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 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE MAKING OF 
 MODERN ENGLAND 
 
 Demy &vo. 7s. 6d. net 
 
 The Manchester Guardian says : " What 
 he has done is done admirably, there it 
 certainly no better textbook of general 
 social development in Modern England. 
 This is high praise, richly deserved by a 
 work which is a model of industry and 
 concentration." 
 
 LONDON: CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
 
 PEACE AND WAR 
 IN EUROPE 
 
 BY 
 
 GILBERT SLATER M.A. D.Sc. 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 AUTHOR tr 
 
 "THE MAKING OF MODERN ENGLAND," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD. 
 
 1915
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS publication is based upon a course of six 
 lectures given in Manchester College, Oxford, in 
 October, 1914. The first four of these lectures, on 
 " The Causes of European Wars," are here reproduced 
 with some modification. The fifth was on " Our 
 Duty during the War," and is here omitted as too 
 ephemeral in its interest. What was the sixth, on 
 " The Terms of Peace," is considerably altered, 
 chiefly in consequence of the intervention of Turkey ; 
 and the last lecture here given, and the addendum, 
 on an International Court of Honour, are new 
 matter. 
 
 G. S. 
 
 RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 March, 1915.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR I 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 RELIGION AND WAR - 22 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM - 48 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 ARMAMENTS - 70 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE - 8 1 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE - IOI 
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 THE NEED FOR AN INTERNATIONAL COURT OF 
 
 HONOUR - - - - - - Il8 
 
 VI
 
 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 LECTURE I 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 
 
 FOR a considerable time I have entertained the plan 
 of offering a series of lectures upon what I may term 
 the natural history of peace and war. For some 
 years we have all felt that Europe was living upon 
 a thin crust covering volcanic and eruptive fires. 
 It was a condition which could not be properly 
 described as peace any more than as war, that con- 
 dition of armed peace, of fierce international rivalries 
 and mutual dread. In these circumstances it seemed 
 to me that there was great need of an attempt to 
 study the problem in as scientific a spirit as possible, 
 and yet that all the existing books on the subject were 
 inadequate, for two different sets of reasons. On 
 the one hand, they were all written in a more or 
 less propagandist spirit, either from a definitely 
 pacifist standpoint, or to prove a case for war as a 
 permanent factor in human life. On the other hand, 
 they were also, it seemed to me, all vitiated either 
 by laying undue prominence upon the economic 
 factor in the forces making for war, or by ignoring 
 the economic factor altogether. Therefore, though 
 
 i
 
 2 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 fully conscious of the inadequacy of my own powers 
 to deal effectively with so difficult and so terribly 
 important a subject, I felt that it was worth while 
 to make my own attempt, and that it might possibly 
 serve as a basis for discussion. This was my attitude 
 of mind in the spring and early summer of 1914, and 
 I had arranged to give a course of lectures on these 
 lines in Oxford early in 1915. At that time I was of 
 opinion that the danger of a great European War 
 involving our own country, which had seemed so 
 imminent in 1910, 1911, and in 1912, was already 
 beginning to disappear. I thought that, owing to 
 the wonderful economic revolution that has been 
 going on in Russia during the past six or seven 
 years, it had already become quite too foolish a 
 policy for Germany or the Triple Alliance to engage 
 in aggressive war against even the Dual Alliance of 
 France and Russia, and that therefore the power of 
 deciding whether Europe should have peace or war 
 had passed into the hands of the relatively pacific 
 States France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. 
 I do not think I was much mistaken in my inter- 
 pretation of the economic situation ; but in estimating 
 the effect of the economic situation upon the minds 
 of those who control the policy of Germany, I was 
 altogether mistaken, and those volcanic forces, 
 rumbles of which we had felt under our feet, have 
 now burst forth. The outbreak of war has com- 
 pletely changed the mental attitude of all of us. We 
 are set furiously to think. We cannot, perhaps, 
 attain the same scientific calm, but, instead, our
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 3 
 
 thinking has become more rapid and vivid, and the 
 need of getting some result of our thinking has 
 become imperatively urgent. 
 
 Fundamentally, therefore, the two questions that 
 are pressing upon me, as upon all of you, are, 
 What is our duty during the war? What is our 
 duty in the making of peace ? In the simplest 
 language, I may say that our duty during the war 
 is to make war victoriously ; our duty in the making 
 of peace, to make peace permanently. This, however, 
 only provokes the further question, How can we 
 make war victoriously ? How can we make peace 
 permanently ? The first of these questions is essen- 
 tially one for the naval and military chiefs, and for 
 the financial and diplomatic heads of the State. 
 The second one is emphatically a question for the 
 historian and the sociologist, and to deal with it 
 demands that preliminary scientific study of the 
 forces for war and peace which I have desired to 
 take part in. 
 
 The forces that work for war or for peace between 
 nations seem to me to be capable of being classified 
 under four different heads. Firstly, there are the 
 biological forces which generated wars in early times, 
 and which, to a certain extent, underlie war in the 
 present day ; and the somewhat cognate economic 
 forces which are brilliantly but not adequately dis- 
 cussed by Mr. Norman Angell in " The Great 
 Illusion." Secondly, there are forces arising out of 
 conflicts of religions, and out of the inculcation of 
 militarist and warlike ideals in the name of religion.
 
 4 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 The third great root of war is the clash of the ideals 
 of nationality or empire entertained by peoples and 
 their governments. The fourth root of war is to be 
 found in the sociological principle that a social 
 necessity tends to create a social organization, and 
 that every social organization acquires a sort of 
 independent life of its own, which it seeks to further, 
 even at the expense of the general life. The fact 
 that war actually has been throughout European 
 history a present reality or a danger has created 
 a whole series of social organizations in the form of 
 ambassadorial services, armies, fleets, arsenals, and 
 gigantic firms manufacturing munitions of war for 
 the purpose of waging war successfully, and these by 
 their reaction upon the States concerned have tended 
 continually to create the very dangers to provide 
 against which they exist. I am not prepared to 
 assert that this classification is exhaustive. It is, 
 however, the best that I can make at the present 
 
 moment. 
 
 HUNGER WARS. 
 
 In connecting the evolution of human economics 
 with war and peace, the broad fact is elicited that 
 economic progress is closely linked with the develop- 
 ment of partial peace and of a desire for peace. 
 Purely hunting societies live by an occupation closely 
 analogous to war, and engage in war easily and 
 almost without feeling it to be any variation on the 
 normal tenour of their life. The change from a 
 hunting to a pastoral life strengthens the desire for 
 peace, and makes war less constant, though still very
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 5 
 
 frequent. It is when men or perhaps I should say 
 women and men set to work to cultivate the land, 
 begin to have fixed habitations, to plant trees, and to 
 accumulate household treasures, that the terrors of 
 war become apparent to their minds. Within the 
 range of countries which have a direct bearing upon 
 European history, it was in Egypt and in Babylon 
 that peaceful industry and effective agriculture were 
 first established, and the influence upon social ideals 
 of this economic progress is illustrated by the fact 
 that the ancient Egyptian idea of heaven was of a 
 country of flat and fertile fields, over which the 
 blessed steered their ploughs drawn by beautiful and 
 splendid oxen, and gathered bounteous harvests. 
 From Egypt and Babylon civilization spread over 
 Asia Minor and the basin of the Mediterranean, 
 through the channels of the Hittite, Minoan, and 
 Etruscan civilizations, and hence permeated Europe 
 to an unknown extent. 
 
 The spread of this pacific civilization, however, 
 did not prevent either internal or external wars. 
 The whole Balkan Peninsula in particular has been 
 continually the sport of a four-footed provoker of 
 strife. Professor Geddes came to the conclusion, 
 from his study of the Near Eastern problem, that 
 " the goat is the devil of mythology, because he is 
 the devil of economics." Thus, for example, the 
 various Greek city states grew up in valleys sur- 
 rounded by mountains, and attained their prosperity 
 by intensive culture, and by the planting of vines 
 and olive-trees. But the mountains surrounding
 
 6 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 each valley were given over to the goatherds, who 
 were continually tempted, when opportunity came, 
 to feed their goats on the cultivated lands of neigh- 
 bouring communities, which were continually being 
 extended higher and higher up the slopes of the 
 mountains. Quarrels and fights between the herds- 
 men of neighbouring valleys necessarily followed, 
 spreading to the main body of inhabitants, and then, 
 when these organized themselves for war, they found 
 that the most effective method of carrying on war 
 was to destroy the crops and cut down the valuable 
 trees belonging to the enemy, and thus permanently 
 to destroy the sources of his prosperity. This inter- 
 relation between the goatherd on the one hand, and 
 the agriculturalist on the other, is the economic root 
 underlying the political history of Greece. The 
 importance of this goat-influence has in recent times 
 been recognized by the Bulgarian Government, 
 which severely restricts the keeping of goats. 
 
 But if the goat inspired the internal contests that 
 cursed some of the fairest lands of the Mediterranean 
 basin, it is the horse that symbolizes the wars of 
 outer barbarism against the early centres of culture. 
 Gradually during historic times, and most rapidly in 
 the nineteenth century, the area of grassy steppes 
 occupied by nomadic folk living upon horseflesh and 
 mare's milk has contracted before the advance of the 
 plough. Gibbon, who wrote before the days of 
 railways, describes this area as extending from West 
 to East for a longitude of no degrees, or a distance of 
 5,000 miles, from the Danube to the Sea of Japan,
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 7 
 
 and from North to South for a distance, in places, 
 of more than 1,000 miles, from the Wall of China to 
 the latitude of the reindeer. 
 
 To understand the significance of this area upon 
 the history of Europe and Asia, it is necessary to 
 realize the biological results of the change from 
 a hunting to a pastoral method of life. Among 
 primitive peoples who live by hunting it is customary 
 for a three years' interval to elapse between the 
 births of successive children ; and should a child be 
 born within this interval its life is generally sacrificed 
 to safeguard the prospects of health and strength of 
 the elder child. Obviously at less than three years 
 old the child belonging to a tribe living upon the 
 flesh of wild animals, berries, grubs, and wild roots, 
 cannot be satisfactorily nourished without the assist- 
 ance of his mother's milk. The hardships of life 
 also shorten the child-bearing period, and the birth- 
 rate, thus doubly limited, is usually approximately 
 equal to the necessarily somewhat high death-rate, 
 and is barely sufficient to maintain the numbers of 
 the population. When, however, the hunters of 
 wild horses had tamed them and could add milk to 
 meat, and a new and suitable nutriment became 
 available both for mothers and young, a revolution 
 in the conditions of vitality took place. Births in- 
 creased and deaths decreased, and the Malthusian 
 theory of the tendency of population to increase 
 faster than the means of subsistence, which so far 
 from being universal is only exceptionally true, began 
 to apply to humanity.
 
 8 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 Throughout the pastoral horse-breeding regions 
 there appears to have been going on in recent 
 geological times a movement of desiccation and 
 elevation of the surface of the land which has tended 
 to diminish the amount of pasture available. This 
 diminution has not been steady, but good seasons 
 have alternated with bad. During the periods in 
 which good seasons have predominated the grass has 
 been abundant, the number of horses has tended to 
 increase, and similarly the human beings dependent 
 upon them. When dry summers and droughts have 
 supervened the multiplied hordes of nomads have 
 been driven forth into the cultivated lands to the 
 east, south, and west, and they have gone forth 
 as conquerors. 
 
 Most interesting studies of the people of the 
 Steppes have been made by sociologists of the school 
 of Le Play ; but for our purpose the description given 
 by Gibbon (" Decline and Fall," chap, xxvi.) is 
 sufficiently accurate and vivid. His main thesis is 
 that " the pastoral manners which have been adorned 
 with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence are 
 much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of 
 a military life." He refers first to the results of 
 a carnivorous diet, and while doubting whether that 
 has a direct effect on character, he urges that the 
 constant and open killing of domestic animals, and 
 serving the bleeding limbs with but little preparation, 
 must blunt the feeling of compassion. Then he 
 dwells upon the military advantages of the pastoral 
 life. Whereas corn has to be transported with
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 9 
 
 difficulty, " the active cavalry of Scythia is always 
 followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, 
 by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be 
 occasionally used either to redouble the speed or to 
 satisfy the hunger of the Barbarians." Then the 
 pastoral life is itself a training for war. " The 
 individuals of the same tribe are constantly assembled, 
 but they are assembled in a camp. . . . The flocks 
 and herds, after grazing all day in the adjacent 
 pastures, retire, on the approach of night, within the 
 protection of the camp. The necessity of preventing 
 the most mischievous confusion in such a perpetual 
 concourse of men and animals must gradually 
 introduce, in the distribution, the order and the 
 guard of the encampment, the rudiments of the 
 military art. As soon as the forage of a certain 
 district is consumed, the tribe, or, rather, army, 
 of shepherds makes a regular march to some fresh 
 pastures, and thus acquires the practical knowledge 
 of one of the most important and difficult operations 
 of war." Such migrations, he points out, are made 
 all the easier by the severity of the climate, which in 
 winter freezes all rivers, so that waggons and cattle 
 can cross securely. He then depicts the skill of the 
 men of the Steppes in horsemanship, in the use 
 of the bow and the lance, their abundant leisure and 
 their habit of spending that leisure in the chase. 
 "The general hunting matches, the pride and delight 
 of the Tartar princes, compose an instructive exercise 
 for their numerous cavalry." They surround a 
 district of many square miles, and drive all the game
 
 io PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 to one centre. " For this march, which frequently 
 continues many days, the cavalry are obliged to climb 
 the hills, to swim the rivers, and to wind through 
 the valleys, without interrupting the prescribed order 
 of their general progress. . . . Their leaders study, 
 in this practical school, the most important lesson of 
 the military art : the prompt and accurate judgment 
 of ground, of distance, and of time. To employ 
 against a human enemy the same patience and 
 valour, the same skill and discipline, is the only 
 alteration which is required in real war." 
 
 Thus there has been almost from the dawn of 
 civilization incursion after incursion of pastoral 
 tribes upon those countries which have attained a 
 higher civilization. China and India have suffered 
 conquests ; but the Mediterranean basin has suffered 
 most frequently. The historic militarism of the Old 
 World has been the result of this conflict. Pacific 
 Egypt, whose early social institutions seem to have 
 been matriarchal, and whose original Kings appear 
 to have been magical symbols of the life of the 
 community, was overwhelmed by those whom they 
 termed " The Shepherds " (Hyksos), but succeeded 
 in organizing an effective resistance, which, however, 
 transformed the social and political conditions of the 
 country, and created a military despotism. Babylon, 
 on the other hand, succumbed to the pastoral 
 Assyrians, but equally there a military despotism 
 was created. Similar incursions, whether of pastorals 
 from Central Asia, or of other peoples of more settled 
 habits and advanced culture, driven from their old
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR n 
 
 sites by the movements of populations originating in 
 the horse-breeding area, again and again overflowed 
 Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, and Italy. The 
 Roman Empire was the first effective organization 
 of Mediterranean civilization for its defence against 
 outer barbarism, and its fall before the attacks of 
 Goths, Alans, Vandals, Huns, Arabs, Saracens, and 
 finally Turks, brought this ancient struggle to its 
 most terrible climax. 
 
 War breeds war, and the wars of more recent 
 times count among their causes the unstable and 
 chaotic conditions produced by conquests of more 
 advanced civilizations by comparatively uncultured 
 peoples. In some cases the conquered ultimately 
 succeeded in conquering the conquerors; but this 
 has notably not been the case where the Turks 
 are concerned. Perhaps in consequence of some 
 racial characteristic, perhaps merely because of the 
 difference of religion, the Turks have always failed to 
 acquire the civilization of their subjects, or to recon- 
 cile them to their rule, or to absorb them into their 
 own body, or even to dissolve their social organization. 
 
 Hence, although Turkish dominion in Europe has 
 lasted between four and five hundred years, it has 
 never been accepted, and no peace is possible upon 
 the basis of Turkish rule over Europeans. We have 
 here one item in the long list of causes of the 
 present war. 
 
 We have to note, however, that the original spring 
 of so much disaster is being fast dried up. Just as 
 the Western Empire of Rome when it perished left
 
 12 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 in London a distant outlying station that remained 
 unconquered by the barbarians, from which grew 
 what we call the British Empire, but what might 
 more properly be called the London Empire, or the 
 neo-Roman Empire, so also before Constantinople 
 perished Byzantine culture had found an outlying 
 centre in the highway of commerce between the 
 Black Sea and the Baltic at Kieff, on the River 
 Dnieper. This trading centre became also a centre 
 of industrial civilization, from which spread that 
 most fundamental of the arts of civilization tillage 
 and the growing of corn. Kieff succumbed to the 
 attacks of the pastoral nomads, but other cities, and 
 notably Moscow, sprang up to take its place. When 
 Constantinople fell before the Turks the niece of the 
 last Greek Emperor of Constantinople became the 
 wife of the Prince of Moscow. From Moscow as 
 a centre Russian grain-growers spread, sending before 
 them a protecting cloud of Cossack cavalry, but 
 really conquering the land with the plough. In 
 consequence of the Russian advance into the Black 
 Earth district, which was Tartary, and is now South 
 Russia, and their later advance into Siberia and 
 Turkestan, introducing tillage and fixed habitations, 
 the great scourge of the ancient civilizations, the 
 periodic incursions of pastoral conquerors, has been 
 eliminated from possibility. There are no more 
 Zenghis Khans or Tamerlanes. The reservoir of 
 Mongols and Tartars no longer overflows. 
 
 The wars of this type, which I have called hunger 
 wars wars caused by the pressure of increasing
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 13 
 
 population upon pastoral peoples incapable of in- 
 creasing their means of subsistence, but all too 
 capable of conquest may truly be described as 
 springing from biological necessity. But at the 
 present time it cannot be asserted truly that there 
 is any biological necessity for war. German socio- 
 logists have endeavoured to make such a plea for an 
 expansionist policy for their own country at the risk 
 of war and by means of war. They have urged that 
 the increase of population in Germany and the 
 limitations of her territories create a biological 
 necessity for expansion. It is obvious that the plea 
 fails, if merely because the world lies open to the 
 German who finds it too difficult to make a living 
 in his native country. It is curious, indeed, that we 
 heard little of this biological necessity for expansion 
 when German emigrants were leaving their country 
 in great numbers, and it only appears to have been 
 thought of since the development of German indus- 
 tries has enabled the increasing population to be 
 absorbed, and emigration has declined to a very low 
 level. The necessity, in fact, is not biological, but 
 sentimental. The rulers of Germany prefer an 
 expansion in population within rather than without 
 the sphere of their authority. The sentiment is 
 natural, but to dignify it with the term " biological 
 necessity" is to say the thing which is not ; and to 
 regard this false necessity as a justification for letting 
 war loose upon the world is a sophism on a par with 
 the pretexts which tyrants in all ages have found for 
 their most monstrous deeds.
 
 14 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 TRADE WARS. 
 
 In the history of Europe the desire not merely for 
 the food necessary for existence, but for special 
 economic advantages making possible the acquisition 
 of wealth, has underlain numerous wars. In the 
 Middle Ages the most important form of international 
 trade was that in spices, which were collected in the 
 East Indian Islands and in Ceylon, brought by 
 Malay traders to the ports of India, there passed 
 into the hands of Arab merchants, and carried by 
 them to the markets of Baghdad, Damascus, and 
 Alexandria. The profits of this trade enriched 
 Constantinople, the cities of Italy, and the valley of 
 the Rhine. Spices were even brought overland to 
 Nijni Novgorod, and thence to the Baltic. Venice 
 and Genoa struggled for maritime supremacy in the 
 Mediterranean in order to reap the profits of this trade. 
 Behind the Crusades, in addition to the religious 
 motive, there was a distinct trade interest, and, during 
 the period in which the Christian kingdom of Jeru- 
 salem was in existence, Jerusalem became a mart 
 for the produce of India. When one trade route 
 between India and Europe after another was closed 
 by the spread of Turkish dominion, it was to capture 
 the trade in spices that Prince Henry the Navigator 
 began the exploration of the coast of Africa, and 
 Vasco da Gama made his wonderful voyage round 
 the Cape of Good Hope to the Coromandel coast. 
 The same object sent Christopher Columbus across 
 the Atlantic, and many a brave English seaman to
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 15 
 
 his fate in the vain search for a practicable north- 
 eastern or north-western route to India. With these 
 explorations and the consequent discoveries, com- 
 merce passed from the Pelagic into the Oceanic 
 stage, and the rivalries of Genoa and Venice were 
 repeated on a grander scale, as Portugal, Spain, 
 Holland, England, and France successively entered 
 into the conflict for maritime supremacy, commercial 
 opportunities, and, incidentally, for colonial empire. 
 
