this military 
 and national spirit requires no apology.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 87 
 
 "But we have long been deceived by false counsels of 
 politicians and sentimentalists, who are even now pre- 
 tending that this is a war which will end war. War 
 will never end as long as human nature continues to be 
 human nature. And war with all its evils teaches us 
 much good. It reminds us of the value of nationality 
 which in peace is apt to be forgotten. There has been in 
 the recent past a horrid disease of internationalism, which 
 has weakened us considerably." 
 
 Nor are we left in any doubt as to the wider 
 social efforts of the militarist spirit in which the 
 Morning Post rejoices: 
 
 "War came like a great thunderstorm, which, while it 
 strikes individuals with its lightning, clears the air and 
 cleanses the ground of heat, vapour, and infection. To 
 those who are thoroughly imbued with these false ideas 
 it must seem as if nothing remained. Social reform, 
 land reform, and all the other reforms without which it 
 was supposed the nation could not live, are gone clean 
 out of the picture. Militarism, said to be so bad a thing 
 in itself, is become the sole business of the nation. . . . 
 Democracy may still exist, but it is no longer in evidence, 
 and it may be surprising to many that it continues to live 
 without some new measure of wet-nursing. Many of the 
 cherished liberties of the subject have been taken away, 
 and even the Tory may be allowed to mourn infringe- 
 ments which the most conservative of Governments would 
 not have dared to make. The liberty of the press can 
 hardly be said to survive: it has been permitted to dis- 
 appear without a protest from those journals which might 
 have been supposed to hold it most dear. Courts-martial 
 have been allowed in certain vital affairs to take the
 
 88 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 place of the Courts. As for freedom of speech, the right 
 to lie, which might have been thought sacred to democ- 
 racy, has been curtailed, so that now only those lies are 
 permitted which appear to be in the public interest, and 
 even truth may not be uttered if its effect is considered 
 to be damaging to the country. Political controversy has 
 almost disappeared, and if politics still exist, they are 
 only permitted upon one side. A national theatre, a 
 national literature, and a national art may all subsist in 
 war, but they must breathe something of the national 
 spirit. The internationalism and the chaotic individual- 
 ism of peace are no longer found acceptable." 
 
 A country at war is led by an almost mechan- 
 ical process to adopt the very morality that it 
 set out to fight. It is all very well to talk of 
 the enormity of militarism, but when we are at 
 war our people must be militarised at least tem- 
 porarily in order to win. It may be monstrous 
 to love war for itself, like the Germans, but 
 if the enemy loves it and you hate it, he is 
 likely to wage it better than you. One must 
 therefore preach its hate with a certain caution. 
 It is all very well to talk of international law, 
 but if you observe it and he does not, that gives 
 him an advantage and you can only equalise 
 things by disregarding it too. Ruth and pity and 
 mercy may be noble things, but they are near 
 relatives to weakness in war. Hate and the desire 
 for vengeance are to some extent military assets 
 they have, for instance, a recruiting value.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 89 
 
 Justice, which cannot exist without some liking 
 for knowing the point of view of the other side, 
 and a determination indeed to do so, may be a 
 divine passion, but a people which sees too much 
 of its enemy's side may be divided in its counsels 
 in acting against him. We may be fighting for 
 democracy, freedom, parliamentary government, 
 against despotism, government by a military 
 caste, and restraint of free speech ; yet, if we are 
 to wage the war efficiently, our government must 
 be autocratic, free speech must be suspended, and 
 the military order must have arbitrary power. 
 To get this unity of action in the direction of 
 military efficiency, we establish a truce of the dis- 
 cussion of those principles which underlie democ- 
 racy, parliamentary government, law and right. 
 But the truce in reality means not that the two 
 rival elements in our national life, the autocratic, 
 and the democratic, the militarist and the anti- 
 militarist, the authoritarian and the libertarian, 
 shall both suspend the advocacy of their respec- 
 tive ideas, but merely that one side shall. The 
 supposed truce is not a truce at all; it is an ar- 
 rangement by which the advocates of one par- 
 ticular method and one particular set of princi- 
 ples can go on urging that method and those 
 principles as much as they like, but no one shall 
 be allowed to reply. For instance, you will find 
 plenty of people in England like Mr. Horatio
 
 90 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Bottomley and Mr. Leo Maxse, and Lord Curzon 
 advocating, to a very wide public, doctrines which 
 are certainly not democratic, and as certainly 
 militarist and Prussian in their tendency. But 
 any reply to them or any advocacy of a contrary 
 doctrine is regarded as a breach of the truce and 
 likely to create a temper which will handicap 
 military efficiency. So that during many months 
 the public is hearing one side of the case only 
 the militarist side. 
 
 Men even of the strongest intellectual equip- 
 ment cannot day by day hear one side of a case 
 to the exclusion of the other without having their 
 judgment greatly affected thereby. And the news- 
 paper, magazine, and review reader is the average 
 man, not the man of exceptional intellectual 
 equipment. 
 
 Now that is important for this reason: any 
 difference of national character that may exist 
 between two peoples, like the English and the 
 Germans, is a matter of absorbed ideas, of the 
 mind, not of race. The Germans are, of all the 
 peoples of Europe, the most nearly allied to the 
 British in race and blood. 
 
 If twenty years ago the average Briton had 
 been asked what people in Europe were most 
 like himself in moral outlook, in their attitude to 
 the things which really matter family life, 
 social morality, the relations of the sexes, and the
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 91 
 
 respective importance which we ascribe to the 
 various moral qualities he would have said al- 
 most to a man that that nation was Germany. 
 The notion that we were more naturally allied in 
 our character to the French would have appeared 
 to ninety-nine Britons out of a hundred, twenty 
 years ago, almost offensive. 
 
 Indeed, we know that the Germans were not 
 always Prussianised: that their character has 
 been modified by the indoctrination which has 
 been part of that national military system to 
 which, during the last generation, they have been 
 subjected. 
 
 The spectacle of Germany to-day is proof of 
 that infinite capacity for self-deception in a people 
 whose judgment is warped by the fact of only 
 hearing one side, by the "nationalist" philosophy 
 and the psychological bias set up in a great 
 national struggle. The world has pronounced 
 Germany the aggressor and her conduct in 
 the war to be that of barbarians. Yet a whole 
 people, including great thinkers, some of the 
 great physicists and, beyond all question, the 
 greatest organisers and administrators of the 
 world, declare that she is fighting a purely de- 
 fensive war by means that are morally justifiable 
 and in the long run the most humane. 
 
 And now the English are undergoing the same 
 indoctrination. Just note the statements of fact
 
 92 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 made by the great London daily that I quoted a 
 page or two back. It tells us flatly that the coun- 
 try will not, or does not, tolerate any discussion 
 of the right or wrong of its acts ; any truth which 
 reflects upon it is not allowed to be stated ; inter- 
 nationalism that is any obligation beyond that 
 to one's country is repudiated, and you have in 
 its place the full flower of the Prussian doctrine 
 that things done for the fatherland are things 
 that carry their own justification. 
 
 Can anyone doubt, if this picture even ap- 
 proaches to the truth, that great English thinkers 
 and scientists will finally be as capable as great 
 German ones, of justifying any action whatsoever 
 committed for the nation's cause. You have here 
 indeed a set of conditions which render the capac- 
 ity for impartial or outside judgments of our 
 country's actions a human impossibility. Even 
 in peace the nationalism of our times has pro- 
 duced a patriotic feeling which requires very 
 little stimulus to become the equivalent of the 
 German doctrine that State interest justifies all. 
 The feeling that one's country stands above right 
 and wrong is of the essence of popular patriotic 
 conceptions the world over. When Mr. Roose- 
 velt tells us that we are right to support the 
 proposition, "my country right or wrong," he is 
 merely turning into American the extremest of 
 Bernhardism. If we are to support our country
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 93 
 
 right or wrong, presumably Mr. Roosevelt would 
 have blamed a German that protested against the 
 invasion of Belgium or the sinking of the Lusi- 
 tania. And if not, why not? 
 
 Nor is the morality of this doctrine merely 
 popular. It dominates political writing and think- 
 ing of the most authoritative order both in Eng- 
 land and America, and influences in consequence 
 weighty political action. An historian of the 
 calibre of Mr. W. A. Phillips, in his "Confedera- 
 tion of Europe/' protests vigorously against the 
 idea that a citizen can have obligations to any- 
 thing higher than his own State. Speaking of the 
 "extremists" in the peace agitation, he says: 
 
 The morality which inspires this agitation moreover 
 shocks the consciousness of those, happily the majority, 
 who still regard patriotism as the supreme political virtue 
 and are not perpared to hold with the late Baron von 
 Sutner that "in any case the interests of humanity and of 
 absolute right are superior to those of any one country." 9 
 
 But if humanity and right do not come before 
 the interests of one's own country, how would 
 Mr. Phillips blame the Germans for putting their 
 country before law and humanity? 
 
 The easy descent or ascent, if you will 
 from one standard to another, the almost un- 
 conscious adoption of that change I am trying to 
 
 *The Confederation of Europe (Longman's), p. 13.
 
 94 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 describe, is illustrated in the case of military 
 methods which at the beginning of the war the 
 Englishman was quite sure nothing in the world 
 would induce him to adopt. Had you in August, 
 1914, put to the first half-dozen Englishmen you 
 met, this question : "Would you sanction the kill- 
 ing of women and children as part of a military 
 operation?" they would have repudiated the idea 
 indignantly. When the first Zeppelins appeared in 
 England, and children were killed, the English 
 press quite sincerely described the act as murder 
 of the vilest kind. An English prelate said that 
 the Kaiser would be held up to the execration of 
 posterity for that one act alone, and that the 
 British government should announce that the 
 German military chiefs responsible should at the 
 close of the war be executed as common assassins. 
 And yet, within a few weeks, English and 
 French officers were killing women and children 
 with bombs thrown from aeroplanes ; the German 
 press were recording the numbers of the slain, 
 and the English press in some case were publish- 
 ing the reports 10 and I am not aware that it has 
 
 10 The following which appeared in the London Times of 
 April 17, 1915 is merely a type of at least thirty or forty similar 
 reports published by the German Army Headquarters : "In yes- 
 terday's clear weather the airmen were very active. Enemy 
 airmen bombarded places behind our positions. Freiburg was 
 again visited and several civilians, the majority being children, 
 were killed and wounded." A few days later the Paris Temps
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 95 
 
 occurred to a single English critic to stigmatise 
 this as anything but quite normal warfare. Cer- 
 tain of the French reports, indeed, speak of the 
 French air raids on unfortified German towns as 
 "reprisals." That, I think, goes a little further. 
 What should we say in peace time of this conduct : 
 A man having murdered a child and escaped, we 
 seized the man's child, or that of his sister, and 
 
 (April 22, 1915) reproduces the German accounts of French air 
 raids where bombs were dropped on Kandern, Loerrach, Mul- 
 heim, Habsheim, Wiesenthal, Tuelingen, Mannheim. These raids 
 were carried out by squads of airmen and the bombs were thrown 
 particularly at railway stations and factories. Previous to this, 
 English and French airmen had been particularly active in 
 Belgium, dropping bombs on Zebrugge, Bruges, Middlekirke, 
 and other towns. One German official report tells how a bomb 
 fell on to a loaded street car, killing many women and children. 
 Another (dated Sept. 7) contains the following: "In the course of 
 an enemy aeroplane attack on Lichtervelde, north of Roulers in 
 Flanders, seven Belgian inhabitants were killed and two were 
 injured." As I write these lines the American paper on my 
 table contains the following despatch from Zurich, dated Sept. 
 24: "At yesterday's meeting of the Stuttgart City Council the 
 Mayor and Councilors protested vigorously against the recent 
 French raid upon an undefended city. Burgomaster Lauten- 
 schlager asserted that an enemy that attacked harmless civilians 
 was fighting a lost cause." 
 
 The English, indeed, are supposed to be developing and 
 specializing on this form of warfare. And yet it is humanly 
 impossible to wage it without killing women and children. The 
 present writer, while acting for a short time as a surgeon's 
 orderly, happens to have witnessed the return of an English 
 officer from a night bomb-throwing raid into the enemy's lines 
 and to have heard his account of just what took place. The 
 aviators themselves have no illusions as to the possibility of 
 sparing civilians in this form of warfare.
 
 96 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 put it to death? It were better, perhaps, not to 
 talk of these things as "retaliations." What re- 
 sponsibility had the women and children of Treves 
 for the bombardment of Luneville ? 
 
 Indeed, English writers are now making very 
 cold and calculated arguments as to the absurdity 
 of distinguishing between combatants and non- 
 combatants at all. Mr. Maurice Low now says : 
 
 The complexities of modern warfare make it impos- 
 sible to differentiate between combatant and non-com- 
 batant. The man, woman, or child working in the 
 Krupp factory in Essen is as much a combatant as the 
 Prussian private in the trenches in France. The private 
 fires a rifle, and if his aim is good he kills a British or 
 French or Belgian soldier ; yes, but with what ? with the 
 cartridge that is the handiwork of men, women, and 
 children working in the Krupp factory in Essen. ... A 
 German man or woman who contributes to the fighting 
 efficiency of Germany loses his or her status as a non- 
 combatant. ... If the enemy is placed on short rations 
 its moral and physical strength is impaired. . . . To the 
 emotional this may sound very dreadful; and it is very 
 dreadful. Slowly to strangle a nation to death, to weaken 
 its power of resistance, to enfeeble it by hunger these 
 things move to pity. But war, as it has been observed, is 
 a brutal business. 11 
 
 In other words, the increased co-ordination of 
 modern life, on the one hand, and the drift of 
 military invention on the other, mean that 
 
 "North American Review, Sept., 1915.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 97 
 
 modern warfare will necessarily be more and 
 more a matter of promiscuous destruction pro- 
 miscuous both as to materials and to persons 
 and if we are to continue waging it we shall have 
 to fit our morality to its needs. The Prussian has 
 merely anticipated us. We shall have to follow 
 him and go one better. 
 
 As Mr. Robert Blatchford, the popular English 
 Socialist, so puts it : "Always go one better. . . . 
 If we can make a gas as deadly, a gas still more 
 lethal and horrible, I say it is our duty to our 
 soldiers to make as much of it as we can and to 
 use it upon the brutal dastards opposed to us 
 without remorse or pity." 12 
 
 Mr. Hilaire Belloc, regarded as one of the fore- 
 most military critics in England, anticipates that 
 when the Russians invade Silesia, "they will drive 
 before them the civilian population, leaving the 
 mines and factories idle. For to leave a civilian 
 population behind the Russian advance, after the 
 methods adopted by the Prussians, would be to 
 invite disaster." 13 
 
 And the same author urges the need for this 
 in the western invasion of Germany as well. 
 Maurice Maeterlinck has made a like claim, and 
 it is put a little more crudely by an English 
 journal, as follows: 
 
 "Weekly Despatch (London), May 16, 1915. 
 "Nash's Magazine, February, 1915.
 
 98 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 "It is being said that when the Allied armies British, 
 French, Belgian, and Russian enter Germany, they will 
 not ravage and destroy. They will march across the 
 country as peacefully as is possible to an invading force. 
 If they do, a policy of very great unwisdom will have 
 been adopted. The one thing that Germany needs is 
 the infliction of a pitiless punishment one that will bring 
 home to every citizen in the German Empire his personal 
 share in all the devilries that have been committed, and 
 make him realise that the lash of civilisation is being 
 applied to his back by way of requital. . . . Forbearance, 
 when you are dealing with a mad dog or a tiger insane 
 with the lust for blood, is an impossible thing. So far as 
 such creatures are capable of any reasoning, they interpret 
 it at once as a sign of weakness. That is how the German 
 nation is going to interpret any failure on the part of 
 civilisation to inflict the very utmost of the vengeance for 
 the innumerable crimes committed in France and Bel- 
 gium. . . . Like the other devils, the Germans will 'be- 
 lieve and tremble.' Any kid-glove policy means simply 
 that Germany will laugh in her sleeve and sharpen her 
 knife for another onslaught on the vitals of civilisation. 
 What is wanted and what we all hope to see is the 
 Belgium army in Germany with a fortnight's free hand. 
 
 The beer-gardens will be quieter then." 14 
 
 * 
 
 In its judgment of the German atrocities in 
 Belgium and elsewhere, American public opinion 
 has very properly made this important distinc- 
 tion: the menacing and barbarous fact in it 
 all is not the isolated acts of cruelty and besti- 
 ality it is recognised that such acts are common 
 
 "The Financial News, September 30, 1914.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 99 
 
 in all wars, though every nation passes the sponge 
 over its own contribution to the record but the 
 formal approval and sanction of those acts. It 
 is that which tends to set up a new code, to estab- 
 lish a new morality among men. 
 
 And what I am trying to emphasise here is that 
 it is precisely that which this war is accomplish- 
 ing for all sides. Louvain and Aerschot were 
 not the outcome of something inherent in the 
 German race; they were the outcome of things 
 that are inherent in, and a necessary part of, 
 militarism and its modern development; all sides 
 are in process of adopting its morality. 
 
 This is part of the price of war and the sane 
 and courageous thing is to face it. If you make 
 war at all, in the end you will make it in that 
 fashion, and there is no protective serum in the 
 blood of Briton or French or Italian that will 
 render him immune. "Among the many delu- 
 sions," says Mr. Wells with very great truth, 
 "that this war has usefully dispelled, is the delu- 
 sion that you can make war a little, but not war 
 altogether; that the civilised world can look for- 
 ward to a sort of tame war in the future, a war 
 crossed with peace, a lap dog war that will bark 
 but not bite. War is war; it is the cessation of 
 law and argument, it is outrage. Even our war 
 in South Africa, certainly the most decently con- 
 ducted war in history, got to farm burning and
 
 ioo THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 concentration camps. Violence has no reserves 
 but further violence. . . . These are no peculiar 
 German iniquities. . . . The German is really, 
 one must remember, a human being like the rest 
 of us, at the worst just merely a little worse in 
 his upbringing." I am not drawing from this 
 for the moment any final conclusion. I am merely 
 trying to emphasise a fact. The result which we 
 shall get for this price that we pay for military 
 efficiency may be worth it; it may be necessary; 
 there may be no other means. All I am saying is 
 that success in this particular process will not 
 liberate us from the Prussian morality. 
 
 One point may be raised. It will perhaps be 
 said that neither the special temper which has 
 arisen in this war, nor the method of its conduct 
 on both sides, would have arisen if the German 
 had not, by conduct which has no parallel, 
 started it. 
 
 Well, of course, one might ask what made the 
 German set the pace in this way if it is not the 
 militarisation to which he has subjected himself, 
 and pushed farther than other people. But as to 
 the morality which war sets up, we must keep in 
 mind this fact: While it may be true that the 
 conduct of which the Germans have been guilty 
 is without parallel, it is just that kind of conduct 
 which every nation in every war has alleged 
 against its enemy. And, believing it, has felt
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 101 
 
 about the enemy as we feel about the Germans. 
 Thus the particular temper which German con- 
 duct has provoked is precisely the temper which 
 is provoked in every war, even though it is based 
 on false reports. At a time when England was 
 suppressing the Boer Republics a large section 
 of English opinion found it as natural to justify 
 "severity" as it now finds it natural to justify the 
 killing of non-combatants on the ground that only 
 German conduct could have led them to it. 
 
 When Swinburne could write of the Boer 
 women and children as "whelps and dams of 
 murderous foes" 5 it is not surprising to find 
 English newspapers making such recommenda- 
 tions as the following : 
 
 The women and children are frequently employed to 
 carry messages. Of course, they must be included in 
 military measures and transported or despatched. . . . 
 \\ e have undertaken to conquer the Transvaal, and if 
 nothing will make that sure except the removal of the 
 Dutch inhabitants, they must be removed, men, women, 
 and children. 16 
 
 Mr. Provost Battersby, a well-known London 
 journalist, is indeed quite ready, if needs be, not 
 
 "Of the Boers as soldiers, Swinburne wrote: 
 "Vile foes like wolves let free, 
 
 Whose war is waged where none may fight or flee, 
 With women and with weaklings. Speech and song 
 Lack utterance now for loathing." 
 
 l "St. James's Gazette (London), August 21, 1900.
 
 102 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 to excuse but glorify the process. This has the 
 true Nietzschean ring : 
 
 The sentiment that would wage war with considera- 
 tion is not humanity, but a shallow and calamitous senti- 
 mentalism, that, to avoid the reproachful appearance of 
 suffering, increases tenfold its persistence and intensity. 
 War is still a method of barbarism and must be to the 
 end. So let us wage it nobly and austerely, as the bar- 
 barians of the past, and not with the blighting pusil- 
 lanimity of a too civilised nation. 17 
 
 And if Americans imagine that they are 
 exempt, let them without even going back to 
 the conduct which each side alleged of the other 
 (I am not talking of what really took place) in 
 the North and South War consider the attitude 
 of responsible papers and public men towards 
 some of the incidents of the Philippine conquest, 
 as, for example, General Jacob Smith's order to 
 "kill everything over ten" in the island of 
 Samar. 18 
 
 But, indeed, one has only to go to our own 
 English and American military authorities, writ- 
 ing in cold blood as to the most efficient method 
 of military action, to see how very slight is the 
 
 "Morning Post (London), August 5, 1902. 
 
 18 I have dealt with the American attitude in such matters in 
 a chapter entitled "A Retrospect of American Patriotism" in 
 an earlier book ("America and the World State": Putnam's). 
 The quotations from Lea, Murray, and Roberts here given 
 appeared therein.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 103 
 
 push needed for them to reach the present 
 Prussian standard. And this is true as much of 
 the general political ethics which lead to war, as 
 to the manner of conducting it. 
 
 An American author, General Homer Lea, has 
 written a book which he has called (suggestively 
 in this connection) "The Day of the Anglo- 
 Saxon." It was dedicated to Lord Roberts, the 
 most popular English soldier and English na- 
 tional character of modern times. The book was 
 well reviewed in England, and I am not aware 
 that it particularly shocked public opinion in 
 this country. Yet its thesis is that the Anglo- 
 Saxon is to conquer the world and to do it with- 
 out regard to any ethical considerations what- 
 soever. The mere fact of the Anglo-Saxon's 
 strength is to justify the whole thing. If the 
 reader can discern in it any moral superiority of 
 doctrine to that preached by Bernhardi he has 
 very remarkable powers of discrimination. As to 
 the ethics of "expansion" which are to justify the 
 Anglo-Saxon conquest of the world, General Lea 
 (pp. 10, n) says: 
 
 "The brutality of all national development is appar- 
 ent, and we make no excuse for it. ... 
 
 "Nations cannot be created, nor can they become great 
 by any purely ethical or spiritual expansion. The estab- 
 lishment, in great or small entities, of tribes and states 
 is the resultant only of their physical power : and when-
 
 104 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 ever there is a reversal, or an attempted reversal, to this, 
 the result is either internal dissolution or sudden destruc- 
 tion, their dismembered territories going to make up the 
 dominions of their conquerors. 
 
 "In just such a manner has the British Empire been 
 made up from the fragments of four great maritime 
 Powers ; the satrapies of petty potentates, and the wilder- 
 ness of nameless savages." 
 
 By way of driving the point home, Lord 
 Roberts himself illustrates it from the history of 
 the British Empire. In his "Message to the 
 Nation" (pp. 8, 9) he says: 
 
 "How was this Empire of Britain founded? War 
 founded this Empire war and conquest! When we, 
 therefore, masters by war of one-third of the habitable 
 globe, when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail 
 her navy or diminish her army, Germany naturally re- 
 fuses; and pointing, not without justice, to the road by 
 which England, sword in hand, has climbed to her un- 
 matched eminence, declares openly, or in the veiled 
 language of diplomacy, that by the same path, if by no 
 other, Germany is determined also to ascend! Who 
 amongst us, knowing the past of this nation, and the past 
 of all nations and cities that have ever added the lustre 
 of their name to human annals, can accuse Germany or 
 regard the utterance of one of her greatest a year and a 
 half ago (or of General Bernhardi three months ago) 
 with any feelings except those of respect?" 
 
 The American author cited whose books, by 
 the way, were recommended to the writer by 
 a great British pro-consul treats of neutrality
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 105 
 
 and the ethics of its violation which are to mark 
 the onward march of the Anglo-Saxon race. I 
 hardly dare think what we should have said if 
 Bernhardi, instead of General Homer Lea, had 
 written the following: 
 
 The occupation of the Persian and Afghanistan 
 frontiers prior to war with Russia, or the European 
 frontiers in a conflict with Germany, arouses in the 
 British nation the appearance of great opposition to the 
 violation of neutral territory. This is false, for the 
 Empire is not moved by the sanctity of neutrality. 
 
 Neutrality of States under the conditions just men- 
 tioned has never heretofore nor will in future have any 
 place in international association in time of war. Such 
 neutrality is a modern delusion. It is an excrescence. 
 
 After justifying the sudden descent of Britain 
 upon Portuguese and Danish territory, General 
 Lea says: 
 
 So correct is the principle of this initiation that it 
 stands out with remarkable brilliancy in the darkness 
 of innumerable military errors made by the Saxon race. 
 
 If England were, therefore, justified in seizing Den- 
 mark in the beginning of the nineteenth century for no 
 other reason than to prevent the employment of the 
 Danish fleet by the French, how much more is she justi- 
 fied during peace in the twentieth century in the occupa- 
 tion of its southern frontiers for the protection of both 
 nations against German aggression. 19 
 
 And so on, and so on. 
 
 19 "The Day of the Anglo-Saxon," p. 228.
 
 io6 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 And General Lea has English compeers. 
 
 An English military writer, Major Stewart 
 Murray, has written a book which is in some 
 sense a counterpart to that of the American 
 author, Lea, entitled "The Future Peace of the 
 Anglo-Saxons." Lord Roberts writes for it a 
 laudatory preface. One can imagine this book 
 of an English officer commended by the greatest 
 of English soldiers being translated into Ger- 
 man as Bernhardi has been translated into Eng- 
 lish, and circulated as representative of English 
 political morality and indicating the real English 
 view of such things as the sanctity of interna- 
 tional law. Major Murray (pp. 4041), speak- 
 ing of the seizure of the Danish Fleet in 1807, 
 says: 
 
 "Nothing has ever been done by any other nation more 
 utterly in defiance of the conventionalities of so-called 
 international law. We considered it advisable and neces- 
 sary and expedient, and we had the power to do it ; there- 
 fore we did it. 
 
 "Are we ashamed of it? No, certainly not; we are 
 proud of it. ... 
 
 "For people in this country to talk of the sanctity of 
 international law is nothing but hypocrisy or ignorance." 
 
 And so as to "frightfulness." We select from 
 Clausewitz, or from the German War Book, pas- 
 sages which seem to place Germans outside the 
 pale of civilised people. Yet these passages can
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 107 
 
 be duplicated almost word for word among Eng- 
 lish authors. Major Murray is frank enough 
 indeed to welcome Clausewitz as "the Shake- 
 speare of military writers, the greatest and deep- 
 est of military thinkers, whose book forms to-day 
 the foundation of all military thought in Britain," 
 and warmly applauds the appeals against "sick- 
 ening humanitarianism." Major Murray fully 
 endorses the principle of making war as "fright- 
 ful" as possible: 
 
 "The worst of all errors in war is a mistaken spirit of 
 benevolence. . . . For 'he who uses his force unspar- 
 ingly, without reference to the quantity of bloodshed, 
 must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act 
 likewise.' . . . Now this is an elementary fact which it 
 is most desirable that those of our politicians and Exeter 
 Hall preachers and numerous old women of both sexes 
 who raise hideous outcries about 'methods of barbarism,' 
 etc., every time we have a war, should endeavour to 
 learn. By their very outcries for moderation and weak- 
 ness they clearly show that they know nothing about war. 
 They impede the proper energetic use of the national 
 forces. They are the greatest possible enemies to our 
 peace." 
 
 Nor does Major Murray stand alone. Admiral 
 Lord Fisher has laid down the same principles 
 just as vigorously: 
 
 "The humanising of war! You might as well talk 
 of humanising Hell ! When a silly ass at the Hague got 
 up and talked about the amenities of civilised warfare,
 
 io8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 and putting your prisoners' feet in hot water and giving 
 them gruel, my reply, I regret to say, was considered 
 totally unfit for publication. As if war could be civilised ! 
 If I am in command when war breaks out I shall issue 
 as my orders : 
 
 "The essence of war is violence. 
 
 "Moderation in war is imbecility. 
 
 "Hit first, hit hard, and hit anywhere. 
 
 ". . . If you rub- it in both at home and abroad that 
 you are ready for instant war with every unit of your 
 strength in the first line, and intend to be first in and 
 hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he is down, 
 and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any) and 
 torture his women and children, then people will keep 
 clear of you." 20 
 
 Lord Fisher was, perhaps, not quite serious, 
 although his biographer says of him: "He had 
 the not uncommon notion which uniform experi- 
 ence of mankind has shown to be false that 
 nations are deterred from going to war by fear 
 of the atrocities which accompany conflict. . . . 
 It is probably the conviction of many who 
 would never dare to express it, although they 
 would be quick enough to act upon it when the 
 time for action came." 
 
 Some of Admiral Fisher's French colleagues 
 are just as "vigorous." We are apt to forget 
 
 "From a character sketch by the late W. T. Stead, which 
 appeared in the Review of Reviews (London) for February, 
 1910.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 109 
 
 that the German submarine warfare was precisely 
 the plan of campaign which the younger naval 
 men of France ("la jeune ecole," as they were 
 called) advocated some years ago when the sub- 
 marine first appeared, as the true tactics against 
 an island power. (At that time, of course, 
 Britain was France's prospective enemy and the 
 one against whom the invention of the submarine 
 in France was mainly directed. ) Admiral Aube, 
 writing on naval war in general, lays down these 
 principles : 
 
 If a great ruler (Frederic the Great), philosopher, and 
 master of the art of war, can declare that wealth is the 
 sinew of war, anything that strikes at the enemy's wealth, 
 a fortiori everything that can affect that at its source, 
 becomes not only legitimate in war but imperative. We 
 must expect then to see battleships that have secured 
 command of the sea turn their power of attack and 
 destruction, in default of adversaries that will not meet 
 them in fight, against all coast towns, fortified or not, 
 peaceful or combatant, burn them, ruin them, or at least 
 impose merciless ransoms upon them. That was the 
 method of the past, it is not that of the present, but it 
 will be that of the future. . . . Fleets can only play a 
 worthy part in war if we descend from the cloudy heights 
 of that sentimentality which has been created by this 
 monstrous association of words: the rights of war, and 
 return to logic and reality, which rule the world. . . . 
 The supreme object of war is to do the greatest possible 
 injury to the enemy. 21 
 
 "La Revue des Deux Mondes, March 15, 1882, p. 331.
 
 no THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 But perhaps the most pathetic illustration of 
 the tendency with which we are dealing that of 
 a nation to become, by successful military re- 
 sistance to military ambition, itself imperialist 
 and militarist is furnished by the recent his- 
 tory of Italy. Her fight for unity and freedom 
 from the oppression of the imperial ambition 
 of other military states, stirred the world. But, 
 the consolidation which enabled Italy to throw 
 off the foreign yoke and become a nation, also, 
 unhappily, enabled her to enter one of the groups 
 of the great military powers. That fact has en- 
 tirely changed the character of Italian national- 
 ism. "Few people realise," says Mr. T. L. 
 Stoddard, 22 "the intensity of the movement which 
 during the last few years has been transforming 
 Italian thought. This movement, expansionist 
 and aggressive to the highest degree, calls itself 
 Nationalism but is in reality a sublimated Im- 
 perialism." Mr. Stoddard presents a mass of 
 evidence which would seem to show that Italian 
 Imperialism is relatively much more violent and 
 widespread, and only lacks the power to become 
 as dangerous, as its Prussian equivalent. 
 
 Its exponents fully recognise that it is the en- 
 dowment of Nationalism with power, its mili- 
 tarisation, that transforms it into aggressive 
 imperialism. 
 
 "In the Forum, Sept., 1915.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? in 
 
 "One is a Nationalist," says Professor Cor- 
 radini, one of the prophets of Italian Imperialism, 
 "while waiting to be able to become an Imperialist 
 later on." He prophesies that "in twenty years 
 all Italy will be Imperialist." His prophecy is in 
 process of realisation. 
 
 It is one of the penalties of a military alliance 
 that one must never tell an unpleasant truth about 
 an ally, and presumably that is why the English 
 public know nothing apparently of the extremely 
 dangerous ambitions growing up in Italy. The 
 facts which Mr. Stoddard reveals and of which 
 other impartial observers have at times given 
 hints point to a grave and menacing problem 
 for the victorious allies at the end of the war. 
 Speaking of the Nationalists who have now be- 
 come so powerful in Italian politics who, indeed, 
 of late seem to have dominated national policy 
 he says : 
 
 "Their eyes have never been fixed solely upon Tren- 
 tino and Trieste, nor have they considered Austria as 
 Italy's sole potential enemy. Space forbids the elabora- 
 tion of this point, but a wealth of Nationalist utterances 
 might be adduced. To sum up the matter: The Nation- 
 alists, while of course never forgetting Trieste and Tren- 
 tino, also remember that French Corsica, Nice, and Tunis, 
 English Malta and Swiss Ticino are all inhabited by 
 Italian populations. If Austria has dominated the Adri- 
 atic, France and England control the Mediterranean. 
 Nationalist colonial aspirations extend far beyond Albania
 
 ii2 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 over the East Mediterranean basin. This last is im- 
 portant because the Italian Government here apparently 
 shares in great measure the Nationalist point of view. 
 Italy's refusal to evacuate Rhodes and the other Aegean 
 islands occupied by her during the Tripolitan War has 
 been supplemented by the staking out of a large sphere 
 of influence in Southwest Asia Minor and by a markedly 
 aggressive attitude throughout the entire Levant from 
 Smyrna to Alexandria. The insistence of the Italian 
 Government on its eastern policy was revealed by the 
 diplomatic duel between Sir Edward Grey and the late 
 Marquis di San Giuliano during the opening months of 
 1914." 
 
 In short, the demand is that Italy shall now set 
 out to fill the role of ancient Rome. "Italy must 
 become once more the first nation of the world," 
 says Corradini. His colleague, Signer Rocco, in 
 a book published early in 1914, explains how it 
 can be accomplished: 
 
 "We are prolific. Hitherto we have had to submit to 
 the injustice of nature, for we were not numerous and 
 the others outnumbered us. ... But to-day we also 
 are numerous. . . . We will soon have overtaken, even 
 surpassed the others. ... It is said that all. the other 
 territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations 
 on the path of progress conquer . . . territories occupied 
 by nations in decadence. Italy will know how to create a 
 culture peculiar to itself and to impress ... its national 
 seal upon the universal intellectual development." 
 
 Another member of the same school, Luigi 
 Villari, well known to the Anglo-Saxon public,,
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 113 
 
 rejoices that for the purposes of this programme 
 "the cobwebs of International Socialism and 
 mean-spirited Pacifism have been swept away. 
 Italians are beginning to feel in whatever part of 
 the world they may happen to be, something of 
 the pride of the Roman citizen." 
 
 Signer Scipione Sighele confirms it: "Italy 
 since the war is another Italy. She has revealed 
 something which before did not exist. Her people 
 vibrate with an enthusiasm at first judged ridicu- 
 lous. A breath of passion animates all souls. . . . 
 Terrible as a menace, which is the instinct of the 
 race. . . . The desire of a great Will." This 
 writer also condemns the ideals of peace and a 
 united Europe : 
 
 "War must be loved for itself. ... To say 'War is 
 the most horrible of evils,' to talk of war as 'an unhappy 
 necessity/ to declare that 'we should never attack but 
 always know how to defend ourselves,' to say these 
 things, is as dangerous as to make out-and-out pa'cifist 
 and anti-militarist speeches. It is creating for the future 
 a conflict of duties ; duties towards humanity, duties 
 towards the Fatherland." 
 
 Corradini expands on the text : 
 
 "All our efforts will tend towards making the Italian 
 a warlike race. We will give it a new Will, we will 
 instil into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty 
 hopes. We will create a religion the religion of the 
 Fatherland victorious over the other nations."
 
 II 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 And for that purpose Professor Corradini 
 wants the Italian nation to discard the "foreign" 
 ideas of English Liberalism and French democ- 
 racy. These are too individualist. The State 
 and Nation must be placed first. Indeed the whole 
 Nationalist movement in Italy seems frankly anti- 
 democratic in the Anglo-Saxon sense. Its posi- 
 tion is indicated by the motto: "Per il Popolo, 
 contro la Democrazia." 
 
 Significantly enough, in the light of subsequent 
 events, a report made to the Nationalist Con- 
 gress in Milan a few months before the war, up- 
 holds the political conceptions of the Italian 
 Machiavelli as against those of English and 
 French individualism. 
 
 Mr. Stoddard sums up a review from which 
 the preceding is largely taken, and which seems 
 to show that the Bernhardis of Italy are both 
 more numerous and more powerful that those 
 even of Germany, by the statement: 
 
 "The outcome of the European War is, indeed, the 
 touchstone, not only of Italian hopes, but perhaps of the 
 Nationalist movement itself. Italian defeat might well be 
 followed by an Anti-Imperialist revulsion akin to that 
 after Adowa, but naturally of much more acute intensity. 
 On the other hand, Italian victory, judging by the con- 
 sequences of the Tripolitan War, would probably mean 
 such further indorsement of Nationalist ideals as to 
 sweep the Italian people fairly into the ambitious race 
 for world-dominion."
 
 ANGLO-SAXON OR PRUSSIAN? 115 
 
 The Prussian, as the most efficient soldier of 
 present-day Europe, has shown us how war in our 
 modern world with modern instruments must be 
 waged if men would have success in it; how a 
 nation must prepare itself for it, how its mind 
 must be shaped and its soul adapted. Presum- 
 ably, if men go to war at all, they will try to be 
 successful in it. The Prussian even may dis- 
 appear, but the process of competition, the elim- 
 ination of those unfit by heart or mind to follow 
 this art, will always tend to give us other Prus- 
 sians. If war, as we now know it, is really in- 
 evitable, then a Prussian world is inevitable. 
 
 But what of this instrument of sea power that 
 does not seem to demand the Prussianisation of 
 those who create and use it ? Cannot that instru- 
 ment hold in check the other and protect the 
 world from militarisation, give to it a dominant 
 society that shall not be Prussianised? 
 
 The three following chapters deal with that 
 question.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER
 
 If "Marinism" has not the special political and social 
 dangers connected with militarism (as in the first chapter 
 we saw that it has not) may not the Anglo-Saxons find 
 therein a means of extending their influence without 
 paying the moral price involved in Prussianism? To 
 answer that it is necessary to realise how sea power works. 
 This chapter gives a summary of the general conclusions 
 of authoritative modern strategists on the operation of 
 sea power and the relation it must bear to military power.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 
 
 WHAT does "sea power" mean? 
 The world comes to use such a word, just 
 as it may speak of "evolution" or any other large 
 process with very wide variations of meaning. 
 
 As a matter of fact "sea power" is very difficult 
 of precise definition. At the end of his work on 
 "The Navy and Sea Power" 1 David Hannay asks 
 whether, after all, in our survey of maritime 
 history we are able to tell exactly what "sea 
 power" is, and what share it has had "in pro- 
 moting the greatness and maintaining the safety 
 of nations." He concludes : "For my own part I 
 have to confess that I find it beyond my capacity 
 to give a definition. In the whole history of con- 
 flict, whether by downright fighting, or competi- 
 tion in trade on the sea, I find but two nations of 
 which it can be said that they could be great only 
 by exercising power oversea, and that so long as 
 they could defeat an enemy in the waters round 
 their shores they were safe against invasion. 
 Even as regards them we have to add the quali- 
 
 'Pp. 247-8.
 
 120 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 fication that their security lasts only so long as 
 they do not possess dominions overseas which 
 are subject to attack by formidable assailants, and 
 across land frontiers." 
 
 In this and the chapter which follows an at- 
 tempt is made to furnish the data necessary for an 
 answer to the question suggested in the first chap- 
 ter of this book, namely: If naval power has not 
 the special political and social dangers connected 
 with military power, may not the Anglo-Saxons 
 find therein a means of extending their influence 
 without paying the moral price involved in 
 Prussianism ? 
 
 The present chapter is a summary of the 
 general conclusions of authoritative modern 
 strategists on the operation of sea power and the 
 relation it must bear to military power, rather 
 than a statement of personal conclusions. In the 
 chapter that follows, however, I have attempted 
 to bring out the limitations of sea power which 
 result from the interdependence of land and sea 
 forces, and the outcome of that on international 
 politics as illustrated in history. 
 
 Sea power is exercised through command of 
 the sea, which is the object of naval warfare. By 
 "the command of the sea" is meant: 
 
 I. That the state obtaining it can carry on its 
 maritime commerce without interruption or with
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 121 
 
 only slight interruption from the armed ships of 
 the enemy. 
 
 2. That it can with reasonable safety trans- 
 port troops overseas for the purpose of attacking 
 colonies or effecting a landing in the enemy 
 country and can keep these troops supplied with 
 such reinforcements, ammunition and provi- 
 sions as will enable them to prosecute their cam- 
 paign. 
 
 3. That portions of its fleet can safely be used 
 to co-operate with land forces in operations on an 
 enemy coast, by bombarding coast fortifications, 
 covering landing parties, and dispersing the 
 enemy's troops by its fire. 
 
