f:)rnia 
 nal
 
 SAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 IN WAR TIME
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 IN WAR TIME 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES BRYCE (VISCOUNT BRYCE) 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1918
 
 I ^. re I LK (VIAYtK j 
 
 COPYRIGHT
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Dok contains three essays, written in the first two 
 f the war, to explain to neutral nations the aims, 
 3tify the action, of Great Britain. They are 
 d by three Addresses of a non-political character, 
 ^ of war in general, its causes and some of its 
 lena, its social effects, its relation to human 
 s. The last two essays now appear in print for 
 t time. They have been written very recently, 
 view to that close of the war which seems to be 
 approaching. One of them examines the history 
 meaning of what is called the Principle of Nation- 
 nd sets forth briefly the questions requiring the 
 'ion of that principle which will arise when a 
 f peace has to be made, and when the demands of 
 , or parts of peoples, dissatisfied with their present 
 lave to be met. The eighth and last chapter deals 
 sideaorplanofaLeagueof Nations to enforce peace 
 ject on which the author has had the advantage since 
 t months of the war of a constant correspondence 
 merican friends. It is intended not so much to 
 :e the formation of such a League — for that seems 
 now finding general acceptance — as to set out 
 what the functions of such a League might be, 
 rgans it would need for the discharge of those 
 ns, what objections have been taken to it, what
 
 vi ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 are the answers to such objections, and what are the 
 conditions of our time which encourage hopes for its 
 success. 
 
 There is, in the first three essays, a certain amount 
 of repetition, which may, it is hoped, be to some extent 
 excused on the ground that as these essays present what 
 is practically the same subject from different points of 
 view, it was sometimes necessary to state the same facts 
 in different relations. The facts themselves are so strange, 
 and yet in the swift passage of events so apt to be im- 
 perfectly remembered, that they deserve to be re-stated. 
 
 The whole volume was in print before the startling 
 events of October had begun to bring the close of the war 
 into sight. The earlier essays are left almost unchanged, 
 because they were written to convey to foreign readers 
 a concise and so far as possible unbiassed account of the 
 motives and temper, the views and moral judgments 
 with which Britain was prosecuting the war at a time 
 when its issue, though certain to ourselves, appeared 
 doubtful to many foreign observers. It seems better to 
 leave them to speak as from the days when Englishmen 
 were bewildered by the doctrines as well as the behaviour 
 of their enemies, and were seeking explanations of what 
 was so new to their experience. The clouds are now 
 beginning to lift. Already we understand some features 
 of the conduct and mental attitude of the enemy better 
 than we did three or four years ago. 
 
 Happily that which we most desired has come to 
 pass. This is a War of Principles, and the course of 
 events has vindicated the principles of morality and 
 humanity that were at stake. 
 
 October \z, 191 8.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Neutral Nations and the War . . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Attitude of Great Britain in the Present War . 17 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The War State : its Mind and its Methods . . 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 War and Human Progress . . . . .65 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Presidential Address delivered to the British Academy, 
 
 June 30, 191 5 . . . . . .92 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Presidential Address delivered to the British Academy, 
 
 July 14., 191 6 . . . . . .106 
 
 vii
 
 viii ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PACK 
 
 The Principle of Nationality and its Applications . 126 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A League of Nations to preserve Peace . . .158 
 
 INDEX . . . . . . .189
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 / Prefatory Note ^ written in October 191 8 
 
 This article, written and published in the autumn of 1 9 14, 
 is now (subject to a few merely verbal changes) reprinted 
 in its original form, in order that it may show what was 
 the impression produced upon Englishmen by the events 
 of the first two months of war. The audacious avowal 
 by the German Government of the doctrine that military 
 necessity warrants breaches of international good faith and 
 common right, and the declarations which were then first 
 brought to the notice of the British people, proceeding 
 from eminent German authorities, that the State stand!s 
 above all morality and all human feeling, and may adopt 
 any war methods conducive to success, were accompanied 
 by an unprovoked invasion of Belgium and by the savage 
 treatment of its non-combatant inhabitants. That in- 
 vasion and the attempts to justify it struck us with an 
 amazement it is well to recall, for now, after four years 
 of war, no action, however outrageous, on the part 
 of the enemy Powers surprises us. It seems proper, 
 therefore, to let what was written in 19 14 stand un- 
 changed as some evidence of what we then felt, and of 
 our unwillingness to believe that the pernicious theory 
 proclaimed by German writers, and the practice which 
 went almost beyond the theory, could be approved by 
 the German people, whom some of us had known in 
 earlier years as a humane and kindly people, a people 
 whose literature we had admired, and for whose services 
 to learning and science we were grateful. 
 
 I B
 
 2 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 But if these pages were to be now rewritten, I should 
 be bound to write them differently, and should have to 
 recognize that the view such Englishmen then took 
 was more indulgent than it could have been if we had 
 known and understood the change which had passed 
 upon the German mind since 1870. It is difficult now 
 to cling to the hope expressed in 19 14 that the principles 
 avowed by the German Government and put in practice 
 by its High Command were held by only a small minority 
 of the nation. 
 
 Allowance must doubtless be made in judging the 
 attitude of the German people, not only for the excitement 
 evoked by a tremendous crisis, which made any criticism 
 of their rulers seem unpatriotic, and for the fear of Russia 
 which then possessed them, but also for the mendacity 
 with which the Government, through its pliant tool the 
 German press, have tricked and misled their credulous 
 and submissive subjects. Public opinion is, and has 
 long been, manufactured by the Government, partly 
 through the newspapers, partly owing to the deference 
 with which the people receive every official declaration. 
 A friend ^ who lived in Germany till 1913, and knows the 
 country thoroughly, writes to me : " German opinion is 
 very ill-educated and very ill-informed politically. The 
 pressure on public and private opinion is enormous : a 
 German needs to be a superman if he would stand out 
 boldly for his convictions ; and supermen, if they exist, 
 are rare." 
 
 Ever since the war began the people have been fed up 
 with falsehoods. The aims and motives of Britain and 
 the United States have been persistently misrepresented. 
 Baseless calumnies have been propagated regarding the 
 conduct of British soldiers and sailors, while the offences 
 committed on sea and land, by order of the German High 
 Command, have been either concealed or covered up by 
 a tissue of deceits. Concealed, also, were the massacres 
 of the Eastern Christians perpetrated by those " trusty 
 Turkish Allies " whom the German Government took to 
 
 ^ Mr. W. Harbutt Dawson, whose valuable books on Germany are well known.
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 3 
 
 its bosom, and when German missionaries sought to 
 pubHsh the facts they were promptly silenced. A strict 
 and stern censorship has repressed every attempt to 
 bring out the facts, has forbidden criticism, and stifled 
 the voice of truth. Deeds at which the world grew pale 
 are perhaps hardly more known to the German peasant or 
 artisan than to the black soldiers of Germany in Africa. 
 
 Yet, after every allowance has been made, it remains 
 a marvel that in a nation like Germany so few of the 
 leaders, in learning, science, education, and, above all, 
 in religion, should have been found bold enough to 
 condemn, and so many ready to defend, crimes which 
 some at least among them must have known, and which 
 would have shocked the generations of Kant and Goethe 
 and Schiller, of Savigny and Schleiermacher and Neander. 
 What has become of the nation's conscience ? 
 
 The explanation sometimes given that the university 
 teachers and the clergy of the Churches recognized by 
 the State are in bondage to the Government does not 
 suffice. There must have been some other cause at 
 work to produce this callousness. Patriotism itself 
 must have been perverted by false teachings and bad 
 examples. I have- tried in two later chapters (Essay III. 
 and Essay VI.) to indicate some of the influences which 
 may have engendered this extravagant nationalism and 
 sown the seeds of this moral decline which make the new 
 Germany unlike the old. 
 
 Neutral Nations and the War 
 
 The present war has had some unexpected conse- 
 quences. It has called the attention of the world outside 
 Germany to certain amazing doctrines proclaimed there, 
 which strike at the root of all international morality, as 
 well as of all international law, and which threaten a 
 return to the primitive savagery when every tribe was 
 wont to plunder and massacre its neighbours. 
 
 These doctrines may be found set forth in the widely 
 circulated book of General von Bernhardi, entitled
 
 4 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Germany and the Next War^ published in 1911, and 
 professing to be mainly based on the teachings of the 
 famous professor of history, Heinrich von Treitschke. 
 
 To readers in other countries, and, I trust, to most 
 readers in Germany also, these doctrines will appear to 
 be an outburst of militarism run mad, the product of a 
 brain intoxicated by the love of war and by superheated 
 national self-consciousness. 
 
 They would have deserved little notice, much less 
 refutation, but for one deplorable fact, viz. that action 
 has recently been taken by the Government of a great 
 nation (though, as we venture to hope, without the 
 approval of that nation) which is consonant with them, 
 and seems to imply a belief in their soundness. 
 
 This fact is the conduct of the German Imperial 
 Government, in violating the neutrality of Belgium, 
 which Prussia, as well as Great Britain and France, 
 had solemnly guaranteed by a treaty (made in 1839 
 and renewed in 1870); in invading Belgium when 
 she refused to allow her armies to pass through to attack 
 France, although France, the other belligerent, had 
 solemnly undertaken not to enter Belgium ; and in treat- 
 ing the Belgian cities and people, against whom she had 
 no cause of quarrel, with a harshness unprecedented in 
 modern European warfare. 
 
 What are these doctrines } I do not for a moment 
 attribute them to the learned class in Germany, 
 whom I respect, recognizing their immense services 
 to science and learning ; nor to the bulk of the 
 civil administration, a body whose capacity and up- 
 rightness are known to all the world ; and least of 
 all to the German people generally. That the latter 
 hold no such views appears from General Bernhardi's 
 own words, for he repeatedly complains of, and deplores 
 the pacific tendencies of, his fellow-countrymen.^ 
 
 Nevertheless, the fact that the action referred to, 
 which these doctrines seem to have prompted, and 
 
 ^ See pp. 10-14 of English translation, and note the phrase, " Aspirations for peace 
 seem to poison the soul of the German people."
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 5 
 
 which cannot be defended except by them, has been 
 actually taken, and has thus brought into this war Great 
 Britain, whose interests and feelings made her desire 
 peace, renders it proper to call attention to them and to 
 all that they involve. 
 
 I have certainly no prejudice in the matter, for I 
 have been one of those who for many years laboured to 
 promote good relations between Germans and English- 
 men, peoples that ought to be friends, and that never 
 before had been enemies, and I had hoped and believed 
 till the beginning of August 19 14 that there would be no 
 war, because Belgian neutrality would be respected. 
 
 Nor was it only for the sake of Britain and Germany 
 that the English friends of peace sought to maintain 
 good feeling. We had hoped, as some leading German 
 statesmen had hoped, that a friendliness with Germany 
 might enable Britain, with the co-operation of the United 
 States (our closest friends), to mitigate the long antagon- 
 ism of Germany and of France, with whom we were 
 already on good terms, and to so improve their relations 
 as to secure the general peace of Europe. 
 
 Into the causes which frustrated these efforts and 
 so suddenly brought on this war I will not enter. Many 
 others have dealt with them.^ Moreover, the facts, at 
 least as we in England see and believe them, and as the 
 documents seem to prove them to be, appear not to be 
 known to the German people, and the motives of the 
 chief actors have not yet been fully ascertained. 
 
 One thing, however, I can confidently declare. It 
 was neither commercial rivalry nor jealousy of German 
 power that brought Britain into the field. Nor was there 
 any enmity in the British people for Germany, nor any 
 wish to break German power. Even now that war has 
 broken out, we do not hate the German people. The 
 leading political thinkers and historians of England had 
 
 ^ [A clear and strong light has recently been thrown upon the circumstances preceding 
 the outbreak of the war by the recently published memorandum of Prince Lichnowsky, 
 who was then German Ambassador in London. They fully vindicate the motives 
 and action in those critical days of Sir Edward Grey, who was then Foreign Secretary. 
 See Chapter ii., note. — Oct. 19 1 8.]
 
 6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 given hearty sympathy to the efforts made by the German 
 people (from 1815 to 1866 and 1870) to attain poHtical 
 unity, as they had sympathized with the parallel efforts of 
 the Italians. 
 
 The two peoples, German and British, were of kindred 
 race, and linked by many ties. In both countries there 
 were doubtless some persons who desired war, and whose 
 writings, apparently designed to provoke it, did much 
 to misrepresent the general national sentiment. But 
 these persons were, as I believe, a small minority in both 
 countries. 
 
 So far as Britain was concerned, it was the invasion 
 of Belgium that arrested all efforts to avert war, and 
 made even the best friends of peace join in holding that 
 the duty of fulfilling their treaty obligations to a weak 
 State was paramount to every other consideration. 
 
 I return to the doctrines set forth by General von 
 Bernhardi, and apparently accepted by the military 
 caste to which he belongs. Briefly summed up, they 
 are as follows. His own words are used, except when 
 it becomes necessary to abridge a lengthened argument : 
 
 War is in itself a good thing. " It is a biological 
 necessity of the first importance " (p. 18). 
 
 " The inevitableness, the idealism, the blessings of 
 war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of develop- 
 ment must be repeatedly emphasized " (p. 37). 
 
 " War is the greatest factor in the furtherance of 
 culture and power." 
 
 " Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detri- 
 mental as soon as they influence politics " (p. 28). 
 
 " Fortunately these efforts can never attain their 
 ultimate objects in a world bristling with arms, where 
 a healthy egotism still directs the policy of most countries. 
 ' God will see to it,' says Treitschke, ' that war always 
 recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race ' " (p. 2>^). 
 
 " Efforts directed towards the abolition of war are 
 not only foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be 
 stigmatized as unworthy of the human race " (p. 34). 
 
 Courts of arbitration are pernicious delusions. ** The
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 7 
 
 whole idea represents a presumptuous encroachment on 
 the natural laws of development which can only lead to 
 the most disastrous consequences for humanity generally " 
 
 (p. 34). 
 
 " The maintenance of peace never can be or may 
 
 be the goal of a policy " (p. 25). 
 
 " Efforts for peace would, if they attained their goal, 
 
 lead to general degeneration, as happens everywhere in 
 
 Nature, where the struggle for existence is eliminated " 
 
 (P- 35)' 
 
 Huge armaments are in themselves desirable. 
 
 '* They are the most necessary precondition of our 
 
 national health " (p. 11). 
 
 *' The end all and be all of a State is Power, and he 
 who is not man enough to look this truth in the face 
 should not meddle with politics" (quoted from Treitschke, 
 Politik) (p. 45). 
 
 " The State's highest moral duty is to increase its 
 power " (pp. 45-6). 
 
 " The State is justified in making conquests when- 
 ever its own advantage seems to require additional 
 territory " (p. 46). 
 
 " Self-preservation is the State's highest ideal," and 
 justifies whatever action it may take, if that action be 
 conducive to the end. 
 
 The State is the sole judge of the morality of its 
 own action. It is, in fact, above morality, or, in other 
 words. Whatever is necessary is moral. 
 
 " Recognized rights (i.e. treaty rights) are never 
 absolute rights ; they are of human origin, and therefore 
 imperfect and variable. There are conditions in which 
 they do not correspond to the actual truth of things ; 
 in this case the infringement of the right appears morally 
 justified " (p. 49). In fact, the State is a law to itself. 
 
 " Every sovereign State has the undoubted right to 
 declare war at its pleasure, and is consequently entitled 
 to repudiate its treaties " (Treitschke). 
 
 " Weak nations have not the same right to live as 
 the powerful and vigorous nation " (p. 34).
 
 8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 " Any action in favour of collective humanity outside 
 the limits of the State and nationality is impossible " 
 (p. 25). 
 
 These are startling propositions, though propounded 
 as practically axiomatic. They are not new, for twenty- 
 two centuries ago the sophist Thrasymachus in Plato's 
 Republic argued (Socrates refuting him) that Justice is 
 nothing more than the advantage of the Stronger, i,e. 
 Might is Right.i 
 
 The most startling among them is the denial that 
 there are any duties owed by the State to Humanity, 
 except that of imposing its own superior civilization 
 upon as large a part of humanity as possible, and the 
 denial of the duty of observing treaties. Treaties are 
 only so much paper. ^ 
 
 To modern German writers the State is a much more 
 tremendous entity than it is to Englishmen or Americans. 
 It is a supreme power with a sort of mystic sanctity, a 
 power conceived of, as it were, self-created, a force 
 altogether distinct from, and superior to, the persons who 
 compose it. 
 
 But a State is, after all, only so many individuals 
 organized under a Government. It is no wiser, no 
 more righteous than the human beings of whom it 
 consists, and whom it sets up to govern it. 
 
 Has the State, then, no morality, no responsibility } 
 
 If it is right for persons united as citizens into a 
 State to rob and murder for. their collective advantage 
 by their collective power, why should it be wicked for 
 the citizens as individuals to do so } Does their moral 
 responsibility cease when and because they act together "^ 
 Most legal systems hold that there are acts which one 
 man may lawfully do which become unlawful if done 
 by a number of men conspiring together. But now it 
 
 ^ Plato lays down that the end for which a State exists is Justice. 
 
 ^ There are, of course, cases in which a treaty may become obsolete by a complete 
 change in the conditions under which it was made, as the treaties of Vienna of 1815 
 had become obsolete sixty years afterwards. But the case of Belgium was not such a 
 case, nor can so-called " military necessity " ever justify violation. The Hague Con- 
 vention of 1907 expressly provides that belligerents must respect neutral territory.
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 9 
 
 would seem that what would be a crime in persons as 
 individuals is high policy for those persons united in a 
 State.i 
 
 Is there no such thing as a common humanity ? 
 Are there no duties owed to it ? Is there none of that 
 " decent respect to the opinion of mankind " which the 
 framers of the Declaration of Independence recognized ; 
 no sense that even the greatest States are amenable to 
 the sentiment of the civilized world ? 
 
 Let us see how these doctrines affect the smaller 
 and weaker States which have hitherto lived in com- 
 parative security beside the Great Powers. 
 
 They will be absolutely at the mercy of the stronger. 
 Even if protected by treaties guaranteeing their neutrality 
 and independence they will not be safe, for treaty obliga- 
 tions are worthless " when they do not correspond to 
 facts," i.e. when the strong Power finds that they stand 
 in its way. Its interests are paramount. 
 
 If a State has valuable minerals, as Sweden has iron, 
 and Belgium coal, and Rumania oil, or if it has abundance 
 of water-power, like Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, 
 or if it holds the mouth of a navigable river the upper 
 course of which belongs to another nation, the great 
 State may conquer and annex that small State as soon as 
 it finds that it needs the minerals, or the water-power, 
 or the river mouth. 
 
 It has the Power, and Power gives Right. The 
 interests, the sentiments, the patriotism and love of 
 independence of the small people go for nothing. 
 
 Civilization has turned back upon itself, culture is 
 to expand its domain by barbaric force. Governments 
 derive their authority, not from the consent of the 
 governed, but from the weapons of the conqueror. 
 
 Law and morality between nations have vanished. 
 
 ^ General Bernhardt (following Treitschke) refers approvingly to Machiavelli as 
 " the first who declared that the keynote of every policy was the advancement of power." 
 The Florentine, however, was not the preacher of doctrines with which he sought, like 
 the General, to edify his contemporaries. He merely took his Italian world as he saw 
 it. He did not attempt to buttress his maxims by false philosophy, false history, and 
 false science.
 
 lo ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Herodotus tells us that the Scythians worshipped as 
 their God a naked sword. That is the deity to be 
 installed in the place once held by the God of Christi- 
 anity, the God of righteousness and mercy. 
 
 States, mostly despotic States, have sometimes applied 
 parts of this system of doctrine, but none has proclaimed 
 it. The Romans, conquerors of the world, were not a 
 scrupulous people, but even they stopped short of these 
 principles. Certainly they never set them up as an ideal. 
 Neither did those magnificent Saxon and Swabian 
 Emperors of the Middle Ages whose fame General von 
 Bernhardi is fond of recalling. They did not enter 
 Italy as conquerors, claiming her by the right of the 
 strongest. They came on the faith of a legal title, which, 
 however fantastic it may seem to us to-day, the Italians 
 themselves — and, indeed, the whole of Latin Christen- 
 dom — admitted. Dante, the greatest and most patriotic 
 of Italians, welcomed the Germanic Emperor Henry 
 the Seventh into Italy, and wrote a famous book to 
 prove his claims, vindicating them on the ground that he, 
 as the heir of Rome, stood for Law and Right and Peace. 
 The noblest title which those Emperors chose to bear 
 was that of Imperator Pacificus, bestowed upon the first 
 of them when he was crowned in Rome in a.d. 800. In 
 the Middle Ages, when men were always fighting, they 
 appreciated the blessings of war much less than does 
 General Bernhardi, and they valued peace, not war, as 
 a means to civilization and culture. They had not learnt 
 in the school of Treitschke that peace means decadence 
 and war is the true civilizing influence. 
 
 The doctrines above stated are (as I have tried to 
 point out) well calculated to alarm the small States 
 which prize their liberty and their individuality, and 
 have been thriving under the safeguard of treaties. 
 But there are also other considerations affecting those 
 States which ought to appeal to men in all countries, to 
 strong nations as well as weak nations. 
 
 The small States, whose absorption is now threatened, 
 have been potent and useful — perhaps the most potent
 
 NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR ii 
 
 and useful — factors in the advance of civilization. It is 
 in them and by them that most of what is precious in 
 religion, in philosophy, in literature, in science, and in 
 art has been produced. 
 
 The first great thoughts that brought man into a 
 true relation with God came from a tiny people, in- 
 habiting a country smaller than Denmark. The re- 
 ligions of mighty Babylon and populous Egypt have 
 vanished : the religion of Israel remains in its earlier 
 as well as in that later form which has overspread the 
 world. 
 
 The Greeks were a small people, not united in one 
 great State, but scattered over coasts and among hills 
 in petty city communities, each with its own life, slender 
 in numbers, but eager, versatile, intense. They gave 
 us the richest, the most varied, and the most stimulating 
 of all literatures. 
 
 When poetry and art reappeared, after the long 
 night of the Dark Ages, their most splendid blossoms 
 flowered in the small republics of Italy. 
 
 In modern Europe what do we not owe to little 
 Switzerland, lighting the torch of freedom 600 years 
 ago, and keeping it alight through all the long centuries 
 when despotic monarchies held the rest of the European 
 Continent ; and what to free Holland, with her great 
 men of learning and her painters surpassing those of all 
 other countries save Italy ? 
 
 So the small Scandinavian nations have given to the 
 world famous men of science, from Linnaeus downwards, 
 poets like Tegner and Bjornson, scholars like Madvig, 
 dauntless explorers like Fridtjof Nansen. England had, 
 in the age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton, a popula- 
 tion little larger than that of Bulgaria to-day. The 
 United States, in the days of Washington and Franklin 
 and Jefferson and Hamilton and Marshall, counted 
 fewer inhabitants than Denmark or Greece. 
 
 In the two most brilliant generations of German 
 literature and thought, the age of Kant and Lessing 
 and Goethe, of Hegel and Beethoven and Schiller and
 
 12 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Fichte, there was no real German State at all, but a 
 congeries of principalities and free cities, independent 
 centres of intellectual life, in which letters and science 
 produced a richer crop than the two succeeding genera- 
 tions have raised, just as Britain, also, with eight times 
 the population of the year 1 600, has had no more Shake- 
 speares or Miltons. 
 
 No notion is more palpably contradicted by history 
 than that relied on by the school to which General 
 Bernhardi belongs, that " culture " — literary, scientific, 
 and artistic — flourishes best in great military States. 
 The decay of art and literature in the Roman World 
 began just when Rome's military power had made that 
 world one great and ordered State. The opposite view 
 would be much nearer the truth ; though one must 
 admit that no general theory regarding the relations of 
 art and letters to Governments and political conditions 
 has ever yet been proved to be sound. ^ 
 
 The world is already too uniform, and is becoming 
 more uniform every day. A few leading languages, a 
 few forms of civilization, a few types of character, are 
 spreading out from the seven or eight greatest States 
 and extinguishing the weaker languages, forms, and 
 types. 
 
 Although the great States are stronger and more 
 populous, their peoples are not necessarily more gifted, 
 and the extinction of the minor languages and types 
 would be a misfortune for the world's future develop- 
 ment. 
 
 We may not be able to arrest the forces which seem 
 to be making for that extinction, but we certainly ought 
 not to strengthen them. Rather we ought to maintain 
 and defend the smaller States, and to favour the rise and 
 growth of new peoples. Not merely because they were 
 delivered from the tyranny of Sultans like Abdul Hamid 
 
 ^ General Bernhardi's knowledge of current history may be estimated by the fact 
 that he assumes (i) that trade rivalry makes a war probable between Great Britain and 
 the United States ! (2) that he believes the Indian princes and peoples likely to revolt 
 against Britain should she be involved in war ! ! and (3) that he expects her self-governing 
 Colonies to take such an opportunity of severing their connection with her ! ! !
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 13 
 
 did the intellect of Europe welcome the successively 
 won liberations of Greece, Servia, Bulgaria, and Monte- 
 negro ; it was also in the hope that those countries would 
 in time develop out of their present relatively crude 
 conditions new types of culture, new centres of productive 
 intellectual life. 
 
 General Bernhardi invokes History, the ultimate 
 court of appeal. He appeals to Caesar. To Caesar let 
 him go. As Schiller wrote : Die Weltgeschichte ist das 
 Weltgericht^ 
 
 History declares that no nation, however great, is 
 entitled to try to impose its type of civilization on others. 
 No race, not even the Teutonic or the Anglo-Saxon, is 
 entitled to claim the leadership of humanity. Each 
 people has in its time contributed something that was 
 distinctively its own, and the world is far richer thereby 
 than if any one race, however gifted, had established a 
 permanent ascendancy. 
 
 We of the English-speaking race do not claim for 
 ourselves, any more than we admit in others, any right 
 to dominate by force or to impose our own type of 
 civilization on less powerful races. Perhaps we have 
 not that assured conviction of its superiority which the 
 school of General Bernhardi expresses for the Teutons 
 of North Germany. We know how much we owe, 
 even within our own islands, to the Celtic race. And 
 though we must admit that peoples of Anglo-Saxon 
 stock have, like others, made some mistakes and some- 
 times abused their strength, let it be remembered what 
 have been the latest acts they have done abroad. 
 
 The United States have twice withdrawn their troops 
 from Cuba, which they could easily have retained. They 
 have resisted all temptations to annex any part of the 
 territories of Mexico, in which the lives and property 
 of their citizens were for three years in constant danger. 
 So Britain also restored in 1907 the amplest self-govern- 
 ment to the two South African Republics, which had 
 been in arms against her thirteen years ago (having 
 
 1 World History is the World-tribunal.
 
 14 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 already agreed to the maintenance on equal terms of the 
 Dutch language), and the citizens of those Republics 
 have now spontaneously come forward to support her by 
 arms, under the gallant leader who then commanded the 
 Boer forces. Nor should we forget that one reason why 
 the princes of India have rallied so promptly and heartily 
 to Britain in this war is because for many years past 
 we have avoided annexing the territories of those princes, 
 allowing them to adopt heirs when successors of their 
 own families failed, and leaving to them as much as 
 possible of the ordinary functions of government. 
 
 It is only vulgar minds that mistake bigness for 
 greatness, for greatness is of the Soul, not of the Body. 
 In the judgment which history will hereafter pass upon 
 the forty centuries of recorded progress that now lie 
 behind us, what are the tests it will apply to determine 
 the true greatness of a people ? 
 
 Not population, not territory, not wealth, not military 
 power. Rather will history ask : What examples of 
 lofty character and unselfish devotion to honour and duty 
 has a people given ? What has it done to increase the 
 volume of knowledge ? What thoughts and what ideals 
 of permanent value and unexhausted fertility has it 
 bequeathed to mankind ? What works has it produced 
 in poetry, music, and the other arts to be an unfailing 
 source of enjoyment to posterity ? 
 
 The smaller peoples need not fear the application of 
 such tests. 
 
 The world advances not, as the Bernhardi school 
 suppose, only or even mainly by Fighting. It advances 
 mainly by Thinking and by a process of reciprocal teach- 
 ing and learning, by a continuous and unconscious co- 
 operation of all its strongest and finest minds. 
 
 Each race — Hellenic and Italic, Celtic and Teutonic, 
 Iberian and Slavonic — has something to give, each 
 something to learn ; and when their blood is blent the 
 mixed stock may combine the gifts of both. 
 
 The most progressive races have been those who 
 combined willingness to learn with a strength which
 
 I NEUTRAL NATIONS AND THE WAR 15 
 
 enabled them to receive without loss to their own quality, 
 retaining their primal vigour, but entering into the 
 labours of others, as the Teutons who settled within the 
 dominions of Rome profited by the lessons and examples 
 of the old civilization. 
 
 Let me disclaim once more before I close any inten- 
 tion to attribute to the German people the principles 
 set forth by the school of Treitschke and Bernhardi, 
 their hatred of peace and arbitration, their disregard 
 of treaty obligations, their scorn for the weaker peoples. 
 
 We in England would feel an even deeper sadness 
 than weighs upon us now if we could suppose that such 
 principles had been embraced by a nation whose thinkers 
 have done so much for human progress and who have 
 produced so many shining examples of Christian saint- 
 liness. 
 
 But when those principles have been ostentatiously 
 proclaimed, when a peaceful neutral country which the 
 other belligerent had undertaken to respect has been 
 invaded and treated as Belgium has been treated, and 
 when attempts are made to justify these deeds as in- 
 cidental to a campaign for civilization and culture, it 
 becomes necessary to point out how untrue and how 
 pernicious such principles are. 
 
 What are the teachings of history, history to which 
 General Bernhardi is fond of appealing ? That war 
 has been the constant handmaid of tyranny and the 
 source of more than half the miseries of man. That 
 although some wars have been necessary, and have given 
 occasion for the display of splendid heroism — wars of 
 defence against aggression, or to succour the oppressed — 
 most wars have been needless or unjust. That the mark 
 of an advancing civilization has been the substitution 
 of friendship for hatred and of peaceful for warlike ideals. 
 That small peoples have done and can do as much for 
 the common good of humanity as large peoples. That 
 treaties must be observed, for what are they but records 
 of national faith solemnly pledged, and what could bring 
 mankind more surely and swiftly back to that reign of
 
 1 6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, i 
 
 violence and terror from which it has been slowly rising 
 for the last ten centuries than a destruction of trust in 
 the plighted faith of nations ? 
 
 No event has brought out that essential unity which 
 now exists in the world so forcibly as this war has done, 
 for no event has ever so affected every part of the earth. 
 Four continents are involved — the whole of the Old 
 World — and the New World suffers grievously in its 
 trade, industry, and finance. Thus the whole world 
 is interested in preventing the recurrence of such a 
 calamity ; and there is a general feeling throughout the 
 world that an effort must be made to remove the causes 
 which have brought it upon us. 
 
 We are told that armaments must be reduced, that 
 the baleful spirit of militarism must be quenched, that 
 the peoples must everywhere be admitted to a fuller 
 share in the control of foreign policy, that efforts must 
 be made to establish a sort of League of Concord — some 
 system of international relations and reciprocal peace 
 alliances by which the weaker nations may be protected, 
 and under which differences between nations may be 
 adjusted by courts of arbitration and conciliation of wider 
 scope than those that now exist. 
 
 All these things are desirable. All nations, and, 
 most of all, the weaker nations, ought to desire them. 
 But no scheme for preventing future wars will have any 
 chance of success unless it rests upon the assurance that 
 the States which enter into it will loyally and steadfastly 
 abide by it, and that each and all of them will join in 
 coercing by their overwhelming united strength any 
 State which may disregard the obligations it has under- 
 taken. 
 
 The faith of treaties is the only solid foundation on 
 which a Temple of Peace can be built up.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ATTITUDE OF GREAT BRITAIN IN 
 THE PRESENT WAR ^ 
 
 We in Britain who respect and value the opinion of the 
 free neutral peoples of Europe and America cannot but 
 desire that those peoples should be duly informed of the 
 way in which we regard the circumstances and the possible 
 results of the present conflict. The pages which follow 
 have been written in compliance with a request from 
 one of those free countries, Switzerland, but what has 
 been set down to be read by its people may equally well 
 be addressed to other neutrals. I speak here with no more 
 authority than is possessed by any private citizen of my 
 country who has had a long experience of public affairs, 
 and my only wish is to express what I believe to be its 
 general sentiments. Other writers would doubtless con- 
 vey those sentiments in somewhat different language, 
 but I think they would do so to much the same general 
 effect, for the British Nation is at this crisis united in its 
 views and purposes to an extent almost unprecedented 
 in its history. 
 
 I shall not enter into the circumstances which brought 
 about the war, for these have been often stated officially 
 and can be readily understood from documents already 
 published. The evidence contained in those documents 
 ought, it seems to me, to be quite convincing to any 
 impartial mind.^ All that need be said here is that the 
 
 ^ This article was written in 191 5. Some few changes, not affecting the general 
 argument, have been made in it, and some passages omitted, because the same topic has 
 been more fully dealt with in the following chapter, also addressed to neutral countries. 
 
 2 It was convincing from the first. But if any further proof be needed the 
 spring of 19 18 brought an unexpected and most effective confirmation in the form 
 
 17 C
 
 1 8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 British nation did most assuredly neither desire nor con- 
 template war. There was no hostility to Germany except 
 among a very few persons who thought she was already 
 planning to attack us. The notion which has been 
 assiduously propagated by the German Government, that 
 England desired to bring about war because she feared the 
 commercial competition of Germany and hoped to destroy 
 German productive industry and mercantile prosperity, 
 is absolutely untrue and without the slightest foundation. 
 It is indeed an absurd suggestion, for every man of sense 
 knew that German trade had brought more advantage 
 to our trading classes than any damage German com- 
 petition had been doing to them. England had far 
 more to lose than to gain by war. Germany was her 
 best foreign customer, taking more goods from her than 
 did any other foreign country. It was plain to the 
 meanest understanding that a war would involve England 
 in pecuniary losses which must far exceed — they have 
 within the first year of war far exceeded — any pecuniary 
 gain her traders could possibly have made by the crippling 
 of German trade for many a year to come. One of the 
 reasons why many Englishmen thought that there was 
 
 of a secret memorandum written by Prince Lichnowsky (German Ambassador in 
 London in 1912—14), and published without his knowledge or consent. In it the ex- 
 Ambassador, who had been conducting negotiations between his country and Britain 
 over various questions affecting their relations, bears the clearest and strongest testimony 
 to the friendly spirit in which the British Government met the wishes of Germany. 
 Large concessions, so large that they seem now, with our fuller knowledge of German 
 plans, too generous, were made regarding the assignment of regions in Africa as spheres 
 of German influence, and as respects the Bagdad railway and Mesopotamia as far as El 
 Basra. Sir Edward Grey, he declares, was sincerely anxious for friendship between the 
 countries, and did his utmost, up to the last moments in July and August 19 14, to avert 
 war. This account of Sir Edward's good-will is confirmed by Herr von Jagow, 
 who was then Foreign Secretary in Germany. The Memorandum also explicitly 
 contradicts the notion, propagated in Germany, that commercial jealousy had made 
 British mercantile men disposed to war. " It was precisely in commercial circles," says 
 Lichnowsky, " that I found the liveliest disposition to establish good relations [with 
 Germany] and to promote common economic interests." 
 
 Another revelation of high significance is contained in the account given by Mr. 
 Morgenthau, lately American Ambassador at Constantinople (see his articles in The 
 World's Work for May and June 1918), of the description given to him by Baron von 
 Wangenheim (till his recent death, German Ambassador to Turkey) of the secret 
 meeting at Potsdam on July 5, 19 14, at which the German Emperor as.ked the heads 
 of the Army, of the Navy, and of the great financial establishments of Germany whether 
 they were all prepared for the approaching war. This meeting is referred to in Prince 
 Lichnowsky's Memorandum also, and there seems to be no doubt that war was then 
 virtually decided upon.
 
 II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 19 
 
 no likelihood of a war between the two countries was 
 because they believed that both countries knew what 
 frightful losses to each the war would bring. Unluckily 
 they did not know the mind and temper of the class that 
 was ruling Germany. Moreover, the fact that Britain 
 had not prepared herself for a land war shows how little 
 she expected it. She had an army very small in com- 
 parison with those of the Continental Powers, and no 
 store of guns or shell comparable to theirs ; so, when 
 the war broke out — Belgium invaded, France threatened 
 with destruction — she found herself suddenly obliged to 
 raise a large force by voluntary enlistment at short notice. 
 Few supposed that the response of the people would 
 have been so general and so hearty. The response came 
 because the nation was united as it had never been united 
 before in support of any war. That which united it 
 at the first moment was the invasion of Belgium ; and 
 that which has done most to keep it united and to stimu- 
 late it to exertions hitherto undreamt of has been popular 
 indignation at the methods by which the German Govern- 
 ment has conducted hostilities by land and by sea. 
 
 The German Government has alleged that the British 
 Fleet had been mobilized with a view to war. That is 
 absolutely untrue. What happened was this. The 
 Fleet had been going through its usual summer man- 
 oeuvres. Just as these manoeuvres were coming to an 
 end, a threatening war cloud unexpectedly arose out of 
 a blue sky. Most naturally, the ships which would in 
 the usual course have been dispersed to their accustomed 
 peace stations were commanded not to disperse until 
 further orders were received. There was in this no 
 evidence of any purpose to embark in war, for to keep 
 the Fleet together was in the circumstances the obvious 
 and only prudent course. 
 
 Now let me try to state what are the principles which 
 animate the British people, making them believe they 
 have a righteous cause, and inducing them, because they 
 so believe, to prosecute the war with their utmost energy. 
 
 There is a familiar expression which we use in England
 
 20 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 to sum up the position and aims of a nation. It is, 
 " What does the nation * stand for ' ? " What are the 
 principles and the interests which prescribe its course ? 
 What are the ends, over and above its own welfare, which 
 it seeks to promote ? What is the nature of the mission 
 with which it feels itself charged ? What are the ideals 
 which it would like to see prevailing throughout the 
 world ? 
 
 There are five of these principles or aims or ideals 
 which I will here set forth, because they stand out con- 
 spicuously in the present crisis, though they have all 
 been more or less parts of the settled policy of Britain. 
 
 I. The first of these five is Liberty. 
 
 England and Switzerland have been the two modern 
 countries in which Liberty first took tangible form in 
 equal laws and in the institutions of self-government. 
 Every lover of poetry remembers the lines in which 
 Wordsworth joins these lands as the ancient homes of 
 freedom : 
 
 Two Voices are there, one is of the Sea, 
 One of the Mountains, each a mighty Voice. 
 
 For a long time it was in these two countries alone that 
 liberty maintained its life, while elsewhere feudal oli- 
 garchies were being superseded by despotic monarchies. 
 After a time Holland followed, and the three peoples of 
 the Scandinavian North, kindred to us in blood, have 
 followed likewise. 
 
 In England Liberty appeared from early days in a 
 recognition of the right of the citizen to be protected 
 against arbitrary power and to bear his share in the work 
 of governing his own community. It is from Great 
 Britain that other European countries whose political 
 condition had, from the end of the Middle Ages down to 
 the end of the eighteenth century, been unfavourable 
 to freedom, drew, in that and the following century, their 
 examples of a Government which could be united and 
 efficient and yet popular, strong to defend itself against 
 attack, and yet respectful of the rights of its own subjects. 
 The British Constitution has been the model whence
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 21 
 
 most of the countries that have within recent times adopted 
 constitutional government have drawn their institutions. 
 Britain has herself during the last eighty years made her 
 constitution more and more truly popular. It is now as 
 democratic as that of any other European State ; and 
 in their dealings with other countries the British people 
 have shown a constant sympathy with freedom. They 
 showed it early in the nineteenth century to Spanish 
 constitutional reformers and to Greek insurgents against 
 Turkish tyranny. They showed it to Switzerland when 
 they foiled (in 1847) the attempt of Metternich to 
 interfere with her independence. They have shown it 
 in other ways within recent years. Britain has given free 
 Governments to all those of her colonies in which there 
 is a population of European origin capable of using 
 them, and this has confirmed the attachment to herself 
 of those colonies. In Canada two insurrections broke 
 out in 1837—38, insignificant, and easily suppressed. 
 But the warning they gave in revealing local discontent 
 with the existing system was not lost. A new system 
 was set up, discontent quickly disappeared, and some of 
 those who had been in arms against the British Crown 
 were before long its loyal supporters, a few of them even 
 among its Ministers. This became the beginning of 
 that policy of Dominion Self-Government which has so 
 powerfully cemented the different parts of what has been 
 well called the Union of British Commonwealths. In 
 1907, only six years after a war with the two Dutch 
 Republics of South Africa, which had ended by a treaty 
 that brought them into the territories of Britain, she 
 restored self-government to the Transvaal and the 
 Orange Free State, and they soon afterwards became 
 members of the new autonomous Confederation called 
 the Union of South Africa, side by side with the old 
 British colonies of the Cape and Natal. The first 
 Prime Minister of that Union was General Louis Botha, 
 who had been Commander-in-Chief of the Boer forces 
 in their war with Britain. What has been the result .'' 
 When the present war broke out the German Govern-
 
 22 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 ment, which had long been planning to induce the 
 Transvaal and the Orange Free State to break away from 
 Britain, found to their astonishment that the vast majority 
 of the South African Boers stood heartily by her. General 
 Botha took command of the Union armies, and overcame 
 the German forces in the German colony of South- West 
 Africa without any assistance from British troops. 
 
 So in German East Africa General Smuts, who had 
 been one of the most efficient leaders of the Boer forces 
 in the South African War of 1 899-1 901, was placed in 
 command of the army which drove the German native 
 and white troops out of that region into Portuguese 
 territory and relieved the inhabitants from the harshness 
 of German rule. He has now been for some time a 
 trusted and most valuable member of the British War 
 Cabinet. So much for South African loyalty to the 
 Empire. As regards the other self-governing Dominions, 
 which the Germans expected to take the opportunity 
 this war would have afforded of severing their connection 
 with the Mother Country, every one knows with what 
 ardour and promptitude they placed all their resources 
 at the service of the common cause and with what valour 
 their soldiers have fought for it. These are the fruits 
 of those principles of liberty by which British policy 
 has been guided since those great colonies grew up. 
 