 This series of wars appeared to be closed with the 
 peace after Waterloo. Britain then emerged trium- 
 phant against all rivals, and not long after she had 
 acquired and consolidated her Empire, she disarmed 
 the jealousy of possible rivals by instituting her 
 system of self-government for her colonies inhabited 
 by people of European stock, by accepting for the 
 whole Empire the principle that government must 
 be for the benefit of the governed, and for these 
 islands and for India the principle of free trade in 
 her commercial dealings with foreign countries. And 
 then she summoned the world to inaugurate the new 
 period of international co-operation in industry, and 
 friendly rivalry in the arts of peace, by opening the 
 first international exhibition. 
 
 The hopes, however, of a world peace which 
 appeared so bright when the first international 
 exhibition was opened in London in the year 1851, 
 was clouded, first by the series of European Wars 
 beginning in 1854 and lasting till 1871, which marked 
 the creation of the new kingdom of Italy and the 
 new Empire of Germany, and later by the appear-
 
 16 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 ance of a fresh economic motive for national rivalry 
 and conflict. In the year 1851 railways only existed 
 in the British Isles, in some of the longest settled 
 districts of North America, and in some of the most 
 advanced countries of Europe. Since then the 
 world has steadily been railroadized. The Americans 
 say that he who owns the transportation system of 
 the country owns the country, and the maxim is full 
 of significance and truth. When a country that is 
 backward, but rich in natural resources, is " opened 
 up," all sorts of opportunities for exploitation are 
 presented to the financiers who can control the 
 investment of other people's capital and the use of 
 other people's knowledge. Hence the international 
 scramble for " concessions," for the right to make 
 railroads in China, in Turkey, in Asia Minor, in 
 Persia, in Africa; the long conflict between England 
 and France for political influence in Egypt ; the 
 more recent conflict between France and Germany 
 over Morocco. 
 
 The influence of this principle upon international 
 relationships has been very ably presented by Mr. 
 Brailsford in his "The War of Steel and Gold," 
 published not long before the outbreak of hostilities. 
 He did not think then that the conflict of interests 
 of the financiers of Berlin and Paris, or Berlin and 
 London, would lead to actual warfare, though he 
 regarded it as the chief cause of the continually 
 growing expenditure upon armaments. I think he 
 was fundamentally right, and I am not prepared to 
 assert that any motive of this sort would have been
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 17 
 
 sufficient by itself to have provoked the present 
 conflict. Nevertheless, such a motive was un- 
 doubtedly one important factor in the situation. 
 
 We cannot understand the origin of the present 
 war without recalling the history of Germany's efforts 
 at obtaining rich tracts of undeveloped country for 
 exploitation. She turned her eyes first to South 
 America, the quarter of the globe richest in un- 
 developed resources. There she was barred by the 
 Monroe Doctrine from doing anything more than 
 settle organized groups of her citizens on countries 
 that remained predominantly of Latin language 
 and civilization. She aspired to a share of Africa, 
 and though Lord Salisbury and the British Govern- 
 ment put no obstacle in the way of the acquisition 
 of the immense areas of German West Africa, 
 German East Africa, Togoland, and the Cameroons, 
 yet all these colonies proved somewhat disappointing. 
 The beginning of something that might have de- 
 veloped into a German Eastern Empire, comparable 
 with the English Empire in India, was made by 
 the extorted lease from China of Kiaochau ; but its 
 development was hindered by the jealousy of other 
 States, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and by the un- 
 expected renaissance of China. There remained the 
 last and the most hopeful project, that of " pacific 
 interpenetration " of the Turkish Empire by means 
 of the " Baghdad Railway." 
 
 In this sphere German diplomacy won great 
 triumphs. Great Britain, France, and Russia ac- 
 quiesced in the passing into German hands of all 
 
 3
 
 i8 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 of the existing railways in Asiatic Turkey, and the 
 control of the projected railways. To Germany 
 hereby was ceded the future tutelage of Asia Minor, 
 Mesopotamia, and Syria, the seats of some of the 
 most ancient civilizations, including great districts 
 now desolate, which in past times have supported 
 vast and prosperous populations. All these were 
 being linked up with the railway-lines from Berlin, 
 through Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, to Constan- 
 tinople. Further, the Bosphorus being linked with 
 Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, a new and shorter 
 highway to India was on the point of being opened, 
 and this was to be in German hands. Our Foreign 
 Office had shown that it did not exactly welcome this 
 development, but it had withdrawn all opposition. 
 
 Germans have long envied England the profits, 
 which they perhaps exaggerate, derived by Britain 
 from her rule in India, and they doubtless also are 
 of opinion that those profits are insignificant com- 
 pared with those which might be obtained if the 
 natural resources of India were developed scientific- 
 ally in a German manner. They probably, for 
 instance, and with some reason, regard us as block- 
 heads and ignoramuses for allowing one of the world's 
 richest stores of energy, the streams that flow from 
 the Himalayas, to run to waste. But whether or 
 not a vision of German India was seen as the final 
 terminus of the Baghdad Railway, that railway itself 
 was sufficiently important as a stepping-stone to a 
 Teutonized Mesopotamia and Babylonia, likely to 
 become as wealthy as in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 19 
 
 The strength of the chain is the strength of its 
 weakest link, and the weak link of this railway-chain 
 was where it traversed the country of the Southern 
 Slavs. Hence it has been a cardinal object of 
 German policy, all the more since the Baghdad 
 project was embarked upon, that Serbia as well as 
 Turkey should be the vassal of Austria as com- 
 pletely as Austria is the vassal of Germany. The 
 two Balkan wars created an enlarged and victorious 
 Serbia, strong in its alliance with the Russian 
 Empire and driven into hostility to Austria by the 
 existence of a Serbia Irredenta, twice as large and 
 twice as populous as the little independent kingdom, 
 and seething with discontent against Austrian and 
 Magyar domination. It was therefore fully as much 
 an element in the policy of Berlin as of Budapest or 
 Vienna that Serbia should be crushed. The ulti- 
 matum to Serbia after the assassination of the Arch- 
 duke Ferdinand was sent in the name of the Emperor 
 Francis Joseph; but the sending of it was sanctioned, 
 if not decreed, in Berlin, to prevent the growing 
 hopes of a great German Empire in the Near East 
 from being dashed to the ground. 
 
 We have, therefore, to recognize the continued 
 existence in the world to-day of economic forces 
 tending to produce war, and the importance of this 
 element among the causes of the present war. On 
 the other hand, the still greater strength of the 
 economic forces working for peace must not be 
 ignored. The industrial and commercial activities 
 of man surmount all the obstacles interposed by
 
 20 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 political boundaries, and link all nations together in 
 profitable co-operation. Absorption in economic 
 interests produces a type of character which is 
 unfavourable to militarism. 
 
 ECONOMIC EVOLUTION AND PEACE. 
 
 It is obvious that the individuals whose economic 
 interests are favoured by war are insignificant in 
 number compared with those whose well-being de- 
 pends on peace. The more widely property is 
 diffused in any country, the clearer is the conscious- 
 ness among the people of the desirability of peace ; 
 the more widely diffused political power, the stronger 
 the political force in favour of a pacific policy. Un- 
 fortunately a pacific policy when pursued by some, 
 but not by all nations, is no security for peace. It 
 is a hoary lie that it takes two to make a quarrel. 
 Either party can force a quarrel. A pacific policy 
 on both sides is necessary in order that peace may 
 be maintained. 
 
 With regard to our own country, I think it is 
 pretty clear that offensive war against a formidable 
 adversary had already become politically impossible 
 before the end of the nineteenth century for purely 
 economic reasons. The manufacturers, traders, 
 retailers, small property owners, comparatively pros- 
 perous working men, trade unionists, co-operators, 
 had become so conscious that war meant for them 
 economic dangers and disasters, and their combined 
 political power was so great, that the only wars that 
 continued to be possible were those like the South
 
 THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR 21 
 
 African War, generally expected to be an easy and 
 trifling enterprise, or a war like the present one, 
 imposed on us by the determination of the enemy. 
 
 The economic aspect of war has, on the whole, 
 been admirably treated by Mr. Norman Angell, 
 though on some questions, as in his dealing with 
 the possibility of deriving a national profit from the 
 receipt of a war indemnity, he slips into fallacies ; 
 but the prospect suggested to readers of " Europe's 
 Great Illusion," that European wars would cease to 
 be possible when nations realized the economic facts 
 concerning war, were misleading. His great mistake 
 lay in dwelling too exclusively upon the economic 
 factor in political life, and, in particular, in over- 
 estimating the power of the economic motive in 
 determining the policy of Germany. Had his con- 
 ception of the Modern State, as something that 
 existed in the interests of private property owners, 
 been as applicable to Germany as to England, France, 
 and America, the hope which he excited of the end of 
 great wars by a process of economic enlightenment 
 would not have been so illusory. But the State in 
 Germany is something finer and something more 
 dangerous than that. The teaching that has done 
 so much to mould British institutions and British 
 policy during the nineteenth century, the teaching 
 that the business of the State is to conserve individual 
 life and property (and property rather than life), and 
 the business of the individual is to buy in the cheapest 
 and sell in the dearest market, has never been accepted 
 there.
 
 LECTURE II 
 RELIGION AND WAR 
 
 WARS OF RELIGION. 
 
 WE are frequently told that wars of religion are 
 things of the past. This is only true if the words 
 " wars of religion " are understood in a narrow 
 sense. The sense in which I propose to use the 
 word religion includes any ethical beliefs or ideals 
 adopted by considerable populations, or inculcated 
 among them, in such a way as to influence their 
 thoughts, emotions, and conduct. Using the word 
 in this sense, the religious influences making for war 
 or for peace are obviously supremely important to- 
 day and demand careful analysis. 
 
 Quite apart from any definite religious teaching of a 
 militarist or pacifist character, the influence of religious 
 differences has been very great both in creating wars 
 and in intensifying the bitterness of wars springing 
 from other causes. In early days it was the complacent 
 habit of tribal deities to take part energetically in 
 all tribal wars on the side of their worshippers, and 
 in consequence the greatest cruelties were regarded 
 as religious duties when perpetrated upon the enemy 
 who worshipped other gods. At the present time 
 a great part of the world has outgrown tribalism 
 
 22
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 23 
 
 in religion, and we feel it somewhat of a shock to 
 realize that the Kaiser believes in and worships a 
 Deity whose special care it is to foster the Hohen- 
 zollern Empire and hallow all that is done for its 
 aggrandizement, however atrocious in our eyes. 
 
 The development of world religions of a propa- 
 gandist character, however, widened the scope of 
 wars as much as it tended to diminish the frequency 
 of war between neighbouring tribes of the same 
 religion ; and sectarian differences again, even among 
 Christians, have made their own wars of religion, the 
 results of which still remain. Thus those Party 
 divisions in our own country which recently so 
 nearly brought us to irremediable disaster, spring 
 from the Civil War essentially religious of the 
 seventeenth century between Cavaliers and Puritans, 
 the disastrous and degrading effect of which historians 
 are much too apt to slur over. The preaching of 
 Protestantism in Northern Europe produced the 
 wars of the Huguenots in France, the wars of the 
 foundation of the Dutch Republic in the Nether- 
 lands, and, most important of all, the Thirty Years' 
 War which ravaged Germany between 1618 and 
 1648. In this last it is calculated that two-thirds 
 of the population was destroyed ; those that remained 
 were reduced from an extraordinarily high level of 
 civilization and prosperity to utter misery, while 
 internal feuds and divisions made the German 
 people the sport of alien monarchs, like the King 
 of Sweden and the King of France. It was only 
 natural that in later years, when Germany began
 
 24 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 to revive and Germans studied their own history, 
 that unity at all costs became the aspiration of every 
 patriotic German ; and the realization of the terrible 
 results of disunion is the root from which spring the 
 moral power of Prussia, and the ready submission of 
 the rest of the Empire to her arrogant and irritating 
 hegemony. This national determination to maintain 
 unity at all costs is a stubborn fact which our 
 national policy will have to take into account. 
 
 Another still longer and still more bitter series of 
 conflicts of hostile creeds is that between Moham- 
 medanism and Christianity. The war of the Cross 
 against the Crescent began as soon as Mahomet's 
 Arab converts attacked the Eastern Empire; it 
 continued while Mohammedan conquest spread 
 through Africa and Spain to the Pyrennes, through 
 the episode of the Crusades, and the Turkish advance 
 to Vienna. This war has never ceased in the Balkan 
 Peninsula. You might think me fanciful if I de- 
 scribed our Soudan war, the French wars in Algiers, 
 Tunis, Morocco, and the Soudan, and the Italian war 
 in Tripoli as new crusades ; yet I do contend that the 
 most important cause underlying them is an inevit- 
 able conflict between Western civilization (whether it 
 is or is not rightly termed Christian) and the Ethics of 
 the Desert embodied in Mohammedanism. Be this 
 as it may, all must admit that the existence of a con- 
 tinuous condition of open or disguised war between 
 Christian and Mohammedan in South-East Europe, 
 Asia Minor, and Syria, has acted as a continual irri- 
 tant to the relations between the Great European
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 25 
 
 Powers, though for them a war over difference of 
 creed would no longer be possible. 
 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHING ON WAR. 
 
 Far more important, however, than either the in- 
 direct result of past religious wars or the present 
 situation, or the association of religious feeling with 
 national sentiment, has been the influence of definite 
 teaching of pacific and warlike ethics. The later 
 period of the Roman Empire saw the clash of four 
 religions, each of which was marked by a fairly 
 definite attitude towards war. The Empire was 
 assaulted on the east by Mohammedanism, which 
 regarded war as virtuous when it was waged on 
 behalf of the faith, and held out to the warrior the 
 prospect of a heaven of ease and sensuous pleasure. 
 Over the frontiers of the Roman Empire there 
 spread a form of Zoroastrian religion known as 
 Mithraism, which taught that the universe is the 
 scene of conflict between almost equal powers of 
 good and evil. This was a religion that appealed 
 specially to the soldier fighting in defence of civiliza- 
 tion, but it gradually disappeared, partly superseded 
 by, and partly absorbed into, Christianity. 
 
 The Roman Empire and civilization on the 
 northern frontier were assaulted by the devotees 
 of a religion more intensively military than either 
 Mithraism or Mohammedanism. Both of these 
 preached war for an ultimate end. Odinism preached 
 war for its own sake. The heaven which it offered 
 as a reward of virtue, the one virtue which it recog- 
 
 4
 
 26 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 nized being to die on the field of battle, was Valhalla. 
 In Valhalla, the heroes feast every night on the flesh 
 of the heavenly boar, and drink till unconscious the 
 mead that flows from the udders of the heavenly 
 goat ; in the morning they rise from their slumbers 
 divided into armies, and fight until they are all 
 hacked to pieces. Then, when the evening falls, 
 their dismembered bodies join themselves together 
 again, and their wounds are healed ready for another 
 night of feasting, to be followed by another day of 
 battle. 
 
 The theory is held by some historians, and I am 
 inclined to think with great probability! though it 
 became unfashionable when the school of Max Miiller 
 was in the ascendant, that the Odinist religion was 
 the creation of an actual founder, just as much as 
 Mohammedanism was the creation of Mahomet, and 
 that it was invented and propagated in order to fill 
 its barbarian adherents with the lust for battle. Be 
 this as it may, the history of Northern Europe for 
 hundreds of years is the story of a conflict waged 
 equally in the field of battle and in the souls of men 
 between Christianity and Odinism. The heathens 
 overwhelmed the Christian regions and destroyed the 
 western Empire, but the Christian missionaries 
 penetrated to the remotest North and brought the 
 conquerors of the Empire under the sway of the 
 Church. One little incident in the most distant area 
 of this conflict will perhaps illustrate its character 
 better than any attempt at description. The 
 Icelandic " Njala Saga " turns upon the death of
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 27 
 
 one of the first converts to Christianity in Iceland, 
 Njal, known afterwards as Burnt Njal. Njal and his 
 household had become involved in a feud with a 
 neighbouring clan. One night when most of his 
 men were away he was surrounded in his farmhouse 
 by his enemies, who prepared to set the whole place 
 on fire. Out of their great respect for Njal they 
 offered him a free passage. He, however, found 
 himself in a dilemma between conflicting duties. If 
 he survived, his traditional code of ethics compelled 
 him to prosecute the feud. His newly acquired 
 Christian ethics taught him to forgive his enemies 
 and to return good for evil. He solved the difficulty 
 by refusing the offer of life; and refraining also 
 from any blow in his own defence, he lay down on 
 his bed beside his wife, who had refused to leave 
 him. They drew the coverlet over their faces, and 
 the story goes that when their friends sought for 
 them afterwards amid the heap of ashes which 
 represented the house, their bodies and faces were 
 found untouched by the fire, dead, but calm and 
 peaceful, and after they had been buried beneath a 
 great mound, strange and solemn music was heard 
 to proceed from it. 
 
 Much of the deepest interest of the history of the 
 Middle Ages turns upon the continued conflict 
 between Christian and Odinist ethics after 
 Christianity had been nominally accepted. The 
 Church had to accept warfare both public and 
 private as a dominant fact. It had to compromise 
 with Odinism and endeavour to control forces which
 
 28 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 were too strong for it to overcome. Thus it enlisted 
 the military ardour of professedly Christian knights, 
 who had but little of the spirit of St. Francis, in the 
 Crusades. It invented the Peace of God and the 
 Truce of God. By the former, certain classes were 
 protected from violence and slaughter for example, 
 women and labouring peasants a victory for 
 humanity which we thought till a few weeks ago had 
 been permanently won throughout Christendom. 
 By the latter, private warfare was prohibited during 
 Sundays and other Holy Days, and the number of 
 prohibited days gradually increased till there were 
 only about sixty left in the year during which a 
 baron without mortal sin could take up arms against 
 his neighbour. The Truce of God was superseded 
 by the growing power of royal governors, who substi- 
 tuted the King's Peace, prohibiting private warfare 
 altogether. 
 
 But perhaps the greatest achievement of the 
 Church in the direction of compromise was the 
 development of the conception of chivalry, and 
 the ideal of the " perfect, gentle knight without fear 
 and without reproach " a conception that is, per- 
 haps, the greatest inheritance that has been handed 
 down to us from the Middle Ages. 
 