 4. That it can prevent the enemy state from 
 carrying out any of the operations coming under 
 heads No. 2 and 3, or at least render them ex- 
 tremely perilous and uncertain. 
 
 5. That it can establish an effective blockade 
 of his chief commercial ports and thus close them 
 to all commerce whether in enemy or neutral 
 bottoms and by exercising the right of search 
 can prevent him from receiving from overseas, 
 through any port, such articles as are classed as 
 contraband. 
 
 It will be seen that the command of the sea 
 is in the first place a defensive weapon. In the 
 hands of a State which has no land frontiers, or 
 none which adjoin the frontiers of the enemy, an
 
 122 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 invasion of its territory is rendered practically im- 
 possible. If the nation possesses a great foreign 
 trade it is enabled to carry on that trade even 
 during the actual period of war. The nation is 
 thus saved both from the worst ravages of war 
 and from any overwhelming interruption to its 
 industrial and commercial life. 
 
 For purposes of direct offensive, the value of 
 command of the sea depends upon the military 
 strength of the nation which exercises it, but as 
 will be seen later, a comparatively small military 
 force is often enabled to exercise an effect dispro- 
 portionate to its size. In the long run naval pre- 
 dominance can be used as an offensive weapon 
 only if there is a strong army to co-operate 
 with it. It must be remembered, however, that a 
 power which, for any reason, does not keep up a 
 great military force in time of peace, is enabled 
 by command of the sea to build up such a force 
 after the declaration of war, to train it, to manu- 
 facture or import arms and equipment, and finally 
 to transport it to the scene of action when it is 
 ready to strike. 
 
 Economic pressure, however, which is an in- 
 direct method of offence, can be exercised by the 
 command of the sea. By preventing the enemy 
 from receiving material of war it weakens his 
 power of resistance and by the interruption of 
 his trade it diminishes his financial resources for a
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 123 
 
 prolonged war and it may also inflict such injury 
 upon his commercial and industrial classes as will 
 induce them to put internal pressure upon the gov- 
 ernment to make peace. This power to exercise 
 this economic pressure often renders a great naval 
 power, even if its army be comparatively negli- 
 gible, an extremely valuable ally to a military 
 state. 
 
 The command of the sea may be either 
 Absolute, Virtual or Disputed. 
 
 Absolute command of the sea implies either 
 that the enemy has no serious naval force or that 
 his naval force has been destroyed. In that case 
 all the advantages mentioned in the five headings, 
 with which we started, are secured to the naval 
 power in full possession. In the South African 
 War the Boer Republics possessed no fleet and 
 Great Britain was thus enabled to transport an 
 overwhelming force to the scene of action and to 
 bring the necessary military pressure to bear, 
 while her commerce went on without any inter- 
 ference from without. 
 
 Virtual command of the sea exists where the 
 enemy's naval force, being in inferior strength, 
 declines to put to sea ; or where it can be so closely 
 observed by the superior fleet that it cannot put 
 to sea without being immediately brought to 
 action by a superior force. In such a case the 
 shores and commerce of the State exercising vir-
 
 124 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tual command will be efficiently protected, while 
 it will be able itself to conduct overseas opera- 
 tions with a minimum of risk. The extent of 
 such risk will depend entirely upon the degree of 
 certainty which can be established that the 
 enemy's force will not get to sea. After Trafal- 
 gar, Great Britain may be said to have exercised 
 virtual command of the sea because the enemies' 
 fleets were closely watched or blockaded, while 
 their reduction in strength and morale rendered 
 it practically useless for them to think of risking 
 a general action for the purpose of breaking the 
 blockade. All danger of invasion passed away, 
 while Great Britain was enabled to land and sup- 
 ply a strong army in the Peninsula. Again, while 
 isolated cruisers caused much damage to British 
 Trade, these losses were not sufficient to prevent 
 that trade from being actively and profitably car- 
 ried on, while the overseas trade of France was 
 completely ruined. In the present war, though 
 the German fleet has never been defeated in a 
 great battle, Britain has from the first exercised 
 a virtual command. The reason is that her 
 superiority in capital ships is very great and her 
 strength in cruisers, coupled with her geograph- 
 ical position in regard to Germany, render it 
 practically certain that Britain could at once 
 throw the British battle squadrons in superior 
 strength across the path of the German fleet
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 125 
 
 should it issue from its ports. Britain has, there- 
 fore, been able to land a large force in France, to 
 keep it reinforced and supplied, to seize German 
 Colonies, and conduct coastal operations in Bel- 
 gium and the Dardanelles. Her commerce has 
 suffered certain losses from cruisers and sub- 
 marines, but only to a very small percentage of 
 its total volume, while her control of the ap- 
 proaches to the German coast and the main trade 
 routes has driven commerce in German ships 
 entirely from the seas. 
 
 The command of the sea is said to be in dis- 
 pute when neither power has obtained a position 
 of naval superiority. In this case neither side 
 will be able to exercise the advantages of com- 
 mand. No invasion on a large scale will be pos- 
 sible and smaller expeditions will be very danger- 
 ous. The danger arises not only from the possi- 
 bility of interruption by an enemy squadron but 
 also from the fact that even if a landing be safely 
 effected the communications of the expeditionary 
 force will be insecure. It cannot receive regular 
 reinforcements and supplies, and if the enemy's 
 fleet should subsequently obtain a position of 
 superiority by winning a decisive action, the in- 
 vaders may find themselves entirely isolated and 
 be compelled to surrender. The commerce of 
 both parties will be exposed to attack and heavy 
 loss, but so long as the condition of disputed com-
 
 126 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 mand continues, neither will be able to undertake 
 a commercial blockade or to drive its rival's flag 
 from the seas. 
 
 During the whole war of American Inde- 
 pendence the command of the sea may be said 
 to have been in dispute. While the allied fleets 
 were numerically superior to the British, they 
 were never able to win a decisive battle. Their 
 intervention was of vital importance to the rebel- 
 ling colonies, because it prevented the British 
 from using their sea power to isolate and reduce 
 one by one the various sections of the narrow and 
 indented Atlantic coast strip, which then formed 
 the United States. On the other hand, it was not 
 sufficient to enable France and Spain to invade 
 the British Isles or to transport troops in suffi- 
 cient numbers to overwhelm the British armies 
 in America or undertake any great expeditions. 
 The West Indian Islands fell into the hands of 
 one side or the other according to the temporary 
 fluctuations of power. As a net result the United 
 States gained their independence because they 
 were on the defensive and a disputed command 
 which prevented the British from exercising the 
 full pressure of seapower was sufficient for their 
 purpose. France and Spain, on the other hand, 
 gained very little because the war for them was an 
 offensive one and they never obtained that naval 
 superiority which would enable them to take the
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 127 
 
 offensive with success against an insular and 
 colonial power. 
 
 At the beginning of the Seven Years' War 
 we find the same position of disputed command, 
 but in this case superior strategy and the great 
 victories of Hawke and Boscawen converted the 
 position into one of virtual command by the 
 British Fleet, which enabled Britain to strike 
 down the French power in India and Canada, 
 while the protection given to her trade so estab- 
 lished her financial position that she could finance 
 Frederick the Great in the continental struggle. 
 
 The command of the sea may also be said to 
 be in dispute so long as an inferior naval power 
 possesses a "fleet in being." The doctrine of the 
 fleet in being is often misunderstood. We have 
 seen that if an inferior fleet can be observed so 
 closely in its ports that it cannot put to sea with- 
 out avoiding action, the superior power may carry 
 on overseas operations without regard to its ex- 
 istence, as in the present war. But if the margin 
 of superiority is so small as to render victory 
 uncertain, or if the inferior fleet retains freedom 
 of action, the case is altered. By a "fleet in 
 being" we mean a fleet which is so far inferior to 
 its opponent that it will not seek action except on 
 favourable terms, but which retains its freedom 
 of movement and is strong enough to constitute 
 a serious threat to overseas operations. Thus in
 
 128 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 1690, when de Tourville was in the Channel with 
 a superior force, Torrington wrote to the Gov- 
 ernment: "Whilst we observe the French, they 
 cannot make any attempt either upon ships or 
 shore without running a great hazard." He did 
 not think himself strong enough to fight on equal 
 terms, but he was so strong that the French could 
 not detach ships to cover military operations 
 without giving him an opportunity, and if their 
 main fleet encumbered itself with transports and 
 the covering of a landing he could attack it with 
 advantage. When his orders compelled him to 
 fight, he drew off with as little loss as possible 
 and continued to observe the French from the 
 Thames estuary, where he awaited reinforce- 
 ments. In his own words: "I always said that, 
 whilst we had a fleet in being, they would not 
 dare to make an attempt." 2 
 
 The extent to which a fleet in being will hamper 
 the movements of the enemy depends, of course, 
 upon the estimate which they form of its fighting 
 value. Thus, in the Chino- Japanese War, the 
 Japanese moved troops into Korea while the 
 Chinese fleet was still at large, undefeated. But 
 in that case Admiral Ito had satisfied himself 
 from the conduct of the Chinese that their squad- 
 
 *In 1866 the Italian admiral, Persano, disregarding the in- 
 ferior Austrian fleet, attempted a descent upon the Island of 
 Lissa. He was taken at advantage by Tegetthoff and disgrace- 
 fully defeated.
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 129 
 
 ron would not be handled with sufficient energy 
 or skill to constitute a serious threat. 
 
 It must be remembered that so soon as an 
 inferior fleet is blockaded, or can be observed so 
 closely that it cannot put to sea without being 
 brought to action by a greatly superior force, it 
 ceases to be "in being" in the sense in which the 
 term is here used. Thus the power of an inferior 
 fleet to affect the situation depends upon its ability 
 to evade action or blockade, hoping for some 
 mistake upon the part of the enemy which will 
 allow it to fall on a detached portion of his force, 
 or to take his main force at a disadvantage. 
 
 The difficulties of an inferior fleet are greater 
 than those of an inferior army, inasmuch as it 
 cannot compensate for numerical weakness by 
 taking up a strong defensive position. It can 
 indeed remain under the protection of its coast 
 fortifications, but by so doing it abandons the seas 
 to its adversary, and on the high seas there are 
 no positions. 
 
 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to observe that 
 a numerically inferior fleet which is greatly 
 superior in efficiency to its opponents may possess 
 a real superiority in striking power. The ex- 
 pression "superior fleet" here used implies simply 
 such superiority in numbers, or type of ship, or 
 morale, as renders defeat of the enemy reason- 
 ably probable.
 
 130 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 In the main, the command of the sea is one 
 and indivisible. A land power, attacked on two 
 frontiers, may stand on the defensive on one 
 and concentrate superior force upon the other. 
 The unity of the sea, with the immense facilities 
 which it gives for concentration, together with 
 the absence of defensive positions, renders any 
 similar plan of campaign at sea impossible. On 
 the high seas there are no neutral frontiers to 
 limit operations, no natural obstacles, such as 
 mountains and rivers present on land, no forti- 
 fied lines, and consequently no positions which 
 cannot be turned. The containing of a superior 
 by an inferior force is thus impossible. If the 
 inferior fleet concentrates it will be defeated or 
 blockaded by the superior, if it is divided, its 
 detachments can be followed everywhere and de- 
 stroyed in detail. 
 
 These considerations may be varied in certain 
 cases by geographical conditions. In the present 
 war the German fleet occupies to some extent the 
 same position with regard to the Russian as the 
 British does to the German. This is due to the 
 very narrow entrance to the Baltic Sea and the 
 existence of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. In the 
 Russo-Japanese War the Japanese navy was in- 
 ferior in total strength to the Russian ; but after 
 the first torpedo attack at Port Arthur it pos- 
 sessed a distinct local superiority, while the rein-
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 131 
 
 forcement of the Russian fleet was rendered 
 difficult by the great length of the voyage and 
 the absence of coaling stations. The Japanese 
 were thus able to use freely the local command 
 which they had established and, finally, Togo 
 beat the Russian reinforcements at Tsushima. 
 Had the Russian fleet been more efficient and had 
 they possessed a good base, say at Singapore, 
 where the fleet could have refitted after its voy- 
 age, Togo's victory might have been less certain ; 
 and had he been defeated, the Japanese army, 
 landed in Korea by virtue of their temporary 
 local command, would have found its communi- 
 cations cut. 
 
 In the war of American Independence, de 
 Suffren, the great French admiral, was fast 
 establishing, not so much by superior force as by 
 superior genius, a control of the Indian seas, 
 which might have seriously shaken the British 
 power in India had not the peace of Versailles 
 intervened. Here too, however, it must be borne 
 in mind that a decisive British victory in the 
 main theatre of war would have enabled them to 
 send out a force by which the control of the Indian 
 seas would have been restored to them. 
 
 The value of superior local strength depends 
 upon the rapidity with which the enemy's main 
 force can be brought up, and the character of the 
 war. Suppose two powers, "A" and "B," are at
 
 i 3 2 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 war for a limited object, say the occupation of 
 the island of "C." "A" has the larger navy, but 
 "B," being nearer to "C" than "A," defeats the 
 "A" squadron in those waters and is able to 
 transport troops to "C," who conquer the island. 
 If the "A" people do not put an excessive value 
 on "C" they may be disinclined to make the exer- 
 tions necessary for its recovery and will make 
 peace. But if the questions at issue between the 
 two nations are such as each regards as of vital 
 importance, then "A" will put forward her whole 
 strength and send out a superior fleet to "C" 
 waters. In that case the "B" troops on "C" will 
 be lost. 
 
 Having examined the nature and meaning of 
 the command of the sea, we must now say a few 
 words with regard to the ways in which that 
 command is obtained and exercised. 
 
 It is a cardinal principle of British naval 
 strategy that command of the sea can only be 
 obtained by defeating or bottling up the enemy's 
 battle squadrons. In Britain's wars with France 
 it was the general strategy of British admirals 
 to bring the enemy's fleet to action upon every 
 possible occasion. The French policy was gener- 
 ally directed rather to ulterior objects, to the 
 taking of certain islands, or the safe passage of 
 convoys. In the words of a French officer : "The
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 133 
 
 French navy has always preferred the glory of 
 assuring or preserving a conquest to that, more 
 brilliant perhaps, but actually less real, of taking 
 a few ships." In consequence they evaded action 
 whenever possible and relied on sudden concen- 
 trations of force to cover the passage of troops. 
 If brought to action, they contented themselves 
 with beating off the enemy so as to cover the 
 immediate military operations in hand. Thus 
 d'Estaing, having achieved a success over Byron, 
 refused to press it because he was afraid of risk- 
 ing the island of Grenada, which he had con- 
 quered and which he regarded as the real object 
 of his campaign. In 1782 de Grasse neglected a 
 very advantageous opportunity of attacking the 
 British, and his action was justified by a Court 
 Martial as "an act of prudence on the part of the 
 admiral, dictated to him by the ulterior projects 
 of the cruise." Three days later he was attacked 
 and defeated by the same fleet and all the ulterior 
 projects of the cruise were lost. By continually 
 hammering at the enemy's fleet wherever it could 
 be found, the British generally ended by obtain- 
 ing a command of the sea which enabled them 
 to recover anything temporarily gained by the 
 French and to gather in all secondary objectives 
 at their leisure. 
 
 So with the various projects for the invasion 
 of the British Isles. If the French could only
 
 i 3 4 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 have defeated the British fleet, or driven it into 
 its ports, they might have thrown an army across 
 the Channel. Instead of attempting to do this 
 they generally relied upon a temporary concen- 
 tration of force to cover a landing, evading the 
 British fleet wherever possible. Their elaborate 
 plans invariably failed because the whole British 
 strategy was directed to maintaining touch with 
 every squadron that put to sea and bringing it 
 to action. One or more of the squadrons destined 
 to cover the crossing was invariably run down 
 and defeated and the whole scheme collapsed. 
 On the other hand, when the British army was 
 sent to Spain, it arrived without interruption, 
 not because it was accompanied by a great cover- 
 ing force, but because successive defeats had 
 shattered the material and moral strength of the 
 French navy and its remaining squadrons were 
 all masked by superior forces. 
 
 The masking of French fleets by the British 
 has sometimes led to a certain confusion in terms. 
 The "blockade" of the French fleets was not in 
 general a blockade in the strict sense of the term. 
 It was not desired to prevent the egress of the 
 French squadrons ; indeed, every effort was made 
 to tempt them out. The one object was to ensure 
 that they should never come out without being 
 fought with. The mainspring of the whole 
 strategy was the desire to bring the enemy's fleet
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 135 
 
 to action. It resulted, of course, in condemning 
 him to inaction if he was unable or unwilling to 
 fight, with the result that the French fleets 
 diminished in morale and seamanship to an extent 
 which greatly reduced their activities when they 
 did manage to slip through. 
 
 It follows from this policy of concentration 
 upon the organised forces of the enemy afloat that 
 the mainstay of naval strength is the capital ship 
 the ship which in the old phrase is "fit to lie in 
 a line" and, as these ships are expensive and can- 
 not be improvised, it results in the necessity for 
 a power desirous of obtaining command of the 
 sea in war, to prepare for war by a free expendi- 
 ture of the national resources upon its battle 
 fleet. A further result is seen in the disposition 
 of the fleets. While the points to be protected 
 may be numerous and scattered, sound strategy 
 dictates that the fleet which is to protect them 
 should be concentrated within striking distance of 
 the enemy's ports. The British Empire could 
 not be protected by a series of local squadrons 
 based on India, on Canada, on Australia. Since 
 it would be impossible to tell where the blow was 
 to fall, such squadrons might well be evaded or 
 overwhelmed in detail. But if the British main 
 fleet is concentrated off the enemy's ports, or at 
 a rendezvous within striking distance of them, 
 with scouts closely observing every movement on
 
 136 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the enemy's coast, then any expedition destined 
 against India, or Canada, or Australia, can be 
 located and destroyed at its point of departure 
 and the only means by which its departure could 
 be protected would be for the enemy to fight and 
 defeat the British fleet. 
 
 The possibilities of evasion have been consider- 
 ably overrated even in the case of the sailing ship. 
 There was a good deal of loose talk about 
 Villeneuve "luring Nelson away" to the West 
 Indies. Nelson was never "lured away." His 
 place was on the heels of Villeneuve, whether in 
 the Mediterranean or the West Indies. While 
 he was on his heels Villeneuve could do nothing. 
 He could only have rendered his squadron avail- 
 able for covering a crossing by falling upon 
 Nelson and defeating him. Napoleon's scheme 
 for the invasion of England was not destroyed 
 at Trafalgar. Trafalgar was only an epilogue. 
 Napoleon's plan presupposed an overwhelming 
 concentration in the Channel and it broke down 
 because the masterly dispositions of the British 
 fleet made it impossible for the French to get to 
 the Channel without fighting. 
 
 It is true that in 1798 Napoleon succeeded in 
 carrying his army to Egypt by evasion, owing to 
 the fact that Nelson was insufficiently supplied 
 with frigates for scouting. But the sequel is 
 instructive. Nelson found the French fleet at
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 137 
 
 Aboukir and crushed it. England obtained com- 
 mand of the Mediterranean. It was impossible 
 for the French to receive reinforcements or sup- 
 plies from home. The co-operation of the British 
 fleet checked Napoleon at Acre. He recognised 
 that the game was up and returned home. A 
 British army was landed in Egypt and the French 
 were forced to capitulate. 
 
 Advocates of local squadrons and defences 
 sometimes contend that the British fleet must 
 remain in British waters to protect the British 
 Isles and that therefore it is not available for the 
 defence, say, of Canada. The non sequitur is 
 complete. If the enemy's organised force is in 
 European waters, the British fleet will protect 
 Canada by being there too. Until it is defeated no 
 great expedition can leave the enemy's ports. If 
 the enemy's fleet has gone to Canadian waters 
 the British fleet will protect Britain by following 
 and defeating it there. 
 
 Those who talk of sudden raids protected only 
 by a few fast cruisers have never considered the 
 position of a crowd of transports, all intensely 
 vulnerable, liable at any moment to be overtaken 
 by a superior force, or the length of time neces- 
 sary for disembarkation. 
 
 The inventions of modern science, steam, and 
 wireless telegraph all go to increase the difficul- 
 ties of invasion. The speed of each side may be
 
 138 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 increased in equal proportion, but all the advan- 
 tages given by greater certainty and by greater 
 rapidity of communication are on the side of the 
 force which desires to keep in touch with the 
 enemy and against the force which relies on 
 chance and evasion. 
 
 The same principle applies to the attack and 
 defence of commerce. No superiority of strength 
 can prevent occasional scattered cruisers from 
 slipping through and working havoc, but such de- 
 struction of commerce will never bring a powerful 
 nation to its knees. The cruisers dare not lie long 
 on the main trade routes or they will be hunted 
 down by superior force. The bases open to them 
 will continually diminish as the command of the 
 sea enables the superior power to capture the 
 overseas possessions of its enemy. On the other 
 hand, if a fleet has defeated the enemy's battle 
 squadrons or bottled them up in their ports it can 
 so dispose its cruisers and so stiffen them with 
 powerful vessels, as to close the main trade routes 
 altogether to the enemy's commerce; or by the 
 establishment of a commercial blockade can bring 
 still more powerful economic pressure to bear. 
 
 The difference of result between sporadic com- 
 merce-destroying and the economic pressure exer- 
 cised by a fleet possessing command of the seas 
 was very clearly shown in the Revolutionary and 
 Napoleonic Wars, The defeat of their battle
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 139 
 
 squadrons induced the French to put a very great 
 part of their energies into commerce-destruction 
 and the actual British losses were heavy. Yet 
 they did not exceed some two or two and one-half 
 per cent of the total volume of commerce. On 
 the other hand, the French overseas trade became 
 dependent upon some form of smuggling by 
 foreigners, and if a ship put into Calais crowds 
 turned out to witness the strange sight. 
 
 An apparent exception to the inefficiency of 
 mere raiding has been found in the disappearance 
 of American shipping as a result of the Con- 
 federate depredations. The answer is two-fold. 
 The transfer of trade was caused largely by the 
 fact that steam was just supplanting sail, and 
 iron vessels replacing wooden ones. The United 
 States fell behind in the competition because her 
 whole energies were absorbed by the war, of which 
 the Confederate commerce-destroying was only 
 an incident. Moreover, the success of the 
 Alabama and her consorts was almost entirely 
 due to the defective dispositions of the Northern 
 Admiralty. A dozen cruisers stationed at the 
 controlling points of the great trade routes would 
 have saved nine tenths of the damage. 
 
 In the present day the lot of the raiding 
 cruiser is harder than ever, partly because wire- 
 less telegraphy renders it easier to locate her, 
 mainly because of her absolute dependence upon
 
 I 4 o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 coal supply. The coaling stations of the weaker 
 naval power soon disappear, the supply which can 
 be obtained from neutrals is restricted. Every 
 time a cruiser puts into port she can be located. 
 
 It is this strategical ineffectiveness of sporadic 
 commerce-destruction, coupled with the effective 
 pressure which a navy which has obtained 
 command of the sea can exercise by blockade 
 and by control of the trade routes, which has 
 given rise to the tendency on the part of the 
 more powerful naval states to stand out for ex- 
 tended belligerent rights. Great Britain in the 
 Napoleonic wars and to-day, and the United 
 States in the Civil War, put belligerent rights 
 high, because the higher they are, the more 
 pressure can be exercised by the superior naval 
 power. 
 
 A fleet cannot, generally speaking, exercise 
 direct military pressure. The defeat of the 
 Spanish Armada freed England from the fear of 
 invasion, but the war lingered on more or less 
 ineffectively for fifteen years because there was 
 no army capable of backing up the blows of the 
 fleet. In general the policy of Great Britain has 
 been a division of labour. She has devoted her- 
 self mainly to securing the command of the sea, 
 leaving to allies, financed by her, the main mili- 
 tary operations. To provide at once a great fleet 
 and a great army has generally proved too hard
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 141 
 
 a task. Moreover, while the naval predominance 
 of an insular power may be borne, since its offen- 
 sive force depends so largely upon co-operation 
 with others, the conjunction of predominant naval 
 power with great military strength in one nation 
 might drive all other states into alliance against 
 it. What the navy can do is to secure time 
 for the creation of an emergency army when 
 required. The present war gives a striking in- 
 stance. An illustration on a smaller scale was 
 given in the very instructive Chilean Civil War of 
 1891. The army held by the government. The 
 fleet declared for the rebels. The long coast 
 line with few lateral railways and great patches 
 of desert rendered command of the sea the decid- 
 ing factor. The Congressionalists imported arms 
 from abroad, trained and equipped an army in 
 the North and then transported it to within strik- 
 ing distance of the capital. 
 
 Moreover, the unlimited power of transporta- 
 tion given by command of the sea has often ren- 
 dered a comparatively small force able to 
 neutralise much greater numbers. In the Seven 
 Years' War, when Pitt put eighteen thousand 
 men into transports in the Solent, the move- 
 ments of over one hundred thousand French 
 troops were affected, because it was impossible to 
 tell at what point the blow would fall. The ex- 
 tent to which this advantage can be reaped de-
 
 142 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 pends, of course, upon the length of the enemy's 
 coast line, the number of good landing places and 
 the rapidity with which his troops can be con- 
 centrated by road or rail. 
 
 Another military advantage of sea power lies 
 in the easy and unassailable communications 
 given to troops who can keep in touch with a sea 
 commanded by their fleet. Further, their retreat 
 is secured. When Moore with his small army 
 cut across Napoleon's communications and drew 
 upon himself the whole force of the French in 
 Spain, he did so in the security afforded by his 
 knowledge that if forced to retreat to the coast he 
 would find his transports waiting for him. 
 
 Direct action by the fleet against coast fortifi- 
 cations is generally of doubtful value. To silence 
 guns on shore it is generally necessary for each 
 gun to be hit ; the whole battery of a ship may be 
 lost by a shot on her waterline or in her engine 
 room. She is peculiarly vulnerable to high angle 
 fire or to plunging fire. The damage done to 
 earthworks is very difficult to estimate and a fort, 
 apparently silenced, can speedily be refitted un- 
 less occupied by a landing party. Where a fort 
 is obsolescent and is attacked by powerful ships, 
 so that its guns are outranged, success may be 
 obtained; but, providing forts have been kept up 
 to date in design and armament, the ship will 
 always be at a disadvantage. Kiel would be a
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 143 
 
 different proposition to the Dardanelles. It is 
 significant that at Port Arthur and again at 
 Tsingtau the Japanese confined themselves to a 
 long range bombardment which did not risk their 
 ships but could not be decisive. The real work 
 of their fleet was to convey and supply the army 
 by which the fortress was reduced. 
 
 The power of ships to run past forts has, more- 
 ever, been limited by the development of the mine. 
 It is perhaps the chief modification of naval war 
 which the mine has worked. Its value for coastal 
 defence, however, may be exaggerated. Unless 
 protected by fortifications a mine field can be 
 destroyed. If the fortifications are there the 
 mine field is generally superfluous. Its one un- 
 doubted use is to prevent vessels running past 
 forts situated at the entrance to a strait, without 
 reducing the works. 
 
 The sowing of mines on the high seas apart 
 from the question of its humanity will only be 
 largely resorted to by a power which scarcely 
 hopes to win command of the sea. The automatic 
 mine is as dangerous to friends as to foes. While 
 it may cause annoyance and loss, it will never 
 decide a war. Sweeping operations can only be 
 prevented by the defeat of the fleet which covers 
 them. A mine field on the high seas can only 
 partially and temporarily hamper the movements 
 of the superior fleet while it restricts the oppor-
 
 144 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tunities for evasion and surprise which might 
 have accrued to the inferior. 
 
 Of the influence of the submarine it is perhaps 
 too early to speak, since it is still in a state of 
 development. So far it never appears to have 
 scored a success against a vessel in rapid move- 
 ment or accompanied by destroyers. Its total 
 failure to interfere with the transport of troops 
 and stores is a significant mark of its present 
 limitations. 
 
 We have now discussed the nature of sea power 
 and the manner in which it is exercised. It re- 
 mains to consider very briefly certain influences 
 it has exercised in the development of nations. 
 
 It may be said in general that sustained national 
 effort will always be associated with real or pre- 
 sumed national needs. A military government, 
 such as that of Louis XIV, may for a time create 
 a great fleet for the purpose of aiding military 
 operations ; but in the long run sea power implies 
 an extensive maritime commerce to be protected 
 from attack, an extensive coast line to be pro- 
 tected against overseas invasion or distant colo- 
 nies with which communication must be kept. 
 
 The ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, 
 with their propensity to commerce and colonisa- 
 tion, early learned the advantages of sea power 
 and many of the decisive battles in the history
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 145 
 
 of Athens were fought at sea. Carthage, as 
 a great commercial and colonising state, de- 
 veloped a high degree of maritime power. When 
 she came into conflict with Rome, the Romans, 
 who had at that time few oversea interests 
 and no fleet, found themselves compelled to 
 build up a navy in order to protect the Italian 
 coast and secure communications with Sicily. In 
 the Second Punic War they seem to have acquired 
 a command of the Mediterranean which com- 
 pelled Hannibal to undertake the long land route 
 from Spain, involving the crossing of the Alps, 
 by which he gained fame but fearfully diminished 
 his army. It was the Roman control of the sea 
 which rendered it impossible for him to receive 
 reinforcements direct from Carthage, while it 
 allowed the Romans to strike at the heart of their 
 enemy. With a Carthaginian command of the 
 Mediterranean it is quite conceivable that Rome 
 would have been crushed. 
 
 It is, however, with the development of the 
 sailing ship which enabled fleets to keep the sea 
 in all weathers and for long periods that the great 
 development of sea power began, and its opera- 
 tions can be illustrated mainly by the case of 
 England. 
 
 In the case of England every requisite for the 
 development of naval power existed. She was 
 insular, and thus could be preserved from inva-
 
 146 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 sion by command of the sea. Her people have 
 shown a natural aptitude for maritime trade and 
 colonisation. She has always had a large sea- 
 faring population. 
 
 The struggle with Spain saw the English com- 
 pelled to develop their seapower (a) for the pur- 
 pose of breaking through the attempted exclu- 
 sion of their traders from the Indies, (b) for 
 defence against invasion by the powerful and ex- 
 perienced Spanish army. The defeat of the 
 Armada secured England against invasion; the 
 supremacy established by her sailors enabled her 
 to force her way into the Indies. The real work 
 of Drake is not to be found in his capture of 
 Spanish treasure, but in his armed penetration 
 of the great new trade routes and his establish- 
 ment of commercial treaties in the Far East. 
 
 The sea power of Holland was one of the de- 
 cisive factors in the attainment of her liberty 
 by cutting the communications of the Spanish 
 troops. Under its cover she founded her colonies 
 and developed her trade. These developments 
 brought her into conflict with England, a conflict 
 ended not so much by the defeat as by the ex- 
 haustion of the smaller nation. The ruin of her 
 sea power was consummated by the necessity for 
 military effort against France imposed by her 
 land frontier, while England, even during her 
 participation in the Continental wars, was enabled
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 147 
 
 to take as much or as little share of the land 
 warfare as she desired and reserve her main 
 effort for the seas. 
 
 In the Wars of the Eighteenth Century the 
 French and Spanish Colonies in America and 
 India fell one by one into the hands of the power 
 which was able to gain command of the seas, 
 while the happy genius of the English for colo- 
 nisation enabled them to develop these colonies 
 into fresh sources of trade and to plant strong 
 communities whose resources afforded admirable 
 bases for the British squadrons. Thus the 
 colonies acquired by the exercise of sea power, 
 in their turn, contributed to its development. 
 
 It is, perhaps, in the great Napoleonic struggle 
 that sea power finds its fullest illustration. While 
 the French armies overran the whole of Conti- 
 nental Europe their power stopped short at the 
 coasts. While the rest of Europe was disorgan- 
 ised by perpetual warfare and France herself 
 exhausted by the drain of conscription, Great 
 Britain, undisturbed by the invader, was able to 
 take advantage of the inventions of Watt and 
 Arkwright to accomplish the great industrial 
 revolution to carry her commerce and her carry- 
 ing trade all over the world. It is not true to 
 say that the great development of British industry 
 and commerce was due to sea power and the war. 
 It arose from economic causes with which the
 
 i 4 8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 war had nothing to do. But that it was developed 
 in spite of the war was due to the protection 
 afforded by the Command of the Sea. The actual 
 prosperity of England was not due to sea power ; 
 her relative prosperity as compared with the 
 general exhaustion of Europe was. 
 
 This prosperity it was which enabled her to 
 subsidise coalition after coalition against Napo- 
 leon. The knowledge of this fact and the steady 
 economic pressure of the fleet forced him into 
 one desperate measure after another with a view 
 to excluding British trade from the Continent, 
 and was finally responsible for the quarrel with 
 Russia which led to the downfall of his empire. 
 English gold and English troops, operating by 
 virtue of sea power, maintained the struggle in 
 the Peninsula which drained so heavily the re- 
 sources of the French army. 
 
 Finally, a growing view as to the extent to 
 which modern naval strategy has suffered modi- 
 fications for which the classical authorities like 
 those just summarised had not prepared us is 
 perhaps fairly indicated in the following: 
 
 "We have witnessed the development of an un- 
 suspected power of the defensive at sea. The 
 mine has made it possible to fortify the waters, 
 and great invisible lines of obstacles stretch across 
 the waves, fulfilling the same functions as the
 
 MECHANISM OF SEA POWER 149 
 
 trenches of the Aisne on land. It seems to be 
 impossible to bring an unwilling enemy to a gen- 
 eral engagement. It is equally impossible to im- 
 pose a formal blockade, though the extension of 
 the doctrine of conditional contraband serves 
 something of the same purpose in limiting the 
 services which neutrals may bring to an enemy. 
 The submarine has limited the activity of capital 
 ships, nor is it easy to-day to imagine a successful 
 landing on a coast provided with the modern 
 defences. The power of a crushing offensive 
 seems to have weakened, and the notion of decid- 
 ing a war by a naval battle to have vanished. 
 What remains is an enhanced power of slow 
 pressure, and an ability to penalise commerce, 
 which steam and wireless telegraphy have greatly 
 reinforced. The seas may never again see the 
 spectacle of a modern Trafalgar. But the basis 
 of Mahan's argument remains. Sea power is 
 still a condition of successful warfare on a world- 
 wide theatre, and it is still the basis of world- 
 empire."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER
 
 Is the assumption that by enlarging the belligerent 
 rights of sea war we shall ensure the predominance of 
 the non-military, Anglo-Saxon type of Liberal society, as 
 against the continental military authoritative form, a valid 
 assumption? The evidence seems against it. Sea power 
 being increasingly dependent upon military alliances for 
 the exercise of world influence is unable to pick and 
 choose as to the character of the nation it supports, as 
 the boxing of the compass by a nation like England in 
 her alliances has proved. The present war is repeating 
 and illustrating what past combinations have abundantly 
 shown.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 SOME LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 
 
 "f AHE truth is that back of all the technical discussion 
 ? which surrounds the subject, beyond all the his- 
 torical considerations which can be adduced, lies one all- 
 important question : Whether Anglo-Saxon domination of 
 the sea is to persist. For centuries the origin of the 
 glory of the Anglo-Saxon race has lain in its sea power. 
 Is that power to continue or to vanish? And what 
 interest have we Americans in that great question? To 
 state the problem is to answer it. Every triumph of 
 Anglo-Saxon sea power, every magnifying of that power 
 by the operations of the Order in Council which we 
 have analyzed, is a weapon wrought for the hand of the 
 United States. 
 
 "Should the East ever menace the coast of California, 
 shall we Americans look out upon an ocean on which 
 ride the fleets of Great Britain and the United States, or 
 shall we face alone an open sea? For centuries England 
 has ruled by her sea power. In 1861 the sea power of 
 the North was not the least of the forces under which 
 the South was crushed. Are there any who would pro- 
 pose for us under the name of 'neutralisation of sea 
 power' the fate of Belgium? Or shall we be mindful 
 of the words of that great American, whose fame stands 
 so far higher in Europe than in our own country, the 
 name of Admiral Mahan? 
 
 "But the great thing is that if Anglo-Saxon sea power
 
 154 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 continue to dominate the sea, if this nation stand firm in 
 the protection of its commerce, if it remember that any 
 blow to the high dignity of sea power is a blow aimed 
 at our future national existence, then the menace which 
 so many thinking men of Europe see lying across the 
 path of the United States will vanish from our future. 
 The spectacle of a Germany whose commerce and whose 
 economic life is held in iron grip by Anglo-Saxon sea 
 power will forever warn an island empire of the fate 
 which the challenging of that sea power will hold. 
 
 "Back of the Order in Council, back of the acquies- 
 cence of the United States in that order, lies the recog- 
 nition of sea power, lies reverence for the wisdom and 
 foresight of Abraham Lincoln, lies perhaps the future 
 destiny of the United States." 
 
 Thus a "Prominent American Lawyer" writ- 
 ing on the subject of International Law and its 
 relation to the United States. 1 
 
 The major assumptions which he makes are 
 usually regarded almost as axioms in the discus- 
 sions of this subject. 
 
 What is their validity? 
 
 How will the enlargement of neutral right 
 affect the international position of the United 
 States, the survival of Anglo-Saxon civilisation 
 in its struggle with rival forms, in such possible 
 future collisions as that in which it is now en- 
 gaged? Should we not by limiting the effective- 
 ness of sea control give relatively greater influ- 
 
 l New York Times, May 16,
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 155 
 
 ence into the hands of militarist land powers? 
 If, as indicated in the first chapter of this book, 
 "marinism," that is to say, the possession of great 
 naval force, does not involve on the part of the 
 nation developing it the peculiar social and moral 
 dangers that does "militarism," should we not by 
 hampering naval power throw the development of 
 civilisation rather under the influence of the more 
 mischievous form of armed power? Ought not 
 America to tolerate whatever disadvantages may 
 belong to a situation like that which has arisen in 
 the present war and to make some sacrifice for 
 the purpose of contributing to the strength and 
 influence of that particular form of civilisation 
 of which she is a part ? 
 
 Such are perhaps the first questions which 
 an Anglo-Saxon is apt to raise in the discussion 
 of sea power. But it is necessary again and 
 again to point out that the project outlined in 
 the first chapter of this book does not involve the 
 limitation of belligerent right at sea, as against 
 neutral right. It amounts indeed to a proposal to 
 increase belligerent power by the voluntary trans- 
 fer from the neutral of his existing rights in 
 return for a more effective defence of his perma- 
 nent interests by the increased power so created, 
 in which power he would have some measure of 
 control. Or put it this way: The process of 
 internationalisation would not limit sea power
 
 156 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 but transfer the control of its operation in so far 
 as that operation acted through economic coer- 
 cion. So long as the belligerent, using sea power, 
 represented in his final political object the general 
 will of the community of nations, the internation- 
 alisation of his instrument would add greatly to 
 its force. Throughout this discussion it will be 
 necessary for the reader to keep this fact well in 
 mind : The suggestion here made is that sea power 
 should be rendered more effective by the free co- 
 operation of "neutrals," who give that co-opera- 
 tion because the coercion is being exercised on 
 behalf of their ultimate interest duly protected 
 by arrangement. Only in the event of an Anglo- 
 Saxon power challenging the general will of the 
 nations would it find itself hampered by this re- 
 adjustment of "neutral" position. 
 
 In other words, the alternative we are con- 
 sidering is not as between the effectiveness of sea 
 power and its limitation, but as between its inter- 
 nationalisation, and its arbitrary exercise by any 
 nation that by any means can become predominant 
 at sea. 
 
 Indeed, the difference of principle between the 
 two courses is that which gives to the foreign 
 policy of the great powers two rival tendencies, 
 that which divides the alternating policies of 
 English statecraft: the Balance of Power as op- 
 posed to the European Concert. Both these poli-
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 157 
 
 cies may be defensive in motive, but they are 
 separated by this radical difference. The partisan 
 of the Balance of Power says to his prospective 
 rival : "You cannot attack my group because it is 
 as strong if not stronger than yours. Therefore 
 it is out of the question for you to carry out your 
 policy against our interest." 
 
 The partisan of the Concert, on the contrary, 
 says to his prospective rival : "We don't ask your 
 group to submit to our preponderant power be- 
 cause we should not be content to submit to yours. 
 But let us all combine for such objects as we have 
 in common. Instead of three nations adjusting 
 their differences on one side and three on the 
 other, let the adjustments be as between the six." 
 
 The Balance of Power policy is bound ulti- 
 mately to fail because "two can play at that 
 game." If we found ourselves faced by a com- 
 bination which was as strong if not stronger than 
 ourselves we should not regard that as a safe 
 position, and, as a matter of self-defence, of 
 protecting our political interests, our diplomatic 
 position in any international negotiations that 
 might come up, we should try to become 
 stronger. Military power being at best an un- 
 certain quantity, it is as well to be on the safe 
 side. So that the method of the Balance is really 
 one by which both of two parties are each try- 
 ing to be stronger than the other; and as both
 
 158 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 cannot be, this method postulates, as a basis for 
 international relationship, a physical impossibility 
 if all are to be treated alike ; or else, not something 
 which is fair for all alike but something which 
 places one party at a disadvantage. This, of 
 course, will never be accepted and the inevitable 
 result is a constant struggle for preponderant 
 power, incidents of which struggle are bound at 
 certain stages to be war. 
 