 The free citizens of neutral nations ought not to forget 
 that the principles of freedom are involved in the present 
 war. More and more as the struggle goes on has the 
 conduct of the German statesmen and soldiers shown 
 that a Government which spurns Right and rests upon 
 Force is of necessity the enemy of every government 
 that rests upon the will of the people, and will try to crush 
 or fetter liberty wherever it has the chance. Both cannot 
 live side by side. This is the meaning of President 
 Wilson's dictum that " the world must be made safe for 
 democracy." Britain, having stood for freedom through 
 many centuries, naturally became its champion in this 
 decisive hour. The United States, the eldest-born 
 child of the liberty which Englishmen had won for
 
 II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 23 
 
 themselves before the separation of 1776, has entered 
 the war from like motives, and is waging it as a crusade. 
 
 Political liberty, itself founded on a recognition of 
 the worth of the individual man, has in England borne 
 its appropriate fruit in creating a respect for the rights 
 of every human being of whatever race. England led 
 the way in the abolition of negro slavery. More than 
 eighty years ago her Parliament voted sums, enormous 
 for those days, to liberate slaves in the British colonies. 
 The extinction of the slave trade was due to her mission- 
 aries, among whom the honoured name of Livingstone 
 stands first, to her philanthropists at home, to the 
 energy of her naval officers on the Atlantic and Indian 
 Oceans. For the last three generations her Govern- 
 ment has everywhere sought to secure the rights and 
 promote the welfare of the native races under her control. 
 Her career was not spotless, for there have now and 
 then been errors, or lapses from the normal standard 
 she prescribed for herself. But compare her long record 
 in this respect with the short but scandalous record of 
 oppression which the German administrators have made 
 for themselves in South-West Africa, in East Africa, 
 and in Togoland. These have been some of the fruits 
 of Liberty as Britain has understood it and practised it, 
 even before her own Government had taken a democratic 
 form : and they have been profitable for the world. 
 
 II. Britain stands for the principle of Nationality. She 
 has often given her aid, material or moral, to a people rest- 
 less under foreign dominion who sought to deliver them- 
 selves from the stranger and to be ruled by a Government 
 of their own. The efforts of Greece from 1820 till her 
 liberation from the Turks, the efforts of Italy to shake off 
 the hated yoke of Austria and attain national unity under 
 an Italian King found their warmest support in England. 
 English Liberals gave their sympathy to national move- 
 ments in Hungary and Poland. Mazzini, Garibaldi, 
 Cavour, Kossuth, and Deak were heroes to the British 
 people as Kosciuszko had been to an earlier genera- 
 tion. They gave that sympathy also to the German
 
 24 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 movement for national unity from 1848 to 1870, for in 
 those days that movement was led by German Liberals 
 of lofty aims who did not desire, like the recent rulers of 
 Germany, to make their national strength a menace to 
 the peace and security of their neighbours. 
 
 In India, England has long ceased to absorb into 
 her dominions the native States, and has been seeking 
 only to guide the rulers of those States into the paths 
 of just and humane administration, while leaving their 
 internal affairs to their own Governments. It was not 
 possible to extend a representative system resembling 
 that of England herself to the numerous races that 
 compose the Indian population, because those races 
 were not yet fit to work such a system. A firm and 
 impartial hand is indeed needed to keep the peace among 
 them. But the British Government in India regards, 
 and has long regarded, its power as a trust to be used for 
 the benefit of the people, and in recent years efforts have 
 been made to associate the people more and more with 
 the work of the higher branches of administration and 
 legislation. Hindu and Musulman judges sit beside 
 European judges in the highest Courts, while the vast 
 mass of local administration is conducted by native 
 officials and native magistrates. Now (in 1 9 1 8) a scheme 
 of far-reaching change has been framed, designed to 
 create representative institutions over nearly the whole 
 of British India, and under these the welfare of the 
 country will be more and more in native hands. No 
 tribute or revenue of any kind has for very many years 
 past been drawn by England from India, and, as every 
 one knows, neither has it been levied from any of 
 those colonies which the Home Government controls. 
 The good results of this policy have been seen in the 
 steady increase of the confidence and good-will of the 
 native rulers and aristocracy of India to the British 
 Government, so that when the present war broke out 
 all those rulers at once offered military aid. Large 
 Indian forces gladly came to fight, and fought most 
 gallantly, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, where they
 
 II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 25 
 
 were opposed to a Muslim enemy, as well as beside the 
 British forces in France. 
 
 I do not claim that these successes attained by British 
 ideas and methods are due to any innate and peculiar 
 merits of British character. They may be largely ascribed 
 to the fact that the insular position and the political and 
 social conditions of England enabled her, earlier than 
 most other peoples, both to attain constitutional liberty 
 and to learn to love it and trust it. She has had long 
 experience, and has profited by experience. She has had 
 cause to see how much better it is to govern by justice 
 and in a fair and generous spirit than to rely on 
 brute force. Once in her history, 140 years ago, she 
 lost the North American Colonies because, in days when 
 British freedom was less firmly established than it is now, 
 a narrow-minded King induced his Government to treat 
 those colonies with unwise harshness. She has never 
 forgotten that lesson, and has more and more come to see 
 that the principles of freedom and nationality are a surer 
 basis for contentment and loyalty than is the application 
 of military power. Compare with the happy results 
 that have followed the instances I have mentioned of 
 respect for liberty and national sentiment in the cases of 
 South Africa and India, as well as in the self-governing 
 Dominions, the results in North Slesvig, in Posen, in 
 Alsace-Lorraine, of the opposite policy of force sternly 
 applied by Prussian statesmen and soldiers. 
 
 III. Britain stands for the maintenance of treaty 
 obligations and of those rights of the smaller nations 
 which rest upon such obligations. The circumstances 
 of the present war, which saw a peaceful neutral country 
 suddenly attacked by a Power that had itself solemnly 
 guaranteed the neutrality of its territory, summoned 
 England to stand up for the defence of those rights 
 and obligations, for she felt that the good faith of treaties 
 is the only foundation on which peace between nations 
 can rest, and is, especially, the only guarantee for the 
 security of those which do not maintain large armies. 
 We recognize the value of the smaller States, knowing
 
 26 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 what they have done for the progress of mankind, 
 grateful for the examples set by many of them of 
 national heroism and of achievements in science, litera- 
 ture, and art. So far from desiring to see the smaller 
 peoples absorbed into the larger, as German theorists 
 appear to wish, we believe that the world would profit 
 if there were in it a greater number of small peoples, each 
 developing its own type of character and its own forms 
 of thought and art. 
 
 Both these principles — the observance of treaties 
 and the rights of the smaller neutral States — were raised 
 in the sharpest form by the unprovoked invasion of 
 Belgium only two days after the German Minister at 
 Brussels had lulled the uneasiness of the Belgian Govern- 
 ment by his pacific assurances. Such conduct was a 
 threat to every neutral nation. That which befell Bel- 
 gium might have befallen Switzerland or Holland had 
 Germany decided that it was to her interests to attack 
 either of them for the sake of securing a passage for her 
 armies. England was obliged to come to Belgium's 
 support and fulfil the obligation she had herself contracted 
 to defend the neutrality of the country unrighteously 
 attacked. When the German armies suddenly crossed 
 the Belgian frontier, carrying slaughter and destruction 
 in their train, an issue of transcendent importance was 
 raised. Can treaties be violated with impunity ? Is a 
 nation which, trusting to the protection of international 
 justice and treaty obligations, has not so armed itself as to 
 be able to repel invasion, obliged helplessly to submit to 
 see its territory overrun and its towns destroyed ? If such 
 violence prevails, what sense of security can any small 
 nation enjoy ? Will it not be the helpless prey of some 
 stronger Power, whenever that Power finds an interest 
 in pouncing upon it ? What becomes of the whole 
 fabric of international law and international justice ? 
 Britain, obliged by honour to succour Belgium, thus 
 became the champion of international right and of the 
 security of the smaller nations. There is nothing she 
 more earnestly desires to obtain as a result of this war
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 27 
 
 than that the smaller States should be placed for the 
 future in a position of safety, in which the guarantees 
 for their independence and peace shall be stronger than 
 before, because the sanction of the law of nations will 
 have been made more effective. 
 
 IV. Britain stands for the regulation of the methods 
 of warfare in the interests of humanity, and especially 
 for the exemption of non-combatants from the sufferings 
 and horrors which war brings. Here is another issue 
 raised by the present crisis, another conflict of opposing 
 principles. In the ancient world, and among semi- 
 civilized peoples in more recent times, non-combatant 
 civilians as well as the fighting forces had to bear those 
 sufferings. The men were killed, combatants and non- 
 combatants alike, the women and children, if spared, were 
 reduced to slavery. That is what the gang which now 
 rules Turkey went on doing all through 19 15 in Asia 
 Minor and Armenia, on a far larger scale than even 
 the massacres perpetrated by Abdul Hamid in 1895-96. 
 The snake has shed his old skin, but he is none the less 
 venomous. This gang of ruffians slaughtered the men, 
 enslaved some of the women by selling them in open 
 market or seizing them for the harem, and drove the 
 rest, with the children, out into deserts to perish from 
 hunger. The Turkish Government is, of course, a 
 thoroughly barbarous Government, and what surprises 
 those who know its history is not the spirit it has again 
 displayed, but the connivance or encouragement of the 
 nominally Christian Government of Germany. But in 
 civilized Europe Christian nations have, during the last 
 few centuries, softened the conduct of war by agreeing to 
 respect the lives and property of innocent non-combatants, 
 and thus, although the scale of modern wars has been 
 greater, less misery has been inflicted on inhabitants of 
 invaded territories. Their sufferings were less in the 
 eighteenth century than in the seventeenth, and less in 
 the nineteenth than in the eighteenth. In the war of 
 1870—71 the German troops, though addicted to the 
 plunder of houses and sometimes guilty of excesses,
 
 28 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 seem on the whole to have behaved better in France 
 than an invading force had usually behaved in similar 
 circumstances. Now, however, in this present war, 
 the German military and naval commanders have taken 
 a long step backwards towards barbarism. Innocent 
 non-combatants have been slaughtered by thousands 
 in Belgium and in France, and the only excuse offered 
 (for the facts of the slaughter are practically admiitted) 
 is that German troops have sometimes been fired at by 
 civilians. Now it is true that any civilian who takes up 
 arms without observing the rules prescribed for civilian 
 resistance, which custom has established and the Hague 
 Convention has sanctioned, is liable to be shot. The 
 rules of war permit that. But it is contrary to the rules 
 of war, as well as to common justice and humanity, to 
 kill a civilian who has not himself sought to harm an 
 invading force. 
 
 German air -war has been conducted with equal 
 inhumanity. Bombs have during three years been 
 dropped upon undefended towns and quiet country 
 villages in Eastern and Central England, on places where 
 there are no troops, no war factories, no stores of ammuni- 
 tion. Very few combatants have suffered, and the women 
 and children killed have been far more numerous than 
 the male non-combatants. No military advantage has 
 been gained by these crimes. They have not even 
 frightened the people generally. 
 
 The same retrogression towards barbarism is seen in 
 the German conduct of war at sea. It had long been the 
 rule and practice of civilized nations that when a merchant 
 vessel is destroyed by a ship of war because it is impossible 
 to carry the merchant vessel into the port of the captor, 
 the crew and the passengers of the vessel should be taken 
 off and their lives saved, before the vessel is sunk. Com- 
 mon humanity prescribes this, but the German sub- 
 marines have been sinking unarmed merchant vessels 
 and drowning their passengers and crews without giving 
 them even the opportunity to surrender. 
 
 These facts raise an issue in which the interests of
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 29 
 
 all mankind are involved. The German Government 
 claims the right to kill the innocent because it suits their 
 military interests. We deny this right, as all countries 
 ought to deny it. England is contending in this war 
 for humanity against cruelty, and she appeals to the 
 conscience of all the neutral peoples to give her their 
 moral support in this contention. Peoples that are now 
 neutral may suffer in future, just as those innocent persons 
 I have referred to are suffering now by these acts of 
 unprecedented barbarity. 
 
 V. England stands for a Pacific as opposed to a 
 Military type of civilization. Her regular army had 
 always been small in proportion to her population, and 
 very small in comparison with the armies of great Con- 
 tinental nations. Although she recognizes that there 
 are some countries in which universal service may be 
 necessary, and times at which it may be necessary in 
 any country, she has preferred to leave her people free 
 to follow their civil pursuits, and had raised her army 
 by voluntary enlistment. Every stranger who before 
 1 9 14 came to England from the European Continent 
 was struck by the fact that in the streets of her cities there 
 were hardly any soldiers to be seen. Military and naval 
 officers have never, as in Germany, formed a class by 
 themselves, have never been a political power, or exercised 
 political influence. The Cabinet Ministers placed in 
 charge of these two services have always been civilian 
 statesmen — not Generals or Admirals — until the out- 
 break of the present war, when, for the first time, under 
 the stress of a new emergency, a professional soldier of 
 long experience was placed at the head of the War 
 Department. England has repeatedly sought at Euro- 
 pean Conferences to bring about a reduction of war arma- 
 ments, as well as to secure improved rules mitigating the 
 usages of war ; but has found her efforts bafl^ed by the 
 opposition of the German Government. In none of the 
 larger countries, except, indeed, in the United States, 
 are the people so generally and sincerely attached to peace. 
 
 It may be asked why, if this is so, does England
 
 30 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 maintain so large a navy. The question deserves an 
 answer. Her navy is maintained for three reasons. 
 The first is, that as her army has been very small she is 
 obliged to protect herself by a strong home fleet from 
 any risk of invasion. She has never forgotten the lesson 
 of the Napoleonic wars, when it was the navy that saved 
 her from the fate which befell so many European coun- 
 tries at Napoleon's hands. Were she not to keep up 
 this first line of defence at sea, a huge army and a huge 
 military expenditure in time of peace would be inevitable. 
 The second reason is that as England does not produce 
 nearly enough food to support her population, she must 
 draw supplies from other countries, and would be in 
 danger of starvation if in war-time she lost the com- 
 mand of the sea. It is therefore vital to her existence 
 that she should be able to secure the unimpeded import 
 of articles of food. And the third reason is that England 
 is responsible for the defence of the coasts and the com- 
 merce of her colonies and other foreign possessions, 
 such as India. These do not maintain a naval force 
 sufficient for their defence, and the Mother Country is 
 therefore compelled to have a fleet sufficient to guarantee 
 their safety and protect their shipping. No other great 
 State has such far-reaching liabilities, and, therefore, no 
 other needs a navy so large as Britain must maintain. 
 In this policy there is no warlike or aggressive spirit, no 
 menace to other countries. It is a measure purely of 
 defence, costly and burdensome, but borne because her 
 own safety and that of her colonies absolutely require it. 
 Neither has Britain used her naval strength to inflict 
 harm on any other countries. In time of peace she has 
 not tried to use it to injure the commerce of her chief 
 industrial competitors. No step was ever taken to 
 retard the rapid growth of the mercantile marines of 
 Germany and Norway, both of which have been im- 
 mensely developed in recent years. The free and equal 
 use of ocean highways has, in time of peace, never been 
 infringed by her. In time of war she doubtless exercises 
 those rights of maritime blockade, search, and capture
 
 II GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 31 
 
 which her naval strength enables her to exert. But 
 rights of blockade and capture have always been exerted 
 by every naval power in war time. They are a recognized 
 method of war, and were exerted in the American Civil 
 War fifty years ago, in the war of France with China, in 
 the war of Chile with Peru, and in the more recent war 
 between Japan and Russia. They are not rights newly 
 claimed by Britain, and they have been exercised with 
 a constant respect for the lives of non-combatants. 
 
 Much has been said since the war began about 
 " the freedom of the seas." What sense that phrase 
 has, or ought to have, I will not venture to enquire. No 
 two persons seem to use it in the same sense. In the 
 German mouth it seems to mean that no State is to possess 
 a navy larger than Germany's. The only rational mean- 
 ing it can have in war time would seem to be a rule 
 granting the immunity from capture by war-ships to 
 vessels carrying merchandise or passengers only. It is 
 an arguable question whether on a balance of considera- 
 tions the right of capture ought or ought not to be 
 recognized by international law. Hitherto it has been 
 recognized, so the British fleet has put it in force against 
 German ships, and always with due humanity. In peace 
 time, Britain, as already observed, has never interfered 
 with the free use of the sea by the ships, either armed 
 or unarmed, of any other nation. 
 
 So far from using her sea-power to the prejudice of 
 other countries in peace time, and trying by its aid to 
 promote her own commercial interests, Britain is the only 
 great country which has opened her doors freely to the 
 commerce of every other country. More than sixty 
 years ago she adopted, and has ever since consistently 
 practised, the policy of free trade. She imposes upon 
 imports no duties intended to protect her own agriculture 
 or her own manufactures. She gives no advantages to 
 her own shipping in her own ports, she pays no bounties 
 to her own shipping, she allows even coasting trade 
 between her own ports to be open on equal terms to the 
 ships of all nations. A Dutch or Swedish or Norwegian
 
 32 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 vessel may trade from Newcastle to London as freely 
 as a British vessel. And this free trade policy has been 
 carried out consistently in all the British colonial posses- 
 sions. Neither in India, nor in those British colonies 
 whose tariffs are controlled by the Mother Country, 
 are duties imposed upon foreign imports, except for 
 the purpose of raising revenue. Such self-governing 
 Dominions as Canada and Australia have control of their 
 own tariffs and impose what duties they please — even 
 against the Mother Country ; but that is a part of 
 the self-government which these Dominions have long 
 enjoyed. 
 
 The policy of free trade has been supported, and is 
 valued, in Britain not only on economic grounds, but also 
 because it is deemed to promote international peace. 
 [It is only of that aspect of the subject that I speak 
 here, because its fiscal aspects raise controversies 
 unsuited to these pages.] Richard Cobden, the first and 
 most powerful champion in Parliament of that policy, 
 saw in this tendency its highest value. He thought 
 that it would so link the nations together, helping them 
 to know one another, enriching them all, and making 
 each interested in the prosperity of the other, each 
 being both a producer and a consumer, each supplying 
 the other's needs and profiting by the exchange, that 
 each and all would be reluctant to break the general 
 peace. He was unquestionably right in principle, 
 although the commercial interests of Germany in main- 
 taining her trade with England were not strong enough 
 to overcome the war policy of the Junker party which 
 expected to extend trade by conquest. The failure of 
 their attempt will hereafter be a warning. Cobden's 
 hopes have proved to be too sanguine, because he did 
 not foresee — how could he — the selfishness and rapacity 
 of the Junker party and its military chiefs. But this 
 idea, that the more the peoples trade freely with one 
 another, the more they will learn that their true interests 
 are not opposed, is sound, and has always had great weight 
 in British commercial policy, which has sought for no
 
 ir GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 22 
 
 exclusive advantages, but was content, confident in its 
 resourceful energy, to leave the field open to all com- 
 petitors. 
 
 As an industrial people the English desire peace. 
 They have not worshipped the State, and expected it to 
 conquer markets or extort concessions for their benefit. 
 They have never made military glory their ideal. They 
 have regarded war, not like Treitschke and his school, as 
 wholesome and necessary, but as an evil, an evil which, 
 although it gives an opportunity (as Europe sees to-day) 
 for splendid displays of patriotism and heroic valour, is 
 the cause of infinite suffering and misery, and ought, 
 if possible, to be expunged from the world. The killing 
 of workers and the destruction of property appear to 
 them to be a hideous waste of human effort. They 
 have always been ready to fight when fighting became 
 necessary. But they have not, like Prussia, loved war 
 for its own sake, for they believe that it has done more 
 than anything else to retard the progress of mankind. 
 
 Our English ideal for the future is of a world in which 
 every people shall have within its own borders a free 
 national government resting on, and conforming to, 
 the general will of its citizens, respecting the freedom of 
 the individual, and not seeking to cramp or supersede 
 his initiative, a government able to devote its efforts to 
 improving the condition of the people without encroach- 
 ing on its neighbours or putting unfair pressure upon 
 them, or being disturbed by the fear of an attack from 
 enemies abroad. Legislators and administrators have 
 already tasks sufficiently difficult in reconciling the 
 claims of different classes, in adjusting the interests of 
 capital and labour, in promoting health and diffusing 
 education and enlightenment, without the addition of 
 those tasks and dangers which arise from the terror of 
 foreign war. 
 
 There is, of course, a certain chauvinistic element 
 in England, as in all countries, which finds some expres- 
 sion in newspapers and books. There are some persons 
 with a deficient respect for the rights of other nations — 
 
 D
 
 34 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 persons who indulge the pleasures of hatred, persons who 
 believe in force, persons who, in fact, have what is now 
 known as the " Prussian view of the world," and the 
 Prussian preference of Might to Right. But such persons 
 are in Britain comparatively few ; they are a diminish- 
 ing quantity and they command little influence. The 
 great bulk of the nation does not cherish hatreds, is 
 satisfied with what it possesses, does not intend to aggress 
 on its neighbours, does not seek to impose its own type 
 of civilization on the world. Our English phrase 
 *' Live and let live " expresses this feeling. Though we 
 prefer our own way of living for ourselves, we do not 
 think it therefore the best for other peoples also, and no 
 more wish to see the world all English than we wish to 
 see it all Prussian. 
 
 The British people did not enter the war for the sake 
 of gaining anything for themselves. They have not 
 now fixed their mind on gaining (so far as concerns 
 objects specially dear to themselves ^) anything except a 
 vindication of the sanctity of treaties, a completer security 
 for the rights of neutral nations, the liberation of Belgium 
 with full compensation to her for the injuries inflicted 
 by the German armies, and adequate guarantees of 
 future peace for themselves and their colonies. To this 
 one must now add — since the Asiatic massacres of 1 9 1 5 — 
 measures that will make impossible in the future cruelties 
 and oppressions such as the Turks have practised upon 
 the Eastern Christians. We have been horrified by 
 those massacres ; and the disclosure of the plans of the 
 German Government for obtaining control over Western 
 Asia, including the Caucasian countries and Persia, have 
 convinced us that neither Turks nor Germans can be 
 suffered to retain any foothold east or south of the Taurus 
 mountains. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have sought to describe 
 what I believe to be the principles and feelings and aims 
 
 ^ I speak, of course, only of what regards Britain's own aims, not of those which 
 primarily concern her Allies. Besides these aims there are, of course, also to be regarded 
 the questions which affect subject nationalities, now oppressed, and the questions which 
 concern the welfare of native races, particularly in Africa.
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 35 
 
 of the British people as a whole. It will not, I hope, 
 be supposed that the description is submitted in a spirit 
 of pharisaic self-satisfaction or self-assertion. We must 
 not claim for Britain either that she is virtuous above other 
 peoples, or that she has steadily lived up to her ideals. She 
 has — as represented by those who were from time to time 
 her rulers — sometimes declined from those ideals ; and, 
 even since her government became in 1832 more demo- 
 cratic, may have seemed from time to time oblivious of 
 them, whether through passion and pride or in ignorance 
 of facts which she ought to have known. Nevertheless 
 the principles above set forth have been, in the main, 
 those which have long guided her course at home, and 
 have, more recently, guided also her policy abroad. 
 They are the principles to which the national mind has 
 returned after temporary aberrations. They are certainly 
 those which animate her now, and which are moving her 
 to make sacrifices as great as a people has ever made in 
 what it held to be a righteous cause. 
 
 Let me now add a few words of a more personal kind 
 to explain the sentiments of those Englishmen who have 
 in time past known and admired the achievements of the 
 German people in literature, learning, and science, who 
 had desired peace with them, who had been the constant 
 advocates of friendship between the two nations. Such 
 Englishmen, who do not cease to be lovers of peace 
 because this war, felt to be righteous, commands their 
 hearty support, are now just as determined as any others 
 to carry on the war to victory. Why ? Because to 
 them this war presents itself as a conflict of principles. 
 On the one side there is the doctrine that the end of the 
 State is Power, that Might makes Right, that the State 
 is above morality, that war is necessary and even desirable 
 as a factor in progress, that the rights of small States 
 must give way to the interests of great States, that the 
 Statd may disregard all obligations whether undertaken 
 by treaties or prescribed by the common sentiment of 
 mankind, and that what is called military necessity justi- 
 fies every kind of harshness and cruelty in war. This
 
 1,6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 is an old doctrine — as old as the Sophists whom Socrates 
 encountered in Athens. It has in every age been held 
 by some ambitious and unscrupulous statesmen. Many 
 a Greek tyrant of antiquity, many an Italian tyrant in the 
 Middle Ages and the Renaissance, put it in practice. 
 Caesar Borgia is the most striking instance in the fifteenth 
 century, Philip II. of Spain and his minions in the 
 sixteenth, Frederick the Great in the eighteenth. Napoleon 
 Bonaparte in the nineteenth. 
 
 On the other side there is the doctrine that the end 
 of the State is Justice, the doctrine that the State is, like 
 the individual, subject to a moral law and bound in honour 
 to observe its promises, that nations owe duties to one 
 another and to mankind at large, that they have all more 
 to gain by peace than by strife, that national hatreds 
 are deadly things, condemned by philosophy and by 
 Christianity. In the victory of one or the other of these 
 two sets of principles the future of mankind seems to us 
 to be at stake. 
 
 I do not mean to attribute to the German people 
 an adherence to the former set of doctrines, for I do not 
 know how far these doctrines are held outside the military 
 and naval caste which has now unhappily gained control 
 of German policy, and it is hard to believe that the 
 German people, as they were known to those of us who 
 studied at German universities more than fifty years 
 ago, could possibly approve of the action of their Govern- 
 ment if their Government suffered them to become 
 acquainted with the facts relating to the origin and 
 conduct of the war as those facts are now patent to the 
 rest of the world. As we English had no hatred of 
 the German people, neither have we any wish to break up 
 Germany, destroying her national unity, or to take from 
 her any territory which is really German, or to interfere 
 in any way with her internal politics. Our quarrel is 
 with the German Government. We think it a danger 
 to every peaceful country, and believe that in fighting 
 against its doctrines, its ambitions, its methods of warfare, 
 we and our Allies are virtually fighting the battle of all
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN PRESENT WAR 37 
 
 peace-loving neutral nations as well as our own. We 
 must fight on till victory is won, for a Government 
 which scorns treaties and wages an inhuman warfare 
 against innocent non-combatants cannot be suffered to 
 prevail by such methods. A triumphant and aggressive 
 Germany, mistress of the seas as well as of the land, 
 would be a menace to every nation, even to those of 
 the western hemisphere. Had she been able to retain 
 Belgium, to ruin France, to dominate Turkey and Persia 
 and Turkistan, and, having done all this, to proceed to 
 create an overwhelming navy — aims which it now 
 appears she has cherished — adding to these gains that 
 of exploiting Russia through vassal States in Finland, 
 Esthonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Ukraine and Trans- 
 caucasia, no country would have been safe, not even 
 Brazil and Argentina. 
 
 Be this as it may, the facts show that the present rulers 
 of Germany have acted upon the former set of doctrines 
 (already described) as consistently as ever did Frederick 
 or Napoleon. They seem to us to be smitten with a 
 kind of mental disease which has sapped honour, ex- 
 tinguished pity, and destroyed the sense of right and 
 wrong. They invaded Belgium without provocation, 
 and slaughtered thousands of innocent non-combatants. 
 They persisted, against the protests of the United States, 
 in drowning innocent non-combatants at sea. They 
 looked calmly on while the Turkish allies whom they 
 have dragged into the war, and whose action they could 
 have restrained if they had cared to do so, were extermin- 
 ating, with every cruelty Turkish ferocity can devise, a 
 whole Christian nation. These things are a reversion to 
 the ancient methods of savagery which marked the war- 
 fare of bygone ages.^ They are a challenge to civilized 
 mankind — to neutrals as well as to the now belligerent 
 States. Neutral nations would do well to recognize 
 
 ^ A German writer, Herr Mueller-Holm, says: "When this war broke out, wc 
 were prepared for dreadful things — unprecedented squandering of human life, fearful 
 misery, famine, disease. What we were not prepared for is this shocking reversion 
 toward moral savagery." (Quoted by Professor Munroe Smith in Political Science 
 Quarterly for September 19 17.)
 
 38 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, n 
 
 this, for they are themselves concerned. The same 
 methods may be hereafter used against them as are being 
 used now. They also ought to desire the defeat of any 
 and every Government which adopts such principles 
 and practises such methods, for its victory would be a 
 blow to morality and human progress which it would 
 take centuries to retrieve. 
 
 Those Englishmen whose views I am seeking to ex- 
 press, recognizing the allegiance we all owe to humanity 
 at large, and believing that progress is achieved more 
 by co-operation than by strife, are hoping and striving 
 for something more than the victory of their own country. 
 They desire to see the world relieved from the burden 
 of armaments and from that constant terror of war which 
 has been darkening its sky for so many generations. 
 They ask whether it may not be possible, after the war 
 has come to an end, to form among the nations an effective 
 League of Peace, embracing smaller as well as larger 
 peoples, under whose aegis disputes might be amicably 
 settled and the power of the League invoked to prevent 
 any one State from disturbing the general tranquillity. 
 The obstacles in the way of creating such a League are 
 many and obvious, but whatever else may come out of 
 the war, we in England hope that one result of it will 
 be the creation of some machinery calculated to avert 
 the recurrence of so awful a calamity as that from which 
 mankind is now suffering. And this is one of the chief 
 objects for which we are now contending, sacrificing 
 every month thousands of the flower of our youth.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE WAR STATE : ITS MIND AND ITS METHODS 
 
 The present war difFers from all that have gone before 
 it, not only in its vast scale and in the volume of misery 
 it has brought upon the world, but also in the fact that 
 it is a war of Principles, and a war in which the permanent 
 interests, not merely of the belligerent Powers, but of 
 all nations, are involved as such interests were never 
 involved before. It concerns the world as a whole in 
 both ways. The principles involved affect all mankind, 
 but whichever way the issue of the war settles them, 
 the settlement will be decisive for a long time to come. 
 The good or evil fortune, materially and morally, of every 
 nation, even of half-civilized tribes in Asia and Africa, 
 will depend on the hands to whom power may fall when 
 the war is over. 
 
 These are facts which many persons in neutral coun- 
 tries have not yet understood. In particular, they have 
 not realized what are the doctrines and the ideals of the 
 contending nations as these have appeared in the conduct 
 of the war. Each side has proclaimed its doctrines and 
 its ideals to some extent even in official documents, but 
 far more fully through books and newspapers. Never 
 before did belligerents make such efforts to put their 
 respective cases before the world ; never was the behaviour 
 of the fighting forces the subject of so much comment. 
 Nevertheless, in many neutral countries men seem to 
 think that, as has usually happened in previous wars, 
 there is no great distinction between the combatants. 
 They perceive that charges and counter- charges are 
 
 39
 
 40 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 bandied to and fro, and they have not the patience to 
 inquire which are true and which false. Being perhaps 
 too lazy or indifferent to examine the motives and the 
 conduct of the parties, they lapse into the easy assump- 
 tion that both are equally to blame, and that if they them- 
 selves have any duty at all as citizens of a neutral country, 
 that duty is only to do their best to bring back peace 
 at the earliest possible moment, with no thought for a 
 more distant future. Some neutral writers have put this 
 view crudely by saying it is only a quarrel over a bone 
 of two dogs whom the bystander would like to separate. 
 Each nation is, they assume, fighting for its own selfish 
 interests, just as the monarchs of Europe used to fight 
 in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to acquire 
 territory or trade. 
 
 Now this is not such a war. I do not deny that such 
 a war of the older type might still occur. Nations might 
 quarrel over their respective territorial claims and become 
 angry enough to fight the matter out instead of going 
 to arbitration. Such a war need not have raised any 
 moral issue. For each of the contending claims there 
 might have been good arguments, and it might well 
 have been thought that faults on both sides had led to 
 the outbreak of hostilities. Even if the balance of merits 
 inclined one way or the other, dispassionate and well- 
 informed observers in neutral countries might have been 
 divided in opinion as to those merits, and have hesitated 
 to express their sympathies, as happened when war 
 broke out between Prussia and Austria in 1866 and 
 again between Russia and Japan in 1901. 
 
 But, let me repeat it, this is not a case in which neutrals 
 can look on with an indifferent or merely curious eye. 
 This is a war of Principles, moral and political, in which 
 every man in neutral countries who has a sense of his 
 personal duties to his own country, and to humanity, 
 ought to try to find the truth and to form an honest and 
 impartial judgment on the merits, so that the sentiment 
 of his country may cast its weight on the side of what may 
 appear to be that of Justice and of the general welfare.
 
 THE WAR STATE 41 
 
 Into the circumstances attending the outbreak of 
 the war I will not here enter. That would lead me into 
 too wide a field. Those circumstances may be studied 
 in the documents published by the belligerent Powers. 
 No fuller and fairer examinations of them have been 
 published than are contained in two books written by 
 American jurists, the book of Professor Ellery Stowell 
 entitled The Diplomacy of the War of 1^14^ and the book 
 of Mr. James M. Beck called The Evidence in the Case, 
 books to which rather than to any English book I desire 
 to refer because their authors, being neutrals, wrote 
 with a complete freedom from national bias. Since they 
 appeared in 1915 we have also had (19 18) the Memo- 
 randum of Prince Lichnowsky.^ 
 
 I shall here examine, not the origins of the war, but 
 the Conduct of the war, and that with especial reference 
 to the light it casts upon the mind and purposes of those 
 who rule Germany. However men may dispute as to 
 the purposes and motives of the rulers and statesmen 
 of Austria, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain, trying 
 to set them in a worse or in a better light, the actual 
 facts regarding the behaviour of the armed forces of the 
 several nations are not really in dispute. Now and then 
 some controversy has arisen about particular cases. But 
 the broad facts stand ; and these facts are enough, when 
 carefully considered, to indicate the temper and spirit 
 of the contending nations, to show by what principles 
 they are guided, and what results the affirmation of those 
 principles by success is likely to have on the future 
 conduct of nations to one another and the well-being 
 of mankind. 
 
 Accordingly, without stopping to refute charges 
 brought against Britain of having desired and planned 
 this war, nor the supposed malicious scheme of " encirc- 
 ling Germany " by a ring of enemies which has been 
 falsely attributed to King Edward VII., I will go straight 
 to the first act in the war, the invasion of Belgium. It is 
 a long-settled rule of international law that no belligerent 
 
 ^ See above, p. 17.
 
 42 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 nation has any right to claim a passage for its army across 
 the territory of a neutral state ; and the neutrality of 
 Belgium had been guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1839 
 to which France, Prussia, and Great Britain were parties. 
 Nevertheless the position which Belgium held between 
 the German Empire and France had obliged her to con- 
 sider the possibility that in the event of a war between 
 these two Powers her neutrality might not be respected. 
 That neutrality she was bound to maintain. It was 
 the condition of her creation and her existence. So, 
 in July 1 9 14, when the danger of war between Germany 
 and France seemed imminent, France and Germany 
 were both asked by Belgium to renew their promises 
 to abstain from violating her neutrality. France pro- 
 mised. The German Minister in Brussels replied that he 
 knew of the assurances given by the German Chancellor 
 in 191 1 to respect Belgian neutrality, and that he "was 
 certain that the sentiments expressed at that time had 
 not changed." Nevertheless on August 2 the same 
 Minister presented a note to the Belgian Government 
 demanding a passage through Belgium for the German 
 army on pain of an instant declaration of war. Startled 
 as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific 
 war-cloud had risen on the eastern horizon, the leaders 
 of the nation rallied round the king in his resolution to 
 refuse the demand and to prepare for resistance. They 
 were aware of the danger which would confront the 
 civilian population of the country if it were tempted to 
 take part in the work of national defence. Orders were 
 accordingly issued by the civil governors of provinces, 
 and by the burgomasters of towns, that the civilian in- 
 habitants were to take no part in hostilities and to offer 
 no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might 
 be furnished for severities, the populations of many 
 important towns were instructed to surrender all fire- 
 arms into the hands of the local officials. On the evening 
 of August 4 the German armies crossed the frontier into 
 Belgium. They immediately began to shoot harmless 
 civilians and to set fire to villages. This was the opening
 
 THE WAR STATE 43 
 
 of that campaign of slaughter and destruction which 
 they carried on against the civiHan population of this 
 neutral and practically defenceless country, men, women, 
 and children, for several weeks, till all Belgium, except 
 a district in the south-west, had been subjugated. 
 
 All along the line of the German march innocent 
 civilians, old men, women, and children, as well as other 
 inhabitants, were murdered on the pretext that some 
 persons in the towns and villages had shot at the invading 
 force. The leading inhabitants — often priests — were 
 constantly seized and called " hostages," who were to be 
 put to death if any resistance was made by any civilian, 
 though these persons were not responsible for such 
 resistance and could not have prevented it. Such 
 *' hostages " were frequently shot. 
 
 Hundreds of innocent persons were seized, packed 
 in baggage or cattle cars, and sent by railway to Germany, 
 often without food or drink for many hours together. 
 Villages and large parts of such a city as Louvain were 
 destroyed by fire. Shocking outrages were committed 
 upon women, and that by officers as well as soldiers, and 
 little effort was made to restrain or punish such crimes, 
 which were often committed under the influence of liquor. 
 
 The accounts of these murders and other excesses 
 which the refugees who escaped from Belgium reported 
 found at first little credence in England, for it was hard 
 to believe that the soldiers of a civilized nation could 
 commit them. But when the Belgian, French, and 
 British Governments caused the evidence of eye-witnesses 
 among the refugees to be carefully taken and tested, 
 it was proved beyond all question not only that such 
 things had happened, but that they had happened by 
 the orders of the German officers, who themselves were 
 acting under orders from headquarters, and who some- 
 times expressed regret at having to execute such orders. 
 A full account of them, with many extracts from the 
 evidence, will be found in the Reports issued by the 
 Belgian Government and in the Report of the Committee 
 appointed by the British Government, issued in May 1 9 1 5.
 
 44 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 If there are any persons in neutral countries who still 
 think such things too horrible to be true, let them weigh 
 these two facts. Diaries (written in German) found 
 upon German prisoners or on the bodies of dead German 
 soldiers contain records of the same (or quite similar) 
 crimes as the evidence of the refugees established. The 
 genuineness of these diaries, many of which have been 
 published by the Belgian, French, and British investiga- 
 tors, is not disputed by the German Government. They 
 alone are sufficient to prove how the troops behaved. 
 
 The second fact is that the German Government 
 has never attempted to disprove the evidence adduced 
 against them. They did publish an official reply to the 
 Belgian reports, but it consisted chiefly of allegations 
 that Belgian civilians had given provocation by firing 
 on German troops, thus " violating the well-established 
 rules of international law." As the German armies 
 had entered Belgium in violation of international law, 
 this argument loses whatever force it might have had if 
 these armies had been engaged in legitimate warfare. 
 But the evidence adduced by the German White 
 Book is often flimsy and untrustworthy, and the few 
 cases in which it may deserve credit are conspicuously 
 insufficient to justify, or even to palliate, the excesses 
 committed by the troops. In reality, the vast majority of 
 the persons executed, including the so-called " hostages," 
 had no responsibility for the occasional firings, such as 
 they may have been. The fact that some other civilian 
 belonging to the same town may have fired on the 
 invaders does not justify the killing of an innocent person. 
 To seize innocent inhabitants, call them " hostages " 
 for the good behaviour of their town, and shoot them 
 if the invaders are molested by persons whose actions 
 these so-called " hostages " cannot control, is murder 
 and nothing else. Yet this is what the German com- 
 manders have done upon a great scale. The executions 
 took place to strike terror into the Belgian population, to 
 make easier the passage of the German armies, to coerce 
 the Belgian forces into despair of resistance. This
 
 Ill 
 
 THE WAR STATE 45 
 
 attempt at a justification was a tacit admission that the 
 massacres had actually been perpetrated. The facts 
 soon became known in Holland, a few miles from some 
 of the towns where the worst atrocities had been per- 
 petrated, and no one, outside Germany, now entertains 
 any doubts regarding them. 
 
 These were the facts. What were the legal justifica- 
 tions alleged by the German Government ? 
 
 Two were put forward. One was that France had 
 been planning to attack Germany through Belgium, and 
 that French officers had, in pursuance of the plan, already 
 entered Belgium to arrange for the execution of an 
 offensive there. This was a pure invention. The story 
 was improbable, for it was not in the military interests of 
 France to adopt such a method, and no evidence was 
 adduced to support it. It was soon dropped, having 
 served its temporary purpose with the credulous German 
 public. 
 
 The other allegation was that the British Government 
 had conspired with that of Belgium sometime before to 
 send a British army into the country to attack Germany. 
 This was equally baseless. A British military attache 
 had conversed with some Belgian officials as to what ought 
 to be done if Germany were to invade Belgium, since 
 Britain was pledged by a public treaty to defend Belgium 
 in the event of her being attacked by any foreign Power, 
 a contingency which it was necessary to provide for, 
 but no idea of making an offensive against Germany 
 through her had ever been entertained in England ; and 
 this has been conclusively shown by the texts which the 
 British Government has published. England had saved 
 Belgian territory from attack in 1870 by requiring both 
 France and Germany to abstain from entering it, and 
 she might have to do so again. Bismarck and Louis 
 Napoleon had then given the promise required, but 
 England could not be sure that Bismarck's successors 
 would do so likewise. 
 
 On this head, however, nothing more need be said, 
 for the German Chancellor openly confessed in the
 
 46 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Reichstag a few days after the beginning of the war 
 that his Government had " committed a wrong " and 
 had violated international law by carrying war into a 
 neutral country,^ the neutrality and independence of 
 which they had guaranteed, and which, had there been 
 no guarantee at all, was entitled by international law, and 
 on the common principles of justice, to be exempt from 
 invasion. His plea was military necessity, a necessity 
 of which Germany herself was to be the judge. 
 
 When the German armies entered France, they applied 
 the same methods as in Belgium. Non-combatants were 
 ruthlessly murdered. Villages were destroyed ; houses 
 pillaged and burnt. Women were violated, and no 
 attempt made to restrain either the lust or the ferocity 
 of the soldiery. Full accounts of these horrors, con- 
 firmed by the evidence of many soldiers' diaries, 
 have been published by the French Government, and 
 others may be found in the British Committee's Reports, 
 as well as in many books, such as that of Professor 
 Morgan. 
 
 Next after the murders on land came those at sea. 
 Submarines began to destroy, usually without any warn- 
 ing, unarmed merchant vessels, drowning their crews, 
 and also unarmed passenger vessels, drowning their 
 passengers. The Lusitania^ in which nearly twelve hun- 
 dred people perished, many of them citizens of neutral 
 countries, was only one of many cases. Fishing-boats 
 were constantly destroyed, and cases occurred in which, 
 when a vessel had been destroyed, its crew, trying to 
 escape, were shelled by the submarine, or the submarine 
 placed them on its upper surface and then submerged, 
 drowning them. These practices, gross violations of the 
 rule of international law, which requires that the safety of 
 those on board a merchant ship shall be provided for if 
 she is sunk, have gone on till now. Even hospital ships, 
 about whose character there could be no mistake, have 
 been frequently torpedoed. 
 