 I have dwelt so long upon this ancient struggle 
 between Odinism and Christianity because it is 
 obvious that to Englishmen and Frenchmen, at any 
 rate, the present war does appear as a revived con- 
 flict between Odinism on the one hand, and the 
 sentiments and ethical ideals of chivalry and
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 29 
 
 humanity on the other. Germany is peculiarly 
 associated with the worship of Odin. The great 
 Odinist epic, the " Nibelungen Lied," has for its 
 scene the Valley of the Rhine, and for its topic the 
 contest for the fatal possession of the Nibelung hoard, 
 evidently an accumulation of treasure from the 
 sacked cities of the Empire. Germany was late in 
 accepting Roman Christianity, and afterwards took 
 the lead in throwing off the spiritual dominion of 
 Rome, substituting another form of Christianity 
 in Lutheranism, which eliminated the worship of 
 the Virgin Mother and Infant Jesus ; and even 
 Lutheranism appears to be now practically dead. 
 I am at any rate assured by my friend Herr Sassen- 
 bach, of the General Kommission of the German 
 Social Democratic Trade Unions, that while Roman 
 Catholicism continues to exercise some spiritual 
 influence, Lutheranism has or, at least, had up 
 to the outbreak of war none at all; and I am 
 further informed that though expensive new Lutheran 
 churches are continually being built, the money for 
 their erection comes from the contributions of Jews 
 who desire to conciliate the Government by subsidiz- 
 ing the Government religion. Certainly it appears 
 that from the time of the Thirty Years' War to the 
 present day there has been no effective religious 
 movement conflicting with the dominant militarism 
 of Northern Germany, and that no Christian teach- 
 ing has ever eliminated from Germany the influence 
 of its ancient pagan Odinism. Would it even be an 
 exaggeration to say that Christianity is an exotic in
 
 30 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 Germany which never really took root ? and that 
 Prussia, in particular, has ever been faithful to the 
 God of War ? 
 
 Here it is well to note certain historical reasons 
 why the cult of War has been so powerful in Prussia. 
 The present kingdom of Prussia was originally the 
 electorate of Brandenburg, and the Electors of 
 Brandenburg had originally been Markgraves i.e., 
 Counts of the Marches. The Mark of Brandenburg 
 was originally granted to a certain warrior known as 
 Albert the Bear. He was posted in the bend of the 
 Elbe, in the region which is still called the Old Mark 
 of Brandenburg. He had to hold this outpost of the 
 Holy Roman Empire in the centre of its most 
 vulnerable frontier, midway between the mountains 
 of Bohemia and the Baltic Sea, and directly in the 
 path of the still more or less nomadic peoples of the 
 great plain of the north and east of Europe. By 
 conquest he extended his dominions from the Elbe 
 to the Oder this district forming the Middle Mark 
 of Brandenburg and east of the Oder over the 
 New Mark. In the course of some centuries the 
 three Marks passed to the Hohenzollern family, 
 and the Markgravate became an Electorate. Still, 
 Brandenburg lay as before in the midst of a plain, 
 with no natural frontier to protect it either on the 
 north, or south, or east, or west. Militarism was 
 more pronounced than in any other German 
 electorate, for its only defences were men. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, on the conclusion 
 of the Thirty Years' War, the great Elector estab-
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 31 
 
 lished the Hohenzollern system of autocracy, a 
 military organization providing for a very large army 
 in proportion to the population, with specially severe 
 discipline. He also secured the indivisibility of the 
 electorate by establishing a law of primogeniture for 
 the succession ; so that while other German states 
 tended to break into fragments Brandenburg grew 
 in area and strength. It acquired the detached 
 region, East Prussia a German state of an even 
 more military character, established in non-German 
 lands by the knights of the Teutonic Order which 
 was outside the Empire, and when the Electors 
 became Kings they took the title of King of Prussia. 
 Militarism became more and more a sort of State 
 religion in Prussia. King Frederick William, the 
 father of Frederick the Great, whose passion for 
 drill and for gigantic soldiers is famous, wrote : 
 " Desertion is from hell ; it is the work of the 
 children of the devil. No child of God could 
 possibly be guilty of it." In accordance with this 
 maxim he proposed to shoot his son Frederick for 
 trying to run away from his cruelty, and was 
 only deterred by the intercession of neighbouring 
 monarchs. 
 
 Frederick the Great's aggressive and successful 
 wars, waged with unflinching determination against 
 tremendous odds, and his cynical partition of Poland, 
 added Silesia, West Prussia, and Posen to his 
 dominions, and made the kingdom by far the 
 strongest state in northern Germany. He has 
 become a sort of patron saint to Prussia, as Joan
 
 32 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 of Arc to the French. The Napoleonic wars, while 
 temporarily humbling Prussia in the dust, prompted 
 her to create her system of a short term of military 
 service so widely enforced as to create a nation in 
 arms. The final stages of the war also added a great 
 portion of the basin of the Rhine to the Prussian 
 Kingdom. Bismarck, again, played on a larger stage 
 a part corresponding to that of Frederick the Great, 
 and by three wars waged in the period 1864-1871, 
 each an aggressive war, each prepared for by 
 diplomacy little trammelled by scruple, and each 
 entirely successful created the Empire of Germany 
 under the hegemony of Prussia as we know it at the 
 present day. 
 
 Hence we see how the whole of their history has 
 tended to impress upon Prussians certain ideas of 
 policy and political ethics. Firstly, the supreme 
 importance of high national organization, of prepara- 
 tion for war, and of the devotion of the largest 
 possible share of the nation's energies to military 
 objects ; secondly, the profitableness of successful 
 war ; thirdly, the unimportance of the public opinion 
 of foreign countries ; fourthly, the advantage of 
 seizing a favourable moment to attack a neighbour- 
 ing State. It is not surprising, therefore, that Von 
 Rumelen and the fashionable school of German 
 political writers from the time of Bismarck's triumph 
 began to maintain the doctrine that there is, and can 
 be, no international ethic ; that there is nothing 
 above the State ; that the highest duty of the indi- 
 vidual is to the State, and that the State should
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 33 
 
 seek nothing except its own aggrandizement. The 
 general effect of the study of their own history, 
 of the teaching of Nietzsche and Treitschke, and 
 the practical acceptance of the discipline and 
 traditional ideals of the army upon the young 
 Germany of to-day, is eloquently, and with an 
 extraordinary degree of sympathy, described by 
 Professor Cramb : 
 
 " Nietzsche clears away the accumulated rubbish 
 of twelve hundred years; he attempts to set the 
 German imagination back where it was with Alaric 
 and Theodoric, fortified by the experience of twelve 
 centuries, to confront the darkness unaided, un- 
 appalled, triumphant, great and free. 
 
 " Thus while preparing to found a world-empire, 
 Germany is also preparing to create a world-religion. 
 No cultured European nation since the French Revo- 
 lution has made any experiment in creative religion. 
 The experiment which England, with her dull im- 
 agination, has recoiled from, Germany will make ; 
 the fated task which England has declined, she will 
 essay. 
 
 "That is the faith of Young Germany in 1913. 
 The prevalent bent of mind at the universities, in 
 the army amongst the more cultured, is towards 
 what may be described as the religion of Valour, 
 reinterpreted by Napoleon and by Nietzsche the 
 glory of action, heroism, the doing of great things. 
 It is in metaphysics Zarathustra's 'Amor Fati.' It 
 is in politics and ethics Napoleonism. These same 
 young men, who, in this very month, thrill with the 
 scenes of 1813, see in Napoleon the oppressor, but 
 they see in Napoleon's creed the springs of his action, 
 a message of fire : Live dangerously ! 
 
 5
 
 34 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 " Kant's great Imperative was born of the defeats 
 and of the victories of Frederick ; echoes from Kolin 
 and Kunersdorf, as well as from Rossbach, thrid 
 along its majestic phrasing ; it is moulded in heroic 
 suffering, and brought forth in resignation and in 
 grief that is overcome. But in the newer Imperative 
 ring the accents of an earlier, greater prime, the 
 accents heard by the Scamander, which even at 
 Chaeronea did not entirely die away : 
 
 " ' Ye have heard how in old time it was said, 
 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
 earth ; but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, 
 for they shall make the earth their throne. And ye 
 have heard men say, Blessed are the poor in spirit ; 
 but I say unto you, Blessed are the great in soul and 
 the free in spirit, for they shall enter in Valhalla. 
 And ye have heard men say, Blessed are the peace- 
 makers; but I say unto you, Blessed are the war- 
 makers, for they shall be called, if not the children 
 of Jehovah, the children of Odin, who is greater 
 than Jehovah. . . .' 
 
 "This conflict between Christ and Napoleon for 
 the mastery over the minds of men is the most 
 significant phenomenon of the twentieth century. 
 You meet with it in England and in America, as in 
 Austria and Spain. You meet with it even in Italy. 
 In Russia Tolstoi's furious attacks are a proof of its 
 increasing sway. The new spirit in France is an un- 
 acknowledged derivative. But it is in Germany alone 
 that as yet Napoleonism has acquired something of 
 the clearness and self-sufficiency of a formulated 
 creed, above all in Berlin and in the cities and towns 
 that come most within the influence of Berlin. . . . 
 Young Germany, the Germany of to-day, in the 
 writings of Treitschke and of the followers of Treit- 
 schke, studies Napoleonism, illumining politics with 
 an austere and uplifting grandeur. In the writings
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 35 
 
 of Nietzsche and of the followers of Nietzsche they 
 study the same Napoleonism transforming the prin- 
 ciples of everyday life, breathing a new spirit into 
 ethics, transfiguring the tedious, half-hypocritical 
 morality of an earlier generation. . . . 
 
 " Corsica, in a word, has conquered Galilee. 
 
 ". . . To Napoleon the end of life is power, and 
 the imposing of his will upon the wills of other 
 men." 
 
 This we may call neo-Odinism. Its kinship with 
 ancient Odinism appears to be recognized for 
 example, one of the societies affiliated to the Pan- 
 German League calls itself the League of Odin, and 
 we have no difficulty in identifying the specially 
 German god, the old ally of the Hohenzollern 
 dynasty, with Odin. 
 
 Just as in the days of the fall of the Roman Empire 
 the struggle between Christianity and Odinism had 
 to be carried on both in the spiritual and the physical 
 spheres, so now, while the troops of the Allies are 
 battling in the trenches for the principle that there 
 is such a thing as national morality, the decisive 
 conflict must take place within the hearts of the 
 German people themselves. 
 
 The inability of the German Socialist party to 
 exercise any practical check upon the policy of the 
 Government does not detract from the significance 
 of their continual protest against the principles of 
 neo-Odinism. The following is a suppressed article 
 in Vorwdrts, which is stated to have been printed 
 in November :
 
 36 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 " Man does not display all his strength and all his 
 weaknesses save in exceptional situations. On the 
 day of battle certain giants fall, like rotten trees 
 before the tempest. The peoples, like individuals, 
 reveal in times of crisis their hidden virtues or their 
 unknown failings. 
 
 " The present crisis is terrible. ... It shows us 
 that the German people is stricken with a malady 
 which, in the end, may prove fatal and this malady 
 is Jingoism. Thus one names a diseased nationalism 
 which sees neither virtue nor courage in any nation 
 but its own, and which has only insults and suspicion 
 for others. 
 
 " Unhappily this disease appears to have seized on 
 the German people at a time when the Empire was 
 in a particularly flourishing condition, and it was in 
 full blast even before this war broke out. 
 
 " When war was decided on, there was an eruption 
 of Jingoism of the most feverish sort. Violent articles 
 appeared in the Press. In the great cities inflam- 
 matory speeches were made, warlike poems were 
 declaimed, and war-songs were chanted. The con- 
 flagration was regarded as a fete. The campaign 
 was to be a simple promenade to Paris and to 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
 " To argue the contrary was to risk being lynched. 
 As soon as war was actually declared, the people of 
 other nations were subjected to every insult. We 
 were honest Germans ; our adversaries were ' brutal 
 Russians,' ' perfidious English,' ' insolent Serbs.' 
 The mob tore down the signs of shops that bore 
 a few words of English or French. As to who began 
 the war, we were the innocent lambs, whilst the 
 French, Russians, and British, were the wolves of 
 the fable. Those who formerly had imputed to the 
 Jews all the faults of our social state now discovered 
 in England the cause of everything.
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 37 
 
 " At the first victory the flags appeared, the bells 
 rang, perfervid speeches were delivered in public 
 places. In the restaurants nothing was sung but 
 ' Deutschland ueber Alles.' The public, hypnotized, 
 recked nothing of the death-rattle of the wounded on 
 the battlefield, of hundreds of villages in flames, of 
 thousands of people robbed of all their belongings, 
 of German families who awaited with anguish news 
 of their sons engaged in the combat. 
 
 " Then one heard the atrocious details of the war 
 in Belgium. The inhabitants had fired on our 
 soldiers. The Belgians were ' assassins,' * savage 
 beasts,' unworthy of any consideration. They must 
 expiate their crimes by sword and fire. No one 
 troubled to explain the uprising of the Belgian 
 people. Our perfervid patriots could not understand 
 that a people must lose its calmness on seeing itself 
 unexpectedly attacked, its fields laid waste, its towns 
 and villages occupied, its men sacrificed in battle. 
 
 " Those who desire war ought to accept the evils 
 that it brings. To be enthusiastic for war and then 
 to descend to petty stories about dum-dum bullets is 
 simply to grow besotted. Our Jingoes have yelled 
 a hundred thousand times since the war began, ' The 
 duty of every citizen is to defend his country to his 
 last breath.' Those poor wretches of Belgium and 
 France, have they done anything else ? Have they 
 not defended home and fatherland ? If WE acted 
 thus, OUR conduct would be heroic ; on the part 
 of our adversaries, it is rebellion and murder. 
 
 " Ah ! don't let us throw stones at others, we who 
 live in glass houses ! Let us not look for the mote 
 in our neighbour's eye, but take the beam out of our 
 own. In this way we shall make the first step 
 towards V entente Internationale and towards peace. 
 
 " Let us understand, then, that we are not merely 
 Germans, French, or Russians, but that we are all
 
 38 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 men, that all the peoples are of the same blood, and 
 that they have no right to kill one another, but that 
 they ought to love and help one another. Such is 
 Christian, humane conduct. Man does not belong 
 to one nation only he belongs to humanity." 
 
 Even before the war, the world has noted the 
 unceasing efforts of Kaiser Wilhelm II. to foster 
 and intensify this ethical trend which I call neo- 
 Odinism, and to combine it with a flaming devotion 
 to the State and to the Hohenzollern dynasty. 
 But it has hardly, in general, realized what a tre- 
 mendous power for this purpose lay in his hands 
 through the State control (which practically means 
 the Emperor's control) of all University and school 
 teaching, against which there has been but an in- 
 effective counterpoise in the independent intellectual 
 life of the smaller German states and the educa- 
 tional organization of the Social Democratic party 
 Professor Geddes, a year or two ago, told me how he 
 had been shown the equipment of Berlin University, 
 and then being entertained at dinner, and being 
 called upon for a speech, he thanked the assembled 
 professors for many things, and most of all " Because 
 you have taken me into your Holy of Holies, and 
 there, in the innermost shrine of your University, 
 you have shown me . . . the Emperor's Jack-Boots." 
 Then one grey-haired professor jumped up, and, with 
 the greatest excitement, shouted, "Yes, we do worship 
 those Boots ; we would die for those Boots !" 
 
 Out of innumerable articles written since the out- 
 break of the war, dealing with the spirit of German
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 39 
 
 militarism, I select a passage for quotation from the 
 first of two articles in the Daily Chronicle by Mr. Ford 
 Madox Hueffer, on the educational policy of the 
 Kaiser, and his personal responsibility for the ill- 
 balanced condition of the German mind : 
 
 " No English officer could ever by any possibility 
 expect a woman to get out of his way ; or let us put 
 it that no Englishwoman would ever think of getting 
 out of an officer's way. But no German woman 
 would ever think of not getting out of an officer's 
 way, since, by doing that, in her humble manner 
 she would be assisting in however minute a degree 
 in the smooth rolling onwards of the mechanism of 
 the State. In such a detail this process of State 
 subjection seems absurd. But it will assume a 
 different aspect when you consider that to-day 
 Prussian women are really entering the drawing- 
 rooms of Berlin, dressed in their gayest clothes, and, 
 with shining eyes and elated faces, saying, ' It is my 
 joy to announce to you that my son and my husband 
 died the hero's death yesterday for their King and 
 their Fatherland.' 
 
 " That is a terrible fineness ; it has been produced 
 by the generation -long discipline of stepping off 
 sidewalks to let Prussian officers pass by ; by the 
 generation-long recognition of the fact that the State 
 comes first, and that the first duty of the State is 
 the waging of war. Who, then, is responsible for the 
 present war? Undoubtedly, in a sense, it is the 
 Prussian people these women with the shining 
 eyes, these officers striding along the sidewalks, these 
 officials sleeplessly tinkering away at the smallest 
 details of the State machine, and the Prussian 
 people who willingly subordinate themselves, and 
 who really believe that the highest and most glorious
 
 40 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 function of a man of homo erectus eurofxzus sapiens ! 
 is to die the hero's death (den Heldentot sterben) for 
 King and Fatherland." 
 
 " Terrible fineness " seems to me exactly the right 
 term. We have to remember that this German neo- 
 Odinism, like all ideas which have forcibly swayed 
 the minds of men, has its element of truth and moral 
 appeal as well as an element of falsity and savagery. 
 We have to confess just as much as the German 
 puts himself morally on a lower plane than people 
 of other States by his denial of any duty to humanity 
 beyond the State, he is on a higher plane in that he 
 does, to a far greater extent than we do, practically 
 recognize and perform his duty to the State ; and 
 that German officialism for efficiency and honesty 
 surpasses anything that the rest of the world can 
 show. We have to confess that in ordinary times 
 the average Briton, Frenchman, or Russian is a 
 slacker compared with the average German. To 
 leave on one side our Allies, Germany should make 
 us ashamed of the extent to which we allow private 
 interests to override those of the Commonwealth, 
 and the quarrels of factions to imperil the general 
 safety. 
 
 We also have to recognize that the evil element 
 in these Prussian ethics has, largely under cover of 
 German prestige, acquired an extraordinary vogue 
 throughout the world, especially in England and in 
 America. It is actually at the present moment an- 
 nounced that at the Oxford Union an unhappy young 
 man is going to uphold the doctrine, " There are no
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 41 
 
 ethics in international affairs." The doctrine is 
 ridiculous, of course. Leaving aside those concep- 
 tions of God and of Humanity, which almost all 
 thinking men reverence, the mere fact that there are 
 other nations, is bound in the long run to bring dis- 
 aster upon the nation that refuses to admit any duty 
 to its neighbours. 
 
 If now we attempt to summarize the results of this 
 hasty survey, we find that while the influence of 
 tribal religion and of differences between Christian 
 sects in creating war may be treated now as negligible, 
 and the war of thirteen centuries between Christianity 
 and Mohammedanism is now at last wearing to its 
 end, yet there still remains, as perhaps the most 
 potent force making for international war, a certain 
 ethical cult of Militarism which has Berlin for its 
 Mecca. That the Kaiser Wilhelm II. is the High 
 Priest of this cult may be admitted, but we need not 
 exaggerate his personal responsibility. Herr Sassen- 
 bach told us last May, " In Germany every officer in 
 the army receives the same homage and admiration 
 as here you pay to an Oxford Blue." Necessarily 
 the whole army is an organization for the promotion 
 of a standard of values which leads to so agreeable a 
 result ; and the Kaiser's force springs from the fact 
 that he is a true representative of the governing 
 military caste. 
 
 But we must now attempt a deeper and more 
 general analysis. For it is only in its peculiar inten- 
 sity and in its particular form e.g., its close asso- 
 ciation with a bureaucratic system of government, 
 
 6
 
 42 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 and a special docility of the civil population that 
 this Odinism or Napoleonism or Militarism, or what- 
 ever we may choose to call it, is specifically German or 
 Prussian. Not only has it its devotees among all 
 nations and at all times, but also it is obviously at 
 bottom a perversion of ethical instincts that are 
 essential to human nature a perversion that results 
 from exaggeration and the upsetting of the true 
 balance by the ignoring of other essential principles. 
 I venture to suggest that popular phrase and fable, 
 in which are frequently embodied summaries of the 
 sociological thought and experience of many genera- 
 tions of men, give us a clue to the nature both of the 
 instinctive roots of militarism and of the basis of the 
 ethical forces which should control and balance those 
 instincts. The phrase I refer to is the constant use 
 of the word " virility " in this connection ; the fable, 
 that of the loves of Venus and Mars. One delegate 
 at a recent Women's Suffrage conference dropped 
 the statement " The male beast will fight," and I 
 believe that most women will accept that as the 
 fundamental truth about war ; on the other hand, 
 there is an unlimited store of proverbial wisdom 
 laying the blame for enmity between men on feminine 
 influence. If we may trust popular wisdom we must 
 infer that the cult of War is an intellectual outgrowth 
 from an emotional base, that base being part of a 
 complex of instincts closely associated with sex. If 
 this be so, it is equally clear that the desire for peace, 
 the hatred of destruction, the detestation of wanton 
 and unnecessary suffering, and, still more, of the
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 43 
 
 rising into dominance of the will to kill and wound 
 and destroy, which form the emotional basis of the 
 cult of Peace, are the natural psychological outgrowth 
 of the maternal instincts. 
 