 Now a conception of international relationship 
 based on sheer superiority of English or Anglo- 
 Saxon sea power belongs to just this character of 
 policy. It assumes that other nations, without 
 sharing in any way the control of its force, will 
 be content to accept it either because it is purely 
 defensive and could not be a menace to them, or 
 because they can do nothing else since Anglo- 
 Saxon peoples alone can exercise preponderant 
 sea power. 
 
 I want to show in this chapter that these last 
 assumptions are invalid, that sea power as a 
 factor of international politics need not be and 
 usually is not purely defensive; that as it is 
 obliged in practice to operate with land powers 
 against other land powers, the incidence of its 
 alliances may well make for the support of mili- 
 tarily aggressive nations ; and that as sea domina- 
 tion has belonged in the past to other than Anglo- 
 Saxon nations it may well do so in the future.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 159 
 
 In the first chapter I have attempted to show 
 that British sea power of itself, in peace time, 
 does not operate as a tyranny or menace to the 
 world, or, as an instrument for commercial 
 favouritism. But as English sea power in war 
 becomes generally a part of some land power it is 
 its effect in that connection which we have to 
 consider in estimating its international influence. 
 
 To an American belongs the honour of having 
 brought home to the world the real meaning 
 of sea power, and he once for all destroyed the 
 illusion of its being necessarily a purely defensive 
 arm. The mechanism of the thing has been 
 sketched in the preceding chapter. It is certain 
 secondary results in international politics with 
 which we are now concerned. 
 
 Mahan's teaching quite true teaching as far 
 as it went was one of the causes, and not the 
 least potent, of this war. But for the entrance 
 of Germany into the field of naval competition it 
 is doubtful whether the differences between 
 Germany and England would have been irrecon- 
 cilable ; and consequently whether European poli- 
 tics would have drifted away from the principle 
 of the Concert which for some time as in the 
 Salisburian regime had the support of English 
 influence, and towards the re-erection by England 
 of the method of the Balance, which has given 
 the present result.
 
 160 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 More than one English critic (Professor 
 Spencer Wilkinson among the number) has noted 
 Mahan's influence on German naval policy. It 
 was summarised by a writer in the London 
 Nation just after Mahan's death, thus : 2 
 
 The strategist who evolved the theory of sea power 
 was much more than a historian. He helped to make 
 history, much as Treitschke did. . . . His teaching was 
 available to remind us how considerable are the oppor- 
 tunities for attack, how immense the resources of resist- 
 ance, of a Power which retains the unchallengeable com- 
 mand of the seas. 
 
 Admiral Mahan had an immense influence among 
 ourselves. But we are inclined to think that his influence 
 on German thinking was even more fateful. He gave us 
 clear reasons for persevering in our traditional policy. 
 He gave the Germans equally cogent reasons for seeking 
 their future on the sea. One may doubt, indeed, whether 
 Bernhardi and all his school had as much effect in 
 deciding Germans to build a great navy as this American 
 historian, who drew the lessons of the past primarily for 
 the benefit of the English-speaking world. His books 
 were quoted as classics by Count Reventlow and other 
 leaders of the "Flottenverein." The significance of Mahan 
 is chiefly that he swept away the comfortable maxim in 
 which most of us were nursed, that a navy is only a 
 weapon of defence. Its function in history has been, 
 
 'There is a story which I have been unable to verify that in 
 the last few months of his life Mahan, who was a keenly reli- 
 gious man, was profoundly affected by the realisation that his 
 doctrines had played so large a part in stimulating German 
 naval ambitions and so in producing the war.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 161 
 
 primarily, the acquisition of Empire. When modern Ger- 
 many turned away, under the pressure of its growing 
 industries and its teeming population, from the Bismarck- 
 ian ideal of a purely Continental Empire to dreams of 
 extra-European expansion, it found Mahan's books ready 
 for its use. ... It might, indeed, by a purely Continental 
 victory over France, for example, acquire French colonies, 
 but it would hold them only by the leave of the Power 
 which commanded the seas. Nor was the case much 
 better, if it thought not so much of predatory adventures 
 at the expense of European Powers, but turned instead 
 to the appropriation of spheres of influence in China or 
 Turkey. There, too, it met with the hard fact of our 
 supremacy at sea. Wild extremists may have thought 
 of an invasion of England. Sober men, like Prince von 
 Biilow, used the argument from capture at sea. But the 
 real motive which explains the rise of the modern German 
 navy is the lesson derived from Mahan, that sea power is 
 essential to world empire. That at bottom is the reason 
 why our attempts at discussion invariably failed. We 
 were rather apt, on our side, to disguise the real facts, 
 when we used to argue as though the sole function of 
 our navy were to defend our shores. The Germans knew 
 better; Mahan and history were their teachers. ... If 
 we, on our side, had been a little franker in our thinking, 
 we might, perhaps, have carried rather further the policy 
 of facilitating German expansion, which Lord Salisbury 
 followed in the delimitation of Africa. 
 
 This passage, though going far beyond the 
 general English understanding of the German 
 view, fails to give full value to this considera- 
 tion: that any continental power, dealing with
 
 162 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 purely continental enemies, is obliged, quite apart 
 from any question of overseas ambitions, to take 
 British naval force into consideration as a pos- 
 sible arm of those continental enemies. As the 
 present war illustrates. 
 
 Assume, for the sake of argument it may not 
 be true at all, but as an illustration helps to clarify 
 the working of these things that German terri- 
 torial ambitions did not envisage British territory 
 at all; that they ran mainly in the direction of 
 Asia Minor, acting at first through Austria and 
 Austria's domination of Servia. Yet, even so, 
 England is brought into the conflict in support of 
 the principle of the Balance of Power, the prin- 
 ciple that a continental power that greatly over- 
 tops the rest threatens her. 
 
 How is this theory defended ? 
 
 The answer explodes the notion that sea power 
 is something which Anglo-Saxon peoples can 
 alone exercise. If England could always be sure 
 that no other power could challenge her sea posi- 
 tion, why should the erection of an overpowering 
 State upon the Continent threaten her ? Her navy 
 would make both herself and her empire safe. 
 
 But she assumes that other nations, if they 
 become powerful enough, can build navies; that 
 "sea power," though exercised at sea, is made up 
 of things that come from the land : iron, steel, coal, 
 intricate and costly machinery, scientific training.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 163 
 
 Naval power is mainly a matter of wealth 
 of industrial efficiency which enables a people to 
 build ships and pay for them. The proportion 
 of material to men is very much greater in naval 
 than in land war. Even seamanship is not an 
 exclusive possession of the Anglo-Saxon race: 
 great seamen of the past have been Scandina- 
 vians, Normans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, 
 Dutch, and even Moors. They have all taken to the 
 sea readily enough when the wealth of their coun- 
 tries was bound up with sea trade and enabled 
 them to maintain great navies. History indeed 
 is quite emphatic on the point that widely diver- 
 gent races, situated in very different geo- 
 graphical conditions, can equip themselves with 
 the wherewithal of sea power. A Germano-Slav 
 combination, a Russia under the tutelage of 
 Germany, which Professor Cramb foretells so 
 emphatically 3 as one of the inevitable combina- 
 tions of the future, organising the resources of 
 territories very much greater than those of the 
 United States and a population twice that of 
 North America, with outlets on the Pacific, the 
 Atlantic, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Medi- 
 terranean, would not be faced by any physical 
 impossibility should it determine to challenge the 
 predominance of British sea power. 
 
 *In "Germany and England."
 
 164 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 That is the first point : It is to take a very short 
 view of history to assume that sea power must 
 necessarily be the exclusive possession of the 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 But the same fact also demonstrates the inter- 
 dependence of land and sea power. If Britain has 
 to prevent the growth of a land power that is in 
 the first instance a military nation using military 
 force to increase its resources she can only do so 
 by allying herself with other military powers, its 
 rivals. Sometimes this has to be done without 
 reference to the merits of any particular dispute 
 between continental states or to the character of 
 a particular state ; or to the question whether the 
 alliance promotes a free form of government or 
 not, as when, during so large a part of the nine- 
 teenth century, she supported Turkey against 
 Russia. 
 
 Moreover, the relative importance of the mili- 
 tary role in this necessary combination between 
 land and sea tends to become greater for reasons 
 that I will deal with presently. 
 
 This will inevitably have one, or both, of two 
 results always assuming that the struggle for 
 political power based on armed force continues. 
 It will compel an empire like the British to de- 
 velop the potential military force contained in its 
 millions of Asiatic subjects, or, more and more 
 to be dependent upon the land forces of military
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 165 
 
 and continental allies. In the former contingency 
 there is likely to be a certain divergence of in- 
 terest in the matter of relations to Asia as be- 
 tween Britain and America (and even certain 
 of the British colonies) and in the latter con- 
 tingency the development of the military struggle 
 is just as likely to make for the survival of the 
 military type of civilisation as for the "Anglo- 
 Saxon." 
 
 This former point bears upon one of the 
 assumptions made by the writer from whom I 
 have quoted at the head of this chapter. He 
 assumes, as a matter of course, that in future 
 world politics America and the British Empire 
 are certain to have such identity of aim that 
 any war made by one is sure to represent the 
 national aims and purposes of the other; or 
 at least not be so divergent as to run counter 
 to those vital interests which the sea power of 
 either could be called upon to defend. This 
 implies that their naval forces could never be 
 brought into rivalry. That, of course, is assur- 
 edly to be hoped, but it is interesting to note 
 that Mahan, although cited in the passage quoted 
 above as supporting such view, was by no 
 means positive thereon. Asked on one occasion 
 by the Editor of The North American Review 
 to express his opinion upon Anglo-American 
 reunion, which, it had just then been suggested,
 
 166 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 should have its beginning in a naval union or 
 alliance, he wrote a long article 4 which, while 
 paying every tribute to the moral unity of Anglo- 
 Saxondom and hands-across-the-sea sentiment, 
 yet "turned down the proposition." He gives 
 more than a hint that America, dominating a 
 whole continent, standing in a maritime sense 
 between the two great halves of the Old World 
 Europe and Asia is destined to control very 
 largely in the days to come the communications 
 between them. "Whate'er betide," he writes of 
 those times, "sea power will play in those days 
 the leading part which it has in all history." 
 He goes on : 
 
 The United States by her geographical position must 
 be one frontier from which as from a base of operations 
 the sea power of the civilised world will energise. . . . 
 Like the pettier interests of the land it must be competed 
 for, perhaps fought for. The greatest of the prizes for 
 which nations contend, it too will serve like other conflict- 
 ing interests to keep alive that temper of stern purpose 
 and strenuous emulation which is the salt of the society 
 of civilised states. 
 
 The writer from whom I have quoted also 
 speaks of the importance of "Anglo-Saxon sea 
 power from the point of view of possible con- 
 flict between this continent and Asia." But can 
 
 4 The North American Review, November, 1894.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 167 
 
 we assume that in the matter of the relationship 
 to Asia the position of the United States and 
 Great Britain is certain to be identical? 
 
 Are we not apt to overlook the fact that Great 
 Britain, in addition to being an Anglo-Saxon, is 
 becoming more and more an Asiatic Power 
 more and more dependent as her military needs 
 increase upon Asiatic populations ? 5 
 
 A certain cleavage between the two Anglo- 
 Saxon powers has in this matter already revealed 
 itself. Great Britain is and has been for many 
 years an ally of Japan; the military and naval 
 aid of the latter country in the present war has 
 been accepted by Great Britain. During that 
 period the relations of Japan and the United 
 States have been getting steadily worse. Japan 
 has seized the occasion presented by the war to 
 assert a virtual sovereignty over China. China is 
 avowedly looking to at least the moral assist- 
 
 'The system which England may be compelled to develop in 
 India and Egypt and equatorial Africa, France may be com- 
 pelled to develop in other parts of Africa. A school of French 
 military leaders have for many years been urging the more 
 thorough conscription of the natives of Northern and Western 
 Africa the development of "La Force noire," as one of their 
 military writers has called it. Some little has, of course, been 
 done in that direction already, but the possibilities of the 
 system have hardly been realised in the view of some very notable 
 authorities. Some of the first "French" troops that the Germans 
 met in battle in August, 1914, were Senagambian blacks "val- 
 iantly defending their fatherland," as Maximilian Harden 
 remarked.
 
 1 68 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 ance of the United States against this encroach- 
 ment and the United States has, it is reported, 
 made very energetic diplomatic representations to 
 Japan. 
 
 The situation is far too undeveloped to judge of 
 its permanent reaction on Anglo-American rela- 
 tions, but it is certain that Britain, at a time when 
 she is beginning to make very considerable use of 
 Indian troops outside of Indian and even Asiatic 
 territory (and if her military needs of the future 
 become more pressing she is pretty certain to 
 develop this system) will go to very great lengths 
 to avoid cleavage of policy with Japan, a nation 
 that in a few years has become the "England of 
 the East," and is in some degree setting the 
 direction of Asiatic ambition. 
 
 I have said that the relative importance of the 
 military part in the necessary combination of land 
 and sea power tends to become greater. 
 
 In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth 
 centuries the three or four great nations of 
 Europe imposed their authority upon great spaces 
 of Africa and Asia and America divided the 
 world between them in large part with small 
 bodies of men. The destiny of half a continent 
 might depend upon the fact of a single shipload 
 of men landing among savages and establishing 
 some sort of authority among them. It was much 
 more largely a matter of sea roving than it would
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 169 
 
 be possible for any contest between European 
 powers in Asia or Africa or America to be to- 
 day. The development of transport and com- 
 munication, both by land and sea (Russia put 
 immense armies into Manchuria without sending 
 a regiment by sea) the industrialisation of the 
 world, the Europeanisation of Asiatic populations 
 has altered the old conditions. 
 
 This is indeed the strongly expressed view of 
 more than one English authority on sea power. 
 In his "Navy and Sea Power," 6 Mr. Hannay 
 says: 
 
 Let us assume that the day may come . . . when 
 Great Britain will require on American, Asiatic, or 
 African frontiers, not the handful of men who obeyed 
 Clive or the small armies of British soldiers who were 
 led by Wolfe, Lake or Sir Arthur Wellesley, but great 
 hosts. What will be the influence of sea power then? 
 Its function will, of course, be to keep open the road 
 for its armies, but the fate of the empire will depend on 
 the armies. 
 
 Nor has the process of consolidation and expansion 
 gone on only in remote continents. It has been every 
 whit as conspicuous in Europe. . . . Instead of weak 
 Imperial cities and small kingdoms on the north there is 
 the German Empire. The kingdom of Italy has taken 
 the place of feeble Genoa and moribund Venice, the 
 Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the States of the Pope and the 
 Kingdom of Naples. If the formation of the German 
 
 Henry Holt & Co., New York.
 
 170 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Empire and the Italian Kingdom has destroyed the old 
 pre-eminence of France on the continent it has also 
 radically affected the position of Great Britain on the 
 sea. . . . The century which began in 1814 by the Treaty 
 of Paris has witnessed one long struggle on the part of 
 Great Britain to maintain her relative position on the sea 
 and . . . she has barely succeeded. ... If the world 
 believes that the Great Sea Power thinks itself to be in 
 danger, is eagerly seeking for allies and will make sacri- 
 fices to obtain them ... it has some excuse. 
 
 It is a conceivable thing that Japan might be driven 
 out of Manchuria as Sweden was driven out of the Baltic 
 provinces in spite of all her fleet could do. It is also a 
 conceivable thing that the frontiers -of Canada and of 
 British India might become to Great Britain nearly what 
 the frontiers of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Netherlands 
 were to Louis XIV. The burden of defending them 
 might be so exhausting that the Sea Power might be 
 beaten even if it had never lost the 'command of the sea. 
 . . . And that is the peril which in the end proved fatal 
 to Athens, to Phoenicia, to Venice, to Holland ; the strain 
 of carrying on war on land. It is a dream that power on 
 the sea can dominate the land. It is valuable because it 
 gives access to the land. ... It is the bridge which keeps 
 up communication and gives access and is of infinite 
 value. But it may be crossed on a march to Moscow and 
 to the retreat therefrom. 
 
 Whatever be the precise place, however, of 
 navies in relation to armies as bearing upon the 
 identity of Anglo-Saxon sea power and the sur- 
 vival of democratic nationalities, we can in any 
 case say this: the history of Britain's conti-
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 171 
 
 nental struggles is proof enough that in the 
 choice of allies for the defence of a policy like 
 the Balance of Power, even the greatest mari- 
 time nation is obliged to disregard the precise 
 quality of the civilisation of the allies which it 
 may choose ; and consequently disregard the kind 
 of civilisation which its policy may or may 
 not promote. The conditions of the struggle for 
 political power do not leave this possibility of 
 picking and choosing, the common impression to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 The franker and abler political critics of Eng- 
 land who do not allow what may be termed 
 the "constants" of statecraft to be obscured by 
 popular feeling on incidentals however praise- 
 worthy and natural it may be fully recognise 
 this. The difference between the popular concep- 
 tion of national policy and the "real," or realistic, 
 was revealed a few months after the war by an 
 interesting incident. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George had made a public statement 
 to the effect that Britain had gone into the war 
 simply because of Germany's disregard of public 
 right the violation of the integrity of Belgium, 
 in other words. "But for that," he said "95 per 
 cent of the electors of Great Britain would have 
 been against embroiling this country in hostili- 
 ties." In other words, the Balance of Power 
 consideration of itself would never have involved
 
 172 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the country. Mr. Lloyd George's own position 
 was stated as follows: 
 
 This I know is true after the guarantee given that 
 the German fleet would- not attack the coast of France or 
 annex any French territory, I would not have been a 
 party to a declaration of war had Belgium not been 
 invaded; and I think I can say the same thing for most, 
 if not all, of my colleagues. If Germany had been wise 
 she would not have set foot on Belgian soil. The Liberal 
 Government, then, would not have intervened. 
 
 When this statement appeared in the press, 
 the London Times, whose historic role has al- 
 ways been to voice the Foreign Office and never 
 more so than in the last few years, printed a 
 very remarkable leading article entitled: "Why 
 we are at War." The following are passages: 
 
 There are still, it seems, some Englishmen and Eng- 
 lishwomen who greatly err as to the reasons that have 
 forced England to draw the sword. They know that it 
 was Germany's flagrant violation of Belgian neutrality 
 which filled the cup of her indignation and made her 
 people insist upon the war. They do not reflect that our 
 honour and our interest must have compelled us to join 
 France and Russia, even if Germany had scrupulously 
 respected the rights of her small neighbours, and had 
 sought to hack her way into France through the Eastern 
 fortresses. The German Chancellor has insisted more 
 than once upon this truth. He has fancied, apparently, 
 that he was making an argumentative point against us by 
 establishing it. That, like so much more, only shows his
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 173 
 
 complete misunderstanding of our attitude and of our 
 character. . . . Why did we guarantee the neutrality of 
 Belgium? For an imperious reason of self-interest, for 
 the reason which made us defend the Netherlands against 
 Spain and against the France of the Bourbons and of 
 Napoleon. . . . We keep our word when we have given 
 it, but we do not give it without solid practical reasons, 
 and we do not set up to be international Don Quixotes, 
 ready at all times to redress wrongs which do us no hurt. 
 .... Even had Germany not invaded Belgium, honour 
 and interest would have united us with France. 
 
 We joined the Triple Entente because we realised, 
 however late in the day, that the time of "splendid isola- 
 tion" was no more. We reverted to our historical policy 
 of the balance of power, and we reverted to it for the 
 reasons for which our forefathers adopted it. They 
 were not, either for them or for us, reasons of sentiment. 
 They were self-regarding, and even selfish, reasons. 
 Chief amongst them, certainly, was a desire to preserve 
 the peace of Europe, but it was the chief only because 
 to preserve that peace was the one certain way to 
 preserve our own. In the event of war we saw, as our 
 fathers had seen, England's first line of attack and of 
 defence in her Continental Alliances. When we subsi- 
 dised every State in Germany, and practically all Europe, 
 in the Great War, we did not lavish our gold from love of 
 German or of Austrian liberty, or out of sheer altruism. 
 No; we invested it for our own safety and our own 
 advantage, and on the whole, our commitments were 
 rewarded by an adequate return. 
 
 In this war, as we have again and again insisted in 
 the Times, England is fighting for exactly the same kind 
 of reasons for which she fought Philip II, Louis XIV, 
 and Napoleon. . . . She is not fighting primarily for
 
 174 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Belgium or for Serbia, for France, or for Russia. They 
 fill a great place in her mind and in her heart. But they 
 come second. The first place belongs, and rightly belongs, 
 to herself. 7 
 
 Now this article is singularly honest; if all 
 political writing were as frank, public discussion 
 would be a pleasanter business than it is and 
 would give better and saner results than it does. 
 
 We see here, in placing the two expressions of 
 opinion that of Mr. Lloyd George and the 
 Times side by side, the popular as opposed to 
 the diplomatic and governmental conceptions of 
 policy. And in European foreign politics the 
 chancelleries initiate and conduct policy; the 
 public approves and pays, when it has been told 
 what to approve. It is true that a policy could 
 never be carried into effect without public sanc- 
 tion, but in our prevailing conceptions con- 
 cerning the need of upholding the hands of the 
 government and supporting the country through 
 thick and thin, the public never fail to sanction 
 anything the diplomatists may initiate. When 
 the balance of power demanded the support of 
 the Turk and opposition to Russia, the Turk 
 was supported by the public at large, who shouted 
 the song in the music halls from which the word 
 "Jingo" took its origin: 'The Roosian shall not 
 
 "March 8, 1915.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 175 
 
 have Con-stan-ti-no-pool." But they are just as 
 ready to shout, as at present, that he shall. 
 
 The recognition of these moral foundations of 
 British foreign policy is not confined to Conser- 
 vative publicists like writers in the Times. A 
 presumably Liberal critic does not hesitate to 
 admit that even when France stood for repub- 
 licanism and freedom in Europe as against re- 
 action, England supported reaction because the 
 "Balance" demanded it. 
 
 "Pitt's principle of the stability of Europe meant the 
 maintenance of an equilibrium between a few great 
 Powers without any kind of reference to the feelings and 
 wishes of the populations they governed. The French 
 were the special objects of his dread, because they had 
 introduced a most disturbing principle into this system 
 the principle that the peoples themselves counted for 
 something. This was what he meant by 'infection,' and 
 in 1793 it was not French power but French principles 
 that the English aristocracy feared. That the French 
 broke their own principles nobody denied, but the part- 
 ners in the first Coalition would not have liked them any 
 better if they had observed those principles with the most 
 scrupulous care." 8 
 
 Of course, popular feeling does not operate thus 
 cold bloodedly, and it is as well that it does not. 
 It has an infinite capacity as witness feeling in 
 Germany at present for making any war even 
 that of most doubtful origins, a Holy War. 
 
 "The Nation (London) May 29, 1915.
 
 176 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 The fashion in which a nation may see in its 
 alliances, actually, or sub-consciously perhaps 
 prompted by one object, the accomplishment of 
 a very much more "noble" one (a phenomenon 
 that modern psychology explains in quite precise 
 terms) is illustrated in the difference between 
 the attitude of the average English historian 
 to-day towards the Napoleonic struggle and 
 that of a French one. To the Englishman, 
 Britain's action a century since was just what 
 it is to-day resistance to a gross military 
 tyranny which threatened Europe. And he pic- 
 tures France to-day as a penitent France, having 
 learned wisdom, co-operating with the British to 
 prevent Germany doing what France tried to do 
 a hundred years ago. Yet to the Frenchman, 
 France is fighting, not on the opposite but on the 
 same side, so far as principles are concerned, as 
 that on which she fought when she fought against 
 England. Speaking at the Sorbonne, the French 
 historian, Aulard, said the other day 9 , in begin- 
 ning his discourse: 
 
 "La guerre actuelle, la guerre que nous soutenons 
 centre le militarisme prussien, centre TAllemagne prus- 
 sianisee, n'est que la continuation de la Revolution fran- 
 caise. Nous combattons pour la meme cause que com- 
 battaient nos aieux en 1793 et 1'an II." 
 
 "March 7, 1915.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 177 
 
 And yet, as one English critic points out, in 
 the eyes of many Englishmen this was the first 
 round in the duel between the British spirit of 
 national independence and the revolutionary 
 spirit of aggrandisement. In French eyes what is 
 all-important about the warfare of 1793 and 
 1794 was that it decided whether or not the ex- 
 periment in democracy should be allowed in 
 Europe. That, and nothing less, was at stake. 
 If in 1793 the Coalition, as represented by 
 Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain, had reached 
 Paris, as Germany tried to reach it in 1914, the 
 counter-revolution would have been triumphant 
 from one end of Europe to the other. "It is not 
 difficult," as Mr. Grant Robertson points out, "to 
 conjecture what a Holy Alliance, worked by Thu- 
 gut and Lucchesini, Artois and Godoy, Frederick 
 William II, of Prussia and the Hapsburgs, the 
 Bourbons of Madrid and Naples and Great 
 Britain in the fetters of the reaction of 1793-1801, 
 would have wrought in a Europe that knew 
 nothing of the Spanish Rising, Stadion, Hofer, 
 and Stein, and the Wars of Liberation." 
 
 I have hinted above and dealt at some length 
 in a previous chapter with our easy changes in 
 regard to Russia. English professors at the 
 present moment are prepared to prove to you 
 that Russia is a democratic, anti-military, liberal- 
 ising force in Europe. It may be so, although
 
 178 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the discovery comes rather late, 10 but England was 
 just as ready when her politico-military position 
 demanded it to fight Russia and enter into an 
 alliance with the Turk "the finest gentleman in 
 Europe" whom Englishmen at the time of the 
 Crimean War were very angry with Cobden for 
 disparaging. During the nineteenth century 
 England allied herself with the Turk as against 
 the Russian because it was deemed that Russia 
 might threaten England's power by cutting her 
 road to the East. She just as readily allies her- 
 self with the Russian against the Turk when the 
 overpowering consideration of maintaining her 
 political power in the world seems to justify it. 
 (The fact that England desires to maintain that 
 power for defensive purposes only does not affect 
 the fact. ) At an earlier period she fought in alli- 
 ance with the German against the French because 
 France seemed to be the main threat to her power. 
 She fights just as readily in alliance with the 
 French against the German when the same pre- 
 dominant motive counsels it. Russia in the Russo- 
 
 10 It will be noted that the Allies are expecting victory to do 
 for Russia what they tell us defeat alone can do for Germany 
 check the reactionary forces. As a matter of fact, it was on the 
 morrow of Russian defeats in August, 1915, that Russian Liberals 
 presented their claims for the liberation of political prisoners, 
 freedom for the Jews, better treatment of Finland, the severer 
 treatment of bureaucratic corruption, and so on. So long as 
 Russian arms were victorious the government showed not the 
 least disposition to move in these things, but went on its old way.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 179 
 
 Japanese War, in 1903, "valiantly defends Chris- 
 tian civilisation against Asiatic heathenism," and 
 just as valiantly enters into an alliance with it in 
 1914. The "yellow peril" was often presumed to 
 be one of the justifications of European arma- 
 ment. Yet when the Armageddon comes it en- 
 ables Japan to do two things : on one hand, to take 
 the first steps towards control over four hundred 
 million Chinese, and, on the other, to assist in 
 the attempt to break up the militarily most effi- 
 cient nation of Europe, the one that has shown a 
 national genius for organisation and which would 
 in any military effort by Europe as a whole be its 
 natural leader. It affects one curiously to read: 
 "The best artillery the Russians have is Japanese 
 artillery, manned by Japanese gunners men who 
 fought them to the death ten years ago and 
 Japanese experts in all lines are assisting them." 
 Italy is in close alliance with Austria and Ger- 
 many for a generation and then in ten months 
 when she has failed to get all she thinks she is 
 entitled to in the way of territory finds that 
 Austro-Germans are the enemies of human 
 freedom; and goes to war with them. Perhaps 
 the most serious thing of all is that the need for 
 military alliance in these combinations is at times 
 so great that military necessities of the moment 
 are allowed to override considerations of perma- 
 nent territorial settlement. The Crimean War,
 
 i8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 by which England, for political purposes of her 
 own, upheld the dominion of Turkey over Chris- 
 tian populations, was at least one of the ancestors 
 of the present. In the present war both sides are 
 offering to the Balkan powers bribes which are 
 not designed to achieve permanent settlement of 
 Balkan difficulties but merely to secure military 
 co-operation in a war involving half the world. 
 But the worst example of all, perhaps, is Italy. 
 In order to bring her into the war she has been 
 offered bribes which, if ever paid, will make 
 future Balkan wars inevitable. A previous chap- 
 ter summarises evidence to show that in Mr. 
 Lathrop Stoddard's words, "Italian victory will 
 probably sweep the Italian people into the am- 
 bitious race for world dominion." n 
 
 I have referred at several points throughout 
 this book to the relations of England and Europe 
 generally to the Near Eastern question because 
 it reveals very clearly the real motive, as apart 
 from the avowed, which is so often either self- 
 deceptive or half hypocritical the fact that our 
 European conflicts have but little to do with the 
 conflict of cultures and ideals. Such motives are 
 indeed less operative to-day than at certain former 
 periods. When Europe fought the Turk for the 
 possession of Jerusalem, the European had a real 
 
 "See Chapter III.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 181 
 
 belief in the importance of religious dogma and 
 symbol. It was a motive which outweighed alto- 
 gether "national" considerations. Europe fought 
 as Christians, not as Frenchmen or Englishmen. 
 A really "ideal" motive determined their wars. 
 But when to-day we talk of differences of national 
 culture any ideal save that of Power or the fear 
 of it determining our international politics, our 
 changed relation to the Turk shows us how un- 
 real is that pretended motive. For between the 
 "civilisation" of the Mohammedan conquerors 
 who captured Constantinople nearly five hundred 
 years since and the civilisation of Western 
 Europe, a real gulf is fixed. It is not an imaginary 
 one created by hazy philosophers who are mis- 
 understood perhaps more when they are read than 
 when they are not, but a real difference of the 
 ordering of daily lives. For very nearly five 
 centuries, in a city which for a still longer period 
 had been one of the capitals of Christendom, the 
 alien conqueror has maintained a society which 
 has included physical slavery in some of its most 
 degrading forms ( involving for centuries raiding 
 expeditions among Christian populations for the 
 purpose of bolstering the military ambitions of 
 an oriental despot or of satisfying the sordid lust 
 of a heathen court), polygamy, organised assas- 
 sination on a huge scale, corruption, oppression 
 of the crudest and most obscene form (in which
 
 182 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the victims were mainly Christians), and you 
 had actually a great Christian monument given 
 over to the rites of an oriental invader from 
 beginning to end a contemptuous repudiation of 
 Christian morals and all the social and civic prin- 
 ciples upon which Western civilisation is sup- 
 posed to be based. 
 
 If, therefore, it is the difference in such funda- 
 mental things as these which is the underlying 
 cause of war, we ought to find in the alliances 
 and groupings that have marked the wars in 
 which the Turk has been involved the Christian 
 and Western Powers ranged as a whole against 
 this alien and anti-Christian Power. But it so 
 happens that in not one of those wars in which 
 the modern Powers were involved has the group- 
 ing been along those lines at all. If international 
 politics, the conflicts between nations, were con- 
 cerned with the profound differences of men; if 
 wars and the alliances of wars arose out of deeper 
 moral issues, you would have found, of course, 
 the essentially anti-Christian and anti-Western 
 Turk confronted with the hostility of Christian 
 and Western Powers. But it is precisely this 
 clear-cut issue which you never have found in all 
 the intricacies of Eastern politics. Always has 
 the Turk found a Christian champion or a Chris- 
 tian ally for considerably over half a century 
 Great Britain was that champion and ally.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 183 
 
 Englishmen who are honestly and genuinely 
 shocked at a German-speaking Alsace being ruled 
 from Berlin, and who would regard an English 
 war for the continuance of such a thing as an 
 unimaginable national crime, were not in the 
 least shocked at England fighting a* war against 
 a Christian Power in order to uphold Turkish 
 domination in Christian lands. Not merely were 
 they not shocked, but they thought it entirely 
 natural that English poets should laud the spec- 
 tacle, and insisted that English public men who 
 ventured to criticise such a situation were evi- 
 dently lost to all sense of national honour. 
 
 One cannot dismiss all this as ancient history; 
 it is very much modern history, since it is un- 
 fortunately part of the very problem which we 
 have to face to-morrow in things like the dis- 
 posal of Constantinople and the settlement of the 
 Balkan difficulty. It is because all the great 
 Christian nations in the past have been in fact 
 indifferent to the moral differences and have been 
 mainly concerned to increase their political power 
 as against some other Christian nation, that the 
 problems presented to us to-day are all but in- 
 soluble. 
 
 What is certain also is that when we find the 
 predominant sea power swinging between the 
 support of, and opposition to, rival civilisations in 
 this way; when we find it standing, however un-
 
 184 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 willingly, for the Japanese conquest of China, the 
 expansion of Russia, the settlement of Balkan 
 questions with reference only to securing the mili- 
 tary aid of the respective states, the annexation 
 by Italy of territory which will inevitably increase 
 difficulty in the future, it is evident that naval 
 force has not within it some mysterious element 
 enabling it to operate with non-militarist military 
 allies and to stand invariably for the promotion 
 of free civilisations as against the unfree. 
 
 At this moment of writing nobody knows on 
 which side of the fence certain of the Balkan 
 states will descend, and in their case the high 
 falutin' about "conflict of morals and ideals," 
 "inevitable clash of civilisations," is a little too 
 much even for our political leader writers. Bul- 
 garia, through her Prime Minister, announces 
 with most commendable frankness that her mili- 
 tary assistance is for sale to the highest bidder. 
 The following is a press despatch from Sofia : 12 
 
 The Bulgarian Premier, for the first time, to-day 
 revealed to the world exactly what Bulgaria demands 
 for remaining neutral, and what she asks from the Allies 
 for driving the Turk from Europe, an operation that 
 admittedly would prove the turning point of the war 
 for the Allies. 
 
 Radoslavoff is the storm centre of the greatest diplo- 
 matic struggle the world has ever seen. Because Bul- 
 
 " August gth, 1915.
 
 LIMITATIONS OF SEA POWER 185 
 
 garia holds the key to the world war the diplomatic 
 agents of every great power involved swarm here, their 
 pressure centering upon him. Said the Premier: 
 
 "We will fight for but one end. That is to extend 
 our frontiers until they embrace the people of our own 
 blood, but that end must be guaranteed. Bulgaria is 
 fully prepared and waiting to enter the war the moment 
 she receives absolute guarantees that by so doing she 
 will attain that for which other nations already engaged 
 are striving, namely, the realisation of her national ideals." 
 
 "We have, therefore, frankly and openly accepted the 
 offers of both groups of powers in negotiations to that 
 end. Only by dealing with both sides do we feel we can 
 obtain the best guarantees that what we desire will be 
 attained." 
 
 Presumably, if, as the result of the large bait 
 offered by the Allies, Bulgaria joins the war, 
 it will also be in her case "a life and death struggle 
 for profound convictions." Six months hence the 
 Bulgarians may be fighting quite genuinely and 
 sincerely in the belief that they, too, have been 
 forced into war in defence of their national exist- 
 ence and spiritual ideals ruthlessly threatened by 
 an alien civilisation; they will hate the Germans 
 with a deadly and quite genuine hatred. If, on 
 the other hand, Germany can to-day make the 
 better offer they will "defend their threatened 
 existence" and "spiritual ideals" in alliance with 
 "their brave comrades in arms the Austrians and 
 Germans against their hereditary enemies the
 
 1 86 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Servians," whom in that case they will certainly 
 regard as the hired assassins of the Russians and 
 the British. 
 
 But the point for us at present is that the mili- 
 tary critics, as I write, are seriously declaring that 
 Bulgaria's decision will determine the issues of 
 the war. "Bulgaria holds the key to the world's 
 war," says one of them. So that it is not sea 
 power that will save our civilisation, but Bul- 
 garia! Fancy the future of civilisation at the 
 mercy of a Bulgarian politician. 
 
 That fact to the degree to which it is a fact 
 at all illustrates the dependence of sea power 
 upon certain other forces in these world struggles. 
 It is not that it does not play a large role therein. 
 It is perfectly true that without England's sea 
 power and America's munitions even the Bul- 
 garian politicians could not save civilisation. But 
 these things are interdependent, and the depend- 
 ence of sea power on those other things marks its 
 limitations. It is quite unable of itself to impose 
 this or that culture at will upon the two billions 
 of the planet; and, even if that were possible, 
 Anglo-Saxon peoples have no patent in it.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPEN- 
 DENCE OF NATIONS
 
 The whole history of the fight for neutral right is a 
 history of failure. The power which is politically the 
 freest and most liberal in the world has by its practice 
 tenaciously prevented any enlargement of neutral right. 
 Yet it has shown by its attitude in peace time towards 
 international law a desire to respect those rights. This 
 seems to indicate that it is impossible to reconcile bel- 
 ligerent necessity at sea with real observance of neutral 
 right. In that case would not neutrals better secure their 
 larger and more permanent interest by modifying the 
 doctrine of neutrality as at present understood in the 
 direction of economic discrimination in war time against 
 the side that has refused to submit its case to enquiry and 
 so violated the international conventions designed to pro- 
 tect the integrity of states? This need was foreseen by 
 Grotius and will be in keeping with future conditions if 
 the guarantors of neutrality treaties should be largely 
 increased in number. Would the assumption of limited 
 international obligation of this kind expose states to 
 greater risk or cost, or greater surrender of sovereignty 
 and independence than is involved in their position in 
 war time under existing arrangements?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF NEUTRALITY, AND 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPEN- 
 DENCE OF NATIONS 
 
 THE growth of the spirit of nationality is ad- 
 mittedly the outstanding fact in the political 
 history of the nineteenth century. Although it 
 had its beginnings in a feeling for popular rights 
 it has gone far in its international effects, not only 
 to undo the work of the French Revolution among 
 European democracies for, of course, the prin- 
 ciples of modern nationalism are in flat contra- 
 diction with the idealistic cosmopolitanism of the 
 Revolutionary period but to render the concep- 
 tion of European society, or of Christendom, as 
 a unity, less vivid perhaps than it was five or, 
 for that matter, ten centuries since. The mediaeval 
 sovereign could acknowledge subserviency to the 
 head of the Christian Church, as representative 
 of a universal order, a moral sanction standing 
 over and above the political State. But to-day 
 we are only just beginning to emerge from the 
 domination of political philosophies which would 
 
 make the State, even in morals, the final appeal. 
 
 189
 
 190 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Nineteenth century nationalism, on its popular 
 side, is at one not only with the "anti-intellec- 
 tualist" tendencies of our time but also with later 
 reactionary German philosophy in its assumption 
 that beyond the political State there can exist no 
 real obligations. The slogan so current in Eng- 
 land and America, "My country right or wrong," 
 is merely the popular expression of the neo-Hege- 
 lianism of Treitschke or Bernhardi. 
 
 This general conception has resulted in intense 
 hostility on the part of modern nations to sur- 
 rendering the least particle of national independ- 
 ence and sovereignty on behalf of any obligation 
 to civilisation or organised society as a whole. 
 
 Every effort towards internationalisation is 
 apt to be met with the objection that the com- 
 plete independence of states, that sovereignty 
 which allows them means of individual develop- 
 ment and self-expression, which prevents the 
 world being cast in one monotonous mould, is 
 a very precious quality which may be cheaply 
 purchased even at the price of disorder and 
 war. 
 
 I want to give just a hint of the extent to which 
 this hesitation to assume international obligation 
 defeats its own end, compelling nations to sur- 
 render both sovereignty and independence in 
 large measure; to show how those things are 
 necessarily invaded by belligerent action in war,
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 191 
 
 and to illustrate by an historical instance or 
 two the failure of neutrals to defend them; 
 to show that neutral right far from developing 
 has in practice always had to cede to belligerent 
 need. This does not necessarily imply any ill 
 will on the part of the belligerent ; on the contrary, 
 the more it can be shown that the power com- 
 manding the sea was or is desirous of respecting 
 neutral right, the stronger does the case become 
 for some revision of the principles of neutrality 
 and belligerency. 
 
 I am suggesting also that just as the belligerent 
 cannot respect the sovereignty and independence 
 of the neutral, the neutral cannot observe real 
 impartiality; that the action of "neutrals," while 
 still preserving the legal forms of neutrality, may 
 conceivably determine the issues of a great w r ar. 
 And, finally, that the aims of the nations as a 
 whole in this matter the objects for which Mr. 
 Asquith has declared Britain to be fighting this 
 war, namely, "to maintain the independent exist- 
 ence and free development of the various nation- 
 alities each with a corporate consciousness of its 
 own" can best be achieved by the general aban- 
 donment of a fictitious neutrality on behalf of 
 some such common international action as that 
 outlined in the first and detailed in the last chap- 
 ter of this book, a principle the need of which 
 by the way was foreseen by Grotius.
 
 '192 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 A London paper, discussing certain problems 
 arising out of the present war, speaks of "the 
 horrid disease of internationalism" and expresses 
 the opinion that a nation willing to yield one 
 fraction of its sovereignty or independence to 
 foreigners has "sacrificed its soul" to ease and 
 convenience and that those who would counte- 
 nance such an act are guilty of "preaching a 
 mischievous and immoral doctrine." 
 