 Concurrently with these acts there were frequent 
 
 ^ The German War Manual itself recognizes this principle.
 
 THE WAR STATE 47 
 
 attacks upon open undefended coast towns In England, 
 often upon health resorts, such as Scarborough and 
 Ramsgate, in which many civilians were killed. 
 
 A little later than the murders on land and sea came 
 the murders from the air. In the many air-raids over 
 England no military damage has been done, and only a 
 handful of soldiers, about fifty (so far as I know), have 
 suffered. But many hundreds of innocent civilians, 
 mostly women and children, have been maimed or killed ; 
 and the murders still go on. The German Government 
 must by this time know that these raids have no effect 
 upon the British people except to rouse their anger and 
 so to make them more determined than ever to prosecute 
 the war. Such murders were blunders as well as crimes. 
 Why, then, were the air-raids and the shelling of un- 
 defended coast towns continued ? No military object 
 was attained. Hardly any soldiers were killed. It 
 was the civilians who suffered. The motive seems to 
 have been to encourage the German people at home to 
 believe that the English were being terrified, and to 
 console them for the disappointments of military failure 
 by the notion that in some way or other the German force 
 was making itself effectively felt by the enemy they 
 were being taught to hate. 
 
 Many particular instances of cruelty may be passed 
 over. That of Miss Edith Cavell, the lady who was, 
 while nursing in a hospital at Brussels, executed for 
 having aided a refugee to escape, is well remembered. 
 But that of Captain Fryatt deserves mention, because he 
 was vindictively put to death in cold blood, in flagrant 
 violation of international law, for having, some months 
 before a German vessel took him prisoner, gallantly 
 defended the passenger vessel which he was commanding 
 against the attack of a German submarine, such defence 
 being entirely legitimate, and, as legitimate, part of his 
 duty to his own country. 
 
 In 1916 a new series of cruelties began to be practised 
 upon civilians. At Lille and other towns in Northern 
 France occupied by German troops many hundreds of
 
 48 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 o^irls were torn from their homes and carried off to 
 Germany to be set to forced labour there, some of them, 
 no doubt, destined to experience an even worse fate. 
 About the same time many thousands of Belgian working 
 men were seized, and on the pretext that there was no 
 employment for them in the towns where they lived, 
 were carried off, amid the cries of their children and the 
 shrieks of their wives, who flung themselves on the rails 
 in front of the locomotives, to German towns, where 
 they were forced to work for their enemy masters against 
 their own fellow-countrymen. 
 
 The motive, so the German Government announced, 
 was a philanthropic one. It is not good for workmen to 
 loiter unemployed. They will be happier if they have 
 something to do. The unemployment, it need hardly 
 be said, had been caused by the German Government 
 itself, which had taken out of the country for its own 
 use all the raw materials of industry and all the 
 machinery. 
 
 These workmen, though deprived of their former 
 means of livelihood, were not starving. When the 
 Germans refused to feed them, they were and had con- 
 tinued to be fed by the charity of Americans and English- 
 men, directed by the admirable skill and energy of an 
 American, Mr. Hoover. In one Belgian province, 
 where some private factories were still going, the German 
 authorities stopped these in order to invent a ground for 
 treating the workmen as unemployed and driving them 
 off into Germany to labour there. This is slave-raiding, 
 worthy of those Arab marauders whom Livingstone tried 
 to root out of Africa.^ 
 
 A similar violation of the best settled rules of inter- 
 national law was carried out in Poland. Here the Polish 
 inhabitants of the invaded districts which the German 
 armies occupy were forced into the German Army on the 
 pretext that as the country had been already conquered 
 its people were virtually German subjects. They were 
 
 1 As to these slave-raidings, see the book of M. Passelecy entitled, Les Deportations 
 beiges a la lumikre des documents allemands, published at Paris and Nancy in 19 17.
 
 in THE WAR STATE 
 
 49 
 
 roped in and driven to die in order to perpetuate the 
 tyranny which the German Government had already 
 been exercising over their brethren in a part of old Poland 
 which she has held by force these many years. 
 
 The facts here briefly enumerated are indisputable 
 and undisputed facts. Whatever the excuses or pallia- 
 tions which the German Government may put forward, 
 all these acts are flagrant violations, not only of the rules 
 laid down by writers on international law, but of the 
 long-settled practice of civilized nations. 
 
 They are even worse. They violate the fundamental 
 principles of natural justice and of common humanity. 
 Even Bonaparte, whose offences shocked his contem- 
 poraries, did not in eighteen years of war so offend 
 against helpless innocence or commit so many breaches 
 of the much laxer international rules of his time, as 
 the German Generals have committed since August 4, 
 1914. 
 
 Last of all, I come to a case which surpasses all the 
 others here mentioned or referred to, not only in the 
 vastness of its scale, but in the hideous cruelties which 
 were practised upon the victims, and in the fact that 
 the victims did not belong to any of the countries with 
 whom Germany was at war. They were the subjects, 
 the innocent and helpless subjects, of one of Germany's 
 trusted Allies. Among the peoples upon whom this 
 war has brought calamity and suffering, the Armenian 
 people have had the most to endure. Great as has been 
 the misery inflicted upon Belgium and Northern France, 
 upon Poland, upon Serbia, the misery of Armenia, 
 though far less known to the outer world, has been far 
 more terrible. 
 
 When the European War broke out in 19 14, the 
 government of the Turkish Empire had fallen into the 
 hands of a small gang of unscrupulous ruffians calling 
 themselves the Committee of Union and Progress, who 
 were ruling through their command of the army, but in 
 the name of the harmless and imbecile Sultan. By 
 means which have not yet been fully disclosed, but the
 
 so ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 nature of which can be easily conjectured,^ this gang were 
 won over to serve the interests of Germany ; and at 
 Germany's bidding they declared war against the Western 
 Allies, thus dragging all the subjects of Turkey, Muslim 
 and Christian, into a conflict with which they had no 
 concern. The Armenian Christians scattered through 
 the Asiatic part of the Turkish dominions, having had 
 melancholy experience in the Adana massacres some years 
 previously of the cruelties which the Committee were 
 capable of perpetrating, were careful to remain quiet, 
 and to furnish no pretext to the Turkish authorities for 
 an attack upon them. But the masters of Turkey showed 
 that they did not need any pretext for the execution of 
 the purposes they cherished. ^ They had formed a 
 design for the extermination of the non-Mohammedan 
 elements in the population of Asiatic Turkey, in order 
 to make what they called a homogeneous nation, con- 
 sisting of Mohammedans only. The wickedness of 
 such a design was equalled only by its blind folly, for 
 the Christian Armenians of Asia Minor and the north- 
 eastern provinces constituted the most industrious, the 
 most intelligent, and the best-educated part of the popu- 
 lation. Most of the traders and merchants, nearly all 
 the skilled artisans, were Armenians, and to destroy them 
 was to destroy the best industrial asset which these regions 
 possessed. However, this was the plan of the Com- 
 mittee of Union and Progress, and as soon as they 
 began to feel, in the spring of 19 15, that the Allied 
 expedition against the Dardanelles was not likely to 
 succeed, they proceeded to execute it. They first dis- 
 armed all the Armenians in order to have them at their 
 mercy, frequently compelling by tortures the surrender 
 
 ^ An extremely interesting account of the process by which the German Government 
 lured the Turks into the war has been given by Mr. Morgenthau, who was then United 
 States Ambassador at Constantinople, and had the best opportunities of watching the 
 course of events, in the numbers for June and July of a well-known American magazine, 
 T/ie World's fFork. 
 
 * The evidence for what is here stated will be found in the Blue Book (Miscellaneous, 
 No. 31 of 19 1 6) entitled Tie Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, jgij—j6, 
 published by the British Government. No attempt has been made to reply to it, 
 though the Turkish authorities put forth some falsehoods alleging provocation by a 
 few of the Christians.
 
 THE WAR STATE 51 
 
 of arms ; and in some cases, in order to make it appear 
 that the Armenians were intending to take up arms, they 
 actually sent weapons into the towns and then had them 
 seized as evidence against the Christians. When such 
 means of defence as the Christians possessed had been 
 secured, orders for massacre were issued from Constan- 
 tinople to the local governors. The whole Armenian 
 population was seized. The grown men were slaugh- 
 tered without mercy,^ The American Consul at Khar- 
 put saw the ravines in the mountains full of skeletons. 
 Others have described the lines of corpses that lay along 
 the roads for miles. The younger women were sold in 
 the market-place to the highest bidder, or appropriated 
 by Turkish military officers and civil officials to become 
 slaves in Turkish harems. The boys were handed over 
 to dervishes to be carried off and brought up as Muslims. 
 The rest of the hapless victims, all the older men and 
 women, the mothers and their babes clinging to them, 
 were torn from their homes and driven out along the 
 tracks which led into the desert regions of northern Syria 
 and Arabia. Most of them perished on the way from 
 hardships, from disease, and from starvation. Some few 
 have been rescued by the British officers in Mesopotamia. 
 A few were still surviving in 19 17 near Aleppo and 
 along the banks of the Euphrates. Many, probably 
 many thousands, were drowned in that river and its 
 tributaries, martyrs to their Christian faith, which they 
 had refused to renounce ; for it was generally possible 
 for women, and sometimes for men, to save themselves 
 by accepting Mohammedanism. By these various 
 methods hundreds of thousands — the number is variously 
 estimated at from 600,000 to 800,000 — have perished. 
 Germany claims to be a Christian country. Its Emperor 
 and its ministers of religion are constantly representing 
 themselves as the special objects of Divine favour and 
 protection. Now the German Government knew what 
 was going on. Their Consuls reported to them. Some 
 
 ^ Some of the professors in the American colleges were murdered. So were several 
 bishops : one was burnt alive.
 
 52 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 of their missionaries besought them to stop the massacres, 
 declaring that the name of Germany would be for ever 
 disgraced if these horrors continued. But no step was 
 taken to arrest the hand of the destroyer. Instead of 
 arresting it, they have honoured the two chief criminals, 
 Talaat and Enver, with many compliments, and have 
 made the last named of these wretches a Colonel in the 
 German army. All happened with the tacit acquiescence 
 of the German Government, some of whose representa- 
 tives on the spot were even said to have encouraged 
 the Turks in their work of slaughter, while the Govern- 
 ment confined its action to the propagation in Germany, so 
 as to deceive its own people, of false stories which alleged 
 that the Armenians had been punished for insurrection- 
 ary movements, and to the exercise of a rigid censorship 
 to prevent the truth from becoming known, through 
 missionary accounts, to the German people. They made 
 themselves accessories, whether before the crime or after 
 the crime, to the most awful catastrophe that has ever 
 befallen a Christian nation. Whether they desired to be 
 rid of the most enterprising and vigorous race in Western 
 Asia because it might be in the way of their plans for 
 dominating those regions, or whether they merely desired 
 to keep their friends of the Turkish gang in good humour 
 by letting them kill to their hearts' content, we do not yet 
 know. Whichever was the motive, the result is the most 
 signal illustration yet given of the lengths to which the 
 doctrine of a State interest, standing high above all 
 morality and all compassion, can be pushed. 
 
 All these facts, with many details too horrible to be 
 repeated here, are set forth in the Blue Book recently 
 published in England, based upon incontrovertible evi- 
 dence, and to which no reply has been made, though 
 some denials, palpably false, have emanated from the 
 Turkish gang. 
 
 The case of Armenia is peculiarly instructive as 
 regards the principles which guide the German Govern- 
 ment, because it shows the civil authorities just as un- 
 scrupulous and just as ruthless as the chiefs of the army
 
 THE WAR STATE 53 
 
 and navy. Though the German Chancellor and the 
 Foreign Secretary acquiesced in the invasion of Belgium, 
 they doubtless saw the political objections. One can well 
 believe them to have remonstrated with the Emperor, but 
 to have been overborne by the pressure of the soldiers. 
 The shifts to which the Chancellor was driven for excuses, 
 and his too frank relief of his conscience by the admission 
 of wrongdoing, suggest a reluctance. But the acquies- 
 cence in and tacit approval of the Asiatic massacres was 
 a matter which fell within the province of the civilians 
 and the Ambassador at Constantinople, and they showed a 
 want of conscience, of human feeling, of religious feeling, 
 which the most hardened soldier could not have surpassed. 
 These crimes were not committed against the Allies, 
 so we can judge them impartially. And for such crimes 
 what forgiveness can there be ? 
 
 These, presented in the barest outline, are the essential 
 facts regarding the conduct of this war by the German 
 Government and its military chiefs. Be it noted that 
 the acts done were not done at random. They were not 
 due to the brutality of individual officers or the passion 
 of excited soldiers. They were done on principle, in 
 pursuance of a settled policy. Said a German officer 
 at Brussels : "I have not done one-hundredth part of 
 what I have been ordered to do by the High German 
 military authorities." ^ The crimes perpetrated hap- 
 pened — as the British Committee observe in their 
 Report (p. 43) — " not froni mere military licence, for the 
 discipline of the German army is proverbially stringent, 
 and its obedience implicit. Not from any special 
 ferocity of the troops, for whoever has travelled among 
 the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly 
 and good-natured as any people in Europe. The ex- 
 cesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover, 
 too widespread and too uniform in their character to be 
 mere sporadic outbursts of passion or rapacity. The 
 
 ^ Report of the British Committee, p. 42. Other instances are given, in which 
 officers regretted the acts which their orders compelled them to do. There are doubt- 
 less plenty of naturally humane men in the German army, and that makes their 
 subjection to the detestable system all the more regrettable.
 
 54 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap.- 
 
 explanation seems to be that these excesses were com- 
 mitted — in some cases ordered, in others allowed — on a 
 system and in pursuance of a set purpose. That purpose 
 was to strike terror into the civil population and dis- 
 hearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance 
 and extinguish the very spirit of self-defence." These 
 remarks are evidently applicable also to the acts of 
 inhumanity perpetrated by the captains of the German 
 submarines, when they killed, by shooting or by drown- 
 ing, the crews of boats they captured. They wished to 
 terrorize British sailors, and nothing in the war has 
 reflected more credit on any class of men than the fact 
 that British sailors and fishermen were not terrorized. 
 
 The German manual of military practice (Kriegsbuch 
 im Landkriege) goes a long way to justify these acts, for 
 it recognizes as proper the taking and, if necessary, 
 killing of hostages, the killing of a non-combatant who, 
 being compelled to guide the troops of an enemy, leads 
 them wrong. It declares that war must be directed 
 against " the whole intellectual and moral resources of 
 the enemy country " and not merely against the com- 
 batant armies. It even goes so far as to hint that " the 
 exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, 
 robbery, incendiarism, and the like) is not opposed to 
 international law." It bids an officer *' to guard himself 
 against excessive humanitarian notions." It advises 
 him to study in military history the instances of stern 
 severity. But, shocking as many of its propositions 
 are, it condemns many particular offences of which 
 the German officers were constantly guilty, and which 
 were committed, as the evidence proves, by the orders 
 of the High Command, as part of their regular system. 
 Its doctrine that military necessity (^Kriegsnoi) is a general 
 warrant for any sort of action was carried out by them 
 even where their Manual seemed to recognize restrictions. 
 
 These facts, considered and remembered, make a sad 
 and terrible catalogue, which we would all gladly forget. 
 But it needs to be presented for two reasons. One is 
 that it furnishes materials from which neutral nations
 
 in 
 
 THE WAR STATE ^^ 
 
 may form a judgment as to the ideas and characters of 
 the belHgerent Governments, apart altogether from those 
 questions relating to the original merits of the quarrel 
 round which controversy still rages. Whatever may 
 have been the motives and intentions of the German 
 Government, here are its acts, unrepented of, justified 
 as a necessary part of war. Let neutrals judge from 
 them, comparing them with the behaviour of the armies 
 and fleets of the Entente Powers, what the triumph of 
 one or other of the belligerent groups is likely to mean 
 for the future peace and welfare of the world. 
 
 The other reason is to enable the peoples of the 
 Entente States and of America, as well as the neutral 
 peoples, to understand the difficulties which surround 
 the making of a treaty of peace with a Government which 
 has such a record. 
 
 For what is it that the facts here summarized prove ? 
 They show, and the German War Manual shows : 
 
 1 . That the German Government, by its own avowal, 
 
 does not respect treaties when State interests 
 require them to be broken. 
 
 2. That it does not observe any engagements it has 
 
 made regarding methods of conducting war. 
 Most, perhaps all, of those it made at Hague 
 Conferences have been violated. 
 
 3. That it draws little, if any, distinction in the 
 
 conduct of war between combatants and non- 
 combatants. 
 
 4. That it shows, not only no sense of what used to 
 
 be called " chivalry " in war, but no sense of 
 pity for the helpless and the suffering. 
 
 5. That it directs, or at least encourages, the infliction 
 
 of the wanton destruction of property and 
 objects of beauty or historic interest, where no 
 military advantage, unless that of terrorization, 
 is to be expected. 
 
 6. That its only rule of action is to follow every 
 
 method, however inhuman, however illegal, that 
 is calculated to attain success.
 
 56 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 How are we to explain the proclamation of such 
 doctrines and the carrying out of them in practice by 
 the Government of a great nation which has attained, 
 at various epochs of its long history, so much distinction 
 in, and rendered such services to, philosophy and science, 
 literature and art ? 
 
 The explanation lies largely in the history of Prussia, 
 the state which has, since 1870, dominated and moulded 
 the mind of Germany. It is a history of success in and 
 by War from the end of the seventeenth century. It was 
 observed long ago that the trade of Prussia is War. 
 Among them the Soldier is the Master. Professor 
 Gilbert Murray has excellently said : — 
 
 Germany has produced the specialized soldier, not the humane 
 soldier, the Christian soldier, the chivalrous soldier, or the soldier 
 with a sense of civil duties, but the soldier who is trained to be 
 a soldier and nothing else, to disregard all the rest of human re- 
 lations, to see all his country's neighbours merely as enemies to 
 be duped and conquered, to see all life according to some system 
 of perverted biology as a mere struggle of force and fraud. The 
 Germans have created this type of soldier, alike concentrated, con- 
 scienceless, and remorseless, and then — what no other people in the 
 world has done — they have given the nation over to his guidance. 
 
 This worship of War would not have spread from 
 the military class throughout the nation had it not been 
 accompanied by and blent with a worship of the State. 
 It is the German conception of the State as an all-mastering 
 power, to which every subject must consecrate all his 
 talents and activities, that has created among the people 
 a sort of war idolatry. Militarism, instead of being 
 restrained or softened down by the thinkers, the men of 
 learning and science, has been allowed to infuse its poison 
 into the mind of the nation, the nation being, one must 
 remember, a nation in arms, and the army the nation. 
 The British Committee, expressing their amazement at 
 the doctrines held and put in practice by the German 
 High Command, observe (p. 44) : — 
 
 In the minds of Prussian officers War seems to have become 
 a sort of sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the omni-
 
 Ill 
 
 THE WAR STATE 57 
 
 potent State, which is itself as much an Army as a State. Ordinary- 
 morality and the ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in its presence, 
 superseded by a new standard which justifies to the soldier every 
 means that can conduce to success, however shocking to a natural 
 sense of justice and humanity, however revolting to his own 
 feelings. The Spirit of War is deified. Obedience to the State 
 and its War Lord leaves no room for any other duty or feeling. 
 Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory. Pro- 
 claimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to 
 have permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, 
 leading them to justify the killing of non-combatants as an act 
 of war, and so accustoming them to slaughter that even women 
 and children become at last the victims. It cannot be supposed 
 to be a national doctrine, for it neither springs from nor reflects 
 the mind and feelings of the German people as they have heretofore 
 been known to other nations. It is a specifically military doctrine, 
 the outcome of a theory held by a ruling caste who have brooded 
 and thought, written and talked and dreamed about War until 
 they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized by its 
 spirit. 
 
 It is a singular result of this kind of obsession that 
 it may affect the normal working of the mind in matters 
 outside the sphere with which the mind is chiefly and 
 primarily occupied. In the case of the German military 
 caste, it prevented them from seeing and comprehending 
 the political facts with which, in the pursuit of their 
 military aims, they had to deal. They did not perceive 
 that the outer world would not recognize what had 
 become to them fundamental axioms. They did not 
 foresee that ruthlessness and faithlessness would rouse 
 against them an anger and hatred which would do them 
 a harm in the field of politics exceeding whatever gain 
 ruthlessness and faithlessness could bring them in the 
 field of war. Bishop Butler once asked whether a nation 
 could go mad. This distortion of the military mind from 
 the natural human view of things has so disturbed its 
 balance as to produce something resembling monomania. 
 
 This species of monomania revealed itself in their 
 intellectual processes. They got hold of what they called 
 a Principle and applied it with remorseless logic. But 
 they blindly ignored other principles, or, let us say, other
 
 58 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 facts than those on which they had chosen to build their 
 system. Having drawn from Prussian experience the 
 conclusion that it takes sixty years to create a supremely 
 efficient army, having assumed the English to be a luxuri- 
 ous and the Americans a money-worshipping nation, 
 they were sure that no attempt by England, or, later on, 
 by America, to produce an army fit to cope with theirs 
 could succeed within the time they had fixed for the 
 duration of the war. Holding the principle that War is 
 Force and that Force operates by Terror, they applied 
 Terror with a total unconcern as to the effect it might 
 produce on enemy or neutral peoples outside the war 
 theatre. Fortunate was it for France and Britain that 
 this malady of the intellect led them so far astray. They 
 had knowledge, they had industry and skill, they had 
 Organization brought to a wonderful perfection. One 
 thing was wanting. It was Wisdom, and especially 
 that highest kind of wisdom which can understand human 
 nature, with the gift of sympathy that can divine the 
 feelings of others. Napoleon, with all his faults, had 
 flashes of it. Bismarck sometimes showed it, harsh as 
 he was. But in them it seems to have been totally 
 lacking, and the lack of it was fatal. 
 
 As it is hard to describe the German worship of the 
 State, except in terms drawn from religion, so the nearest 
 parallel to this obsession of a highly trained body of men 
 by one dominant idea, which extinguishes ordinary 
 morality and normal human feeling, is to be found in 
 the fanaticism which occasionally seizes those who have 
 come to live in one doctrine and for one purpose, which 
 becomes their faith. The Spanish Inquisitors of the 
 sixteenth century were possessed by a zeal for orthodoxy 
 which narrowed their minds to a single conception of life 
 and duty. The one thing that mattered was to bring 
 and keep every human creature to the words and forms 
 of the orthodox Roman creed and worship. Heresy 
 was the deadliest thing in the world, for only by exact 
 orthodoxy and implicit obedience to the Church could 
 souls be saved. This belief covered their whole sky ;.
 
 THE WAR STATE 59 
 
 this extinguished all other feelings. They were not 
 naturally worse than other men. But to them all methods 
 were lawful for tracking down a heretic, all cruelties 
 laudable that could extort a confession or the disclosure 
 of an accomplice, or could give to punishment a more 
 frightfully deterrent power. Strange are the aberrations 
 of human nature. Fanaticism may manifest itself in 
 one sphere of thought and action or another. But its 
 familiar symptoms always recur ; and they may be as 
 deadly in the soldier as in the priest. 
 
 We may now revert to the practical issues which this 
 study of German war methods raises for neutral nations. 
 What help does it afford them for judging the questions 
 involved in the conflict which the Entente Powers on 
 the one hand, Germany and Austria on the other, are 
 maintaining ? What light does it throw on the characters 
 of the belligerent nations themselves ? 
 
 We have seen what Germany's war doctrines are and 
 how perfectly her practice follows and conforms to her 
 doctrines. Can any charges similar to those which have 
 been proved against her be advanced against the armies 
 or the fleets of Britain, France, and Italy ? Have they 
 broken faith or murdered non-combatants, or gone in 
 any respect beyond what the settled rules for the conduct 
 of war authorize ? It may be that here and there re- 
 grettable acts have been done by individual soldiers. 
 Such things cannot but happen in any war. But the 
 military and naval authorities have, as everybody knows — 
 except, indeed, the German people, who have been fed up 
 by their Government with false stories against French 
 soldiers and British sailors — conducted their operations 
 with as much regard to justice and humanity as the 
 process of fighting allows, and have abstained from 
 severities which the doctrine of Retaliation upon an 
 enemy who has himself violated international usage 
 might have allowed. No maxims of cruelty, no justifi- 
 cations of it as necessary, like those which the German 
 Manual contains, stand in the books used by British 
 oflicers for their guidance. If, therefore, a verdict is
 
 6o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 to be delivered by neutrals upon the merits of this war 
 after a consideration of the way in which it has been 
 actually waged, can they have any doubt as to the side 
 that is entitled to their sympathy ? If they look into 
 the future and ask themselves what will be the effect on 
 the welfare of mankind which the victory of one or other 
 party in such a conflict of principles, principles only 
 too well illustrated by practice, must involve, have they 
 not ample materials for their decision ? Let them ask 
 themselves what difference will it make to the world 
 if the War doctrines and State doctrines maintained by 
 the German Government are approved by success, and 
 if German war methods are found to have accomplished 
 what the High Command expects from them ? 
 
 Through many centuries the nations have been 
 slowly climbing out of the savagery of primitive tribal 
 warfare into the general acceptance and observance of 
 rules for the conduct of war which, if they did not remove, 
 did at least mitigate its horrors, and limited their range 
 by assuring safety to non-combatants. The German 
 Government has now gone back to savagery. All 
 restrictions are removed. All pretence of good faith 
 is tossed aside. If Germany should win the war the 
 stamp of success will have been set upon her methods. 
 She will reproduce them and other nations will imitate 
 them in those future wars which her scientific thinkers 
 pronounce to be necessary for the progress of mankind. 
 The gains of these later centuries will have been lost, 
 and the last state of the world will have become so much 
 worse than the first, because the evil spirits that had 
 seemed to have been exorcized will now have at their 
 command the boundless resources of modern science. 
 
 There is another feature of the war and of the part 
 which the German Government has been playing in it 
 which may give cause for thought to those neutral 
 peoples that value liberty. Respect for the Rights of 
 Man as Man is the foundation of every free self-governing 
 community. If therefore any State shows itself in war 
 disregardful of human rights in the person of civilian
 
 Ill 
 
 THE WAR STATE 6i 
 
 non-combatants, as, for instance, if it murders or enslaves 
 them, it commits what may be called a political as well as 
 a moral offence, indicating its scorn for those feelings, 
 and trampling on the laws and customs which hold com- 
 munities together. Whatever brings back the regime 
 of brute force lowers human nature and destroys men's 
 confidence in one another. Right and Duty are the 
 cement which holds citizens together in a free common- 
 wealth. A blow struck at them is a blow struck at 
 democracy. 
 
 Another question also is raised which affects not 
 only neutrals, but also the peoples of the Entente coun- 
 tries and now (191 8) of the United States. When the 
 time arrives for negotiating a peace — and it must be a 
 peace whose conditions are not left to the discretion of 
 the Governments but are approved by the will of the 
 peoples — what principles, what considerations are to 
 prescribe their action in settling the terms to be given 
 to a defeated Germany ? 
 
 I pass by the preliminary difficulty on which many 
 writers and speakers have dwelt — that of making a treaty 
 with a Government which has declared that it does 
 not respect treaties any further or longer than suits its 
 own interests, but will break its promises when State 
 necessity requires. It is not merely the form of govern- 
 ment that matters. Kings have sometimes been honour- 
 able men, faithful to their engagement, and democracies 
 have sometimes been faithless. It is rather the fact that 
 this particular set of rulers, the oligarchy which dominates 
 Germany, has announced that treaties, however solemnly 
 made, do not bind it. The difficulty is a real one. 
 Treaties, however, must be made, though the experience 
 of Belgium suggests that the performance of their obli- 
 gations will need to be fortified by something stronger 
 than a scrap of paper. 
 
 A further feature of the situation is unfortunate. 
 The behaviour of the German armies in France and 
 Belgium, the murders of American and English non- 
 combatants by the German submarines, the inhumanity
 
 62 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 with which prisoners of war have been treated — all these 
 things have evoked a cry for revenge. That was in- 
 evitable. But revenge, however natural, is a bad guide 
 in politics. The more it can be held in check, the 
 better for the victors themselves. 
 
 In the peace congresses heretofore held the questions 
 discussed have usually turned upon material interests, 
 such as cessions of territory or war indemnities, or future 
 conditions of trade, or possibly upon the protection of 
 subject populations, such as were the Christian subjects 
 of Turkey or (in former days) the Protestant subjects 
 of Roman Catholic Powers. But this war presents some 
 different phenomena. It is a war of Principles, a war 
 between two hostile systems of ideas. These systems 
 are irreconcilable. One of them has challenged the 
 other to a mortal combat. If it is not utterly defeated 
 it may be expected to renew that combat so soon as it 
 has recovered from that exhaustion which awaits all the 
 combatants. The interests involved are not material 
 merely. They are also moral. 
 
 Victory will consist not merely in such territorial 
 rearrangements as the principle of nationality, judiciously 
 applied, may show to be needed for the fiiture peace of 
 Europe and Western Asia (including, of course, the 
 liberation of Belgium and Serbia and the deliverance of 
 the Eastern Christians from the Turk), but also in 
 assuring the triumph of the principles which are at stake, 
 and which have drawn Britain and America into the 
 war, the respect for the faith of treaties, and for the rights 
 of small nations, the protection of non-combatants in 
 war, the overthrow of what is called Prussian Militarism, 
 that system whose unbridled ambition has threatened 
 the liberties of the world. 
 
 Every thoughtful man, every one who has any pity 
 in his heart, must desire this war, which has been destroy- 
 ing the flower of our youth and carrying sorrow into 
 every home, to be brought to a speedy end. But we 
 must also feel — and those of us who have been workers 
 for peace through all our lives feel it as much as any
 
 m THE WAR STATE 63 
 
 others — that a peace made now, leaving the military 
 system and military caste of Germany still unbroken 
 in power, in credit, in self-confidence, in its prestige 
 and ascendancy over its own people, would be only a 
 truce, a brief respite in a conflict which that military caste 
 would resume as soon as it had repaired its losses. 
 
 To make the sort of treaty which the German Govern- 
 ment desires, and which it from time to time hints it 
 might accept, would not only leave that Government 
 in possession of ill-gotten gains, with no adequate re- 
 paration for the wrongs it has inflicted, but would be 
 an acquiescence in, almost an encouragement to repeat, 
 the methods by which its armies have carried on the war, 
 and would leave the peace-loving peoples the victims 
 to perpetually recurring fears and suspicions, obliged to 
 maintain military and naval armaments even vaster and 
 costlier than those which had become, before the war, 
 an intolerable burden. The Allies feel, and they desire 
 neutral nations to know, that if it becomes necessary 
 to fight on till the ill-gotten gains have been disgorged 
 and the reparation made, neither passion nor revenge, 
 but a conviction of what is needed for future safety will 
 be their motive. 
 
 What, then, can be done to overthrow the so-called 
 " Prussian Militarism " ? There is no more use in 
 reasoning with the military caste that rules Germany 
 than there would have been in reasoning with Spanish 
 Inquisitors. Their premises, the settled convictions by 
 which they are possessed and obsessed, are fundamentally 
 different from those which the Western nations hold. 
 Whatever Christianity may mean to them, it means 
 something different from what it means to us in Britain 
 and America. Who their God is we know not. He is 
 not our God. Can we appeal to the German people ? 
 Unfortunately a large part of the educated upper class 
 would seem to have been either indoctrinated with 
 militaristic doctrines or debarred by national patriotism 
 from expressing open dissent. The masses of the people 
 have been kept in ignorance of the causes of the war and
 
 64 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap, m 
 
 the real behaviour of their rulers. They have formed 
 habits of obedience, and they have not the constitutional 
 means that democracies possess for asserting their will 
 and changing the policy of the Government. We have 
 hoped and waited for an assertion of that will, but so 
 far we have waited in vain. It is not for us to interfere 
 with the internal affairs of Germany. " Who would 
 be free, themselves must strike the blow." 
 
 These things being so, the only course left would 
 seem to be to cut up by its roots the cause which has given 
 to Prussian militarism the power over the German mind 
 which it enjoys. That cause has been the long tradition 
 of military victory, and of the extension and enrichment 
 of the State by war. If this military prestige can be 
 destroyed, the power of the ruling caste will wither and 
 fall. The British and American peoples ought not to 
 wish, and I believe that they do not wish, to dismember 
 Germany or to inflict any permanent injury on her people. 
 What they seek is a peace of safety, a peace the terms 
 of which shall make it clear to the world, and especially 
 to the German people, that the doctrine of Force as the 
 only power, and the practice of those methods by which 
 Force has been applied, have been decisively condemned 
 by Failure, and that the most tremendous effort ever 
 made to substitute Force for Right has been defeated, 
 because it evoked the righteous indignation of the world.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 
 
 An Address delivered on the Huxley Foundation to the University of 
 
 Birmingham in 191 6 
 
 Those who have studied the general principles that 
 guide human conduct, and the working out of these prin- 
 ciples as recorded in history, have noted two main streams 
 of tendency. One of these tendencies shows itself in 
 the power of Reason and of those higher and gentler 
 altruistic emotions, which the development of Reason or 
 Philosophy as the guide of life tends to evoke and foster. 
 The other tendency is associated with the less rational 
 elements in man — with passion and those self-regarding 
 impulses which attain their ends by physical violence. 
 
 Thus two schools of philosophical thinkers or his- 
 torians have been formed. One lays stress on the power 
 of the former set of tendencies. It finds in them the 
 chief sources of human progress in the past, and expects 
 from them its further progress in the future. It regards 
 man as capable of a continual advance through the 
 increasing influence of reason and sympathy. It dwells 
 on the ideas of Justice and Right as the chief factors 
 in the amelioration of society, and therefore regards 
 good-will and peace as the goal of human endeavour 
 in the sphere both of national and of international life. 
 Its faith in human nature — that is to say, in the possi- 
 bility of improving human nature — fills it with hopes for 
 the ordinary man, who may, in its view, be brought by 
 
 65 F
 
 66 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 education, and under a regime of beneficence, to a higher 
 level than he has yet anywhere attained. 
 
 The other school is less sanguine. It insists on the 
 
 power of selfishness and of passion, holding these to be 
 
 elements in human action which can never be greatly 
 
 refined or restrained, either by reason or by sympathy. 
 
 Social order — so it holds — can be secured only by Force, 
 
 as Right itself is created only by Force. It is the strength 
 
 of the strong that has in the past made what men call 
 
 Right and Law and Government ; it is still this strength 
 
 that sustains the social structure. The average man needs 
 
 discipline ; and the best thing he can do is to submit to 
 
 the strong man — strength, of course, consisting not only 
 
 in physical capacity, but in a superiority of will and 
 
 intellect also. This school, which used to defend slavery 
 
 as useful and, indeed, necessary — the older among us 
 
 remember a time when that ancient, time-honoured 
 
 institution was still so defended — prefers the rule of the 
 
 superior One or Few, i.e. monarchy or oligarchy, to the 
 
 rule of the Many. Quite consistently, it has regarded 
 
 war as a necessary and valuable form of discipline, because 
 
 war is the final embodiment and test of physical force. 
 
 This opposition can be traced a long way back. It 
 is already visible in the days of Plato, who combats the 
 teaching of some of the Sophists that Justice is merely 
 the advantage of the strong. From his time onward 
 great philosophical schools followed his lead. So the 
 poets, from Hesiod onward, gave an ideal expression to 
 the joys of peace in their pictures of a Golden Age before 
 the use of copper and iron had been discovered. Virgil 
 describes the primeval Saturnia Regna^ the time before 
 war trumpets were blown or the anvil sounded under 
 the strokes of the swordsmith's hammer : 
 
 Necdum etiam audierant inflari classica, necdum 
 Impositos duris crepitare incudibus enses. 
 
 This was the happy time of man, to which the Roman 
 poet who acclaimed the restoration of peace by Augustus 
 looked back, desiring a rest from the unending strife of 
 the ancient world. Just after Virgil's day, Christianity
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 67 
 
 proclaimed peace as its message to all mankind. Twelve 
 hundred years later, in an age full of strife, Dante, the 
 most imaginative mind of the Middle Ages, hoped for 
 peace from the universal sway of a pious and disinterested 
 Emperor ; and, nearly six hundred years after him, in the 
 days of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Immanuel Kant, 
 the greatest metaphysician of the modern world, produced 
 his plan for the establishment of an everlasting peace. 
 
 These hopes and teachings of poets and philosophers, 
 though they had little power in the world of fact (for few 
 rulers or statesmen, even of those who rendered lip- 
 service to pacific principles, ever tried to apply them to 
 practice), continued to prevail in the world of theory, 
 and seemed, especially after the final extinction of slavery 
 half a century ago and the spread of democracy from 
 America to Europe, to be passing into the category of 
 generally accepted truths. 
 
 Latterly, however, there has come a noteworthy 
 reaction. A school of thinkers has arisen which, not 
 content with maintaining war to be a necessary factor 
 in the relations between states, as being the only ulti- 
 mately available method of settling their disputes, 
 declares it to be a method in itself wholesome and socially 
 valuable. To these thinkers it is not an inevitable evil, 
 but a positive good — a thing not merely to be expected 
 and excused, but to be desired for the benefits it confers 
 on mankind. This school challenges the assumptions 
 of the lovers of peace and denounces their projects of 
 disarmament and arbitration as pernicious. War, it 
 seems, is a medicine which human society needs, and 
 which must be administered at frequent intervals ; for 
 it is the only tonic capable of bracing up the character 
 of a nation. 
 
 Such doctrines are a natural result of the system of 
 thought which exalts the functions and proclaims the 
 supremacy of the State. The State stands by Power. 
 The State is Power. Its power rests upon force. By 
 force it keeps order and executes the law within its limits. 
 Outside its limits there is no law, but only force. Neither
 
 68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 is there any morality. The State is a law unto itself, and 
 owes no duty to other states. Self-preservation is the 
 principle of its being. Its Might is Right, the only 
 possible Right. War, or the threat of war, is the sole 
 means by which the State can make its will prevail against 
 other states ; and where its interest requires war, to war 
 it must resort, reckless of the so-called rights of others. 
 
 This modern doctrine, or rather this modernized 
 and developed form of an old doctrine, bases itself on 
 two main arguments. One is drawn from the realm of 
 animated nature, the other from history. Both lines of 
 argument are meant to show that all progress is achieved 
 by strife. Among animals and plants it is Natural 
 Selection and the Struggle for Life that have evolved 
 the higher forms from the lower, destroying the weaker 
 species, and replacing them by the stronger. Among 
 men it is the same process of unending conflict that has 
 enabled the higher races and the more civilized states to 
 overcome the lower and less advanced, either extinguish- 
 ing them altogether, or absorbing them and imposing 
 upon such of them as remain, the superior type of the 
 victors. 
 
 The theory I am describing has, in these latest years, 
 acquired for us a more than theoretical interest. It has 
 passed out of the world of thought into the world of 
 action, becoming a potent factor in the relations of states. 
 It has been used to justify, not merely war itself, but 
 methods of warfare till recently unheard of — methods 
 which, though recommended as promoting human pro- 
 gress, threaten to carry us back into the ages of barbarism. 
 It deserves to be carefully examined, so that we may see 
 upon what foundations it rests. I propose to consider 
 briefly the two lines of argument just referred to, which 
 may be called the biological and the historical. 
 
 II 
 
 Never yet was a doctrine adopted for one set of reasons 
 which its advocates could not somehow contrive to
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 69 
 
 support by other reasons. In the Middle Ages men 
 generally resorted to the Bible, rarely failing to find a text 
 which they could so interpret as to justify their views or 
 their acts. Pope Gregory the Seventh, perhaps the most 
 striking figure of the eleventh century, proved to the 
 men of his time that his own spiritual power was superior 
 to the secular power by citing that passage in the Book 
 of Genesis which says that the sun was created to rule 
 the day and the moon to rule the night. The modern 
 reader may not see the connection, but Gregory's con- 
 temporaries did. The sun was the Popedom and the 
 moon was the Empire. In our own time — I am old 
 enough to remember the fact, and the reader will find it 
 referred to in Uncle Tom s Cabin^ a book which ought to be 
 still read, for it told powerfully upon opinion here and in 
 America — the apologists of Negro slavery justified that 
 ** peculiar institution " by quoting the passage in Genesis 
 where Noah prophesies that Ham, or rather Canaan the 
 son of Ham, shall serve his elder brother Shem. In the 
 then current biblical ethnology, Ham was the progenitor 
 of the black races of Africa, and the fact that even that 
 ethnography did not make Shem the progenitor of the 
 Anglo-American race, which the children of Ham were 
 destined to serve, was passed lightly over. This argu- 
 ment had no great currency outside the Slave States. 
 But another book l^esides the Bible was open, and to 
 that also an appeal was made : the Book of Nature. 
 It was frequently alleged by the defenders of slavery 
 in Europe, as well as in America, that the Negro was not 
 really a man, but one of the higher apes, and certain 
 points from his bone-structure were adduced to prove . 
 this thesis. I well remember listening to a lecture in 
 which Huxley demolished it. 
 
 Less use is made of Scripture now for political pur- 
 poses than in the days of Gregory the Seventh or even in 
 those of Jefferson Davis. But attempts to press science 
 into the service of politics are not unknown in our genera- 
 tion, so we must not be surprised that a nation which is 
 nothing if not scientific should have sought and found
 
 70 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 in what is called the Darwinian Doctrine of Natural 
 Selection a proof of their view that the elimination of 
 the weak by the strong is a principle of universal potency, 
 the method by which progress is attained in the social 
 and political, no less than in the natural sphere. 
 
 Their argument has been stated thus : The geological 
 record shows that more highly developed forms have 
 been through countless ages evolved from forms simpler 
 and more rudimentary. Cryptogamous plants — such 
 as lichens, mosses, ferns — came first, and out of these 
 the phanerogamous were developed. Animal life began 
 with zoophytes and molluscs ; serpents and birds 
 followed ; then came the mammalia, these culminating 
 in Man. Some species disappeared, and were replaced 
 in the perpetual struggle for existence by others that 
 had proved themselves stronger. Every species fights 
 to maintain itself against the others ; there is not room 
 enough for all ; the weak disappear, the stronger prevail. 
 So the earlier forms of man himself have succumbed 
 to others superior in strength ; and among these latter 
 some races have shown a greater capacity, physical and 
 mental, and have either displaced or exterminated or con- 
 quered the weaker, sometimes enslaving them, sometimes 
 absorbing them. When the conquered survive, they 
 receive the impress of the conqueror and are conformed 
 to his more perfect type. Thus the white man has 
 prevailed against the coloured man. Thus the Teuton 
 is prevailing against the Slav and the Celt, and is indeed 
 fitted by his higher gift for intellectual creation, as well 
 as practical organization, to be the Lord of the World, as 
 the lion is lord of the forest and the eagle lord of the air. 
 