 The fortunes of the struggle, therefore, between 
 the cult of Peace and the cult of War will depend 
 partly on the effective force of the instincts behind 
 these cults respectively, and partly upon the intellec- 
 tual weapons of social or ethical or religious theory, 
 which the evolution of human thought supplies on 
 either side. 
 
 I have advisedly said " maternal instincts," not 
 " instinct." If there were a single and indivisible 
 maternal instinct inherited only by women, then the 
 inference from what has been said above is that the 
 hope of eliminating international war must depend 
 on an increase in the influence of women in the 
 affairs of nations, and particularly, in constitutional 
 countries, on the acquisition of the franchise by 
 women. That this inference is made by many is 
 shown by the fact that, in general, the warmest male 
 supporters of women's suffrage are keen pacifists ; 
 and the strong opponents are either militarists or 
 men who fear that as a consequence of the admission 
 of women to political power, their own country's 
 defensive forces will be weakened to a dangerous 
 degree. In reality, however, the relation between 
 mother and child during the long period of dependence 
 of the human young, has evolved not one simple 
 instinct only, but a number of instincts of considerable 
 variety, each separate instinct being a tendency to
 
 44 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 respond to a particular call or stimulus, with a par- 
 ticular type of action and a corresponding emotion, 
 and most of these instincts are equally inherited by 
 both sexes. The inheritance by the male of instincts 
 evolved from the maternal relation may with con- 
 siderable probability be regarded as the origin of the 
 family grouping, which, according to the greater 
 weight of sociological opinion, dates from the 
 arboreal stage of human ancestry ; and the paternal 
 relation so constituted again originates instincts, 
 which also pass by inheritance to both sexes. The 
 practical result on human character to-day we recog- 
 nize by talking of " parental " and " protective," as 
 well as " maternal," instincts. 
 
 It may be thought that all this leads nowhere, 
 seeing it is talk about the deep-rooted forces in 
 human nature which are not likely to change. The 
 answer is that, while these fundamental instincts 
 change either in nature or intensity only by imper- 
 ceptible degrees, yet the most rapid changes can 
 take place in the influence exerted by the emotions 
 springing from them under changing social con- 
 ditions. During the last forty years there has been 
 over the whole of Western Europe an extremely 
 rapid fall in death-rates and an equally rapid fall in 
 birth-rates. The environment in which the funda- 
 mental instincts play has been profoundly modified. 
 Year by year fewer babies are born ; on the average, 
 the more urbanized mother has to fear a more 
 difficult and painful child-birth ; with more sensitive 
 nerves both parents suffer more from the troubles
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 45 
 
 and cares which parentage brings. Each individual 
 infant on the average costs more in anxiety and 
 mental effort, not only to his own particular parents, 
 but also to the community at large, which exercises 
 parental functions through sanitary inspectors, 
 health visitors, schools and teachers, and State and 
 local legislation and administration in many other 
 guises. The lower the birth-rate and the greater the 
 care spent on each child born, the less complacently 
 will people look forward to the destruction of life on 
 the battlefield, whether they think in the phrase 
 Kanonen-fntter or Heldentot. 
 
 Also, while fewer babies are born, each baby, on 
 the average, stays longer in the world. With the 
 decline of the death-rate, the proportion of old and 
 middle-aged increases. The view of life of the old 
 and middle-aged counts for more, relatively to that 
 of the young, merely because there are more of them 
 to count. In this way also, quite apart from any 
 change in individual character, the mass-psychology 
 of the nations is being changed speedily ; the young 
 may be just as fiery, but their fire has to encounter 
 a greater mass of middle-aged caution and phlegm. 
 
 Again, while the innate characteristics of man 
 may be regarded as for practical purposes un- 
 changeable, the average effective character can be 
 greatly changed by a change in educational methods. 
 Kaiser Wilhelm, in the same year in which he dis- 
 missed Bismarck, instructed the teachers of Germany 
 that it was their duty to provide soldiers of the right 
 sort, and to combat social democracy. Germany,
 
 46 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 like Sparta of old, set to work to foster militarism 
 by education. But in this respect she was running 
 counter to the general course of educational progress 
 throughout the world, though, indeed, with such 
 force as to create a considerable eddy, and to stimu- 
 late militarist tendencies in our own schools. Yet, 
 I believe, the biggest change in the upbringing of 
 boys throughout the English-speaking countries is 
 in the opposite direction, though it is one which has 
 been almost overlooked. From a period of unknown 
 antiquity the education of boys has been dominated 
 by the idea that boys must not be girls. For girls 
 dolls were appropriate ; it was right that in them the 
 maternal instinct should be early aroused. But woe 
 to the boy who wanted to play with his sister's doll ! 
 Suddenly that sex disability was, in effect, swept 
 away. Mr. Theodore Roose veldt stood for the 
 Presidency of America, and Teddy Bears appeared 
 in every home, to be loved and cherished by boys 
 and girls equally. They appealed to instincts equally 
 present in both. It is impossible to judge of the 
 nature or extent of the future result of this new 
 influence on the development of character ; but we 
 may be sure it will have its influence. 
 
 My general conclusion is that the effective force 
 of the maternal instinct, the emotional basis of 
 Pacifism, is, and has been for the last forty years, 
 increasing very rapidly. It is also, I believe, a fact, 
 and if so certainly a fact of equal importance, that 
 the general trend of scientific thought during the 
 past century has swept away what intellectual basis
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 47 
 
 there was for militarism, and supplied new arguments 
 on the other side. The great scientific achievements 
 of the eighteenth century were in the field of physics 
 and chemistry, and Newton was the representative 
 man of science, Newton the physicist, astronomer, 
 and Master of the Mint. By the end of the century 
 a science, or pseudo- science, of economics was built 
 up, which justified war as one of the methods of 
 checking the too great redundancy of population. 
 But throughout the nineteenth century the greatest 
 scientific achievements have been in the field of 
 biology, and in working out the principles of heredity 
 and racial progress. Consequently, except in intel- 
 lectual backwaters, it is now recognized that the 
 problems of human life must be considered with 
 even greater care from the standpoint of eugenics 
 than from that of economics. The working out of 
 valid conclusions from that standpoint is one of the 
 great tasks of the twentieth century, and we cannot 
 anticipate the results. But already, in England, 
 France, and Germany, people are thinking of the 
 war in the terms of eugenics. War claims the best 
 of the manhood of each nation and destroys it. 
 Each country may rejoice that its young men have 
 shown that they can die the hero-death ; but it 
 cannot forget that war did not create their heroism, 
 it was only the test that showed it was already 
 there. War selects the hero for slaughter, so that 
 the inheritance of heroism for the next and all sub- 
 sequent generations is cut off. 
 
 Meanwhile war in its character grows with each 
 example more grimly terrible and less romantic.
 
 LECTURE III 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 
 
 WHILE the present war arises partly from the con- 
 flict of economic interests, and is in greater measure 
 a contest between opposing ethical ideals, it is 
 primarily and directly the result of the clash of 
 Imperialist and Nationalist ideals, of Empire against 
 Empire, and of Empire against Nation. 
 
 A Polish sociologist, M. de Majewski, has enun- 
 ciated a striking theory with regard to nationality. 
 Reality, according to him, exists in four grades : 
 Reality A, which is the Atom ; Reality B, the Cell ; 
 Reality C, the Individual Organism ; and Reality D, 
 the Nation. The cell, he argues, is built up out of 
 atoms, and the body out of cells, by co-ordination, 
 and the creation of a union of a higher rank out of 
 existences of the lower rank depends upon their 
 adjustment to one another in co-operation and with 
 differentiation. Human aggregations, therefore, to 
 meet the test of being real social units, must be built 
 up on those two principles of co-ordination in their 
 activities and differentiation in their separate func- 
 tions ; and this can only take place through mental 
 contact. Since mental contact again depends upon 
 
 48
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 49 
 
 language, language alone, and not government, re- 
 ligion or race, determines true nationality. Like all 
 nice, clear-cut theories about human affairs this one is 
 open to much criticism, and it attains its neatness 
 and simplicity by emphasizing one element in a com- 
 plex situation and ignoring others. But the element 
 it emphasizes is of the first importance, and we may 
 take it not only as representing the Polish view, but 
 also as giving a clue to the creation of national 
 sentiment in countries where it has recently developed. 
 It is indeed possible for true nationality to exist 
 among a people though divided among themselves by 
 language, as, for instance, in Belgium, which speaks 
 French and Flemish ; in Switzerland, which speaks 
 German, Swiss-German, French, and Romansch. 
 Fundamentally, what creates national unity is not a 
 common medium of thought, but the possession of 
 a common content of thought, and the memories of 
 sorrows and joys shared in common may create a 
 1 national unity in spite of differences of language. On 
 the other hand, it would be difficult to over-estimate 
 the importance of unity of language. We see at the 
 present time the internal strain to which Switzerland 
 is subjected through the tendency of German- 
 speaking Switzerland to sympathize with Germany, 
 and French-speaking Switzerland to sympathize 
 with France. In the Balkan Peninsula the nine- 
 teenth century saw the development, in one State 
 after another, first of a quickened desire for educa- 
 tion, then the diffusion of literature through districts 
 linked together by unity of language, and then on 
 
 7
 
 50 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 the basis of the possession of a common medium of 
 thought, the acquisition of a common body of 
 thought, from which arose more and more imperative 
 demands for the means of common action. If, then, 
 we try to answer that question now so frequently 
 put, What is nationality ? I think we can best say 
 that nationality is the result of the possession of 
 a common body of thought which inspires a common 
 emotion, and that a man is of the nationality to 
 which he thinks he belongs. 
 
 The relation of the spirit of nationality to war 
 depends much on the tone of the national feeling, 
 which varies in character and intensity among the 
 peoples of Europe. I remember, nearly thirty years 
 ago, a Pole reciting to me his National Anthem, and 
 the intense excitement that it roused in him. I 
 asked him to translate it, but he would only tell me 
 that its dominant thought was that of wading to 
 Moscow through a sea of Russian blood. In countries 
 like England and Russia, which have had freedom 
 from foreign domination during the whole of the 
 period in which they have possessed the conscious- 
 ness of national unity, national feeling lacks that 
 spirit of bitterness ; while, on the other hand, in 
 nations whose history has been one of subjection, 
 like Poland and Ireland, it is lacking in the element 
 of pride. But when a nation cherishes the memories 
 of past greatness, of subjection, and yet again, of 
 emancipation, then there is both bitterness and pride 
 in its national feeling ; and the highest level of 
 intensity may be reached.
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 51 
 
 Such a history, I need hardly say, has been that 
 of Italy and Germany ; it is less recognized that it is 
 emphatically that of Serbia. The time of Serb great- 
 ness, when Serbia held rank among the more highly 
 civilized States of Europe was as far back as the 
 fourteenth century. It was in the year 1389 that 
 Serbia fell before the tide of Turkish conquest at 
 Kossovo. Then followed centuries of slow degrada- 
 tion and impoverishment, varied by rebellion and 
 massacre, till in 1829, with the help of Russia, a 
 certain measure of autonomy was secured. Her 
 history for the past hundred years has been one of 
 most painfully slow, but yet continual, progress 
 towards liberty and unity. A young Serb recently 
 said to me that he feared that the crushing of the 
 armies of his country by Austria was imminent, but 
 in that case his people would revert to guerilla 
 warfare, that they would never surrender. If on 
 conclusion of war the Allies failed to realize the 
 importance of the Serbian question, and endeavoured 
 to settle it by compromise, such a settlement would 
 only be the prelude for fresh wars. All that made 
 life really worth living for him, and those who 
 thought like him, was dependent upon the attainment 
 of the complete unity and liberty of the whole Serbian 
 race and the attainment of that greater Serbia which 
 should include Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, 
 and Herzegovina. 
 
 I have already dealt with the motives which im- 
 pelled the decision of the German and Austrian 
 Empires that Serbia should be crushed. What we
 
 52 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 have witnessed during these months displays in 
 letters of fire the termination of her people that 
 Serbia shall not be crushed, and that no Imperial 
 ambitions of any empire whatsoever shall deprive 
 them of their dearly won liberties, or induce them to 
 resign their cherished hopes. Thus Imperialism 
 meets nationality ; and the collision plunges Europe 
 into war. 
 
 Whenever such a collision takes place between 
 a great empire which seems actuated J>y " the will 
 to power " displaying itself in a will to expand, and a 
 small nation that makes no claim for domination 
 over aliens, but only demands freedom and unity for 
 itself, it is the small nation that commands the 
 general sympathy of humanity, and very emphatically 
 our own sympathies when we are in the position 
 of unbiassed neutrals. We glory in the memory of 
 how Sir Philip Sydney died for Holland and Lord 
 Byron for Greece, and of the Englishmen who fought 
 with Garibaldi. We hear frequent references to the 
 sanctity of nationality as a necessary link between 
 the narrow circles of the family, and of personal 
 friendship, which most easily draw out our affections, 
 and the whole of humanity to which we admit a duty 
 of brotherly love, but which baffles imagination by 
 its multiplicity and the immensity of its moral 
 distances. 
 
 No one, I imagine, has more nobly expressed this 
 view than Joseph Mazzini. Out of many passages 
 that might be chosen, take these from " The Duties 
 of Man " :
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 53 
 
 " O my brothers, love your Country ! Our country 
 is our Home, the house that God has given us, 
 placing therein a numerous family that loves us, and 
 whom we love ; a family with whom we sympathize 
 more readily, and whom we understand more quickly 
 than we do others; and which, from its being centred 
 round a given spot, and from the homogeneous 
 nature of its elements, is adapted to a special form of 
 activity. . . . 
 
 "In labouring for our own country on the right 
 principle, we labour for Humanity. . . . 
 
 " Humanity is a vast army advancing to the 
 conquest of lands unknown, against enemies both 
 powerful and astute. The peoples are the different 
 corps, the divisions of that army. Each of them has 
 its post assigned to it, and its special operation to 
 execute; and the common victory depends on the 
 exactitude with which these distinct operations shall 
 be fulfilled. Disturb not the order of battle. Forsake 
 not the banner given you by God. . . . Say not /, 
 but we. Let each man among you strive to incarnate 
 his country in himself. Let each man among you 
 regard himself as a guarantee, responsible for his 
 fellow-countrymen, and learn so to govern his actions 
 as to cause his country to be loved and respected 
 through him. Your country is the sign of the mission 
 God has given you to fulfil towards Humanity. The 
 faculties and forces of all her sons should be associated 
 in the accomplishment of that mission. . . . 
 
 " Never deny your sister nations. Be it yours 
 to evolve the life of your country in loveliness and 
 strength; free from all servile fears or sceptical 
 doubts ; maintaining as its basis the People ; as its 
 guide the consequences of the principles of its 
 Religious Faith, logically and energetically applied ; 
 its strength, the united strength of all ; its aim, the 
 fulfilment of the mission given to it by God.
 
 54 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 " And so long as you are ready to die for Humanity, 
 the life of your country will be immortal." 
 
 The Nationalism that responds to these appeals 
 "Never deny your sister nations!" "Be ready to 
 die for Humanity" is, I am inclined to think, the 
 basis of the hopes for the future of humanity of 
 many people of European countries who are in- 
 cluded under the loose name " Liberals." It is, for 
 example, the idea which in the eyes of many of his 
 admirers Gladstone stood for when he emerged from 
 political retirement to thunder against the Bulgarian 
 atrocities. The article quoted above from Vorwdrts 
 echoes Mazzini's thought, almost his phrases. The 
 organization of the world into national States, each 
 inspired by this form of Nationalism, is indeed a 
 noble ideal. 
 
 Unfortunately we have to admit that there is also a 
 baser and that a more familiar type the Nationalism 
 which demands liberty and integrity and sovereignty 
 for itself, but for itself alone. Starting from Shakes- 
 peare, whose favourite hero was Henry V., the 
 originator of one of the most criminal and rightly 
 disastrous wars of aggression on record, we might go 
 through the whole of our own patriotic poetry, and 
 then through that of nation after nation, and find 
 very little that is wholly free from the taint of either 
 hatred or envy or scorn of the foreigner. I doubt if 
 there is a nation with an organized system of educa- 
 tion whose school histories do not in effect falsify the 
 record of the national dealings with other countries 
 either by omission or by unfair emphasis. This was
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 55 
 
 first brought home to my mind a number of years 
 ago when for the first and only time I visited 
 Versailles. Among the countless battle pictures I 
 amused myself by looking for Crecy and Poitiers. 
 They were not to be found ; but I did find numerous 
 pictures representing battles of that time which I 
 had never heard of. I wondered then what sort of 
 record of the wars of Edward III. the French school- 
 boy reads. Our boys get the impression that those 
 wars were a brilliant series of English victories. 
 But seeing that, as a matter of fact, the chief result 
 of those wars was the expulsion of the English King 
 from the vast French dominions which he had in- 
 herited from his ancestors, French schoolbooks may 
 tell the story in a very different way, and yet not less 
 accurately. 
 
 I need hardly point out that Nationalism of this 
 narrow type is a potent force for war. So well is 
 this recognized that the main effort of organized 
 Peace propaganda has been directed to combating 
 it, by promoting better acquaintance between nations, 
 in the hope that mutual knowledge will lead at least 
 to mutual respect. 
 
 But those who seek for international peace by way 
 of a world of free, independent, sovereign nations 
 mutually respecting one another's rights, and sinking 
 hostilities in a friendly rivalry for primacy in service 
 to humanity, find themselves face to face, not only 
 with the British Empire, a somewhat solid fact, but 
 also with a fairly clearly marked tendency through- 
 out the world towards the aggregation of nationali-
 
 56 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 ties into empires, and this fact it is fatal to ignore. 
 We have to turn, therefore, to the examination of 
 the nature of Empire and of Imperialism. 
 
 Professor Geddes has said that " every Empire is 
 the Empire of a City." We may argue that this is 
 an overstatement, alleging that it would be more 
 correct to call the Austrian Empire the Empire of 
 the Hapsburgs, or the German Empire the Empire 
 of the Hohenzollerns, than to regard them as the 
 Empires of Vienna and Berlin respectively. Never- 
 theless, the statement is generally true, and, more- 
 over, we find that European empires derive their 
 origin ultimately from the City-state of the Medi- 
 terranean. First there were struggles of the greater 
 and more successful of the trading cities possessed of 
 protected seaports, like Athens, and, on a larger 
 scale, Sidon, Tyre, and Carthage, for wider spheres 
 of exploitation ; then Rome came into collision with 
 Carthage, and gave the world not only the name, 
 but a new type of the reality of empire. Professor 
 Geddes suggested that an empire might be defined 
 as the area exploited by a particular city ; but 
 here again we note that empires founded purely upon 
 exploitation, however powerful in appearance, are 
 built of iron mixed with clay. The secret of the 
 triumph of Rome was that Rome possessed an ideal 
 of imperial law and justice, imperfectly realized, no 
 doubt, but still sufficiently powerful for Cicero to 
 appeal to it and Virgil to boast of it. 
 
 We are accustomed to look upon the Romans as 
 soldiers and conquerors who loved war and domi-
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 57 
 
 nated alien populations by the might of their legions. 
 No idea could be farther from the truth. At the 
 height of its power the Roman Empire, with a 
 frontier of thousands of miles, stretching from the 
 Firth of Clyde through the forests of Germany, the 
 plain of Southern Russia, the borders of Persia, 
 Arabia, the Sahara to the Atlantic Ocean, only 
 maintained in the whole of its armies and navies 
 about the same number of men as Serbia alone has 
 been putting in the field in the present war. 
 