 Yet this same authority is an ardent defender 
 of all those belligerent rights at sea claimed by 
 Great Britain in the present war; and evidently 
 in defending these two things at one and the same 
 time sees no inconsistency whatever, showing 
 how little is there any general and vivid realisa- 
 tion of the sacrifice of sovereignty and inde- 
 pendence which the non-combatant nations are 
 compelled to make under the existing condition 
 of things. It is doubtful whether until just 
 recently Americans as a whole have really 
 visualised the extent of the surrender of their 
 own sovereignty. The situation is referred to 
 briefly in a previous chapter, but it is necessary 
 to elucidate it in greater detail. 
 
 Most Americans certainly have at the back of 
 their minds or had until the recent exchange of 
 notes with Great Britain a general impression 
 that the United States by her past wars, by the 
 respect which she is able to impose for her flag,
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 193 
 
 by the power of her navy and her army, had 
 acquired the right at least to go about her lawful 
 business on the high seas without let or hindrance 
 from anyone; that an American ship, flying the 
 American flag, carrying American goods to a 
 country with which it was at peace and with 
 which all the rest of the world was at peace, could 
 at least proceed secure and unmolested; that an 
 American merchant had at least secured the right, 
 backed by the power of his country, to trade with 
 the four corners of the world. That is all fiction. 
 The American merchant cannot sell a single 
 sack of wheat or a ton of iron to any country, 
 although that country may be at peace with this 
 country and with all the world, save by the per- 
 mission of a foreign naval bureaucrat if that 
 foreign official's country cares to go to war. The 
 American merchant carries on his trade not by 
 virtue of any right which his Government has 
 managed to enforce, but simply to the extent to 
 which a foreign official will permit him to do so. 
 A Chicago or New York magnate may, for in- 
 stance, enter into vast commercial arrangements 
 with some foreign magnate in Amsterdam or 
 Rome or Buenos Aires, and the Governments of 
 the United States and Holland and Italy and 
 Argentina may be agreed as to the legitimacy of 
 the transaction but it will not be completed un- 
 less a British official, making himself judge of
 
 194 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 all its details, decides that it is in accordance with 
 His Majesty's Orders in Council. The American 
 merchant may make oath which may be supported 
 by the foreign merchant that the cargo is of 
 such and such a nature, destined for such and such 
 a purpose; all that will go for nothing if in the 
 decision of a court, in which neither the American 
 nor the Dutchman nor the Argentine is repre- 
 sented, the circumstances are not what the par- 
 ties profess them to be. The American ship can 
 be searched, its cargo can be turned upside down, 
 can be held up indefinitely by a British officer, 
 and the fiat of a foreign court will decide the 
 fate of the American merchant's enterprise. 
 
 Now, if I appear to put this case strongly 
 as a matter of fact I have put it rather in its 
 minimum than in its maximum form it is not 
 because I want to create the impression that the 
 American has any grievance, but because I want 
 to make it plain that he has not. All that I 
 have indicated takes place in strict accordance 
 with international law. The case could be 
 made a great deal stronger if one sketched in- 
 stances of power exercised under recent Orders in 
 Council, but the legality of which may be a little 
 questionable. The British are applying, at least 
 in the situation I have described, not merely the 
 law, but what American interpretation of the law 
 sanctions. There may be differences as to details,
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 195 
 
 but this right of a foreign navy absolutely in this 
 way to control the trade of the whole world, to 
 say, at any rate within very wide limits, when 
 their particular navy happens to be at war, 
 which ship shall pass and which shall not, which 
 country it shall trade with and which it shall 
 not, is a condition which the American Gov- 
 ernment has accepted and which, fittingly enough, 
 the writings of an American admiral have done 
 a good deal to encourage. 1 
 
 1 When we remember that the only formal code to which 
 England was definitely bound in most of the questions which 
 have been raised is the Declaration of Paris, I think it is diffi- 
 cult to say that there has been definite violation of law on 
 England's part. However that may be, we can certainly say this : 
 that any other country would have acted in the same way. 
 Even in the matter of the blockade, which is not complete, Mr. 
 Balfour surely makes a good case when he says that even if 
 England has violated the letter she has respected the spirit of 
 the law. The intention was to exact that no blockading nations 
 should show favoritism of one neutral as against another. 
 What has actually happened is that the accident of geography 
 prevents Britain exercising the blockade against the Scandi- 
 navian States. There is no intentional favoritism the thing 
 at which the law was evidently aimed on England's part. 
 
 It may be said that British action is a clear violation of 
 Clause 2 of the Declaration of Paris. ("The neutral flag covers 
 enemy's merchandise with the exception of contraband of war.") 
 But apart from the question of what is contraband neither 
 Holland nor America were parties to that Declaration; its 
 only signatories were the present combatants, so that in strict 
 law America has no grievance arising from its violation. For 
 blocking the approaches to neutral harbours justification can 
 be found in American action during the North and South War 
 with reference to ships bound for Nassau and Mexican ports
 
 196 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Whether the above is an over statement of the 
 situation can be judged by the admission of a 
 famous English writer on Sea Law whose efforts 
 were in large part responsible for England's 
 failure to ratify the Declaration of London. 
 Although he takes the ground that Britain's 
 authority at sea is already too curtailed he admits 
 that the "last rags of English maritime right" 
 left by the Declaration of Paris include the right 
 of English Prize Courts to administer not the law 
 of England but the law of nations and to decide 
 every material question affecting the rights of 
 neutrals : 
 
 "Was this an effectual blockade? The Prize Court 
 alone could decide. Was there an actual or attempted 
 breach of blockade? The Court decided. Were these 
 enemy goods? The Court alone decided. Was this a 
 duly commissioned public vessel of war? The Court 
 pronounced. Was that act a breach of neutrality? The 
 Court declared. Was this enemy merchant ship duly 
 transferred by a valid assignment to a neutral ? Was this 
 
 the American doctrine of continuous voyage. Given a definition 
 of "blockade" which includes the maintenance of a cruiser 
 cordon hundreds or even thousands of miles from the blockaded 
 coast, the doctrine of "continuous voyage" and its derivative 
 which a modern writer has termed "the doctrine of continuous 
 transport," a definition of contraband which can include ladies' 
 underclothing, there is perhaps no British act for which some 
 precedent or other of existing international law cannot be found. 
 However, whether a pro-British or anti-British view of the 
 Anglo-American dispute is taken, is in fact irrelevant to the 
 main thesis of this chapter.
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 197 
 
 or that thing contraband of War? Again it was for 
 the Court." 2 
 
 Yet a very considerable body of English 
 opinion, and even in the last year or two before 
 the war, of governmental opinion, has worked 
 hard for a more civilised code. The significant 
 thing is the immense gulf which separates the best 
 English intention and effort as to sea law, and 
 actual English practice. One has only to take 
 three great international acts the Naval Provi- 
 sions of the Hague Convention of 1907, the 
 Project for the International Prize Court, and the 
 Declaration of London and to remember that 
 though these last two did not receive ratifica- 
 tion, they represented the evident desires of the 
 British government as a whole, and then see how 
 utterly that government has failed to carry out the 
 intention embodied in those acts, to realise what 
 immense pressure bears against the respect for 
 neutral interest in war time. Those Conven- 
 tions represented the painful accumulations of 
 international law during sixty years since the 
 signing of the Declaration of Paris. At the first 
 "whiff of grape shot" the whole thing was swept 
 away, and to justify the Orders in Council we 
 have to go back to the Declaration of Paris of 
 1856 indeed it is the opinion of Sir John Mac- 
 
 *T. G. Bowles : "Sea Law and Sea Power," pp. 18, 19.
 
 198 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 donnel that we can only get formal justification 
 for them by going back to still earlier conceptions. 
 So far as practice is concerned and international 
 law is built up from precedent the world has 
 made no progress towards the protection of 
 neutral rights in sixty years. 
 
 One may doubt, indeed, whether it has made 
 any in a hundred or two. Take a typical 
 instance of the struggle between neutral and 
 belligerent that which led to the war of 1812. 
 An American authority has recently dealt with 
 the facts at some length. 3 They may be sum- 
 marised as follows : 
 
 Great Britain had (in 1806) proclaimed a 
 blockade of the Continental coast from the Elbe 
 to Brest, though she let it be known that it would 
 be enforced only from Ostend to Havre. Napo- 
 leon replied with his Berlin Decree, proclaiming 
 a blockade of the entire British Isles and for- 
 bidding sub Poena all trade or communication 
 with them a decree considerably resembling the 
 present German "war zone" order; particularly 
 in this respect, that Napoleon was quite lacking in 
 naval power to make the blockade effective. 
 
 Next came a British Order in Council forbid- 
 ding all neutral commerce with European ports 
 under Napoleon's control, or from which British 
 commerce was excluded, with a supplementary 
 
 "North American Review, May, 1915.
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 199 
 
 Order declaring all such ports to be blockaded, 
 but giving neutral vessels which were warned 
 away from them the privilege of proceeding to 
 some open port, on payment of a fee to the British 
 Government. In reply to this came Napoleon's 
 Milan Decree, ordering the seizure and confisca- 
 tion of every neutral vessel which submitted to 
 this Order. 
 
 American commerce was thus so placed that it 
 was penalised whatever course it followed. An 
 American merchant ship might be overhauled by a 
 British cruiser and searched, quite in accordance 
 with international law, and then be released with 
 an admonition not to try to enter a blockaded port, 
 but to proceed to some open port. In that the 
 American would be committing no offence against 
 France or anyone else. Yet, because of that epi- 
 sode, the vessel would be seized and confiscated 
 by the French. Vessels had to comply with 
 certain British requirements or be seized by the 
 British. Yet, if they did comply with them, for 
 that very cause they would be seized and confis- 
 cated by the French. 
 
 It was to escape from this embarrassing 
 dilemma that the famous Embargo was ordered, 
 forbidding American merchant vessels to trade 
 with either of the belligerents and thus practi- 
 cally confining them to our domestic waters; 
 whereupon Napoleon ordered the seizure and
 
 200 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 confiscation of every American ship found on 
 the seas. 
 
 The next move was made by Great Britain, in 
 offering to repeal the Orders in Council if 
 America would repeal the Non-Intercourse and 
 Embargo acts so far as Great Britain was con- 
 cerned, while still enforcing them against France. 
 This bargain was not consummated, but the 
 knowledge that it had been considered provoked 
 Napoleon to order the confiscation of every 
 American ship that might enter the ports of 
 France, Spain, Italy, or the Netherlands; an 
 order, however, which was not promulgated. 
 Then Congress repealed the Non-Intercourse act 
 and gave Americans freedom again to trade with 
 both belligerents. But, at the same time, it in- 
 vested the President with power to prohibit inter- 
 course with France if Great Britain should before 
 March 3rd withdraw the Orders in Council, or 
 with Great Britain if France should annul the 
 Decrees. Neither of those powers took action, 
 and the act therefore remained a dead letter. 
 
 Later in that year, Napoleon, fearing war with 
 America, suggested that he would withdraw the 
 Berlin and Milan Decrees, so far as America was 
 concerned, provided that the United States would 
 either get Great Britain to annul her Orders in 
 Council or declare non-intercourse with that 
 country. This offer was, of course, designed
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 201 
 
 either to have the blockade of the French coast 
 removed or to secure America as an ally against 
 Great Britain. Yet, at the same time, Napoleon 
 ordered the condemnation of all American ves- 
 sels which had entered French ports, and imposed 
 upon all which should thereafter arrive a vexa- 
 tious system of license fees and cipher letters 
 with which alone they would be permitted to 
 trade with France. Madison accepted Napoleon's 
 offer at its face value, believed that all restric- 
 tions upon American commerce with France were 
 removed, and, in default of similar action on the 
 part of Great Britain, proclaimed non-intercourse 
 again with the latter country. That led to the 
 War of 1812. 
 
 But the war itself virtually achieved nothing 
 so far as the permanent protection of neutral 
 right is concerned. Anything that it might have 
 accomplished in that direction has been undone 
 by America's action as a belligerent since then 
 when her interest happened to be on the side of 
 expanding belligerent right. 4 
 
 *The New York Times says with reference, for instance, to 
 the British reply to the American notes : "The American Eagle 
 has by this time discovered that the shaft directed against him 
 by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To 
 meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and 
 our own court decisions. . . . 
 
 "Sir Edward very naturally puts great reliance upon the 
 case of the Springbok, involving questions of continuous voyage. 
 The principles laid down in the Springbok case have been con-
 
 202 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 "The issue to-day between the belligerents and 
 this nation is the same as that between the United 
 States, Great Britain, and France a century ago. 
 Napoleon's Berlin decree was in retaliation of 
 England's blockade of 1806. The Kaiser's sub- 
 marine war order is in retaliation of the British 
 attempt to starve Germany. The British Orders 
 in Council of 1807 were in retaliation of the 
 Berlin decree. The British Orders in Council of 
 last March were in retaliation of Germany's sub- 
 marine war order. The United States never ad- 
 mitted the legality of Napoleon's decrees or of 
 the British Orders in Council, it declared that 
 they were illegal, and in defence of its rights 
 resorted to the embargo and non-intercourse acts, 
 with the result that Napoleon cancelled his de- 
 crees; but England refused to withdraw her 
 
 demned by some of the greatest authorities, particularly Conti- 
 nental authorities, on international law. Sir Edward reminds us, 
 however, that it is the business of text writers to formulate 
 existing rules and not to offer suggestions of their own; the 
 'existing rule' is unquestionably that laid down by the Supreme 
 Court and accepted by Great Britain in the Springbok case. It 
 was not through lassitude or mere good nature that the British 
 member of the Mixed Claims Commission voted with the other 
 Commissioners to affirm the Springbok condemnation. Great 
 Britain was not disposed, even in the interest of British com- 
 merce and British ship owners, to insist then upon a construc- 
 tion of law which in her later experience as a belligerent she 
 might find to be highly inconvenient. The wisdom and fore- 
 sight she then exhibited now enable her to make use of this case 
 in the argument defending her blockade practices against 
 Germany."
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 203 
 
 Orders in Council, and the war of 1812 followed 
 her refusal. To-day the United States is on pre- 
 cisely the same ground it was on a century ago." 5 
 The whole history of sea law reveals over and 
 over again the hopeless ineffectiveness of any 
 method which ignores this simple fact : that to the 
 extent to which the nations use the sea at all they 
 are a society, and that the units have obliga- 
 tions the one to the other, which cannot be dis- 
 charged by "neutrality." Recognising the im- 
 possibility of neutrality, and refusing, or unable, 
 to accept the principle of internationalisation, the 
 nations have in the past applied the principle of 
 territorial jurisdiction to the seas a principle 
 not finally surrendered until well into the nine- 
 teenth century. They divided the seas between 
 them. Portugal regarded herself as sovereign 
 of the whole Indian Ocean and the Southern 
 Atlantic. Spain more modestly laid claim to the 
 Pacific. England claimed the North Sea and 
 the Atlantic from Cape Finisterre to Stadland 
 in Norway, and at times, tentatively, the seas 
 of the world ; and it was only in the early part 
 of the nineteenth century that Great Britain 
 silently dropped her claim that foreign vessels 
 should "strike their topsail and take in their fla^ 
 in acknowledgment of his Majesty's sovereignty 
 within his Majesty's seas." In the preceding cen- 
 
 "R. B." in the New York Evening Post.
 
 204 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 turies this very claim had figured in the causes of 
 more than one war, notably with the Dutch. 
 Hendrick van Loon (whose descent may, if the 
 reader will, prompt a certain discount of his 
 presentation of the case) tells picturesquely some 
 early phases of the struggle. 
 
 "On the 2Qth of May, 1614, Marten Harperts- 
 zoon Tromp, lieutenant admiral of the Republic of 
 the United Seven Netherlands, commanding a 
 fleet which cruised off the coast of Flanders, was 
 by persistent and severe northeasterly winds 
 driven in the direction of Dover. There he met 
 with a British fleet under command of Blake. 
 Between the two countries, England and Holland, 
 there was no state of war. Furthermore, the 
 Dutch Republic, a commercial establishment 
 which preferred sound profit to mere disputes 
 about hollow honors, had given its admiral urgent 
 instructions to avoid all possible conflict. It was 
 known and had been known for a long time that 
 the English Government insisted upon having 
 their ships of war saluted by those of every other 
 nation. Indeed, the first open warfare about this 
 unwarranted demand of England had occurred 
 in the year 1640, when two Swedish warships 
 had been attacked because they refused to salute 
 the British flag. They had been brought to the 
 Island of Wight and had been released. The 
 conduct of the admiral had been thoroughly ap-
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 205 
 
 proved by Parliament because he had 'Maintained 
 this Kingdom's sovereignty at sea.' Upon this 
 particular occasion, Admiral Tromp, to avoid all 
 possible misunderstanding, struck all his sails 
 (except the topsails) when he came near the 
 British fleet and made ready to salute by lower- 
 ing his orange pennant. The British admiral, 
 not satisfied with this preparation, expressed his 
 feelings by firing a shot which mortally wounded 
 a Dutch soldier. Tromp thereupon ordered a 
 boat to proceed to the ship of the British admiral 
 and ask for an explanation. Before the explana- 
 tion could be given a bullet had hit his ship in the 
 centre. Remembering his instructions, Tromp 
 satisfied himself with a defensive action and after 
 five hours quietly sailed home to report. The 
 first battle of modern times for the right to the 
 open sea had been fought." 
 
 In "The Memorials of Sir William Penn, Ad- 
 miral and General" (London, 1833), we can read 
 how Sir William meets with three Dutch vessels 
 in the Mediterranean. The Dutch vessels salute 
 the British squadron, but Sir William is not cer- 
 tain that they have done this politely enough. 
 Accordingly he calls his captains together for 
 their advice, but after a discussion it appears that 
 in the opinion of the captains the Hollanders 
 "have done enough" and they are allowed to go. 
 
 It was some forty years before this that the
 
 206 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Dutch East India Company, in the matter of a 
 law suit concerning the seizure of a Portuguese 
 vessel, had ordered a certain young attorney to 
 assist in the defence. This young man set to 
 work and wrote a huge tome. This, however, he 
 never published. But one short chapter, entitled 
 "Mare liberum," and containing the chief items 
 for the defence, was printed in pamphlet form. 
 In this chapter he claimed the right of all nations 
 to communicate freely with each other on water. 
 This right he based upon the fundamental laws 
 of humanity and at the same time denied that any 
 one single nation could declare herself by a stroke 
 of the pen the rightful sovereign and owner of 
 the limitless ocean. The name of this young man 
 was Grotius and the doctrine that he then enunci- 
 ated brought Holland for two centuries into 
 deadly conflict with England. 
 
 Van Loon has sketched it as a phase of the 
 struggle for neutral right. If it was we can only 
 say it has been as great a failure as the other 
 phase of that struggle. He says : 
 
 "From the middle of the seventeenth century on, the 
 issue between the two countries was clear. On the one 
 side England, with her claim to sovereignty over the 
 billowy highways of the nations. On the other side the 
 Dutch Republic, which demanded that these roads should 
 be open to all those who wished to use them for just and 
 lawful purposes.
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 207 
 
 "In four terrific naval wars the Dutch Republic tried 
 to establish her good right to sail and trade as she 
 pleased. That she was not driven into this conduct by 
 unselfish reasons of a speculative legal nature alone is 
 quite clear. Her demand for her natural right coincided 
 with her direct commercial interests. But without any 
 doubt she had the right on her side." 
 
 After some century and a half of Anglo-Dutch 
 conflict, Holland's task was also taken up by 
 others. 
 
 The story is told by Mahan, 8 who certainly 
 could not be accused of Dutch sympathies as op- 
 posed to English. Speaking of the War of Armed 
 Neutrality (1780) he says: 
 
 "The claim of England to seize enemy's goods in 
 neutral ships bore hardly upon neutral powers, and espe- 
 cially upon those of the Baltic and upon Holland, into 
 whose hands, and those of the Austrian Netherlands, the 
 war had thrown much of the European carrying-trade; 
 while the products of the Baltic, naval stores, and grain, 
 were those which England was particularly interested in 
 forbidding to her enemies." 
 
 The declarations finally put forth by Russia, 
 and signed by Sweden and Denmark, were four 
 in number: 
 
 ( I ) That neutral vessels had a right, not only to sail to 
 unblockaded ports, but also from port to port of a bel- 
 
 8 "Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution."
 
 208 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 ligerent nation; in other words, to maintain the coasting 
 trade of a belligerent. 
 
 (2) That property belonging to the subjects of a power 
 at war should be safe on board neutral vessels. This was 
 the principle involved in the now familiar maxim, "Free 
 ships make free goods." 
 
 (3) That no articles were contraband, except arms, 
 equipments and munitions of war. This ruled out naval 
 stores and provisions unless belonging to the government 
 of a belligerent. 
 
 (4) That blockades, to be binding, must have an ade- 
 quate naval force stationed in close proximity to the 
 blockaded port. 
 
 The contracting parties being neutral in the 
 war, but binding themselves to support these prin- 
 ciples by a combined armed fleet, the agreement 
 received the name of the Armed Neutrality. 
 
 Mahan tells us that the British Ministry, 
 without meeting the declarations by a direct 
 contradiction, determined to disregard them a 
 course which was sustained in principle even by 
 prominent members of the bitter opposition of 
 that day. The undecided attitude of the United 
 Provinces, divided as in the days of Louis XIV 
 between the partisans of England and France, 
 despite a century of alliance with the former, 
 drew the especial attention of Great Britain. 
 They had been asked to. join the Armed Neu- 
 trality; they hesitated, but the majority of the 
 provinces favoured it. Mahan adds:
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 209 
 
 A British officer had already gone so far as to fire 
 upon a Dutch man-of-war which had resisted the search 
 of merchant ships under its convoy, an act which, whether 
 right or wrong, tended to incense the Dutch generally 
 against England. It was determined by the latter that 
 if the United Provinces acceded to the coalition of 
 neutrals, war should be declared. On the i6th of Decem- 
 ber, 1780, the English ministry was informed that the 
 States-General had resolved to sign the declarations of 
 the Armed Neutrality without delay. Orders were at 
 once sent to Rodney to seize the Dutch West Indies and 
 South American possessions; similar orders to the East 
 Indies; and the ambassador at the Hague was recalled. 
 England declared war four days later. 
 
 Now note how Mahan tells us of the end of this 
 two hundred years' fight of Holland for a right 
 which in theory, though not in practice, the civil- 
 ised world has come unanimously to support. 
 Holland's fight for a great principle of civilisation 
 ended, as it was bound to end, in existing concep- 
 tions of neutrality and sovereignty, and is thus 
 described by Mahan: 
 
 The principal effect, therefore, of the Armed Neu- 
 trality upon the war was to add the colonies and com- 
 merce of Holland to the prey of English cruisers. The 
 additional enemy was of small account to Great Britain, 
 whose geographical position effectually blocked the junc- 
 tion of the Dutch fleet with those of her other enemies. 
 The possessions of Holland fell everywhere, except when 
 saved by the French, while a bloody but wholly unin- 
 structive battle between English and Dutch squadrons in
 
 210 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the North Sea, in August, 1781, was the only feat of 
 arms illustrative of the old Dutch courage and obstinacy. 
 
 And after these century-long sacrifices the 
 Dutch population is to-day, in 1915, being im- 
 poverished and burdened, the trade of her ports 
 arrested and her workpeople deprived of employ- 
 ment, from the very selfsame cause for which she 
 was fighting nearly three hundred years since; 
 for a war in which they are entirely innocent 
 and in which they have no share they are paying 
 as heavily as some of the combatants; the "Vry 
 schip Vry goed" for which they have given so 
 much, is once more shattered. 
 
 "The work of centuries," as Dr. van Loon says, 
 "has been undone in a few months." He adds: 
 
 The North Sea once more has been proclaimed the 
 exclusive property of the warring nations. Without any 
 regard for the rights of neutrals, all parties liberally 
 sprinkle their mines upon the highroads of commerce. 
 Like so many sharks German submarines shoot rapidly 
 through the waters and gobble up whatever they can find. 
 If they discover that in the hurry of the moment they 
 destroyed the wrong fish, a Swedish or Dutch or Nor- 
 wegian ship, they say: "Sorry; it was a mistake," and 
 promise some future indemnity, which does not make 
 dead men alive. 
 
 On the other hand, England, blockading the German 
 coast at a distance of three thousand miles, drives all 
 neutral ships into her harbors, keeps them there, talks 
 about them, writes about them, wastes much red tape
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 211 
 
 upon them, does some more writing, and finally lets them 
 go, after the cargo has been thoroughly spoiled. 
 
 Things are just as bad in the Baltic. They threaten 
 to be just as bad in the Mediterranean. A similar anarchy 
 by organised government was never before seen. 
 
 The small neutral nations, however, unless a speedy 
 return is made to some semblance of law and order, will 
 be impoverished for years to come. Even Switzerland, 
 which has never been bothered by strictly maritime con- 
 siderations, now discovers that its very existence depends 
 upon the goodwill of the unlawful owners of the high 
 seas. For ten months the republic has been kept from 
 starvation by the grace of Italy and England and has been 
 obliged to go through many experiences, humiliating to 
 the proud spirit of this most advanced of nations. 
 
 French and English prize courts have apparently de- 
 cided that all Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch 
 ports are disguised suburbs of the German Empire, and 
 the difficulties of the trade between those countries and 
 the rest of the world (even with their own colonies and 
 the products of their own possessions) are such that the 
 trade may come to a complete standstill at any time. 7 
 
 And be it noted, the nation which is insisting 
 upon a conception of belligerent right which 
 produces these results, entered the war for a pur- 
 pose described by its Prime Minister in the fol- 
 lowing terms : 
 
 "The end which in this war we ought to keep in view 
 is the enthronement of the idea of public right as the 
 governing idea of European politics. Room must be 
 
 7 From an article in the Boston Transcript.
 
 212 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 found and kept for the independent existence and free 
 development of the smaller nationalities each with a 
 corporate consciousness of its own. 
 
 "Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland and the Scandi- 
 navian countries, Greece and the Balkan States must be 
 recognised as having exactly as good a title as their more 
 powerful neighbours to a place in the sun." 
 
 Now I do not believe that the anticlimax here 
 indicated is in conflict with what has been said in 
 the first chapter of this book ; namely, that British 
 "marinism" in normal times constitutes no men- 
 ace to the other nations of the world. But war 
 time is not normal time. And I believe further 
 that heavy as is the British naval hand in war 
 time it is as light as would be or could be 
 that of any other power exercising the belligerent 
 right of the command of the sea at such time. 
 All the evidence goes to show that England does 
 her utmost to make things as light as possible 
 for neutrals; with the result, however, that we 
 have seen. 
 
 And this leads directly to the conclusion sug- 
 gested at the beginning of the chapter, namely, 
 that there is no means under existing conditions 
 for neutrals to escape paying very heavily for a 
 war in which they play no part and are not re- 
 sponsible. They cannot escape war's risks. 
 
 Would the risk of a definite obligation to take 
 some economic part in a system of policing which
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 213 
 
 looks towards the restraint of nations attempting 
 aggression involve greater risk? 
 
 Moreover, if, under present arrangements, 
 neutrals have grievances against belligerents, 
 belligerents have grievances against neutrals. 
 
 It is America a neutral that will largely 
 determine the issues of this war. One may admit, 
 if you will, that England's prohibition of imports 
 of food and raw material into Germany has not 
 had the effect anticipated (though if prolonged 
 the story might be very different). But no one 
 denies the overwhelming importance of the am- 
 munitions supplied to England and her Allies 
 and not supplied to Germany. 
 
 More and more is it evident that modern war is 
 what Napoleon foresaw it would become, mainly 
 a matter of munitions. 8 It is a war largely of 
 factories. As the industrial population is drawn 
 upon more and more for the army, the fact that 
 their places can be filled indefinitely by calling 
 upon the resources in ammunition and material 
 of outside countries, makes those countries 
 directly contributory to the military power of the 
 nation to which the sales are made. 
 
 "Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech reported in the American 
 press as I write these lines, says : "The reverses of our allies, 
 the Russians, are due absolutely and entirely to one thing only : 
 a lack of proper ammunition. . . . What we have to do is to 
 ensure for ourselves and our allies munitions, more munitions, 
 and still more munitions."
 
 214 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Indeed, these facts are not challenged. As the 
 war goes on, military opinion gives greater 
 emphasis to them. In the opinion of most im- 
 partial military critics to-day, the Allies would 
 have a hopeless task in dislodging the Germans 
 from the territory held by them if the immense 
 quantity of ammunition purchased in this country 
 were withheld. And so it is America that will 
 largely determine the issue against Germany. 
 
 Now, that America should thus be free to aid 
 in the defeat of Germany, is, in the view of the 
 present writer, entirely as it ought to be. But 
 what is not as it ought to be is that the result is 
 secured by a sort of chicanery. Referring to the 
 agitation for an embargo on the export of am- 
 munition an American authority says : 
 
 "The real objection to the proposed embargo is not 
 that it would be legally unneutral, but that it would be 
 morally and politically reprehensible. By forbidding 1 the 
 export of arms and munitions the United States would be 
 aiding and abetting the Germans in bringing to a success- 
 ful conclusion a deliberate conspiracy against the peace 
 of the world. . . . 
 
 "The government of the United States must continue 
 its profession of technical neutrality, but American public 
 opinion should not deceive itself with the pretence. There 
 are two ways of being technically neutral. One is to 
 sell war supplies to all belligerents. The other is to sell 
 war supplies to none of them. We should prefer the 
 former, and should assume full responsibility for the 
 consequences of the preference, because in this way we
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 215 
 
 can most effectually protest against German preparedness 
 for conquest by war. Germany should be made to under- 
 stand that the loss of American co-operation is one of 
 the penalties which she must pay for the violation of 
 Belgium. If she had not attacked France through Bel- 
 gium the demand for an embargo on the exportation of 
 war supplies would, we believe, be irresistible. The 
 government of the United States did not formally protest 
 at the time of the violation, but its citizens protested and 
 have been protesting ever since. International law gives 
 us an opportunity of making that protest effective with- 
 out going to war ourselves with Germany. We should 
 take advantage of it as a matter of deliberate national 
 policy, because as a pacific democracy we want to bring 
 into existence a world in which inoffensive pacific nations 
 are free from unprovoked attack. And in every unofficial 
 way Germans should be made to understand why Amer- 
 ican public opinion preferred to give its neutrality an 
 Anglican rather than a Teutonic complexion." 9 
 
 But all this puts the United States government 
 in the position of maintaining a solemn diplomatic 
 farce. While making protestations of its absolute 
 neutrality in all things, it is, as a matter of fact, 
 enabling Germany's enemies to win the war. And 
 this fact of itself deprives America's act in siding 
 with the Allies of the moral value which it might 
 otherwise have possessed. It has in it a large 
 element of that diplomatic make-believe which 
 it is so essential for the future to break down. 
 The writer from whom I have quoted is forced 
 
 "The New Republic, July 10, 1915.
 
 216 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 to admit that while making a great diplomatic 
 parade of impartiality the government is obeying 
 a popular feeling which is not at all impartial. It 
 would be better in every way, it would be an im- 
 mense service to the cause which the American 
 people has given its unofficial allegiance, if the 
 government had been able to give just that reason 
 for not putting an embargo upon the export of 
 munitions. It would have been better still, if, by 
 virtue of the terms of some already existing inter- 
 national arrangement, like that indicated in the 
 first and last chapters of this book, the American 
 government had been able, in the fateful days of 
 July, 1914, when Germany was repelling the 
 offers of an international enquiry, to notify her 
 that failure to submit her case to such enquiry 
 would close America to her as a source of sup- 
 plies, whatever happened. If, in other words, 
 America had chosen the form of "neutrality" for 
 which this book is an argument. 
 
 The accepted conception of neutrality is a 
 direct encouragement to naval rivalry. The 
 writer from whom I have just quoted implies 
 that in no case whether Germany won com- 
 mand of the sea or not would America have 
 aided the cause of the violator of Belgium by 
 furnishing supplies and munitions. But what 
 assurance have we of that? In existing cir- 
 cumstances it is only a guess to say that had
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 217 
 
 the Germans won command of the sea Amer- 
 ican ports would still be closed to them. 10 
 Indeed, we know that that is not true in so far as 
 food, cotton, etc., are concerned, as the American 
 government is at this moment doing its best to 
 see that the American merchant shall be allowed 
 to sell those things to Germany. 
 
 Most Germans to-day, doubtless, argue that if 
 they had command of the sea they could buy 
 munitions and supplies from America just as 
 England is doing. Indeed, America's formal and 
 legal position is: We are prepared to sell to you 
 if you can fetch the goods. It enables the Ger- 
 man Navy League to say with some show of 
 reason: "Now you see why we were asking for 
 twice as many ships as the Reichstag would vote. 
 If we had got them you would have seen a very 
 different story." And at the peace settlement, 
 which is quite unlikely to witness the "destruc- 
 tion" of Austro-German Europe, or render new 
 combinations more or less favourable to it impos- 
 sible, American policy, as at present denned, will 
 be but an added incentive to the further rivalry 
 of naval power. But if the defined policy of 
 America is that its doors are closed in any event 
 to the powers that go to war without submission 
 
 l In the article from which I have quoted occurs the sentence : 
 "If the Germans wanted to buy supplies from us during war 
 they should have planned to control the sea." This is given as 
 pne of several views of the situation.
 
 218 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 of their case to enquiry, the case is entirely 
 altered; and still more if America in this matter 
 acts practically for the western hemisphere. 
 That would have at least these important results : 
 give very solid reasons to the Teutonic powers 
 for accepting international judgment of its case, 
 add weight to the value of outside opinion (one 
 of the difficulties of the past having been to show 
 Germany that that was a thing she need regard 
 at all), and to the importance for a nation of 
 keeping its policy right with it ; and would detract 
 very largely from the value of sea power used 
 in any way in defiance of outside opinion. 
 
 But such an action on America's part, or in 
 conjunction with other nations, could only be 
 effective if it represented a definite and pre- 
 announced policy. Obviously no penalty, whether 
 in municipal or international action, can be pre- 
 ventive if the prospective offender is unaware of 
 what awaits him. Moreover, to leave American 
 decision in such matters to the accidental circum- 
 stances of each particular case, to the drift of 
 public opinion for the time being, subject to the 
 lobbying of special interests cotton, munitions 
 (which promise to become the greatest of all 
 American industries) or what not and in heaven 
 knows what condition of internal politics, would 
 deprive the action of any real value in this 
 connection,
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 219 
 
 Definite proposals are indeed now being made 
 to employ this economic force of the country as 
 against Great Britain for the purpose of com- 
 pelling her to give greater consideration to neu- 
 tral trade rights. It is urged, for instance, by 
 Professor Clapp, in his book, "The Economic 
 Aspects of the War," n that the threat to put an 
 embargo on arms would soon restore American 
 right to trade with neutral countries and within 
 the limits allowed under the Declaration of Lon- 
 don with belligerent countries as well. Pro- 
 fessor Clapp recognises that to carry the threat 
 into effect (and unless there is a possibility at 
 least of America doing so it would be disregarded 
 by England as bluff and so remain ineffective) 
 might mean placing a very grave handicap on 
 England's military task, and so give Germany 
 an added chance of victory. But, he argues, 
 neutrals are not concerned with the outcome of 
 a war to which they are not a party. 
 
 Well, apply that to the present case. If Ger- 
 many were victorious, Belgium and part of 
 France annexed, English commercial policy in 
 large areas replaced by German, would inter- 
 national law, the integrity of the smaller states 
 and America's general international position be 
 as secure as in the case of British victory? 
 Rightly or wrongly the American public has de- 
 
 "Pp. 307-308.
 
 220 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 cided that they would not. But if that decision 
 is just, to facilitate German victory for trade pur- 
 poses is to sacrifice a large permanent interest 
 for a relatively smaller and temporary one. To 
 base remedial action on the assumption that 
 America is relatively indifferent to the issue of 
 the war, that she can allow the action which she 
 takes, if needs be, to give the victory to Germany, 
 is to disregard the decision of American public 
 opinion on essential facts of the case. 
 
 That brings us indeed once more to the unreal- 
 ity which vitiates both the existing theory and 
 practice of neutrality. Nevertheless the right 
 course is for America to protect as much existing 
 international law as the world possesses, and to 
 enlarge that if possible towards the recognition 
 of some such code as that embodied in the 
 Declaration of London. Otherwise we might 
 lose what there is with little assurance that we 
 should get a different law to replace it. 
 
 Indeed to press energetically for respect of 
 neutral right in existing circumstances might 
 conceivably be a first step to the internationalisa- 
 tion of the economic control exercised by bel- 
 ligerents: Belligerents finding themselves ham- 
 pered would want to come to terms with neutrals, 
 not in the direction of surrendering any means 
 of carrying on a war, but of securing sanction of 
 its necessities. This they might achieve by making
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 221 
 
 its objects such as to promote the permanent 
 interest of the non-belligerent nations. 
 
 Surely the evidence dealt with here is proof 
 enough of this : that, even if we could secure the 
 formal recognition of such a code as the Declaja- 
 tion of London, there is no assurance in our 
 present absence of sanctions that it would, in all 
 the altering circumstances of war, be observed in 
 future. And if it were neutrals would still suffer 
 in some cases as much as at present, because 
 these things are a matter mainly of the hazards of 
 geography and commercial intercourse by the 
 operations of blockade and contraband; and still 
 more importantly, of course, by the general com- 
 mercial chaos occasioned by war. Switzerland 
 has suffered perhaps as much as any neutral in 
 this war: and no Declaration of London could 
 protect her. 
 
 International law as we know it has grown up, 
 not as the result of definitely thought out prin- 
 ciples and long views as to the protection of the 
 general interest, but as the piecemeal accumula- 
 tion of spasmodic protest against isolated injury 
 to neutral trade. The neutral has in effect said: 
 "We don't care what you do to your victim but 
 you must not hurt us." The momentary incon- 
 venience to the neutral has been the predominat- 
 ing consideration. 
 
 But can any community which hopes to create
 
 222 
 
 a real law be guided by such a standard of judg- 
 ment? If such principles guided municipal law 
 we should find the State concerning itself with 
 and punishing very severely offences like ob- 
 struction of the sidewalk (because of their imme- 
 diate inconvenience) but being "neutral" to the 
 murder of old people or infants because no imme- 
 diate inconvenience to the general public was 
 occasioned. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that "the father of 
 modern international law" clearly anticipated the 
 need sooner or later for embodying the principle 
 here indicated in any code if we are to get a real 
 society: and, of course, law connotes a society. 
 
 In the chapter which Grotius devotes to the 
 subject of neutrality (lib. Ill, cap. 17) he sum- 
 marises his doctrine as follows: 
 
 It is the duty of those who stand apart from a war to 
 do nothing which may strengthen the side which has the 
 worse cause or which may impede the motions of him 
 who is carrying on a just war ; and in a doubtful case to 
 act alike to both sides, in permitting transit, in supplying 
 provisions, in not helping persons besieged. 
 
 This doctrine has been condemned as absurdly 
 impracticable by modern lawyers, but its imprac- 
 ticability arises, not from its intrinsic fallacy, but 
 from the failure of nations to organise themselves. 
 If for "worse cause" we read : "the nation which 
 has refused to submit its case to enquiry," so as
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 223 
 
 to get an instant and ready standard of judgment, 
 it will be seen that some such economic co-opera- 
 tion of States to the end of securing an inter- 
 national sanction for law as that suggested in the 
 last chapter of this book, is, in some sense, a 
 realisation of the Grotian forecast of "neutrality." 
 
 Grotius rightly foresaw that a society based 
 on the general principle that an attack on one 
 of its members does not concern it, that those 
 not attacked can remain "neutral" and recog- 
 nise any rights that the victorious party may 
 establish as against the resistance of the other, is 
 in its very foundations anti-social. It compels 
 each one of its members to arm, often on the 
 standard set by the least scrupulous, and tends, at 
 least, to make power the measure of right. 
 
 Such a conception necessarily produces an- 
 archy. Civilised communities within the state 
 are founded upon the directly contrary principle, 
 namely, that all are interested in resisting aggres- 
 sion because if one is victimised with impunity 
 to-day any may be the victim to-morrow. Illegal 
 injury to one is injury to all, and in such case the 
 community immediately takes sides. It takes 
 sides by compelling (through its collective powers 
 represented in the police) the aggressor in the 
 case to submit to third-party judgment. As to 
 which is the aggressor, it settles that by deciding 
 that it is the party which uses force on his own
 
 224 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 judgment to secure a decision in his own case. 
 It may be true in a disputed case that B owes A 
 a certain sum of money; but if A broke into 
 B's house and took it he would be arrested for 
 burglary. The community would, through the 
 police, with no knowledge of the merits of the 
 case and not needing to have them side with B. 
 
 The conceptions of neutrality which have en- 
 tered into international law are, of course, bound 
 up with the conceptions of sovereignty and 
 independence which the more morbid moods of 
 nineteenth century nationalism referred to at the 
 beginning of this chapter have engendered. 
 Underlying those moods is a question of morals 
 too big to enter into just here, but it is certain 
 that before our international code can be put 
 upon a more civilised basis we shall have to shed 
 some of our more barbaric nationalism. We talk 
 of sovereignty and independence as absolute 
 things in the case of nations and create the fiction 
 that states are accountable to no sovereign be- 
 yond themselves. But "law" and the complete 
 independence and sovereignty of those subject to 
 it, are, of course, contradictions in terms. A 
 "society" made up of "sovereign and independent 
 units" is another. Until we can get away from 
 some of these assumptions and replace them by 
 some clearer notions of the real relationship of
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 225 
 
 states, international law will be founded upon 
 confusions and hugger mugger. 
 