 As progress in the animal creation is effected by a 
 strife in which the animal organisms possessing most 
 force prevail and endure, so progress in the political 
 world comes through conflicts in which the strongest 
 social organisms, that is, the states best equipped for war, 
 prove themselves able to overcome the weaker. Without 
 war this victory of the best cannot come about. Hence, 
 war is a main cause of progress.
 
 IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 71 
 
 Lest this summary should misrepresent the view I 
 am endeavouring to state — and it is not easy to state it 
 correctly, for there lurks in it some mental confusion — 
 I will cite a few passages from one of its exponents, 
 slightly abridging his words for convenience of quotation.^ 
 Others have probably stated it better, but all that need be 
 done here is to show how some, at least, of those who 
 hold it have expressed themselves. 
 
 " Wherever we look in Nature we find that war is 
 a fundamental law of development. This great verity, 
 which has been recognized in past ages, has been con- 
 vincingly demonstrated in modern times by Charles 
 Darwin. He proved that nature is ruled by an unceas- 
 ing struggle for existence, by the right of the stronger, 
 and that this struggle in its apparent cruelty brings 
 about a selection eliminating the weak and the un- 
 wholesome." 
 
 ** The natural law to which all the laws of nature can 
 be reduced is the law of struggle." 
 
 " From the first beginning of life, war has been the 
 basis of all healthy development. Struggle is not merely 
 the destructive, but the life-giving principle. The law 
 of the stronger holds good everywhere. Those forms 
 survive which are able to secure for themselves the most 
 favourable conditions of life. The weaker succumb." 
 
 Now, let us examine this so-called argument from the 
 biological world and see whether or how far it supports 
 the thesis that the law of progress through strife is a 
 universal law, applicable to human communities as well 
 as to animals and plants. 
 
 Several objections present themselves. First. This 
 theory is an attempt to apply what are called Natural 
 Laws to a sphere unlike that of external nature. The 
 facts we study in the external world are wholly different 
 from those we study in human society. There are 
 in that society certain generally observable sequences 
 of phenomena which we popularly call laws of social 
 development : that is to say, individual men and com- 
 
 ^ Gtrmany and the Next War, by General von Bcrnhardi, p. i8.
 
 72 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 munities of men show certain recurrent tendencies which 
 may be compared with the recurrent sequences in the 
 behaviour of inanimate substances and in the animated 
 creation. But the human or social sequences have not 
 that uniformity, that generahty, that capacity for being 
 counted or measured, and thereby expressed in precise 
 and unvarying terms, which belong to things in the world 
 of external nature. Oxygen and sulphur always and 
 everywhere behave (so far as we know) in exactly the 
 same way when the conditions are exactly the same. 
 Every oak tree and every apple tree, however different 
 the individuals of the species may be in size, grow in 
 the same way, and the laws of their growth can be so 
 stated as to be applicable to all members of the species. 
 But we cannot do more than conjecture, with more or 
 less confidence, but never with certainty of prediction, 
 how any given man or any given community of men will 
 behave under any given set of conditions. 
 
 The human body no doubt consists of tissues, and 
 the tissues of cells. But each individual in the species 
 Homo Sapiens Europaeus has, when considered as a human 
 being, something peculiar to himself which is not and 
 cannot be completely known or measured. His action 
 is due to so many complex and hidden causes, and 
 is therefore so incalculable by any scientific apparatus, 
 he is played upon by so many forces whose presence 
 and strength no qualitative or quantitative analysis can 
 determine, that both his thoughts and his conduct are 
 practically unpredictable. That which we call a scientific 
 law is therefore totally different in the social world from 
 what it is in the world of external nature. Considerations 
 drawn from the latter world are accordingly, when applied 
 to man, not arguments but, at best, mere analogies, 
 sometimes suggestive as indicating lines of inquiry, but 
 never approaching the character of exact science. 
 
 Secondly. That which is called the Darwinian principle 
 of Natural Selection is a matter still in controversy 
 among scientific men. A distinguished zoologist, for 
 instance. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, whose little book en-
 
 IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS , 73 
 
 titled Evolution and the War may be commended as full 
 of interest and instruction, pronounces the principle to 
 be only a highly probable hypothesis regarding the 
 process by which the evolution of species has taken place, 
 but still no more, as yet, than a hypothesis. The methods 
 by which natural selection takes place are uncertain.^ 
 Higher and more complex forms do certainly come out 
 of lower and simpler forms ; and the adaptability to 
 environment would seem to be an extremely important 
 factor in their development. More than that — so one 
 gathers from the biologists — we are not entitled to assert. 
 
 Thirdly. The Struggle for Life in the Darwinian sense 
 is not so much a combat between species as a combat 
 between individuals of the same .species, which, like the 
 seeds of plants, dispute the same bit of soil, or, like the 
 carnivorous animals, feed on the same creatures and find 
 there is not enough to go round. In the animal world 
 we find nothing that really resembles the wars of human 
 tribes or states. Tigers or other bellicose animals do 
 not fight either with other tigers or with such other 
 feline tribes as leopards. Individuals may fight in those 
 occasional cases where the possession of the same female 
 is disputed by two males ; but groups do not fight each 
 other. Tigers kill antelopes for food ; they have no 
 impulse to dominate or to extirpate, but only desire to 
 support their own life. If zoology furnishes any analogy 
 to the contests of nations, it is to be found, not in the 
 clash of Teutonic and Slavonic armies, but where there 
 is an appropriation, by individuals possessing superior 
 industry and skill, of the means of livelihood and oppor- 
 tunities for amassing wealth which trade and civilized 
 finance offer to all alike who will address themselves to 
 the task. Here we see not war, but a competition for 
 means of livelihood. 
 
 Fourthly. The supersession of one species by another 
 is certainly not effected, in the external world, by fighting, 
 but apparently by the adaptation to its environment 
 of the species which ultimately survives. Where an 
 oceanic island like Hawaii is overrun by new species
 
 74 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 of plants whose seeds, or seedlings, are brought from 
 another country, what happens is that some of the new 
 species thus introduced find in the isle an environ- 
 ment of soil and climate which suits them so well that 
 they multiply and crowd out, by their natural growth in 
 the soil, the weaker of the native species established there, 
 till at last a mixed flora results, representing both the old 
 natives and other species from elsewhere. In 1883, 
 when I saw it, Hawaii had thrice been thus overrun. 
 You may see a somewhat similar process where the turf 
 has been cut off a piece of land, leaving it bare for seeds 
 to settle on. Various species appear, some perhaps 
 hardly known before in the neighbourhood ; but after 
 some years a few will be found in exclusive possession. 
 Here we have a phenomenon to which there are parallels 
 in the rapid growth and increase of some trees in certain 
 situations which favour them and the consequent dis- 
 placement of others. But there is nothing like this in 
 human war. And, on the other hand, there is in the 
 animal world no parallel to the fundamental fact that in 
 human warfare it is not the weaker but the stronger part 
 of the population that is drawn away to perish on the 
 battlefield. 
 
 Fifthly. We must note in this connection two other 
 important factors in the extension and decline of 
 species. One of them is liability to disease. The other is 
 fecundity. Here an analogy between plants and animals, 
 on the one hand, and the races or sub-races of mankind 
 may no doubt be traced. But there is here no conflict. 
 The causes which make some species more susceptible 
 to maladies than others, or make some more prolific than 
 others, exist everywhere in animated nature. But they 
 exist in the species, or race, being due to something in 
 its peculiar constitution. They have nothing to do with 
 conflict between one species, or one race, and another 
 species or race. That these physical factors have more 
 to do with the numerical strength of a species than has 
 its capacity for fighting becomes so clear when we com- 
 pare the diffusion of some non - predatory with some
 
 IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 75 
 
 predatory species, that it is not worth while to adduce 
 instances. It may be noted, however, that in some of 
 the most advanced races of man the birth-rate is so much 
 lower than it is in the backward races as to threaten the 
 ultimate supremacy of the former. 
 
 These considerations, which I have been obliged to 
 state only in outline, seem sufficient to show how hollow 
 is the argument which recommends war as the general 
 law of the universe and a main cause of progress in the 
 human as well as the natural world. It is not an argu- 
 ment at all, but an analogy, and an imperfect one at that. 
 Let me add that the view which regards war as a useful 
 factor in human development had no support from 
 Darwin himself.^ So far from considering war a cause 
 of progress in general, or of improvement in the popula- 
 tion of a particular country, he wrote, in the Origin of 
 Species : "In every country in which a large standing 
 army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by 
 conscription or enlisted. They are thus exposed to 
 early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and 
 are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. 
 On the other hand, the shorter and feebler men, with 
 poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently 
 have a much better chance of marrying." 
 
 Ill 
 
 So much for the first set of grounds on which the war 
 theorists rely. Let us turn to the second, that is to say, 
 the argument from history. It is alleged that the record 
 of all that man has done and suffered is largely a record 
 of constant strife — a fact undeniably true — and that 
 thereby the races and nations and states which are now 
 able to do most for the further advance of mankind have 
 prevailed. They have prevailed by war ; war, there- 
 fore, has been the means, and the necessary means, of 
 
 ^ My friend, Major Leonard Darwin, in a letter which appeared in the Press in 1914, 
 expressly denied that his illustrious father had ever countenanced this application of his 
 theory of Natural Selection. He considered that war tended to the injury of the human 
 apecies by killing off the best.
 
 76 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 that predominance which has enabled them to civilize 
 the best parts of the globe. 
 
 Before entering this part of the enquiry, let us see 
 what Progress means. It is a term which covers several 
 quite different things. 
 
 There is Material progress, by which I understand 
 an increase in wealth, that is, in the commodities useful 
 to man, which give him health, strength, and longer life, 
 and make his life easier, providing more comfort and 
 more leisure, and thus enabling him to be more physi- 
 cally efficient, and to escape from that pressure of want 
 which hampers the development of his whole nature. 
 
 There is Intellectual progress — an increase in know- 
 ledge, a greater abundance of ideas, the training to think, 
 and think correctly, the growth in capacity for dealing 
 with practical problems, the cultivation of the power 
 to enjoy the exercise of thought and the pleasures of 
 letters and art. 
 
 There is Moral progress, a thing harder to define, 
 but which includes the development of those emotions 
 and habits which make for happiness — contentment and 
 tranquillity of mind, the absence of the more purely 
 animal and therefore degrading vices (such as intemper- 
 ance and sensuality in its other forms), the control 
 of the violent passions, good-will and kindliness toward 
 others — in fact all the things which fall within the philo- 
 sophical conception of a life guided by right reason. 
 People have different ideas of what constitutes happiness 
 and virtue, but these things are at any rate included in 
 every such conception. 
 
 A further preliminary question arises. Is human 
 progress to be estimated as respects the point to which 
 it raises the few who have high mental gifts and the 
 opportunity of obtaining an education fitting them for 
 intellectual enjoyment and intellectual vocations, or is 
 it to be measured by the amount of its extension to and 
 diffusion through each nation, meaning the nation as a 
 whole — the average man as well as the superior spirits ? 
 You may sacrifice either the many to the few — as was
 
 IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 77 
 
 done by slavery — or the few to the many, or the advance 
 may be general and proportionate in all classes. 
 
 Again, when we think of Progress, are we to think of 
 the world as a whole, or only of the stronger and more 
 capable races and states ? If the stronger rise upon the 
 prostrate bodies of the weaker, is this clear gain to the 
 world, because the stronger will ultimately do more for 
 the world, or is the loss and suffering of the weaker to be 
 brought into the account ? I do not attempt to discuss 
 these questions. It is enough to note them as fit to be re- 
 membered ; for perhaps all three kinds of progress ought 
 to be differently judged if a few leading nations only are 
 to be regarded, or if we are to think of all mankind. 
 
 Now let us address ourselves to history. Does 
 history show that progress has come more through and 
 by war or through and by peace ? It would be tedious 
 to pursue an examination of the question all down 
 the annals of mankind from the days when authentic 
 records begin ; but we may take a few of those salient 
 instances to which the advocates of the war doctrine 
 and those of the peace doctrine would appeal as sustaining 
 their respective theses. Let us divide these instances 
 into four classes, as follows : 
 
 (i) Instances cited to show that War promotes 
 Progress. 
 
 (2) Instances cited to show that Peace has failed to 
 promote Progress. 
 
 (3) Instances cited to show that War has failed to 
 promote Progress. 
 
 (4) Instances cited to show that Peace promotes 
 Progress. 
 
 I begin with the cases in which war is alleged to have 
 been the cause of progress. 
 
 It is undeniable that war has often been accompanied 
 by an advance in civilization. If we were to look for 
 progress only in times of peace there would have been 
 little progress to discover, for mankind has lived in a 
 state of practically continuous warfare. The Egyptian 
 and Assyrian monarchs were always fighting. The
 
 78 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Book of Samuel speaks of spring as the time when kings 
 go forth to battle, much as we should speak of autumn 
 as the time when men go forth to shoot deer. IToXe/io? 
 ^vaei VTTtip'^et ttjOO? dirdaa'i Ta<? TroXet?,^ said PlatO. Things 
 have not greatly improved since those distant days, 
 though latterly men have become accustomed to think of 
 peace as the normal, war as the abnormal or exceptional, 
 relation of states to one another. In the ancient world, 
 as late as the days of Roman conquest, a state of peace 
 was the rare exception among civilized states as well as 
 barbarous tribes. But Carthage, like her Phoenician 
 mother-city, went on building up a mighty commerce 
 till Rome smote her down, and the Hellenic people, 
 in its many warring cities, went on producing noble 
 poems and profound philosophical speculations, and rear- 
 ing majestic temples and adorning them with incom- 
 parable works of sculpture, and all this in the intervals 
 of their fighting with their neighbours of the same and 
 other races. The case of the Greeks proves that War 
 and Progress are compatible. Whoever visits Sicily and 
 the coasts of the Aegean cannot but be struck by the 
 thought that it was in the midst of warfare that the 
 majestic buildings of these regions were erected at 
 enormous cost. 
 
 The case of Rome is still more often dwelt upon. 
 Her material greatness was due to the conquests which 
 made her mistress of the world. She also achieved 
 intellectual greatness in her poets and orators and jurists, 
 and by her literature and her laws contributed immensely 
 to the progress of mankind. How far are these achieve- 
 ments to be credited to that long course of conquest ? 
 
 The Temple of Janus had stood open as a sign 
 of war for two hundred years, when it was closed by 
 Augustus in 29 B.C. to indicate the general peace he had 
 established. The spirit of the Roman people was sustained 
 at a high level by military triumphs, as discipline and the 
 capacity for organization and united national action were 
 also engendered and sustained. But it is to be noted 
 
 ^ War is the natural relation of states to one another.
 
 IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 79 
 
 that, although the Romans had shown great political 
 intelligence in creating and working their curiously 
 complex constitution, their literary production attained 
 no high level until Hellenic influences had worked upon 
 it. To these influences, more than to any material causes, 
 its excellence is due. Nor did the creative epoch last 
 long. War continued ; but production declined both 
 in letters and in art after the days of the great warrior 
 Trajan, though there was more fighting than ever. The 
 waning strength of the Empire, as well as the economic 
 decay of Italy, has been justly attributed in large measure 
 to the exhaustion by warfare of the old Italian stock. 
 
 In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, 
 when civilization had greatly advanced in southern and 
 western Europe, the phenomena of ancient Greece were 
 repeated. Incessant wars between the cities of Italy did 
 not prevent the growth of a brilliant literature and an 
 even more brilliant art. It is, however, to be noted that, 
 while the fighting was universal, the literature was con- 
 fined to comparatively few centres, and there were places 
 like the Neapolitan South, in which high artistic talent 
 was rare. There is nothing in Italian history to show 
 any causal connection between intellectual activity and 
 the practice of war. The same may be said of France. 
 The best work in literature and art was done in a time of 
 comparative tranquillity under Louis XIV., not in the 
 more troubled days of the Hundred Years' War with 
 England and of the religious wars of the sixteenth century. 
 
 The capital instance of the association of war with 
 the growth and greatness of a state is found in Prussia. 
 One may say that her history is the source of the whole 
 thesis and the basis of the whole argument. It is a case 
 of what, in the days when the students of my generation 
 were learning logic at the University of Oxford, we used 
 to call the " induction from a single instance." Prussia, 
 then a small state, began her upward march under the 
 warlike and successful prince whom her people call the 
 Great Elector. Her next long step to greatness was 
 taken by Frederick II., again by a course of successful
 
 8o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 warfare, though doubtless also by means of a highly 
 organized, and, for those days, very efficient administra- 
 tion. Voltaire said of Frederick's Prussia that its trade 
 was war. The close of the Napoleonic wars further 
 enlarged her territory. Three successful wars — those of 
 1864, 1866, and 1870-71 — made her the nucleus of a 
 united German nation and the leading military power of 
 the Old World. 
 
 Ever since those victories her industrial production, 
 her commerce, and her wealth have rapidly increased, 
 while at the same time scientific research has been prose- 
 cuted with the greatest vigour and on a scale unprece- 
 dentedly large. These things were no doubt achieved 
 during a peace of forty-three years. But it was what one 
 may call a belligerent peace, full of thoughts of war and 
 preparations for war. There is no denying that the 
 national spirit has been carried to a high point of pride, 
 energy, and self-confidence, which have stimulated effort 
 in all directions and secured extraordinary efficiency in 
 civil as well as in military administration. Here, then, 
 is an instance in which a state has grown by war and a 
 people has been energized by war. 
 
 But before drawing any conclusions from this solitary 
 instance three questions must be asked : 
 
 Will the present conflict be attended by such a success 
 as to lead the Prussian people to approve the policy which 
 this war spirit has inspired .'' 
 
 Even supposing that the nation is not defeated and 
 humbled in the struggle, may not its material prosperity 
 be thrown back and its internal tranquillity impaired ? 
 
 May not the national character turn out to have 
 suffered a declension which it will take long to cure ? 
 
 Results cannot be judged at the moment. What 
 people was ever prouder of its world-dominion than the 
 Romans at the time of Augustus ? Yet the seeds of 
 decline were already sown. Within a century, men like 
 Tacitus had begun to note the signs of a slowly approach- 
 ing dissolution, and within two centuries more the dissolu- 
 tion was at hand. To this it may be added that the
 
 rv WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 8i 
 
 advance of any single state by violent methods may involve 
 greater harm to the world than the benefits which that 
 state expects to gain for itself, or than those which it 
 proposes to confer upon its neighbours by imposing its 
 civilization upon them. 
 
 I pass to another set of cases, those in which it is 
 argued that the absence of war has meant the absence of 
 progress. Such cases are rare, because so few countries 
 have enjoyed, or had the chance of suffering from, periods 
 of long peace. Two, however, may be referred to. 
 One is supplied by the Spanish dominions in America 
 from the middle of the sixteenth till the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, when they threw off the yoke of the 
 mother-country. These vast countries, stretching from 
 California to Patagonia, lay lapped in a peace disturbed 
 only by the occasional raids of Dutch or British sea-rovers, 
 and by skirmishes, rarely severe, with native Indian 
 tribes. The Spanish colonies certainly did stagnate, and 
 made no sensible advance either materially or intellectu- 
 ally. But peace was not the cause of their stagnation. It 
 may be easily explained by the facts that they were ruled 
 by a government at once autocratic and incapable, and 
 that they lived so far from the European "world of ideas 
 as to be hardly affected by its vivifying influences. Such 
 causes were amply sufficient to arrest progress. 
 
 The other case, often cited, is that of China. She is 
 supposed to have become flaccid, feeble, immovably 
 conservative, because her people, long unaccustomed 
 to war, have contracted a pacific temper. In this state- 
 ment there is some exaggeration, for there has always 
 been a good deal of fighting on the outskirts of the Chinese 
 Empire ; and in the Tae Ping insurrection forty years 
 ago millions of men are said to have been killed. It 
 must also be remembered that in Art, at least — one of 
 the activities in which the Chinese hold a leading place — 
 there have been frequent changes and some brilliant 
 revivals during the centuries of peace. China reached 
 in comparatively early times a civilization very remarkable 
 on its moral and intellectual as well as on its material
 
 82 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 side. That her subsequent progress was slow, some- 
 times hardly discernible, is mainly attributable to her 
 complete isolation, with no nation near her from which 
 she had anything to learn, because the tribes to the south- 
 west and west — tribes constantly occupied in war — were 
 far inferior to her. Lucky has it been for the rest of the 
 world that her three hundred and fifty millions, belonging 
 to a race both physically strong and capable of discipline, 
 have been of a pacific temper, valuing trade and industry, 
 artistic creation and skill in literary composition, as objects 
 worthier of man than martial prowess. 
 
 Whoever travels among the Chinese sees that, peaceful 
 as they are, they are anything but a decadent or exhausted 
 race. Nor is it idle to remark that the Japanese, a really 
 military people, had during many centuries made no m.ore 
 progress than their Chinese teachers, and for the same 
 reason : viz. that they had remained, down to our own 
 time, cut off, and that by their own wish, from all the 
 stimulating influences which the white races were exerting 
 upon one another. 
 
 Next, let us take the cases which show that there have 
 been in many countries long periods of incessant war with 
 no corresponding progress in the things that make civiliza- 
 tion. I will not speak of peoples tribally organized, among 
 the more advanced of which may be placed the Albanians 
 and the Pathans and the Turkomans, while among the 
 more backward were the North American Indians and 
 the Zulus. But one may cite the case of the civilized 
 regions of Asia under the successors of Alexander, when 
 civilized peoples, distracted by incessant strife, did com- 
 paratively little for the progress of arts or letters or govern- 
 ment, from the death of the great conqueror till they were 
 united under the dominion of Rome and received from 
 her a time of almost unbroken tranquillity. 
 
 The Thirty Years' War is an example of long-con- 
 tinued fighting, which, far from bringing progress in 
 its train, inflicted injuries on Germany from which she 
 did not recover for nearly two centuries. Nearer our 
 times, there has been more fighting in South and Central
 
 IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 83 
 
 America, since the Wars of Independence, than in any 
 other civilized countries. Yet can any one say that 
 anything has been gained by the unending civil wars 
 and revolutions, or those scarcely less frequent conflicts 
 between the several republics, like that terrible one 
 thirty years ago in which Peru was overcome by Chile ? 
 Or look at Mexico. Except during the years when the 
 stern dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz kept order and equipped 
 the country with roads and railways, her people have 
 made no perceptible advance, and stand hardly higher 
 to-day than when they were left to work out their own 
 salvation a hundred years ago. Social and economic 
 conditions have doubtless been against her. All that 
 need be remembered is that warfare has not bettered 
 those conditions, or improved the national character. 
 
 Last of all we come to cases in which periods of peace 
 have been attended by an increase in national prosperity 
 and by intellectual development. These periods have 
 been few and generally short, for (as already observed) 
 war has been everywhere the rule and peace the exception. 
 Nevertheless, one may point to instances like that of the 
 comparative order and repose which England enjoyed 
 after the Wars of the Roses. There were some foreign 
 wars under the Tudors ; there were brilliant achievements 
 and adventures on the seas. There were some few in- 
 ternal revolts under Elizabeth. But the great bulk of 
 the nation was left free to prosper by agriculture and 
 trade and to produce great writers. It was the century 
 of More and Bacon and Harvey, of Sidney and Spenser 
 and Shakespeare. Two similar instances are furnished by 
 the rapid progress of Scotland after the Revolution of 
 1688—89 gs-ve her internal peace, and the similar progress 
 of Norway from 18 14 till our own days. The annals of 
 Switzerland since 18 15 and those of Belgium since her 
 creation in 1832 have shown that a peace maintained 
 during two generations is compatible, not only with the 
 rapid growth of industrial prosperity, but also with the 
 preservation of a courageous and patriotic spirit, ready to 
 face the dangers of war.
 
 84 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 IV 
 
 If this hasty historical survey has, as I frankly admit, 
 given us few positive and definite results, the reason is 
 plain. Human progress is affected by so many condi- 
 tions besides the presence or absence of fighting, that it 
 is impossible in any given case to pronounce that it has 
 been chiefly due either to war or to peace. Two con- 
 clusions, however, we may claim to have reached, though 
 they are rather negative than positive. One is that 
 war does not necessarily arrest progress. Peoples may 
 advance in thought, literature, and art while they are 
 fighting. The other is that war cannot be shown to 
 have been a cause of progress in anything except the 
 wealth or material power of a state which extends its 
 dominions by conquest or fills its coffers by tribute 
 extorted from the vanquished. 
 
 In those cases, however, where the victorious state 
 has gained materially, there are two other things to be 
 considered. One is the possible loss to the conqueror 
 of the good-will of other nations who may reprobate its 
 methods or fear its aggressive tendencies. Another is 
 the political injury it may suffer by sacrificing, as usually 
 happens with military states, its domestic freedom to its 
 achievements in war, or the moral injury which the pre- 
 dominance of warlike ideals is apt to bring to national 
 character. And if we extend our view to take in the 
 general gain or loss to world-progress, the benefits reaped 
 by the victorious state may be more than counterbalanced 
 by the harm inflicted on the vanquished. When the 
 Macedonian kings destroyed the freedom of Greece, 
 did not mankind lose far more than Macedon gained ? 
 
 The weakness of the argument which recommends 
 and justifies war by the suggestion that it is by war that 
 the foremost races and states have established their posi- 
 tion may be very briefly stated. War has been practically 
 universal. All the races and states have fought, some 
 better, some worse. The best fighters have not always 
 succeeded, for they may have been fewer in number.
 
 IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 85 
 
 There is no necessary connection between fighting quality 
 and intellectual quality. True it is that some of the 
 intellectually gifted peoples have also been warlike 
 peoples. The Greeks were ; so are the French and 
 the Germans. But the Turks, who are good fighters, 
 are good for nothing else ; and the dull Spartans fought 
 better, on land at least, than the bright Athenians. Where 
 the gift for fighting goes with the gift for thought, the 
 success achieved by the intellectual race in war is not a 
 result but a symptom, an indication or evidence of an 
 exceptional natural force. Those races and states that 
 are now in the front rank of civilization have shown 
 their capacity in many other fields besides that of war, 
 and at other times than when they were fighting. All 
 that can safely be said to be proved by history is that 
 a race which cannot fight or will not fight when a proper 
 occasion arises, as, for instance, when it has to vindicate 
 its independence, is likely to go down, and be subjected 
 or absorbed. Yet the fact that a state is subjected or 
 absorbed does not prove its inferiority. There is no 
 poetical justice in history. The highly gifted race may 
 be small, like Israel, or too much divided to maintain 
 itself against heavy odds, like the Hellenes of antiquity. 
 From 1490 to 1 560 Italy was the prey of foreign invaders ; 
 but she was doing more for human progress in art and 
 letters than all the other European nations put together. 
 So far, then, our inquiry has shown two things. 
 One is the worthlessness of the biological analogy — for 
 it is only an analogy — between animated nature and 
 human society, based upon what is called the Struggle for 
 Life and the Survival of the Fittest. The other is the 
 weakness of the arguments drawn from history to prove 
 war necessary to progress. 
 
 Let us now, in conclusion, try to approach the question 
 in another way. Let us ask what are the consequences 
 which seem naturally to flow from the devotion to war
 
 86 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 of a nation's gifts and powers, whether physical or in- 
 tellectual. Reverting to the distinction already drawn 
 between Material, Intellectual, and Moral progress, let 
 us see what are the consequences to be expected in each 
 of these spheres from that process of killing an enemy 
 and capturing or destroying his property which we call 
 War, and how far they will make for the general progress 
 of mankind. 
 
 Materially regarded. War is Destruction. It is the 
 destruction of those who are killed, and the reduction, 
 by maiming or disease, of the physical working power 
 of the combatants who survive. It is thus a diminution 
 of the wealth-producing capacity of the combatant 
 nations, whether they be victors or vanquished. It 
 means also the destruction of articles of value, such as 
 crops, railways, bridges, and other buildings, and the 
 contents of buildings, including works of art and libraries. 
 It is an interruption of international trade as well as of 
 production, and therefore a cutting-off, for the time 
 being, of that other source of gain which consists in 
 an exchange of commodities produced better or more 
 cheaply in one country than they can be in another. It 
 involves a further lessening of wealth by the withdrawal 
 from their productive activities of a large number of 
 workers, not only during the actual fighting, but during 
 the time spent in being trained to fight. All these 
 results mean waste of resources and the impoverishment 
 of a nation, with a corresponding shock to its credit. 
 
 Against these losses there may be set, in the case of 
 a conquering country, what it acquires by seizure of 
 property, annexation of territory, levying of contributions 
 and of indemnities, although these forcibly gotten gains 
 do not always prosper. There may also be new openings 
 to foreign trade, and victory may evoke an enterprising 
 spirit which will push that trade with new vigour. But 
 such possible indirect benefits are usually far outweighed 
 by the direct loss. 
 
 Another loss is also to be considered in estimating 
 the effects of war on a nation. There is not only the
 
 IV WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 87 
 
 diminution of the population by death in battle, but 
 also the reduced vigour and efficiency of the next genera- 
 tion. Those who are killed are presumably the strongest 
 and healthiest men, for it is these who are the first to be 
 drafted into the fighting forces ; and it is the finest regi- 
 ments that suffer most, because they are selected for the 
 most critical and perilous enterprises. Thus, that part 
 of the nation which is best fitted to have a vigorous pro- 
 geny perishes, and the births of children during, and 
 long after, the war will be chiefly from a male parenthood 
 of a quality below that of the average as it stood before 
 the war. The physique of the French people is said to 
 have suffered palpably from the tremendous drain of the 
 strongest rrlen into the armies of the Revolution and of 
 Napoleon. 
 
 In the sphere of intellectual life, the obvious effect of 
 war is to turn the thoughts of a large part of the nation 
 toward military and naval topics. Inventors busy them- 
 selves with those physical and chemical researches which 
 promise results profitable for war. Such researches may 
 incidentally lead to discoveries of value in other fields, 
 just as the practice of military surgery in the field may 
 advance surgical science in general. But the main effect 
 must be to distract from pure science, and from the 
 applications of science to industry, minds that might 
 have done better work for the world in those fields of 
 activity. In general, the thought of a people that de- 
 lights in war will be occupied with material considera- 
 tions ; and while the things of the body will be prized, the 
 things of the mind will be disparaged, save in so far as 
 they make for military success. A fighting caste will 
 be formed, imposing its peculiar ideals on the people ; 
 the standards of value will become more and more 
 practical, and the interest in pure truth and in thought 
 and art for their own sake may decline. 
 
 These are conditions not favourable to progress in 
 the higher forms of literary or scientific work. Against 
 them is to be set that stimulus which a great war is held 
 to give to the whole life of a people. When it rouses
 
 88 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 them to the maximum of effort, and gives them the 
 strongest consciousness of national unity, it may also — 
 so we hear it argued — invigorate them for intellectual 
 creation. It would be rash to deny this possibility, but 
 no one seems to have succeeded in tracing any causal 
 relation between war and the production of great work 
 in art and letters. They have often coincided, but each 
 has often appeared without the other. 
 
 Note also how misleading it may be to apply the 
 doctrine of Natural Selection to the phenomena of human 
 society, even so far as it may safely be applied in zoology. 
 Within a nation it is not strength alone, whether physical 
 or intellectual, that brings success. The power of self- 
 control, the talent for co-operating with others, the 
 capacity for inspiring confidence, are no less important 
 both in securing influence for the possessor of these gifts 
 and in contributing to the unity and energy of a nation. 
 Similarly a nation's vitality consists not only in the 
 physical and mental powers of its members, but also in 
 their moral qualities, their patriotism, their capacity for 
 devotion and self-sacrifice, their good faith and up- 
 rightness, their respect for law as law — qualities to which 
 the Romans, for instance, were wont to ascribe their 
 greatness. Natural Selection assumes the rule of Force. 
 But Force and Law are opposed : Force Worship is the 
 negation of Right expressed in Law, and those who have 
 been taught to contemn Right and to put their trust in 
 Force may not only injure themselves, but raise up fears 
 and hatreds against them in their neighbour nations. 
 
 As respects the ethical side of life, soldiering and the 
 preparation for soldiering produce a type of character 
 marked by discipline and the habit of obedience. The 
 Spartans were in the ancient world the example of a 
 people who excelled in these qualities, uniting to them, 
 however, an equally marked insensibility to the charms 
 of poetry and art. They produced no literature, and 
 seemed to value none except martial songs. Discipline 
 has its worth, but it may imply some loss of individuality ; 
 obedience is useful, but (except with the highly intelli-
 
 IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 89 
 
 gent) it Involves some loss of initiative. If it increases 
 physical courage, it may depress that moral courage 
 which recognizes allegiance to Right rather than to the 
 Might of the State. War gives opportunities for the 
 display, by those serving in the field, of some exalted 
 virtues, such as courage, self-sacrifice, devotion to the 
 common cause. So, likewise, does religious persecution, 
 but we do not therefore persecute. Tennyson, writing 
 his Maud at the beginning of the Crimean War, seems 
 to have expected these virtues to be evoked by that war, 
 to pervade the whole people, and to effect a moral re- 
 generation of Britain. Did that happen } And if it 
 happened, did it endure } Did it happen in other coun- 
 tries where it was expected, as, for instance, in the United 
 States after the Civil War ? Is such regeneration a 
 natural fruit of war } 
 
 The courage and the patriotism of those who fight 
 are splendid, but we have to think of the nation as a whole, 
 non-combatants as well as combatants. May not much 
 depend on the causes which have brought about an appeal 
 to arms and the motives which inspire the combatants } 
 A war of oppression, stimulated by national pride and 
 ambition, may have a different moral effect from one 
 that is undertaken to repel a wanton attack, to defend an 
 innocent neutral state, to save peaceful peoples from a 
 danger to their liberties, and protect the whole world 
 from a menace to the sacred principles of justice and 
 humanity. 
 
 Believing the war we are now waging to be such a 
 war, we cannot but hope that the unspeakable sufferings 
 and sorrows it has brought to nearly every home in Britain 
 may be largely compensated by a purifying of the heart, 
 an increased spirit of self-sacrifice, and a raising of our 
 national and personal ideals. 
 
 On a review of the whole matter, it will appear that 
 war, since it is destruction, does not increase, but reduces, 
 national wealth, and therefore cannot be a direct cause 
 of material progress. As it exalts physical strength and 
 the principle of Force as against the mind and the love
 
 90 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 of truth and the pleasures of thought and knowledge, 
 war, except so far as the particular department of military- 
 science is concerned, cannot be deemed a cause of in- 
 tellectual progress. As it depresses the individual and 
 exalts the State, the thing we call Militarism places 
 the conception of Might above that of Right, and creates 
 a type of character in which the harsher, and what one 
 may call the heathen, virtues are exalted above those 
 which the Gospel has taught and through which the moral 
 elevation of the world has been secured. 
 
 What, then, are the causes to which the progress of 
 mankind is due ? It has come partly, no doubt, if not by 
 strife, yet at any rate in the course of competition. But 
 the chief cause is the exercise of creative thought in the 
 sphere of ideas, in scientific discovery, in inventions. Now 
 Thought, as we have seen, is more often hindered than 
 helped by war. It is the races that know how to think, 
 not the far more numerous races that excel in fighting 
 rather than in thinking, that have led the world. Thought, 
 in the form of invention and scientific inquiry, has given 
 us those improvements in the arts of life and in the 
 knowledge of nature by which material progress and 
 comfort have been obtained. Thought has produced 
 literature, philosophy, art, and (when intensified by 
 emotion) religion — the chief things that make life worth 
 living. Now, the thought of any people is most active 
 when it is brought into contact with the thought of an- 
 other, because each is apt to lose its variety and freedom 
 of play when it has worked too long upon familiar lines 
 and flowed too long in the channels it has deepened. 
 Hence, Isolation retards progress, while Intercourse 
 quickens it. 
 
 The great creative epochs have been those in which 
 one people of natural vigour received an intellectual 
 impulse from the ideas of another, as happened when 
 Greek culture began to penetrate Italy, and, thirteen 
 centuries later, when the literature of the ancients began 
 to work on the nations of the mediaeval world. 
 
 Such contact, with the process of learning which
 
 IV 
 
 WAR AND HUMAN PROGRESS 91 
 
 follows from it, may happen in or through war, but it 
 happens far oftener in peace ; and it is in peace that men 
 have the time and the taste to profit fully by it. A 
 study of history will show that we may, with an easy 
 conscience, dismiss the doctrine of Treitschke — that 
 war is a health-giving tonic which Providence must be 
 expected constantly to offer to the human race for its 
 own good. The spirit which every class in the com- 
 munity has shown, since August 19 14, in volunteering 
 to fight and in fighting has shown that a long peace does 
 not impair the courage and the valour of a people.^ 
 Apart altogether from the hopes we entertain for the 
 victory in this war of a cause which we believe to be just, 
 we may desire in the interests of all mankind that its 
 issue should discredit by defeat a theory which is noxious 
 as well as baseless. The future progress of mankind is 
 to be sought, not through the strifes and hatreds of the 
 nations, but rather by their friendly co-operation in the 
 healing and enlightening works of peace, and in the 
 growth of a spirit of friendship and mutual confidence 
 which may remove the causes of war. 
 
 1 The same may now (191 8) be said of the people of the United States.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 [This and the following chapter contain two Annual 
 Presidential addresses delivered in 191 5 and 1916 to 
 the British Academy for the promotion of historical, 
 philological, and philosophical studies, with the omission 
 of those parts which related to the work done by the 
 Academy itself during the two years preceding, viz. 
 the undertakings it directs, the papers read before it, 
 and the lectures delivered on the foundations it adminis- 
 ters, together with the obituary notices of Fellows de- 
 ceased. These general portions of the two addresses 
 were first published in 1916 by the desire of the Council 
 of the British Academy. They treat of certain aspects 
 of the present war, and of war in general, which have an 
 interest for historians and for students of human nature. 
 References to current political issues, national or 
 international, are necessarily absent, because those topics 
 lie outside the scope of the Academy's functions, and are 
 never discussed at its meetings.] 
 
 Presidential Address delivered to the British 
 Academy, June 30, 19 15 
 
 In the scantiness of a record of work done in the 
 fields which the Academy cultivates, it might be expected 
 that I should offer to you some remarks on the war itself, 
 the causes that produced it, the antagonisms, deeper than 
 most people supposed, which it has revealed, and the 
 changes it is likely to involve. But many of you will 
 have felt, and all will admit, the dangers that surround 
 any one who, influenced by strong emotions and possess- 
 
 92
 
 cHAP.v PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS . 93 
 
 ing imperfect knowledge, should now commit to print 
 his judgment of the events of the last eleven months. 
 Every one among us must sometimes have had cause to 
 regret, when reading them years afterwards, words which 
 he wrote in the heat of the moment. Time modifies 
 our judgments as it cools our passions. Neither the 
 friendships nor the enmities of nations are exempt from 
 change. You remember how Ajax, in the drama of 
 Sophocles, says that he has learnt 
 
 o T e^dpo'S rjfMiv es Tocroi/S' ix6apT€0S 
 ws Kal (^iXri<TUtv avOi's. 
 
 I am, however, in any case debarred by the rules and 
 practice of our body from entering the field of current 
 politics. It is better that nothing should be said to-day 
 in an address to the Academy which any one of its 
 members, to whatever country he may belong, would 
 feel pain in reading ten or twenty years hence. News- 
 papers and pamphlets will convey to posterity sufficiently, 
 and even more than sufficiently, the notions and fancies 
 and passions of the moment. 
 
 What we may do, not without profit, is to note and 
 to set down in a spirit of detachment the impressions 
 made upon us by the events which our eyes see and watch 
 as they pass into history. Many a pen will for centuries 
 to come be occupied by the events of this year, and end- 
 less controversies will arise over them. It is well that 
 whoever has gained from his studies something of an 
 historical sense should in the spirit proper to an historian 
 place on record from month to month the impressions he 
 receives. The record will be almost as useful if the 
 impressions should turn out to be erroneous as if they 
 should be confirmed by subsequent events, because what 
 the future historian will desire to know is not only what 
 happened but what people believed and thought at the 
 time it was happening. That which is omitted has 
 also its value. Fifty years hence men will be struck 
 by the significance of things whose significance was not 
 perceived by contemporary observers, and will seek to
 
 94 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 know why those observers failed to see or comprehend 
 facts which will then stand out in bold relief. 
 
 So let me now try to enumerate briefly what are the 
 facts of the present situation by which we are chiefly 
 impressed — facts that make it novel as well as terrible. 
 
 The first fact is the immense width and range of the 
 war. Thucydides observed that men always thought 
 the war they were then engaged in the greatest that had 
 ever befallen. But here we have facts which show how 
 much the present conflict does transcend any seen in 
 previous ages. This might have been foretold twenty 
 years ago, assuming that Russia, Germany, and Britain 
 were involved, seeing how vast are the possessions and 
 claims and ambitions of all three States. Yet the reality 
 goes far beyond every forecast. All the six great Euro- 
 pean Powers and four lesser Powers are involved. ^ So 
 is the whole extra-European Old World, except China 
 and Persia and the possessions of Holland and Portugal. 
 In the New World it is only the Dominions and Colonies 
 of Britain that are as yet afl^ected — a noteworthy illus- 
 tration of the severance of the Western hemisphere from 
 the broils of the Eastern. 
 
 Secondly. There is the prodigious influence of the 
 war upon neutral nations. This also might have been 
 foreseen as a result of the development of world com- 
 merce and the interlockings of world finance. But here, 
 too, the actual results are transcending expectation. 
 
 Thirdly. The changes in the methods and character 
 of war have been far more extensive than in any previous 
 period. It took much more than two centuries from 
 the invention of gunpowder for musketry and artillery 
 to supersede completely archery and defensive armour. 
 The long pike, after having been used for some twenty- 
 five centuries at least, was still in use as late as the Irish 
 Rebellion of 1798, and to a slight extent in the abortive 
 rising of i 848. War, however, is now a totally difl^erent 
 
 ^ Since this was written three other European Powers have entered the war, the 
 Portuguese colonies have also become involved, and not only the United States, with its 
 population exceeding one hundred millions, but Brazil and Cuba also have followed.
 