 The strength of the Roman Empire lay in the 
 services it rendered to the countries that were com- 
 prised within it, and the true symbols of the Empire 
 were not so much the Roman eagles as the Roman 
 high-roads, aqueducts, municipal institutions, and 
 the spread of the cultivation of the most useful 
 plants and trees, and, most of all, that system of 
 Roman law which is the foundation of the jurispru- 
 dence of the world. 
 
 On this account Dante, who was perhaps the 
 most enlightened political thinker as well as the 
 greatest poet of the Middle Ages, regarded the 
 Empire as equally sacred with the Church, and 
 selected for consignment to the bottom pit of hell as 
 the world's three greatest criminals, Judas Iscariot, 
 Brutus, and Cassius. There, in an atmosphere of 
 the intensest cold, the devil perpetually champs 
 with his teeth the supreme traitor of Christianity 
 and the mortal enemies of the Imperial idea. 
 
 The Roman Empire fell, partly as a result of 
 assaults from without, partly through certain deadly 
 
 8
 
 58 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 causes of internal weakness. The spread of malaria 
 in Italy and Greece sapped the physical and moral 
 vigour of the peoples whose native civilization the 
 Empire created and extended ; and the development 
 of great landed estates cultivated by slave labour 
 destroyed the peasantry. Both these facts have 
 their obvious moral for Britain. But far more sig- 
 nificant for our instruction, as well as more pertinent 
 to this discussion, is the third source of Rome's 
 weakness. Rome failed to maintain the springs of 
 local energy and public spirit. The Empire was, by 
 degrees, entirely centralized. There was too little 
 scope for disinterested activity between the in- 
 dividual citizen and the distant Imperial power. 
 For lack of local public spirit and power of inde- 
 pendent organized effort the Empire had no defence 
 when once the Imperial legions failed to hold in 
 check the attacks of the barbarians ; and no doubt it 
 was mainly because each part of the Empire desired 
 to share as lightly as possible in the burden of 
 defence, that the armies, as a whole, became inade- 
 quate for their task. 
 
 The Roman is the mother of existing European 
 empires. This is true of the British Empire, for 
 when the Western Empire fell and Rome itself was 
 captured by barbarians, one distant city on the banks 
 of the Thames remained unconquered. Though 
 London afterwards was willing to acknowledge 
 Jutish, Saxon, Danish, and Norman Kings, yet the 
 political history of our country may be described as 
 dealing with the spread of London dominion in
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 59 
 
 succession over England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, 
 and the vast dominions beyond the sea. It is true 
 of the Central European empires. The crowning 
 of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of the Holy 
 Roman Empire was the result of the desire of the 
 Prankish conqueror to succeed to the ancient Empire 
 rather than to destroy it. The " Holy Roman 
 Empire" was perhaps never holy; it ceased soon 
 to be Roman and became German, and the power 
 of its feudal Princes was so much greater than that 
 of their overlord, that it was no empire in the 
 Roman sense; but it lasted from A.D. 800 to 1804, 
 when it was converted into an Austrian Empire, 
 thereby leaving a gap to be filled in 1871 by the 
 creation of the present German Empire, which has 
 learnt its aspirations partly from the Holy Roman 
 Empire in its most brilliant periods, partly from the 
 British Empire, and partly from Rome. As for 
 France, in the reign of Louis XIV. Paris became 
 an Imperial city, avowedly imitating and emulating 
 the Augustan epoch. Napoleon was a copyist of 
 Julius Caesar, and since 1870 Paris has rescued 
 Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco from Mohammedan 
 rule, and begun to regain for them the prosperity 
 and civilization which they enjoyed under Rome, 
 and has carried the Latin tradition and civilization 
 into regions where Caesar's eagles never flew. Lastly, 
 as has been pointed out above, the Russian Empire 
 the Empire of Moscow and of Petrograd has the 
 same filial connection with the Eastern Empire and 
 with Constantinople as London has with Rome.
 
 60 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 The Portuguese, Dutch, and to a less extent the 
 Spanish, Empires, show a reversion to the Cartha- 
 ginian type. 
 
 This strange fact about the Roman Empire that, 
 when apparently destroyed, it springs up again in 
 the form of many empires, is very significant. 
 Does it mean that empire, like nationality, is a 
 necessary phase in the evolution of human society ? 
 
 Leaving that question aside for the moment, we 
 note that Imperialism is a fertile mother of wars. 
 There are frontier wars occurring in the progress of 
 Imperial expansion, as the French, Italian, and 
 British wars in Africa, and the wars on the frontier 
 of India. There are the wars in which an expanding 
 empire comes into conflict with a free nation, and 
 endeavours to absorb it or bring it to a condition of 
 subservience. There are the wars which result from 
 revolting nationalities comprised within the sphere 
 of a decaying empire, like the War of Greek Inde- 
 pendence. Lastly, there are the wars of empire 
 against empire. 
 
 The play of the forces of Nationalist and Imperialist 
 feeling in the present war is most complex and 
 various. In the first place, we have to note that 
 while Imperialism is not necessarily irreconcilable 
 with nationality, yet in the case of the Austrian 
 Empire its very basis is the denial of nationality. 
 The history during the nineteenth century of the 
 Austrian Empire has been that of a continual contest 
 between the two dominating nationalities, the Teuton 
 and the Magyar, which finally have reached a sort of
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 61 
 
 insecure harmony, by combining to oppress the other 
 nationalities which comprise the majority of the 
 total population the Poles, Italians, Roumanians, 
 Czechs, and Serbs. Then, again, between Germany 
 and France there is the issue of Alsace-Lorraine and 
 the wounded national feeling of France. On the 
 East there is the issue of Poland, that pathetic land, 
 where true national feeling has been growing in 
 intensity ever since national existence perished. 
 Lastly, there are the three inter-Imperial struggles 
 that between Germany and France for the domina- 
 tion of Morocco ; that between Germany and Russia 
 for hegemony in the Balkan Peninsula; and that 
 between Germany and Britain for the supremacy of 
 the seas. 
 
 Good people, it seems to me, are apt to be a gene- 
 ration behind the times in their thinking. The 
 aspirants after peace and human brotherhood have 
 taken nationality into account, but hitherto, I fear, 
 they have failed to grasp the power of the forces 
 which are creating the political reconstruction of the 
 world in great empires. Many of them seem to have 
 no use for the idea of empire ; they thrust it out of 
 their minds, as something that disturbs their system 
 of thought with regard to the great ideals they have 
 adopted, and the plan for attaining them which they 
 have conceived. It is a fatal habit of mind ; it prac- 
 tically results in making a present to the Odinists of 
 the growing forces behind Imperialism. 
 
 How rapidly these forces are growing may be 
 judged from one or two examples. Sixty years ago
 
 62 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 our statesmen thrust the Orange River Colony, against 
 its will, out of the Empire, and compelled it to be 
 independent. In the current phrase of that time 
 the Colonies were regarded as a burden on the 
 Mother Country. Twelve years ago we sacrificed 
 250,000,000, the lives of twenty thousand British 
 soldiers, and over twenty thousand women and chil- 
 dren who died in the Concentration Camps, and 
 uncounted thousands of men, women, and children, 
 who died on the veldt, in a war, the result, if not the 
 object, of which was to bring the Orange River 
 Colony with the Transvaal back into the Imperial 
 circle. Bismarck, after the Franco-Prussian War, 
 held that colonies were good things for Germany to 
 encourage Continental rivals to possess, but un- 
 desirable acquisitions for Germany herself. Some 
 twelve years afterwards either he was converted to 
 the contrary opinion or overruled, and he acquired 
 dominions many times as great in area as Germany 
 in Africa and the Far East. Since then the German 
 Empire in distant lands has grown, but not nearly 
 so fast as the appetite for more. 
 
 I must ask your pardon for dwelling on such 
 obvious and familiar facts, but we are apt to miss the 
 significance of facts, sometimes in consequence of 
 their very familiarity. Can you call to mind the 
 appearance of the political map of the world now as 
 compared with fifty years ago ? At the present time 
 the whole of Africa, with the exception of the rugged 
 mountains of Abyssinia and the minute strip of 
 Liberia, is parcelled out among the European Powers.
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 63 
 
 In Asia we have the huge dominions of Russia, 
 Britain, and France, together with what may prob- 
 ably become a Chino-Japanese Federation, occupying 
 almost the whole of that mighty continent. If we 
 turn to the New World, we find even the United 
 States drawn or driven along the Imperial road, and 
 while the destinies of South and Central America 
 remain a puzzle, we can have little doubt that they 
 will involve, somehow or other, aggregation into 
 larger units. Gibbon estimated the population of 
 the Roman Empire at one hundred and twenty 
 millions, and expressed the opinion that so great a 
 number of human beings had never been united 
 under any other single government. To-day by far 
 the larger part of humanity is comprised in empires 
 of a greater magnitude, and, apart from the present 
 war, which may, or may not, hasten the process, the 
 disproportion has been tending to become over- 
 whelming. 
 
 The explanation of this as a development of the 
 last half-century, is very simple. The tendency of 
 empires to aggrandizement has always been in exist- 
 ence, but certain checks, very powerful in the past, 
 have largely ceased to operate. The area which can 
 effectively be ruled from a given centre is limited by 
 the distance from that centre, but the distance must 
 be reckoned not in miles, but in time ; and not even 
 so much in the time necessary for the transport of 
 troops and supplies, as in that required for the com- 
 munication of information to, and orders from, the 
 governing centre. While the time required for
 
 64 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 transport has been cut down, and continues to be 
 cut down, by railways and steam navigation, that 
 required for communication has been practically 
 annihilated by the telegraph. In the centre of Africa 
 and over the islands of the Pacific, the wireless 
 station and the thin line of copper wire are the most 
 significant symbols of empire. 
 
 But these revolutions in the conditions of trans- 
 port and communication are only the removal of a 
 check to Imperial expansion, the forces that create 
 that expansion have still to be looked for. The word 
 "empire" means, properly, "military command" 
 which is, perhaps, in itself a reason why Pacifists 
 dislike it and among the most powerful motives for 
 expansion is the desire for military strength. In 
 general, an increase in the size of an empire adds to 
 its total force for war, though not at all in proportion 
 to the increment. The British Isles have a popula- 
 tion of some forty-five millions, the British Empire 
 of some four hundred and twenty millions. The 
 whole Empire is more effective in war than these 
 islands alone would be, but it is very far from being 
 nine times as effective. 
 
 On the other hand, we must not forget that one 
 of the duties of a general is to prevent his soldiers 
 from killing one another, and the Pax Romana or 
 Pax Britannica is a fact which is not to be decried, 
 either in its vast present importance or in its hope 
 for the future. Think what this means that in 
 spite of all the terrible slaughter and destruction 
 now taking place, all the belligerent States taken
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 65 
 
 together will probably have a greater population 
 on August i, 1915, than they had on August i, 
 1914. 
 
 Now, one sort ot Imperialism a sort which in- 
 evitably provokes war is in reality at bottom a 
 narrow, aggressive Nationalism, desiring to stamp its 
 peculiar features upon other races or civilizations. 
 When we see this in action in Belgium it horrifies 
 us, yet we have our own advocates in England of 
 this very type of Imperialism. In one of the most 
 interesting passages in Von Bernhardi's " Germany 
 and the Next War," he quotes Lord Rosebery as 
 having said at the Royal Colonial Institute on 
 March i, 1893: "It is said that our Empire is 
 already large enough, and does not need expansion. 
 . . . We shall have to consider, not what we want 
 now, but what we want in the future. . . . We 
 have to remember that it is part of our responsibility 
 and heritage to take care that the world, so far as 
 4 can be moulded by us, should receive the Anglo- 
 Saxon, and not another, character." And most 
 characteristically his comment is, "That is a great 
 and proud thought which the Englishman then 
 expressed." If Bernhardi could see nothing ugly in 
 such Imperialism in an Englishman, it is scarcely to 
 be expected that the general body of German opinion 
 can see anything ugly in it when " German " is 
 substituted for " Anglo-Saxon." And yet it is per- 
 fectly clear that the British Empire would now be on 
 the point of crumbling to pieces if Lord Rosebery's 
 type of Imperialism had been allowed to dominate 
 
 9
 
 66 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 our policy completely instead of only perverting it 
 occasionally. 
 
 To get to grips with the question as to what this 
 modern Law of Imperial Expansion means for our 
 hopes of peace, I think we must inquire into the 
 psychology of Imperialism. The late Mr. Hubert 
 Bland dealt with this subject in one of his articles in 
 the Sunday Chronicle. Taking himself as an example 
 of the typical Imperialist, he said, if I remember 
 rightly, that he was full of affection for every subject 
 of the Empire, but that his sympathies for all people 
 outside were cool. If this introspection was accurate, 
 Mr. Bland must have been a psychological miracle. 
 It is natural to us to love a brother-Englishman more 
 than an Italian or a Hollander; for it is easier to 
 understand him, to realize his material sufferings 
 and fnental troubles, and that normal psychological 
 fact is a real foundation for national sentiment. But 
 how can you love a Kaffir as your fellow British sub- 
 ject merely because he sets up his kraal on the eastern 
 side of Longitude 20 degrees, in British South Africa, 
 and become quite indifferent to him as an alien 
 if he happens to live a few yards away across 
 that imaginary line, in German territory ? I believe 
 many of our Imperialists do try to cultivate this 
 sentiment, but their geographical knowledge is not 
 always equal to the strain. A few years ago some of 
 our halfpenny papers which had poured obloquy on 
 Mr. Keir Hardie during the South African War as a 
 pro- Boer, later denounced him as a pro-Zulu. The 
 writers unfortunately forgot that the Zulus are British
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 67 . 
 
 subjects, so that the Englishman who is not a pro- 
 Zulu is an offensive sort of Little Englander. 
 
 The sentiment of Imperialism, in fact, is, to use 
 a metaphor from chemistry, an unstable compound. 
 It ends either to decompose into the simpler com- 
 pound of selfish Nationalism, or to be a stepping-stone 
 to a higher ethics. Whether the fact of empire is 
 going to be a curse or a blessing to humanity depends 
 upon whether empires are dominated by the narrow 
 national spirit of one or more of the peoples who 
 comprise them, or whether they can attain to broader 
 and more comprehensive sympathies. And the ques- 
 tion whether the British Empire itself is likely to 
 survive hangs on the same issue. 
 
 When next Empire Day comes round, school- 
 masters and after-dinner speakers may be recom- 
 mended to take for a text Mazzini's words, with a 
 special application : " Never deny your sister-nations 
 in the British Empire." Never deny them just and 
 equal treatment in act, or word, or thought. If they 
 are European or Asiatic, never call them Hottentots. 
 Never refuse to allow their national aspirations the 
 same validity as your own. Above all, never attempt 
 to penalize their language nor to force their manner 
 of thinking into uncongenial channels ; and learn to 
 rejoice in the variety of achievement which becomes 
 possible by the full development of the various 
 natural gifts of many races of men of different 
 climes. 
 
 If the British Empire stands to-day, it stands 
 because at certain critical times those who ruled it
 
 68 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 had their eyes opened and acted on those principles, 
 as when Lord Durham gave self-government to 
 Canada and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to 
 South Africa, when it was resolved to give equal 
 rights to the Boer Taal, and when the Government 
 of India recognized the practice of adoption by native 
 Indian Princes. 
 
 The passing out of the National into the Imperial 
 stage of political evolution is to be regarded as a 
 forward stride in human progress, which brings its 
 own great dangers side by side with its possibilities. 
 It demands a new ethical development, failing which 
 it must needs be calamitous. But if human nature 
 responds to the call, if we, for example, achieve real 
 and effective sympathy for Cingalese and Punjabi, 
 for the Arunta in the central desert of Australia and 
 the Eskimo dwelling by Melville Sound, we are so 
 near to the Christian state of mind of love for all 
 men that the final transition should not be im- 
 possible. 
 
 Dante wrote " De Monarchia " to vindicate the 
 claims of the Holy Roman Empire. He held that, 
 just as all humanity should be gathered into one true 
 and universal Christian Church, whose head must 
 be a Vicar of Christ upon earth, all kingdoms and 
 principalities and cities should form one holy and 
 world-wide empire, whose Emperor must also be 
 another Vicar of Christ, exercising a parallel dominion 
 in temporal affairs to that of the Pope in spiritual 
 affairs. Nineteenth-century thinkers preferred to 
 look forward to union of the nations without such a
 
 NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM 69 
 
 personal head, and expressed the idea in the phrase 
 " the federation of the world." In whatever terms 
 we conceive it, the imaginations of many of us refuse 
 to be content with any political ideal short of such a 
 unity. But facts appear to indicate that the destined 
 path thither lies through the gathering together of 
 larger and larger aggregations of humanity.
 
 LECTURE IV 
 ARMAMENTS 
 
 ONE of the oldest maxims with regard to war that 
 has come down to us is conveyed in the pithy 
 question put by Solon to Croesus when the Lydian 
 King showed him his treasures of gold : " But how 
 will you fare if some other King makes war against 
 you who has more and better iron ?" 
 
 In the history of war, as it is popularly taught, 
 we hear a great deal perhaps too much about the 
 military importance of the valour of soldiers and 
 about the skill of the generals. The importance of 
 numbers is also, to a certain extent, indicated. The 
 importance of the control of the supply of weapons 
 and of the material for manufacturing the imple- 
 ments of war is only fitfully recognized. Our school- 
 boys do have the importance of the part played by 
 the English long-bow at Crecy explained to them ; 
 but when the Armada is dealt with the real factors 
 that decided the issue are left obscure. There is a 
 monument on Plymouth Hoe to commemorate the 
 defeat of the Armada with the inscription on it, " He 
 blew with His winds and they were scattered." 
 This suggests that the weather was the decisive 
 factor, whereas, in fact, the Armada was beaten by 
 the English, and it was not until it was in flight that 
 
 70
 
 ARMAMENTS 71 
 
 it suffered from the storms. The secret of the 
 defeat of the Armada is that the English ships not 
 only were better sailers than the Spanish, but also 
 carried heavier guns, so that they could keep out of 
 range and yet bombard the enemy. I, for one, 
 never knew this till I found it in Froude's history of 
 the expedition collected from Spanish sources. In 
 the naval wars of the seventeenth century against 
 the Dutch it was again the factor of the conditions 
 of manufacture of the material of war that decided 
 the issue of the struggle. In numbers of sailors, 
 seamanship, financial resources, and leadership the 
 Dutch were in every way our equals ; but they drew 
 their timber-supply from the pine forests of the 
 Baltic, whereas the English ships were built of oak, 
 with the result that in the process of equal cannon- 
 ading the Dutch ship sank first. In the great 
 Napoleonic wars you have to go to military writers 
 to find any mention of the serious handicap under 
 which the French laboured for lack of saltpetre. 
 Though they ransacked their country and dug up 
 old stables and cowsheds, they could never get 
 enough of this essential constituent of gunpowder 
 to be able to afford supplies of ammunition for 
 practising. The English troops were only moder- 
 ately trained, but, in comparison with the French, 
 the fire of our infantry was deadly in its accuracy. 
 
 While the influence of superiority in armaments 
 upon the affairs of nations engaged in wars has 
 thus been only inadequately explored, the part 
 played by the same factor in determining whether 
 war shall or shall not take place has been left in
 
 72 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 still greater obscurity. I have referred, or example, 
 to both the economic and the religious forces con- 
 cerned in the barbarian incursions which destroyed 
 the Roman Empire. It is quite possible that no 
 less importance ought to be assigned to the activities 
 of the traders who led their caravans from the Black 
 Sea to the Baltic, and opened up trade with Sweden, 
 and there found rich deposits of iron ore peculiarly 
 suitable for the making of spears and swords. The 
 maxim si vis pacem para bellum is obviously a mixture 
 of truth and falsehood. It is a security to peace 
 that countries which desire it should be believed to 
 be ready for war. War becomes certain when the 
 country that desires it believes its preparations are 
 adequate to secure victory. 
 