 We could only imagine complete sovereignty 
 and independence if each nation kept to itself. 
 From the moment that it has contact at all with 
 others and enters into treaty arrangements, it 
 has surrendered its absolute sovereignty to that 
 of its bond. Unless we get back to the Machia- 
 vellian principle, that a nation is not even bound 
 by its bond, we cannot maintain the fiction of 
 complete sovereignty. And, of course, the final 
 sovereignty the social obligation, treaty faith, 
 what you will is representative of all. The sea 
 is symbolical of a worldwide social unity. It 
 is "one," and the ship plying between two coun- 
 tries is an international thing, and in actual prac- 
 tice half a dozen nationalities may, through pas- 
 sengers, cargo, mail, insurance, be concerned in 
 the case of a single vessel. How can those 
 nationalities be either "neutral" or "sovereign" 
 in any absolute sense ? 
 
 What are the practical conclusions to which the 
 whole thing points? They may be summarised 
 thus: 
 
 (i) In a great war where sea operations are 
 involved there can be no real protection of non- 
 combatant nations by international arrangements 
 for isolating them from the conflict ; by the stiffen- 
 ing of neutral right, that is.
 
 226 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 (2) It is impossible for non-combatant nations 
 to be neutral in the sense of impartial as between 
 the combatants; the command of the sea by one 
 belligerent may compel their economic co-opera- 
 tion with him; or geographical position and 
 other factors may make a country's neutrality of 
 immense value to one party and an immense 
 handicap to the other, irrespective of whether the 
 neutral nation's interests or feelings correspond 
 with such favouring of the one as against the 
 other. 
 
 (3) The disposal of valuable factors of this 
 kind should not be left to chance, but should be 
 utilised for aiding international arrangements 
 which already exist in embryo for the protection 
 of the integrity of states. 
 
 (4) The sort of alliance which at present is 
 effected between the government of a combatant 
 state and the citizens of a "neutral" one as in 
 the matter of controlling Dutch exports through 
 arrangements with Dutch citizens, and the fur- 
 nishing of American credit should be the pre- 
 rogative of government, duly and constitutionally 
 using those forces for nationally-approved pur- 
 poses. 
 
 (5) Constructive international law which pro- 
 ceeds on the principle of the isolation or detach- 
 ment of states not directly concerned with mili- 
 tary co-operation in the conflict, is bound to break
 
 NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY 227 
 
 down owing to the weight of the forces against 
 it the complexity of international contacts which 
 make it impossible for the action of a belligerent 
 nation not to affect in certain cases a non-belliger- 
 ent one. 
 
 (6) Rather should the efforts at the framing 
 of international law proceed on the principle that 
 a state, in order to secure its benefits, must 
 assume certain obligations towards other nations 
 which have pledged themselves to render the law 
 effective by similar obligations. 
 
 (7) Though the assumption of such obliga- 
 tions would give to international law a reality it 
 does not at present possess, their burden would 
 not be greater than those borne by neutrals and 
 non-combatants under past and present conditions 
 of international relationship. 
 
 The character of the obligations here men- 
 tioned is explained in detail in the concluding 
 chapter of this book. The suggestion there made 
 would, of course, link international law to inter- 
 national politics, would compel alliances for the 
 protection of law just as we now have alliances 
 for the protection of territory like the treaty 
 which was supposed to protect Belgium but did 
 not; like the alliances which have brought the 
 European world to arms. If the nations had 
 shown as great a readiness to assume burdens
 
 228 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 for the enforcement of law embodying the general 
 interest, as for political and territorial interests, 
 the war might have been avoided. 
 
 In any case if, after the war, a state like Bel- 
 gium is to be protected at all, it must still be by 
 means of a treaty of some kind. We talk con- 
 temptuously of treaties, but do we propose to 
 leave Belgium after the war dependent upon her 
 own force alone? Any other plan involves ar- 
 rangements of some kind between the nations, 
 the assumption of guarantee obligations by 
 Belgium's neighbours. And the same applies to 
 other lesser states. 
 
 Since international contracts of some kind 
 therefore there must be, and since those contracts 
 are obviously frail things, likely to be violated, 
 the only recourse is to give them as many 
 guarantors as possible. To ensure this, the 
 obligations under the guarantee must be of a 
 kind that the guarantors can discharge without 
 too great a cost. In the case of certain states, 
 an undertaking to use their economic influence 
 the control of their exports and imports mainly 
 not in obedience to an uncertain law of neutrality, 
 but to a definite law designed to ensure their 
 national protection, would be a lesser burden than 
 military obligation, and one Just as effective in 
 many cases, and would be less costly to them than 
 is the present system and its total results.
 
 If the struggle for power is the struggle of rival 
 groups for sustenance in a world of limited space and 
 opportunity, if war is really, as in the prevailing con- 
 ception it is, a "struggle for bread," it is inevitable be- 
 tween men and will go on. If one of two parties must 
 eat the other the two cannot come to a really amicable 
 agreement about the matter. Even if this is not the case, 
 but mankind remains persuaded that it is so, war will 
 also continue. But in that case it would be a struggle not 
 of necessity, but of misunderstanding which better think- 
 ing and adjustment could dispose of as it disposed of 
 religious wars, the cessation of which proves clearly that 
 some of man's deepest passions can be redirected by a 
 different interpretation of facts knowledge. Is the "ex- 
 pansion" of states a real need? Nearly all political 
 philosophy and public discussion avoid that question, but 
 until we have made up our mind on it all schemes of 
 world organisation must necessarily be frustrated, owing, 
 among other factors, to the elusive processes of the 
 psychology of fear.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM OF POWER 
 
 UNDERLYING all the questions so far dis- 
 cussed in this book neutral and belligerent 
 right, Prussianism, sea power as a part of the 
 general contest for political power, the possibility 
 of co-operation between nations, underlying indeed 
 all problems of international relationship what- 
 soever, is one ultimate problem which I can most 
 vividly indicate by two quotations, one of which 
 I happened to have used elsewhere but which I 
 repeat for reasons that will appear presently. 
 
 A writer in the English "National Review" 
 one of the leading anti-German organs during the 
 last decade or so in an article which appeared 
 a year or so before the war, said: 
 
 Germany must expand. Every year an extra million 
 babies are crying out for more room, and, as the expan- 
 sion of Germany by peaceful means seems impossible, 
 Germany can only provide for those babies at the cost of 
 potential foes, and France is one of them. 
 
 A vanquished France might give Germany all she 
 wants. The immense colonial possessions of France 
 present a tantalising and provoking temptation to Ger- 
 man cupidity, which, it cannot be too often repeated, is 
 not mere envious greed, but stern necessity. The same 
 struggle for life and space which more than a thousand 
 
 231
 
 232 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 years ago drove one Teutonic wave after another across 
 the Rhine and the Alps is now once more a great compel- 
 ling force. Colonies fit to receive the German surplus popu- 
 lations are the greatest need of Germany. This aspect of 
 the case may be all very sad and very wicked, but it is 
 true. . . . Herein lies the temptation and the danger. 
 Herein, too, lies the ceaseless and ruinous struggle of 
 armaments, and herein for France lies the dire necessity 
 of linking her foreign policy with that of powerful 
 allies. 1 
 
 The other quotation is from Mr. Jerome K. 
 Jerome, the English author who tells us, with 
 prophetic vision, that as long as the human race 
 endures men will fight about their national ideals. 
 It has to be accepted, he says, as a fact in nature, 
 not in any way to be altered by this war which is 
 only one round in a never-ending series of great 
 games. He imagines an Englishman outlining 
 the nature of the game that he is playing with 
 the Prussian by saying to the latter : 
 
 You believe that God has called upon you to spread 
 German culture through the lands. You are ready to die 
 for your faith. And we believe God has a use for the 
 thing called England. Well, let us fight it out. There 
 seems no other way. You for St. Michael and we for 
 St. George ; and God be with us both. 
 
 Are the underlying assumptions of these two 
 passages true? Is it true that nations are in- 
 
 'Sept., 1913.
 
 233 
 
 cvitably pushed to conflict either by vital needs 
 of sustenance, "the struggle for bread"; or by 
 an irreconcilable antagonism of ideal, or by both ? 
 
 I will put the question in less absolute form: 
 Does military victory and the consequent increase 
 of political power over others that it gives, achieve 
 for a people great material or moral advantage 
 promote their commerce and culture for example ? 
 
 These are the ultimate questions in interna- 
 tional politics. They underlie not merely the 
 competition of the Great Powers for colonies and 
 territories, the intrigues of the Chancelleries, but 
 the whole problem of nationality and self-govern- 
 ment, Imperialism and Home Rule; not merely 
 the differences about Egypt and Morocco and the 
 partition of Africa, but the struggles of race, 
 language, religion, in South Eastern Europe, the 
 emancipation of peoples from alien domination, 
 the final political situation of Belgium, of Alsace, 
 of Poland, of Bohemia, of Austria, Balkan policy 
 generally, the expansion of Russia, Italian irre- 
 dentism. A mere knowledge of the detailed 
 fact is of no avail unless we realise the general 
 meaning of the facts: we may fail to see the 
 forest for the trees. If we are to have any 
 reasoned opinion about our own future policy in 
 the world on preparedness and its nature, the 
 character of future alliances, the causes we should 
 support and those we should condemn we must
 
 234 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 answer in our minds the question of principle 
 involved in the two quotations just cited. 
 
 This does not mean, of course, that when we 
 have answered those questions, and answered 
 them truly, we shall have solved all international 
 difficulties. It merely means that an obstacle 
 which prevents, and which of itself suffices to 
 prevent, their being solved will have been re- 
 moved. Until we got rid of the notion that 
 pestilence was a visitation of God, prophylactic 
 medicine w r as impossible (as it is in the East to- 
 day where that belief prevails) . And the destruc- 
 tion of that fallacy was not the less essential 
 because there are terrible diseases with which 
 medicine cannot deal at all. But until the world 
 could shake itself free from the old fatalism it 
 was not even on the right road in its fight with 
 disease. 
 
 It is necessary to emphasize the very elemen- 
 tary truth that this illustrates, because it will be 
 said that to reduce international politics to a 
 general principle like that dealt with in this chap- 
 ter is to be guilty of over-simplification; to dis- 
 regard difficulties of detail, to settle complex prob- 
 lems with generalities and formulae. A vast 
 amount of criticism of this kind seems to ignore 
 the real function of a general principle. 
 
 So long as the world believes although the 
 belief may be a barely conscious one that the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 235 
 
 answer to the suggested questions is "yes," and 
 that states are condemned by a necessity of 
 nature, a law beyond human control to exist in 
 perpetual and inevitable antagonism, we shall 
 develop neither the intention nor the energy 
 necessary to carry into effect that international 
 co-operation which might put us fairly on the road 
 to some solution of our difficulties. To believe, 
 however vaguely or undefinedly, that in questions 
 of war and peace we are the puppets of forces 
 outside ourselves will prevent our forming that 
 "Will" without which there can certainly in this 
 matter be no way. 
 
 And the way will be just as impossible of dis- 
 covery so long as nations believe that they must 
 either be swallowed by others or be in a position 
 to swallow them. With that belief in the back- 
 ground of consciousness policy would inevitably 
 drift in one direction; and no effort could per- 
 manently succeed in re-directing it until that 
 belief had been destroyed. 
 
 Now, it is one of the grimmest humours of the 
 war that the thing which everyone, taking due 
 thought, admits to be the basic issue, is the one 
 thing that, practically speaking, has never been 
 raised as between the nations; only various inci- 
 dents arising out of that issue, not the issue itself. 
 Not merely has it no place in the vast official 
 literature that fills the various bulky blue, white,
 
 236 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 orange, red, green, and grey books, but it has 
 never been discussed as between the peoples 
 through their press, their writing, their daily talk 
 in the way that issues between Liberals and Con- 
 servatives, Republicans or Democrats, Suffragists 
 and anti-Suffragists, vegetarians and carnivora 
 are discussed. 
 
 The people of Europe have not asked them- 
 selves: Why do nations want to govern each 
 other instead of themselves? Is that desire a 
 fixed thing, or something that can be changed, 
 like opinion in politics? Do they really need 
 each other's territory ? Can we so arrange things 
 in Europe that the German, without murdering 
 us now, will be able to feed his children of the 
 future? What is it precisely that he needs to 
 that end ? Is there any means of letting him have 
 it that would not hurt us? 
 
 As little has the ordinary German put seriously 
 to himself the question: "Have we any more 
 reason for compelling other people to accept our 
 culture than for compelling them to accept our 
 religion?" 
 
 Of the elements of these problems the public 
 of all three countries are profoundly ignorant. 
 They have gathered up catchwords about places 
 in the sun, fulfilling national destiny, the inevit- 
 ability of struggle, all of which creates a vague 
 sense of resentment of the other man's intentions,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 237 
 
 and that is all. The blue and red books are, of 
 course, even farther away from the realities than 
 the public talk and writing. Here for years the 
 peoples which compose the allied nations of the 
 west had been alleging an evident intention on 
 the part of Germany to establish a military 
 tyranny over them ; the Teutonic peoples had for 
 the same period been alleging the evident inten- 
 tion of her political rivals to "encircle" her. Yet 
 in the immense mass of official despatches which 
 were exchanged during the crisis that preceded 
 this war those things are barely mentioned: just 
 a vague and distant hint once or twice. 
 
 And the public discussion, that of the press and 
 political writers, concerning the alleged rival am- 
 bitions of the various parties the intention of 
 Germany through Austria to dominate the Bal- 
 kans, and so Asia Minor, and so perhaps the 
 world ; the intention of Russia to protect the Slav 
 peoples from this alien domination; the necessity 
 for England, in terms of the Balance of Power 
 principle, to prevent the establishment on the 
 channel of an overwhelming continental power 
 was all carried on in such a way, owing mainly to 
 the conventions of secrecy and hugger mugger 
 that characterise European diplomacy, as to de- 
 generate into accusations of intended aggression 
 and little more. 
 
 Despite all the oceans of talk that went on
 
 238 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 before the war concerning the planned invasion 
 of England by Germany, the contemplated de- 
 struction of France, and Germany's allegations of 
 "encirclement," we do not to-day know how far 
 the mutual accusations were true. 2 The final 
 action of each group was based on an assumption 
 concerning the other, the truth of which that 
 other denied and continues to deny to such 
 degree that both sides have managed honestly to 
 convince themselves that they are fighting a 
 purely defensive war. 
 
 During all those years the social democratic 
 party in Germany, for instance, could not tell, 
 because it did not know, the policy for which Ger- 
 many stood. Not merely the British Parliament, 
 but the members of the British Cabinet, a week 
 before the declaration of war did not know for 
 what policy England stood, whether England 
 would participate. One member of the Cabinet 
 says that but for Belgium England would never 
 have been brought in ; another says that Belgium 
 
 3 The London "Nation," which has shown itself, because of its 
 Liberalism in politics, perhaps most energetically anti-German 
 and enthusiastically pro-war, says, more than a year after 
 the outbreak (Sept. 4, 1915) : "The main object for which the 
 saner German Imperialists are fighting is the Empire of the East. 
 The picking up of scattered colonies is only a secondary aim 
 and the annexation of Belgium is the dream of extremists. The 
 goal of the main official body is to win that political and military 
 predominance in Turkey from which a sort of economic monopoly 
 might follow."
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 239 
 
 or no Belgium, England would have been brought 
 in to destroy a tyranny that threatened her 
 existence. 
 
 The discussion of motive and intention is of 
 little avail here. We don't even know our own 
 motives as individuals; less even can we know 
 the motive of millions of differing fellow country- 
 men; less yet those of foreign countries. One 
 may hear a political wiseacre solemnly descanting 
 on the "intention" of this or that foreign country, 
 to do this or that thing, some years hence. Yet 
 if you were to ask this same wiseacre the inten- 
 tion of his own country in some such simple 
 matter as suffrage, or the next Presidential elec- 
 tion, what it would do, not some years, but six 
 months hence, he could not tell you to save his 
 immortal soul. 
 
 What we have to establish is not intention or 
 motive, but need, necessity; and then interest, 
 moral and material. 
 
 In the questions which underlie the two quota- 
 tions I have given, there is, of course, a very sig- 
 nificant difference : If we admit that an increasing 
 population like the German must either expand 
 its frontiers or starve, conquer or be without food, 
 war, of course, will go on, because you cannot 
 ask a whole population to commit suicide. Nor, 
 if it is a question of one surviving at the cost of 
 the other, can there be any real possibility of
 
 240 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 agreement between them. It would only last as 
 long as the pressure of population on the soil was 
 not really severe. As well might two cannibals 
 say: "Since one of us has got to eat the other, let 
 us come to some amicable agreement about it." 
 
 And even though, as a matter of fact, there 
 was no necessity whatever for either to eat the 
 other, agreement would be just as impossible so 
 long as each believed in that necessity. For the 
 false belief would have the same effect on the 
 conduct of both as though that belief were true. 
 But in that case their conflict would be the out- 
 come, not of necessity at all, but of a mistake; 
 of misunderstanding of certain facts. 
 
 So with nations: the fact that there is no in- 
 evitable rivalry between them based on conflicting 
 needs, the fact that the whole idea is a mistake, 
 will not necessarily stop war between them. War 
 might take place because nations wrongly believed 
 their needs to be irreconcilable. But, again, in 
 that case also, it would be a conflict of misunder- 
 standing. And that is why we need widespread 
 discussion. 
 
 But, assuming the idea that nations must 
 struggle with one another for their sustenance 
 in a world of limited space and opportunity to be 
 a true one, there is this difference between that 
 conflict and the conflict of ideals. I may acquire 
 another man's ideal, "capture" it in the sense of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 241 
 
 adopting it, but he still has it. But if I take his 
 property he hasn't. 
 
 And that is rather an important difference. 
 
 Now the main reason which leads people to 
 avoid discussion of this whole subject is the plea 
 that man's conduct is not affected by discussion. 
 It is argued, as Mr. Jerome argues in the quota- 
 tion I have made from him, that whether the 
 struggle for political power serve any purpose or 
 not, is well or ill founded, necessary or unneces- 
 sary, men always have struggled for power and 
 that consequently the motives of such struggle are 
 something fixed, which no amount of "talk" or 
 reason or logic will change. That it is "in human 
 nature." 
 
 Which, of course, is bad psychology and worse 
 history. Some of the strongest passions and 
 motives that have played the greatest part in 
 history, such as those which for centuries led the 
 populations of Europe to pour out their blood like 
 water, and their wealth like trash, for the re- 
 covery of the Holy Sepulchre, or later drove 
 them in rival religious parties one against the 
 other until countries were depopulated and king- 
 doms ruined, are passions and motives that have 
 been so transformed by discussion and change of 
 view and attitude, that we cannot even under- 
 stand them. When the Europe which had fought 
 during two centuries for the Holy Sepulchre could
 
 242 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 have had it for the asking, it did not even ask. 
 The French Catholic has not merely stopped kill- 
 ing the Huguenot, he has stopped wanting to, 
 which is far more remarkable. "Nationalism" 3 
 as a passion in politics is a modern creation 
 resting upon a certain conception of certain 
 facts which discussion and literature, and that 
 accumulation of them which we call tradition, 
 has formed in quite modern times. To say 
 that the direction of our passions cannot be 
 changed by our interpretation of facts, by "logic" 
 if you will, is, of course, to be guilty of ignorant 
 confusions. If you see your enemy, Smith, going 
 down the street, you may want to murder him ; if 
 he turns round and you see that the man is not 
 Smith at all but your very good friend Brown, 
 your purely intellectual perception of a fact 
 due to a piece of pure "logic," enabling you 
 to conclude that a fur coat resembling Smith's 
 had caused a false induction changes altogether 
 the direction of your feeling. Some of the bitter- 
 est passions in nations are due to mistaking 
 
 3 This word is used to-day indifferently to describe the pan- 
 German, or the Italian who dreams of Italy dominating the 
 world as a resuscitated Rome, and the German who expelled 
 Napoleon or the Italian who freed his states from the Austrian 
 or the Balkan populations who rose against the tyranny of the 
 Turk. But surely the two are very different ideals. The 
 earlier nationalism was in large part a revolt against sheer 
 political oppression; its later development is an Imperialism 
 based on race superiority.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 243 
 
 Brown for Smith ; and a clearer knowledge of the 
 fact and clearer thinking about it will redirect 
 those passions. 
 
 Dogmatically to assume, therefore, that be- 
 cause nations do desire power and territory, there- 
 fore they must, and that it is not worth discus- 
 sion, is to show one's inability to face even simple 
 facts. The idea that a national culture should 
 be imposed by force of arms upon an unwilling 
 people and, of course, if no nation wanted to im- 
 pose it, no nation would have to go to war to resist 
 its imposition is a conception of what constitutes 
 a worthy and noble national ideal, certainly as 
 much subject to modification by discussion as were 
 those other abandoned ideals that bled Europe for 
 some centuries. 4 It may be that nations do fight 
 to-day simply to dominate, "to show that they are 
 boss," to impose their political religion. But can 
 we dogmatise and say that the human mind is 
 incapable of realising that such an ambition is a 
 tawdry and shoddy one ? On what ground do we 
 allege that the human mind is incapable of seeing 
 this: That if you can't convince your neighbour 
 of the superiority of your political ideas by fair 
 argument, you are certainly not going to do so 
 
 4 We need not conclude that the modern European has no 
 feeling for religion. That feeling is probably deeper than ever. 
 What he has lost is the idea that anything of worth in it can 
 be "imposed" upon a people by defeating their armies, or that 
 such defeats are relevant in any way to religious conviction.
 
 244 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 by burning his house down and murdering his 
 wife? To insist that such a notion of national 
 "dignity" must for all time be the possession of 
 mankind is a curious plea coming from those who 
 profess to see in these military struggles the 
 higher manifestations of the human spirit. 
 
 * * 
 
 All that may apply, it will be urged, to the 
 moral side of the problem. But what of the 
 brutal, physical side; of the view that this con- 
 test for territorial expansion and political power 
 giving commercial privileges and advantage 
 does indeed represent a part of man's "struggle 
 for bread," for survival; that expanding popu- 
 lations must secure more territory or expose 
 themselves or their descendants to starvation? If 
 that is true, no argument, no talk will alter it. It 
 is a physical fact as regrettable as you like, but 
 a fact in nature. 
 
 I have said at the beginning of this chapter 
 that that is a question which, speaking broadly, 
 no government or people have thought it worth 
 while to discuss. In the disputes of the diplomats 
 as of the general public, it has been assumed al- 
 most as an axiom that, of course, this contest for 
 territory is in fact the "struggle for life" among 
 nations; that changes of frontier are not of the 
 nature of other political changes like that from 
 Republican to Democratic rule, or vice versa.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 245 
 
 Never, it is assumed, could such things be a 
 matter of normal political discussion and re- 
 adjustment, maintaining by such means, more or 
 less, the required equilibrium. It is an irreconcil- 
 able conflict to be determined only by force. 
 
 A few specialists have, it is true, discussed 
 these things in books which the public as a whole 
 don't read. But, even with those specialists, the 
 "ultimate" question is generally settled by an 
 unquestioned adoption of the orthodox assump- 
 tion concerning the value of political power. 
 Admiral Mahan, for instance, will discuss with 
 acuteness and learning, through large volumes, 
 the place of sea power as an instrument of inter- 
 national rivalry, but this last question was one 
 which, as the circumstances of a discussion with 
 the present writer showed, he had not asked him- 
 self with any clearness since he answered in one 
 way, in one mood, and in an exactly contrary 
 way in another. 
 
 The extent to which this is general among the 
 specialists may be gathered from a book like 
 Professor Usher's "Pan-Americanism," written 
 since the war, and which deals with prob- 
 lems presenting themselves for solution after- 
 wards. This book is described as "a forecast of 
 the inevitable clash between the United States 
 and Europe's victor," and the author essays to 
 present the views of the various sections and
 
 246 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 interests in the country. Underlying practically 
 every view presented, however contradictory 
 otherwise, is the assumption accepted virtually 
 without discussion, that the industrial nations at 
 least are rivals in trade, that what one gets the 
 other loses, and that their economic development 
 represents a competition for strictly limited "mar- 
 kets," and that out of this arises a conflict deeply 
 rooted in real sustenance need. Germany is repre- 
 sented as being impelled by these needs to "strike 
 a crushing blow at her adversary's prosperity" 
 (p. 149) and England looking upon even the 
 United States as a "dangerous rival, whose 
 foreign trade is to be checked by British military 
 and naval power" (p. 158). The view that 
 political power, even in peace, determines the cur- 
 rents of trade, is carried so far that the develop- 
 ment of Central American trade with the United 
 States during the last fifteen years is gravely 
 ascribed to the withdrawal of the British fleet to 
 European waters during that period, thus "giving 
 the naval supremacy of the Western Hemisphere 
 into American hands." And when the destruction 
 of the German fleet places that supremacy once 
 more in British hands, England will, by some 
 unexplained process, use her "supremacy" to pre- 
 vent further development of American trade in 
 that direction. 
 
 The following passages indicate sufficiently
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 247 
 
 the dominant assumptions of Professor Usher's 
 discussions : 
 
 Foreign markets, expanding markets, are necessary 
 for the defence of the future and the greater good to the 
 greater number yet to be born justifies a war of apparent 
 aggression to ensure their welfare (p. 119). They see 
 clearly in Europe that the most vital interest of the state 
 is economic, because economic prosperity is the founda- 
 tion of political independence, of national unity, and of 
 international status ; they see that prosperity depends 
 upon the continuance of the rate of growth, and that 
 political and military action ought to protect and further 
 those economic interests. The present European con- 
 flicts are based primarily upon those economic conten- 
 tions. This, then, is an economic war a war for mar- 
 kets, for colonies, for dependencies, in which markets 
 may be developed, for access and, perhaps, preferential 
 rights in those of Asiatic communities. Precisely those 
 factors are already present in the United States, and, if 
 precedent be any criterion, will before long lead our 
 statesmen and citizens to a conviction that the supreme 
 duty of the state is to provide for the economic welfare 
 of its citizens, whence it is but a step to territorial ex- 
 pansion, to an insistence upon new markets, secured by 
 political, diplomatic, and, it may be, military and naval 
 agencies. 
 
 It is true that in his chapter on the Monroe 
 doctrine he intimates that it is not expedient for 
 the United States to quarrel with Europe, to 
 extend our relations with Latin America, but by 
 his emphasis throughout on the general concep-
 
 248 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tion implied in this passage makes it also pretty 
 plain that America may well have to choose be- 
 tween her fundamental future interests and her 
 desire to live unaggressively at peace. 
 
 Now, the present writer happens to be one of 
 those who have maintained (in books mostly un- 
 read even when discussed by the general public) 
 that there are certain fundamental "illusions" 
 economic, political, biological at the basis of this 
 whole theory of the necessary rivalry of states. 
 The grounds upon which he has challenged what 
 is undoubtedly a prevailing conception, cannot be 
 repeated here. 5 They do not constitute, by any 
 
 'America will lose nothing by European development eco- 
 nomically in South America, nor Europe by ours; and if clash 
 comes it will come, not from any necessary hostility of interest, 
 but from misunderstanding of interest. All the talk of the 
 inevitable clash for markets leaves out of account half the 
 facts. If we want expanding markets in South America we 
 should welcome the investment of European money therein; 
 if we want to sell harvesters to Argentina we should be glad 
 to have Europe buy her wheat; and if Europe is to buy her 
 wheat Europeans must sell something in some foreign market 
 wherewith to get the money and so become our competitors 
 somewhere. A market is not a place where things are sold, it 
 is a place where things are bought and sold ; and the one 
 operation is impossible without the other, a fact which makes 
 our competitors necessary to our markets and our markets 
 impossible without our competitors. "America" is no more a 
 "rival," dangerous or otherwise, of Great Britain or Germany 
 than Virginia is a rival of Missouri. These political units are 
 not economic units at all, nor are they trading corporations; to 
 the extent to which there is economic competition and rivalry 
 it goes on between individuals and not between states. These
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 249 
 
 means, a whole cloth new theory of the relation- 
 ship of states. They are more the development 
 and definite application to current problems, of 
 principles, the beginnings of which can be found 
 in the arguments of the physiocrats, two hundred 
 odd years since, and which every economist has 
 since in some measure developed. Happily, it is 
 not a purely economic case. It does not rest upon 
 showing the cost of war, more or less, or whether 
 it pays more or less, but upon the existence of an 
 
 things are, of course, very elementary economics, and this is 
 not the place to develop them, but the whole fabric of "inevit- 
 ability" of struggle for economic ends between nations falls to 
 pieces when due account is taken of them. 
 
 To the extent to which the old economic misconceptions 
 dominate international politics they do so by virtue of the 
 momentum of old ideas. It is always a slow process by which 
 better thinking gets translated into political action. For a 
 century and a half, or more, from the days when David Hume 
 poured his contempt upon the "narrow and malignant opinion" 
 that one nation had any interest in checking the economic ex- 
 pansion of another, and prayed "not only as a man but as a 
 British subject for the prosperity of Spain, of the Germanics, 
 aye, and even of France," the economists almost to a man have 
 thought one way and the politicians acted another. For the 
 philosophy of political aggression does not get its main inspira- 
 tion from the economists, or even from the traders and mer- 
 chants, but from the Bernhardis, Treitschkes, or the popular 
 admirals, generals, and politicians who have seldom been econo- 
 mists even of the most elementary kind. But this lagging of 
 political action behind the best contemporary thought is not 
 merely true of international relations. Montaigne was laughing 
 at witchcraft two hundred years, and most educated men a hun- 
 dred years, before the politicians and lawyers stopped burning 
 witches. From a Review of Professor Usher's Book.
 
 250 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 entirely false mental picture of the relation of 
 government and administration to those activities 
 by which the mass of people earn their livelihood 
 and live their lives. Part, at least, of the all but 
 universal approval of power in one's own govern- 
 ment comes from the idea that by the exercise of 
 that power, especially in the extension of terri- 
 tory, annexation of colonies, and the like, there is 
 a definite accretion of wealth to the annexing 
 power. 
 
 That, of course, implies a confusion of thought. 
 A country which annexes a province has not added 
 to the wealth of the original inhabitants of that 
 country any more than a city which takes an 
 outlying suburb into its administration adds to 
 the wealth of the original inhabitants of the city. 
 The change may, or may not, be of advantage; 
 there may be some administrative economy, and 
 so some reduction of taxation for the citizens of 
 the new administrative area as a whole, and 
 something similar may take place on the annexa- 
 tion of a province by a national government 
 (though generally the reverse is the case). But 
 the point is that to the ordinary mind the two 
 operations are not upon the same plane. In the 
 case of the city there is no widespread illusion 
 that New Yorkers now "own" this or that suburb, 
 and have added something to their wealth thereby, 
 and no New Yorker would dream for a moment
 
 THE PROBLEM OE POWER 251 
 
 of shedding his blood or giving the lives of his 
 children for bringing about such a change; or 
 talk of the need of the city's expansion for 
 his children's sake. If the new suburb didn't 
 want to come in, let them stay out. It would not 
 be regarded as a life and death matter. But if 
 Austria wants to annex a Servian province, or 
 Germany a French one which adds not one iota 
 to the economic or moral welfare of the average 
 Austrian or German, which, indeed, complicates 
 his politics, adds to his military burdens, to his 
 risks of attack from other nations the dire cost 
 is all assumed as a sacrifice on behalf of his father- 
 land's destiny; in order, that is, that the central 
 administrations of these territories may be Berlin 
 instead of Paris, or Vienna instead of Belgrade. 6 
 Obviously, the two operations are not judged 
 by him in the same light : he sees in one all sorts 
 of important considerations economic, cultural, 
 moral, social, what you will that he does not 
 see in the other. Yet in terms of the realities of 
 human life they are about upon the same plane. 
 
 *It will be noted that I have chosen examples from the 
 attempt to impose rule on other people, not from the attempts 
 to resist foreign rule. Wars of nationality are caused not by 
 a man's preference for his own country but by the attempt to 
 destroy that preference, to make someone else accept a foreign- 
 er's rule our rule. If all respected the preference of men for 
 their own nationality the wars of nationality would cease, like 
 the wars of religion ; and for the same reason.
 
 252 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 The whole picture that he has in his mind as to 
 what happens in the case of conquest is a false 
 one. The essential untruth of that picture 
 which, obviously, is not just a matter of statistics 
 of cost and expenditure in war is what I have 
 attempted to show in earlier works. The fact 
 that it is a general idea and not a matter of 
 statistics which is involved is important, for 
 this reason: If the truth did depend upon statis- 
 tics, if the public, before it could have right 
 ideas upon the subject, had to become familiar 
 with elaborate theorems, as in the case for 
 Free Trade or Protection, the outlook for sound 
 general judgment would be very poor. But much 
 less than that is needed. In order to shake off 
 the obsessions of witchcraft, it was not necessary 
 for mankind as a whole to pass judgment upon 
 the learned discussions running through thou- 
 sands of volumes that marked the debate on that 
 subject during a century or two. It sufficed that, 
 having shaken itself free from the hypnotism of 
 false theories, it was able to see the common daily 
 facts of life straight. 
 
 In the same way, when certain old Roman and 
 Feudal prepossessions as to the nature of the 
 State, and its relationship to the wealth it ad- 
 ministers, have been shaken off, it will not take 
 an economist nor an historian to see that the 
 citizens of a little State like Sweden, or Switzer-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 253 
 
 land, without political power, without colonies, 
 having enjoyed no conquest, are by every real 
 test of well being, moral or material, as well off 
 as the citizens of great military empires that have 
 spent blood and treasure immeasurable upon 
 securing their "place in the sun." It is as possible 
 for the ordinary unlearned man to test politics 
 and the worth of political theory by the realities 
 of his daily life as it is for him to test witchcraft 
 to the confusion of many learned doctors and the 
 obliteration of fearful and wonderful theories. 
 
 That does not mean, of course, that even if en- 
 lightened feeling and opinion on international 
 relations become general, serious economic ques- 
 tions would not arise between States. They 
 would. But what makes those differences now 
 so fatal is precisely this general feeling that the 
 possession of political power over others is an 
 economic need of life and death order. When one 
 State of the Heptarchy fought with another over 
 some question of cattle grazing, or fishing, it was 
 a war from "economic causes," and doubtless the 
 wise men of the time spoke of the inevitability of 
 the struggle for subsistence between nations. But 
 there was no inevitability about it. That it did 
 not arise from any real sustenance need was 
 proven by the fact that both states sustained 
 their people immeasurably better after they gave 
 up the habit of fighting one another. When the
 
 254 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 inhabitants of Great Britain were engaged in the 
 "struggle for bread" by war with one another, 
 the island supported with difficulty, and frequent 
 want and famine, anything from half a million 
 to a million inhabitants. When they stopped this 
 form of struggle for existence, the island sup- 
 ported in infinitely greater comfort a population 
 from twenty to forty times as great. And so 
 little is it true that the great states of the world, 
 like America, are England's "rivals" to-day, that 
 a sensible proportion of the British people is 
 absolutely dependent upon such states for its 
 livelihood: let all these "rivals" be destroyed 
 and those people would have to starve or emi- 
 grate. 7 
 
 Nor has the use of political power for the con- 
 trol of trade or the imposition of trade monop- 
 olies been, as a matter of simple historical fact, 
 any permanent element of a people's economic 
 development, or any real "insurance for their 
 future." The mercantilism of the type assumed 
 by Professor Usher to be the motive of modern 
 wars, was applied ruthlessly by an enormously 
 powerful Spain with a hemisphere for experi- 
 mental ground, and the more she applied it 
 the poorer she became. Pretty much the same 
 
 T I need hardly remind the reader that England can only 
 raise enough food for some four fifths or less of her 
 population.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 255 
 
 could be said of Portugal, and of France, while 
 England's period of greatest commercial and 
 industrial development synchronises with the 
 abandonment by the British Empire of those 
 methods. Great states, wielding immense political 
 power, have seen the welfare of their peoples 
 arrested or declining, while little states, with no 
 means whatever of enforcing their supposed in- 
 terests by military means the Switzerlands, 
 Denmarks, Hollands, Belgiums, Swedens have 
 shown a steady upward movement, and to-day 
 display a standard of wealth and welfare not 
 outdone by any great naval or military state of 
 the world. 
 
 Not that we need assume necessarily that there 
 is nothing whatever to be said for political power 
 as a means of economic advantage. There was a 
 great deal to be said, both socially and morally, 
 for the control of religious belief by the state, 
 the policy which gave us the wars of religion. 
 But that policy, once nearly universal, has been 
 abandoned, not because every argument which 
 led to it has been answered, but because the funda- 
 mental one has. That argument was based on 
 the belief that a people's possession of religious 
 truth was dependent upon the possession of pre- 
 ponderant military power over religious "rivals." 
 In our day a people's prosperity is deemed to be 
 dependent upon the possession of preponderant
 
 256 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 military and political power over economic 
 "rivals." When it is realised that mere political 
 power, preponderant force over others, is in any 
 positive sense as ineffective to the ends of pro- 
 moting prosperity and welfare as to the ends of 
 promoting religious truth, we shall be within dis- 
 tance of making wars between the political groups 
 as obsolete as are wars between the religious. 
 And just as these realisations, to which we owe 
 the disappearance of the religious wars, were 
 the result of a change of mind and attitude due 
 to widespread discussion largely the indirect 
 work of the Reformation so, by the dragging 
 of international problems into the arena of normal 
 political discussion, by the growing perception 
 that those problems are an integral part of all 
 social problems, we may get a corresponding 
 change of mind and attitude in our international 
 relations. And then and probably by no means 
 which does not include this process will the 
 ''inevitable" conflicts be made avoidable. 8 
 
 Mr. Lowes Dickinson has, in his compelling 
 way, described this false picture of the state to 
 which I have referred as "the governmental 
 theory." He says: 
 
 War is made this war has been made not by any 
 necessity of nature, any law beyond human control, any 
 
 *From a Review of Prof. Usher's book, "Pan-Americanism," 
 in The New Republic, July 17, 1915.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 257 
 
 fate to which men must passively bow; it is made be- 
 cause certain men who have immediate power over other 
 men are possessed by a certain theory. Sometimes they 
 are fully conscious of this theory. More often, perhaps, 
 it works in them unconsciously. But it is there, the 
 dominating influence in international politics. I shall 
 call it the governmental theory, because it is among 
 governing persons emperors, kings, ministers, and their 
 diplomatic and military advisers that its influence is 
 most conspicuous and most disastrous. It might be out- 
 lined as follows: 
 
 The world is divided, politically, into States. These 
 States are a kind of abstract Beings, distinct from the 
 men, women and children who inhabit them. They are 
 in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one another; 
 and, though they may group themselves in alliances, they 
 can be only for temporary purposes to meet some other 
 alliance or single Power. For states are bound by a 
 moral or physical obligation to expand indefinitely each 
 at the cost of the others. They are natural enemies, 
 they always have been so, and they always will be; and 
 force is the only arbiter between them. That being so, 
 War is an eternal necessity. As a necessity, it should be 
 accepted, if not welcomed, by all sound-thinking and 
 right-feeling men. Pacifists are men at once weak and 
 dangerous. They deny a fact as fundamental as any of 
 the facts of the natural world. And their influence, if 
 they have any, can only be disastrous to their State in 
 its ceaseless and inevitable contest with other States. 9 
 
 'Mr. Lowes Dickinson, so well known in America from his 
 books, is a lecturer in political science at Cambridge University, 
 a fact interesting in this connection which may not be so well 
 known.
 
 258 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 The relation of the ordinary man to this theory 
 he thus explains: 
 
 He has a blank mind open to suggestion; and he has 
 passions and instincts which it is easy to enlist on the 
 side of the governmental theory. He has been busy all 
 his life; and he has no education, or one that is worse 
 than none, about those issues which, in a crisis like that 
 which has come upon us, suddenly reveal themselves as 
 the issues of life and death. History, no doubt, should 
 have informed him. But history, for the most part, is 
 written without intelligence or conviction. It is mere 
 narrative, devoid of instruction, and seasoned, if at all, 
 by some trivial, habitual, and second-hand prejudice of 
 the author. History has never been understood, though 
 it has often been misunderstood. To understand it is 
 perhaps beyond the power of the human intellect. But 
 the attempt even has hardly begun to be made. Deprived, 
 then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man 
 falls back upon the Press. But the Press is either an 
 agent of the very governments it should exist to criticise 
 (it is so notoriously and admittedly on the Continent, 
 and, to an extent which we cannot measure, also in this 
 country) or, it is (with a few honourable exceptions) 
 an instrument to make money for certain individuals or 
 syndicates. But the easiest way to make money by the 
 Press is to appeal to the most facile emotions and the 
 most superficial ideas of the reader. And these can 
 easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or 
 that foreign State is our natural and inevitable enemy. 
 The strong instincts of pugnacity and self-approbation, 
 the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a vague and unanalysed 
 impression of the course of history, these and other 
 factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 259 
 
 that they may be directed indifferently against any State. 
 A hundred years ago it was France; sixty years ago it 
 was Russia ; thirty years ago it was France again ; now 
 it is Germany ; presently, if governments have their way, 
 it will be Russia again. The Foreign offices and the 
 Press do with nations what they like. And they will 
 continue to do so, until ordinary people acquire right 
 ideas and a machinery to make them effective. 
 