 V PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 95 
 
 thing from what it was in the campaign of 1870-71, 
 or even in the war between Russia and Japan of 1904. 
 Chemistry has changed everything by increasing the 
 range and the power of missiles, while electricity, without 
 the wire, supplies new means of communication not only 
 along battle lines, but across hostile territory. So the 
 application of photography to war has enabled the position 
 of enemy entrenchments or forces to be so located that 
 artillery can now play effectively upon spots which those 
 who direct the fire cannot see. Warfare in the air and 
 warfare under the sea were heretofore mere dreams. 
 
 Fourthly. The cost of war is greater in proportion 
 to the size of armies, immensely larger as these armies 
 are, than it ever was before. The ten belligerent Euro- 
 pean Powers are estimated to be spending now more 
 than ten millions sterling a day.^ At this rate their 
 total expenditure for twelve months could not be less 
 than 4000 millions, and may be much more. But some 
 competent economists put it at 5000 millions, figures 
 which are hardly more realizable by us than are those 
 which express the distances of the fixed stars. 
 
 Fifthly. In each nation the whole body of the people 
 is more fully and more hotly interested in, and united by, 
 this war than by any it ever waged before. During the 
 eighteenth century it was in most countries only the 
 monarch and the ruling class that knew or cared what 
 was happening. The great European conflict that began 
 in 1793 brought a change. But this war is far more 
 intensely national, in the sense that it has roused the 
 animosities of the whole of each people from top to bottom, 
 than any preceding conflict, and it is everywhere waged 
 with a sterner purpose. In this respect we are reminded 
 of the citizen wars of the small city-states of ancient 
 Greece and Italy, and of the Italian Middle Ages. 
 
 Sixthly. Some grave moral issues have been raised 
 more sharply than before. Is a state above morality ? 
 Does the plea of military necessity (of which the State 
 itself is apparently to be the judge) entitle it to disregard 
 
 1 This sum was subsequently much exceeded.
 
 96 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 the rights of other states ? (Cf. Thucydides v. 84-113, 
 the case of Melos.) 
 
 Seventhly. The predictions that the vast interests 
 involved, the increasing strength of defence as opposed 
 to attack, and the growth of a general pacific sentiment 
 would avert strife have all proved fallacious. The 
 wisdom of the wise, where is it now ? Many supposed 
 that the great financiers would be able to avert hostilities, 
 and would think it their interest to do so. Some twelve 
 years ago Jean de Bloch, in a book that made a great 
 impression at the time, argued that the growing diffi- 
 culties of conducting military operations on a vast 
 scale might not only make war a longer and far more 
 costly business than ever before, but even prove an 
 effective deterrent. More recently an accomplished and 
 persuasive English writer has shown how much more a 
 nation has to lose by war than it can possibly gain even 
 if victory crown its arms. Others have thought that a 
 sense of solidarity among the workers in each industrial 
 country would be strong enough to restrain their govern- 
 ments from any but a purely defensive war. Others, 
 again, have declared that democracies are essentially 
 peaceful, because the mass of the people pay in their 
 blood, other classes merely in their wealth. I do not 
 say that these arguments are unsound, but the forces 
 they rely upon have not proved strong enough for the 
 occasion. For practical purposes the wisdom of the 
 wise has been brought to naught, because the rulers of 
 the nations have been guided by other motives than 
 those of pure reason. 
 
 These observations relate to the palpable facts we 
 have witnessed. Let us turn now to some of the reflec- 
 tions which the facts suggest. It is not easy to express 
 these with that cold detachment at which the historian 
 is bound to aim ; but the effort must be made. 
 
 On that reflection which rose first to our minds when 
 the war began, and which continues to be the sombre 
 background to every aspect it presents — upon this I 
 will not pause. After more than forty centuries of
 
 V PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 97 
 
 civilization and nineteen centuries of Christianity, man- 
 kind — in this case at least three-fourths of mankind — 
 is settling its disputes in the same way as mankind did 
 in the Stone Age. The weapons are more various and 
 more destructive. They are the latest product of highly 
 developed science. But the spirit and the result are the 
 same. 
 
 There has never been a time in which communications 
 were so easy, and the means for discovering and circulat- 
 ing information so abundant. Yet how little is now 
 certainly known as to the real causes which have brought 
 about the war. The beliefs current among different 
 peoples are altogether different, not to say contradictory. 
 Some are almost demonstrably false. Even in some 
 neutral nations such as Holland, Switzerland, and Spain, 
 opinion is sharply divided not merely about the rights 
 but also about the facts. The whole German people 
 seem to hold just as implicitly that this is for them a 
 defensive war as the French hold the opposite ; and how- 
 ever clear the main points may appear to us in Britain, 
 there are others which may remain obscure for many 
 years to come. 
 
 How few are the persons in every state in whose 
 hands lie the issues of war and peace ! In some of the 
 now belligerent countries the final and vital decisions 
 were taken by four or five persons only, in others by six 
 or seven only. Even in Britain decision rested practi- 
 cally with less than twenty-five, for though some few 
 persons outside the Cabinet took a part, not all within 
 the Cabinet are to be reckoned as effective factors. It 
 is of course true that popular sentiment has to be con- 
 sidered, even in states more or less despotically governed. 
 Against a strong and definite sentiment of the masses the 
 ruling few would not venture to act. But the masses 
 are virtually led by a few, and their opinion is formed, 
 particularly at a crisis, by the authority and the appeals 
 of those few whom they have been accustomed to trust 
 or to obey. And after all, the vital decision at the vital 
 moment remains with the few. If they had decided 
 
 H
 
 98 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 otherwise than they did, the thing would not have 
 happened. Something like it might have happened 
 later, but the war would not have come then and so. 
 
 How rapidly do vast events move, how quickly are 
 vast decisions taken ! In the twelve fatal days from 
 July 23 to August 4 there was no time for reflection. 
 Telegrams between seven capitals flew hither and thither 
 like swift arrows crossing one another, and it would 
 have needed a mind of more than human amplitude and 
 energy to grasp and correlate all the issues involved 
 and to foresee the results that would follow the various 
 lines of action possible in a game so complicated. Even 
 the intellect of a Caesar or a Bonaparte would have been 
 unequal to the task. Here the telegraph has worked 
 for evil. Had the communications passed by written 
 dispatches, as they would have done eighty years ago, 
 it is probable that war might have been avoided. 
 
 Sometimes one feels as if modern states were growing 
 too huge for the men to whom their fortunes are com- 
 mitted. Mankind increases in volume, and in accumu- 
 lated knowledge, and in a comprehension of the forces 
 of nature ; but the intellects of individual men do not 
 grow. The power of grasping and judging in their 
 entirety the far greater mass of facts to be dealt with, 
 the far more abundant resources at command, the far 
 vaster issues involving the weal or woe of masses of men 
 — this power fails to follow. The disproportion between 
 the individual ruling men with their personal prejudices 
 and proclivities, their selfish interests and their vanities, 
 and the immeasurable consequences which follow their 
 individual volitions, becomes more striking and more 
 tragic. As the stage expands, the figures shrink. There 
 were some advantages in the small city-states of antiquity. 
 A single city might decline or perish, but the nation 
 remained ; and another city blossomed forth to replace 
 that which had withered away. But now enormous 
 nations are concentrated under one government and its 
 disasters affect the whole. A great modern state is like 
 a gigantic vessel built without any water-tight compart-
 
 V PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 99 
 
 ments, which, if it be unskilfully steered, may perish 
 when it strikes a single rock. 
 
 How ignorant modern peoples, with all the abundant 
 means of information at their disposal, may nevertheless 
 remain of one another's character and purposes ! Each 
 of the nations now at war has evidently had a false notion 
 of its adversaries and has been thereby misled. It has 
 not known their inner thoughts, it has misread their 
 policy. It was said in the days of the American Civil 
 War that the misconception by the Southern States of 
 the Northern States, and their belief that the North 
 cared for nothing but the dollar, was the real cause why 
 their differences were not peaceably settled, and yet they 
 were both members of the same Republic and spoke the 
 same language. European nations cannot be expected 
 to have quite so intimate a knowledge each of the other, 
 yet both their commercial intercourse and the activity of 
 the press and the immensely increased volume of private 
 travel might have been expected to enable them better 
 to gauge and judge one another's minds. 
 
 Historians as far back as Thucydides have made upon 
 the behaviour of nations in war time many general 
 observations, which have been brought out in stronger 
 light by what passes from day to day before us. A few 
 of these I will mention to suggest how we may turn to 
 account the illustrations which Europe now furnishes. 
 
 When danger threatens a nation its habits change. 
 Defence becomes the supreme need. In place of the 
 ordinary machinery of government there starts up a 
 dictatorship like that of early Rome, when twenty-four 
 lictors surrounded the magistrate and the tribunician 
 veto, with the right of appeal, sank away. The plea of 
 public interest overrides everything. The suspension 
 of constitutional guarantees is acquiesced in, and acts of 
 arbitrary power, even if violent, are welcomed because 
 taken as signs of strength in the ruler. Even the with- 
 holding of information is submitted to. The voice of 
 criticism is silenced. Cedit toga armis. The soldier 
 comes to the front, speaks with an authority greater than
 
 loo ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 that of the civilian statesman, is permitted to do whatever 
 he declares to be necessary for the nation's safety. So 
 long as that is secured, everything else is pardoned, and 
 success gives enormous prestige. 
 
 Whoever watches these things must see how danger- 
 ous to freedom is war, except in those communities 
 where long tradition has rooted constitutional habit 
 very deep. In old Greece seditions opened the way to 
 the Tyrant. Napoleon supposed that the Duke of 
 Wellington would, after Waterloo, have made himself 
 master of England. So might a victor of another quality 
 have done who had achieved such a triumph as Welling- 
 ton's, had not an ancient monarchy and Parliament 
 stood in his way. War is the bane of democracies. 
 If it be civil war, he who restores peace is acclaimed like 
 Augustus. Even a Louis Napoleon may be welcome 
 when he promises security for property. If it be foreign 
 war, the man of the sword on horseback towers over the 
 man on foot who can only talk and administer. 
 
 So those psychological phenomena which former 
 observers have noticed when a country is swept by war 
 or revolution, have become vividly real to Europe now. 
 The same passion seizes on every one simultaneously 
 and grows hotter in each by the sense that others share 
 it. It is said that when sheep, feeding unherded on a 
 mountain, see the approach of a danger they all huddle 
 together, the rams on the outside facing the foe. The 
 flock becomes one, with one mind, one fear, one rage of 
 fear. So in times of danger a human community feels 
 and acts like one man. The nation realizes itself so 
 intensely that it becomes a law to itself and recks little of 
 the opinion of others. The man is lost in the crowd, 
 and the crowd feels rather than thinks. Passion in- 
 tensified supersedes the ordinary exercise not only of 
 individual will but even of individual reason. Fear 
 and anger breed suspicion and credulity. Every one 
 is ready to believe the worst of whoever is suspected. 
 What is called the power of suggestion rises to such a 
 height that to denounce a man is virtually to condemn
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS loi 
 
 him. Lavoisier is sentenced to be guillotined ; he 
 pleads that he is a harmless chemist, but is told that the 
 Republic does not need chemists. After the death of 
 Julius Caesar, Cinna, the poet, is seized, and when he 
 protests that he is not Cinna the conspirator, is never- 
 theless killed for his name, the bystander (in Shake- 
 speare) adding, " Kill him for his bad verses." A 
 foreign name is taken to be evidence that its bearer is 
 a spy. Grotesquely absurd charges find credence. 
 There is no tolerance for difference of opinion, and to 
 advance arguments against the reigning sentiment is 
 treason. Any tribute to the character or even to the 
 intellectual gifts of an enemy is resented. Sentiments 
 of humanity towards him are disapproved, unless the 
 precaution is taken of expressing these in the exact words 
 of Holy Scripture. The rising flame of hatred involves 
 not merely the government and armies of the enemy, 
 but even the innocent citizens of the hostile country. 
 These well-known phenomena are all more or less 
 visible in Europe to-day, though in our own country the 
 coolness of our temperament and the fact that no in- 
 vader has trodden our soil have been presenting them in 
 a comparatively mild type. 
 
 The intensification of emotions includes those of a 
 religious kind, and these not always in their purest 
 form. In most countries it is only the most enlightened 
 minds that can refrain from claiming the Deity as their 
 peculiar protector and taking every victory as a mark of 
 His special favour. Modern man seems at such moments 
 to have reverted to those primitive ages when each tribe 
 fought for its own god and expected its own god to fight 
 for it, as Moab called on Chemosh and Tyre on Mel- 
 karth. True it is that a nation now usually argues that 
 Divine protection will be extended to it because its cause 
 is just. But as this is announced by every nation alike, 
 the result is much the same now as it was in the days of 
 Chemosh and Melkarth. Oddly enough, the people in 
 whom fanaticism used to be strongest are now respond- 
 ing more feebly than ever before to the appeal of the
 
 I02 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Jihad. Is it because the Turkish Musulmans have 
 infidel Powers for alHes as well as for enemies, or because 
 the men who now rule Turkey are known to fear God as 
 little as they regard man, that this war seems to them 
 less holy than those of the centuries in which their con- 
 quests were won ? 
 
 Upon other symptoms indicating a return to the con- 
 ditions of warfare in earlier ages I forbear (for a reason 
 already given) to comment. It is more pleasant to note 
 that some of the virtues which war evokes have never 
 been seen to more advantage. Man has not under 
 civilization degenerated in body or in will-power. The 
 valour and self-sacrifice shown by the soldiers of all the 
 nations have been as conspicuous as ever before. The 
 line of heroes that extends from Thermopylae to Luck- 
 now might welcome as brothers the warriors of to-day, 
 while among those at home, in Britain, and in France 
 who have been suffering the loss of sons and brothers 
 dearer to them than life itself, there has been a dignity 
 of patience and silent resignation worthy of Roman 
 Stoics or Christian saints. 
 
 In these and other similar ways we see many a feature 
 of human character, many a phase of political or religious 
 life recorded by historians, verified by present experience. 
 We can better understand what nations become at 
 moments of extreme peril and supreme effort ; and those 
 of us who occupy ourselves with history find it profitable 
 to note the Present for the illumination of the Past. 
 
 But the Future makes a wider appeal. Every one 
 feels that after the war we shall see a different world, but 
 no one can foretell what sort of a v/orld it will be. We 
 all have our fancies, but we know them to be no more 
 than fancies, for the possibilities are incalculable. Never- 
 theless it is worth while for each of us to set down what 
 are the questions as to the future which most occupy 
 the public mind and his own mind. 
 
 Will the effect of this war be to inflame or to damp 
 down the military spirit } Some there are who believe 
 that the example of those states which had made vast pre-
 
 V PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 103 
 
 parations for war will be henceforth followed by all states, 
 so far as their resources permit, and that everywhere, 
 so soon as wealth has again accumulated, armies will be 
 larger, navies larger, artillery stored on a larger scale, 
 so that whatever peace comes will be only a respite and 
 breathing-time, to be followed by further conflicts till the 
 predominance of one state or race is established. Other 
 observers of a more sanguine temper conceive that the 
 outraged sentiment of mankind will compel the rulers of 
 nations to find some means of averting war in the future 
 more effective than diplomacy has proved. Each view is 
 held by men of knowledge and judgment ; and for each 
 arguments can be adduced. 
 
 The effects which the war will have on the govern- 
 ment and politics of the contending countries are equally 
 obscure, though every one admits they are sure to be 
 far-reaching. Those who talk of politics as a science 
 may well pause when they reflect how little the experience 
 of the past enables us to forecast the future of govern- 
 ment, let us say in Germany or in Russia, on the hypo- 
 thesis either of victory or of defeat for one or other of 
 the Allied groups. 
 
 Economics approaches more nearly to the character 
 of a science than does any other department of inquiry 
 in the human as opposed to the physical subjects. Yet 
 the economic problems before us are scarcely less dark 
 than the political. How long will it take the great 
 countries to repair the losses they are now suffering ? 
 The destruction of capital has probably been three or 
 four times as great during these last eleven months as it 
 ever was before in so short a period, and it goes on with 
 increasing rapidity. It took nearly two centuries for 
 Germany to recover from the devastations of the Thirty 
 Years' War, and nearly forty years from the end of the 
 Civil War had elapsed before the wealth of the Southern 
 States of America had come back to the figures of i860. 
 One may expect recovery to be much swifter in our 
 days, but the extinction of millions of productive brains 
 and hands cannot fail to retard the process, and each of
 
 I04 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 the trading countries will suffer by the impoverishment 
 of the others. 
 
 This suggests the gravest of all the questions that 
 confront us. How will population be affected in quan- 
 tity and in quality ? The birth-rate had before 1 9 1 4 
 been falling in Germany and Britain : it had already so 
 fallen in France as only to equal the death-rate. Will 
 the withdrawal of those slain or disabled in war quicken 
 it ? and how long will it take to restore the productive 
 industrial capacity of each country ? Nearly all the 
 students and younger teachers in some of our universities 
 have gone to fight abroad, and many of these will never 
 return. Who can estimate what is being lost to litera- 
 ture and learning and science from the deaths of those 
 whose strong and cultivated intelligence might have 
 made great discoveries or added to the store of the 
 world's thought ? Those who are now perishing belong 
 to the most healthy and vigorous part of the population, 
 from whom the strongest progeny might have been 
 expected. Will the physical and mental energy of the 
 generation that will come to manhood thirty or forty 
 years hence show a decline ? The data for a forecast 
 are scanty, for in no previous war has the loss of life been 
 so great over Europe as a whole, even in proportion to 
 a population very much larger than it was a century ago. 
 It is said, I know not with how much truth, that the 
 stature and physical strength of the population of France 
 took long to recover from the losses of the wars that 
 lasted from 1793 till 18 14. Niebuhr thought that the 
 population of the Roman Empire never recovered from 
 the great plague of the second century a.d., but war has 
 a more distinctive potency, for where it is disease that 
 reduces a people, it is the weaker who die, while in war 
 it is the stronger. Our friends of the Eugenics Society 
 are uneasy at the prospect for the belligerent nations. 
 Some of them are trying to console themselves by dwelling 
 on the excellent moral effects that may spring out of the 
 stimulation which war gives to the human spirit. What 
 the race loses in body it may — so they hope — regain in
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 105 
 
 soul. This is a highly speculative anticipation, on which 
 history casts no certain light. As to the exaltation of 
 character which war service produces in those who 
 fight from noble motives, inspired by faith in the justice 
 of their cause, there can be no doubt. We see it to-day 
 as it has often been seen before. But how far does this 
 affect the non-combatant part of each people ? and how 
 long does the exaltation last ? The instance nearest to 
 our own time, and an instance which is in so far typical 
 that the bulk of the combatants on both sides were 
 animated by a true patriotic spirit, is the instance of the 
 American War of Secession. It was felt at the time to 
 be almost a moral rebirth of the nation. I must not 
 venture here and now to inquire how far the hopes then 
 expressed were verified by the result : for such an 
 inquiry would detain you too long. 
 
 These are some of the questions which it may be 
 interesting to set down as rising in our minds now, in 
 order that the next generation may the better realize 
 what were the thoughts and anxieties of those who 
 sought, sine ira, metu, studio, to comprehend the larger 
 issues of this fateful time. It is too soon to hope to 
 solve the problems that are crowding upon us. But 
 we can at least try to see clearly what the problems are, 
 and to distinguish between the permanent and the 
 temporary, the moral and the material causes that have 
 plunged mankind in this abyss of calamity : and we can 
 ask one another what are the forces that may help to 
 deliver it therefrom. This is a time for raising questions, 
 not for attempting to answer them. Before some of 
 them can be answered, most of us who are met here to-day 
 will have followed across the deep River of Forgetfulness 
 those who are now giving their lives that Britain may 
 live.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE BRITISH 
 ACADEMY, JULY 1 4, I916 
 
 A YEAR ago, in the annual Presidential Address, I men- 
 tioned and commended to your reflection a number of 
 phenomena which the war had displayed and which 
 deserved to be noted by historians, because they cast 
 light on divers features of previous wars. To-day I will 
 refer to some other such facts ; and, in mentioning these, 
 will endeavour to observe that well-settled rule which in 
 this Academy forbids references to questions of current 
 politics. It is a wholesome rule, for one who should 
 depart from it might easily be betrayed, under the 
 influence of a natural passion, into words that would 
 afterwards be regretted. 
 
 One of these phenomena is the shock given to the 
 rules of international law. Some of the principles that 
 had been thought best established have been virtually 
 destroyed. To use an Aeschylean phrase, they have 
 been " pierced with as many wounds as a net." It has 
 become clear that there are Governments which, when 
 they see advantage to be gained by taking a certain course, 
 will not be deterred from it by rules of morality or law. 
 Nations, and especially the Powers that are neutral, are 
 asking whether there is any use in passing such rules 
 unless some method can be devised for enforcing them. 
 Is it worth while, when the war has ended, to attempt a 
 reconstruction of the fabric of international law unless 
 it can be rebuilt upon far firmer foundations ? In war 
 time, it is only the action of neutrals that can eiffectively 
 
 106
 
 CHAP. VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 107 
 
 punish a belligerent transgressor. Is there any reason 
 to look for such action ? One series of breaches in that 
 law is especially deplorable. The respect for the rights 
 of non-combatant civilians which had been consecrated 
 by many years of practice, and which represented the 
 greatest mitigation of the savagery inherent in war that 
 the progress of civilization had effected, has now dis- 
 appeared. We seem to have gone back to the brutality 
 of the earlier Middle Ages. May this be partly due to 
 the system of what is called " The Nation in Arms " ? 
 If all the men of a country are set to fight, do they form 
 the habit of thinking not only of all the men but also of 
 the women and children in enemy countries as enemies 
 to whom no mercy is to be shown ? and are they dis- 
 posed, when they enter an enemy country, to treat these 
 civilians as their personal foes ? With the increase of 
 such cruelties hatred also has grown. It is fiercer between 
 the warring peoples than ever before. In both these 
 respects our own soldiers, and those of France and Italy, 
 have (as we believe) been so far blameless. But one 
 must desire that the strain should not last too long. 
 
 The power of a Government to keep its subjects in 
 ignorance of the facts of a war, political as well as military, 
 has never seemed so complete. This is all the more 
 wonderful in days when the means of learning facts 
 through the press are so much more abundant than 
 ever before. It is a regrettable fact, because it prevents 
 the public opinion of a people from acting as it ought 
 upon its Government. A remarkable instance of this 
 ignorance came lately to our knowledge. No single 
 incident of the last two years has made so great an impres- 
 sion as the destruction by a torpedo of the passenger 
 ship Lusitania. Now a medal was struck in Germany, 
 and has been widely distributed there — whether or no 
 by the German Government I have been unable to 
 ascertain — which represents the Lusitania sinking in 
 the ocean. Her fore part is piled high with cannons and 
 aeroplanes and other war material. Here, moreover, 
 we see a warning given to the historian who has been
 
 io8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 apt to rely upon the evidence of works of art contempor- 
 aneous with the events they depict. Suppose that five 
 centuries hence few other records of the events of May 
 19 1 5 have survived, and that this medal is then dug up 
 from some ruin. It would be appealed to as affording 
 the best kind of proof that the Lusitania^ which carried 
 no cannons and no aeroplanes, was a vessel not only 
 laden, but conspicuously overladen with munitions of 
 war. 
 
 There has never before been a conflict in which such 
 efforts were made by belligerents to win the favour of 
 neutrals. Able agents have been employed and immense 
 sums expended in attempts to form public opinion through 
 the press. Such efforts have of course been primarily 
 directed towards inducing neutrals to take some measure 
 either positively friendly to the belligerent Power con- 
 ducting the propaganda or to dissuade it from some 
 measure helpful to that Power's enemies. In this, 
 however, there is implied a tribute to the importance 
 of the opinion of the world at large, and a recognition 
 of the fact that there is such a thing as a moral standard 
 which a nation, even if it deems itself absolved by the law 
 of State necessity from obedience to such a standard, 
 knows to constitute the basis whereon the judgment 
 of neutrals, and of posterity, will be founded. 
 
 The ethical problems which this war has raised are 
 not new, but in their essence, and sometimes even in 
 their form, at least as old as the fifth century B.C., when 
 we find them discussed in ancient Athens. But they 
 have been presented on a larger scale, and in a sharper 
 way, than perhaps ever before, and the differences between 
 the standard recognized as applicable to the individual 
 and that fit to be prescribed for the State have been, in 
 one country, worked out more thoroughly as parts of a 
 general system of doctrine. It is now asked. Have 
 states, in their international relations, any morality at 
 all } or are they towards one another merely like so many 
 wild beasts, owning no obligations of honour or good 
 faith } Is self-preservation the highest law of a State's
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 109 
 
 being, entitling it to destroy its neighbour whenever 
 it conceives this to be the easiest way to save itself ? If 
 the State has any conscience, any morality, what is that 
 morality ? How far does it differ from the moral prin- 
 ciples which are either embodied in the law, or recognized 
 by the opinion of each community as applicable to in- 
 dividual citizens within a state ? If state morality is 
 lower than the morality of the individual, ought it to be 
 raised ; and if so, how can it be raised ? 
 
 If there has been a retrogression, can this be con- 
 nected with the substitution of the State as an impersonal 
 entity for the monarch as a person ? In the sixteenth 
 century the monarch, if he was not personally a base 
 creature, had a certain sense of honour, and was amenable 
 not only to the censures of the Church but to the dictates 
 of chivalry, which, though chivalry never was quite 
 what romancers have painted it, had still a certain in- 
 fluence. When the Emperor Charles the Fifth put 
 himself in the power of Francis the First of France, who 
 had been his enemy (and indeed his prisoner) before, 
 and was to be his enemy again, he reckoned, and not in 
 vain, upon that sense of chivalry. Francis himself was 
 not the best kind of knight, but he had been the sove- 
 reign and the friend of Bayard, the pattern of all knightly 
 virtue. Is any trace of that spirit of chivalry left in 
 our time ? Or do those who now administer a state 
 feel themselves to be like the soulless directors of an 
 incorporated company, as compared with the individual 
 landlord or employer of former days, who recognized 
 a sort of quasi-feudal responsibility for those who tilled 
 his lands or worked at his bidding ? 
 
 All these are serious questions, and serious not for 
 states only, seeing that the individual may come to think 
 that the morality (or want of it) which is good enough 
 for the State is good enough for himself. 
 
 From noting these phenomena I pass on to a still 
 wider question. 
 
 The awful scale of the present war, both in its local 
 extension over the globe and in the volume of ruin and
 
 no ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 suffering which it is causing, inevitably suggests the 
 question : Is this " latest birth of Time " to be taken 
 as the last result of civilization ? Must we contemplate 
 catastrophes such as that we now see as being likely from 
 time to time to recur ? Is a future of incessant hatred 
 between peoples, or groups of peoples, disposing them 
 to inflict economic injury on one another in time of peace, 
 and breaking out from time to time in efforts to destroy 
 one another in time of war, the future to which mankind, 
 far more numerous than ever before, and better provided 
 than ever before with every material comfort and luxury, 
 must henceforth look forward ? 
 
 This is a question which has been constantly present 
 to our minds for the last two years. It includes three 
 points fit to be considered : 
 
 1. What have been the chief causes of war in the 
 past ? Are they diminishing or increasing ? Will they 
 further diminish or increase ? 
 
 2. Are there any and what forces discernible that may 
 tend to counterwork the causes which lead to war, and, 
 if so, are these forces that work for peace likely to grow ? 
 
 3. Can any international machinery be contrived 
 calculated to reduce the strength of the forces that make 
 for war and to strengthen those that make for peace ? 
 
 As you have all been reflecting on these questions, it 
 is not likely that I shall be able to suggest any new facts 
 or thoughts which may not have already crossed your 
 minds. All I can do is to try to construct a sort of 
 framework into which your ideas may be fitted, or, in 
 other words, to bring up for examination certain specific 
 points, so that definite issues may stand out and thinking 
 be so far clarified. 
 
 In following the stream of history downwards from 
 its dim and distant sources, one finds it to be a record of 
 practically incessant fighting. Some races are fiercer 
 than others. But War is the rule. Peace the rare excep- 
 tion. To the Greeks war seemed the natural relation 
 between states. So it had been before, so it has been 
 since. Tribes fought, cities fought, despotic monarchies
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 1 1 1 
 
 fought, tiny republics fought, as vast empires are 
 fighting to-day. This was so from the very beginning 
 of our records. The monuments of Egypt and Assyria 
 are devoted to war and to worship — generally to both, 
 for the warrior king is represented as aided by the national 
 gods who give him victory and receive their share of the 
 spoils. So it was down through the ancient world and 
 through the Middle Ages. 
 
 Intervals of peace have been longer within the last 
 two centuries, especially in Europe ; but the wars that 
 preceded and followed such intervals have been on a 
 more terrible scale than those of earlier times. The 
 wars of the French Revolution and those of Napoleon 
 covered twenty-three years, with two very short respites. 
 Since 1852 Europe has seen eight wars ; and if there be 
 added to these other wars in Asia, Africa, and America, 
 not to speak of civil conflicts (one of which, in the United 
 States, lasted four years), very few years can be found in 
 which the clash of arms was not somewhere heard. Thus 
 there is abundant material for enumerating the causes of 
 war. 
 
 These causes may be classed as arising either out of 
 material interests or out of sentiment. In most cases 
 both causes have been operative, though often in unequal 
 measure. 
 
 The causes of the former class include : 
 
 The desire for plunder, including the capture of 
 women. 
 
 The desire for land or new settlements, as when the 
 Teutonic tribes entered the Roman Empire in the fifth 
 century and the Slavonic tribes in the sixth and seventh. 
 
 Disputed successions, in which two or more claimants 
 to a throne have dragged their subjects or followers, and 
 sometimes other States also, into the strife. 
 
 Interests in the sphere of commerce and industry, as 
 when one state desires to debar another from the trade 
 of a region (as Spain tried to debar the English from 
 South America), or to reduce another state to commercial 
 vassalage, as Austria did in the case of Serbia. By a
 
 112 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 curious irony, wars of commerce were often waged in a 
 total ignorance of economic principles, and when success 
 had been won it proved to be worthless. 
 
 To the other class, where the motive is one of passion 
 or sentiment, may be assigned the following causes of war : 
 
 Revenge for some injury to a people or insult to a 
 sovereign, or perhaps only for some defeat suffered in a 
 previous conflict. 
 
 The desire of a monarch to win glory. 
 
 Religious animosity. 
 
 National animosity, due to previous quarrels, and 
 perhaps increased by racial dislike. 
 
 Sympathy (usually grounded on religious or racial 
 affinities) with a section of the subjects of another state 
 who are believed to be oppressed by it. 
 
 National pride or vanity. 
 
 Fear of an attack by another state. This includes 
 what are called Preventive Wars, where a Power which 
 thinks (or professes to think) itself endangered by the 
 designs of another Power seeks to anticipate those 
 designs by striking first. ^ 
 
 Few wars can be referred entirely to one cause, and 
 the presence of any one ground for collision naturally 
 tends to intensify the influence of such other grounds 
 as may exist. 
 
 Of these causes there is only one which has been 
 almost eliminated. This is religious (or ecclesiastical) 
 hatred. The desire to propagate a faith by the sword is 
 no longer strong even in Islam, though attempts have 
 been recently made by the German Government as the ally 
 of the Young Turks to utilize the preaching of a Jihad 
 against the infidel. Among the so-called Christian States 
 religious antagonism survives only as a secondary source 
 of enmity, disposing to civil strife or international hos- 
 tility communities which have been permeated by the 
 traditions of ancient persecution. The sentiment of 
 
 1 Bismarck declared his disapproval of such wars, and when urged to attack France 
 in 1875 because she was then less formidable than she might become later, infused, 
 observing, " No one can look into the cards held by Providence."
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 113 
 
 ecclesiastical unity has, moreover, sometimes contributed 
 to strengthen the sense of a national unity, leading a 
 people to believe in what it calls its mission, and to seek 
 to accomplish that mission by forcible means. 
 
 The old desire for territory or booty has now passed 
 from cattle-lifting on land and Vikingry at sea into the 
 form of a desire for more and better colonies, and for a 
 fuller control of the means of production and of the 
 industrial high roads of commerce. The tribal chieftain's 
 thirst for fame appears in the desire to maintain the 
 grandeur of a dynasty. But the ancient motives — 
 selfishness, rapacity, and vanity — are as strong as ever. 
 In one sense they are even more formidable, because 
 they are often shared by the masses of a nation, and 
 inflamed by an agency more pervasive than any that 
 existed before the telegraph had been added to the 
 printing-press. 
 
 Is there any one of these causes the disappearance 
 whereof can be expected ? 
 
 Religious passion has cooled, and ecclesiastical an- 
 tagonisms may vanish, for the hold of dogmas and church 
 organizations on men's minds has grown weaker. Yet 
 the sort of fervour which expressed itself through those 
 antagonisms, the desire in bodies of men to make other 
 men think as they do, and so to resort to persecution if 
 persuasion fails, may pass into new forms, and in them 
 be again terrible. Of the other causes there is none 
 which we have not seen active in our own time, some 
 perhaps more active than ever before. Nearly all have, 
 as affecting one or other of the now belligerent Powers, 
 borne a part in bringing about the present conflict. It 
 is the gloomiest feature in the situation that to-day the 
 interests and passions of peoples, and not merely those 
 of monarchs or oligarchies, are engaged, for the enmities 
 thus created are more lasting and pernicious. In the 
 old days when philosophers used to ridicule the whims 
 of a king who went to war to revenge a sneer or to pro- 
 vide an appanage for a younger son, the king might be 
 appeased, and the war was sometimes closed by a royal 
 
 I
 
 114 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 wedding, but now the bitterness which conflict engenders 
 remains to keep jealousy and suspicion alive for many a 
 year. As Mephistopheles says in Goethe's Faust, " the 
 little god of the world bears always the same stamp." 
 Other things change. Knowledge increases and wealth 
 increases, but human nature has remained, in essentials, 
 much what it was thirty centuries ago, and is never free 
 from the risk of a relapse into the primal passions. 
 Vanity and Ambition may so possess a whole people 
 as to suspend the cohtrol of reason. 
 
 It may be argued that we must not lay too much 
 stress on the circumstances attending the outbreak of 
 the present war, for the position was unprecedented, and 
 the conduct of some at least of the belligerents is not 
 to be construed as indicating a bellicose spirit. This 
 argument has force, for it is not merely the action of each 
 nation that has to be regarded, but also the temper and 
 motives which determined that action. But after making 
 all allowances, the conclusion must be that the forces 
 whence conflicts spring have never shown themselves 
 stronger than in our own time. There is no sign of a 
 diminution either in the spirit of rapacity or in the spirit 
 of arrogance which moves those in whose hands lie the 
 issues of war and peace, be they sovereigns or subjects. 
 The sentiment of nationality, which in the days of Mazzini 
 was deemed an almost unmixed good, has shown (and 
 notably in South-Eastern Europe) that it can be darkened 
 by national selfishness, jealousy, and pride. And the 
 practice of forming alliances for the common defence of 
 each member against some other Power or Powers who 
 may be the enemy of one, though not necessarily of any 
 other member of the alliance has the effect of extending 
 the range of a war to States which might otherwise have 
 remained at peace. This happened in 19 14. 
 
 So far, then, this brief review of the causes of war in 
 the past gives little ground for hope. 
 
 We may now pass to the second question. Assuming, 
 as the facts seem to indicate, that the causes which have 
 induced war through the whole of history are still present
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
 
 115 
 
 and potent, can we discover any forces already counter- 
 working them, and likely to strengthen in the future the 
 motives that make for peace ? 
 
 Four such forces have at various times inspired hope. 
 
 One is Religion. Of the three great World Religions, 
 one, Islam, is essentially warlike, for it is the duty of 
 every Musulman ruler to propagate the Faith by the 
 sword. The other two are nominally pacific. Into the 
 history of Buddhism I will not enter, except to remark 
 that its practice has in all matters of State fallen so far 
 short of its theory that theory has virtually counted for 
 nothing. As to Christianity, it is enough to look back 
 over the centuries since the Emperor Constantine. Res 
 ipsa loquitur. What would be the thoughts of one of 
 the Apostles, or of a martyr saint of the second century, 
 who, revisiting this planet to-day, should be told that 
 the gospel he preached had overspread the world, and 
 was taken as their rule of life by nearly all of the nations 
 on whose strife he looked down } 
 
 Are Christian principles more likely to influence the 
 conduct of nations in the future than they have influenced 
 it in the past } That question is as dark to-day as ever 
 it was before. The lesson of ecclesiastical even more 
 than of secular history is that the movements of thought 
 and emotion and the changes they undergo are altogether 
 unpredictable. Where there is an unlimited field of 
 possibilities there is of course room for hope. Christi- 
 anity is no doubt, at least in some countries, far more 
 of an influence making for peace than it was four cen- 
 turies ago. How little it was doing for peace even 
 before the great religious schism of the sixteenth century 
 had supplied a new cause for war may be seen by referring 
 to the book (the Complaint of Peace) in which Erasmus 
 comments on the unchristian spirit of his own time. 
 
 Another such force is democratic government. We 
 are often told that so soon as the masses of the people — 
 that is, the numerical majority of the voters — obtain 
 in each nation the full control of its policy towards other 
 nations, the old dynastic traditions that have so often
 
 ii6 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 prompted aggression will be eliminated, and the power 
 of the military castes be destroyed. It is a gain for peace 
 that those traditions and those castes should disappear, 
 and no doubt that the working people have heretofore 
 (though not indeed in this war) had more to lose by 
 war than any other class, for they were the first to 
 suffer in loss of employment as well as by slaughter in 
 battle. That sense of class solidarity which has gone 
 further among the wage-earners than in any other sec- 
 tion of a nation — even if not nearly so far as had been 
 expected — may dispose them to refrain from indulging 
 in permanent hatred towards another people. Against 
 this view it is urged — apart from the difficulty which no 
 democracy has overcome, of finding a method by which 
 the control of foreign relations may be exercised by the 
 masses — that the multitude is just as liable to be swept 
 away by passion, just as liable to be puffed up by national 
 or racial pride, just as likely to covet the land or the 
 commerce of other nations, as is any other class in the 
 community. These things were seen in the popular 
 governments of antiquity, and seen also in the (far less 
 popular) republics of mediaeval Italy. The experience 
 of modern democracy has been too short to warrant 
 positive conclusions. The two countries most pacific 
 in spirit are free democratic republics, but Switzerland 
 has geographical as well as moral or philosophical reasons 
 for keeping out of war, and the United States were, 
 between 1783 and 19 14, engaged in three wars, none of 
 which can be called necessary, and one of which (that 
 with Mexico in 1845) is now admitted, by Americans 
 themselves, to have been scarcely justifiable. The 
 sources of war are to be found not in constitutional 
 arrangements but in human nature. They are ethical 
 rather than political. 
 
 A third line of argument has been used to show that 
 the extension of commerce, unfettered by any tariffs 
 giving an advantage to the domestic producer, must give 
 each country a larger interest in keeping the peace, 
 because trade is profitable both to the seller and to the
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 117 
 
 purchaser. The more trade the more profit, and there- 
 fore the stronger is the motive for continuing the ex- 
 change, and the wider are the opportunities for friendly 
 intercourse and reciprocal knowledge. 
 
 This theory also has much to recommend it. Those 
 who realize that they will lose by war ought to desire 
 peace. But the doctrine which favours a free interchange 
 of products has not in fact spread or thriven of late 
 years. It appears to be less popular now, even in its 
 ancient British home, than it was fifty years ago, which 
 may indeed be said of the theory of laissez-faire generally. 
 Most peoples, even the formerly self-helpful peoples, 
 seem disposed to look more and more to governments 
 to take charge of their affairs and to make the prosperity 
 of individuals. 
 
 Fourthly, those who see that in some countries the 
 increase in the functions of government and the tendency 
 to sacrifice the individual to the State have been accom- 
 panied by the development of a martial and aggressive 
 spirit, conceive that the two things are naturally con- 
 nected. When the State labours to increase the wealth 
 of individual producers by the imposition of tariffs, and 
 by helping its financiers to lay their grasp upon foreign 
 countries, it is expected to go further and acquire new 
 territories, especially if they be rich in minerals, and to 
 open up or even create new markets outside Europe. 
 It is only by military strength that such plans can be 
 carried out. Hence — so the argument runs — militarism 
 becomes popular with the great employers of labour, 
 perhaps even with the employees. Military glory and 
 the prosperity of the State are identified. Huge arma- 
 ments are advocated for business reasons ; and a people 
 proud of its military resources is naturally tempted to 
 use them. If, therefore, this doctrine of State omnipo- 
 tence could be discredited, if the masses of a nation 
 could be induced to revolt against the dominance of State 
 officials and the extension of State activity, the antagonism 
 of nations would be softened and a fertile cause of war 
 be reduced.
 
 ii8 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 This reasoning finds support in recent experience, 
 but there are at present few signs of any general revolt 
 against the doctrines which the argument seeks to dis- 
 credit. On the contrary, the range of State action 
 tends, in almost every country, to be increased, various 
 classes desiring it for their own special reasons, and a 
 well-marked current of thought running in that direction. 
 This fact is far from proving that mankind will ultimately 
 be the gainer. There are flood-tides of error as well as 
 of truth. History furnishes many an instance in which 
 such currents, strong for a while, and sweeping every- 
 thing before them, have in the long run brought more 
 evil than good. 
 
 Lastly, there are those who believe that we may look 
 for the growth over the civilized world of a sentiment 
 of friendliness and goodwill for men as men, irrespective 
 of national distinctions, and that this sentiment will 
 ultimately draw the peoples of the earth together and 
 make them realize the conception of a great Common- 
 wealth embracing all mankind, to which all will owe an 
 allegiance higher than that which they bear to their 
 own State and country. To create such a sentiment 
 was of course part of the message of Christianity : and 
 the sentiment has always found its chief support in re- 
 ligious belief. But as it may exist, and has in some 
 minds existed, apart from Christianity, it deserves to 
 be separately mentioned. Is the sentiment likely to 
 grow till it becomes strong enough to influence national 
 policy ? Has it, in fact, been growing ? 
 
 To those of us who can look back for sixty years, it 
 seems to be weaker now in most, perhaps in all, countries 
 than it was then, as it was stronger then than it had been 
 in the days when the horrible African Slave Trade was 
 deemed an asset in commercial prosperity. But a life- 
 time is far too short a period from which to draw con- 
 clusions on such a matter. Within our own time we 
 have seen among ourselves a great advance in the sense 
 of responsibility felt by those to whom Fortune has 
 been kind for those whom she has neglected. We note
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 119 
 
 a more active sympathy and, despite class antagonisms, 
 a stronger sense of brotherhood between the members 
 of the same people. May not such a feeling spread into 
 the wider field of international relations ? We perceive 
 that in the English-speaking countries, of which alone 
 we can judge, there exists already a warmer and more 
 general pity than was ever seen before for suffering of 
 every kind in every country ; and wherever over the 
 world a cry is raised for help to the victims of some dis- 
 aster by earthquake, flood, or storm, the response is 
 prompt and generous. That the hatreds and horrors 
 conspicuous to-day grieve us all the more because they 
 seem to be a reversion to a dark and cruel past, is of itself 
 a testimony to the progress which mankind had made, 
 and raises in some minds the hope that the horrors we 
 have been witnessing may be transient and the next 
 change be for the better. 
 