 To all war preparations we can apply the broad 
 sociological principle that a social need creates a 
 social organization, and that the social organization, 
 once it is created, acquires an independent life of 
 its own, which struggles for existence even at the 
 expense of the well-being of society. Because war 
 has been an actual recurring historical fact, nations 
 have been obliged to prepare for war and to create a 
 great organization Army, Navy, arsenals, fortifica- 
 tions, spies, to say nothing of diplomatists and Press 
 bureaux. This organization, once created, is con- 
 tinually striving for its own aggrandizement. It is 
 jealous of the expenditure of national resources for 
 the purposes that elevate life and advance civilization. 
 It is continually looking for evidence that its services 
 will be required and its existence justified. 
 
 Now, the professional feeling of the Army and
 
 ARMAMENTS 73 
 
 Navy for its own aggrandizement is something which 
 is fairly well understood, and which works mostly 
 in the open, and which, therefore, the ordinary 
 citizen is, to a certain extent, on his guard against, 
 except in those countries in which, for historic 
 reasons, the importance of a military element in 
 society is peculiarly aggrandized. The Army and 
 Navy in England have usually been kept in a certain 
 degree of subordination, because they are national 
 services, and while they yield salaries and pay to 
 great numbers of men they yield profits to com- 
 paratively few. The case is different with the third 
 factor in defence the making of implements of 
 war, from cartridges to Dreadnoughts. This, in the 
 main, is done by the vast industrial companies 
 which are more or less international in their organi- 
 zation, and which tend in each country in which 
 they are established to develop practical monopolies. 
 It is one of the dangers characteristic of this trade 
 that the prosperity of a particular firm depends very 
 largely upon its success in opening up foreign 
 markets by bribing those who have influence on 
 Governments, and the prosperity of the trade as a 
 whole depends upon its success in fostering inter- 
 national hatred, jealousy, distrust, and mutual fear. 
 
 A great deal has been said, as, for example, by 
 Mr. Philip Snowden in the House of Commons, 
 upon the sinister significance of the great ammunition 
 firms. The particular point that I wish to elaborate 
 is the difference between the way in which this 
 influence has worked upon England on the one hand 
 and Germany on the other. 10
 
 74 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 In Germany the greatest of the firms that supply 
 munitions of war is Krupps', of Essen. It is said to 
 employ between fifty and sixty thousand men, and 
 it certainly has the very closest relations with the 
 German Government. The dividends distributed 
 among the proprietors exceed "1,000,000 per annum, 
 and it is also able to spend great sums of money in 
 bribery in various countries, and in fomenting 
 militarist opinion in Germany. I imagine that we 
 shall all be agreed that the firm of Krupps' exercises 
 a very potent and malignant influence upon Germany. 
 But yet we have to recognize that it has never sacri- 
 ficed the military efficiency of the Empire of 
 Germany to its own profits. For example, though 
 it did enter into a contract to supply Belgian forts 
 with guns that might be used against Germany, it 
 did not for that sake of keeping faith with its cus- 
 tomers arm those forts efficiently. The private 
 manufacturer in Germany, having no State depart- 
 ment to compete with him, has made it his first 
 object to increase German expenditure on arma- 
 ments to the maximum. 
 
 In England, on the other hand, the circumstances 
 have been slightly different, and the policy of the 
 ammunition firms has varied accordingly. Besides 
 buying warships, guns, and the rest from private 
 firms, the State has its own shipbuilding yards and 
 factories, and before the South African War it was 
 accustomed to provide by its own manufacture for 
 its own needs to the extent of one-third, while 
 purchasing from private firms to the extent of two- 
 thirds. With this the private firms were not satis-
 
 ARMAMENTS 75 
 
 fied. Even before the South African War broke out 
 the great engineering firms of the country that 
 enjoyed Government contracts determined upon a 
 campaign against the Government factories; and 
 the profits realized through the South African War 
 sharpened them in this determination. 
 
 The broad principles which had led to the adoption 
 of the system in vogue had been the idea that, while 
 it was convenient to utilize the resources of private 
 firms, it was also necessary to maintain a system of 
 Government manufacture in order that the Govern- 
 ment might have a staff of experts capable of testing 
 the quality of the private supplies, and also a means 
 of checking the prices. The result of such checking 
 has generally been kept a profound secret, but the 
 people of Enfield succeeded in getting a Government 
 inquiry into the cost of Government manufacture as 
 compared with purchase. It was found that where 
 the same articles were partly purchased and partly 
 manufactured it was much cheaper to the nation to 
 manufacture for itself. With regard to other things, 
 such articles as were invariably supplied by private 
 firms continually went up in price ; such articles as 
 were regularly manufactured in a Government 
 factory continually went down in cost. 
 
 On the conclusion of the South African War a 
 Departmental Committee was appointed, known as 
 the Murray Committee, and, after consultation with 
 private manufacturers, this Committee recommended 
 that only the smallest possible nucleus of men should 
 be retained in employment in the Government work- 
 shops. At the time the report was published, after
 
 76 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 great reductions, there were 14,037 men so employed. 
 The Chief Superintendent of Ordnance Factories 
 reported that this number was not susceptible to any 
 further reduction. Nevertheless, the Committee 
 recommended that it be reduced to 10,600,* and that 
 on the outbreak of war this 10,600 should be suddenly 
 increased to 26,700. Those who were responsible 
 for the internal working of these factories warned the 
 Government that to increase suddenly the staff of the 
 Ordnance Factories almost threefold would lead to 
 a hopeless breakdown. Nevertheless, the Murray 
 Committee and the War Office, under Lord (then 
 Mr.) Haldane, resolved that it must be done, although 
 they admitted that in the first all-important months 
 of war the nation would have to rely, in the main, 
 on the supplies from its own factories. When the 
 War Office began to act on this report and discharge 
 men wholesale, an outcry was made ; and the case of 
 the operatives commanded so much sympathy that 
 a further inquiry was ordered, and a Conference, con- 
 sisting of Government officials, three Labour M.P.'s, 
 and two Members of Parliament, representing the 
 interests of the private manufacturers, further sifted 
 the matter. They reported that there was no neces- 
 sity for the discharges, as the men and the machinery 
 could be utilized in various ways in the Government 
 service, and they added the significant warning : " It 
 will only be by utilizing the plant in this manner in peace- 
 time that the country can look with any confidence to 
 possess a body of workmen of sufficient number and suffi- 
 
 * 8,000 in Woolwich Arsenal, 2,600 in Enfield.
 
 ARMAMENTS 77 
 
 dent training as will make expansion in time of emergency 
 possible, without risk of failure from an excessive influx 
 of strange and unskilled labour." 
 
 In spite of this authoritative declaration, the 
 Government persisted in the policy of reduction of 
 the staff of the Ordnance factories. It similarly 
 also continually increased the proportion of warships 
 built by private firms as compared with those built 
 in the national dockyards. No explanation of this 
 policy has been vouchsafed. Every remonstrance 
 was met with vague talk about "economy," in spite 
 of the fact that Government manufacture is the more 
 economical system, by baseless insinuations that the 
 critics of the Government were actuated by political 
 partisanship, and by misleading expressions of sym- 
 pathy for the men discharged. 
 
 So far as the general public was concerned, it was 
 not found possible to make it understand that the 
 question at issue was not whether a body of public 
 servants should be thrown out of work, but whether 
 the safety of the nation itself should be sacrificed to 
 dividends. 
 
 The Government itself offering no explanation of 
 its policy, those who remonstrated had to find their 
 own interpretation. The following explanations 
 were offered : 
 
 1. That the private firms, through the wide diffu- 
 sion of the ownership of their shares, exercise great 
 influence among Members of Parliament. 
 
 2. That by giving specially favourable opportunities 
 for investment to Government officials, they can 
 influence them to the peril of the nation.
 
 78 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 3. It is pointed out that out of Woolwich Arsenal 
 alone in two or three years some twenty men, 
 occupying important positions, were taken into the 
 service of private firms manufacturing munitions of 
 war, receiving great increases in their emoluments. 
 It is said that, in consequence, the members of the 
 staff of the Government factories were induced to look 
 upon their positions in the Government service as 
 opportunities for making openings for themselves into 
 much more profitable careers in private employment. 
 
 4. It is said that certain of these firms contribute 
 to party funds. 
 
 Whether all or any of these statements explain 
 the facts, it is obvious that they do not offer the 
 slightest justification. 
 
 On one particular occasion with regard to certain 
 torpedoes detailed charges of a most serious character 
 were made in the Woolwich Pioneer, and brought 
 before the personal attention of the Prime Minister 
 himself, and these statements have never been con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 The outbreak of war tested the policy of reduction 
 to a mere nucleus of the men employed in the 
 Ordnance factories, adopted by the Government on 
 the recommendation of the Murray Committee. 
 The expectation that had been held out that it would 
 be possible immediately on the outbreak of the war 
 to increase the number of men at work from 10,600 to 
 26,700, was found utterly delusive. Out of the many 
 obvious difficulties which one proved insurmount- 
 able, we need not inquire ; it is sufficient that there '
 
 ARMAMENTS 79 
 
 was only a gradual increase, and the great immediate 
 expansion of output from the Government's own 
 factories, which was the basis of the Government's 
 scheme for national defence, did not take place, 
 though in course of time the numbers swelled to a 
 much larger total than 26,700. 
 
 For me it was no surprise in August to see so 
 repeatedly in the reports of the retreat from Mons 
 and the subsequent fighting those fatal words, " The 
 great superiority of the enemy in quantity of artil- 
 lery." How much we have had, and shall have, to 
 pay for the Arsenal discharges of 1906 and 1907 in 
 loss of men in the initial stages of the war, and still 
 more through the prolongation of the war as a conse- 
 quence of the August disasters, and what France and 
 Belgium have had to pay through the occupation of 
 their territories, it is impossible to say. I have no 
 doubt that but for the crippling of the Royal Arsenal 
 in 1907, at least the French and British armies would 
 have been able to carry through successfully the 
 scheme whereby it was hoped that Antwerp would 
 have been saved and its defenders linked up with the 
 main allied army. 
 
 It is distasteful to have to deal with this sordid 
 aspect of war, but it is necessary. It may be bad to 
 wash dirty linen in public ; it is much worse not to 
 wash it at all. It is very disquieting now to re- 
 member that, in spite of Sir William Butler's efforts, 
 only a poor pretence was made of dealing with the 
 scandals of the South African War. The suspicion 
 of fresh scandals, of enormous and unjustifiable
 
 So PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 profits made out of war contracts, is already exer- 
 cising a very powerful influence on the minds of 
 those manual workers on whose skill and strength 
 the existence of the British Empire depends. If the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer were in a position to 
 announce that there should be, when the war is over, 
 if not before, an inquisition into the whole subject of 
 war profits, and that all increase of profits made by 
 any British company or individual as a consequence 
 of the war, should be taxed aos. in the , he would 
 achieve something for the country's finances, and 
 much more for the avoidance of strikes during the 
 war. The principle of the British Army is that if 
 you want men to face danger, you must say to them, 
 " Come," not " Go." The same applies to the facing 
 of sacrifice. Shareholders of firms drawing big divi- 
 dends from war-orders, and calling in the name of 
 patriotism upon artisans and labourers to work over- 
 time every day and Sundays, and to abstain from 
 strikes in any circumstances whatever, supply a 
 spectacle to which only the pencil of Will Dyson 
 can do justice. 
 
 It has been proposed that, in the making of peace, 
 one of the objects sought should be the abolition in 
 all countries of the private trade in munitions of war, 
 and that this manufacture should in all countries be 
 a Government monopoly. The facts, as far as I 
 have been able to support them, indicate that that 
 proposal should receive the support, not only of 
 pacifists, but also of all Britons concerned for the 
 safety of their own country.
 
 LECTURE V 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 
 
 WHEN war began, the prayers in our churches were 
 for " a speedy, honourable, and lasting peace." 
 Never in our time did prayers more truly interpret 
 the aspiration of the people. There may be some 
 variation in the emphasis which we lay on those three 
 adjectives, but almost all thinking men will, I believe, 
 agree in laying the greatest emphasis on the last. 
 " We are not going to leave this for our children to 
 have to do over again." And all over the country, 
 wherever two or three people are met together dis- 
 posed for serious talk, the discussion turns on this 
 question, How can we make peace permanent ? Shall 
 endless wars still more wars breed ? 
 
 Because war tends to breed war, because it rarely 
 settles old issues without raising new ones which 
 equally bear the seeds of conflict, this discussion 
 must turn in the first place upon the problem of 
 making such a peace as to leave the fewest and 
 smallest possible provocations to renewed inter- 
 national antagonisms ; and in the second place to 
 the measures to be taken in subsequent years. 
 Neither of these problems do I propose to consider 
 from all possible or actual standpoints. I shall 
 
 81 ii
 
 82 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 ignore entirely what to my mind is the insane view 
 that war is in itself desirable, and the foolishly 
 pessimistic view that war, though undesirable, is an 
 evil that can never be got rid of. I shall also assume, 
 what seems to me to be clearly proved, that the 
 British, French, and Russian Governments were each 
 and all honestly and keenly desirous of preventing 
 war, and that they were defeated in their efforts to 
 maintain peace by the determination of the German 
 Government that war should take place. There are 
 some who admit this, and yet contend, like Tolstoi, 
 that war can be ended, and can only be ended, by 
 refusing to fight, and that German aggression should 
 have been met, after the example of Ivan the Fool, 
 by non-resistance. Apart from the question as to 
 whether that is possible, human nature being what 
 it is, past experience shows that the result of sub- 
 mission to Prussia has been that the State that has 
 submitted has been put through the mill of Prussian 
 organization and education and refashioned into a 
 new engine for further aggression. To wage this 
 war with determination in order to secure, if possible, 
 a very complete victory, appears to me to be the 
 clear duty of the Allies, terrible as may be the sacri- 
 fices entailed. 
 
 It has been urged in some quarters that there 
 should be no humiliation of Germany. That we 
 should love our enemies is not only the noblest, but 
 also the wisest, advice that can be proffered to 
 nations at war, just as much as to private persons 
 entangled in antagonisms. Unless we love our
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 83 
 
 enemies, and sympathetically try to realize the whole 
 situation from their point of view, we shall fail to 
 understand them, and shall miscalculate both their 
 strength and their weakness. But it does not follow 
 that we should attempt to stifle the feeling of 
 righteous indignation at monstrous wrong ; and one 
 wonders whether this talk of not humiliating Ger- 
 many does not spring from a failure to apply the 
 same principle of imaginative sympathy with Ger- 
 many's victims. But I do not wish to criticize the 
 sentiment behind this attitude, only to examine it in 
 cold blood from the point of view of the permanence 
 of peace. 
 
 Up to the outbreak of this war all efforts towards 
 securing peace or mitigating the horrors of war, 
 whether by Hague Conventions, or arbitration 
 treaties, or neutrality arrangements, or in any other 
 way whatsoever, have been based upon the assump- 
 tion of the sanctity of treaties. This was necessarily 
 so ; and, when the war is over, there will be no 
 possibility of building up an organization for peace 
 which does not depend on that same assumption. 
 But Germany, having resolved on this war, merely 
 for the sake of greater convenience in carrying it on, 
 tore up the most sacred treaties, and did so on the 
 ground that no treaty by which she had bound her- 
 self would count for anything with her if it stood in 
 the way of those ambitions which she chooses to call 
 " necessity." The indispensable preliminary, there- 
 fore, to any peace policy must be the vindication of 
 the sanctity of treaties. Had the United States and
 
 84 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 other neutral nations seen their way to protest, and 
 protest effectively, against the invasion of Belgium, a 
 great forward stride would have been made. But, as 
 a matter of fact, they made no protest, effective or 
 otherwise ; therefore the burden rests upon the Allies. 
 It is now compulsory on them, in their own interest, 
 in the interest of the whole of humanity, not excluding 
 Germany, to see that, if they can possibly achieve it, 
 the results of that chapter of events which opened 
 with the violation of Belgian neutrality shall be a 
 renewed and increased binding force in treaty obliga- 
 tions. That object cannot be achieved without 
 bringing Germany into an attitude of repentance 
 repentance, that is, of the only sort that can be 
 imposed on from without, a conviction that wrong- 
 doing does not pay but it must be a very deep and 
 lasting repentance of that particular type. A better 
 sort may then follow later, for German philosophy 
 has always been ready to interpret the lessons of 
 German experience into ethical maxims, good and 
 bad. Now it is utterly inconceivable that terms of 
 peace can be drawn up which should produce this 
 repentance, which Germany will not feel to be 
 humiliating in an extreme degree. 
 
 It is, of course, premature at this period to assume 
 that the Allies will be able to inflict a sufficiently 
 complete defeat of Germany by force of arms. Some 
 people think that we shall never succeed in driving 
 the Germans out of Belgium, but shall have to get 
 them out by bargaining offering, perhaps, the 
 return of conquered German colonies. A nominal
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 85 
 
 peace of this sort would be no real peace, and the 
 choice of policies before the Allies would be between 
 different ways of continuing the struggle. We might 
 return to the old method of competition in arma- 
 ments, but henceforward with our eyes open, and 
 acting in definite co-operation, and hoping, by 
 simultaneously developing the immense resources of 
 the allied dominions, to establish so great a pre- 
 ponderance of strength as to achieve ultimately by 
 diplomatic pressure the essential objects for which 
 we are at war to compel the disarmament of 
 Germany, and then to disarm ourselves ; or we 
 might proceed along the lines of the policy recom- 
 mended by Mr. H. G. Wells, and, while nominally 
 making peace, continue the struggle as a tariff war, 
 forming a Customs Union with our Allies, and levy- 
 ing heavy duties on every import from Germany. 
 Neither of these alternatives is pleasant to contem- 
 plate, but in the situation under consideration it 
 would be necessary to face unpleasantness. It 
 would have arisen through our failure to defeat 
 Germany, and we should have to accept the conse- 
 quences of that failure. 
 
 In such circumstances, the proposal of a tariff war 
 would demand very careful consideration. It would 
 presumably take the form of an agreement between 
 the British Empire, Russia, France, Belgium, and 
 Serbia for either absolutely free trade within the 
 boundaries of this alliance, or for very light duties 
 on each other's goods, a considerable uniform tariff 
 on all goods imported from neutral countries, and a
 
 86 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 very much higher tariff on goods imported from 
 Germany and Austria. There might also be taxes 
 on exports to Germany and Austria of goods in 
 which the allied countries have more or less a virtual 
 monopoly. Thus Russia could tax the export of 
 rye to Germany, and the British Empire the export 
 of wool. Further, efforts would be made to induce 
 neutral countries, particularly European neutral 
 countries, to join the alliance, whereupon they also 
 would impose the penal tariff on German goods, and 
 get the benefit of free trade with the Allies. The 
 underlying principle would have to be carried out 
 along other lines also. British and French capital 
 would have to be used freely for the reconstruction, 
 in the first place, of Belgium and North-East 
 France, and then for the organization of cheap 
 and rapid communications between all the allied 
 dominions. The ancient sea-route by Archangel, 
 for example, would have to be developed, the 
 Russian railway systems European, Siberian, trans- 
 Caspian, and trans- Caucasian linked up with those 
 of India by way of the Persian Gulf, and the Channel 
 Tunnel constructed. Further, the study of the 
 French and Russian languages would have to be 
 fostered, and all unnecessary barriers to inter- 
 communication swept away. 
 