 Such, then, in very general terms, is the issue ; 
 and until the democracies of Europe can in some 
 way "sense" it by some real discussion, and in 
 general terms pass upon it, as they have passed 
 upon graver issues of the past, there can be no 
 solution of the military conflicts of European 
 society. 
 
 But, as I have said, in the way of bringing 
 about that discussion, of making these issues part 
 of the ordinary issues of everyday politics, stand 
 certain very curious facts in human nature which 
 have to be surmounted. The average man does 
 not like to have to change his opinion upon any 
 matter in which his feeling is involved, and is 
 very angry with any other who seems to be 
 likely to do it. Generally he protects himself 
 against such risks by so arranging his life the 
 clubs or societies to which he belongs, the papers 
 that he reads, the people that he meets that he 
 only comes into contact with ideas that he already 
 holds. If we really cared about the truth, we
 
 2<5o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 should, of course, arrange our clubs, etc., so as to 
 throw Republicans into contact with Democrats, 
 Catholics with Protestants. As it is, we organise 
 them for the express purpose of keeping them 
 apart. 
 
 It is a curious fact in psychology, this. In an 
 argument someone shows us conclusively that we 
 are quite wrong; and we want to hit him. Yet 
 he has done us a very great service one of the 
 greatest services that a friend can do us: he has 
 corrected an error of which we were the victim. 
 And we immediately get angry with him, and if 
 it is safe to do so, call him names ; and if the public 
 hear evil stories about men of unpopular opinion 
 that is to say, men who, by compelling the popu- 
 lar opinion to justify itself, are doing the com- 
 munity a very great deal of good they are 
 delighted. To recall the outstanding facts in the 
 history of religious heresy, political radicalism, 
 abolition, socialism, suffrage (until these things 
 become fashionable), will furnish endless exam- 
 ples of what I am trying to indicate. 
 
 Society also protects itself against having to 
 shift its point of view or modify a conception, by 
 a subconscious conspiracy to kill the thing at the 
 start by misrepresentation. The Roman belief 
 that the early Christians indulged in human sacri- 
 fice was doubtless genuine in its way as was the 
 belief of the English churchman, that the early
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 261 
 
 dissenters indulged in wild orgies of devil 
 worship. 
 
 This may in part explain the popular attitude 
 towards those who would rationalise and improve 
 the relations between nations. "Pacifist" has in 
 the popular journalism of Europe and America 
 become a term of contempt, and with certain 
 fluctuations has been ever since the idea of 
 international organisation and order took root 
 among European thinkers. The popular feel- 
 ing towards the "peace men" drove Cobden 
 from public life at the time of the Crimean 
 War. One of the greatest of England's orators, 
 and, in his generation, one of its great democratic 
 figures, he could not hold a meeting in his own 
 constituency among his own people. Such was 
 the penalty of venturing to differ from popular 
 opinion on the most foolish war that England 
 ever entered into, a war which has amply justi- 
 fied Cobden; concerning which, as Morley has 
 said, all the after events showed Cobden to be 
 as right as the public were wrong. 
 
 There are one or two curious forms that this 
 subconscious conspiracy of misrepresentation 
 takes. To the popular journalist the Pacifist is 
 a person who believes that war is impossible, or 
 that it will not take place because foreigners are 
 too kind to wage it, or something equivalent. 
 And every war that breaks out is taken as
 
 262 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 demonstrating how foolish Pacifists are. Yet 
 surely it must be obvious, even to the hurried 
 journalist, that no man in his senses would, in 
 a world where war rages every year, seriously 
 urge "the impossibility of war." And the Cob- 
 dens and Herbert Spencers, after all, did not 
 write from lunatic asylums. 10 
 
 10 To a New York paper which had editorially remarked 
 that "Mr. Norman Angell has written books in the endeavour to 
 prove that war has been made impossible by modern economic 
 conditions . . . but events have shown their fallacy," I was 
 impelled to reply as follows : 
 
 I have never written any book to prove that war has been 
 made impossible. On the contrary, in every book of mine on 
 the subject, I have urged, perhaps with wearisome emphasis, 
 that no such conclusion could be drawn from the facts 
 with which I dealt. Indeed, considering that violent wars were 
 raging when the books were written ; have been raging very 
 nearly continuously ever since, such books, had they been based 
 on the argument that "wars had become impossible," must quite 
 obviously have been just silly rubbish, and I do not quite see, in 
 that case, how you would justify your very excellent reviews 
 of them ! 
 
 What, of course, I have tried to show is not that war is impos- 
 sible, but that it is futile; not that conquest cannot in modern 
 economic conditions take place, but that those conditions make it 
 impossible to benefit by it ; that the victory of Germany, for 
 instance (if that implied conquest), would not benefit the German 
 people morally or materially, and that all the talk about the need 
 for Germany's fighting for her place in the sun, or her political 
 "expansion" being necessitated by the struggle of her population 
 for sustenance, is all part of a grave and very prevalent miscon- 
 ception. I have, indeed, taken the ground that since the Reli- 
 gious Wars, most wars have been the outcome of a contest for 
 political power based on just that false conception. Among the 
 causes of this war the general belief in Germany that that coun- 
 try had to possess greater power than its neighbors or be
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 263 
 
 Another form of protective misrepresentation, 
 by which the community is shielded from any dis- 
 turbing need to readjust its opinion in this matter, 
 is a sort of swinging between picturing the Pacifist 
 as a dreamy, idealistic person living in an unreal, 
 Sunday-school kind of world, and altogether too 
 
 gradually "squeezed out," both in the sense of economic expan- 
 sion and national culture, certainly played a large, if not a 
 dominant part. 
 
 Since no nation will commit suicide, even on behalf of 
 morality and peace, the question whether these conceptions are 
 right or wrong, whether nations are in reality struggling units 
 obliged in a world of limited space and opportunity to eat or be 
 eaten, is the supreme question behind all international politics. 
 All relations of one country to another turn at last upon that 
 ultimate interrogation. 
 
 I have tried to contribute certain quite definite data, economic, 
 social, and moral, toward the answer of it; to show that that 
 data proved aggression and territorial conquest (the possibility 
 of which creates the need for defensive armament), to be futile 
 in terms of human well-being. The events of this war do not 
 show, if I may say so, "the fallacy of these arguments," or 
 anything resembling it. 
 
 But the futility of war will never of itself stop war, and it 
 is that fact which justifies the very ungrateful task in which I 
 happen to be engaged. It is not enough that conquest and power 
 should be barren; men must realise that barrenness, since, even 
 in their rational moments, they are not guided necessarily by 
 their interests, but what they believe to be their interests. It is 
 not the facts which matter so much as men's opinions about the 
 facts. And, unhappily, mankind is little apt to be guided by 
 reason at all, and that is why it is so tragically important to 
 nurse and cultivate the little reason that we have and to get 
 the facts of this matter as clear as possible. Otherwise, certain 
 luxuries of our nature temper, pride, passion, irritation will 
 certainly lead us to the pit,
 
 264 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 good for this, refusing to face the hard facts of 
 life between this, and the exact opposite of a 
 sordid person who thinks that nations go to war 
 for money and would yield up his country's 
 honour for profit or security. (The two pictures 
 can be, and are, used indifferently for one and 
 the same person.) 
 
 This last plea has been used particularly with 
 reference to that case against the prevailing 
 view which I have attempted to indicate in this 
 chapter. Even Mahan was shocked quite 
 genuinely, I believe at the "sordidness" of the 
 thesis which I presented. That this should be 
 possible with a man of Mahan's intellectual equip- 
 ment shows the difficulties that stand in the way 
 of any real discussion of this issue. 
 
 Just consider. Mahan had laid it down that to 
 the possession of political power based on arms 
 there belonged commercial advantages so great 
 that inevitably, as the world grew more crowded, 
 men, for their very sustenance, must be pushed 
 into war. For many years Mahan maintained 
 this, fortifying it by the general proposition that 
 states must unsentimentally, because they are 
 trustees for their people, be guided by their in- 
 terests even to the extent of killing others in 
 defence of them. He regarded this killing as an 
 inevitable and even elevating process. He main- 
 tained all this for many years, and I am not
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 265 
 
 aware that any critic ever thought of treating him 
 as sordid therefor. 11 
 
 A writer then comes along and attempts to 
 show that there is not this dreadful alternative 
 between killing other people's children or allow- 
 ing our own to starve ; that these conflicts are not 
 any necessary result of physical facts in nature, 
 but are the results of a misunderstanding con- 
 cerning them which it is necessary to clear up. 
 Obviously that misunderstanding cannot be 
 cleared up save by showing where and in what 
 manner the prevailing interpretation of the facts 
 
 "Mahan's attitude in this matter showed how possible it is for 
 a great technician, for a man who has handled what may be 
 called the mechanism of power all his life, never to have asked 
 himself clearly the fundamental question : "What in the end is 
 it all for?" This is shown by the fact that he could give with 
 equal emphasis two mutually contradictory answers to it accord- 
 ing to the mood or controversial necessity of the moment. In 
 1908 (in "The Interest of America in International Conditions") 
 he wrote : "It is as true now as when Washington penned the 
 words, and will always be true, that it is vain to expect nations 
 to act consistently from any motive other than that of interest. 
 . . . The study of interests international interests is the basis 
 of sound, of provident policy for statesmen." Yet, in criti- 
 cism of my own work, which sought to establish just what 
 were the real interests of nations in the matter of conquest, he 
 wrote (North American Review, March, 1912) : "Nations are 
 under no illusion as to the unprofitableness of war. . . . The 
 entire conception of the work is itself an illusion based upon a 
 profound misreading of human action. To regard the world 
 as governed by self-interest only is to live in a non-existent 
 world, a world possessed by an idea much less worthy than 
 those which mankind, to do it bare justice, persistently entertains."
 
 266 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 in question is wrong. The facts are, of course, 
 "economic" in their nature, and that has involved 
 dealing with certain economic phenomena and 
 their relation to international politics. 
 
 Then Mahan replies that this writer is a very 
 sordid person for introducing such a thing as 
 "economics" into the problems of war and peace. 
 An English military critic says that the -attempt 
 to do so is a "slander upon the profession of arms 
 and offensive to men of honourable tradition." 
 
 Let us see the position in which this places 
 these military critics with reference to (say) 
 German policy and its results. 
 
 The German is presumed to have based his 
 aggression, in part at least, upon this kind of 
 plea : The great expansion of our population com- 
 pels us to acquire territory wherewith to feed 
 them. Failing that, our children will be reduced 
 to want. 
 
 To this the military philosopher in England 
 or in America replies in effect: "You are abso- 
 lutely right. That is just the position in which 
 you are placed." 
 
 And one can imagine the German then saying 
 to the Englishman or American: "In that case 
 you will, of course, as a man of chivalric tradi- 
 tion, share with us your great heritage; or, at 
 least, facilitate our expansion. You will not op- 
 pose it by your arms."
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 267 
 
 To which the British Imperialist, or Nationalist, 
 or Militarist, or whatever one cares to call him, 
 replies: "We are a people of noble and chivalrous 
 tradition. You shall therefore starve ere we 
 want, and we will kill your people upon the battle- 
 field to the last man rather than give from our 
 fullness to your need." 
 
 And then comes the Pacifist to say : "You have 
 stated a false dilemma. No sacrifice on your 
 part is involved. The German can feed his chil- 
 dren and add to your wealth in so doing. He 
 can better their welfare, and you can profit. You 
 need not surrender anything whatsoever. It is 
 merely a matter of understanding how." 
 
 To which the militarist replies: "You are a 
 sordid bagman and understand nothing of the 
 noble sentiments that animate my soul." 
 
 Now, if all this began and ended as a matter 
 of dialectics between rival "schools of thought," it 
 would be of no great moment, and the reader may, 
 indeed, ask what all this has to do with the "ulti- 
 mate problem of power." Well, these issues lie 
 at the very bottom of that problem. Mankind is 
 fighting blindly; it has not really asked itself why 
 its conflicts arise. It is concerned with a mass 
 of confusions and misunderstandings which 
 themselves generate the poison gas of ill-feeling 
 that prevents us seeing clearly; it is in the worst 
 kind of vicious circle, and we are trying to break
 
 268 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 it at one point the point where the very attempt 
 to open blinded eyes creates the hostility of the 
 sufferers to the remedy. 
 
 I am not, of course, overlooking the fact that 
 the feeling against Pacificism is "protective" in 
 a more rational sense: based upon the fear that 
 such indoctrination may lead to a neglect of 
 national defence and so endanger the country's 
 security. 
 
 But in so far as the advocacy of military pre- 
 paredness includes appeals to old prejudices and 
 misconceptions, and the disparagement of effort 
 at international agreement and we have to 
 admit unfortunately that very much of such 
 advocacy does include that it is likely to create 
 as much danger as it provides against. 
 
 Much military advocacy in America would 
 seem to imply that military force need not take 
 foreign policy or the questions raised at the be- 
 ginning of this chapter into consideration at all, 
 because the United States could never be brought 
 into military conflict with a foreign nation except 
 to repel an unprovoked invasion of these shores. 
 The average advocate of increased armament 
 seems to say: "All we ask of foreign nations is, 
 kindly to keep out. And as we don't intend to 
 argue about that, what has the nature of our 
 foreign policy to do with the amount of protec- 
 tion that we need?"
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 269 
 
 Well, a moment's reflection suffices to show 
 what a travesty of the facts that is, and how very 
 direct is the relation between our military needs 
 and our foreign policy. 
 
 Within the last few years the United States 
 has been confronted with the problem of a pos- 
 sible intervention in Mexico ; it has actually inter- 
 vened in Central America; is at this moment 
 arranging the affairs of Hayti ; has been develop- 
 ing a specific policy toward South America which 
 makes this country, by that fact, concerned very 
 closely with the relations of European nations to 
 those republics, and this, apart from the implica- 
 tions and responsibilities under the Monroe Doc- 
 trine, whatever they may be ; has taken over the 
 government of islands off the coast of Asia; has 
 been brought into conflict with England over the 
 Panama Canal ; with Japan over the question of 
 immigration; has taken a certain stand with 
 reference to the Open Door in China, and may be 
 brought into conflict with Japan also over the 
 future international status of China; has been 
 brought into very acute conflict with Germany 
 over sea law, and less acute but still serious con- 
 flict with England over other phases of the same 
 law. 
 
 Now it is out of some of these questions that 
 war, if it .comes to America, will arise: some de- 
 mand of Japan for equality of treatment which
 
 270 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the nature of its Federal relations with California 
 will not allow the government to grant; a con- 
 sequent attack on the Philippines which this coun- 
 try would repel the beginning it may be of some 
 great assertion of their power by Asiatic 
 peoples a long, demoralising and enervating 
 war. 
 
 It is unlikely to be fought on American soil and 
 military preparedness of itself will not prevent it. 
 Merely to acquire an army or a navy sufficiently 
 large to deal with Japan would certainly not be 
 adequate, even from a purely military point of 
 view. The great wars of our time are not fought 
 by single nations but by groups, and Japan would 
 certainly find Asiatic and possibly European 
 allies. 
 
 These questions present themselves: Are we 
 going to make no attempt to stop this drift to- 
 wards conflict by some equitable settlement of the 
 difficulties involved ? To take one instance only : 
 that of Japan. Those who know the subject best 
 declare that settlement is not impossible and thai- 
 patience and fairness on America's part could 
 secure it. But that means an effort which won't 
 be military at all. Are we going to make that 
 effort? 
 
 Probably it cannot succeed except as part of 
 the settlement of other foreign difficulties: those 
 with China, possibly with certain of the South
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 271 
 
 American republics. And if we find that it cannot 
 be settled, are we going to wage this war alone, 
 without knowing beforehand what stand the other 
 white nations Australia, Canada, and Great 
 Britain will take with reference to this ques- 
 tion of the relations of Asiatic and European? 
 
 But so long as "preparedness" means merely 
 adding to the instruments of war, America may 
 muddle into this great collision without having 
 made just the kind of effort that might have 
 avoided it. And her responsibility in that case 
 will be a very serious one. 
 
 International relations become daily less and 
 less matters merely of two parties, more and more 
 matters of many. American relations to China 
 affect immediately those to Japan; those to Japan 
 affect those to Great Britain, those to Mexico to 
 the whole problem of Pan- Americanism ; the 
 policy of Pan- Americanism to the Monroe Doc- 
 trine; the Monroe Doctrine the whole relation- 
 ship of the new to the old world. 
 
 Where does America stand precisely in all this ? 
 Nobody very clearly knows. And until it is known 
 we cannot tell whether we or the others are the 
 aggressors, and, however great our navy and 
 army may be, whether we are adequately de- 
 fended or not. For in the last resort the army 
 and navy are for the purpose of defending, not a 
 country, but the policy of a country.
 
 272 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Every war, moreover, has a Pacifist aim: it is 
 fought to establish a peace. (After all, peace is 
 just as inevitable as war, which cannot last for 
 ever. ) What kind of peace ? Without some con- 
 ception of that, without some kind of programme, 
 war degenerates into a series of national epileptic 
 fits. A sudden passion on both sides, over a 
 question that neither has rationally discussed, 
 precipitates an American-Japanese War. The 
 Japanese are beaten, but the victory does not settle 
 the question; the Japanese may decide that in 
 some early future, with a westernised China at 
 their back, they won't be beaten. And so it might 
 go on until a policy of some kind is established. 
 On the morrow of most wars the discovery is 
 made that if the nations had taken as much 
 trouble with policy before the war began as they 
 are obliged to take when it is over, it need never 
 have taken place at all. Scientific Pacifism is 
 merely the formulation of that policy. 
 
 Not that saner international relations are a 
 simple matter; they are not. And it is because 
 they are difficult and increasingly important that 
 one must take a little trouble with them. 
 
 * * 
 
 One of the most difficult problems of inter- 
 national politics is the psychology of national 
 defence. Earlier in this chapter I attempted to 
 show that it is not enough that nations should in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 273 
 
 fact have no need to fight one another ; that war, 
 in other words, is futile. It is also necessary that 
 they realise it to be futile. Otherwise it will still 
 go on. But even that is not enough. Each side 
 must see that the other realises its futility. 
 For even though each of two parties may him- 
 self believe that nothing is to be gained by 
 war, if he thinks that the other party may be 
 of a different opinion, you may still get war from 
 mutual fear ; which is probably what in large part 
 this present war is. Each being afraid of the 
 other takes measures to which the other immedi- 
 ately replies, and finally it becomes necessary to 
 act first in order to anticipate the other. That 
 was the case perhaps in the European war. 
 Everybody was afraid of everybody else. At the 
 last it was precipitated by the very things which 
 each did to make himself safe. Germany built a 
 navy to be on the safe side; it brought England 
 into the war against Germany ; France allied her- 
 self with Russia to be safe; but for the alliance 
 she would not have been involved. Russia mobi- 
 lised to protect herself against German action: 
 it led Germany to declare war. And so on. 
 
 Not merely were we all afraid, but we were 
 all afraid of an action from the other side which 
 was finally caused by our own. 
 
 I know it is difficult at this stage to realise that 
 the Germans could have been afraid of the Rus-
 
 274 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 sians, and perhaps the general staff wasn't. But 
 the people as a whole including the Social 
 Democrat party were. I remember a conversa- 
 tion which I had in Germany with a business man 
 who knew Europe pretty well and I think it is 
 worth reproduction here. 
 
 I had been defending English "nervousness" 
 with reference to invasion; had urged our vul- 
 nerability, or what we thought to be our vulner- 
 ability; that we had never abused our world- 
 power; that Germany was not so vulnerable and 
 had little to fear, and perhaps I hinted had 
 not always refrained from abusing her power in 
 the past. The German had listened patiently, and 
 when I had quite done he spoke with a certain 
 quiet intensity. And this is what he said: 
 
 "Oh, yes. You talked just now of the 
 'stately homes of England.' Do you know 
 that there are no stately homes of Germany 
 no beautiful old houses that have come 
 down to us from the past. They have all, 
 practically every one, been destroyed by the 
 invader, mainly by the French, by the Rus- 
 sian, or his hirelings and allies. I suppose 
 you know the history of the Thirty Years' 
 War, of the wars of Louis XIV, of the wars 
 of Napoleon how these new-found friends 
 of yours ravaged our country again and 
 again, and actually, literally, cut our popu- 
 lation in half ; stamped it into the mud. Try
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 275 
 
 to get the perspective. Picture Edinburgh, 
 Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, 
 Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Notting- 
 ham wiped out, not merely that the houses 
 were destroyed, but that every man and 
 woman and child within those places had 
 perished, and this not in some distant past, 
 but so near to you that your great-grand- 
 father could have told you the story, having 
 got it from the mouths of those who wit- 
 nessed it. 
 
 "Of course, you cannot conceive, no man 
 can conceive, what the destruction of ten 
 million human beings means. Yet by that 
 number of beings was the population of 
 Germany decreased during these wars. A 
 State as populous as England when Queen 
 Victoria came to the throne was in one war 
 reduced to the population of Holland. What 
 have you to compare with this, to set beside 
 it? When, indeed, have you had to watch 
 vast uncounted multitudes of your women 
 and children driven forth homeless, their 
 corpses massed in the country roads, with 
 grass in their mouths, the only food that the 
 invader had left? And these same invaders 
 who have poured in devastating floods over 
 our land to-day boast that again they will 
 invade us if and when they can. I say boast. 
 Can you find me one French public man who 
 will say that France should abandon the hope 
 of attacking us? It is their declared, their 
 overt policy. 
 
 "And that is only half the story, the danger
 
 276 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 on one side of us only. On our other side we 
 have 160,000,000 of semi-barbaric people of 
 whom not more than one-eighth can read or 
 write. The Chinese have a larger proportion 
 of literates than these Russians. And these, 
 our immediate neighbours, are governed on 
 absolutist methods by a reactionary bureau- 
 cracy frankly militarist. It is a country in 
 which public interest means the interest of 
 an autocratic caste. Do you believe that 
 such a State, whose frontier abuts directly 
 on ours, is no danger? But, my dear Eng- 
 lishman, for generations, until last Tuesday 
 week in fact, you were preaching that this 
 Great Power was the standing menace of the 
 Western World, and although a Russian 
 soldier has never set foot upon your shores 
 you have fought one great war to stop the 
 progress of this nation, to check her march 
 towards your possessions. But it is not in a 
 distant possession that she threatens us. It 
 is on our own soil. 
 
 "So that is our situation : on our right and 
 on our left enemies from whom we have 
 suffered as no other civilised people have 
 suffered at the hands of enemies. The his- 
 tory of both is a history of conquest, in one 
 case passionate, insatiable conquest, whose 
 ambitions you and I in the past have had to 
 resist shoulder to shoulder. And that Power, 
 who was your enemy for centuries, makes no 
 secret of its intention to renew the aggression 
 upon us when it can. It is in the creed and 
 blood of Frenchmen that they will attack us
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 277 
 
 at the first opportunity. Oh, yes, we are a 
 military people. Do you wonder? But we 
 have fought on our own soil, or have re- 
 turned to it as soon as the invader was re- 
 pulsed. And you? You have fought in 
 every land under the sun except your own. 
 And where you have fought you have for the 
 most part stayed. Where have we sought 
 to conquer? Where have we stayed, save 
 in territories that were in history, race, 
 and language part of the German heritage? 
 Our soldiers have fought your battles in 
 North America. Where is our North Amer- 
 ican dominion ? We helped you to break the 
 power of Napoleon. Have we inherited 
 French Colonies? We helped you to fight 
 your battles in Spain. A regiment of ours 
 still bears upon its arms the word 'Gibraltar.' 
 You have the fortress. We have the name. 
 "This is ancient history. But what is our 
 modern history? With these memories be- 
 hind us we found ourselves the absolute mas- 
 ters of our ancient military enemy, France. 
 The country from whom during bloody cen- 
 turies our people had suffered so much was 
 at our feet, thanks not so much to our 
 strength as to her divisions. We found her 
 people murdering each other, divided against 
 themselves, helpless, broken, hopeless. What 
 did we do? Did we adopt the policy of Louis 
 XIV or Napoleon, the policy that Louis 
 Napoleon would have adopted if he had been 
 the victor? We conquered nothing. We 
 restored to Germany what was German in
 
 278 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 speech and history and had been cut off by 
 the sword from the German body two cen- 
 turies before. And even when, during the 
 generation that followed, when perhaps we 
 were the military masters of Europe, did we 
 start upon a career of conquest? We are 
 the only Great Power that has not gone to 
 war, real war, for forty years. And in those 
 forty years you have fought wars big and 
 little. Your conquests have gone on. You 
 have acquired Upper Burma, British Balu- 
 chistan, part of the Straits Settlements, 
 Rhodesia, Nigeria, Uganda, Nyassaland, 
 British East Africa, the Transvaal, the 
 Orange River Colony, Egypt. And France, 
 she has acquired a whole Empire Cochin 
 China, Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, Mada- 
 gascar, Tunis, Senegambia, Dahomey, and 
 finally Morocco. What has Germany to com- 
 pare to all this ? 
 
 "And now you profess to know, by what 
 political astrology I cannot tell, that we are 
 to be the aggressor we who under the 
 shelter of our national armour have scru- 
 pulously kept our sword sheathed and have 
 found our expansion in the arts of peace, we 
 who have endeavoured to give to Europe an 
 example of social organisation complete and 
 scientific, who by our industrial organisation 
 have stopped the emigration of our people, 
 who possess a territory as yet half filled, are 
 told by you, who have conquered half a 
 world, that these old enemies of ours, who in 
 the past have invaded us again and again,
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 279 
 
 and who still boast that they will do it 
 yet once more if they can, must be strength- 
 ened by English might, lest we should crush 
 them ! 
 
 "What can we conclude ? Here is my old 
 enemy Jacques shaking his fist and declaring 
 that he will go for me because he is deter- 
 mined to have certain property that I hold, 
 and then you rise and announce that you will 
 stand by Jacques. He has only been waiting 
 for the means to attack me, and now finds 
 these means yours placed at his disposal. 
 What can I possibly conclude but that you 
 desire to instigate him to attack me? What 
 is all this talk of the 'new France,' of which 
 we hear, but the revival of old France, of 
 all that Napoleon meant, 'The Great Shadow' 
 as one of your own writers has called him? 
 It is you who have revived the spectre of 
 the guerre de revanche, which was nearly 
 laid a year or two ago, and would have dis- 
 appeared but for your encouragement. The 
 successors of the Napoleons are now talking, 
 as you are now talking, of this expeditionary 
 force to the Continent. But an English ex- 
 peditionary force to the Continent means a 
 force against Germany. Against whom else 
 could you use it? And so, with these 
 160,000,000 barbarians on our right, and our 
 ancient military enemy (who also talks of 
 using the black troops of his African Empire 
 against us) on our left both peoples who 
 have invaded us and destroyed our homes 
 you are now to add an invasion from another
 
 2 8o THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 quarter. What do you expect us to do? 
 Stand and wait supinely for it to come to us ; 
 watch the hordes of invaders, the old in- 
 vaders and the new prospective ones, 
 increase ? 
 
 "My friend, the reply to an English ex- 
 peditionary force is a German Navy. We 
 must try to prevent that force reaching our 
 shores or the shores of our enemy, your ally. 
 That is why we build. 
 
 "You talk of standing by an 'old friend.' 
 By an 'old friend' you mean not the one who 
 has maintained peace with you for 1,000 
 years and who has fought your battles with 
 you, but the one who has fought against 
 you for a thousand years and whom ten years 
 ago your own statesman warned to mend 
 their manners or take the consequences. And 
 that same statesman was talking then of an 
 alliance with Germany. And when we see 
 this sudden patching up of the old enmity, 
 are we not entitled to watch and see its mean- 
 ing, and begin soberly and moderately to 
 take our precautions? I know no official 
 secrets, but it seems that you needed French 
 acquiescence, in Egypt was it not? What 
 was the price? That you should support 
 France somewhere else against us apparently 
 if needs be. Well, we hoped that Morocco 
 had paid off your obligations, but now appar- 
 ently you are still to support France against 
 us in all her quarrels. And thus 'the new 
 France.' Once more we hear of the guerre 
 de revanche, and see you, who hold a French-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 281 
 
 speaking province and would never think of 
 surrendering it, take part and lot against us 
 in an enmity based on the fact of our holding 
 a German-speaking province which we will 
 not surrender. Again I ask you, what would 
 you have us do? 
 
 "I will not insult you by supposing that 
 you deem our fleet to have anything to do 
 with a desire to invade India, or Canada, or 
 Australia. Even the blindest of your coun- 
 trymen have ceased even to pretend that you 
 are in greater danger from us than from 
 Russia in India, or from the United States 
 in Canada, or from Japan in Australia. You 
 know that that is not the cause of our fleet, 
 and although I am not an expert in high 
 politics I will make this guess that readily 
 would we agree to the limitation of our fleet 
 if your statesmen would plainly and cate- 
 gorically declare the neutrality of England 
 in these ancient quarrels of ourselves and 
 France. But they will not declare that neu- 
 trality. More and more are your people 
 declaring that they are the friends and allies 
 of our enemies. Well, that is why we are 
 building. Let it be on your head." 
 
 This, of course, is an entirely partial view it 
 is certainly not the writer's but it is plausible 
 enough, given the bias of ordinary patriotism, to 
 furnish the basis and background of the kind of 
 appeal that the German militarists made for a 
 thoroughly efficient military machine. And once
 
 282 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 you have that, the border line between defence 
 and preventive war becomes very, very thin. 
 
 * * 
 
 Were not the religious wars also wars of fear ? 
 There is a story somewhere of a conversation 
 that took place between a Catholic statesman and 
 a Huguenot just after the Massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew. It ran translated into the speech 
 of our time something like this: 
 
 Huguenot: I submit, Your Eminence, that 
 this affair of the other night is a very regret- 
 table one. 
 
 Catholic Eminence: Agreed. But you 
 cannot ask us Catholics to commit political 
 suicide. You are perfectly aware, of course, 
 that the Huguenots have been growing very 
 greatly in power of late. They have, in fact, 
 formed a State within a State. If they grow 
 much in power they will dominate us. And 
 then they will massacre us. And if needs be 
 we are prepared to massacre them to prevent 
 their doing it. 
 
 Huguenot: But need there be any massacr- 
 ing about it. Can't we agree that these dif- 
 ferences shall not be settled that way. Need 
 we make them a matter of political rivalry 
 at all? 
 
 Catholic Eminence: I spoke as a statesman. 
 I will now speak as a man and a Catholic. 
 Men will always fight about their religion, 
 the most important thing that concerns them. 
 We can imagine a man submitting such dif-
 
 THE PROBLEM OE POWER 283 
 
 ferences as those concerning money and 
 property to the decision of courts; we cer- 
 tainly cannot imagine him, if we believe that 
 he has an immortal soul at all, submitting the 
 alleged rights of heretics to such tribunal. 
 He will defend his religion with his life be- 
 cause it goes beyond his life. He will defend 
 his eternal salvation and that of those dear 
 to him to his last drop of blood. 
 
 Huguenot: Should you not say the last 
 drop of the Huguenot's blood ? 
 
 Catholic Eminence: So long as the heretic 
 threatens, as he does, by the dissemination 
 of his doctrines the eternal salvation of our 
 beloved children, yes. What is the momen- 
 tary pain of a slain Huguenot to the eternal 
 torments of my people, whose salvation is 
 placed in jeopardy by your influence ? 
 
 We see here fear of a double kind fear of the 
 Huguenot's temporal and political power and of 
 the spiritual perversion that he might engender. 
 But there was a fear and doubt of a more subtle 
 kind : the Catholic's fear that his belief would not 
 be equal to meeting unaided, the other's belief, a 
 doubt as to the strength of his own spiritual 
 forces. 
 
 And when we talk of this war as a spiritual 
 conflict, of it being necessary to destroy the 
 Prussian root and branch in order that he shall 
 not impose his atrocious ideals and morality upon
 
 284 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the world, are we not revealing a doubt in the 
 strength of our own moral and spiritual forces? 
 
 English and American writers without num- 
 ber have spoken of the need of saving France 
 her literature, her intellectual contribution to 
 western civilisation implying that those things 
 would be destroyed and the French become in 
 their spirits and minds submissive Prussians if 
 Germany should destroy French military power. 
 
 Well, Germany has done it before pretty 
 thoroughly but the Frenchmen did not forth- 
 with surrender their literature and those special 
 qualities that we associate with France. Van- 
 quished France since 1871 has had a wider intel- 
 lectual and moral influence in the Western world 
 than victorious Germany since that date. In the 
 same way, half a century or so before that, 
 France, with which men had come to associate 
 the democratic idea, was defeated by reactionary 
 Europe. Did the democratic idea die? 
 
 If this present is in part even, a war of fear, 
 surely it is worth examining the nature and 
 origins of our fears. And what follows is not 
 intended as an argument for non-resistance 
 in which this present writer most emphatically 
 does not believe or even the restriction of 
 resistance to non-military forces, but as a contri- 
 bution to clearing up some of our misunder- 
 standing. And one can strongly believe in mili-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 285 
 
 tary defence and still desire, for the general 
 understanding of the issue, to have the case for 
 the use of non-military forces clearly stated. 
 If we had a few men of intellectual weight in 
 England or in France and Germany stating 
 that case they would certainly not convert those 
 countries, and so deprive them of military de- 
 fence ; but they might compel Europeans generally 
 to question the ground of certain fears, instead of 
 re-acting to them without thought; by the dis- 
 cussion of the foundations help perhaps to modify 
 the temper of Europe just as a somewhat analo- 
 gous discussion helped to modify its temper con- 
 cerning religious conflict. 
 
 It may sound like playing with paradox to say 
 that military submission to Germany would pos- 
 sibly contain less risks of moral Prussianisation 
 than successful military resistance to her. And 
 yet there is in it a measure of truth. 12 
 
 "I have dealt with the impossibility of widespread tribute by 
 a conqueror in our times in "The Great Illusion" and in "Arms 
 and- Industry." The Hon. Bertrand Russell, the Cambridge 
 mathematical philosopher, has recently put the case picturesquely 
 (The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1915). He says: "The greatest 
 sum which foreigners could theoretically exact would be the 
 total economic rent of the land and natural resources of Eng- 
 land. In fact economic rent has been defined as what can be 
 and historically has been extorted by such means. The rent 
 now paid to land-owners in England is the outcome of the 
 exactions made by William the Conqueror and his Barons. The 
 law ... is the outcome of that set up at that time . . . From
 
 286 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 I attempted to show in an earlier chapter that 
 the defeat of Germany might quite conceivably 
 result in the Prussianisation of the victor. But 
 
 inertia and lack of imagination the English at the present day 
 continue to pay the land-owners vast sums to which the latter 
 have no right but that of conquest. The working classes, the 
 shop keepers, manufacturers and merchants, the literary men and 
 men of science, and all the people who make England of any 
 account in the world, have at the most an infinitesimal and acci- 
 dental share in the rental of England. The men who have a 
 share use their rents in luxury, political corruption, taking the 
 lives of birds and depopulating and enslaving the rural districts. 
 This way of life is that which all Englishmen and women con- 
 sider the most admirable. Those who are any way near to 
 achieving it struggle to attain it completely and those who are 
 more remote from it read serial stories about it as their ancestors 
 would have read of the joys of paradise. 
 
 "It is this life of the idle rich which would be curtailed if the 
 Germans exacted tribute from England. Everything in England 
 that is not positively harmful would be untouched : wages and 
 other earned incomes could not be diminished without diminish- 
 ing the productivity of English labour and so lessening the 
 capacity for paying tribute ! Our snobbish instincts, if the idle 
 rich were abolished, might be driven by want of other outlet into 
 admiration of real merit. And if the Germans could effect that 
 for us they would have deserved their tribute. 
 
 "It is very doubtful indeed whether Germans would exact 
 from us a larger tribute than we exact from ourselves in resist- 
 ing them. ... A debt of a thousand million created by the war 
 represents an annual payment of forty million pounds. All this, 
 together with the annual expenditure on the army and navy, we 
 might have paid to the Germans without being any poorer than 
 we shall be when the war ends. This represents an incredibly 
 larger tribute than any derived from India." 
 
 I think most economists would question even the possibility 
 of exacting from a modern nation its economic rent as foreign 
 tribute. In practice it would be found impossible to exact even 
 a considerable proportion of it.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 287 
 
 it may also conceivably be true that just as 
 we may surrender to an alien culture, while 
 we continue to fight the alien arms, resistance 
 to the alien culture and morality can go on 
 long after military resistance has ceased. Forty 
 years of German domination in Alsace and 
 Poland, when the military power of the Prussian 
 was as complete as it possibly could be in those 
 territories, did not suffice to Germanise them. 
 The same sort of moral resistance has kept alive 
 a separate national conception and culture during 
 centuries in Ireland in the face of ruthless alien 
 regimentation. And these forces of resistance 
 become stronger with the development of such 
 things as printing, education, cheap newspapers, 
 and other instruments of expression which make 
 a tradition or ideal a very elusive thing to handle. 
 "You can do most things with bayonets," once 
 said a Russian general in Poland, "except sit on 
 them." 
 
 And the converse is true: That an absence of 
 political domination does not necessarily involve 
 an absence of moral and intellectual influence on 
 the part of aliens. Japan, which is not under 
 direct European political control, has become 
 Europeanised much more rapidly than India, 
 which is under the very efficient political control 
 of the leading European power. America was 
 not lost to English literary, political, or social
 
 288 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 influences when the political tie was severed. The 
 ideas of the French Revolution did not make 
 much headway in Europe while French arms 
 were predominant; they made their greatest 
 headway in a period which followed the defeat 
 of French arms. The greatest change of all, 
 perhaps, in the nature of European society in the 
 last two hundred years was not due to political 
 forces at all, but to the industrial revolution. 
 
 But what of the horrors of hostile invasion, the 
 atrocities, as in Belgium? 
 
 In making that objection we have forgotten 
 certain things. When we speak of the abandon- 
 ment of physical resistance to invasion, we have 
 a vision of a vast army landing in a country, 
 finding no resistance, and forthwith subjecting 
 that country to sack and destruction. But that 
 is to ignore not only the whole character of human 
 nature but the way things actually work in 
 practice. 
 
 Take the case of the German who in the methods 
 of his warfare we believe to be more brutal and 
 ruthless than any other modern European man. 
 We say: It is childish to put yourself within the 
 power of such a wild beast; he respects nothing 
 but force. Yet for generations thousands of us 
 have without hesitation put ourselves, our women- 
 folk, our children, with perfect confidence within
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 289 
 
 his absolute power. We have sent our children 
 to German schools, our invalids to German sana- 
 toria, placing them absolutely beyond the reach 
 of our army or police. And it never even oc- 
 curred to us that they were in any danger. As in 
 truth they were not. Germany has maintained 
 civil order better than any country in Europe: 
 crimes of violence in Germany are little more than 
 half what they are even in England, infinitely less 
 than in the United States. The schoolmaster in 
 Germany to whom with perfect confidence we 
 entrust our children, the surgeon who operates 
 upon us, only become murderous animals when 
 organised into an army, when they meet the re- 
 sistance of other armies, or presumably armed 
 populations. There have been no massacres in 
 Luxemburg not a person has been hurt al- 
 though it is in German occupation. There has 
 been no killing in Brussels, though the German 
 army has been there a year or more. 
 
 But even when we keep these facts in mind we 
 have not got to the heart of the matter. If there 
 were no armies to meet it, there would be no 
 German army, or a very small one. How have 
 the German people been persuaded during forty 
 years to give their lives and wealth, those they 
 love, and the taxes that they pay, to the creation 
 of this marvelous military machine? Because 
 the German government managed to persuade
 
 290 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 them that it was necessary to overcome the 
 armies that it would have to meet. Germany 
 would not maintain an army of three million men 
 during forty years in order at the end of that 
 period to annihilate civil populations that did not 
 possess soldiers. Even the German taxpayer 
 would object to such a burden when a few bodies 
 of properly trained butchers would perform the 
 task just as well. 
 
 But if you had not had a large army during 
 forty years in Germany, the whole military 
 system would have yielded to civilian influence: 
 indeed, there would have been no military system. 
 You can't have that without a great army. Would 
 German militarism and all that it has meant to 
 Europe have arisen? 
 
 When in conversation in past years French- 
 men have alleged an overpowering determination 
 on the part of Germans to conquer their country, 
 I have often put this question: "Why did not 
 Germany do it in 1871, when France was abso- 
 lutely prostrate; her military power broken; her 
 state dismembered, and German troops in occupa- 
 tion of the whole country, a German government 
 established at Paris?" 
 
 Suppose that when the last German soldier had 
 been withdrawn from France after that war, 
 Frenchmen had argued thus : "The Germans have 
 been, and gone. If they had wanted to stay and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 291 
 
 rule our country, then was their chance. They 
 did not take it, so presumably our actual soil is 
 safe. We will not create another army. These 
 millions of youths will no longer give the best 
 years of their lives to the drill sergeant and to the 
 barracks, but to economic and intellectual effi- 
 ciency; to social reorganisation, to strengthening 
 the influence throughout the world of French 
 thought and culture." 
 