 After thus enumerating these natural causes, if one 
 may so call them, which have made or are making for 
 war or for peace, it remains only to ask what prospect 
 there is that the nations may by a conscious and united 
 effort succeed in establishing some machinery whereby 
 the likelihood of future wars may be at least diminished. 
 No one can examine the wars that have sprung from 
 the causes I have enumerated without perceiving that in 
 the great majority of instances peace might have been 
 kept, without dishonour to either party, and with material 
 advantage to both, had there been more foresight of the 
 consequences of war, and a real desire to avoid it. Many 
 wars have been unjust, most have been unnecessary. 
 Can any means be devised whereby the action of nations 
 other than those two (or more) between whom the quarrel 
 arises can be invoked to prevent the disputants from 
 settling it by arms ? 
 
 This is a very old problem. It was debated in 
 the fourteenth century, when two great Italians, Dante 
 Alighieri and his younger contemporary Marsilius of 
 Padua, both saw in the authority of the Roman Emperor 
 the guarantee, and indeed the only guarantee, for the
 
 I20 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 peace of a distracted world, as others had before their 
 time found it in the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman 
 Bishop. Five centuries later the problem was again 
 discussed by Immanuel Kant, and, a generation later, a 
 feeble attempt at a solution was made by the Holy 
 Alliance, on principles which would have foredoomed it 
 to failure, even had the three despotic governments of 
 Austria, Russia, and Prussia been more altruistically 
 minded than they were. 
 
 Both here and in the United States sanguine minds 
 are now busy with plans which propose some kind of 
 federation or league or alliance of nations charged with 
 the duty of compelling disputant Powers to refer their 
 disputes to arbitration or conciliation, and to abstain from 
 violent measures, at least until these peaceful methods 
 have had their chance. Such ideas cannot be dis- 
 missed as visionary, since they have been blessed both 
 in this country and in the United States by the highest 
 authorities in public life. I do not propose here to 
 discuss them, but may properly supplement what has 
 been said regarding the causes of war by indicating 
 what are the difficulties which all such schemes for the 
 prevention of war have to surmount.^ 
 
 I will mention a few of these. 
 
 That statesmen of the old school will dislike new 
 methods which may withdraw from them some of the 
 control they have hitherto enjoyed must be expected. 
 But far more serious is the deep-rooted unwillingness of 
 every nation, and especially of a strong and proud nation, 
 to submit any part of what it calls its rights to the decision 
 of an external tribunal. This has been happily overcome 
 in some recent instances, but in none of those instances 
 were the interests involved of great moment : and even 
 in the countries where arbitration has won most favour 
 there is a feeling, hard to overcome, that the cession of 
 territory is a question on which the country itself must 
 always have the last word. In every nation the fact 
 
 ^ Some aspects of this topic are discussed more fully in Chapter VIII., which treats 
 of a League of Nations for the preservation of a permanent peace.
 
 VI 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 121 
 
 that statesmen and journalists seek to please their public 
 by constantly asserting the righteousness of its own 
 cause makes it hard to arrange reasonable compromises. 
 An American statesman, than whom there is none wiser 
 anywhere, recently observed that one of the greatest 
 difficulties the negotiator of a treaty has to encounter 
 is the displeasure of his fellow-countrymen at any con- 
 cession, even when he feels his own cause to be none too 
 strong, and believes his country would gain by the re- 
 moval of friction. Nations seem to be as sensitive on 
 what is called the " point of honour " as were members 
 of the noblesse in France and England three centuries 
 ago. They hold out against arrangements which in- 
 dividual men would accept. He who suggests the 
 dropping of a doubtful claim is accused of timidity or 
 want of patriotism. 
 
 When a nation is invited to reduce its defensive 
 armaments in the faith that the other states which are 
 uniting themselves in a Peace League will join their 
 forces with its own to repel any aggression, doubts will 
 arise whether the parties to any alliance for the preserva- 
 tion of peace can be trusted to fulfil their respective 
 obligations except when it is their obvious interest to 
 do so. Where several allied states are alike threatened 
 by a powerful enemy, a regard for their safety will doubt- 
 less require them to hold together. But cases may 
 easily be imagined in which some members of the League, 
 having at a given moment nothing direct to gain by 
 supporting a threatened ally, may, either through un- 
 willingness to fight or through the offer of some advantage 
 for themselves, be induced to find a pretext for standing 
 aside. As soon as one member thus falters, some other 
 member is likely to follow the example, alleging that if 
 one or more fail to stand by the obligation, the rest cannot 
 be expected to fulfil it. The ultimate benefit to all of 
 mutual protection and of the repression of any disturb- 
 ance of the general peace may be admitted. But in 
 politics the avoidance of a near evil is usually preferred 
 to the attainment of a more remote good, for all can
 
 122 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 recognize the former and only those of large minds and 
 long views can appreciate the latter. 
 
 Another difficulty has received little notice, because 
 those who start these schemes, rejoicing in the excellence 
 of their aim, sometimes forget to examine the means. 
 It is the difficulty of securing persons competent to dis- 
 charge the functions of Arbitration and Conciliation. 
 Jurists versed in international law can be found fit to 
 determine questions of a purely legal nature, such, for 
 instance, as the interpretation of a treaty. Though 
 there are not many such men in Europe, there may be 
 enough for present needs. But the causes which most 
 frequently lead to hostilities are not of a legal character. 
 In comparatively few cases out of all those in which 
 disputes have led to war in Europe since 1815 could 
 the judicial methods of an arbitral court have been 
 profitably used.^ War usually springs from questions 
 of wider range, questions to which no precedents are 
 precisely applicable, questions which involve the passions 
 of rulers or of peoples. To these questions it is Con- 
 ciliation, not Arbitration, that must be applied ; and the 
 conciliators who are to deal with them must be men 
 possessing an intimate knowledge of European politics 
 and a long experience in international statesmanship. 
 They must enjoy a reputation extending beyond their 
 own country, and such as will add weight to their opinions. 
 They must, moreover, possess sufficient independence 
 and courage to follow their own views of what is right 
 and wise at the risk of displeasing their countrymen. 
 Few are the persons in whom these qualifications will 
 be likely to meet. 
 
 It is better to state and face these obstacles than to 
 ignore them with the complacent optimism which mis- 
 takes its own wishes for facts, or assumes that ethical 
 precepts will prevail against the bad habits of many 
 generations. But the obstacles are not insuperable. If 
 
 ^ The controversy as to the succession to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 
 which arose on the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark is such an instance. In that 
 case the parties did not wish to arbitrate.
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 123 
 
 the free peoples of the world really desire permanent 
 peace, desire it earnestly enough to make it a primary 
 object and to forgo some of their own independence of 
 action to attain it, the thing may be tried with a fair 
 prospect of success. What is needed is the creation, 
 not only of a feeling of allegiance to humanity and of 
 an interest in the welfare of other nations as well as 
 one's own — what in fact may be called an International 
 or Supra-national Mind — but also of an International 
 Public Opinion, a common opinion of many peoples 
 which shall apply moral standards to the conduct of other 
 nations with a judgment biased less than now by the 
 consideration of the particular national interests which 
 each nation conceives itself to have. 
 
 Could such a moral iudicium orhis terrariim be estab- 
 lished, it might do more than any arbitral tribunal, or 
 Council of Conciliation, or combination of Powers to 
 raise the level of conduct in international relations and 
 restrain the selfish passions even of monarchs or dema- 
 gogues. Though the nations are still some considerable 
 way from the general diffusion of such a feeling and 
 opinion, we need not assume that the waves of passion 
 will continue to run so high as they do now, and we may 
 even venture to hope that the sentiment of a common 
 devotion to the common welfare of all mankind will, 
 within the next few generations, gradually assert its 
 strength. 
 
 This leads me to one more topic proper to be here 
 referred to. 
 
 In comparison with all the other sadnesses of this 
 time, with the sorrow and mourning that have entered 
 every home, with the loss of those bright young spirits 
 who would have been the leaders of the next generation, 
 some among them minds that would have rendered in- 
 comparable services to learning and science and art — 
 in comparison with these things the evil I am about to 
 mention may seem small. Yet it is one that must be 
 mentioned, for it directly affects the objects for which 
 this Academy exists, and we, together with our friends
 
 124 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 and colleagues of the Royal Society, are those who best 
 know how grave it is. I speak of the severance of friendly 
 relations between the great peoples of Europe, the 
 interruption of all personal intercourse, and of that co- 
 operation in the extension of knowledge and the dis- 
 covery of new truth from which every people has gained 
 so much. The study of philosophy and history has 
 done little for those of us who pursue it if it has not 
 extended their vision beyond their own country and their 
 own time, pointing out to them that human progress has 
 been achieved by the united efforts of many races and 
 many types of intellect and character, each profiting by 
 the efforts of the others, and also reminding them that 
 for further advance this co-operation is essential. To 
 
 J. 
 
 restore it is at this moment impossible. But let us at 
 least do nothing to retard its return in happier days. 
 Those days some of us cannot hope ever to see. For the 
 elder men among us there has come a perpetual end of 
 that delightful and mutually helpful companionship 
 which united us with the learned men of two other great 
 nations, a sense of partnership between those who pur- 
 sued truth which overrode all national jealousies, and 
 was fruitful for the progress of letters and science. This 
 partnership is gone, and the world will for years to come 
 suffer from its departure. Yet the severance cannot 
 last for ever. When a storm has levelled the forest or a 
 waterspout has scarred the slopes of a valley, the eternal 
 forces of Nature, slow and often imperceptible in their 
 working, but restlessly active, begin to repair the ruin 
 the storm has wrought. Young trees spring up to 
 renew the forest, and verdure clothes once more the 
 devastated hillsides. 
 
 Two years ago the Spirit of Sin and Strife was let 
 loose upon the earth like a destroying whirlwind. That 
 spirit is personified in the Itiad as Ate, the Spirit of Evil 
 that takes possession of the soul. She is the power that 
 strides swiftly over the earth, kindling hatred and prompt- 
 ing men to wrong. But the poet tells us that after Ate 
 come the Litae, gentle daughters of the Almighty, who,
 
 VI PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 125 
 
 by their entreaties, soften men's hearts to pity. Halting 
 are their steps and their visage wrinkled, and their look 
 askance, but they bring repentance and they assuage 
 the passions which the Spirit of Wrong has kindled. 
 Ate has been afoot in the world, and we see everywhere 
 her deathful work. But after a time the Litae, following 
 slowly in her track, will begin to heal the wounds she has 
 cut deep into men's souls. Nations cannot be enemies 
 for ever. The time must come when a knowledge of 
 the true sources of these calamities will, even there where 
 hatred is now strongest, enlighten men's minds and 
 touch their hearts. May that time come soon ! 
 
 AIXlvov atkivov elire, to B ev vckutco.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY AND 
 ITS APPLICATIONS 
 
 Seventy years ago many an active and sanguine mind in 
 
 Europe and America was aflame with what then began to 
 
 be called the Principle of Nationality. Those were the 
 
 days when Despotism seemed the great enemy to human 
 
 progress and human happiness ; and despotism was worst 
 
 where the despot ruled over an alien people. So the 
 
 sympathy, both of America and of Britain, or at least 
 
 of British Liberals (among whom was then to be found 
 
 a great majority of the men of light and leading), went 
 
 out when, in 1848, the crash of the Orleans Monarchy in 
 
 France had shaken most European thrones, to the Italian 
 
 revolutionaries, to the Polish revolutionaries, to the 
 
 Czechs in Bohemia, to the Magyars in Hungary, who, 
 
 under the illustrious Kossuth, were fighting in 1849 for 
 
 their national rights against Hapsburg tyranny, to the 
 
 German patriots who were trying to liberalize Prussia 
 
 and the smaller kingdoms, and bring all Germans under 
 
 one free constitutional Government. Men hoped that 
 
 so soon as each people, delivered from a foreign yoke, 
 
 became master of its own destinies, all would go well for 
 
 the world. The two sacred principles of Liberty and 
 
 Nationality would, like twin guardian-angels, lead it 
 
 into the paths of tranquil happiness, a Mazzinian paradise 
 
 of moral dignity and liberty, a Cobdenian paradise of 
 
 commercial prosperity and international peace. 
 
 These bright prospects were soon overclouded. A 
 dreary reaction followed the revolutions that ran over 
 
 126
 
 CHAP. VII PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 127 
 
 Europe in 1848-49. After a while the passion for 
 liberty regained its power. Italy was set free ; Louis 
 Napoleon's bastard imperialism disappeared in 1870. In 
 1867 Hungary regained her constitutional rights under 
 the leadership of Francis Deak. But the principle of 
 Nationality has not only proved far more difficult to 
 apply than its apostles of those days expected, but has 
 developed dangerous tendencies then unforeseen. In 
 not a few countries it has led to constant disquiet and 
 frequent strife. As the wars of the later sixteenth and 
 earlier seventeenth century were in the main wars of 
 religion, as the wars of the eighteenth century were in 
 the main wars of dynastic interest, so the wars of the 
 nineteenth century mostly arose from, or were entangled 
 with, questions of nationality. And now, in the twentieth 
 century, we have seen the overweening nationalism of 
 Germany become the chief source of the present war, as it 
 was the desire of Austria to crush the nationality of Serbia 
 that furnished the immediate cause of its outbreak. The 
 problems which await solution when the war ends are 
 nearly all problems that involve the claims of peoples 
 dissatisfied with their present rulers and seeking either 
 independence or union with some kindred race. It is 
 therefore of the utmost importance to have clear ideas 
 as to what Nationality means, what part it is playing in 
 this world -conflict, whether it has contributed to a 
 perversion of the moral sense of Germany, and, finally, 
 in what ways and to what extent the Allied Powers can, 
 when victorious, apply the principle it embodies. What 
 can be done in the coming treaty of peace to satisfy the 
 national aspirations of the peoples and bring about a 
 more stable international situation than Europe has yet 
 seen ? What constitutes a Nationality ? and what is 
 the difference between a Nationality and a Nation ? 
 
 The popular use of the terms is vague, and any 
 definition that can be given is likely to be either too 
 wide or too narrow to suit the facts. How various the 
 facts are can be shown from a few examples. A 
 Nationality may or may not be also a Nation. The
 
 128 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 peoples of France, of Norway, of Italy are both Nations 
 and Nationalities. The people of Great Britain are a 
 Nation, including three Nationalities — English, Scotch, 
 and Welsh being parts of a larger British Nationality. 
 The races and peoples of Austria -Hungary, such as 
 Germans, Czechs, Poles, Magyars, Slovenes, are each 
 of them either a Nationality or a part of one, but they 
 do not form a Nation, though they are gathered into one 
 State. The German Empire would be nearly con- 
 terminous with a German Nationality, if we were to omit 
 from it the Slavs of Posen and West Prussia, as well as 
 the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine and those of North 
 Slesvig, both of whom disclaim the name of Germans. 
 The Spaniards are a Nation, and though we can speak of 
 Catalans and Basques as elements in that nation, neither 
 Catalans nor Basques constitute a Nationality in the same 
 sense as do the Czechs within the Austro-Hungarian 
 Monarchy. The former are at any rate content to remain 
 Spaniards, while the latter desire to lead an independent 
 political life as a Nation. 
 
 Wliat, then, makes Nationality ? Not Race alone. 
 There may be a Nationality composed of two or more 
 races. The Swiss people is composed of three : Franco- 
 Burgundian, Allemano-Teutonic, and Italian. Yet the 
 Swiss nationality is one of the strongest and most cohesive 
 in the world. Scottish nationality has grown up out 
 of four kingdoms, and it was not completed till the old 
 hostility of Highlanders and Lowlanders ended in the 
 eighteenth century. So the Belgians are partly Flemings, 
 partly French-speaking Walloons, but the two elements 
 have joined to form that genuine Belgian nationality 
 which the Germans have been trying to break in two 
 and destroy. 
 
 Neither does a common language make, or the 
 want of it efface, Nationality. The Alsatians before 
 1870 had become virtually French by nationality, though 
 most of them spoke German. Switzerland is all one, 
 though three — one might almost say four — languages 
 are spoken in it. In South America the Uruguayans are
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 129 
 
 of the same stock as the Argentines, and speak the same 
 Spanish, but they are now a distinct NationaHty and 
 proud of being a distinct Nation. It is only a series of 
 historical accidents that have made them such. 
 
 The Albanians have never had one government of 
 their own. They are divided into tribes, often at feud 
 with one another. Some are Muslims, some Orthodox 
 Greek Christians, some Roman Catholics. But they are 
 a Nationality, and are most unwilling to be merged either 
 in a Serb or in a Greek kingdom. So just as we cannot 
 define the term Nationality, so neither can we lay down 
 a general rule as to what makes the thing in the concrete. 
 But we can recognize it when we see it, and can in each 
 case explain by the light of history how it comes to be 
 what it is, the product of various concurrent forces, 
 which have given to a section or group of men a sense 
 of their unity, as the conscious possessors of common 
 qualities and tendencies which are in some way distinctive, 
 marking off the group from others and creating in it 
 the feeling of a corporate life. Race is one of these 
 forces, language is another, religion is a third, often 
 of the greatest importance. A common literature — 
 perhaps in the rude form of traditions and ballads in 
 which those traditions are preserved, as in the songs 
 of the Serbian people — all these things count. The 
 memories of the heroes who helped to achieve liberty 
 for Switzerland, of the perils they faced and the victories 
 they won, have been to its people a constant stimulus 
 to national sentiment. Even stronger, in some countries, 
 than recollections of glory have been the recollections of 
 suffering, of sorrows endured, and of sacrifices nobly but 
 vainly made. Through generations cheered by few hopes, 
 such recollections have been nourishing that sentiment 
 among the Irish, and the Czechs, and the Serbs, and the 
 Armenians, and the far-scattered fragments of Israel. 
 These are cultivated races, each with a long history 
 and a copious literature, so the sense of Nationality has 
 been able, through the ampler expression it found therein, 
 to become more fully developed among them than in 
 
 K
 
 I30 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 a comparatively backward race, such as is the Albanian 
 or the Lithuanian. And of course where that which 
 we call the Fibre of a race is tough, the sentiment has 
 more tenacity and more elasticity. It is a power to be 
 reckoned with in the modern world, far stronger now 
 than it was a century ago. 
 
 Why has it thus been gaining strength, and that 
 at the very time when every part of the world is being 
 drawn into closer connection with every other part, so 
 that each is less isolated, more dependent upon others ? 
 The passion of a nation for its independence is of course 
 old enough. Among the Scots, for instance, it was power- 
 ful from the days of the War of Independence, when the 
 attempts of the English King Edward the First to domin- 
 ate Scotland as he had conquered Wales forced the 
 people into a union of resistance. In Portugal it brought 
 about the revolt which severed the country from the 
 Spanish monarchy, of which it had formed a part for 
 sixty years. Among the Magyars it supported Francis 
 Rakoczy in vindicating their ancient rights against the 
 Hapsburg sovereigns. Nearly all the European nations 
 had a national pride which expressed itself conspicuously 
 in times of war. In most of them, however, this pride did 
 not, in times of peace, go deep down among the middle 
 and lower classes. They had little more than an attach- 
 ment to their own ways of life and their own religion, 
 with a corresponding distrust of foreigners and of 
 " heretics " or " Papists," as the case might be. The 
 two things which distinguish Nationality, as we know 
 it, from these old familiar feelings, are comparatively 
 recent. One is the desire of the politically divided parts 
 of a race (or racial group united by language and tradi- 
 tions) to be gathered together into a single State. The 
 Poles, who in the successive partitions of Poland had 
 found themselves allotted partly to Russia, partly to 
 Austria, partly to Prussia, sought to be reunited in a 
 Polish kingdom. Italy, still more divided and parcelled 
 out into many principalities, longed to be delivered from 
 their mJsrule, as well as from Austrian tyranny, and to
 
 VII THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 131 
 
 become a single free State. Similarly, among the 
 South and Middle Germans, who were ruled by a far 
 greater number of petty potentates, though these were of 
 their own race, and their rule seldom oppressive, there 
 arose after the War of Liberation (18 13—14) a movement 
 for bringing together all Germans, Prussians included, 
 under one government, which should make a German 
 nation conterminous with German nationality, restoring 
 the unity of the old Empire as it stood in the days of 
 the Hohenstaufen Emperors. With this movement, as 
 well as with the aspirations of the Poles and those of 
 the Italians, British and American Liberals were in hearty 
 sympathy. Italy made the strongest appeal, not only 
 because the tyranny of the Neapolitan Bourbons and of 
 the Hapsburgs in Lombardy was detestable, but also 
 because the Italian Risorgimento was led by a group 
 of men eminent by elevation of character and aims, no 
 less than by their brilliant gifts. Among them Cavour, 
 Mazzini, and Garibaldi are the best remembered, but 
 there were many other noble figures whose names are still 
 cherished in Italy. To-day the same desire of a nation- 
 ality divided between several governments to coalesce in 
 one State shows itself among both the Northern and the 
 Southern Slavs, among the Italians who dwell in the 
 Trentino under Austrian rule, among the Rumans who 
 inhabit parts of Transylvania, Eastern Hungary, and 
 Bukovina (lying north and west of the kingdom of 
 Rumania). 
 
 The other recent phenomenon is the intensification 
 of nationalistic pride and national vanity within many 
 nationalities which are already independent nations, and 
 especially among the greatest of these. In the seven- 
 teenth century men's minds were occupied with religious 
 controversies, so they knew little, thought little, and cared 
 comparatively little about racial distinctions. In the 
 eighteenth century it was the sovereigns or the " classes " 
 that made wars with dynastic or commercial ends in 
 view. But after the revolutionary convulsions that began 
 in 1789 the mass of the people, as in each country it
 
 132 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 began to gain power, began also to realize itself as a 
 Nation. The strength of the State, the size and the 
 wealth of the State, became sources of pride for it. The 
 philanthropic quality which had marked the apostles 
 of freedom in the later eighteenth century, the respect 
 professed at least, however neglected in practice, for the 
 Rights of Man, the desire to promote the progress of 
 mankind as a whole which animated the Utilitarian 
 school, the tenderness for backward races which appeared 
 in the British and American Abolitionists — these and 
 similar phases of opinion fell into the background. 
 With a more active and pervasive national self-conscious- 
 ness there came a spirit of rivalry, a desire to compete 
 with other States for all that was worth having, — 
 foreign trade, tropical territories occupied by uncivilized 
 races. So there came also a passion for powerful fleets 
 and armies. The aggressive tendencies which had 
 belonged to monarchs passed into the blood of the 
 peoples. A sort of " struggle for life " set in. Theories 
 of race were promulgated which played up to national 
 vanity. History was invoked to prove to each people 
 its own superiority to its rivals. Public writers and 
 speakers sought popularity by disparaging other nations 
 and flattering their own. The spirit of Nationality 
 was no longer a mere assertion, wholesome and legiti- 
 mate, of the right of those who felt themselves united in 
 language and literature, in ideas and traditions, to be 
 also united politically. That spirit, the satisfaction 
 of whose claims had from 1840 to 1870 been expected 
 to produce brotherhood and peace as well as freedom, 
 now revealed itself as a source of strife and danger. It 
 showed a capacity for fanaticism which almost repro- 
 duced the phenomena of religious animosity in the 
 sixteenth century. It had passed into an aggressive 
 self-assertiveness which strove for pre-eminence and 
 recked little of justice. 
 
 This spirit was more or less visible in all the greater 
 nations, and in all of them politicians tried to turn it to 
 their purposes. But it reached its climax in Germany,
 
 vn THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 133 
 
 which came latest into the rank of the nationalities that 
 had consolidated themselves into States. United Ger- 
 many had become the strongest of European military 
 powers, for Russia, vast as were her territory and 
 population, stood far behind in intelligence and civiliza- 
 tion. Few things in modern history are better worth 
 studying than the causes which have transformed the 
 Germany of 1864 into the Germany of 19 14. 
 
 The spirit of German Nationality, which had begun 
 to show itself about 1770, had been immensely stimu- 
 lated by the War of Liberation against Napoleon, and 
 had blazed out again in 1848, found one of its chief 
 supports in the memories enshrined in poetry and legend 
 of the mediaeval Romano - Germanic Empire. These 
 memories gave a colour of sentiment and romance to 
 the longing for national unity. They helped to form 
 the view which other nations, and especially Englishmen, 
 were in those days apt to take of the Germans, that they 
 were an idealistic, unpractical, almost dreamy people, who 
 found their chief joy in music, art, and m.etaphysics. 
 
 This, however, was anything but the spirit of Prussia, 
 or at least of the class that ruled Prussia. No romance 
 or sentiment there. All was hard, stern, practical. The 
 traditions typical of Prussia were traditions of war and 
 territorial aggrandizement, which dated from the vic- 
 tories of the Great Elector (of Brandenburg) in the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century and gained further 
 strength from the career of Frederick II. (the Great). 
 He was, and remains, the most perfect expression of the 
 Prussian spirit. He it was who gave to Prussia's aims 
 their definite direction and stamped upon her methods 
 the character they have never lost. Frederick was not 
 only a successful commander, but a diligent and capable 
 organizer. From him date the association in the Prussian 
 mind of civil discipline and economic progress with war 
 and conquest, the identification of the controlling power of 
 the State with the prosperity of the submissive subject. 
 
 Prussia's leadership in the War of Liberation gave 
 her an ascendancy over the German peoples which was
 
 134 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 able to endure, despite the jealousies of the governments 
 of the second-class States, such as Bavaria and Saxony, 
 and despite also the disappointment caused to the German 
 Liberals by the repressive policy which Prussian mon- 
 archs followed in domestic affairs. In 1848 Frederick 
 William IV. refused the invitation of the Frankfort 
 Parliament to become German Emperor, and William I. 
 his successor allowed Bismarck to defy the Prussian 
 Chamber. But whatever complaints German Liberals 
 everywhere had against Prussia, they were compelled 
 to look to her for leadership as against the despotic 
 and clerically obscurantist Hapsburgs. On her they 
 still placed their hopes for turning German nationality 
 into a unified German State. Bismarck satisfied these 
 hopes by his three wars, against Denmark in 1864, 
 against Austria in 1866, against France in 1870. But 
 the price paid for the victories which created a united 
 Germanic Empire was the extinction of the old German 
 Liberalism. Of the children of the Liberals of 1848— 
 1 849, some passed over into the ranks of the Conservative 
 parties, some into those of the Social Democrats. The 
 ideals and aims of the nation were undergoing a change. 
 The three wars wrought this change by reviving in 
 greater strength than ever the traditions of Frederick II. 
 The principle of nationality had triumphed, for unity 
 was won, but it had been won by " blood and iron." 
 The military spirit and traditions of the Prussian mon- 
 archy were blent with those traditions of the mediaeval 
 Empire which the rest of Germany had cherished. 
 Frederick's conception of a military State, resting on 
 Power, aiming at further power, imposing strict dis- 
 cipline and exacting unquestioning obedience in civil 
 as well as military affairs, began to pervade the national 
 mind. The South and Middle Germans, accustomed 
 to hear themselves described as sentimental dreamers, 
 were now resolved to show that they too could be practical. 
 Thus Prussianism and the principles of State control 
 were accepted because the State undertook to do so 
 much for its subjects. It gave an efficient administration
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 135 
 
 by which all classes profited, and it promoted foreign 
 trade and every kind of material development by every 
 possible means. The rapidly growing industrial and 
 commercial prosperity obtained by this policy, and by 
 the energy of the people, intensified the sense of national 
 pride and self-confidence. 
 
 The transports of joy which accompanied the vic- 
 tories of 1870—71 and the attainment of full national 
 unity in an Empire which seemed to re-embody the 
 meridian glory of the Middle Ages, stimulated — one 
 might almost- say deified — the sentiment of Nationality, 
 spurring the new realm to achieve fresh conquests beyond 
 the seas. In the competition for unoccupied tropical 
 territories which began not long afterwards, large claims 
 were made for Germany. The " Colonial policy " be- 
 came popular, and with it presently came the desire 
 for a great navy. Bismarck, who had been content to 
 make Germany One State, and the strongest in Europe, 
 was swept along by the current, and almost compelled 
 to acquire colonies which he did not care for. He cared 
 even less to turn eastward, and emphatically disclaimed 
 any interest in Constantinople. But when he was gone 
 the young Emperor William II., professing himself the 
 friend of Islam and of Abdul Hamid, formed plans for 
 dominating the Near East, and obtained first commercial 
 and railway concessions, and ultimately a practically con- 
 trolling influence over the rulers of Turkey. A powerful 
 navy was created. The scope of ambition enlarged itself, 
 in many German minds, to the domination of the world. 
 
 Nationalism, as it affected the educated class gener- 
 ally, made the greatness of the country seem the supreme 
 aim for State and individual, justifying not only aggres- 
 sion, but even breaches of faith, such as was the invasion 
 of Belgium in 19 14. Salus Germaniae suprema lex. As 
 the Nation had become an Army rather than a People, 
 Nationalism gave to the military caste a prestige and 
 authority never seen in Europe before. The Caste 
 dominated politics. Bismarck had resisted it and dis- 
 approved its methods. Unscrupulous as he could be,
 
 136 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap- 
 
 he recognized the power of world opinion, and showed 
 a certain respect for it by his efforts to put his antagonists, 
 technically at least, in the wrong. ^ But he had no civilian 
 successors of equal strength. The military and naval 
 chiefs to whom his controlling influence passed, thinking 
 and dreaming incessantly of war, and making Power 
 and Victory their only aim, became so obsessed with the 
 ideas of successful war, that morality ceased for them to 
 exist. All methods became lawful. It was to them a 
 duty — as it had been to the Spanish Inquisitors — to be 
 cruel and faithless if cruelty and faithlessness promised 
 success in their aims. 
 
 Nowhere else in the modern world have national 
 pride and self-confidence risen to so high a pitch. Not 
 even the Romans in the days of Augustus surveyed the 
 world, of which they were masters, from such a pinnacle 
 of conscious superiority, for the Romans did at least 
 acknowledge the Greeks as their teachers, and recog- 
 nized the greater brilliance of Hellenic science and litera- 
 ture and art.^ But in the case of Germany several 
 streams of feeling combined to swell the flood of pride. 
 There was the marvellous growth of industry and com- 
 merce. There was the progress of chemistry and 
 physics, assiduously pursued in many Universities, turned 
 to practical ends in technical institutions, and so made 
 to yield an ample harvest of profits to the commercial 
 class. There was a literature not indeed equal in richness 
 and variety to that of Britain or that of France, but 
 illustrated by many great names, especially in the domains 
 of abstract thought. And, above all, there were the 
 triumphs of the Prussian rifle and cannon. Much has 
 been attributed to the histories, like those of Giesebrecht 
 and von Raumer, which celebrated the achievements and 
 virtues of mediaeval heroes, much to the philosophical 
 
 1 Thus in 1864 he did not act till Denmark had broken the treaty of 1852 ; in 1866 
 he contrived that the breach of the treaty of 1865 should come from Austria. See 
 Professor Munroe Smith's interesting book, Militarism and Statecraft, for an instructive 
 comparison between Bismarck's diplomacy and that of his latest successors. 
 
 2 Cf. Aeneid, bk. vi. 1. 848 ; Horace, Epp. 11. i. 156, and Ars Poet. i. 268. This 
 recognition moderated arrogance and aided the Romans in their civilizing work.
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 137 
 
 theories which have claimed omnipotence for the State 
 and placed it above all moral obligations. But it is Facts 
 that have remoulded the German mind during the last 
 fifty years. Hegel and Treitschke would have counted 
 for little without the three successful wars which have 
 Prussianized Germany and made War seem to so many 
 to be the foundation of her greatness. 
 
 While the spirit of Nationalism was running to this 
 excess in Germany, the small nationalities of South- 
 Eastern Europe and Western Asia were awakening to a 
 more active life. The war of 1877-78 had delivered 
 Bulgaria from the Turk, the rising of the Eastern 
 Rumelians in 1885 enlarged its territory, and led Serbia 
 to attack it. Greece and Montenegro gained extensions 
 in 1880 by the help of England. Each of the five 
 Balkan nationalities ^ had its traditions ; and as the aspira- 
 tions of each were hard to reconcile with those of its 
 neighbours, a bitter rivalry followed where there ought 
 to have been a mutual good-will, and where there was 
 really a common interest, which might have taken useful 
 shape in a federal union against the hostility of Turkey 
 and the dangerous patronage of Russia and Austria. 
 Meanwhile, in Asia the rulers of Turkey were seeking 
 to preserve their own national and religious predomin- 
 ance by exterminating their Christian subjects. It 
 was the Armenians, as lying most out of the sight and 
 knowledge of Europe, and because most feared in 
 respect of their industry and intelligence, who were the 
 chief victims of massacre, but Greeks and Syrians too 
 have had to suffer. Turkish misgovernment went so far 
 as to awaken in Syria also the long-dormant sense of 
 Arab nationality. 
 
 As the present war has sprung from the strife of 
 races and religions in the Balkan countries and from 
 that violence done to the sentiment of nationality in 
 Alsace-Lorraine which made France the ally of Russia, 
 so also has it raised a multitude of other questions of 
 
 1 Greece, Serbia, Albania, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Montenegro, though an inde- 
 pendent State, belongs to the same " Jugo-Slav " Nationality as does Serbia.
 
 138 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 nationality in various parts of Europe and Western Asia 
 which call for settlement at the end of the war. Settled 
 they must be, if the desired peace is to endure and if the 
 proposed League of Free Nations to Enforce Peace is 
 to have a fair chance of success. These questions fall 
 into five groups : 
 
 I. Those of Western Europe. 
 II. Those of East Central Europe (Bohemia, Poland, 
 and the western parts of Russia). 
 
 III. Those of South- Eastern Europe (the so-called 
 
 " Balkan Countries "), 
 
 IV. Those of Western Asia (Syria, Armenia, the 
 
 Caucasus, and the Twelve Islands of the 
 Aegean Sea). 
 V. Those of West Central Asia (Persia with, possibly, 
 Turkistan and Siberia). 
 
 Of these Groups, Nos. III. and IV. are really one, 
 for both involve the fate of the Turkish Empire. The 
 step preliminary to their settlement is to abolish for ever 
 the rule over subjects of a different faith of the un- 
 speakable, irreclaimable, intolerable Turk,^ who has 
 been a curse to Asia, as well as to Europe, for six cen- 
 turies. But it is convenient to take the Balkan countries 
 separately, because their fate is inwoven with that of 
 another Empire, whose dynastic interests have caused 
 infinite mischief since the days of the Emperor Ferdinand 
 the Second. 2 
 
 I. Western Europe 
 
 The West European issues of Nationality are those 
 of Alsace-Lorraine and of the Danish-speaking popula- 
 tion of North Slesvig, who have been kept under German 
 rule ever since the wars of 1864-66, though it had been 
 stipulated that they were to be restored to Denmark. 
 
 ^ By "the Turk" I mean the Osmanh as a ruler, not the Turkish peasant, who is 
 usually an honest and kindly being, though capable of ferocity on occasions. 
 
 2 In briefly describing these questions I shall seldom express my own opinions, for 
 though whoever has travelled through the countries concerned (as I have through 
 many of them) cannot but have his opinions, views are little worth without arguments 
 to support them, and for arguments there is no room in such a sketch as this.
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 139 
 
 These cases are too familiar to need description. The 
 German Government has tried to create another racial 
 question by its attempt to make the Flemings of 
 Belgium into a Germanic nationality as opposed to the 
 Walloon or French-speaking part of the population. 
 But this ingenious plan, interesting as proceeding from 
 those who have laboured to extinguish Polish nationality 
 in Posen, did not suggest itself till after an unfortunate 
 beginning had been made by shooting in cold blood, 
 during the invasion of Belgium, batch after batch of 
 innocent non-combatant Flemish burghers at Louvain, 
 Aerschot, and other Belgian towns. Nor has it been 
 promoted by the more recent carrying off into virtual 
 slavery of crowds of Flemish workmen and peasants to 
 toil in German factories or help to construct German 
 entrenchments on the Western front. 
 
 II. Central Europe 
 
 The break-up of the Russian Empire which followed 
 the revolution of March 191 7 has created some very 
 intricate new problems in the regions which lie between 
 the Baltic and the Euxine, in addition to the old 
 problems of Bohemia and Poland. Bohemia was an 
 independent Slavonic kingdom ten centuries ago, and 
 is a separate kingdom now, though since 1526 its crown 
 has been worn by the Hapsburg archdukes of Austria, 
 who have (since 1804) called themselves Emperors 
 of Austria. Its original Slavonic quality has remained 
 over most of the country, despite the influx of Germans 
 from the North and West. These now form about one- 
 third of the population, but the spirit of Czech nationality, 
 which had never died out, has been powerfully reinvigor- 
 ated since 1848, and most markedly so in recent years.^ 
 This spirit has spread not only among the Czechs of 
 Moravia, but also, more recently, among the Slovaks 
 of Northern Hungary, whose language is practically 
 
 ^ In Bohemia the Czech - speaking population constitutes 63.19 per cent, in 
 Moravia, 71.74 per cent, the remainder being German speakers.
 
 CHAP. 
 
 140 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 the same as Czech, though they have been for many 
 centuries subjects of the Hungarian Crown. Far behind 
 the^ Czechs as these Slovaks are in intellectual culture, 
 their sense of their kinship with that people and their 
 resentment at the attitude towards them of the Hungarian 
 Government have produced among them a sympathy 
 with the Czech movement, which now seeks to create 
 a Czecho-Slovak State covering the regions aforesaid. 
 Both Czechs and Slovaks have during this war given 
 proof of courage and of devotion to their nationalist 
 aims by going over in large numbers from the Austrian 
 armies to the Russian, and by the valour with which they 
 have fought along the Volga and in Siberia on behalf 
 of the Entente Allies. Taken together, Czechs and 
 Slovaks in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia con- 
 stitute a population which may be roughly estimated 
 at nearly six and a half millions, to which may be added 
 about 1,900,000 Slovak-speakers in North- West Hun- 
 gary, making a total approaching eight millions and a 
 half.i Their aspirations have already received general 
 sympathy in Britain, France, and Italy, and doubtless in 
 the United States also. 
 
 Polish politics are too intricate and their aspects too 
 changeful to be described here. It must suffice to say 
 that the bulk of the Polish nation, including nearly all 
 of those who are subjects of Prussia in Posen and West 
 Prussia and Prussian Silesia, and a large (though probably 
 smaller) proportion of those who are subjects of Austria 
 in Galicia and Austrian Silesia, desire to see Poland 
 become once more an independent State, not necessarily 
 with territories as wide as those which it had before the 
 lamentable partition of 1772, but at any rate with some 
 guaranteed access to the Baltic. Whether the Ruthenian 
 population of Eastern Galicia and parts of Russian Poland 
 should be included in this kingdom (or republic) or should 
 be assigned to the Ukraine, is a moot question. The 
 population of such a reconstituted Poland would be large, 
 
 1 There are also some detached Slovak communities in South-West Hungary, but 
 these are too far oflF to be brought into a Czecho-Slovak State.
 
 vn THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 141 
 
 sufficient, with its material resources, to enable it to 
 become a strong State, much larger, though perhaps 
 less fully united in spirit, than would be the proposed 
 Czecho-Slovak State. 
 
 When we pass from these two ancient kingdoms to 
 the races which have not, for centuries past, been distinct 
 States, and some of which cannot even be called Nations, 
 Lithuanians and Letts in East Prussia and the north- 
 western parts of Russia, Slavonic Ruthenians or Little 
 Russians in the Ukraine, Finns in Esthonia and Finland, 
 the difficulties to be settled at the conclusion of a General 
 Peace become even greater. Here there are no natural 
 boundaries either of mountains (for these regions are 
 parts of the great East European Plain) or of rivers. 
 Neither are there potent historic traditions moulding the 
 wishes of the peoples. Language and religion are 
 practically our only guides to the discovery of any nation- 
 alistic distinctions on which the building of political 
 fabrics can be based. The Finns, a vigorous race, have 
 a language entirely different from that of their Slavonic 
 neighbours, and they are Protestants. The Lithuanians 
 have their own very ancient tongue, and they are mostly 
 Roman Catholics. The Letts also, with a language 
 closely resembling Lithuanian, are mostly Protestants. 
 ■ A few belong to the Orthodox Church. Neither of these 
 are Slavs. The Ruthenians, also called Ukrainians or 
 Little Russians, like the less well-marked groups — not fit 
 to be styled nationalities — called Red Russians and White 
 Russians, speak Slavonic dialects differing but slightly 
 from the much larger mass of the Great Russians, and 
 they, as well as the latter, belong to the Orthodox Eastern 
 Church. If the German Government had been left to deal 
 with the problem which this part of Europe presents, it 
 would doubtless have set up a number of small princi- 
 palities, which it would control partly through rulers of 
 its own choice, partly by military menace, partly by the use 
 of money. The weakness of such rulers, and their mutual 
 jealousies, would have made them helpless vassals of the 
 German Empire. The Western Allies, whose aim must
 
 142 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 be not only to create a stable order, but also to foster 
 liberty and to respect the spirit of nationality, promoting 
 in an unselfish spirit the welfare of populations hitherto 
 neglected by their despotic sovereigns, will have a harder 
 task, for most of these populations can hardly be deemed 
 fit to work democratic institutions. Politically, the Finns 
 are most advanced, for they have had in the Grand-duchy 
 of Finland an autonomous government under the Czars. 
 In some cases, as, for instance, that of the Ukraine 
 Ruthenes or " Little Russians," we do not yet know 
 how far what can be called a true Nationality, i.e. a sense 
 of constituting a distinct intellectual and moral entity, 
 so far pervades the bulk of the people as to make them 
 desire a distinct governmental organization. Such a 
 sense seems to exist in a part at least of the educated 
 class, and the Austrian and German Governments have 
 tried to develop it in order to sever the Ukrainians from 
 the other Russians. But is it general ? It may be that 
 they will wish to form part of a reconstructed Russia. The 
 Finns of Finland, an educated and intelligent race, are of 
 course in a different position. They might well be left, 
 when the German intruder has been expelled, to form 
 an independent Government, probably republican, per- 
 haps a member of a Federation, which should include 
 Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians, all three of these 
 apparently anxious to be independent both of Russia and 
 of Germany. A reconstituted Poland might also be a 
 member, but the smaller peoples may prefer to be left to 
 themselves. When Russia begins to reorganize herself 
 she will probably do so all the better if her problem is not 
 complicated by the claims of nationalities unwilling to 
 be included in her vast body. 
 