 It is easy to see that the passing and enforcing of 
 the Tariff would be attended with great difficulties. 
 The mere fact that it would favour many important 
 industries and injure others would lead to internal 
 strife. Then there are the more or less divergent
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 87 
 
 interests of the several allied countries. The enemy 
 would not be idle, and would make full use of the 
 many opportunities that would occur of aggravating 
 discord. In neutral countries, the struggle between 
 the Allies on one hand, and the Germanic powers 
 on the other, would lead to very ugly developments. 
 Imagine, for example, the position of Holland or 
 Denmark, called upon to cut commercial connections 
 either with Germany or with Britain, France, and 
 Belgium. But war is always difficult and ugly and 
 disastrous. The question is not whether tariff war 
 is to be preferred to peace, but whether, in the 
 event of real peace not being attainable, tariff war is 
 not better than war carried on by slaughter. As 
 long as that was really the alternative, and the fact 
 that it was so was kept in mind, the difficulties 
 should be surmountable, and the enormous pre- 
 ponderance in area, population, and natural resources 
 of the allied Powers should put the result out of 
 doubt. The result would involve the relative, not 
 the absolute, impoverishment of Germany. 
 
 Let us now turn to the alternate hypothesis, and 
 consider, if the result of the war is that the Allies are 
 able to impose their own conditions of peace, what 
 terms would be most favourable to the avoidance of 
 future wars. 
 
 i. Indemnity. The possibility of peace depending 
 greatly on the question whether nations are prepared 
 to govern their actions by considerations of justice, 
 it is clear that the Allies should vindicate the purity
 
 88 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 of their motives by refusing to follow the precedent 
 set by Germany in 1871, and decline to make any 
 profit out of the war. On the other hand, they are 
 bound to seek the fullest obtainable compensation 
 for the wrongs actually inflicted on the people of 
 Belgium, France, Poland, and Serbia in districts 
 occupied by the enemy. That is the minimum 
 indemnity with which they have any right to be 
 satisfied. The maximum indemnity which they 
 might justly demand obviously includes the full 
 costs of the war, and even for France a return of 
 the 240,000,000 exacted in 1871, with compound 
 interest up to date. Reckoning the interest at 4 per 
 cent, per annum, this would approximately multiply 
 the original total eightfold. To what extent it would 
 be wise to abate the maximum demand, and treat 
 the Germanic empires with generosity, it is, of 
 course, impossible to discuss here. 
 
 If our Government exacts, as it is fully entitled to, 
 the full cost of the war, then all the German colonies 
 which fall into our hands must be returned. But if, 
 in view of the feelings of South Africa and Australia 
 with regard to German neighbours, it is considered 
 necessary to retain any of these, those retained might 
 be valued on an equitable basis possibly the total 
 expenditure sunk in them by the German Govern- 
 ment and paid for by a reduction from the indemnity. 
 
 The view has been expressed that at the end of 
 the war Germany will not be in a position to pay 
 any very great sum. This is a mistake. Germany, 
 when war broke out, was enormously rich and rapidly
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 89 
 
 growing in wealth, and practically free of debt, as 
 the Imperial and State railways and other assets 
 yielded a clear net income far in excess of the interest 
 on Governmental debts. From the point of view of 
 private citizens Germany was both a debtor and a 
 creditor country, using foreign capital to a consider- 
 able extent, but also owning vast foreign investments, 
 and here also the balance was greatly in her favour. 
 If Germany chose to cease her military and naval 
 expenditure, she could pay an indemnity of two thou- 
 sand millions sterling without being a penny worse 
 off. As to how much she could pay without be- 
 coming seriously impoverished, without, for example, 
 being reduced to the average economic status of the 
 British Empire, a correct calculation would un- 
 doubtedly run into enormous figures. It is obviously 
 an understatement to say that Germany's power of 
 production is ten times as great as that of the United 
 Kingdom after Waterloo. Yet our National Debt 
 was then close on 900,000,000, and that did not 
 cripple the national energies, nor stop the rapid 
 increase in population and industrial efficiency. The 
 inference is obvious. 
 
 2. Rectification of Boundaries. The whole argu- 
 ment in Lecture III., if it is worth anything, goes to 
 show that the guiding principle in the Congress of 
 Powers, which will have to redraw the map of 
 Europe, ought to be Nationality. This is the prin- 
 ciple advocated by the " Union for Democratic 
 Control," which is very actively promoting the dis- 
 cussion of the lines of the settlement. It is obvious 
 
 12
 
 90 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 that the reality of peace and the permanence of 
 peace must depend on people being reasonably well 
 satisfied with the Government they have, and they 
 cannot be satisfied with a system of government that 
 runs entirely counter to their national aspirations. 
 The particular way in which the said union proposes 
 to apply the principle namely, by a plebiscite is 
 open to very serious objections. There are regions 
 of Europe where, if such an arrangement were 
 announced, in a district where there was something 
 like an equality of numbers, the rival nationalities 
 would not stop short of wholesale murder to secure 
 the verdict. It is possible, however, that the 
 plebiscite method might be applied to Alsace and 
 Lorraine. 
 
 In Germany, apart from Alsace and Lorraine, the 
 two outstanding questions are Schleswig-Holstein 
 and Poland. It is only the northern part of Holstein 
 that is Danish in language, and the practical question 
 to settle would be whether it would be best to draw 
 the new frontier according to the present language 
 boundary that is, westwards from the Flensborg to 
 the North Sea, or at, or even beyond, the Kiel Canal. 
 The latter policy has obvious attractions, but if there 
 is reason to suppose that the German population 
 thus handed over to Danish rule would resent the 
 change, Denmark would probably be wise enough to 
 reject so dangerous a gift. 
 
 Russia has already announced her policy of 
 creating a united and autonomous Poland, and pre- 
 sumably has done so with British and French assent.
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 91 
 
 Exactly how the boundaries should be drawn is, 
 however, a question of great difficulty. Before 
 Frederick the Great carried out the first partition, 
 Poland stretched to the Baltic Sea, including the 
 lower basin of the Vistula, now called West Prussia, 
 and the city of Dantzig. To include this area would 
 be to make future trouble through the fact that the 
 district has now a predominantly German popula- 
 tion ; on the other hand, not to give the new 
 dominion an outlet to the sea would generate dis- 
 content on economic grounds. Perhaps, as the 
 Vistula is a great and not a rapid river, the problem 
 could be solved by improving its navigation, so that 
 a port capable of receiving ocean-going ships could 
 be created on Polish soil, and neutralizing the river 
 thence to its mouth. 
 
 The changes in the German frontier here discussed 
 are comparatively slight, for the historical reason 
 that the German Empire was built up on the principle 
 of nationality. But when we turn to Austria- 
 Hungary, based on the dynastic principle, and the 
 denial of nationality, the transformation indicated 
 by the national principle is extraordinary. A redis- 
 tribution according to supposed racial affinities would 
 add part of Galicia to Poland, and part to Little 
 Russia ; Bukowina, Transylvania, and considerable 
 parts of Hungary to Roumania; the Trentino, 
 Trieste, and neighbouring districts to Italy ; and 
 would assign to Serbia not only Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina, but Slavonia, Croatia, and most of Dalmatia, 
 the rest going to Italy. Then there would still be
 
 92 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 the problem of the Slav populations of Bohemia, 
 Moravia, and the adjoining portion of Hungary, 
 numbering some eight millions, and forming a pretty 
 compact mass in spite of numerous German villages 
 and a large German and Jewish population in the 
 towns. An independent Greater Bohemia does not 
 as yet seem to be contemplated even among the 
 Czechs ; but as they are in numbers not very inferior 
 either to the Magyars or to the Austrian-Germans, 
 and have powerful organizations, they may demand 
 autonomy and an equal status, and thus convert the 
 dual into a triple monarchy. Subsequently, one is 
 left to speculate what might be the influence on them 
 of an autonomous Poland, with its kindred language, 
 touching them on their eastern frontier. 
 
 Even this hasty sketch is sufficient to show how 
 complicated must be the problem of straightening 
 out the Austrian tangle on Nationalist lines ; and I 
 have left unmentioned the difficulties springing from 
 the lack of any clearness or simplicity in the racial 
 and language frontiers. For example, however sin- 
 cere and unbiassed the desire to draw the boundary 
 correctly between Hungary and Roumania, it would 
 be impossible to avoid leaving both Magyars and 
 Roumanians in considerable numbers on the wrong 
 side. There is also, in the case of the Serb popula- 
 tions, the additional difficulty of religious differences ; 
 and it is very doubtful whether, if they were given the 
 choice, the Roman Catholic section would not prefer 
 to remain under Austria, rather than united with 
 their kin of the Eastern Church. 
 
 Similar difficulties, greatly intensified, lie before
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 93 
 
 the Congress of the Powers which would attempt to 
 deal with Turkey on the lines of nationality. The 
 islands, including Cyprus, might, without any diffi- 
 culty arising from the nature of things, pass to 
 Greece. But Smyrna also is Greek, and much of 
 the shore of Asia Minor ; and Smyrna is also the 
 port for a great hinterland, of which the population 
 is Mohammedan and largely Turkish. If Smyrna 
 be ceded to Greece, it would be extraordinarily diffi- 
 cult to fix on a satisfactory frontier. The success of 
 Jewish colonization in Palestine ought to secure the 
 opportunity for the creation of an autonomous Jewish 
 State, which might gradually extend to the limits of 
 Solomon's kingdom ; but for the rest of the vast 
 Empire there seems no possibility of forming separate 
 States of Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Kurds, and the 
 rest, capable either of decent internal administration, 
 or of keeping the peace with one another. The rule 
 of the foreigner seems the only possible solution. If 
 there were any chance that the suggestion would be 
 listened to, I should like to urge government by a 
 Commission, the Chief Commissioner appointing his 
 colleagues, and himself appointed by the President of 
 the United States ; this being the nearest possible 
 approach to these newly-evolved American forms of 
 government which have yielded the most brilliant 
 results. 
 
 But I must urge, however fruitlessly, that a con- 
 sideration that is only too likely to be altogether for- 
 gotten ought to be the guiding idea in the settlement 
 of the Turkish Empire. These lands, together with 
 Greece, parts of Italy, and Egypt, are the sites of the
 
 92 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 the problem of the Slav populations of Bohemia, 
 Moravia, and the adjoining portion of Hungary, 
 numbering some eight millions, and forming a pretty 
 compact mass in spite of numerous German villages 
 and a large German and Jewish population in the 
 towns. An independent Greater Bohemia does not 
 as yet seem to be contemplated even among the 
 Czechs ; but as they are in numbers not very inferior 
 either to the Magyars or to the Austrian-Germans, 
 and have powerful organizations, they may demand 
 autonomy and an equal status, and thus convert the 
 dual into a triple monarchy. Subsequently, one is 
 left to speculate what might be the influence on them 
 of an autonomous Poland, with its kindred language, 
 touching them on their eastern frontier. 
 
 Even this hasty sketch is sufficient to show how 
 complicated must be the problem of straightening 
 out the Austrian tangle on Nationalist lines ; and I 
 have left unmentioned the difficulties springing from 
 the lack of any clearness or simplicity in the racial 
 and language frontiers. For example, however sin- 
 cere and unbiassed the desire to draw the boundary 
 correctly between Hungary and Roumania, it would 
 be impossible to avoid leaving both Magyars and 
 Roumanians in considerable numbers on the wrong 
 side. There is also, in the case of the Serb popula- 
 tions, the additional difficulty of religious differences ; 
 and it is very doubtful whether, if they were given the 
 choice, the Roman Catholic section would not prefer 
 to remain under Austria, rather than united with 
 their kin of the Eastern Church. 
 
 Similar difficulties, greatly intensified, lie before
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 93 
 
 the Congress of the Powers which would attempt to 
 deal with Turkey on the lines of nationality. The 
 islands, including Cyprus, might, without any diffi- 
 culty arising from the nature of things, pass to 
 Greece. But Smyrna also is Greek, and much of 
 the shore of Asia Minor ; and Smyrna is also the 
 port for a great hinterland, of which the population 
 is Mohammedan and largely Turkish. If Smyrna 
 be ceded to Greece, it would be extraordinarily diffi- 
 cult to fix on a satisfactory frontier. The success of 
 Jewish colonization in Palestine ought to secure the 
 opportunity for the creation of an autonomous Jewish 
 State, which might gradually extend to the limits of 
 Solomon's kingdom ; but for the rest of the vast 
 Empire there seems no possibility of forming separate 
 States of Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Kurds, and the 
 rest, capable either of decent internal administration, 
 or of keeping the peace with one another. The rule 
 of the foreigner seems the only possible solution. If 
 there were any chance that the suggestion would be 
 listened to, I should like to urge government by a 
 Commission, the Chief Commissioner appointing his 
 colleagues, and himself appointed by the President of 
 the United States ; this being the nearest possible 
 approach to these newly-evolved American forms of 
 government which have yielded the most brilliant 
 results. 
 
 But I must urge, however fruitlessly, that a con- 
 sideration that is only too likely to be altogether for- 
 gotten ought to be the guiding idea in the settlement 
 of the Turkish Empire. These lands, together with 
 Greece, parts of Italy, and Egypt, are the sites of the
 
 96 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 militarism in Germany and restore her to a proud 
 and honourable place in the comity of nation?. 
 They consider that we can do practically nothing to 
 assist such a change of opinion in Germany, but that 
 it will probably come by the natural workings of the 
 German mind. Many people who have intimate 
 relations with Germany hold this opinion ; and 
 others who lay great stress upon the steady increase 
 of the Socialist vote. There are others, including 
 our militarists, and also Mr. H. G. Wells, who, 
 while equally thinking that the German attitude of 
 mind is outside our control, are altogether pessimistic 
 about a victory for pacific forces in Germany, and 
 look forward to an indefinitely prolonged period 
 during which she will be gathering her forces for a 
 renewal of the struggle. Universal military service 
 and a continually expanding Navy are assumed to be 
 necessary by the former group ; while Mr. Wells 
 recommends the Tariff war discussed above. 
 
 The first question, therefore, is whether we are 
 justified in taking an optimistic view with regard to 
 the future determination of Germany to live on good 
 terms with her neighbours. This is at least doubtful. 
 English people who have made friends in Germany 
 have naturally in most cases come chiefly into con- 
 tact with the section of opinion most disposed to be 
 friendly to England, and are in danger of over- 
 estimating the numbers and weight of that section. 
 As to the growth of the Socialist vote, it proves 
 nothing. It is true that it has been swollen very 
 largely by the support of opponents to the ever-
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 97 
 
 increasing armaments and the aggressive and pro- 
 vocative foreign policy of the Government, but there 
 is no indication that the number of these pacific 
 voters was increasing, but only that to an increasing 
 extent they were driven into voting for the Socialist 
 party, because it was the only genuine anti-Govern- 
 ment party. The fact that all the other parties were 
 becoming more and more united in their support of 
 despotism at home and war abroad, combined with 
 the increasing timidity of the Socialists, completely 
 negative any favourable inferences which might be 
 drawn from the increase of the Socialist vote. 
 
 Is it, however, beyond doubt that we must con- 
 sider it impossible to influence German opinion ? 
 
 Of policies based upon the opposite idea there 
 are three that I know of. The first is that of the 
 No Humiliation school. These desire that the war 
 should end in a draw rather than in victory. The 
 more extreme of them would confirm Germany in 
 the possession of Alsace and Lorraine and all her 
 other dominions, would veto the unification of 
 Poland, inflict no indemnity, and even in the more 
 extreme cases propose that Great Britain should 
 bear the cost of restoring Belgium once more to 
 prosperity. They hope that such touching magna- 
 nimity would melt the hearts of the German General 
 Staff. It is a view about which it is impossible to 
 argue. Those who hold it would also perhaps 
 apply a similar view to cases of individuals, and put 
 convicted burglars in positions of trust. They are, 
 fortunately perhaps, in the minority. 
 
 '3
 
 98 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 Quite early in the course of the war the idea was 
 suggested, which I, for one, welcomed with great 
 hopefulness, that the German Empire might be split 
 into its constituent states and the Kingdom of 
 Prussia subdivided, and each fragment be given a 
 completely democratic constitution, with full liberty 
 to all subsequently to confederate and form any sort 
 of union they chose, except that of a Hohenzollern 
 Empire. I regret to say that I have ceased to regard 
 this as possible. The work of unification on the 
 existing lines appears, from the accounts received of 
 the state of feeling in various parts of Germany, to 
 have been done too thoroughly. 
 
 A similar idea is urged by Mr. Charles E. Innes. 
 " Destroy the present form of Germany, root and 
 branch, and grant to the German nation a demo- 
 cratic form of government, with the sovereign power 
 and responsibility vested in the people," with the 
 condition : " That it shall join with the Allies, and 
 participate in a defensive alliance against any and 
 every aggressive nation from now henceforth, and it 
 shall disown any intention of self-aggrandizement at 
 the expense of any other nation." 
 
 With regard to the suggested condition, it seems 
 to me that it would either be superfluous or futile ; 
 superfluous if a democratized Germany ceases to be 
 aggressive, futile if it does not. The main proposition 
 can be discussed quite apart from this addendum. 
 It can be taken as a possible interpretation of 
 Mr. Asquith's inspiring, but somewhat cryptic, declara- 
 tion : " We shall not sheathe the sword . . . until
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 99 
 
 the military domination of Prussia is wholly and 
 finally destroyed." Necessarily that cannot be done 
 unless it is destroyed in Germany, even in Prussia 
 itself; it can only be destroyed by being superseded, 
 and the only supersession we could contemplate 
 would be supersession by democracy. Yet whether 
 we should not too greatly compromise democracy in 
 Germany by forcing it upon the nation from without, 
 is a question on which the most serious doubts must 
 arise. The Allies would have to invite the help of 
 the Socialist party, and request German democrats 
 to take up the task of working out the plan of the 
 democratic constitution. If they refused, the diffi- 
 culty would be greatly increased ; if they responded, 
 they might make themselves the mark for bitter 
 attacks and the accusation of aiding the country's 
 enemies. If, however, by the time peace is made 
 there is a great revulsion of feeling, and a democratic 
 constitution is desired by the majority of the people, 
 the Allies might break down the obstacles to a free 
 choice by the people of their future system of govern- 
 ment. To take such a step would be in harmony 
 with the declarations frequently made, that we are at 
 war not with Germany, but with German militarism. 
 But the result, good or bad, would have to be 
 accepted in good faith. 
 
 We have, lastly, the view of the man in the street 
 that when the war is over responsibility for making 
 the war shall be brought home to its authors, and 
 that fitting punishment shall be imposed on them 
 personally, however highly placed; and that where
 
 ioo PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 the guilt of violations of the Conventions of War is 
 traced home to the actual perpetrators or to those 
 who gave the orders, the guilty persons shall be 
 justly dealt with. Personally, I wish it might be so, 
 and I can imagine no more salutary action. But I 
 do not expect in my time to see Emperors and 
 Ministers and Generals made to pay the penalty of 
 their crimes, like ordinary citizens, any more than I 
 expect to see the lord who steals the common from 
 the goose serve his term with the vagabond who 
 steals the goose from the common. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that the best guarantee 
 against a war of revenge will be a continuance of the 
 present Alliance, with the addition of such Powers, 
 at present neutral, as may seek admission, and 
 towards Germany a policy of justice, tempered, not 
 overpowered, by mercy peace being preceded by a 
 victory so complete that the Hohenzollern dynasty 
 and the existing system of government may be 
 seriously discredited, and the delusion of German 
 invincibility destroyed.
 
 LECTURE VI 
 THE FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 
 
 " A dog starved at his master's gate 
 Predicts the ruin of the State." 
 
 HAVING thus attempted a wide, though cursory, 
 review of the perspective of past wars, and some 
 examination of the problems of the present crisis, 
 have we, as a result, obtained any new light or wider 
 vision of the possibilities of building up international 
 peace, and of the essential elements of the right 
 policy to that end ? I think we have. 
 