 It is true that there would have been no con- 
 quests in Tonkin or Madagascar, nor alliance 
 with Russia, nor complications in Morocco, nor 
 consequent rivalry with Germany as to who 
 should appoint the officials to administer certain 
 Negro populations in Africa (and also conse- 
 quently certain of the factors of the great war 
 would not have come into existence ) . But would 
 the setting of such an example in Europe, the 
 establishment of quite a new method in "high 
 politics," have had no effect on their subsequent 
 development ? 
 
 Bismarck, addressing the German parliament 
 in 1888, said: 
 
 If I were to come before you and say: We are seri- 
 ously menaced by France and Russia ; it is to be foreseen 
 that we shall be attacked; that is my conviction as a 
 diplomat based on military information; for our defence 
 it is better to employ the anticipatory thrust of the attack 
 and open hostilities at once ; accordingly I ask the Imperial
 
 292 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Diet for a credit of a milliard marks in order to start the 
 war against both our neighbours well, gentlemen, I do 
 not know whether you have sufficient confidence in me to 
 vote such a grant. I hope not. 
 
 But if Bismarck was doubtful about their assent 
 in such circumstances as those and if he was not 
 only doubtful but could infer that they would be 
 right what would have been the attitude of the 
 Reichstag and the Nation if the government had 
 been obliged to say : 
 
 Our neighbours cannot invade us because they have 
 nothing to invade us with. But we intend to invade their 
 territory and to conquer them. It is true that our army 
 will have no army to meet, so that a large army, even on 
 military grounds, is quite unnecessary; but we want a 
 large army by way of showing our valour; a small pro- 
 portion of it only will be used, and that to sack and burn, 
 and kill unarmed, defenceless people. 
 
 Do you think that in these conditions the sacri- 
 fices necessary for the maintenance of that large 
 and useless army would have been made, 
 year after year? 
 
 What actually happened was that, to the aston- 
 ishment of everybody, the crushed and beaten 
 France became in a few years once more a very 
 formidable military power, and in the later seven- 
 ties German militarists were believing that the 
 crushing might all have to be done again. One
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POWER 293 
 
 can trace in these years, 13 in the history of Ger- 
 man foreign policy, the growth of a justification 
 of "preventive war," based on the armaments of 
 alleged enemies. 14 
 
 But if, despite all, the last penalty would in the 
 case of her disarmament have been paid by 
 France, and we could imagine her annexed to 
 Germany, become part of the German Empire, 
 need we, even then, if we have a real faith in the 
 strength of moral and intellectual forces, believe 
 that her mission in the world is ended? Would 
 not the greatest single element in the German 
 Empire then be French? Would the moral in- 
 fluence of forty million French, the effect of the 
 intellectual fermentation of their art, stage, liter- 
 ature, cease and in no way affect their new fellow 
 subjects? Does not all evidence go to show that 
 if we could imagine such a thing taking place 
 the incorporation of France into the German 
 
 "Bismarck himself quite admitted the risk of the military 
 spirit affecting national policy. In the "Memoirs" (p. \\>, 
 translation, Vol. ii p. 103) occurs the passage quoting him: 
 ". . . That the General Staff and its chiefs . . . have permitted 
 themselves to be misled into imperilling peace lies in the necessary 
 spirit of the institution. ... A spirit I should not desire to see 
 disappear. It becomes dangerous only under a monarch whose 
 policy lacks sense of proportion and capacity of resisting one- 
 sided and constitutionally unjustifiable influences." 
 
 "The conflict between the two tendencies is brought out very 
 clearly in Pfofessor Monroe Smith's scholarly and pregnant 
 article, "Military Strategy versus Diplomacy," in the Political 
 Science Quarterly for March, 1915.
 
 294 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Empire would mean the Frenchification of the 
 German and the Germanisation of the French 
 perhaps to the very great improvement of both? 
 
 And yet, says our instinct (and it happens to 
 be mine), men should die rather than submit to 
 foreign dictation. To hope that they ever will 
 so submit is to hope for the world's salvation 
 through human cowardice. 
 
 And yet again all war this war is based on 
 the belief that men will submit to foreign dicta- 
 tion rather than die. The English believe that 
 if they beat the Germans sufficiently they will 
 give in. The Germans hope that if they frighten 
 the English enough they will yield. Most of war 
 and its operations are based on the assumption 
 that the enemy will obey motives that we won't. 
 
 And, moreover, if on one great day all the com- 
 batants in this war were to throw down their 
 arms, refuse to strike another blow, come out of 
 the trenches and decline absolutely to discuss who 
 began it or who first used poison gas, we should 
 know that these transformed men, far from being 
 craven or coward, would be showing qualities of 
 greater hope for mankind's future than all the 
 vast heroisms of the war so far shown; and be 
 performing an act more glorious than all the 
 military victories that history records.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- 
 NATIONAL COERCION
 
 Any method of defence in the modern world, including 
 the military, involves a large measure of international 
 agreement: the present war has necessitated a military 
 alliance between nine separate and very diverse states 
 and may finally number more. Yet despite this large 
 measure of agreement, one force, that of economic 
 pressure, which might tell most effectively against Ger- 
 many may be largely ineffective, partly because of "leak- 
 ages" owing to the position of neutrals but much more 
 because the pressure will come to an end as soon as the 
 war is over. Yet much of the motive of aggressive 
 war the desire for "culture domination" and commer- 
 cial expansion could be neutralised and even reversed 
 if the cost of aggression were worldwide exclusion of 
 both the culture and the commerce of the aggressor, 
 not merely during a war but until such time as the 
 aggressive policy were modified. Recent facts go to 
 show that the very highly developed means of co- 
 ordinated effort which nations now possess would make 
 this method effective where in the past it would not 
 have been. In any case its worth as a practical means 
 depends, not upon its absolute effectiveness as an instru- 
 ment of international coercion, but its relative effective- 
 ness as compared to present methods ; or as an aid thereto.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NON-MILITARY MEANS OF INTER- 
 NATIONAL COERCION 
 
 THE justification for America concerning 
 herself with the possibilities of non-military 
 means of enforcing international public right, is 
 that for her purposes, military means are ineffec- 
 tive to that end, however successful in the mili- 
 tary field. 
 
 However great be America's naval and mili- 
 tary power, she cannot defend by that power alone 
 even her most elementary rights, like those 
 violated in the sinking of the Lusitania. Did she 
 possess to-day the greatest fleet in the world she 
 could not radically alter the naval situation of the 
 present war, since the Western Allies have a sea 
 supremacy about as complete as ships can make it. 
 
 If she joined the Allies, sending armies to 
 France or Russia, the resultant victory might 
 still leave America without any assurance that 
 the rights for which she had fought would be 
 respected in the future ; for sea law, as laid down 
 by her own prospective allies, fails to meet her 
 claims. She might after victory find the radical 
 
 297
 
 298 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 reform of that law, which alone can satisfy the 
 demands moral and material that she is mak- 
 ing, still strenuously opposed by her own military 
 associates. 
 
 Even though she could secure agreement be- 
 forehand as to the sea law that was to follow the 
 war, she has no assurance that the agreement 
 would outlive the military alliance on which its 
 enforcement depended. There is a vague idea 
 that she could in some way enforce the agree- 
 ment by her own naval and military strength, 
 becoming for that purpose the "strongest Power 
 in the world"; but nations no longer fight as 
 units they fight as groups. 
 
 This war has demonstrated that a nation can 
 no longer depend either for its security or for 
 the enforcement of its views of right on its own 
 strength, as the position of any one of the allied 
 nations France, England, Russia, or Italy 
 clearly shows. What has made it possible for 
 them to defend themselves is an international 
 agreement their national safety depends on 
 treaties. War has become internationalised. 
 
 If, therefore, America intends to vindicate her 
 rights perhaps even if she intends to secure her 
 mere safety on land by military means, she, too, 
 must do what even the most powerful military 
 states of the past have done : enter into the game 
 of military alliances. But, for America's purposes
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 299 
 
 the establishment and enforcement of certain 
 international laws, for instance the alliances 
 must be permanent. Of the very few things that 
 history teaches us, with any certainty, one is that 
 these military alliances do not outlast the pressure 
 of war conditions. 
 
 No international settlement that has followed 
 the great wars ever settled or endured. The 
 military alliances on which they were based have 
 been, as we saw from the facts presented in a 
 former chapter, unstable and short-lived. As for 
 destroying a common enemy, like the Germany 
 of to-day, those same facts show that the destruc- 
 tion has never lasted more than a year or two; 
 at the end of which time the common enemy, the 
 outlaw, generally became the ally of one of its 
 policemen against all the rest; and the whole 
 process of alliance shuffling has begun again da 
 capo. 
 
 The usual conclusion from all this is that the 
 problem is insoluble. We indulge in a sort of 
 fatalistic dogmatism: War is "inevitable"; "we 
 shall always have it and it is useless to try to 
 prevent it"; "it is the outcome of forces beyond 
 our control"; "man is a fighting animal ... as 
 long as human nature . . ." and so forth. 
 
 All of which, obviously, gives not the slightest 
 help in this question of protecting America's 
 rights and interests. It is merely a noisy way
 
 300 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 of running away from the problem. The question 
 under discussion is not the inevitability or other- 
 wise of war; it is whether we can make war 
 effective for the purposes for which it is waged 
 can so organise our relations with our allies that it 
 shall achieve the ends for which it is fought, 
 which heretofore most wars have not done. If 
 we say that this is Utopian, we merely proclaim 
 our desire to be relieved of the fatigue of thought 
 by action of some kind, preferably entertaining 
 and spectacular action action which at the same 
 time gratifies an instinct or satisfies impatience. 
 But the fighting, however gloriously ineffective, 
 must finish sooner or later, and then once more 
 we are brought face to face with the problem: 
 "How shall we achieve our purpose?" 
 
 I have said that war itself has become inter- 
 nationalised and depends on agreement of some 
 kind. Indeed the use of force effectively in 
 human affairs generally depends on agreement 
 and co-operation. 
 
 And as it is supremely important in this matter 
 to realise the relation between co-operation the 
 possession of a common purpose and the em- 
 ployment of physical force, I want to tabulate 
 a few of those truths which happen to bear on 
 this problem and which, because they are so 
 obvious, are generally overlooked. 
 
 We are often told that the world is governed
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 301 
 
 in the last resort by physical force. Well, 
 there are animals on the earth that have im- 
 measurably greater physical strength than man. 
 They do not govern the world. Man, who 
 is so much weaker, eats them, or makes them 
 work for him. The world, indeed, was once 
 peopled by immense beasts of a physical strength 
 bearing about the same relation to man's that 
 man's does to the blackbeetle's. These colossal 
 creatures have all disappeared, superseded by 
 others that were smaller and physically weaker. 
 
 So it is evident that some element other than 
 physical force is involved in survival. Let us 
 push the inquiry a little further. 
 
 We are told that law and civilisation rest in 
 the last resort upon force the police or the army. 
 Yet the police or the army obeys the instructions 
 of the law. What physical force compels it to 
 do so, ensures that it shall do so? Who guards 
 the guardians? What is our final "sanction," or 
 means of compulsion? It is an oath, a contract, 
 and if we could not depend upon it the civilisation 
 of the United States would be like that of Mexico 
 or Hayti. 
 
 When, as Democrats or Republicans, we vote 
 against an existing President, how do we know 
 that he will obey our votes and quietly walk out 
 of office? The army? But it is he who com- 
 mands the army; the army does not command
 
 302 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 him. The army would stand by the country? 
 Then what is controlling its act is a conception of 
 constitutional right, not physical force, since it 
 could easily, presumably, make itself master of a 
 hostile Republican or Democratic party, as the 
 case may be. Obviously it is not because the 
 North American is more military that he is saved 
 from certain defects of South American civilisa- 
 tion. Just as obviously it is because he is less 
 military. 
 
 An Englishman says: "It is force alone which 
 vindicates Belgium's rights." But what put the 
 force in motion? What decided England to go 
 to the rescue of Belgium, instead of remaining at 
 home ? It was a thing of the mind, a moral thing, 
 a theory: the tradition of the sanctity of treaties, 
 the theory of international obligation, a sense of 
 contract, if you will, like that which makes the 
 President respect the hostile vote instead of in- 
 triguing with the army, and the army obey its 
 oath instead of intriguing with the President, or 
 against him. Without this moral thing you can- 
 not get even the effective employment of force in 
 things that look at first sight like sheer violence. 
 You cannot, for instance, have piracy without 
 an agreement and co-operation, without the ob- 
 servance of treaty rights as between pirate cap- 
 tain and crew. If every member of the crew said : 
 "Don't bother me about rules and obeying the
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 303 
 
 captain. I've got a pistol and I mean to make my 
 own rules and act as I see fit" why, of course 
 you could not run even a pirate ship. Success in 
 piracy depended a great deal on the morals and 
 discipline of the pirates on the mind of the cap- 
 tain ; his fairness in dividing the booty ; the capac- 
 ity of the crew to hang together. 
 
 Anyway, alleges the man who is so sure that 
 nothing but physical force matters, nations can- 
 not depend upon anything but their own strength ; 
 and all international agreements are futile. 
 
 Well, as we have already seen, but for inter- 
 national agreement no single one of the Allies 
 in the present war would be safe. If, for 
 instance, France had had to depend simply upon 
 her own strength she would have been lost. But 
 she had an alliance, an international treaty, and 
 that saved her. And so with the other parties 
 to that treaty. And if Germany is beaten, as, 
 despite her immense forces, she probably will 
 be, it is because she depended upon her own 
 strength alone and neglected the element of 
 "opinion" in other nations which has enabled her 
 enemies to range the world against her. 
 "Opinion" a mere moral thing was something 
 that the German military leaders seem to have 
 held in immense contempt ; and that contempt will 
 be paid for by Germany at the price of defeat. 
 For opinion comes before force, since it deter-
 
 304 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 mines the direction that force shall take; how it 
 shall be used. 
 
 Force, in other words, is not a thing that acts 
 of itself in human affairs, but as the instrument 
 of a human will. The savage who happened to 
 be born with a longer "reach" than others of 
 his tribe was the bully of the whole until two 
 weaker men put their heads together and agreed 
 to co-operate, and so, by taking him front and 
 rear at the same time, brought his tyranny to an 
 end, replacing it by their own; which continued 
 until three weaker men were able to act as one, 
 and so on, until finally we got a combination of 
 the whole community in the policeman. The 
 effectiveness of the policeman resides, not mainly 
 in the fact of the force that he wields, but in the 
 fact that he personifies a common will, which is 
 the outcome of things of the mind. 
 
 When you have something resembling a com- 
 mon will you can get the policeman : but until you 
 get that agreement, "force" cannot be used for 
 the ends of the community at all. The final 
 triumph of the community represented the slow 
 growth of a common purpose as against conflict- 
 ing purposes. 
 
 Now, what forms the basis of this common 
 purpose, of the starting point of common action 
 in which force is combined instead of being 
 cancelled ?
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 305 
 
 How does a disorderly group of individuals 
 an early collection of Western pioneers, for in- 
 stance become an orderly society ? Not by each 
 of the individuals going as heavily armed as pos- 
 sible and taking his own view of his own rights 
 and his own means of enforcing them. That 
 gives you a mining camp, where they "have a man 
 for breakfast every morning," or those Carolina 
 mountain counties, the counties of the "crackers," 
 where a feud about a strayed hog will wipe out 
 a dozen families. When we say, therefore, that 
 civilisation is based upon physical force, the 
 statement is incomplete ; there is plenty of physical 
 force in a mining camp and among the Carolina 
 "crackers"; plenty of guns, armaments, "de- 
 fence" ; much more, indeed, in proportion to popu- 
 lation than in New York or Boston. And yet 
 the physical force does not give us order and 
 civilisation; it gives us chaos. 
 
 What, then, makes a society out of a fortuitous 
 gathering of units? The law courts and police? 
 But that only pushes the question a little further 
 back. How do the law courts and police come 
 there? The police do not descend from the skies 
 ready made ; they do not impose themselves upon 
 the community. They are the creation of the 
 community. Before you can have the police, the 
 community must get together and decide to create 
 it; before you can have the police you must have
 
 306 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 a law, and before you can have a law the com- 
 munity must decide what it is to be. The step 
 which turns the group of Western pioneers into 
 an orderly community is their coming together 
 and agreeing to enforce such rules as are neces- 
 sary to the common good. And there is no mys- 
 tery as to the point at which common agreement 
 starts. There is one matter on which all are 
 agreed. There is not one of us who wants to be 
 wiped out. Many want to wipe others out, want 
 to make victims; nobody wants to be a victim. 
 So that you have here, in this desire for pro- 
 tection, an absolutely universal agreement. 
 
 It is the least common denominator, and it is 
 from that starting point of common agreement 
 that all societies are created. That is why any 
 society, even the most primitive, will protect in 
 some degree the weak against the strong, be- 
 cause each is aware that he may at any moment 
 find himself accidentally weaker than some one 
 else. A degenerate loafer with an automatic pistol 
 on some dark night is more "mighty" than the 
 finest athlete or physical giant who happens to 
 be unarmed. We have decided that the superior 
 physical power of any one individual the fact 
 that any one man happens to have his sixshooter 
 with him while his neighbors have not shall not 
 give him by virtue of that, a right to impose his 
 point of view. The community has agreed, if it
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 307 
 
 is on the road to civilisation, that such a strong 
 man shall be restrained. They will cancel his 
 force by throwing the whole force of the com- 
 munity against it and in favour of his victim. 
 They may, like the "crackers," be unintelligent, 
 suspicious, like most ignorant folk; unable to or- 
 ganise the mechanism for achieving what they 
 want, but they all want this security. 
 
 Their agreement on that point does not mean 
 agreement upon all points. You may have in 
 a community Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, 
 Populists, Protestants, and Catholics, atheists, 
 homoeopaths and allopaths, Latins and Anglo- 
 Saxons, every imaginable difference of race, reli- 
 gion and opinion, but they are all agreed on 
 the one point; that they do not want to be the 
 victims of some one else's gun. So they decide 
 that any one who attempts to use his gun to 
 enforce his own view shall be restrained; all 
 would protect his prospective victim. 
 
 Now, it will be noted, as I have tried to make 
 plain in preceding chapters, that this attitude in- 
 volves the abandonment of "neutrality" on the 
 part of the community. And yet the aggressor 
 might be right. 
 
 That involved a further step a necessary co- 
 rollary that no man should be judge of his own 
 case. He must submit his dispute to third-party 
 decision. The individual New Yorker who
 
 3 o8 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 should attempt to settle a business difference 
 with his grocer or his insurance company or his 
 banker with his sixshooter, would be restrained. 
 The fact that he believed himself entirely right 
 and his opponent wrong; the fact, indeed, that 
 he was right as to his contention on the difference, 
 that he was a college professor and the grocer an 
 ignorant person none of this would be accepted 
 as the slightest justification for settling the matter 
 in that way ; the plea that he was using might on 
 the side of right would be most summarily dis- 
 missed. For if each were his own judge as to 
 what was right against his neighbour no society 
 would be possible. It is the essence of a social 
 group that no individual shall be permitted to 
 make himself the judge of his own cause and the 
 executioner of his own verdict in any difference 
 that he may have with a neighbour ; and that the 
 whole social group shall combine to prevent it. 
 
 Now, the difference between the "peace man" 
 and the "war man" is generally taken as being 
 that the first is opposed to physical force and the 
 second recognizes the need for it; and that the 
 "peace man" is inconsistent because he approves 
 of the police, and that, as the police uses physical 
 force, he should thereby sanction and approve 
 of armies, and their multiplication. About as 
 reasonably could one urge that in some way a 
 horse chestnut is related to a chestnut horse.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 309 
 
 What is the difference between an army and 
 a police force? It is very simple: armies are 
 for the purpose of righting one another ; the police 
 forces are not. If the New York police force 
 were raised for the express purpose of fighting 
 the Chicago police of defending New York 
 against an attack from the Philadelphia police 
 it would be an army. An army is not for the 
 purpose of maintaining order and restraining 
 crime ; the German army did not need to maintain 
 order in France, and did not go there for that 
 purpose. Nor did the French army need to main- 
 tain order in Germany, a country which normally 
 has less crime in it than any country in the 
 world. In our chaotic society of nations the 
 army of each is for exactly the purpose that the 
 sixshooter of each individual is in the case of the 
 Western disorderly pioneer; it is that each may 
 enforce his own view of his rights as against 
 his neighbour. 
 
 The army of Germany or Britain is not like 
 the police force of New York, the creation of 
 the community of the community of nations, 
 that is. It is merely the arm which each indi- 
 vidual has created for himself, which he uses, not 
 according to law or rule upon which the commun- 
 ity (again of nations) have agreed, but according 
 to his own notion of right or justification. Each 
 is quite sure, passionately believing itself to be
 
 310 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 right, that it is entitled to use its might to en- 
 force its view. But such a plea would never for a 
 moment be accepted in any civilised community of 
 men. And it is because it is accepted by the 
 nations that they do not at present form a com- 
 munity in the proper sense of the term. Until 
 we realise that no individual nation as against 
 another is entitled to be its own judge of what 
 its own rights are, we shall not make much 
 progress to making out of them a real society. 
 
 We are so much the slaves of words that I am 
 afraid the use of the word police force will distort 
 my meaning. We have heard from time to time 
 a good deal of an international police force, and 
 immediately we have in mind an army and navy 
 controlled by an international body, taking their 
 instructions from some international council or 
 court, a great international force operating at 
 the dictation of some cumbrous international 
 machine Cossacks camping in Central Park to 
 secure the enforcement of an international deci- 
 sion hostile to the will of the whole American 
 people and secured in the International Congress 
 as the result of a snap vote in which a combina- 
 tion of Japanese, Haytian, Siamese, and Turkish 
 delegates had managed to secure the voting 
 balance ! 
 
 On that I will touch at greater length presently.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 311 
 
 It is hardly astonishing that those at all familiar 
 with the practical difficulties of international 
 politics have never managed to take very seriously 
 the elaborate paper schemes of World Federation 
 which flourish so abundantly in this country. If 
 we were within measurable distance of having 
 achieved an international "will" to co-operate so 
 complete as to agree upon the numberless and 
 immensely difficult details that the simplest 
 Federation plans involve, there would be no need 
 for Federation so far as war prevention was 
 concerned, because war would not take place. 
 Questions like the proportional representation of 
 the nations in a parliament with authority to 
 decide matters of vital interest, whether in such 
 a parliament China should count for four times 
 as much as the United States and, if not, whether 
 San Domingo on some principle of equality should 
 count for as much, are at present even greater 
 difficulties than the problems which it would be 
 the business of the Parliament to solve if once 
 it could be created. 
 
 One need not rule out the possibility of such 
 a Parliament, nor abandon effort toward its 
 creation. But neither should less ambitious 
 schemes wait upon its creation. The prac- 
 tical thing is to ask whether it is not possible to 
 set up in international society, the operation of 
 forces which shall in fact include the active prin-
 
 312 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 ciple of policing: that is to say, shall represent 
 the common will on at least the one point of pro- 
 tection, integrity, and shall be coercive of the 
 recalcitrant member who challenges that will. 
 
 Europe has, of course, had a shadowy consti- 
 tution intermittently, even in modern times, with- 
 out going back to the Roman or the Holy Roman 
 ages, or to Henri IV and his "Grand Design." 
 The Peace of Westphalia did at least recog- 
 nise the existence of a community of states and a 
 public law of sorts, an European "system"; and 
 the Congresses of Vienna and Paris a new and 
 different one. Both systems frequently broke 
 down in part, and both, at the last, entirely. 
 
 In so far as they attempted to give expression 
 to a common will and a sanction to their law, 
 that attempt was marked by two characteristics 
 which obviously in part underlay their failure: 
 (i) The real parties to the Acts, great military 
 states, were few in number; (2) They depended 
 upon military power for the enforcement of their 
 will. Had not a few great powers virtually 
 excluded the smaller ones from any weight in 
 the Concert (as at Vienna) ; and had the forces 
 which lay behind the treaties been other than 
 military, the results might have been more satis- 
 factory. 
 
 It is true that there have been international 
 congresses of an order different to those of
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 313 
 
 Munster and Vienna, but they got over the diffi- 
 culty of sanction by deciding to have none at all ! 
 We cannot settle the difficulty by running away 
 from it in that fashion. 
 
 It is certain that if the sanction is to be purely 
 military, the real parties to the agreement will 
 be few in number. The military co-operation of 
 an Argentina, or even a Portugal, in resistance to 
 a Russian invasion of Sweden, or a German one 
 of Belgium, is of very doubtful effectiveness. 
 And yet when the alliance is composed of just 
 a few great states the defection of one state is 
 likely to split the combination into two hostile 
 groups and create a situation in which there is an 
 attempt on the part of the one group to exchange 
 the condition of partnership for that of mastery. 
 
 And this too is, of course, aided by that peculiar 
 psychology of power and military effectiveness 
 touched on in the last chapter. What has made 
 Germany desire to dominate the Europe of which 
 at one time she was perfectly content to be a 
 partner, is her growing effectiveness in that 
 military power which in the first instance was 
 merely a contributon to the common stock. 
 
 Can these two dangerous characteristics of the 
 past, which have marked the great European 
 coalitions since the Renaissance, in future be 
 avoided ? 
 
 There is at least one favourable circumstance:
 
 314 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 the parties to the European agreement of to- 
 morrow will probably be numerous. The com- 
 batants in the present war number a round dozen, 
 may number fifteen before it is over ; and if those 
 directly affected by the war and its problems are 
 to have any part in the settlement, most of the 
 civilised world will be involved. 
 
 If the Congress even pretends to "settle" any- 
 thing at all it will necessarily, of course, have to 
 decide how it proposes to ensure the permanence 
 of the rearrangement which it may make, the 
 carrying out of the decrees it may promulgate. 
 To put it more briefly, it will have to consider the 
 question : "How shall we deal with the party that 
 in a year or two attacks our decision and violates 
 the treaty guaranteeing it?" If the implication 
 is to be that nothing will be done if Austria 
 may, at the moment most favourable for her, 
 proceed to take back the Trentino, or Servia 
 her territories ceded to Bulgaria, or what not 
 the whole thing will, of course, be a futility 
 too monstrous for words, and that public right 
 and the greater security of the lesser states which 
 Mr. Asquith has told us were the main objects 
 of the war, will be more remote than ever. 
 
 And yet the perpetuation of the old alliance 
 arrangements will create again the condition 
 which existed in Europe in July, 1914, when a 
 difference with a small Balkan State over a
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 315 
 
 political assassination precipitates, overnight, a 
 war which finally involves twelve nations, the 
 killing or maiming probably before its close of 
 some ten millions of men, and the piling up of 
 burdens which virtually place a generation of 
 Europeans in pawn in order to defray the cost of 
 it. Yet, it was a war which an English ambas- 
 sador, who was in the thick of the negotiations, 
 declared a ten days' delay would have prevented. 
 
 Will the future Congress of settlement so leave 
 things that when such an incident occurs again, 
 Europe is in precisely the same condition of chaos, 
 so far as any preconcerted policy or plan is con- 
 cerned, as it was in July, 1914? 
 
 It is not, of course, a matter merely of creating 
 some Council of Enquiry and decreeing that an 
 incident like the Serajevo assassination be sub- 
 mitted to it. It is doubtful whether the mere 
 existence of such a Council would have been more 
 effective in stopping the action of the Central 
 powers than was the offer of an international 
 conference actually made. 
 
 The truth is that though the whole system of 
 European armaments is based on the presumption 
 that states will commit aggression when oppor- 
 tunity offers, and though Europe had for a gener- 
 ation been piling up armaments as never before in 
 history, the force it had so acquired had no deter- 
 rent effect on the aggressors, and when used was
 
 316 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 rendered largely ineffective owing to factors 
 which, practically speaking, had not been taken 
 into account at all. There was plenty of force in 
 Europe to render a common policy effective; 
 there was no common policy. 
 
 European military force failed as a preventive 
 of aggression in Germany's case because there 
 was no certainty that any overwhelming part of 
 it would be used against Germany. There was no 
 certainty that England would not remain neutral ; 
 no certainty that Belgium would refuse the pas- 
 sage of troops; nor that Japan would be one of 
 the Allies ; nor that Italy would "rat" ; nor what 
 part the Balkan states would play. There are 
 plenty of gambling chances here to a state that 
 becomes bitten with military ambitions. 
 
 Just as uncertain were the effects of England's 
 command of the sea. Would food importation be 
 allowed? How far would the position of the 
 neutral states facilitate the securing of supplies? 
 Could not America, as the champion of neutrals, 
 be counted on for ensuring large imports of food 
 and raw material ? And, finally, if German effort 
 failed it would not fail in such a way as to penalise 
 or handicap Germany's future in the world at 
 large. 
 
 Obviously, until we get agreement on the points 
 involved here, there can be no effective common 
 action against a recalcitrant state. And that
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 317 
 
 agreement must just as obviously include many 
 States, great and small, and cover the economic 
 as well as the military contribution of each. That 
 the lesser state can play an important part is 
 shown by the spectacle, in this war, of the great 
 Powers, going hat in hand to some Balkan 
 Premier, begging him to save Western civilisa- 
 tion by intervention at the crucial moment, and 
 also by the fact that it is the position of such 
 states as Holland and Sweden that has rendered 
 the economic force of sea power, in part at least, 
 ineffective. One may doubt whether in future 
 European arrangements the lesser states, whose 
 territorial integrity the coalition will doubtless be 
 pledged to uphold, will be allowed to frustrate in 
 some degree the effectiveness of a war waged on 
 behalf of a public right which is for them their 
 only guarantee of security. Note the situation 
 in the present war. States like Holland and the 
 Scandinavian, though not directly involved, are 
 nevertheless vitally interested in the outcome, for 
 the simple reason that if Germany were com- 
 pletely successful it is certain their future position 
 would be extraordinarily insecure. Yet these 
 countries, even against their will, served in the 
 early part of the war as entrepots for the supply 
 of Germany. 
 
 It is not generally realised how far from com- 
 plete is the isolation of Germany. She has been
 
 318 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 in daily communication with the outside world 
 by mail and cable. The moral and military 
 advantage of this is immense; while during the 
 first six months of the war the flow of materials 
 of all kinds including ammunition was very 
 great indeed. 
 
 I want to suggest here that the forces of Europe 
 will not be really deterrent of aggression until 
 the following conditions at least are fulfilled: 
 
 (a) The forces placed behind a policy the first 
 object of which shall be to deter aggression; 
 
 (b) aggression so defined as to have no reference 
 to the merits of a dispute between two nations 
 or groups, but to consist simply in taking any 
 belligerent action to enforce a state's claim 
 against another without first having submitted 
 that claim to international enquiry; (c) the 
 economic pressure which is an essential part of 
 military operations rendered effective by the co- 
 operation of states which do not necessarily give 
 military aid at all; (d) economic pressure so 
 organised as to be capable of prolongation be- 
 yond the period of military operations; and (e) 
 the penalties attaching to aggression made so 
 plain as to be realised beforehand by any people 
 whose government tends to drift towards 
 aggression. 
 
 If the new Congress of Vienna is effective, 
 those conditions will be fulfilled.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 319 
 
 Any arrangement which includes them would 
 partake of the nature of a league of mutual guar- 
 antee of integrity, and would be one in which 
 there would be fair hope of economic pressure 
 gradually replacing military force as the com- 
 pelling sanction. Economic pressure might be 
 that first felt if the outstanding feature of the 
 arrangement were that any constituent state 
 resorting to hostilities as the result of a differ- 
 ence with another, not previously submitted to an 
 international court of enquiry, by that fact caused 
 boycott or nonintercourse to be proclaimed and 
 maintained against it by the whole group. This 
 would not prevent certain members of the group 
 from carrying on military operations, as well, 
 against it. Some of the group would go to war 
 in the military sense all in the economic sense; 
 the respective roles would be so distributed as to 
 secure the most effective action. From the 
 moment of the offending nation's defiance of the 
 international agreement to which it had been a 
 party, its ships could enter no civilised ports out- 
 side its own, nor leave them. Payment of debts 
 to it would be withheld; the commercial paper 
 of its citizens would not be discounted ; its citizens 
 could not travel in any civilised country in the 
 world, their passports being no longer recognised. 
 
 Thus, the outlaw nation could neither receive 
 from nor send to the outside world material or
 
 320 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 communication of any kind neither food nor 
 raw material of manufacture, nor letters, nor 
 cables. Money due to him throughout the world 
 would be sequestrated for disposal finally as the 
 international court's judgment should direct ; and 
 that rule would apply to royalties on patents and 
 publications, and would, of course, involve pre- 
 cautionary seizure or sequestration of all prop- 
 erty ships, goods, bank balances, businesses 
 held by that nation's citizens abroad. 
 
 It is doubtful whether at the present stage of 
 international understanding this arrangement 
 could be carried beyond the point of using it as 
 a means to secure delay for enquiry in inter- 
 national disputes. Its use as a sanction for the 
 judgments of international tribunals will prob- 
 ably require a wider agreement as to the founda- 
 tions of international law than at present exists. 
 But a union of Christendom on the basis of 
 common action against aggression would be a 
 very great step to the more ambitious plans. 
 
 It has, however, been suggested 1 to use this 
 method as a sanction for the judgment of an 
 international court in the following terms : 
 
 In the event of non-compliance with any 
 decision or decree or injunction of the Inter- 
 national High Court, or of non-payment of 
 the damages, compensation, or fine within the 
 
 *At a conference organised by the Fabian Society, July, 1915.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 321 
 
 time specified for such payment, the Court 
 may decree execution and may call upon the 
 Constituent States or upon some or any of 
 them, to put in operation, after duly pub- 
 lished notice, for such period and under such 
 condition as may be arranged, the following 
 sanctions : 
 
 (a) To prohibit all postal, telegraphic, 
 telephonic, and wireless communication with 
 the recalcitrant state; 
 
 (b) To prohibit all passenger traffic (other 
 than the exit of foreigners), whether by ship, 
 railway, canal, or road, to or from the re- 
 calcitrant state; 
 
 (c) To prohibit the entrance into any port 
 of the Constituent States of any of the ships 
 registered as belonging to the recalcitrant 
 state, except so far as may be necessary for 
 any of them to seek safety, in which case 
 such ship or ships shall be interned; 
 
 (d) To prohibit the payment of any debts 
 due to the citizens, companies, or subordinate 
 administrations of the recalcitrant state, or 
 to its national Government; and, if thought 
 fit, to direct that payment of such debts shall 
 be made only to one or other of the Con- 
 stituent Governments, which shall give a 
 good and legally valid discharge for the 
 same, and shall account for the net proceeds 
 thereof to the International High Court; 
 
 (e) To lay an embargo on any or all ships 
 within the jurisdiction of such Constituent 
 State or States registered as belonging to the 
 recalcitrant State;
 
 322 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 (f) To prohibit any lending of capital or 
 other moneys to the citizens, companies, or 
 subordinate administrations of the recalci- 
 trant State, or to its national Government ; 
 
 (g) To prohibit the issue or dealing in or 
 quotation on the Stock Exchange or in the 
 press of any new loans, debentures, shares, 
 notes, or securities of any kind by any of the 
 citizens, companies or subordinate adminis- 
 trations of the recalcitrant State, or of its 
 national Government; 
 
 (h) To prohibit all imports, or certain 
 specified imports, coming from the recalci- 
 trant State, or originating within it; 
 
 (i) To prohibit all exports, or certain 
 specified exports consigned directly to the 
 recalcitrant State, or destined for it. 
 
 It should be noted that if the future European 
 coalition means business at all in giving perma- 
 nent effect to its settlement provisions, the chief 
 powers would be committed, during any period 
 of war, by virtue of their military obligations, 
 to everything contained in the plan just outlined. 
 All that the project under discussion involves 
 in addition is that (i) Certain states interested 
 in the observance of public right, but which, 
 by their circumstances, are not suited to mili- 
 tary co-operation, should give economic aid by 
 taking part in the embargo arrangements. 
 They should not be neutral, but should refuse
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 323 
 
 intercourse with the recalcitrant state while 
 according it to the others. (2) That such co- 
 operation should be duly organised beforehand 
 by public arrangement and be recognised as 
 part of the normal measures of international 
 public safety and, being duly recognised in 
 this way, should become part of international 
 law an amended law in so far as the rules of 
 neutrality are concerned. (3) That the arrange- 
 ments should include provisions for prolonging 
 embargo or discrimination against an offending 
 state after the period of military operations had 
 ceased. 
 
 The first point that occurs to one, of course, 
 in considering such a plan is that it has proven 
 ineffective in the present war since this condi- 
 tion of non-intercourse is exactly that in which 
 Germany now finds herself, and it is not at all 
 effective. 
 
 To which I reply : 
 
 i. That Germany, as already pointed out, is 
 not yet subject to a condition of complete non- 
 intercourse, since from the beginning of the war 
 she has been receiving her mail and cables and 
 maintaining communication with the outside 
 world, morally an immensely important factor. 
 Nor is it entirely moral. Large supplies have, 
 despite the naval blockade, come to her through 
 Scandinavia and Holland.
 
 324 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 2. That, though of slow operation, it is the 
 economic factor which in the end will be the 
 decisive one in the operations against Germany; 
 as the ring tightens and a necessary raw material 
 like cotton, is absolutely excluded, the time will 
 come when this fact will tell most heavily. If 
 the nonintercourse had been world-organised the 
 effect would have operated from the first. Inci- 
 dentally, of course, America and England, be- 
 tween them, control the cotton of the world. 
 
 3. The effect of the suggested embargo, boy- 
 cott or economic pressure would be most decisive 
 as a deterrent to aggression, not so much by what 
 it might be able to accomplish during a war as by 
 what its prolongation would mean to the aggres- 
 sor afterwards. 
 
 For purposes of illustration, let us imagine the 
 method applied to the case of the present war. 
 
 In the first chapter I have reproduced the terms 
 of a definite proposal for America's participation 
 in the present conflict, in just that way out- 
 lined for the case of those states whose circum- 
 stances render it unsuitable for them to take part 
 in the military operations, but whose economic 
 co-operation would be valuable. The suggestion 
 in question is that America should offer to settle 
 the whole contraband and blockade dispute with 
 England on the basis of making international that 
 virtual control of the overseas trade of the world
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 325 
 
 which she now exercises. 2 America would thus 
 take a definite part in preventing any of her sup- 
 plies reaching Germany. The same international 
 body, created for this purpose of which, of 
 course, America would be part would be "deal- 
 ing with the disposal of German property, in- 
 terned ships, businesses of various kinds, royal- 
 ties on patents, bank balances, and so forth, and, 
 it may be, the more remote arrangements as to 
 the future control of German action in the world : 
 tariff arrangements, the conditions upon which 
 Germany should at the peace be once more ad- 
 mitted to the community of nations, whether on 
 equal terms or not; whether the most efficient 
 means of exacting some indemnification for 
 damage done might not be by sequestration of 
 German property throughout the world, and pos- 
 sibly some surtax by tariff ship and mail dues, all, 
 of course, subject to definite legal judgment of 
 an international court." 
 
 Some of the criticism provoked by this proposal 
 shows the extreme difficulty of making clear any 
 suggestion which implies the revision, however 
 small, of familiar abstract conceptions. 
 
 Thus Professor Usher criticises in these terms : 
 
 Under this specious guise of an international council 
 controlling the overseas trade of the world with all coun- 
 tries except Germany, Mr. Angell proposes to strip Eng- 
 
 *See page 14.
 
 326 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 land of her control of the seas. ... In return for such 
 cession of England's present authority he urges no quid 
 pro quo whatever, and does not even discuss the necessity 
 of granting one to secure the cessation itself. . . . But 
 does not this scheme require England to cede to others 
 that very control of the seas which she regards as the 
 foundation of her national independence? Is it not this 
 the control at which the German fleet is aimed and which 
 every effort of England has been made to insure beyond 
 peradventure ? Must not its loss seem to Englishmen the 
 very greatest possible blow (short of invasion) which a 
 crushing defeat of the Allies by Germany might deal 
 them ? Moreover, is not this arbitrary exercise of author- 
 ity by England, of which Mr. Angell writes, the very 
 right which the English are supremely anxious to pre- 
 serve? How, too, can it really be transferred to others 
 while the English fleet outnumbers the fleets of its allies 
 and all neutrals combined? 
 
 I cannot believe that such a council would do more 
 than . . . reveal in all their nakedness the fundamental 
 difficulties which now hold nations apart. These lie in 
 the fact that England does have control of the seas and 
 that all other nations have something to gain from taking 
 it away from her, and per contra that England has every- 
 thing to lose by allowing them to do it; that nearly all 
 neutral states, the United States in particular, are depen- 
 dent upon the English merchant marine, English ex- 
 change, English insurance, for economic contact with 
 three- fourths of the globe; that the geologic contour of 
 the European coast, the ocean currents, and the position 
 of the British Isles compel the commerce of the world 
 with northern Europe to pass through the English 
 Channel which England's harbours, for the same geologic 
 reasons, control.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 327 
 
 To that criticism I replied as follows: 
 
 One rubs one's eyes. 
 