 III. South-Eastern Europe 
 
 Here we find five distinct Nationalities — Ruman, Bul- 
 garian, Serb, Greek, Albanian, as well as (if the Turks 
 can be called a Nationality) Turkish, or at any rate 
 Muslim. Montenegro, though an independent State, is
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 143 
 
 hardly a nationality, for its people are racially identical 
 with those of Serbia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. Each of 
 these nationalities has claims beyond its present political 
 boundaries. 
 
 The Rumans seek to acquire a large part of Bess- 
 arabia (included in Russia till 1917), which is inhabited 
 by Rumans, and also most of Transylvania, with a 
 slice of Eastern Hungary and a bit of Bukovina.^ In 
 Transylvania, however, there is a certain population of 
 German-speaking Saxons, chiefly in a few towns such as 
 Hermanstadt and Kronstadt, and a greater population 
 of Magyars, the largest part of which consists of a 
 remarkable mountain people called Szeklers, slightly 
 differing in aspect and dialect from the Magyars of the 
 plain, but equally unwilling to be merged in the Rumans. 
 How are the respective rights of these elements to be 
 adjusted ? The Rumans also dispute with Bulgaria the 
 possession of the territory called the Dobrudja, which 
 lies along the Black Sea south of the lowest part of the 
 Danube's course, and which they forced it to cede in 
 191 3, though part of its population speaks Bulgarian. 
 Some politicians would like to go farther south and get 
 hold of Varna, but there is no Ruman population there 
 to justify such a demand. 
 
 The Bulgarians, besides contesting Rumanian claims 
 to the Dobrudja, seek to recover Adrianople and the 
 country to the south of it towards Constantinople, part 
 of which is certainly Bulgar-speaking and was yielded 
 to them by the treaty of 19 12, though the Turks 
 took it back from them during the calamitous war of 
 19 1 3. Moreover, — and this is one of the most trouble- 
 some of all the Balkan questions, — Bulgaria disputes 
 with Serbia the possession of Southern Macedonia, i.e. the 
 country west of the rivers Struma and Vardar from Veles 
 as far as Monastir and Ochrida,^ and also disputes with 
 
 1 In Bukovina, which belongs not to the Hungarian crown but to Austria, the 
 proportions of populations are : Ruthenes, about 38 per cent, Rumans 34 per cent, and 
 German speakers 28 per cent. 
 
 2 As to the feelings and claims of the population of Southern Macedonia, see the 
 remarks of Mr. H. N. Brailsford in his book, A League of Nations, pp. 96-99.
 
 144 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Greece a strip of territory along the north coast of the 
 Aegean. Both of these were assigned to Bulgaria by the 
 treaty of 1 9 1 2 but lost in the war of 1 9 1 3, and then ceded, 
 the former to Serbia, the latter to Greece. Both were 
 reoccupied by the troops of Bulgaria in the present war, 
 and are claimed by her on the ground that their inhabit- 
 ants are predominantly of Bulgarian stock. It was the 
 popular desire to recover these districts which enabled 
 King Ferdinand to lure or cajole his subjects into the war. 
 Not less perplexing than this set of questions are 
 those which relate to Albania, a country which has never 
 formed an independent State, and was till recently part 
 of the Turkish Empire, nominally at least, for the Turks 
 had so little effective control that I found, when travelling 
 there in 1885, that a Turkish general, desiring to send 
 troops across the country, found it prudent to take off 
 the soldiers' uniforms, that they might pass through in 
 small bodies, and so escape the unfriendly attentions of 
 the warlike tribes. Some of these tribes indeed have 
 maintained their practical independence ever since 
 Illyricum was lost to the Roman Empire in the sixth 
 and seventh centuries. The boundaries of the country 
 which they occupy are undetermined. On the south 
 in particular the Skipetar (as the Albanians call them- 
 selves) are mingled with a Greek-speaking population, 
 so that it is hard to say where Greece begins and Albania 
 ends. On the north and east there is a similar con- 
 tact, though rather less intermixture, with the Serbs. 
 Thus both Serbia and Greece advance to certain dis- 
 tricts claims which the Skipetar would not admit. So 
 does Montenegro also. Italy, too, has now stepped in, 
 and is understood to desire a protectorate over the 
 southern parts at least of Albania. An unprejudiced 
 observer is disposed to think that the best way out of this 
 imbroglio would be to leave the mountain tribes severely 
 alone. They are a bold and spirited race, and would fight 
 fiercely for the independence which they love. To 
 subdue such, a people who, like the Afghans, love 
 fighting for its own sake and are defended by rocky
 
 VII 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 145 
 
 fastnesses, would give far more trouble than any results 
 to be expected could justify. There has never been 
 among them any effective government, that is, any 
 regular civil administration, and they get on without it. 
 All that seems needed is to fix their boundaries — no easy 
 task — give them access to the Adriatic, and prevent them, 
 by a sort of police cordon, from raiding their neighbours. 
 
 Next we come to the largest problem of all, that 
 of the Slavonic population which occupies the south- 
 western parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, 
 viz. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Istria, Croatia- 
 Slavonia (the district south of the middle and lower 
 course of the Drave), Carniola, Eastern Carinthia, and 
 a district of Southern Styria. The inhabitants of the 
 westerly parts of these regions are called Slovenes, and 
 speak a language cognate to, but slightly different from, 
 that of the Dalmatians and Croatians, who are all Serbs, 
 practically identical in race with the Serbians, though 
 differing in religion, for the latter are " Orthodox " 
 Greek, the former, as also the Slovenes, Roman Catholics. 
 It would appear, though no trustworthy statistics exist, 
 that in Croatia-Slavonia the proportions of the races 
 are : Croats (Catholics using the Latin alphabet), 62 ; 
 Serbs, 26 ; Germans, 5 ; and Magyars 4 per cent 
 respectively. [There are said to be 40,000 Slovenes 
 in the Italian district of Friuli.] The Bosnians are also 
 Serbs, mostly Orthodox, though there are some Catholics, 
 and a few Muslims remain. Taken altogether, these 
 populations are now described as Jugo-Slavs (i.e. South 
 Slavs) to distinguish them from the Northern Slavs 
 (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Ruthenes, as well as Russians 
 generally). 
 
 The ambition of Serbia is to be the nucleus of a great 
 Jugo-Slav State, embracing all these branches of the 
 South Slavonic stock, which count some eight millions 
 of souls, and delivering them out of the hand of the 
 Hapsburgs. Assuming the power of Austria to have 
 been so completely broken as to make this aim attain- 
 able, we have to ask whether all the above-named sections 
 
 L
 
 146 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 of her present subjects desire their deliverance. They 
 have had no opportunity during the war of expressing their 
 wishes, by constitutional methods, and they have not in 
 war broken away from the Austrian armies as the Czechs 
 have done. The only means hitherto suggested for 
 enabling them to exercise the right of self-determination 
 after the war is by some sort of popular vote or so- 
 called " plebiscite." Will their assent be forthcoming ? 
 It used to be thought that the ecclesiastical differences 
 between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Slavs 
 would prevent union, but these have come to seem smaller 
 as the sentiment of racial unity has grown. Though 
 that sentiment is still rather less developed among the 
 Slovenes than it is in Bosnia or Dalmatia, or perhaps in 
 Croatia, the Jugo-Slav leaders seem confident that it will 
 overcome any lingering loyalty to the Hapsburgs, and 
 will not even desire a federation under the old House. It 
 must, however, be remembered that leaders, especially 
 when they are also exiles, naturally tend to attribute their 
 own ardent convictions to their fellow-countrymen at 
 home, many of whom may be but faintly interested in 
 nationalistic aspirations. More cannot be said at present. 
 If the dynasty of Rudolf comes to a perpetual end, it may 
 well die unwept, for no long-descended line has ever, 
 except in the person of Maria Theresa, shown less 
 nobility of soul or pursued its own interests in a more 
 selfish spirit than this House has done since the well- 
 intentioned Maximilian II. passed away in 1576. 
 
 An Austrian monarchy need not, however, cease to 
 exist when the South Slav regions have broken away from 
 her, and when Italy has received the Trentino and any 
 other districts to which she may show herself entitled. 
 The Hapsburgs may still keep what they had, and rather 
 more than what they had, in the fifteenth century, that is 
 to say, their purely German territories, the archduchies 
 of Upper and Lower Austria, all northern Tirol, Vorarl- 
 berg, Salzkammergut, most of Styria, and Western 
 Carinthia. Whether these territories will be hereafter 
 attracted to Germany may depend on what befalls that
 
 VII 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 147 
 
 country after the war. Whether the Magyars, now 
 that they have no longer to fear that Russian autocracy 
 whose invading hosts cut short their struggle for liberty 
 in 1849, will care to prolong their political connection 
 with the Hapsburgs and Germanic Austria will be their 
 own affair. What they most care for is to preserve some 
 ascendancy over the Slavs and Rumans who dwell within 
 the lands of the Hungarian Crown. They are a high- 
 spirited and forceful race, who could stand alone. 
 
 The questions that arise in connection with these 
 two groups of nationalities (II. and III.) are so intricate 
 that it may be well to state concisely the schemes for 
 settling them which have, so far, received the most general 
 support from the European Allies and from America. 
 
 As respects Central Europe, the claims of the Czechs 
 are felt to be strong. Their fervid national sentiment, 
 their literature and traditions, as well as their ancient 
 historic rights, entitle Bohemia to break her connection 
 with the Hapsburgs and live once more as a separate and 
 independent State. Difficulties will, however, arise in 
 dealing with the German minority and in the delimita- 
 tion of those districts in North- West Hungary which 
 are purely Slovak. Not less warm is the sympathy which 
 the free peoples of Europe and America have given to 
 the Poles in their long struggle to recover national 
 independence. We all desire a reconstituted Poland, 
 strong enough to hold its own. But here, too, there are 
 obstacles to be overcome. Where are the frontiers to 
 be drawn on the north and east ? How is access to the 
 sea to be secured ? Are the Ruthenians of Eastern 
 Galicia to be a part of Poland, or united, as the prin- 
 ciple of nationality suggests, with their brethren in the 
 Ukraine ? Can Prussia be forced to let go those parts 
 of Posen which she has during two generations vainly 
 laboured to Germanize ? 
 
 The problem of European Russia is one on which 
 few people in Western Europe or America are qualified 
 to speak confidently, but the balance of opinion inclines 
 to leave the Ruthenians (or Little Russians) to settle for
 
 148 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap 
 
 themselves whether they wish to go with the Great 
 Russians or to stand alone. It is clear that the Finns 
 in Esthonia and those in Finland wish to be quit of Russia 
 altogether, and this is apparently the desire of the Letts 
 and Lithuanians also. The question for these four 
 small peoples therefore comes to be, Shall they form a 
 group of petty unconnected States or shall they be united 
 in a Baltic Federation ? 
 
 When we turn to South-Eastern Europe the questions 
 in debate are so many and opinion is so divided upon 
 them that it is impossible here to do more than summarize 
 the main points in controversy. Briefly stated, they are 
 these : 
 
 1. Shall a Jugo-Slav State be created embracing 
 Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs, who are now subjects of 
 Austria, and also the Serbs of Serbia and Montenegro ? 
 
 2. What possessions shall Italy have on the Adriatic 
 coast, and in its islands ? 
 
 3. Shall the Albanians be independent ? What 
 ports on the Adriatic shall they receive ? 
 
 4. Where shall the boundaries be drawn — 
 
 (a) Between Greece and Albania ? 
 
 (b) Between Greece and Bulgaria } 
 {c) Between Serbia and Bulgaria } 
 (d) Between Serbia and Albania ? 
 {e) Between Bulgaria and Rumania ? 
 
 5. How much of Transylvania, of Eastern Hungary, 
 of Bukovina, and of Bessarabia shall be allotted to 
 Rumania ? 
 
 6. What shall become of Constantinople and the bit 
 of territory behind it still possessed by the Turks ? 
 
 Those who know even a little of these countries 
 know that in some regions the races live so intermixed 
 that it is impossible to draw any lines without placing 
 many villages or even large districts of one nationality 
 within the territory of a State of a different nationality. 
 There must be a certain amount of" give and take," but 
 unfortunately the temper which arranges a " give and 
 take " is wanting to the Balkan peoples.
 
 vn THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 149 
 
 IV. Western Asia 
 
 Passing from Europe to Asia, we find ourselves among 
 the Twelve Islands in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea 
 (the so-called Dodekanese), most of which belong rather 
 to the latter than to the former continent. They were 
 taken from the Turks by the Italian fleet in 191 1, and 
 Italy still continues to hold them, though they were not 
 ceded to her by the treaty of 191 3. Their popula- 
 tion is, with the exception of a few Muslims, wholly 
 Hellenic. One of them, Astypalaea, is specially valuable 
 in respect of its excellent harbours. What is to be done 
 with Constantinople and the Bosphorus, unique in their 
 position as in their history ? There is a general feeling that 
 a position of such incomparable military and commercial 
 importance, guarding the passage from one continent 
 to another, commanding the gateway to a great inland 
 sea, ought not to be left in the hands of any Great Power. 
 Is it then to be assigned to a weak Power, and if so, to 
 which ? Or is an attempt to be made to place it under 
 the joint control of some combination of Powers, a 
 hazardous experiment, which may, however, have to be 
 tried, faute de mieux } 
 
 In Asia Minor we find a Greek-speaking population 
 along the west coast, mixed with Muslims in the country 
 districts and with Armenians in the cities. On the north 
 coast, and in the great inland plateau, the inhabitants 
 are nearly all Muslims, calling themselves Osmanlis, 
 besides some Circassians and Muslim sects like the Kizil 
 Bashes, with Greek and Armenian Christians scattered 
 here and there, the latter chiefly in the cities and in the 
 Cilician mountains. The principle of nationality would 
 allot the western seaboard, with its adjacent islands, to 
 Greece, and leave the inner plateau to the Muslims. If 
 it is desired to maintain an Ottoman Sultanate — the 
 Khalifate will naturally go to Mecca — these inland 
 and northern regions might be assigned to it. Bad as 
 Turkish rule is everywhere, such a Sultanate would be too 
 weak to venture to oppress or massacre the Christian
 
 I50 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 inhabitants of the few cities in the regions aforesaid. For 
 a capital it might have Angora or Afium Kara Hissar, 
 or Konia, which was the seat of the Seljukian Sultans in 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It need hardly be 
 said that the Western Allies will feel bound to exclude 
 from German as well as Turkish influence both the 
 Caucasian countries and Mesopotamia, since the Germans 
 have not concealed their wish to use these regions as a 
 stepping-stone to the domination of Central Asia and the 
 creation of a menace to the position of Britain in India. 
 No one will now venture to propose that the Turk 
 should be allowed to retain any power in the countries east 
 and. south of the Taurus range, in which he has committed 
 such unheard-of cruelties as those which Armenians and 
 Syrians have had to suffer in 191 5 and 1916. His work 
 of massacre was unfortunately so thoroughly done in 
 these two years that the larger part of those elements of 
 the population on which its prosperity depended, and 
 to which some kind of self-government might have been 
 given, has been destroyed in Armenia and greatly 
 reduced in Syria. The Armenian race is, however, 
 singularly industrious and singularly tenacious of life. 
 It quickly repairs its losses. Its sense of nationality is 
 so strong that many who emigrated to escape the miseries 
 from which they were suffering may return, even from 
 the United States, where they are counted by hundreds of 
 thousands. But these native races, progressive as they 
 are by their intelligence and their industry, will for some 
 time to come need a guiding and protecting hand. They 
 live intermingled with so-called " Turkish " Muslims and 
 with Kurds. The latter have been wont to rob and 
 murder and carry off the women of their Christian 
 neighbours, whom the Turkish Government tried to 
 keep unarmed. But the Kurds were constantly stirred 
 up and hounded on by that Government. Left to them- 
 selves, they might be kept in order by a comparatively 
 small police force. There is little racial and no great 
 religious hatred between them and the Armenian or 
 Nestorian Christians. Much the same may be said of
 
 VII THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 151 
 
 northern Syria, mainly Arabic-speaking and partly non- 
 Muslim, except in and about Aleppo and in Damascus. 
 Its most prosperous region, the Lebanon, is virtually 
 Christian. Armenia and Syria have great natural re- 
 sources, and want nothing but a government which will 
 secure public order and improve communications to 
 recover the prosperity of which a blighting rule has 
 deprived them. The question is : What Power or 
 Powers will undertake, in an unselfish and benevolent 
 spirit, the task of securing order ? A small gendarmerie, 
 organized and officered by a civilized Power, would 
 suffice, and the expenditure on roads and railways might 
 before long prove remunerative. 
 
 What has been said of Syria applies to that region 
 lying farther south which arouses our keenest interest. 
 In Palestine the Muslims, speaking Arabic, have long 
 disliked the Turks, and would welcome the Protectorate 
 of a European Power which should give that good order 
 and prosperity which Egypt has enjoyed during the last 
 thirty years. So, of course, would the small Christian 
 element. The Jews, who have already established 
 flourishing agricultural colonies, are prepared to return 
 in numbers so large that there may be a difficulty in 
 finding land for all who wish to come. Irrigation works 
 would, however, vastly increase the productive areas. In 
 the Jordan valley alone hundreds of thousands of acres 
 could be reclaimed from aridity at no great cost, and 
 along the coast between Mount Carmel and Gaza large 
 tracts could be made productive by the construction of 
 reservoirs in the valleys which descend westward from 
 the Judaean highlands. 
 
 Mesopotamia, which thirty centuries ago was one 
 of the richest and most populous parts of the world, is 
 now mostly a wilderness, over which nomad Arabs and 
 Kurds wander at their will across broken canals and 
 among the huge mounds which mark the sites of famous 
 cities ruined long ago. It might again become one of 
 the chief corn-supplying countries, not to speak of 
 cotton and other staples. Labour is of course wanted, but
 
 152 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chak 
 
 under some sort of civilized Protectorate labour might 
 soon flow in. There is here no question of nationality 
 to deal with, the country being almost empty. Titular 
 sovereignty might be given to the King of the Hedjaz 
 or some other Musulman potentate. But in whom are 
 the duties of a Protecting Power to be vested .'' 
 
 Turning to the north, we come again in contact with 
 old nationalities. The middle and western parts of Trans- 
 caucasia are inhabited by the Georgian race (the ancient 
 Iberians), to which the Mingrelians, Imeretians, and 
 Lazes belong, the former Christian, the mountain 
 Laz tribes (dwelling south of Batum), who are much 
 less advanced, Mohammedan. Out of them a new 
 State, renewing the traditions of the old Georgian mon- 
 archy, which did not finally disappear till 1800, might 
 be created. Eastern Transcaucasia (the lower valley 
 of the Kura River and the coasts of the Caspian) is 
 chiefly occupied by Mohammedan Tartars, who had 
 no sense of nationality, and indeed had not heard of 
 the thing, till the recent Pan -Turanian propaganda 
 of the German Government began to be applied to 
 them. The oil wells of Baku, which lie within it, are of 
 immense economic importance to the whole of Southern 
 Russia. They cannot now be left to a semi-barbarous 
 race. Can any State be built up out of what is not even 
 a nation .'' Southern Transcaucasia, round Erivan, Kars, 
 and Ani (the ancient capital), is part of the Armenian 
 lands, and would naturally come within any govern- 
 mental organization that may be given to them, though 
 there is enough difl^erence between the Armenians of 
 what was Russian Transcaucasia and those of what was 
 Turkish Armenia to make it doubtful whether these two 
 divisions should be completely fused. 
 
 V. West Central Asia 
 
 Easternmost of all among the countries which the 
 war has shaken are Persia and its northern neighbour 
 Turkistan, the Iran and Turan of the ancient Oriental
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 153 
 
 world. It is so hard to know what to do with them that 
 the Congress which will have to settle Europe and the 
 fragments of Asiatic Turkey on solid foundations may 
 well seek to avoid the task. The Khanates of Khiva and 
 Bokhara, where Russian Bolsheviks have been fighting 
 fiercely with Muslim Turkmans, might perhaps be left 
 alone, though one would be sorry to see them relapse 
 into the barbarism of ninety years ago. With Persia it is 
 otherwise. Europeans have acquired large interests there, 
 and enterprises have been set on foot whose continuance 
 would have benefited the country. It is now threatened 
 with anarchy. The monarchy has broken down ; the 
 attempts to set up a Constitution and a Parliament seem 
 to have failed, though the Persian people has retained 
 its high intelligence and still from time to time produces 
 remarkable men. Can any plan be devised by which 
 the Allied nations could give the country a prospect of 
 order and peace ? Here, however, the questions in- 
 volved are not primarily those of Nationality — and the 
 same may be said of Siberia — so here our survey of that 
 particular aspect of the Resettlement of the Near Eastern 
 World may close. 
 
 This list of questions that await decision is a long 
 one, yet it gives no sufficient impression of their com- 
 plexity and of the multitude of details a knowledge of 
 which will be needed by those who will represent the 
 belligerent Powers at a Peace Congress. Many points 
 are highly controversial, and few are the well-informed 
 persons to be consulted who add impartiality to their 
 knowledge. Every Nationality in the Balkan countries 
 and, in the southern parts at least, of Austria-Hungary 
 tends to exaggerate its legitimate claims. The members 
 of the Congress will need to be on their guard against 
 journals, pamphlets, and books written to advocate the 
 claims of particular nationalities, or particular factions 
 within nationalities. Some of these nationalities have 
 secured what is called " a good press." Their particular 
 case is constantly and forcibly pushed, while the case on 
 the other side is misrepresented or ignored, and may
 
 154 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 find hardly any organ to defend it. Thus opinion is 
 manufactured for a pubHc which is never given the 
 chance of hearing all the facts fully and fairly set forth. 
 
 Another danger of which a Peace Congress will, 
 we may hope, beware, is that of assuming responsibility 
 for framing constitutions and maintaining governments in 
 States which the treaty of peace will call into existence. 
 Should an Ukrainian republic, for instance, be set up or 
 a new Jugo-Slav State be formed by the union of Bosnia 
 and Herzegovina, probably of Croatian and Dalmatian 
 districts also, with Serbia or Montenegro, it would be 
 better to let the peoples of these regions settle for them- 
 selves their form of government and their relations with 
 one another rather than for the treaty-making Powers 
 to undertake the task. If the latter were to attempt 
 it, they could hardly escape liability for controlling and 
 guiding the course of whatever government they had set 
 up, a thing always full of risks for all parties concerned, 
 and specially difficult when undertaken by a Concert 
 of Powers. Remember the failures of the European 
 Concert after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. So far from 
 settling the Balkan troubles, it kept them unsettled. 
 The new States so constituted or enlarged will doubtless 
 have plenty of troubles to face, but each had better face 
 those troubles for itself and learn by its own experience. 
 
 Many cases will arise where no arrangements can 
 be made satisfactory to all the nationalities concerned. 
 In Bohemia, for instance, how are the wishes of the 
 Czech majority to be reconciled with the rights of the 
 considerable German-speaking minority who border on 
 or live intermingled with the Czechs, and form in some 
 districts the larger part of the inhabitants ? How is it 
 to be determined whether a territory which is by race 
 and language half Greek and half Albanian shall be 
 dealt with ? We remember the case of Ulster, in which 
 it was found impossible to induce the contending parties 
 to agree as to whether the counties of Tyrone and Fer- 
 managh were or were not to be included in the area 
 for which special treatment was proposed. Compromises
 
 VII THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 155 
 
 are apt to be resisted on both sides. The difficulty may 
 in some countries be lessened by the creation of local 
 self-government for small areas. Villages belonging to 
 the race and language which is in a minority in the 
 country as a whole might be permitted to administer 
 their local affairs, including churches and schools, a 
 fertile source of quarrels. Such an expedient would 
 reduce friction and provide some sort of safeguard 
 against oppression by the Central Government. In 
 South-Eastern Europe much bitterness has arisen from 
 the attempts of the majority in the country to enforce 
 uniformity in the use of its own language in schools, as 
 well as in official proceedings. 
 
 Some may fear that the difficulties which the Peace 
 Congress will find in the tremendous task of redrawing 
 the map of Europe in accordance with the principles 
 of Nationality and " self-determination of the peoples " 
 will prove so great that the Congress will abandon it in 
 despair, and cut short an interminable labour by rough- 
 and-ready methods, leaving many aspirations unsatisfied, 
 many injustices unredressed. This is no idle fear. Yet 
 every such injustice may be the parent of future unrest, 
 perhaps of future war. With the best will in the 
 world, it cannot satisfy all hopes nor produce a perfect 
 work. Still, considering how strong the sentiment 
 of nationality has grown to be, and how earnestly 
 the Allied peoples desire that it should cease to be a 
 source either of domestic troubles or of international 
 strife which would blast the prospects of a Peace League, 
 ought not the Congress to do all that it can to respect 
 and give effect to that principle, even though many months 
 be required for the task ? Much, I venture to think, 
 may be expected from the influence of the United States 
 in the Congress, because the great republic of the West 
 will stand impartial between the jarring interests which 
 have heretofore affected the Governments of the European 
 Powers in their dealing with the Near East, and because 
 she has no selfish interests of her own to serve. Poles, 
 Czechs, Germans, Russians, Finns, Magyars, Serbs,
 
 156 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 Bulgars, Greeks, Rumans, Albanians, Armenians, Arabs, 
 and Syrians will recognize the voice of her representa- 
 tives as being more detached and unbiassed than those of 
 any European nation would be assumed to be ; and the 
 three great European Powers will value her disinterested 
 counsel. This is an advantage which the Congress will 
 possess over those that have preceded it, for in them, 
 from the days of Osnabriick and Munster in 1648 down 
 to those of Berlin in 1878, the diplomatic envoys of the 
 Powers were sent to press the interests each of his own 
 country, and could not help regarding at every turn those 
 interests, unchecked by the presence of any who came to 
 speak only for justice and liberty. We may hope that 
 all the Powers will feel after the declarations they have 
 made that now at last justice and liberty are to be the 
 supreme aims. 
 
 The respect to which the principle of Nationality 
 is entitled ought to be extended to the German people 
 also. For the German Government, indeed, no punish- 
 ment could be too severe. We cannot forget its shame- 
 less perfidy and the detestable cruelty with which it has 
 carried on war, even against non-combatants, by land 
 and sea. It must be disgraced and discredited, fatally 
 discredited, in the eyes of its own people by the only 
 things that will discredit it and deliver them — Failure 
 and Defeat. There is no need to talk of revenge. Justice 
 alone will inflict sufficient punishment — justice, and the 
 anger of the subjects upon whom it has brought disaster. 
 The military caste which rules Germany, its pernicious 
 theories and its inhuman methods, have been a menace 
 to the rest of mankind. That menace must be removed. 
 But to go beyond this and try to dismember Germany, 
 or inflict upon her any wanton humiliation, would be 
 a capital error. The insolent arrogance which Napoleon 
 showed when Prussia lay prostrate before him after 
 the battle of Jena provoked the harsh retaliations of 
 the Prussian army when it entered France in 18 14, 
 creating for the first time a deep-rooted animosity between 
 the two peoples. The Allies Jhad better sow no dragon's
 
 VII THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY 157 
 
 teeth out of which armies shall hereafter spring up. 
 They may content themselves with a victory which shall 
 vindicate the principles of Right, and deliver the world 
 from the dangers with which German ambition has 
 threatened it. 
 
 Nationalism, carried to an extravagant excess in 
 Germany, became dangerous to the world when united 
 to the doctrine of an omnipotent and non-moral State, 
 just as two chemical substances which may be com- 
 paratively harmless apart make up a dangerous explosive 
 when combined. But though exaggerated and per- 
 verted by the Germans in a way which no one expected 
 sixty years ago, its spirit is innocent and useful in modera- 
 tion. The same electricity which is a destroying force 
 in the thunderbolt carries our messages and warms our 
 houses when diverted to safe uses. National feeling 
 has been running too high not only in Germany but to 
 some extent in nearly every people. Its indulgence 
 has been almost as dangerous to peace as was its re- 
 pression by the ignorant and short-sighted diplomatists 
 of former generations. Recent experience has taught 
 us to understand the limitations as well as the value of 
 the principle of Nationality. Better things may be hoped 
 from it in the future as it becomes more and more re- 
 strained and purified by the higher sentiment of an 
 allegiance to mankind.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONCERNING A LEAGUE OF NATIONS FOR PEACE 
 
 The idea that action should be taken after this war to 
 secure an enduring peace in the future, an idea at first 
 derided as Utopian and afterwards denounced as a form 
 of " pacificism," has begun to find favour among the 
 AlHed nations in Europe, and now receives in Britain 
 an assent almost as general and hearty as it had already- 
 won in America. Statesman after statesman has blessed 
 it. Nearly all the organs of public opinion that are 
 worth regarding commend it. Trade Unions and other 
 organizations of workers have given it a specially warm 
 welcome. Thus it is scarcely necessary to-day to submit 
 arguments on its behalf.^ It is enough to refer to the 
 words spoken by the leading statesmen of Britain and 
 France, to the powerful advocacy of President Wilson, ex- 
 President Taft, and Mr. Elihu Root in the United States, 
 expressing, it cannot be doubted, the general sentiment 
 of the American people, and especially to the dispatch 
 of January 8, 1917, in which the Allied Powers gave it 
 their collective sanction. Nevertheless, in Great Britain 
 at least, the idea still remains (to all but a few students) 
 a vague conception, an aspiration that has taken no 
 definite and tangible form. It is easy to talk of a League 
 Peace. But in what definite way and for what specific 
 
 ^ It is hardly necessary to say that the Peace League discussed in the following 
 pages is a totally different thing from the present Alliance of the " Entente Powers " 
 formed to prosecute this war to a successful conclusion, and would be established 
 after, and if possible immediately after, that conclusion, in order to make secure and 
 permanent the peace then attained. All that I have to say relates to what may be 
 done after the war has ended, though it is important to begin at once to consider the 
 proper steps to be then taken. 
 
 158
 
 CHAP. VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 159 
 
 purposes are nations to combine ? Who are the com- 
 bining nations to be ? Will any combination stand 
 firm and endure ? in power, in wisdom, in a sense 
 of responsibility and an honesty of purpose ? What 
 machinery can be created equal to a task so great as that 
 of keeping the world's peace ? The proposal is one of 
 immense scope, and opens up all sorts of questions which 
 it would take a large book to explore and discuss. Into 
 the details of these questions I shall not venture. But 
 it may be profitable to state exactly what the essence of 
 the problem is, what sort of action it implies, what 
 obstacles confront those who try to solve it. The evil 
 to be dealt with is as old as mankind. Tribes were 
 already fighting in the Stone Age, as the remains of their 
 weapons show. The philosophers of the ancient world 
 assumed war to be the natural relation between States. 
 While the conditions of human society generally have 
 been improving in other directions, in this one direction 
 they have grown worse. Man, as he developed skill, 
 soon found means of defending himself against the 
 wild beasts that used to terrify him. Still advancing, he 
 studied and subjugated the forces of nature. He has 
 learnt how to prolong his life and how to cure most of 
 his diseases. But while other evils were being extin- 
 guished or mitigated, the evils of war have increased. 
 The present world conflict is more terrible in the volume 
 of slaughter and in the physical and moral suffering it 
 has brought on combatants and non-combatants than any 
 which history records. 
 
 Many remedies have been from time to time pro- 
 pounded, but only once has a serious attempt been made 
 to apply any. Christ taught that men should love one 
 another, even their enemies, and when the rulers of the 
 world embraced Christianity it was expected that peace 
 would overspread the world. Athanasius, writing in 
 the days of Constantine, declared that wars would end 
 because Christians could not possibly fight one another. 
 Centuries after his time sanguine spirits hoped that the 
 Pope, as the spiritual, or the Emperor, as the temporal
 
 i6o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 head of Christendom,^ would bring the strife of Christian 
 States to an end. But Popes as well as Emperors were 
 found who fomented war, or, like Julius II., themselves 
 engaged in it.^ 
 
 Now, when at last many peoples are again addressing 
 their thoughts to find means of securing an enduring 
 peace, two methods are proposed. One, which is 
 really the Christian method in a new dress, is to induce 
 men to restrain their national patriotism or national 
 selfishness so far as to recognize, over and above their 
 duty to their own State, an allegiance to Humanity at 
 large. They are to respect the rights of others equally 
 with their own, and to cultivate what has been called 
 an International or a Supernational Mind. This remedy, 
 if it succeeded, would be a complete remedy. But the 
 spirit it enjoins has made little, if any, progress in recent 
 years, and the most ardent optimists admit that no one 
 can, as yet, foresee a time when it will prevail over the 
 world. 
 
 Another method would be that of the Anarchists, 
 who propose to destroy war by destroying the State as 
 the power which makes war, or that which finds expres- 
 sion in the doctrine of the Bolshevists that if those whom 
 they call " Capitalists " and " bourgeois " were extinguished 
 and all men became " proletarians," national distinctions 
 would be effaced and the causes of war be therewith 
 removed. These fantastic visions need not delay us. 
 
 The only method with a promise of practical utility 
 that has been proposed for securing international peace 
 is that suggested by a consideration of the steps whereby 
 law and order have been established within every civilized 
 community. In primitive societies, and down even to 
 the Middle Ages, private wars were common. Whoever 
 had the power did that which was right in his own eyes, 
 making good his claims or redressing his injuries by the 
 strong hand. After a time the evils of violence being 
 felt, custom established rules for settling disputes. An 
 
 ^ See in particular Dante's treatise De Monarchia. 
 
 ^ See the book of Erasmus, written two centuries after Dsnte, called The Complaint 
 of Peace. He refers to the case of Pope Julius, his contemporary.
 
 ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS i6i 
 
 authority which was, or professed to be, impartial grew 
 up, which adjudicated according to these rules ; and the 
 collective power of the community was called in to 
 enforce the decisions given by the judicial authority. 
 By these means law and order were established within 
 each State. No such means have been applied to the 
 settlement of disputes between States, because rules 
 recognized by States as binding them have not existed, 
 because there has not been an impartial authority to 
 determine disputes arising between them, because even 
 in cases where nations have agreed to set up such an 
 authority on a particular occasion there has been no power 
 strong enough to enforce obedience to its decisions. If 
 these three things could be created, viz. : (i) a body of 
 rules constituting a law governing the relations of States, 
 (2) impartial tribunals to decide controversies between 
 States according to that law, and (3) a supra-national 
 power to compel obedience to the judgments of those 
 tribunals, there would be a security against violence done 
 by one nation to another resembling that which now 
 exists within each State against violence done by one 
 citizen to another. 
 
 How, then, can these three requisites for inter- 
 national peace be created ? 
 
 The first requisite is a law which independent States 
 will recognize as binding. The rules which now go by 
 the name of international law are, as everybody knows, 
 not really laws in the strict sense of the word. Many of 
 them have the authority of justice and good sense behind 
 them. Many have the authority of a custom long 
 settled and observed. Others, again, though not rules 
 of universal application, have been embodied in treaties 
 between two or more States, and are therefore binding in 
 honour on those States. But none of these principles 
 or customs or obligations of honour created by contract 
 can be relied on as certain to be obeyed. No principle 
 of right is based on a more solid foundation of justice 
 than that the territory of a peaceful neutral must not be 
 violated by a belligerent power. But this did not prevent 
 
 M
 
 1 62 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 the German Government from invading and ruining 
 Belgium. A solemn promise was made by the Great 
 Powers to one another at the Hague in 1907 to abstain 
 from the use of poisonous gases in war. This did not 
 prevent the German Government from resorting to 
 that cruel method. To the means of making so-called 
 international law effective by providing for its enforce- 
 ment we must presently return. Meantime we have 
 to ask who is to draft and enact the rules which are 
 to bind States or nations in the future. Evidently this 
 must be done by States themselves. They must select 
 competent men to prepare the rules, and must after 
 discussion enact them, each State pledging itself to 
 the others to a full and loyal obedience of what they 
 have conjointly declared to be the law that shall there- 
 after govern their relations to one another. Any State 
 that refuses to join will, of course, not be technically 
 bound by the law enacted ; but that law will, nevertheless, 
 have a much higher authority than international rules 
 have hitherto possessed, for it will embody the mind and 
 will of at least a considerable number of States who will 
 be, concerned to apply, extend and defend it.^ 
 
 How is this body of international law, once created, 
 to be applied to the controversies that may arise between 
 States ? Disputes must, of course, be expected to arise 
 from time to time between nations as they do between 
 individuals within a State. Some way must be found 
 of settling them by peaceful methods, since the nations 
 have agreed to forgo war. 
 
 This method will obviously be the establishment of 
 a Tribunal, which can inspire respect by the learning and 
 experience, the skill and the impartiality of the judges 
 who compose it. Such an international tribunal will 
 resemble the Courts of Arbitration set up in time past 
 for a special purpose by two litigant States, such as 
 that which, in 19 10, consisting of eminent jurists selected 
 from the panel of the Hague Court, happily settled the 
 
 ^ It has been suggested that every law enacted should require the consent of at least 
 two-thirds of the members of the League.
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 163 
 
 question of 120 years' standing between Great Britain 
 and the United States over the Newfoundland fisheries. 
 Treaties now exist between Great Britain and the United 
 States, as also between France and other Powers and the 
 United States, providing for arbitration by Courts so 
 specially set up for such occasions. What is now 
 proposed is a Permanent Tribunal which shall not need 
 a special treaty made for each occasion, but one to which 
 any State shall be entitled to appeal for justice against 
 another, that other being bound to recognize the juris- 
 diction and put in an appearance. Arrangements would 
 of course be made that those judges of the tribunal who 
 were to he'^r the particular case should not be drawn 
 from either of the contestant States. 
 
 Controversies of a legal character easily admit the 
 use of this judicial procedure. Where a dispute turns 
 upon facts, or upon the application of a settled rule of law 
 to facts, or upon the interpretation of a contract (i.e. a 
 treaty) between the litigant States, the issue is one which 
 a Court of Arbitration can determine. But many of the 
 differences or suspicions or grounds of ill-will that induce 
 war between States have not this legal or justiciable 
 character. 1 Whoever will examine the circumstances 
 that brought about most of the disputes that ended in 
 war during the last seventy years will find that very few 
 were such as a judicial tribunal could have dealt with by 
 legal methods. W^here the question is one of what is 
 called National Honour, and is perhaps mere national 
 vanity, where the difficulty lies in sentiment or in views 
 of material interests involved, where one nation does 
 not trust the other, or nurses a sullen resentment for 
 
 1 This is true of the wars of 1853 (Great Britain and France against Russia), of 
 1866 (Prussia and Austria), of 1870 (Germany and France), of 1877 (Russia and 
 Turkey), of 1898 (U.S.A. and Spain), of 1899 (Great Britain and the Transvaal), of 
 1904 (Russia and Japan), of 1909 (Italy and Turkey), of 19 1 2 (Balkan States and Turkey), 
 of 191 3 (Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece). 
 
 Disputes are said to be " justiciable " when they relate to the interpretation of a 
 treaty or turn on any question of international law, or on the existence of any fact which 
 would, if established, constitute a breach of any international obligation, or as to the 
 nature and extent of the reparation to be made for any such breach. When it is 
 doubtful whether a question is or is not " justiciable," the point might be referred to 
 the Tribunal for decision.
 
 1 64 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap 
 
 past injuries, these methods avail little. What is wanted 
 is something less rigid and more elastic, not Adjudication 
 but Conciliation. In some of the disputes just referred 
 to as having caused recent wars, the mediation of even one 
 impartial State might have had a fair chance of success, 
 and that of a group of impartial States a better chance. 
 In most of them, moreover, a careful investigation of 
 the sources of friction and of the complaints which each 
 disputant had against the other would have enlightened 
 the world at large as to the merits of the controversy. And 
 if during the period occupied by such an investigation — 
 a period of, say, four or six months — each disputant had 
 been required to refrain from military operations, the 
 mere lapse of time would have allowed passions to cool 
 and would have enabled the public opinion of the world 
 to express itself. Even in 19 14 it is possible that if 
 each State had been compelled, on pain of incurring 
 the hostility of nations not directly concerned, to refrain 
 from setting its armies in motion for a period of six 
 months, war would have been averted. 
 
 There is therefore an evident need for the creation by 
 the combined peace-loving and peace-ensuing nations of 
 an organ suited to cases which are incapable of legal 
 determination. This organ would be most useful if it 
 were permanent, taking the form of a Council composed 
 of persons representing each of the combining States, 
 persons possessed, not necessarily of legal attainments, 
 though these would always be valuable, but of historical, 
 geographical, diplomatic, and political knowledge, and, 
 above all, of tact and experience in public affairs. 
 
 The function of such a Council would be to examine 
 and consider controversies between States which were 
 endangering their friendly relations, and to endeavour 
 to find means for pacifically adjusting differences, by 
 removing their causes or by propounding a reasonable 
 compromise between conflicting claims. This would 
 be attempted by diplomatic methods, but in some 
 cases, especially where the States concerned seemed un- 
 amenable to persuasion, it would be useful to publish a
 
 vin ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 165 
 
 report upon the situation, setting out the case made by 
 each State, delivering the opinion of the Council upon 
 the merits of each issue, and recommending an adjustment 
 calculated to reduce tension and avert hostilities. Such 
 a Report would have a double value. It might affect 
 the minds and allay the passions of the contending 
 parties, for it usually happens that each nation is fed 
 up, by its own politicians and its own press, with ex- 
 aggerated and fallacious views of its own claims, views 
 which moderate men are denounced as unpatriotic for 
 seeking to correct. At least one recent war could be 
 mentioned which would never have come about had the 
 people who were thus beguiled into it known the full 
 truth. Not less important would be the service a Report 
 might render in providing other nations with the means 
 of forming a just judgment on the respective claims of 
 the disputant States. Any war arising anywhere over 
 the earth has now become an evil to the world which 
 the public opinion of the world ought to be invoked 
 to avert. That opinion is a growing power. Think 
 of the efforts made from 19 14 onwards by Germany 
 on the one hand and the Entente Allies on the other 
 to win it over to their side. If its weight were thrown 
 in favour of either party it might deter the other from 
 resorting to hostilities. 
 