 Here are Great Britain and her allies, by 
 their own repeated avowal, in an all but 
 desperate position. They have again and 
 again declared that their very existence is 
 threatened; they are at this moment strain- 
 ing every nerve to secure the help of even 
 minor Balkan states, not a few military 
 critics declaring that the outcome of the war 
 will depend upon the action of those states. 
 However that may be, however slim the 
 chance, that is, that Germany is likely to 
 overcome the Western Allies, there is no 
 visible prospect of their achieving what we 
 have so often been told is the real object of 
 the war: such a conquest of Germany as to 
 reduce her military power to impotence and 
 make it impossible for her ambitions ever 
 again to disturb the world. If that, or any- 
 thing resembling it, is ever to be achieved by 
 the method that the Allies are now employ- 
 ing, it will mean a long drain upon resources 
 that are already strained as the present very 
 serious credit difficulties of Great Britain 
 show resources which, without the United 
 States to draw upon, would be obviously un- 
 equal to the task. 
 
 The proposal under discussion is that at 
 this very critical juncture the United States 
 should intervene and say to Great Britain: 
 In order to secure a more effective co-opera- 
 tion of the world against a common menace,
 
 328 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 we will not only sacrifice what we believe to 
 be our rights to very valuable trade with 
 neutrals and with Germany, which, if insisted 
 upon, would greatly add to the difficulty of 
 your task; but we will also make arrange- 
 ments concerning our trade and finance in 
 the future which may render possible what 
 your unaided efforts seem unlikely to accom- 
 plish, namely, the removal of a menace which 
 you say threatens your existence. Such co- 
 operation on our part involves, in fact, plac- 
 ing our national resources at your disposal 
 for your present purpose and may involve 
 on America's part great sacrifices of trade 
 and profit over very long periods ; this sacri- 
 fice will be obviously a valuable, possibly a 
 vital contribution to the achievement of your 
 ultimate purpose, which from the first you 
 have declared to be essential to your con- 
 tinued national existence. 
 
 And this, says Professor Usher, is no 
 service at all on America's part, "no quid pro 
 quo whatever"! 
 
 In submitting my proposal I made an 
 assumption which I believe most Englishmen 
 would make, namely, that "control of the 
 sea" is something which England exercises, 
 not for the purpose of imposing her domina- 
 tion, political or commercial, upon the world, 
 but for securing England's safety (which 
 they believe in the present circumstances in- 
 volves the defeat of Germany) and the vindi- 
 cation of what Mr. Asquith has called "the 
 public right of Europe." If the civilized
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 329 
 
 world will make common cause with her in 
 those objects, associating itself with her for 
 the purpose of rendering more effective that 
 isolation of Germany she is attempting to 
 achieve by her sea power; and, if the neces- 
 sity of defeating Prussian military aggres- 
 sion should demand it, for the purpose also 
 of completing and prolonging that isolation 
 to a degree and in a way which her unaided 
 sea domination could never do, why, in the 
 name of all the professions with which she 
 entered this war, should England object? 
 Professor Usher seems to write as though 
 the plan involved some surrender of Eng- 
 land's power to her enemies; but it means 
 increasing that power over her enemies by 
 the addition of an economic ally and the pro- 
 longation into the post bellum period, by the 
 consent of her allies, of blockade arrange- 
 ments, their transformation into an organ- 
 ised embargo. What Professor Usher 
 suggests is that when virtually the whole 
 non-German world is prepared to tax its re- 
 sources for the purpose of waging more 
 effectively a war against a common enemy, 
 England will stand out for controlling the 
 employment of that instrument, not for the 
 common purpose, but for her own advantage 
 as against that of her allies. I do not believe 
 that she could if she would, or would if she 
 could. For, while it is true that England's 
 allies and the United States may be depen- 
 dent upon her in the way Professor Usher 
 suggests, it is also true that England is very
 
 330 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 much dependent financially and industrially 
 just at present upon the United States a 
 circumstance which Professor Usher's sur- 
 vey of the factors does not include. When 
 he tells us that international co-operation of 
 this kind is impossible because England 
 would be in a position to defy the decision of 
 her partners by virtue of her preponderant 
 sea power, he surely overlooks the fact that 
 those partners, notably the United States, 
 have the disposal of things ammunition, 
 food supplies, money essential to rendering 
 even sea power effective. The real situation 
 is one of interdependence with the balance 
 as between England and the United States 
 tilted rather remarkably just now against 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Professor Usher's criticism moreover 
 seems to overlook the fact that if America 
 joins the Allies in the ordinary way all the 
 arrangements I have indicated will go into 
 effect automatically during the period of the 
 war. America in a state of war will take 
 her own precautions to see that supplies, 
 whether of cotton or of anything else, do not 
 reach Germany; this country will also pre- 
 sumably enter into some sort of consultation 
 with her allies as to the most effective form 
 of her co-operation in the war that they 
 would be waging in common : whether, for 
 instance, her energies should go mainly into 
 the furnishing of supplies, ammunition, 
 money, etc. This country would have to 
 decide what proportion of the output of
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 331 
 
 munitions and supplies would be needed for 
 her own military purposes, and that would 
 involve the control of exports. Obviously 
 there can be no real and effective division of 
 labor between the Allies in these circum- 
 stances without consultation and agreement 
 as to such matters, and as to others like the 
 furnishing of supplies to neutrals. Would 
 England still insist that her allies had no 
 part in controlling those arrangements, and 
 that such control must remain a prerogative 
 of her absolute dictation secured through sea 
 power ? In short, would not the mere fact of 
 America's joining the Allies bring about just 
 those international arrangements concerning 
 the destination of American supplies, etc., 
 which in effect mean the internationalisation 
 of sea control? 
 
 What my suggestion amounted to was 
 this: that since internationalisation of sea 
 control would be inevitable during the period 
 of the war anyhow, if America became one 
 of the combatants, this country could secure 
 England's co-operation in a plan which may 
 give the nations as a whole, not merely for 
 the purposes of the present war but per- 
 manently, an instrument more effective 
 than military force, exercised as it has been 
 in the past, seems to be in restraining a 
 recalcitrant member. 
 
 England's co-operation therein would in 
 no wise weaken British sea power as a de- 
 fensive instrument, for a condition of its 
 internationalisation would be the co-opera-
 
 332 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tion of all of those who shared its control 
 in British defence. The world as a whole 
 under such an arrangement would stand for 
 British integrity as much as it would stand 
 for Belgian, and if the plan is workable at 
 all British security would gain and not lose. 
 What Professor Usher's objection comes 
 to is that England desires to retain her con- 
 trol of the seas, not as a defensive instru- 
 ment, but as one for securing special ad- 
 vantage over other nations. To which I 
 would reply that it cannot in practice be so 
 used ; and that if it could, and England does 
 so attempt to use it to the disadvantage of 
 others, she is destined one day to occupy the 
 position that Germany does to-day. Rather 
 than that, I believe that Englishmen as a 
 whole would, if the facts were clear, infinitely 
 prefer some such international arrangement 
 as the one I have indicated. 
 
 I will deal with certain other criticisms and 
 objections later, but in order to see clearly 
 just how the proposed internationalisation of 
 trade control might be applied to the problems 
 created by the war let us assume that the Allies 
 have been only so far successful as to stop the Ger- 
 man offensive ; that, in other words, it had become 
 plain, even to the Germans themselves, that they 
 could not possibly break through the Allies' lines. 
 
 On the assumption that the German offensive 
 has been stopped, here is something, at least, with
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 333 
 
 which the world could bargain. For, if, as pointed 
 out in the proposal I have cited, we can assume 
 the international control of the world's wealth 
 having gone on for some time, "there would be a 
 situation in which the channels of trade would 
 for prolonged periods have been turned away 
 from Germany, while the needs of war would 
 have engendered between Germany's enemies 
 much mutual helpfulness in the way of loans, 
 credit arrangements, etc., with their resources 
 organised and their action co-ordinated by cen- 
 tral international organisation." The Allies 
 in these circumstances would be in a position 
 to notify Germany that, whether the military 
 operations of the Allies compelled the evacua- 
 tion of Belgium or not, German property 
 throughout the world ships in port, royalties on 
 patents, all other debts due to German citizens 
 would be sequestrated and, under order of court, 
 ultimately realised and the proceeds paid into a 
 central war indemnification fund for the relief 
 of those who had suffered by Germany's 
 aggression. 
 
 They would also be in a position to notify 
 her that, failing the fulfilment of certain con- 
 ditions, the world would be closed to her after 
 the war for a period of years, that period to 
 be succeeded by one in which, though inter- 
 course might be established partially, a sur-
 
 334 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 tax would be imposed on all tolls or dues paid 
 for mail, cables, harbor charges, and so on, 
 by Germany throughout the world, such surtax 
 also to be paid into the same indemnification fund. 
 
 Such a situation does not imply an overwhelm- 
 ing victory on the part of the Allies. From the 
 moment that Germany obviously cannot break 
 through the Allied line the Allies would be in a 
 position to put such a threat into execution. 
 
 But it is, of course, mainly as a deterrent in 
 the formulation of future policies on the part of 
 would-be aggressors that some such method 
 would be valuable: when the nations come 
 to discuss the future at the end of this present 
 war. Whether such a method could play much 
 part or not as an instrument of bargaining in the 
 existing settlement it could certainly play a large 
 part in determining the future course of nations 
 likely to be bitten with military ambition. 
 
 If Germany had known, during the last decade 
 or two, when Pan-Germanism and culture- 
 spreading had taken its most dangerous form, 
 that the result of military aggression would be 
 to close the world to German influence, would 
 aggression have become a popular policy? al- 
 ways assuming for the sake of the argument that 
 Germany is the aggressor. Would not the pros- 
 pect of such a penalty on aggression reverse and 
 neutralise the motives that provoke aggression?
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 335 
 
 If the center of militarism and unrest in Europe 
 has been in Germany, certainly that unrest had its 
 origin in the German desire for national self- 
 expression, for expansion, for the imposition of 
 German influence on the world. But if it had been 
 known that the fact of using Germany's military 
 machine in defiance of the common will of Chris- 
 tendom implied the closing of the outside world to 
 her trade, her communications, the travel of her 
 people, the dissemination of her literature, the 
 distribution of her products, would not Germans, 
 inspired by dreams of German domination, have 
 been likely to consider whether German influ- 
 ence would not have a greater chance of free 
 play by peaceful methods than by military aggres- 
 sion? 
 
 Imagine the world absolutely closed to Ger- 
 many, her trade shut out, all communication 
 with her cut off, for a period of ten years! 
 (That is the case now, remember, with four- 
 fifths of Europe, and will be the case with 
 America if this country goes to war.) How 
 would German influence, whether commercial, 
 intellectual, or political, stand at the end of 
 that period ? In any case it would not be a condi- 
 tion that the Pan-Germanist or Imperialist would 
 desire as likely to advance his dreams. There 
 is at least a chance that even he would decide, on 
 the strength of evidence now available, that Ger-
 
 336 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 manism stood a greater chance of survival 
 through peaceful penetration than through mili- 
 tary means. Had he to choose between reduction 
 of armaments coupled, of course, with some 
 guarantee against attack by other states plus an 
 open field in the world at large on one hand, and 
 continued armaments and a closed world on the 
 other, even he would be likely to choose the 
 former. 
 
 As to certain obvious objections. We will first 
 take the suppositious case of American action 
 against Germany already described. 
 
 It will be said that by such action America 
 would have sacrificed her neutrality and created a 
 state of war with Germany. Of course, and if 
 Germany cared to avail herself of existing inter- 
 national law to insist on that point, it would sim- 
 plify America's action. But . it would be an 
 academic point raised by Germany. She could 
 hardly oblige America to send troops to Europe 
 to fight German troops and, just for the moment, 
 she is not in a position to send troops here. The 
 meaning which America gives to a "state of war" 
 is in the supposed circumstances mainly Amer- 
 ica's affair ; and if she cares to put the emphasis 
 of her effort upon the development of other than 
 military forces, how can Germany prevent that? 
 And why should America worry as to the precise
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 337 
 
 meaning which Germany might attach to "a state 
 of war" in the assumed circumstances? 
 
 The situation of a state like Holland would, of 
 course, be very different. But it should be noted 
 that Britain is managing to obtain by the private 
 co-operation of Dutch merchants pretty much the 
 situation which would exist if Dutch neutrality 
 had been abolished in the fashion contemplated in 
 the project under discussion. The Dutch mer- 
 chants have established a commission The 
 Netherlands Overseas Trust the scope of whose 
 operations may be gathered from the notifica- 
 tion issued from Washington 3 to the following 
 effect : 
 
 Further restrictions on commerce -to Holland are re- 
 ported to the Department of Commerce by Commercial 
 Attache Erwin W. Thompson, assigned to Berlin, but 
 temporarily handling United States commercial interests 
 at The Hague. 
 
 Mr. Thompson cables that the Overseas Trust, which 
 handles all imports into the Netherlands under an agree- 
 ment with Great Britain that none of the goods will 
 reach Germany, had decided to issue licenses only to 
 importers able to satisfy the trust that former consign- 
 ments had been consumed in Holland. Only shipments 
 consigned to the Overseas Trust are allowed to pass 
 unmolested by Great Britain. 
 
 Dutch importers will be required hereafter to dispose 
 of their goods under the immediate supervision of the 
 
 'August 13.
 
 338 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Overseas Trust, which has formed a new committee for 
 the purpose. 
 
 Mr. Thompson advises the department of an opening 
 for American coal in the Netherlands market. Hereto- 
 fore no coal from abroad has been allowed to enter 
 Holland, but agitation resulting from a shortage of fuel 
 has influenced the Overseas Trust to issue important 
 licenses for the American product. 4 
 
 4 Some of the effects of these measures are dealt with by the 
 Saturday Evening Post in the following paragraph : 
 
 "Recently rates for marine insurance on shipments in neutral 
 vessels from the United States to Scandinavian ports except 
 Stockholm were advanced to seven per cent ; while to Stockholm 
 the rate was fixed at ten per cent. These are the rates the 
 shipper paid when he declared neutral ownership and neutral 
 destination of the cargo. At the same time the rate of insurance 
 on shipments in neutral vessels from the United States to 
 Holland neutral ownership and destination being declared 
 was one and a half per cent. 
 
 "The reason for this extraordinary difference was that Dutch 
 shipping interests had combined in the Netherlands Overseas 
 Trust and given guaranties satisfactory to Great Britain that 
 no goods shipped into Holland should find their way to Germany. 
 The Overseas Trust gives licenses, under strict regulations, to 
 Dutch importers, who must prove that the goods do not reach 
 Germany. When the insurance rates were advanced Scandi- 
 navian countries had not made arrangements which assured to 
 England's satisfaction that goods billed to their ports would not 
 reach Germany. Hence, England was seizing the shipments; 
 hence, the nearly prohibitive insurance rates. 
 
 "Small neutral states are free to use the sea just in propor- 
 tion as they meet Britannia's requirements. In wartime 'free- 
 dom of the seas' is largely a figure of speech." 
 
 Measures of a much more coercive kind are 
 applied by Great Britain to control American 
 trade in such a way as to serve her military ends.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 339 
 
 They are revealed in great detail in the New 
 York " World" (which speaks of them as "Brit- 
 ain's Blockade of America") in its issues of 
 September 20-21. It summarises their nature 
 thus : 
 
 The procedure is simple. When an American industry 
 is dependent on raw material coming from any part of 
 the British Empire, that industry is compelled, at the 
 cost of a famine in raw material, to sign agreements 
 restricting its sales at home and confining its exports to 
 England or her allies in the war. In the case of cotton, 
 which is beyond British control, a blacklist of offending 
 American dealers serves the same purpose. 
 
 This is an attempt to extend the British blockade of 
 Germany along a line reaching out around the world. 
 It is an effort to "collect" on the blockade not within the 
 war area but "at the source," through a virtual invasion 
 of neutral America, thousands of miles from, the scene. 
 It is either an admission that Britain is not powerful 
 enough at sea in this war to administer an effective and 
 legitimate blockade, or it is an undertaking to prevent 
 America from gaining any advantages out of the war as 
 against England in trade with neutral markets. 
 
 The first of these alternative conclusions makes a 
 sorry comment on British naval efficiency. The second 
 reads badly at a time when British financial agents are 
 combing the country for the means with which to buy 
 goods in a market their Government is trying to hold 
 down. 
 
 These blacklisting and blackjacking efforts are con- 
 ducted through individuals and associations, many of 
 them in the United States. They are glaringly in re-
 
 340 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 straint of the domestic and foreign trade of the United 
 States. We have a law clearly applying criminally or 
 civilly to such cases. Let that law be enforced. 5 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, the American 
 State Department, far from taking any such ac- 
 tion, in a sense recognises, if not the legality, at 
 least the inevitability of measures like these. 
 Professor Clapp points out that though the 
 United States government had taken the view 
 that the stoppage of German exports to America 
 was illegal, two officials of the State Department 
 were deputed to act as representatives of Amer- 
 ican shippers in presenting to the British embassy 
 at Washington proofs that their desired imports 
 from Germany had been paid for before March. 
 As he points out, the situation would have been 
 paralleled with regard to Germany if, after pro- 
 testing against the sinking of passenger vessels 
 with Americans aboard, the American govern- 
 ment had appointed two Foreign Travel advisers 
 attached to the State Department, whose func- 
 tions would have been to inform prospective 
 travelers what ships the German Ambassador, on 
 behalf of his government, would agree not to 
 torpedo. 
 
 "For further details of the fashion in which Britain thus 
 secures discrimination against Germany by neutrals, see Pro- 
 fessor E. J. Clapp's interesting work : "The Economic Aspects 
 of the War" (Yale University Press), pp. 252-6.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 341 
 
 Now, if such a situation is possible at all under 
 international law, that law will not require much 
 stretching either in fact or in abstract conception 
 to include a general subscription to the rule which 
 would, of course, be a necessary part of any plan 
 of international sanction by economic pressure. 
 That rule, which would have to secure general 
 assent at the forthcoming European settlement if 
 any such plan as that here discussed is to become 
 part of such settlement, would be of some such 
 nature as that indicated by the following clause 
 of a suggested arrangement : 
 
 When any sanction or other measure or- 
 dered by the Court (Council) is directed to 
 be put in operation against any Constituent 
 State, it shall be an offence against the comity 
 of nations for the State against which such 
 decree, decision, injunction or execution is 
 ordered, or against which any sanction or 
 other measure is directed to be enforced, to 
 declare war or to make any naval or military 
 action, or to violate the territory or attack 
 the ships of any other State or to commit any 
 other act of aggression against any or all of 
 the States so acting under the order of the 
 court; and all the other Constituent States 
 shall be bound, and do hereby pledge them- 
 selves to make common cause with the State 
 or States so attacked. 6 
 
 'From a plan outlined by the Fabian Society in July, 1915.
 
 342 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 It will be said, of course, that a state which 
 has challenged the other constituent states by 
 refusing to submit its difference to enquiry is 
 certainly not likely to be restrained from aggres- 
 sion by the mere fact that such aggression is 
 proclaimed "an offence against the comity of 
 nations." But there is nothing now save its own 
 caution that prevents any one nation from issuing 
 declarations of war to the whole world at the 
 same time. We may assume that a nation placed 
 in a state of nonintercourse with the world would 
 not gratuitously add to the not trifling difficulties 
 of this situation by insisting that every party to it 
 must fight it by its armies and navies as well as 
 by its economic forces. 
 
 This point is important, because the first 
 natural criticism provoked by the proposal is that 
 the acts necessary to create a state of noninter- 
 course are tantamount to a state of war, which 
 calls on a nation to move its troops or its battle- 
 ships. 
 
 So, under existing precedent and conceptions, 
 it does; but with new methods and new concep- 
 tions would come new precedents and a new 
 meaning to "a state of war." If a nation cares to 
 assume that it has received a declaration of war 
 from the world, it can, of course, if it deems 
 its dignity demands it, move its troops against the 
 planet as a whole.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 343 
 
 As a matter of military fact, of course, it could 
 do nothing of the kind. It would have to choose, 
 to say the least, which part of the world it would 
 attack first; and would desire, if it could, while 
 dealing with one particular nation, to be free 
 from attack by the others. 
 
 So there is not necessarily any more likelihood 
 than at present of a minor state like, say, Spain 
 or Sweden finding itself suddenly involved in 
 military operations. We know unhappily that 
 such a risk exists now for a small state, even 
 when it is not a party to such an arrangement as 
 that which we have in mind. Belgium and Lux- 
 emburg show us that little states, obviously inno- 
 cent of any intention or possibility of aggression, 
 may now become the victims, merely by reason 
 of their position, of the military quarrels of 
 larger neighbours. 
 
 This much is certain that, confronted by an 
 organized group of nations representing in fact 
 the outside world determined to enforce a boy- 
 cott, Germany could not challenge all at once 
 and compel by military means all, at one and the 
 same time, to admit her ships and facilitate her 
 trade. She would have to begin with at most 
 one or two and concentrate her military effort on 
 them, and in order to be successful would have to 
 secure some sort of peace or understanding with 
 the others,
 
 344 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 "It is too complicated to be effective, and likely 
 to hurt us as much as our enemy." 
 
 Well, I think most men of affairs would have 
 argued that way a year ago ; but the experience of 
 the present war shows that centralised action, 
 like that of a great state, or, better still, of a 
 group of states, utilising the devices of the 
 modern world instantaneous communication 
 with all parts of it, and so on can co-ordinate 
 the immense economic forces of our commercial 
 and industrial civilisation far more effectively 
 than most of us a year ago believed to be pos- 
 sible. 
 
 In the first days of August both Great Britain 
 and Germany were confronted with the need of 
 redirecting the currents of trade and intercourse 
 of all kinds. Intercourse between two great 
 groups the British and the German Empires 
 had been suddenly severed, and very many 
 thought that the disorganisation so created 
 would produce catastrophic effects paralysing 
 both incidentally the present writer did not 
 take and never had taken that view. The 
 respective governments, however, immediately 
 used the national resources at their disposal to 
 rearrange the fabric of credit and trade. The 
 British, for instance, guaranteed commercial 
 paper and the collection of certain foreign debts. 
 It practically took over marine insurance. It
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 345 
 
 even took charge of certain industries and became 
 the distributor of certain raw materials. 
 
 Very much to the astonishment even of those 
 who had the arrangements in hand, it was found 
 that a great centralised government could effec- 
 tively exercise the necessary control over very 
 great areas, stretching, in the case of the British 
 Empire, from Calcutta to London, from Cape 
 Town to Vancouver, and from Montreal to 
 Sydney; and in a few days make such readjust- 
 ments as would enable life in these immense areas 
 to go on with relatively small disturbance. 
 
 The experiment proved two things : First, that 
 nonintercourse can in large degree be very 
 quickly established; and, second, that its effects 
 can be controlled that they can be prevented, 
 for instance, from falling unduly on one class 
 or section. 
 
 Now we may urge that this proves too much, 
 since it proves that a nation like Germany can 
 escape in large part the damage resulting from 
 being cut off from the rest of the world. That 
 point I have already dealt with. In the long run 
 she cannot stand it and maintain her position of 
 dominance. The rest of the world those enforc- 
 ing it can stand it much better, for the following 
 reasons : 
 
 Every League of Peace every combination 
 for the restraint of disorder assumes that the
 
 346 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 lawbreakers will be in a minority; that those 
 coercing outnumber those to be coerced; and, 
 though this method, like all methods of restraint 
 police and courts and prisons within the state 
 cost money involves sacrifice on the part of the 
 majority enforcing it, it is to them less burden- 
 some because shared by a greater number. 
 
 In other words, the states enforcing noninter- 
 course are still free to maintain their communi- 
 cation with one another and so to readjust their 
 social, commercial, and industrial life more easily 
 and to greater advantage, because operating over 
 a larger area, than is possible within the nar- 
 rower limits of the embargoed nation. 
 
 "Embargoes of the past have not been effec- 
 tive." 
 
 This objection generally is based on the ill 
 working of the Continental decrees of Napoleon 
 and his rivals and the futility of our own decrees 
 of "nonintercourse" during that period. 
 
 But I can hardly imagine anyone quoting that 
 with any vivid realisation of the difference, not 
 only in extent of international commerce, but in 
 the dependence of a civilised people in normal 
 times upon international intercourse. So far, of 
 course, as the American nonintercourse procla- 
 mations were concerned, they were not the act 
 of a worldwide group of powers, but of what
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 347 
 
 was at the time a feeble, distant, and undeveloped 
 outpost of civilisation. Embargoes in those days 
 were enforced by sailing ship navies and so 
 loosely applied that smuggling became at times 
 as considerable an industry as the commerce 
 which the embargoes aimed to destroy had been. 
 Every feature of the conditions of the continental 
 embargoes is as obsolete as the old smuggler who 
 formed a part of them. If, in those days, bad 
 weather or other causes completely severed the 
 new world from the old for three or four months 
 if it took, that is, that period to communicate 
 with Europe and get a reply, which it frequently 
 did there was no particular disturbance of life 
 on either continent. But if one could imagine 
 such cessation of communication to-day, immense 
 industries, involving millions of persons, would 
 be vitally affected. I have already touched upon 
 the deceptiveness of that appearance of self- 
 sufficingness which war conditions have given to 
 Germany. She could, of course, live in a physical 
 sense ; but the cost that she would pay for sever- 
 ance from civilisation the scientific and intel- 
 lectual as well as the economic which her people 
 would thoroughly well realise would be enor- 
 mous. 
 
 She can, undoubtedly, be self-sufficing as a 
 military measure for a time, a year or two it may 
 be, but a country cut off from cotton, rubber,
 
 348 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 coffee, tropical drugs, to mention but a few 
 things ; hardly able to communicate with the out- 
 side world, whose citizens cannot travel abroad, 
 is not a comfortable country, to say the least, 
 and not one that could very long keep up the 
 pretension of "world domination." The whole 
 philosophy of "world domination," world leader- 
 ship, "saviourship of civilisation," and all the 
 phrases which feed national vanity and the 
 disastrous policy it promotes, would become 
 ludicrous in the case of a people so situated. 
 From the moment that it is no longer covered 
 with the glamour of military heroism; so soon 
 as it becomes, not a matter of glorious battles, but 
 inglorious isolation from civilised intercourse, 
 the psychological roots of sentimental Imperial- 
 ism are cut away. 
 
 * * 
 
 This psychological difference from methods of 
 war is an important one. If someone with whom 
 you maintain ordinary relations quarrels with 
 you over a dispute, and, by way of enforcing 
 his view of it, strikes you, you don't argue about 
 the merits of your difference, you strike back 
 and you have no desire whatever to know his 
 view: your only desire is to hurt him. And the 
 more he proclaims his intention of showing you 
 he is the better man and parades his fighting 
 capacity generally, the more you are determined
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 349 
 
 not to be humiliated in that fashion. The merits 
 of the dispute itself soon disappear, and it is the 
 circumstances of the fight that concern both par- 
 ties. Neither has any sense of moral obloquy, 
 and the longer the fight goes on and the more 
 its origins are forgotten and the more bitter it 
 becomes, the more do both feel justified in carry- 
 ing it "to an honourable conclusion." 
 
 But the case is different, if, as the result of 
 your conduct, one of your friends simply ceases 
 business and personal relations with you; and, 
 still more, if he is joined in this attitude by the 
 community in which you live. If you have 
 honestly taken the view that your conduct has 
 been right, you are much more likely to put to 
 yourself the other man's view than in the cir- 
 cumstances when he opened negotiations with a 
 blow. And though parallels between individuals 
 and nations are generally false, there is enough 
 of validity in the analogy here to justify the hope 
 that a prolonged condition of nonintercourse, in- 
 glorious and tiresome, would not set up quite that 
 condition of patriotic blindness to any side of 
 the case other than that of one's country, that a 
 war does. 
 
 And it should be noted that the essentials of 
 this proposal are entirely in keeping with the 
 evolution of police processes in society generally.
 
 350 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Only in the very crudest forms of society are its 
 members compelled to make their contribution to 
 the enforcement of the common will by sharing 
 in the act of physical compulsion, taking actual 
 part in police work. Only on the frontier is a 
 citizen likely to be called upon to become part of 
 the sheriff's posse. The policing of a populous 
 and heterogeneous community could not be 
 efficiently done in that way. What the citizen 
 does is to make an economic contribution thereto : 
 he pays his taxes. But that is not all he does. 
 Social control is directly exercised in a thousand 
 ways, other than through direct physical force, 
 even of the police: by the honour which in our 
 daily intercourse we accord to the good man, 
 the repugnance with which we meet the bad, 
 the discomfort we create for the challenger of 
 certain conventions, the effort to make it pleasant 
 for those who make it pleasant for us, our dis- 
 trust of the dishonest, our refusal to co-operate 
 by employment of or trade with the inefficient 
 and untrustworthy all the multitudinous proc- 
 esses, moral, social, economic, by which we compel 
 conformation to certain definite rules and stan- 
 dards of conduct. 
 
 It is difficult to bring home clearly a vision of 
 how an analogous process would operate interna- 
 tionally, because mankind has never used this 
 instrument of exclusion in just this way. Two
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 351 
 
 countries or groups of countries go to war; the 
 armies of one are destroyed; and a year after 
 peace is made they trade with one another and 
 both with the world at large just as before. 
 Trade between France and Germany was multi- 
 plied by three in the interval between the wars 
 of 1870 and 1914. But, with efficient organ- 
 isation, the most telling elements of boycott are 
 those against which no military force can pre- 
 vail. Here is a form of defence against a common 
 enemy in which every man, woman, or child of 
 every country that feels itself threatened can co- 
 operate. Even bayonets cannot compel a world 
 to drink German beer, or buy German goods, or 
 read German books, or speak the German tongue, 
 or understand German philosophers. 
 
 Germany herself has, during forty years in the 
 case of Alsace, and longer in the case of Poland, 
 employed ruthlessly all the means that unques- 
 tioned power placed in her hands, and tried to 
 Germanise those two provinces; and, though she 
 was dealing with peoples without means of mili- 
 tary resistance and with but rudimentary organ- 
 isation of the non-military means, her efforts, by 
 her own admission, have completely failed. 
 
 But, nevertheless, Poland has been invaded 
 and more Polish territory taken? Yes, because 
 only now is the futility of these annexations be- 
 ginning to appear. Much German opinion, even
 
 352 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 in this time of war, is against annexation of non- 
 German territory and recognises its danger. But 
 the point is that these annexations have hereto- 
 fore carried no penalty in so far as German ex- 
 pansion in the rest of the world is concerned. 
 If, forty-four years since, the German Empire 
 had known that as the price of the annexation 
 of Alsace-Lorraine, it would face a costly ex- 
 clusion from the markets of Europe and America, 
 would not the counsellors who opposed that 
 annexation have been very greatly strengthened; 
 and would it have occurred? 
 
 It is the elusiveness of non-military resist- 
 ance which would give it its strength in the 
 modern world. Even if one could imagine a 
 Germany breaking down a world's embargo in 
 some way forcing the entrance of her ships into 
 foreign harbours that would not give customers 
 to German trade if the resisting country had 
 determined not to buy German goods. Every 
 housewife boycotting German hardware and 
 every child German toys would be a soldier in the 
 defence of his or her country; and if all German 
 power and efficiency have not sufficed to break 
 down the resistance to Germanisation of a rela- 
 tively small number of Polish peasants, how 
 could it accomplish the immensely more difficult 
 task of overcoming the American woman and the 
 American child ?
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 353 
 
 It is not generally realised, perhaps, how the 
 outstanding features of our industrial civilisa- 
 tion give into the hands of a determined popula- 
 tion means of non-military resistance not pos- 
 sessed in former times. Instantaneous intercom- 
 munication over wide areas would render a unity 
 of action of this kind possible, which was not 
 possible even a century since. The permanent 
 need of intercommunication between nations is 
 greater than it was; the interdependence is far 
 more vital. In the old days a nation could live 
 within itself in some degree. In our day it cannot. 
 
 Perhaps the one nation that could come nearest 
 to it would be our own. The United States is 
 indeed the one country of the world against which 
 it would be most difficult to employ effectively 
 the method of boycott. That fact is, of course, 
 a considerable disadvantage and tells somewhat 
 against the value of the method. On the other 
 hand, however, the vastness of the resources and 
 the weight of the economic forces that give us 
 this immunity also give us a strong position for 
 initiating this plan, for organising it and render- 
 ing it effective. 
 
 Indeed, so far as it is possible to judge, there 
 is no great scepticism on the part of American 
 business men as to the practicability of the plan 
 under discussion. In the Convention of the
 
 354 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 Chamber of Commerce of the United States held 
 last February in Washington, Mr. Herbert S. 
 Houston presented a resolution urging that "the 
 economic pressure of the world's commerce was 
 the most effective possible safeguard of the 
 world's peace and that its application should be 
 provided for as a penalty in future Hague Con- 
 ventions." In supporting his resolution, Mr. 
 Houston said: 
 
 Hague Conferences have sought earnestly for penal- 
 ties that would save their conventions from being treated 
 as mere "bits of paper." Penalties that every nation 
 would be bound to respect could be enforced through 
 economic pressure. The loss in trade would be small 
 or great in proportion to the amount and duration of 
 the pressure ; but it would be at most only an infinitesimal 
 fraction of the loss caused by war. 
 
 This pressure would not require an international police 
 force to make it effective. Each nation signatory to a 
 Hague Convention that some nation had broken could 
 apply it against that nation. Of course, the fact of 
 infraction would have to be established, but that would 
 be equally necessary if an international police force were 
 to be used. The point urged is that economic pressure 
 is a powerful and peaceful way to insure peace, while 
 an international police force is likely to be a warlike 
 way to provoke war. Probably such a force could be 
 employed as a constabulary for the Hague Conference, 
 under well defined limitations, but its use would be 
 beset with endless difficulties and enormous and per- 
 petual expense. Economic pressure, on the other hand, 
 could be put in operation from within by each nation
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 355 
 
 without expense and its power would be as sure and 
 steady and irresistible as gravity. 
 
 Mr. Edward A. Filene, the well-known Boston 
 merchant, vice-president of the International 
 Congress of Chambers of Commerce, is another 
 prominent business man who has identified him- 
 self with the support of the general plan of 
 economic pressure. Speaking at Philadelphia, at 
 the meeting which was organised there under the 
 presidency of Mr. Taft (June 17, 1915), Mr. 
 Filene emphasised many of the considerations 
 urged here. He said : 
 
 America has it within her power to organise forces 
 which are greater, perhaps, than battleships and armies. 
 Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting 
 that the world can do without arms. I do not think we 
 can, any more than we can do without the policeman. 
 But, just as within the State there are many things we 
 use besides the policeman, and before we use the police- 
 man, for the enforcement of the law or the execution of 
 the judgments of the courts, so there are forces that we 
 can use before we employ our armies and our navies. 
 These forces can be summarised in the term "Economic 
 Pressure," by which I mean the commercial and financial 
 boycott of any nation which goes to war without sub- 
 mitting its dispute to judgment or to inquiry, and that 
 boycott could be of a progressive severity. In the first, 
 and what would probably be usually a sufficiently effec- 
 tive stage, the nations forming a league for international 
 law and order would refuse to buy goods from or sell 
 goods to the offending nation. If its offense, however,
 
 356 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 were a very grievous one, and continued despite the first 
 measures, so that greater pressure were needed, the 
 nations of the League would practically sever all inter- 
 course with it and refuse to enter into financial or com- 
 mercial transactions, refuse to receive or send its mail, or 
 to clear its ships. And then only, finally, if such measures 
 were ineffective, would military force be resorted to. But 
 my plea is that, in the first instance, economic force is 
 clearly indicated and that military force should be resorted 
 to only if economic pressure should prove ineffective. It 
 is the deterrent effect of organised nonintercourse which 
 would make war less likely, since it would be a terrible 
 penalty to incur, and one more difficult, in a sense, to 
 fight against than military measures. Furthermore, its 
 systematic organisation would tend to make any subse- 
 quent military action by the League more effective. 
 Many States that, for various reasons, might not be able 
 to co-operate with military force, can co-operate with 
 their economic force, and so render the action against 
 the offending State more effective, and that, in the end, 
 would be more humane." 
 
 Mr. Filene's support is suggestive owing to 
 the fact that he has in the past carried through 
 very important measures of international com- 
 mercial organisation, notably in connection with 
 the International Chamber of Commerce. It is 
 understood that a very influential group in the 
 United States Chamber of Commerce is now 
 at work upon a report on the subject and may 
 submit a referendum upon it to the Chambers of 
 the country.
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 357 
 
 I do not imagine, by the way, that "without 
 expense" Mr. Houston intends to convey the idea 
 that non-intercourse would be costless to the 
 nations enforcing it. It would not. It would be 
 costly, as is every form of penalty to those inflict- 
 ing as well as to those upon whom it is inflicted. 
 But that does not condemn it. 
 
 Some of the gravest dangers of the proposed 
 plan have not been touched upon by its critics so 
 far as I know: certainly not by my critics. Its 
 outstanding defect is that the strong inter- 
 national currents which division of trade and 
 labour, irrespective of frontiers, have in the last 
 few generations set up would be deliberately 
 checked. The activities of men, which have in 
 the recent past so largely disregarded frontiers, 
 would be so organised as to take very considerable 
 regard of frontiers. Nations will tend to become 
 under such an arrangement what they have not 
 been of late: economic, social and moral units. 
 There might result between nations a sort of 
 competition for self-sufficingness which, ill 
 directed, might conceivably end in buttressing 
 that immoral nationalism which was one of the 
 causes of the war. 
 
 But to accept present evils because a possible 
 remedy may be ill-used is to condemn us to help-
 
 358 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 lessness. If a remedy presents itself it is our 
 business to see that it is not ill-used. 
 
 Moreover and this reason is the decisive one 
 all the risk and evil of distorted nationalism, of 
 swamping the human conscience in the national 
 corporation, which like other corporations has no 
 conscience, is still more inherent in the militarisa- 
 tion of the nations, in military preparation and 
 efficiency. 
 
 Every new proposal is subjected to a standard 
 of judgment which it is never thought of apply- 
 ing to old methods. There are, of course, in 
 the project under discussion, obvious defects, 
 difficulties, and dangers. But to justify its trial 
 or adoption it is not necessary to controvert that ; 
 all that is necessary is to show that those dis- 
 advantages are, on the whole, less than those 
 attaching to any possible alternative method. 
 When, therefore, it is objected that the proposal 
 has such and such defects, it is necessary to ask 
 whether military force war in the ordinary 
 sense has not those defects in still greater 
 degree. 
 
 The plan here outlined will not work perfectly ; 
 it will be less imperfect than the present means 
 just as imperfect as the means we employ 
 within the state for punishing crime or compel- 
 ling observance of necessary rules. It will be 
 expensive of employment, just as the maintenance
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 359 
 
 of law courts and police and prisons is expensive. 
 It will hurt innocent parties, just as when we 
 send a man to the penitentiary we punish his 
 wife and family far more severely, probably, than 
 we do the culprit. 
 
 All I claim for this extension of the meaning 
 of war is that the methods which the circum- 
 stances of the modern world have made possible 
 will be much more effective than merely military 
 coercion, because in the last resort history proves 
 such coercion in certain contingencies notably 
 such contingencies as those that face America 
 now and will face Christendom at the end of the 
 war hardly to be effective at all. 
 
 Above all, will the method here suggested 
 stand out from purely military methods as tend- 
 ing by its use to undermine at least some of the 
 motives moral and material which create the 
 danger of military ambition and aggression. The 
 older and purely military method does not so 
 undermine those motives and impulses; its em- 
 ployment tends to develop them, to spread the 
 very disease which it is its object to cure. Mili- 
 tary conquest of a military aggressor generally 
 ends merely by transferring the danger from one 
 area to another. 
 
 What are the steps for America to take? 
 
 The definite one that has here been suggested 
 is contingent upon the rupture of Diplomatic
 
 360 THE WORLD'S HIGHWAY 
 
 relations with Germany. If that is avoided the 
 natural ground for international action by Amer- 
 ica at the settlement, or earlier, is in the questions 
 arising out of sea law. In that, as in certain other 
 regards, America stands at this juncture of inter- 
 national affairs as the natural and most powerful 
 exponent of neutral interest. She should, there- 
 fore, secure practical agreement not necessarily 
 by formal conference between herself, the South 
 American states, and possibly also the neutral 
 states of Europe, as to the international law for 
 which they would all stand in such matters as 
 the use of the sea. On the basis of this, America 
 might then devise with them an agreement as 
 to their economic relations with the rest of the 
 world in certain situations: an understanding 
 covering not only such things as the furnishing 
 of supplies to European or Asiatic combatants in 
 wartime, but also covering certain peace con- 
 tingencies as well. 
 
 Presenting thus a solid front to the actual com- 
 batants, the neutrals could certainly secure a 
 place at the settlement when it comes to discuss- 
 ing those matters that are now subjects of differ- 
 ence between this country and Germany and 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Obviously the combatants will need the neutrals 
 after the war ; and if America went into the con- 
 ference as the central figure of a combination
 
 NON-MILITARY COERCION 361 
 
 composed of the neutral states, she could in large 
 measure dominate the situation, so far as future 
 international law is concerned, and place the 
 international relations of the future on a very 
 different foundation, by leading in the organisa- 
 tion and application of those forces I have dealt 
 with here. 
 
 All this, of course, calls for a little imaginative- 
 ness and inventiveness; but America has never 
 lacked those qualities in other spheres. Will she 
 show them in this new field that she will shortly 
 be obliged to enter the field of international 
 politics? Or will she be content with the old 
 futilities of the older world ?
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 PRINTKDINU.S.A.
 
 JfKMHBRNII