 It seems better not to bestow on a Council of Con- 
 ciliation any executive powers. It may work more 
 freely without them. But for the purposes of enquiry 
 and report it must be allowed time. Months might 
 be required from the moment when the danger of war 
 appeared before the suggestions of the Council could 
 be addressed to the parties involved and a fair chance 
 secured for mediation. Here, however, a grave difficulty 
 presents itself. Time has become more important than 
 ever in war. The promptitude with which the German 
 armies flung themselves across the Bohemian frontier in 
 1866 and the French frontier in 1870 gave to them, as 
 to the Japanese armies in 1903, an initial advantage 
 which affected the whole course of the campaign. An
 
 1 66 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 ambitious nation that has made up its mind to fight 
 will not lightly forgo such an advantage. It will desire 
 to strike at once and strike hard, as Germany struck in 
 1 9 14. How is it to be induced to hold its hand till the 
 voice of reason can be heard, till methods of Conciliation 
 have had their chance ? Only by the interposition of 
 a power superior to its own. 
 
 This consideration brings us to our question : Where 
 are we to find the Supra-National power which will apply 
 Compulsion to secure peace ? We have seen that it is 
 idle to construct a system of international law without 
 Force behind it. Force and nothing but Force will 
 restrain those to whom Might is Right. A tribunal will 
 be ineffective without some means of giving effect to its 
 decisions. A body selected to apply methods of con- 
 ciliation will be little regarded unless it represents 
 potential power, ready to be put in action by those 
 who have created it. And it is even more plain that 
 States disposed to reject arbitration or conciliation will 
 fall upon their neighbours as suddenly as they can unless 
 the fear of a Force stronger than their own deters them. 
 
 The Force needed for all these purposes must be 
 greater than any one violent and rapacious State, or any 
 probable combination of rapacious States, can put forth. 
 It is to be found in a Combination of Nations, a League 
 for securing Peace, able to make its Will to Peace prevail 
 against the Will to Violence of bellicose nations. This 
 is the sort of League which the men of good-will over 
 the world now desire to establish. 
 
 Among the other questions that arise as to how such 
 a League can be created and what is the machinery by 
 which it must work, I will deal with two before proceeding 
 to consider the obstacles that must be surmounted before 
 the League can be created. One is : Who shall be the 
 members of the League ? There has been much dis- 
 cussion as to what States shall be admitted. It is asked : 
 " Why not make it a World League and invite all States 
 to join ? " It is answered : " There may well be States 
 which would enter with no honest purpose, but rather to
 
 ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 167 
 
 conceal their own selfish aims, or possibly to try to wreck 
 the enterprise. To admit such would be dangerous." 
 Are we then to admit none but free nations (i.e. demo- 
 cracies), because such nations only can be trusted to 
 desire justice and peace } This would furnish a line of 
 discrimination nearly yet not quite complete, because 
 there might well be a truly constitutional monarchy or 
 republic, whose government, although not wholly popular, 
 might be trusted to become an honest and useful member 
 of a Peace League. Chile, a constitutional republic 
 but hardly to be called a democracy, is an instance. It 
 must also be observed that there are in the Western 
 hemisphere some so-called " republics " which are really 
 military tyrannies, and so not fit to be received. Their 
 rulers, having no responsibility either to their subjects 
 or to the public opinion of the world, could not be trusted. 
 Perhaps, therefore, the simplest plan may be to leave it 
 to those States which first form the League to decide 
 whom they will admit as partners. It will be the interest 
 of these original members to strengthen the combination 
 by including in it all States whose loyalty to its principles 
 is beyond question. 
 
 It has been often asked whether Germany and 
 Austria can be admitted. Is not this a question that 
 cannot be answered till the end of the war has come .? 
 Should that much-desired moment see a Germany which 
 has abjured militarism and all its works, and is " regener- 
 ate in the spirit of its mind," its claim to co-operate 
 could not be denied and would indeed be welcomed. 
 We do not desire a League against Germany, but one 
 in which a new, de-Prussianized Germany would honestly 
 join in promoting a World Peace. But should the 
 present military oligarchy be still in the saddle, ferocious 
 and unscrupulous, dominating a too submissive people, 
 he would be a sanguine man who could believe that 
 such a Government as that of the Prussian Junkers 
 has shown itself to be would join the League except 
 with a purpose of undermining it. Rather would 
 its threatening presence require either the continuance
 
 1 68 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 of the existing Alliance of the Entente Powers or the 
 maintenance by the future Peace League of military 
 and naval armaments amply sufficient to hold it in 
 check. 
 
 The other question is : What shall be the Organs 
 of the League ? Of these Organs two have been already 
 mentioned, the Court of Arbitration and the Council of 
 Conciliation, the former of which might consist of from 
 twelve to fifteen judges, while the number of the latter, 
 which would probably act largely by Committees, might 
 run up to twenty, the members of each being chosen 
 from the nations composing the League, and all the larger 
 of these nations being represented on the Council. 
 Besides these bodies there will be needed another for 
 the purpose, essential after the shocks which the war 
 has given to the fabric of international law, of rebuilding 
 that system of rules in a fuller, clearer, and more authori- 
 tative form. For this there must be a sort of legislature, 
 composed of representatives of all the States within the 
 League, each appointing at least one member. Rules 
 drafted by this body, which might be called the Confer- 
 ence or Congress of the League, would be submitted 
 to the Governments of the Component States, to be by 
 them either adopted or referred back for further con- 
 sideration till finally approved. If adopted by a pre- 
 scribed majority of the States, they would become binding 
 on all the States, and constitute, subject of course to 
 subsequent amendments from time to time, a Code of 
 International Law. 
 
 A second Organ also may be found necessary in order 
 to make effective the machinery described for preventing 
 war. A Court of Arbitration and a Council of Concilia- 
 tion will lose half their value if there be not some means 
 of compelling disputant States within the League, and 
 also any State outside it which has a controversy with a 
 State within it, to resort to one or other of these methods 
 before taking hostile action. There must be executive 
 action in the background, and means for determining 
 when and how to act must be provided. Two such
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 169 
 
 means may be suggested. One is for the Governments 
 of the States within the League, at the request of any one 
 of their number, to consider forthwith together what 
 action they will jointly take. The other is to constitute 
 a permanent Executive of the League, consisting of repre- 
 sentatives chosen by the States, which would meet in 
 conclave as soon as signs of danger appeared and recom- 
 mend the measures of coercion required. Arguments 
 may be advanced in favour of either method. 
 
 Some of our friends in America who have given 
 much thought to this subject conceive that the League 
 ought to have two other Organs also. One of these 
 would be a tribunal to decide, where the point seemed 
 doubtful, whether any particular controversy between 
 States ought to be referred to the Court of Arbitration 
 or to the Council of Conciliation. They suggest that 
 a body, which might be called the Court of Conflicts, 
 should be formed from some members of the Arbitra- 
 tion Court and some members of the Council of Con- 
 ciliation to determine such cases. The other Organ 
 would be a Court in which suits raising pecuniary claims 
 might be brought by individual citizens, or corporations, 
 of one country against the Government of some other 
 country. Cases of this kind are frequent, and often 
 involve protracted diplomatic discussions and long delays. 
 It would be convenient to make regular provision for 
 them. The judges to hear and decide them might be 
 a branch of the Court of Arbitration.^ 
 
 It has been asked whether every State is to be equally 
 represented in the various Organs of the League. As 
 respects the Arbitral Tribunal and the Council of Con- 
 ciliation, since the excellence of these bodies depends 
 on the personal qualities of their members, the best men 
 ought to be selected wherever they can be found, but 
 the large majority of such men will obviously be found in 
 the five or six greatest States, while in some of the smaller 
 States they might be sought in vain. In the Conference 
 
 ^ A Court of this kind was created in 19 12 by a treaty between Great Britain and 
 the U.S. for the determination of claims, some of which were more than a century old.
 
 CHAP. 
 
 170 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 or Congress, since the rules it prepares are meant to be 
 generally binding, every State must have a voice, though 
 the greater would be entitled to a larger representation 
 than such small States as those of South-Eastern Europe 
 and of the tropical parts of the New World. Equality 
 between Powers like France and the United States on 
 one side and Montenegro or Salvador on the other 
 would be not justice but injustice. Still more clearly 
 will the great States have larger representation in any 
 executive authority, since it is upon them that the duty 
 of enforcing the decisions of the League will chiefly 
 or perhaps wholly fall. 
 
 As respects the executive action of the League, i.e. 
 the prevention of a recourse to war before the Arbitral 
 Tribunal has given its decision, or before the Council of 
 Conciliation has accomplished its work of enquiry and 
 mediation, two questions have to be answered. Ought 
 the League to confine itself to securing either Arbitration, 
 or a period of time sufficient for enquiry and for Con- 
 ciliation, leaving the disputant parties alone so soon as 
 one or other method has been applied } Or ought it 
 to go further and compel, by coercive means, those 
 disputant parties to obey the decision of the Tribunal 
 given in a justiciable controversy, or to comply with 
 the recommendations of the Council in other (i.e. non- 
 justiciable) matters ? The American League to Enforce 
 Peace have inclined to the former plan, thinking that it is 
 unwise to attempt, at present, anything more far-reaching. 
 Others conceive that this is not enough, because a 
 powerful and aggressive State might disregard the 
 decision given or recommendation made and proceed 
 to attack its weaker opponent. Nothing, they say, can 
 be relied on to prevent this and give due protection to 
 the weak except the knowledge that the whole force of the 
 League will be arrayed against aggression. 
 
 Whichever view may be taken as to this point, there 
 will be two engines of compulsion available. One is 
 the application of armed force. The League must have 
 at its disposal military and naval resources sufficient to
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 171 
 
 protect any of its members who accept the decision, or 
 recommendations (as the case may be) against an an- 
 tagonist who disregards them. This raises the question 
 whether the League should maintain a regular standing 
 army and navy under the control of its Executive, or be 
 content to call upon the several States that compose 
 it to make up such an army by contributing their pre- 
 scribed contingents. The former plan would make 
 military operations more effective, for unity of command 
 could be better secured, but the latter, as leaving greater 
 freedom of action to the several Powers, would probably 
 be preferred by their Governments. 
 
 Supposing this latter plan to be approved, it has been 
 suggested that the States composing the League might 
 be divided into two classes : (i) the Great Powers, 
 who would be bound to put their military and naval forces 
 at the disposal of the Executive ; and (2) the Minor 
 Powers, which would assume belligerency against any 
 State attacking a member of the League, but would not 
 be required by the Executive to contribute military or 
 naval support, though they would join in whatever 
 measures of economic compulsion might be decreed.^ 
 
 This kind of Compulsion is the second engine or 
 method applicable against a recalcitrant State. It might 
 be applied as a first step, to be followed, if necessary, by 
 military action. It would consist in a commercial, 
 financial, possibly also a postal and telegraphic boy- 
 cott. All the members of the League would refuse to 
 send goods to or receive goods from the offending State, 
 and would forbid their citizens to lend money to it. It 
 might be cut off from communications by post or tele- 
 graph. All supplies to it of raw materials needed for 
 
 ^ Those who have talked of boycotting Germany and Austria as soon as this 
 war is over had much better wait to see how the war ends. How can they declare 
 that the war ought to be prosecuted till the German Government has been made 
 powerless for evil, and also assume that Government likely to be, at the end of the war, 
 just as powerful for evil as ever, able to resume its insidious schemes against the 
 industries and resources of other countries ? If it is then still able to do so, by all 
 means let us deal vigorously with such a menace. The means for doing so will be 
 at hand. It was a mistake to talk of following up a victorious war of arms by a sub- 
 sequent war of trade, for the threat was used by the German Government to prolong 
 the war by stiffening the resistance of the German people.
 
 172 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 industries could be stopped and all banking transactions 
 interdicted. Objection to such measures of commercial 
 restriction has been taken on the ground that they might 
 operate unequally among the members of the League 
 itself, affecting the industry and commerce of some 
 members much more than those of others. This might 
 conceivably happen, but after all such countries would 
 suffer far more by an outbreak of war. 
 
 The refusal to a manufacturing country of raw 
 materials for its industries and a market for its products 
 would be a penalty it would scarcely venture to defy. 
 Such a method might often be speedier than war, and 
 quite as effective. But its efficacy would depend upon 
 its being reserved as a weapon to check some aggressive 
 action against a member of the League. An economic 
 boycott applied in normal peace times by one nation 
 or group of nations against the legitimate trade of a 
 foreign country would be a means of provoking rather 
 than of preventing war, and ought not to be resorted to, 
 in such times, by the Allied nations against Germany and 
 Austria, as some have suggested should be done in any 
 event after the war. As Mr. Lloyd George has well said : 
 ** We must not arm Germany with a real wrong." A 
 League honestly desiring peace could not take such action 
 except as a penal measure against an aggressive State, 
 hereafter threatening its neighbours with hostilities. 
 
 Other useful objects which might fall within the scope 
 of the League's activities have been put forward. One 
 is the protection of native races in tropical countries 
 from exploitation by European Governments or European 
 adventurers.^ Another is the elaboration of rules for 
 securing the free passage of goods by riyers or railroads 
 from inland countries to the sea. A third is the making 
 of regulations which would reduce the spread of disease 
 (and especially of epidemics) from one country to another. 
 A fourth is the rendering of guidance, as, for instance, 
 by providing capable officials, to backward countries that 
 
 ^ An interesting suggestion as to such action in Africa has been made by Sir S. 
 Olivier, formerly Governor of Jamaica.
 
 ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 173 
 
 need them, or by advice as to their financial engage- 
 ments. A fifth is the consideration of measures for 
 improving industrial conditions on parallel lines in differ- 
 ent countries. Every region, every people, is now more 
 closely bound to every other than in former days, and 
 each has become more dependent on the others for weal 
 or woe, so that without pursuing the illusion of a " world 
 government " there are many ways and many matters 
 truly international in which the joint action of nations 
 may enure to the benefit of all. Some have gone so far 
 as to propose a sort of international parliament with 
 legislative functions in the social or economic sphere. 
 There are doubtless certain subjects which such a body 
 might usefully discuss, and work out, by means of 
 Committees, into practicable schemes. But it would be 
 altogether premature and unwise to confer any enacting 
 power on any such deliberative body. To propose 
 anything infringing the authority of each Legislature 
 in its own country would excite natural alarms and injure 
 the prospects of the League. 
 
 These schemes, however, I must pass by — they are 
 too complicated for brief treatment — to speak of one 
 more nearly related to that preservation of peace which 
 will be the main aim of the League. It is the question 
 of Armaments. The gigantic armies and navies — 
 to which we must now add the increasing air forces 
 — which great nations have been maintaining, have 
 proved to be not so much, as was often represented, 
 an insurance against war as rather an incitement and 
 temptation to it. They have imposed a crushing 
 buiden upon the peoples of the Great Powers, a burden 
 which must become greater as science goes on producing 
 new and ever costlier warlike engines and devices. 
 Must it not be a main function of any Peace League 
 to bring armies and navies and air fleets down to a modest 
 standard and keep them from thereafter expanding ? 
 
 Few will deny that this is an admirable, indeed an 
 essential aim, entirely within the scope of the League. 
 Nothing would be more helpful. But how is it to be
 
 174 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 carried out, even if the building of warships and manu- 
 facture of munitions be kept entirely within the hands 
 of Governments ? Doubters ask : " Upon what prin- 
 ciples can the proportions of armed forces to be allotted 
 to different nations be determined ? Are the needs 
 for preservation of internal order as well as those for 
 external defence to be considered ? What security can 
 each vhave that others will not exceed the limit pre- 
 scribed ? What means can be found for detecting and 
 checking the prohibited increase of their forces and their 
 stores of munitions ? Estimates presented to a Legisla- 
 ture purporting to be for one purpose may be covertly 
 transferred to another purpose. The German Reichstag 
 is said to have been in this way often overreached. Many 
 kinds of war materials and contrivances may be secretly 
 manufactured. Articles, ships, or other things for peace 
 purposes may be capable of being rapidly adapted to the 
 purposes of war. How are such devices to be prevented."^ " 
 These are questions which we must hope to see answered, 
 but the answers are not yet forthcoming. Since it is 
 evident that the peace-loving nations cannot reduce their 
 respective armaments till they have a ground for security 
 in an armed force upon which they can rely to defend 
 each one of them against attack from outside, this is a 
 matter of urgent importance. 
 
 Other objections of wide scope which have been taken 
 to the scheme of a Peace League deserve consideration. 
 It is better to face them at the outset and see how 
 they can be met than hasten forward in a spirit of easy 
 optimism. 
 
 I. It is argued that when a State enters into a per- 
 manent compact, binding itself to submit to Arbitration 
 or Conciliation all its controversies with other States, it 
 necessarily renounces some of its self-determination and 
 sovereignty. Doubtless it does. It does this whenever 
 it concludes a treaty, just as every contract an individual 
 makes creates an obligation limiting his antecedent 
 freedom of action. But men make contracts because 
 they expect to gain more in other ways than they lose in
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 175 
 
 the particular part of their freedom they part with.^ So 
 does a State. Here the gain is immense. It has been 
 well said that absolute sovereignty for each is absolute 
 anarchy for all. There will doubtless be cases in which 
 a State will dislike a summons to defend its conduct 
 before a Court of Arbitration or a Council of Conciliation. 
 But this must be faced if the League is to attain its 
 ends ; and we may expect from such a Court and Council 
 as the League will create an upright and impartial 
 handling of the matters referred to them. Even the 
 strongest State has more benefits to expect for itself 
 from the security of a world peace than it could obtain 
 by war, while the benefit to humanity at large is im- 
 measurable. 
 
 2. I need not stop to refute the Prussian doctrine that 
 frequent wars are needed to maintain the virility and 
 courage of a nation, — " a drastic medicine for the human 
 race," says Treitschke, " which God will always provide," 
 — for that doctrine has found its completest disproof in 
 the present war. The two great nations of the world 
 who have least desired war, thought of war, prepared 
 themselves for war, have been the peoples of Britain 
 and America. They ought, on the Prussian theory, to 
 have been found when war came feeble, spiritless, effemin- 
 ate. But what have we seen ? Britain raised in three 
 years an army of five millions, most of them volunteers, 
 and these men have come from the pursuits of peace, 
 the rich as gladly as the poor, to show a valour and an 
 endurance never surpassed by their ancestors in the 
 fighting days of the Middle Ages. The men of America, 
 even (if that be possible) more pacific in their spirit, have 
 flown to arms and thrown themselves into the conflict 
 with a whole-hearted enthusiasm which has amazed 
 those who did. not know what the American people are. 
 Heroism is not made by military drill and practice. It 
 dwells in the hearts and the ideals of a people, and 
 while these are sound, it responds to the call of duty. 
 
 ^ " The question for every contracting party in all forms of contract," says Sir F. 
 Pollock, " is whether the portion of liberty he surrenders is adequately recompensed by 
 the portion of reward or security he acquires."
 
 176 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 3. A word or two may be given to another argument. 
 It is sometimes said that patriotic sentiment will be 
 weakened by a League which relies upon and seeks to 
 foster the sentiment of human brotherhood, making 
 men recognize an allegiance to mankind, a sense of what 
 they owe to its common welfare. But is this so ? Will 
 this effect follow .'' Is there not room for both feelings ? 
 Why should a citizen feel his duty to his country any the 
 less because he feels a duty to his larger fatherland the 
 world ? Does a man cease to be a patriotic Virginian or 
 Californian because he recognizes a higher allegiance to 
 the United States ? Has Scottish national pride proved 
 incompatible with zeal to serve the United Kingdom 
 and the British Commonwealth of Nations ? Is a father 
 less likely to love his family and do his best for them 
 because he is a public -spirited citizen, always at the 
 service of his neighbours and his city, or will a man be 
 a less earnest and devoted member of his own church 
 because he wishes to see all the churches brought together 
 in a reunited Christendom ? Love, and the expression 
 of Love in duty gladly done, are things of which it can 
 be said that the more we give the more we have to give, 
 according to the famous lines : 
 
 I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more. 
 
 4. To extend to every State a guarantee against an 
 attack by any other State might (it is argued) have the 
 ejffect of perpetuating injustices or grievances suffered 
 by a part of the population of a State, for some other 
 State might be thus prevented from compelling, by 
 threats or war, the redress of those grievances. The 
 existing conditions would be stereotyped, however unfair 
 they might be to some sections of a State's subjects, how- 
 ever likely to go on breeding discontent.^ Suppose the 
 Government of a country to treat part of its subjects as 
 Austria has treated the Czechs, or Prussia the Poles of 
 
 1 This difficulty points to the propriety of endeavouring to remove (so far as possible) 
 at the end of the present war all such sources of future trouble. See p. 153.
 
 viii ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 177 
 
 Posen, or as the Spanish Government treated Cuba before 
 1898. Is a Peace League to arrest all efforts from 
 without, made by a nation sympathizing with these 
 subjects, to remove the grievances they suffer from ? 
 It may be answered that under the scheme outlined 
 above such grievances could be brought before, and 
 be dealt with by, the Council of Conciliation. But the 
 Council would not have the power to extinguish them 
 should its recommendations be rejected. May there 
 not then be a case either for allowing interference by a 
 sympathetic State or for empowering the League to 
 interfere ? If the matter transcends the functions of 
 the Council of Conciliation, the members of the League 
 might (it has been suggested) meet in a sort of Congress 
 to consider it. 
 
 5. Does there exist a due supply in the world of 
 the persons fit for such difficult duties as those which 
 the scheme entrusts to the Tribunal of Arbitration and 
 for the still more delicate functions of the Council of 
 Conciliation ? Judges of sufficient legal learning and 
 skill as are required may perhaps be found to staff the 
 Tribunal, though there are none too many. But the 
 men qualified for the Council are extremely few. A 
 knowledge of history and geography, of diplomacy, and 
 of the political conditions of the different countries of 
 the world is needed, for the work is international. And 
 besides tact and good sense, the Councillors must have 
 that superiority to national prejudices and that repu- 
 tation outside their own country which would give 
 them a truly international authority. As to this it 
 may be answered that, under the new conditions we 
 hope for, the supply of men required will tend to 
 increase, and each people will know more of those 
 who in other countries attain eminence and inspire 
 confidence. 
 
 6. Can any League of Nations be trusted to with- 
 stand the temptations which will assail its members ? 
 Timidity, jealousy, self-interest will not cease to affect 
 Governments. Intrigues proceeding from the ill-will 
 
 N
 
 178 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 of States outside the League, or from some treacherous 
 Government of one of the States inside it, must be 
 contemplated as possible, intrigues designed to bring 
 about failure to perform the obligation to join in 
 compulsive action. " Will the nations in the League 
 stand by their promises ? " If even one nation fails 
 at the critical moment, others may make that failure 
 a pretext for withdrawal. Then the League would fall 
 to pieces, and those who, in reliance on it, had reduced 
 their armaments would be exposed to sudden danger. 
 Some one may say, " These are prophecies, and, according 
 to the proverb, you cannot argue with a prophet, but you 
 can disbelieve him." Here, however, there is no case for 
 confident disbelief. The risks predicted cannot be lightly 
 dismissed. Have we not just seen men who came into 
 power by a revolution in a great empire repudiate the 
 solemn engagements which its Government had made 
 three years before, and not only abandon the Allies whom 
 it had itself drawn into a tremendous conflict, but deliver 
 over to the enemy regions of immense strategic import- 
 ance, which were immediately occupied and used by 
 that enemy against them ? There are, however, risks 
 which must be faced where the greatness of the aim in 
 view makes it worth while to go on. In this instance 
 we may weigh some considerations which inspire hope. 
 Should a League to Enforce Peace be now formed, and 
 should it come before long to include all, or nearly all, 
 the great free and peace-loving Powers, its members 
 will have time to form — some of them have indeed already 
 been forming — a habit of joint action and mutual con- 
 fidence before any severe strain is put upon the obligations 
 they have undertaken. The exhaustion and impoverish- 
 ment caused by the present war will prevent any Power, 
 however aggressive its spirit, from being able to threaten 
 its neighbours for a good many years to come. Within 
 those years the League may become an established 
 institution, the members of which, though liable to find 
 matter for controversy in the changing relations of 
 countries to one another, will not be likely to push their
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 179 
 
 controversies to extremes. International relations may- 
 be raised to a higher plane of honour and justice. Threats 
 of war may go out of fashion among those who have seen 
 what militarism means. Thus the sense of duty to 
 mankind at large and to the great common aim of peace 
 will have time to ripen and become durable in the minds 
 of the next generation as the public opinion of the world, 
 which is on the whole pacific, and ought to grow more 
 than ever pacific while it remembers what misery this 
 war has brought, acquires more and more influence on 
 every nation. The mere fact that the League exists as 
 an organization created to represent the joint interest 
 of all men in all nations cannot but help to nourish and 
 develop the spirit of fraternal goodwill. 
 
 Let us remember that the wars of the past have been 
 mostly made by despots, or by oligarchies ; and it is by 
 them that the faith of treaties has been mostly broken. 
 But now, in nearly all the great States, power has passed 
 to the people, and the people can be trusted, better than 
 the monarchs or the oligarchs of former days, both to 
 realize the value of peace and to do all they can to secure 
 it. Democracies also have no doubt been sometimes, 
 and may be again, swept by passion or lured by misrepre- 
 sentation into war ; yet they are more likely to feel the 
 duty both of refraining from aggression and of check- 
 ing it when attempted by others. They will better 
 recognize the obligations of international honour and 
 good faith, and their responsibility to mankind at large. 
 They will feel more respect for the public opinion of 
 the world. 
 
 Once the League of Peace has been established, its 
 very existence will embody in visible form the principle 
 of the solidarity of free nations, and will foster the senti- 
 ment of human brotherhood. Every year that it lives on 
 ought to increase its moral authority and strengthen the 
 respect for the decisions of its Courts. 
 
 These are hopes, not certainties. But they are not 
 dreams. There are solid grounds for the hopes ; and 
 this time is one in which we must hope, for if we do not
 
 i8o ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 hope we must despair. Moments come when evils have 
 grown so frightful that new and bold experiments must 
 be tried to escape from them, times when men must go 
 forward in the strength of faith and hope. 
 
 It is among the masses of the people in this country 
 that the warmest zeal has been shown for this beneficent 
 idea. It is from the great democracy of the West and 
 its leaders, President Wilson and others, that the most 
 powerful impulse has come. The difficulties are doubt- 
 less great. Much wisdom, much skill, will be needed 
 to surmount them. But the peoples must supply the 
 motive power. They must push statesmen forward. 
 They must join in guiding the policy of the League 
 and help it by their watchful sympathy. And behind 
 the sympathy there must be to inspire it the sense of a 
 great and high motive. Our motives and those of our 
 Allies in this war are purer than ever were seen in a war 
 before. We are fighting for Righteousness against 
 Wickedness, fighting to protect the weak, to secure the 
 recognition of conscience and duty as the highest powers, 
 the powers on whose rule the safety of the world depends. 
 It is this motive that has brought America to our aid, 
 America, which had no interest of her own to secure, 
 and had hitherto watched from afar, in happy security, 
 the strifes and sorrows of the Old World. 
 
 It may be convenient to sum up in a few propositions 
 the reasons for creating a Peace League and the essential 
 features which it ought to possess. 
 
 I. The prevention of future wars will be, after 
 this war has ended, one of the supreme needs of the 
 world. 
 
 1. War can be prevented only by substituting for it 
 methods of Arbitration and Conciliation as the means 
 of settling international disputes. 
 
 3. Arbitration and Conciliation will not succeed 
 unless there is Compulsive Force behind them. 
 
 4. Compulsive Force can be secured only by the
 
 VIII 
 
 ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS i8i 
 
 combination and co-operation of peace-loving nations, 
 i.e. by a League to Enforce Peace. 
 
 5. Every member of such a League must undertake 
 to accept Arbitration or Conciliation in any controversy 
 it may have with another member. 
 
 6. The League shall undertake to defend any one of 
 its members who may be attacked by any other State, 
 whether within or without the League, which has refused 
 to accept Arbitration or Conciliation. 
 
 7. The League will require four organs for its 
 action : (a) a Tribunal to arbitrate on justiciable contro- 
 versies, (b) a Council of Conciliation to enquire into and 
 apply mediation in non-justiciable controversies, (c) a 
 representative Conference or Congress to amend, develop, 
 and codify international law, and (d) an Executive 
 Authority to decide on the time and methods of apply- 
 ing (and to supervise the application of) measures for 
 compelling disputant States to submit to arbitration 
 or to allow time for conciliation, before resorting to 
 hostilities. 
 
 8. The methods of Enforcement may be either the 
 use of economic pressure or the use of armed force, or 
 both, as the Executive Authority may determine. 
 
 9. The League shall adopt any measures it finds to 
 be practicable for bringing about a general reduction 
 of military and naval armaments. 
 
 These may be taken as the chief points on which 
 most of those who have been advocating the project 
 in Britain and America are agreed. Other points of 
 importance, but on which some difference of opinion 
 exists, are the following : 
 
 (a) What shall be the principle regulating the ad- 
 mission of States to a League of Peace } 
 
 {b) Shall all the members of the League (great and 
 small) have equal powers and responsibilities, or, if not, 
 how shall these be distributed } 
 
 (c) How shall the persons to serve on the Tribunal 
 of Arbitration and on the Council of Conciliation be 
 chosen t ^
 
 1 82 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 (d) Shall the Executive Authority of the League 
 consist of persons representing the Governments of the 
 States who are its members, or how otherwise ? 
 
 (e) Shall the Council of Conciliation have power, 
 without being invoked by a disputant State, to act when 
 it sees dangers which threaten peace looming up ? 
 
 (f) Shall the League have a standing army and navy, 
 or shall it obtain its necessary forces by summoning the 
 contingents of the States (or of the greater States) when 
 the need for military action arises ? 
 
 (g) Shall a decision to apply compulsion (economic 
 or military) require the concurrence of all the States 
 who are members of the League, or, if not, what majority 
 shall be required ? 
 
 (k) Shall force (economic or military) be applied 
 only to compel the acceptance by disputant States of 
 Arbitration or of Conciliation (as the case may be), or 
 also to compel such States to obey the judgment of the 
 Tribunal of Arbitration, or the recommendations of the 
 Council of Conciliation, as the case may be ? 
 
 (i) What methods are to be resorted to for securing 
 a reduction of military and naval armaments ? 
 
 (j) To what extent may the diplomacy of the States 
 composing the League continue to be conducted secretly ? 
 
 (k) Are the States composing the League to be at 
 liberty to make separate treaties with one another ? 
 
 (/) Are tariffs, i.e. duties on imports and the fiscal 
 relations generally of the States composing the League, 
 to fall to any, and, if so, to what extent, within the scope 
 of the League's action ? In particular, are preferential 
 duties on imports to be deemed incompatible with the 
 successful working of the League ? 
 
 (m) What objects (if any) besides those directly 
 connected with the prevention of war, can be brought 
 within the scope of the League ? 
 
 Such a list as this, incomplete as it is, of problems to 
 be solved in setting up some machinery for averting war, 
 shows how immensely difficult is the task. Timorous 
 minds will recoil from it. But what is the alternative ?
 
 ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 183 
 
 Are we to fall back upon the old diplomatic methods, 
 condemned by failure in the past ? Can we acquiesce 
 in the continuance of that international anarchy out of 
 which the catastrophe of 19 14 arose ? Will there ever 
 be again a moment so favourable as that which the end 
 of this war will afford for a supreme effort to save civiliza- 
 tion from relapsing into a strife that will blast the hopes 
 of human progress ? 
 
 The reason and the conscience of mankind have 
 been roused to-day as they were never roused before to 
 a sense of the moral as well as the material ruin wrought 
 by war, for no conflict has ever inflicted such wide- 
 spread suffering, has evoked such furious hatreds, has 
 so gravely affected neutral nations, has brought death 
 or misery to so many innocent non-combatants. If we 
 do not try to make an end of war, war will make an end 
 of us. In every free country the best minds must now 
 address themselves to the means of deterring aggressive 
 Governments from war and enthroning Public Right 
 as the supreme Power in international affairs. With 
 goodwill, with an unselfish devotion to the highest 
 and most permanent interests of humanity, nothing is 
 impossible. 
 
 If we let slip this opportunity for the provision of 
 machinery by which the risk of future wars may be 
 averted or reduced, another such opportunity may 
 never present itself. If things are not made better after 
 this war, the prospect will be darker than ever. Darker 
 because the condition of the world will have grown so 
 much worse that the recurrence of like calamities will 
 have been recognized as a thing to be expected and 
 the causes of those calamities as beyond all human cure. 
 Rather let us strive that all the suffering this war has 
 brought, and all the sacrifices of heroic lives it has 
 witnessed, shall not have been in vain.
 
 1 84 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES chap. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I| subjoin as outlines of possible methods for establishing a 
 Peace League the two following schemes, one prepared in the 
 United States, the other by a small group of Englishmen : — 
 
 LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 
 
 (American Branch) 
 
 President — The Hon. William Howard Taft 
 
 Secretary — Wm. H. Short, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 
 
 Platform 
 
 It is desirable for the United States to join in a league of 
 nations binding the signatories to the following : — ; 
 
 1. All justiciable questions arising between the signatory 
 Powers, not settled by negotiation, shall, subject to the limitations 
 of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judg- 
 ment, both upon the merits and upon any issue as to its jurisdiction 
 of the question. 
 
 2. All other questions arising between the signatories and not 
 settled by negotiation shall be submitted to a Council of Concilia- 
 tion for hearing, consideration, and recommendation. 
 
 3. The signatory Powers shall jointly use forthwith both their 
 economic and military forces against any one of their number that 
 goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the 
 signatories before any question arising shall be submitted as provided 
 in the foregoing. 
 
 4. Conferences between the signatory Powers shall be held 
 from time to time to formulate and codify rules of international 
 law, which, unless some signatory shall signify its dissent within a 
 stated period, shall thereafter govern in the decisions of the Judicial 
 Tribunal mentioned in Article One. 
 
 SCHEME DRAFTED BY A BRITISH GROUP, 1915 
 
 Justiciable Disputes 
 
 I. The signatory Powers to agree to refer to the existing 
 Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, or to the Court of 
 Arbitral Justice proposed at the second Hague Conference, if and 
 when such Court shall be established, or to some other arbitral
 
 VIII ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 185 
 
 tribunal, all disputes between them (including those affecting 
 honour and vital interests), which are of a justiciable character and 
 which the Powers concerned have failed to settle by diplomatic 
 methods. 
 
 2. The signatory Powers so referring to arbitration to agree 
 to accept, and give effect to, the award of the tribunal. 
 
 3. "Disputes of a justiciable character" to be defined as 
 " disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question of 
 international law, as to the existence of any fact which, if estab- 
 lished, would constitute a breach of any international obligation, 
 or as to the nature and extent of the reparation to be made for any 
 such breach." 
 
 4. Any question which may arise as to whether a dispute is of 
 a justiciable character, to be referred for decision to the Court of 
 Arbitral Justice when constituted ; or until it is constituted, to the 
 existing Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. 
 
 Permanent Council of Conciliation 
 
 5. With a view to the prevention and settlement of disputes 
 between the signatory Powers which are not of a justiciable char- 
 acter, a permanent Council of Conciliation to be constituted. 
 
 6. The members of the Council to be appointed by the several 
 signatory Powers for a fixed term of years, and vacancies to be filled 
 up by the appointing Powers, so that the Council shall always be 
 complete and in being. 
 
 7. In order to provide for the case of disputes between a 
 signatory Power and an outside Power which is willing to submit 
 its case to the Council, provision to be made for the temporary 
 representation of the latter. 
 
 8. The signatory Powers to agree that every party to a dispute, 
 not of a justiciable character, the existence of which might ulti- 
 mately endanger friendly relations with another signatory Power or 
 Powers, and which has not been settled by diplomatic methods, will 
 submit its case to the Council with a view to conciliation. 
 
 9. Where, in the opinion of the Council, any dispute exists 
 between any of the signatory Powers which appears likely to 
 endanger their good relations with each other, the Council to 
 consider the dispute and to invite each Power concerned to submit 
 its case with a view to conciliation. 
 
 I o. Unless, through the good offices of the Council or other- 
 wise, the dispute shall have previously been settled between the 
 parties, the Council to make and publish, with regard to every 
 dispute considered by it, a report or reports, containing recommenda- 
 tions for the amicable settlement of the dispute.
 
 1 86 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 11. When it appears to the Council that, from any cause 
 within its knowledge, the good relations between any of the signa- 
 tory Powers are hkely to be endangered, the Council to be at 
 Hberty to make suggestions to them with a view to conciHation, 
 whether or not any dispute has actually arisen, and, if it considers 
 it expedient to do so, to pubHsh such suggestions. 
 
 12. The Council to be at liberty to make and submit for the 
 consideration of the signatory Powers, suggestions as to the limita- 
 tion or reduction of armaments, or any other suggestions which in 
 its opinion would lead to the avoidance of war or the diminution of 
 its evils. ^ 
 
 13. The signatory Powers to agree to furnish the Council with 
 all the means and facilities required for the due discharge of its 
 functions. 
 
 14. The Council to deliberate in public or in private, as it 
 thinks fit. 
 
 15- The Council to have power to appoint committees, which 
 may or may not be composed exclusively of its own members, to 
 report to it on any matter within the scope of its functions. 
 
 Moratorium for Hostilities 
 
 1 6. Every signatory Power to agree not to declare war or begin 
 hostilities or hostile preparations against any other signatory Power 
 {a) before the matter in dispute shall have been submitted to an 
 arbitral tribunal, or to the Council ; or [b) within a period of twelve 
 months after such submission ; or (c), if the award of the arbitral 
 tribunal or the report of the Council, as the case may be, has been 
 published within that time, then not to declare war or begin 
 hostilities or hostile preparations within a period of six months after 
 the publication of such award or report.^ 
 
 Limitation of Effect of Alliances 
 
 17. The signatory Powers to agree that no signatory Power 
 commencing hostilities against another, without first complying 
 with the provisions of the preceding clauses, shall be entitled, by 
 virtue of any now existing or future treaty of alliance or other 
 engagement, to the military or other material support of any other 
 signatory Power in such hostilities. 
 
 ^ It will be observed that it is not proposed to confer any executive power on the 
 Council. 
 
 * If an agreement for limitation of armaments had been arrived at, any departure 
 from the agreement would presumably be taken to be a " liostile preparation," until the 
 contrary were shown.
 
 viii ON A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 187 
 
 Enforcement of the Preceding Provisions 
 
 18. Every signatory Power to undertake that in case any 
 Power, whether or not a signatory Power, declares war or begins 
 hostilities or hostile preparations against a signatory Power, (a) 
 without first having submitted its case to an arbitral tribunal, or to 
 the Council of Conciliation, or (b) before the expiration of the 
 hereinbefore prescribed periods of delay, it will forthwith, in con- 
 junction with the other signatory Powers, take such concerted 
 measures, economic and forcible, against the Power so acting, 
 as, in their judgment, are most effective and appropriate to the 
 circumstances of the case. 
 
 19. The signatory Powers to undertake that if any Power shall 
 fail to accept and give effect to the recommendations contained in 
 any report of the Council, or in the award of the arbitral tribunal, 
 they will, at a Conference to be forthwith summoned for the pur- 
 pose, consider, in concert, the situation which has arisen by reason 
 of such failure, and what collective action, if any, it is practicable 
 to take in order to make such recommendations operative.^ 
 
 ^ The measures contemplated in paragraphs i8, 19 would, of course, be taken by 
 the Governments of the signatory Powers acting in concert, and not by the Council of 
 Conciliation.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Albanians, 142, 144, 148 
 Arbitration, 162-3, i^^, 180 
 Armaments, 173 
 Armenia, 27, 50-53, 137, 150-51 
 
 Belgium, 6, 26, 41-6, 139 
 
 Bernhardi, General, 3, 6, 7, 9, 13, 15 
 
 Bismarck, 134-6 
 
 Bloch, Jean de, 96 
 
 British Liberty, 20 
 
 British motives and aims, 17-20, 26, 
 
 29» 35 
 British Navy, 19, 29-31 
 
 Bulgarians, 137, 143-4 
 
 China, 81 
 Chivalry, 109 
 Conciliation, 164-6, 168-9 
 Constantinople, 148, 149 
 Czechs, 128, 139, 147, 154 
 
 Dante, 10, 67 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 71, 75 
 
 Democracy, 61, 100, 1 15-16 
 
 Finns, 141, 142 
 
 Frederick II. (of Prussia), 36, 133 
 
 Free Trade, 32, 116 
 
 Freedom of the seas, 31 
 
 German Doctrine of State, 7, 8, 56, 
 
 59. 67 
 German Nationality, 13 1-5, 157 
 German public opinion, 2 
 German War Book, 54, 55, 59 
 German war methods, 42, 54, 59 
 German war mind, 15, 35, 57-61, 64, 
 
 134 
 
 India, 24 
 
 International Law, 106, 161, 181 
 
 Jean de Bloch, 96 
 Jugo-Slavs, 145, 148 
 
 League of Peace, 38, 158, 166, 170- 
 173, 180-83; objections taken to, 
 174-8 
 
 Lichnowsky, Prince, 5, 18 
 
 Lithuanians and Letts, 141, 142, 148 
 
 Lusitama, the ship, 107-8 
 
 Magyars, 143, 147 
 Militarism, 56-59 
 
 Morgenthau, Mr. (U.S. Ambassador 
 to Turkey), 18, 50 
 
 Nationalities in Europe and the Near 
 
 East, 138 
 Nationality, principle of, 23, 126-32, 
 
 156- 
 Natural selection, 68-75, ^5' ^^ 
 Non-combatants, treatment of, 28, 
 
 107 
 
 Peace, means of preserving, 38, 114, 
 
 119' 123, 158 
 Poles, 23, 48, 140, 147 
 Population, effects of war upon, 104 
 Progress of mankind, 64, 75-91 
 Prussia, 56, 79-81, 133 
 Public Opinion, International, 123, 
 
 179 
 
 Right and Power, 8, 9, 10, 35 
 Rumans, 143 
 Russia, 140, 147 
 
 Ruthenes (and Ukrainians), 140-42, 
 147 
 
 Serbia, 145, 148, 155 
 Serbs, 129, 145 
 Slesvig, 128 
 
 189
 
 190 
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 
 
 Slovenes, 128, 145 
 Sophocles quoted, 93 
 South Africa, 21 
 Spanish Inquisitors, 58 
 Switzerland, 17, 20, 21, 128, 129 
 Szeklers, 143 
 
 Thucydides, 94, 96, 99 
 Transylvania, 143, 148 
 
 Treaties, 7, 8, 16, 25, 55, 6r 
 Treitschke, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 91, 
 
 137 
 Trentino, 146 
 
 Turks, 27, 34, 37, 49, 85, 102, 138, 
 144, 148 
 
 War, causes of, 1 10-14, 163 
 War, effects of, 85-89 
 
 THE END 
 
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