 On the balance of force for peace or war, we have 
 this main conclusion : that while war breeds war, so 
 that the period after the termination of a war, from 
 4 /vl the time that there is some recovery from the ex- 
 haustion, and while still the angry feelings and the 
 irritation from new conditions imposed by the peace 
 are unabated, is the period of maximum peril, yet 
 from the point of view of the general evolution of 
 society the forces for peace are continually growing. 
 Though States widen their boundaries, yet the geo- 
 graphical radius of any individual person's interests 
 extends far more rapidly. Less and less can any 
 nation preserve an independent economic life. In the 
 very elementary function of feeding and clothing its 
 
 101
 
 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 population, it is part of one world-wide system of 
 production, transport, and exchange. It is the same 
 with regard to the higher activities of man. It was 
 more or less reasonable for Euripides to talk about 
 Hellenic culture in contrast with foreign barbarism. 
 To adopt a similar attitude to-day, and to talk about 
 British or French or German culture is to talk about 
 what does not exist. In reality, there is nothing more 
 than British, French, and German contributions to a 
 common world-culture, and British, French, and 
 German assimilations from the common stock. And 
 while each nation may take an honourable pride in 
 its own contributions, when it examines them it can- 
 not find any which are exclusively its own, for each 
 worker starts from results already achieved, which 
 men of all nations have helped to attain. The active- 
 minded citizen of any advanced nation can no longer 
 be thought of in terms of his relation to his city and 
 to his nation merely. All round him there are 
 organizations religious, economic, scientific, pro- 
 pagandist which appeal to him to link himself with 
 others in many countries who share with him some 
 particular common interest. This is not only the 
 case with the "intellectuals." Trade-unionism is 
 rapidly becoming more and more international, so is 
 co-operation. Free libraries make the writings of 
 the most famous authors of the world accessible to 
 very humble readers. Certain difficulties in carrying 
 on the war against which many people have chafed ; 
 the enormous number of "enemy aliens" in each 
 belligerent, and in all the more important neutral
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 103 
 
 countries ; the awkwardness to Governments of the 
 problem of dealing with them ; the great number of 
 men, and still more of wives, whose real nationality, 
 as determined by their sympathies, it is impossible to 
 ascertain all these illustrate the cardinal fact that 
 a social organization of human beings is proceeding, 
 which ignores State frontiers, and which is entirely 
 out of harmony with international war. The out- 
 break of war violently severs or strains millions of 
 personal bonds between individuals which should 
 enable us to realize that those personal bonds were 
 there, and that they have been rapidly multiplying 
 and growing stronger. 
 
 If we take the results of our examination on the 
 other side the state of the forces making for war, 
 grouped under the four heads of Economic, Religious, 
 Political, and Sociological we find the outlook on the 
 whole encouraging and reassuring. Hunger wars, 
 wars springing from biological necessity for Europe 
 and Asia, were ended by the Russian conquest of the 
 Steppes of Tartary ; and though there are groups of 
 capitalists and financers who can make profits out of 
 wars, and out of Imperialistic adventures which may 
 lead to wars, such profits are insignificant compared 
 with the losses that fall upon the whole body of the 
 owners of the world's accumulated stores of wealth. 
 In the field of religion, the centuries of wars of the 
 Cross and the Crescent are almost to their end ; and 
 the balance of the power of ethical appeal for peace 
 over that for war is increasing more rapidly than at 
 any previous time in the world's history. There re-
 
 104 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 main the political conflicts of rival nationalities and 
 empires what we may call the stupid egotisms of 
 corporate personalities of the political order ; and 
 also the sinister power wielded by the very organiza- 
 tions which nations have created for their defence, 
 but which are necessarily offensive as well as defen- 
 sive. On this side the force making for war is as 
 great or greater than ever. Nevertheless, taking the 
 process of social evolution as a whole, the pacific 
 force is relatively strengthening, the war force 
 weakening. 
 
 Translating this estimate of the general situation 
 into terms of policy, we have the three following 
 lines of action indicated : 
 
 1. Time being on the side of peace, and the forces 
 for peace in most countries, if only they were organized, 
 being more powerful than those for war, at the worst 
 it is always worth while to struggle for the postpone- 
 ment of an " inevitable " war. 
 
 2. But the main struggle must be to create an 
 international morality, and to 
 
 3. Win for society as a whole the power of con- 
 trolling its belligerent organs. 
 
 I. The Postponement of War. As I write, exactly a 
 hundred years have passed since the day of Napo- 
 leon's return from Elba, which was followed within 
 a few weeks by Waterloo. How many times during 
 that hundred years has not war between Britain and 
 France been " inevitable " ? Our Volunteers were 
 organized to meet a French invasion ; our forts in the 
 South of England were built for that purpose ; for
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 105 
 
 the greater part of the hundred years it was against 
 France that we built our Navy ; but, in spite of Siam 
 and Fashoda and many forgotten issues, the " inevit- 
 able " war has been postponed with such success that 
 it has ceased to be " inevitable," and to-day is 
 nothing more than an ugly and improbable night- 
 mare. The value of postponement was the guiding 
 principle with Sir Edward Grey in his negotiations 
 for the averting of the present war, and it was also 
 fully understood by those who made the war. They 
 hurried forward the crisis with all possible speed for 
 that very reason. The United States has recognized 
 the same fact in its last series of arbitration treaties 
 characterized by " the cooling-off clause." 
 
 2. International Morality. I have previously alluded 
 to the doctrine that there is no place for morality in 
 international relations, that there is nothing above 
 the State, and that each State has the right to pursue 
 its own aggrandizement irrespective of the rights or 
 interests of others and regardless of its own plighted 
 word. I do not wish to enter into any philosophic 
 argument on the theory ; intellectually, the mere fact 
 that no State can live a separate life seems to me to 
 demonstrate its absurdity. What I am concerned 
 with is the tendency, growing or disappearing, of 
 States to act upon it. 
 
 We have to recognize that, as a matter of fact, the 
 prevailing level of morality of State action in inter- 
 national relations is appallingly low. Our own record 
 for the past sixty years includes the Crimean War, 
 Chinese opium wars, Afghan and Zulu Wars, the 
 
 14
 
 106 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 bombardment of Alexandria, the Soudan War, the 
 South African War. There are, of course, varying 
 opinions about each of these ; there is one, but only 
 one, of them which I personally should be pre- 
 pared to defend before an international audience. 
 Nor has our inaction been much more honourable 
 than our action. We deserted Denmark in 1864 ; 
 we made no efforts to mitigate the conditions 
 imposed by Prussia on France in 1871 ; our sup- 
 port of the Turkish tyranny was shortsighted and 
 cynical ; and our efforts to secure the execution of 
 reforms in Macedonia and Armenia timid in the 
 extreme and so on. To foreign observers the pro- 
 fessions that were uniformly made that we were 
 acting from the highest motives, out of respect for 
 treaties, from necessary self-defence, desire for peace, 
 or for the general well-being of humanity, must seem 
 like the most odious hypocrisies, designed to serve 
 selfish ends by deceiving those whom it was our 
 supposed interest to outwit. But in reality it was 
 not so. To a certain extent all these alleged motives 
 were real factors, though perhaps lamentably feeble 
 ones, in the make-up of British policy ; and, to the 
 extent that they were hypocritical, they were de- 
 signed to deceive our own people, who did desire that 
 the conduct of the State towards other nations should be 
 just, honourable, and humane. 
 
 Now, whether the British Empire, as a State, has 
 in its international relations behaved better or worse 
 than the average of contemporary States, all circum- 
 stances being taken into consideration, must be left
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 107 
 
 to the judgment of historians of the distant future. 
 But what is true of our record is generally true of 
 theirs also. The binding power of any higher 
 morality when in direct conflict with what is sup- 
 posed to be the interest of the State has been small, 
 but very rarely has it appeared non-existent. And it 
 is clear that in the judgment of humanity to-day, 
 when a nation openly declares its complete repudia- 
 tion of moral obligations to the rest of the world, it 
 is regarded as suffering from a sort of collective 
 insanity. The result is that the State so suffering 
 morally is doomed also to suffer materially. 
 
 Now, this is true in a special degree for the British 
 Empire. If we never realized this before we ought 
 to realize it now. The very right of the Empire 
 to exist has been rudely challenged. When we can 
 look back and carefully review the progress of events, 
 we shall see by what a narrow margin it has been 
 saved, and that it owes its continued existence not 
 only to the might of the Fleet, to the valour of the 
 Army, and the success of the action taken by the 
 Government, but primarily to the verdict pronounced 
 upon it by neutral nations and by subject nation- 
 alities within the Empire. Germany disregarded 
 Sir Edward Grey's warnings because she believed 
 that, when challenged, the British Empire would 
 crumble into dust. She believed that there would 
 be civil war in Ireland, a widespread rebellion in 
 India, a rally to the Holy War for Islam in Egypt, 
 a practically unanimous rising of the Boers in 
 Africa, and a cutting of the painter by Canada and
 
 io8 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 Australia. She believed, also, that neutral nations 
 would desire to see the supremacy of the sea pass 
 from Britain. In all these hopes she was dis- 
 appointed. But they were not all unreasonable or 
 improbable hopes, and if any one had been realized 
 the balance of force in the great struggle would 
 have been altered incalculably. And in some of 
 these quarters a very slight transfer of opinion from 
 our favour to our disfavour would have turned the 
 scale. The world has given its verdict in favour of 
 the continued existence of the British Empire, but 
 not in too enthusiastic terms. We might read it as 
 saying, " Better Britain than Germany, however bad 
 Britain may be " ; or, at best, " This and better 
 may do." 
 
 We have, in fact, to make up our minds that 
 justice, understanding, and sympathy must be the 
 very lifeblood of the Empire. In order that there 
 may be strength at the centre, in these islands we 
 must have more economic and social justice between 
 classes and between the sexes, otherwise there will 
 be growing disunion and, all too probably, a pro- 
 gressive decay in the very physical vitality of our 
 people. There must be more justice, in particular, 
 for the peoples of India ; and, in order that there 
 may be justice, a much more effective understanding 
 of Indian problems. Signs of marked progress in 
 this direction one has been glad to notice in recent 
 years. Lastly, the principle of justice must be much 
 more keenly pursued in our relations with those 
 nations whose strength is negligible compared with
 
 log 
 
 our own. Though for very existence the British 
 Empire must adopt justice as a policy, it will not 
 suffice that it should do so only from prudential 
 motives. In that case, at every crisis shortsighted 
 views of what was prudent would prevail. There 
 must be a deliberate training of those who are to 
 exercise authority in the love of justice and fair 
 play, and the obvious place for this training is in the 
 school and the playing-field. 
 
 The example of the British Empire, when guided 
 by a clearly grasped truth, is likely, after the con- 
 clusion of the present war, to exercise a dominating 
 influence over Russian policy, and we can see very 
 easily what a relief to international strain and 
 general appeasement of the human mind would 
 result from a resolve of the Czar's Government to 
 treat with justice and understanding and sympathy 
 Finland, Poland, and Persia, not forgetting the 
 Russian peasant and workman. The effect of British 
 example will be enhanced if the policy be continued 
 a policy which seems in itself prudent and natural 
 of continuing to knit more closely the Anglo- Franco- 
 Russian Entente. Judging from Sir Edward Grey's 
 declaration in 1913 that, while welcoming new 
 friendships, he would not sacrifice old ones to get 
 them, this is likely to be the policy of the immediate 
 future. Oxford University might well assist by 
 arranging for Rhodes scholarships to be held in 
 future by Russian instead of German students. 
 Further, all those measures of economic co-opera- 
 tion suggested above in connection with Mr. Wells's
 
 no PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 Tariff war proposal form a natural supplement to 
 that diplomatic policy. 
 
 It is, however, necessary that Sir Edward Grey's 
 declaration should be read backwards as well that 
 while holding fast to existing friendships we also 
 welcome new ones. It being clearly understood 
 that the Triple Entente is to persist, we must aim at 
 a wider understanding. 
 
 One of the ideas that has been brought forward, 
 and has been very earnestly discussed in many 
 circles, is that the first preliminary steps towards 
 "the United States of Europe" shall be taken a few 
 years after the conclusion of peace. As the result of 
 discussion in different circles, the fundamental idea 
 has probably been hammered into a great variety of 
 forms. Where 1 myself joined in the discussion, it 
 was agreed that the limitation to Europe was unde- 
 sirable and impracticable, and the majority endorsed 
 the proposal that at the fitting time there should be 
 called a council representative of the great European 
 Powers, together with the United States and Japan, 
 not excluding the later admission of other States, 
 with the hope that this council should be continually 
 performing modest but useful functions, securing to 
 itself the delegation of fuller and fuller powers, and 
 thus become an effective organ of the common will 
 of humanity, and exercise a powerful moral restraint 
 over individual States. 
 
 Among the functions which it was suggested such 
 a council might exercise were (i) Dealing with the 
 difficult problems arising from the confusion of racial
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE in 
 
 and language boundaries in the south-eastern corner 
 of Europe, and with those arising from the liquida- 
 tion of the Turkish Empire ; (2) international postal 
 arrangements ; (3) international labour legislation ; 
 (4) the registration of international treaties when 
 not secret, and such penalizing or moral condemna- 
 tion of secret treaties as may be found practicable. 
 It would seem to be suggested by analogy that as 
 soon as such a council was formed and began to act, 
 its powers would grow from year to year. 
 
 3. The Whole Community and its Organization for 
 War. We have next to deal with the essence of the 
 power of militarism. It lies in the circumstances 
 symbolized by the fact that in every great national 
 pageant, like the coronation or the funeral of a King, 
 only the slightest recognition is granted to all the 
 peaceful activities of the nation which fill up the 
 lives and interests of the great bulk of the popula- 
 tion, and the cortege consists almost exclusively of 
 soldiers and diplomats. Kings, foreign Ministers, 
 chiefs of the Army, chiefs of the Navy, diplomats 
 these form a circle in the closest touch with one 
 another, in a certain measure of isolation, removed 
 to a great extent from the influence of the best 
 thought of the world, and determining for each 
 nation whether it shall or shall not close in deadly 
 struggle with its neighbour. Outside these circles 
 but close by, ready to be admitted into partial con- 
 sultation, are the great financial houses which are 
 prepared to mortgage the accumulations of the past 
 and the productions of the future for the purposes of
 
 H2 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 present destruction, and the firms of armament- 
 makers who sell the instruments of slaughter at a 
 profit of ten to twenty per cent., and the newspapers 
 by which the passions of the people can be played 
 upon. 
 
 Because the nations desire peace, will these govern- 
 ing circles also desire peace ? 
 
 If the diplomats and military chiefs do not desire 
 peace, how can the nations which do restrain them ? 
 
 Liberal and Labour politicians have been asking 
 these questions for many years in all European 
 countries. Answering the first question in the nega- 
 tive, they have devised various policies in answer to 
 the second. 
 
 In Germany the Social Democratic party habitu- 
 ally voted against the Budget, without any percep- 
 tible result. In England, on similar lines, agitations 
 have been carried on against increases in the Army 
 and Navy estimates. Here, again, it is hard to see 
 that anything has been gained. More and more, 
 the current of democratic thought has been turned 
 into the direction of popular control of the diplomats 
 and of the foreign policy of the country. 
 
 Here again, I believe, they will encounter a diffi- 
 culty and a danger that requires to be faced. The 
 difficulty arises from the fact that our constitutional 
 organ for exercising popular control over Govern- 
 ment is the House of Commons, and the House of 
 Commons, by the working of the party system and 
 by the morbid and dangerous development of party 
 spirit in the country, has made itself practically in-
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 113 
 
 capable of putting any check on the Executive, and 
 morally unfit for the task of lifting foreign relations 
 into a higher and serener atmosphere. A necessary 
 preliminary to giving the House of Commons more 
 control over foreign policy should be a curbing of 
 the excesses of party spirit and a weakening of the 
 shackles of party discipline by the adoption of Pro- 
 portional Representation. And then it would be 
 necessary to wait to see the result of that. 
 
 But behind this difficulty there lies an even more 
 serious danger, in the lack of the necessary knowledge 
 and intellectual training among people of all classes. 
 This is partly due to the fact that popular education 
 is mainly devoted to increasing efficiency for wage- 
 earning, and that it is somewhat scanty and in- 
 efficient at that ; and partly to the criminal obscur- 
 antism of those estimable country clergy who refuse to 
 allow the ancient Universities to abolish compulsory 
 Greek, and thus divorce education from modern life 
 for the public schools, and consequently for all those 
 who have the opportunity of a prolonged education. 
 Valuable as are the efforts of those who are building 
 up systems of higher education among the people, 
 these are only by degrees leavening the mass. It is 
 only slowly that they are making possible the future 
 democratic control of international politics. 
 
 Meanwhile, a proposal has been made which seems 
 to me, after turning it over and over, to offer a great 
 hope ; it is that there shall be established, by volun- 
 tary association, an International Court of Honour. 
 It should exercise no military or financial force; it 
 
 5
 
 ii 4 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 should operate only through the power of public 
 opinion. It should ascertain facts, and declare them. 
 It would not have to wait till both nations at contro- 
 versy with one another consented to refer the dispute 
 to it. Directly one party, the weaker presumably, 
 appealed to it, it could begin to examine the case as 
 presented, and invite the antagonist also to put its 
 case ; if it refused, the inference would be easy. The 
 helplessness of the great mass of pacific public 
 opinion, the opinion of those who pay the taxes, who 
 suffer the toils and the wounds of campaigns, the 
 widows and orphans left destitute, arises from their 
 ignorance. If they had for their organ a judicial 
 tribunal, of men of high honour and great capacity, 
 selected for each international dispute from neutral 
 nations, declaring where lay the justice of the issue, 
 or how it might be compromised with honour to 
 both sides, their confusion and uncertainty and help- 
 lessness would disappear. They would find a common 
 voice, and they would make it heard. I have 
 searched, but have failed to find any sufficient reason 
 for thinking this proposal impracticable, or the Court 
 it contemplates likely to be corrupted or perverted. 
 
 In conclusion, there is a question which citizens of 
 the United Kingdom must needs put very seriously 
 to themselves. We say we are at war against 
 Prussian militarism : the Prussians answer that they 
 are at war against British navalism. To our minds, 
 " Britannia rules the waves " generally carries no 
 more meaning than that the British Fleet is the 
 greatest and most powerful on the ocean, and that it
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 115 
 
 guards our shores and the oversea trade without 
 which we should starve. To the German it means 
 that the British Fleet arrogates to itself the right to 
 make war upon all their shipping, and to seize the 
 cargoes, irrespective of their nature ; and that it is 
 only by permission, that can be revoked at any time, 
 that German commerce can pass on water outside 
 the narrow limits of the Baltic Sea. This is the 
 question, technically, "of the right of capture of 
 private goods at sea." The general opinion of the 
 world is in favour of the abolition of that right, 
 except for contraband of war. Britain asserts it, and 
 therefore maintains it for all other navies as well as 
 her own. By this right, as Mr. Gibson Bowles says, 
 we have in the past been able " to coerce not a 
 nation only, but a whole continent." This it is that 
 adds weight to the German argument in America 
 and elsewhere, when they endeavour to rouse sus- 
 picion and distrust against us. It is almost impos- 
 sible for us to wish now, while this war lasts, that our 
 Navy had any less freedom of action. But should we 
 succeed, in Mr. Asquith's words, in wholly and 
 finally destroying Prussian military domination, we 
 must face the question, whether in foreign eyes our 
 naval policy does not bear the appearance of a 
 national arrogance similar to that of Prussia. That 
 this right should be abandoned has been long advo- 
 cated by Lord Loreburn, and for a good many years 
 by Mr. F. E. Smith. Sir Edward Grey's policy at 
 the last Hague Conference appears to have been to 
 offer to take this momentous step if Germany would
 
 ii6 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 agree to a limitation of navies. But Germany re- 
 jected this offer which, we can now see, would have 
 been of enormous advantage to her. The question 
 lies dormant during the war ; when the war is over it 
 will inevitably be raised again, and in very powerful 
 quarters. Then we shall have to decide whether we 
 shall not offer up the right of capture as our sacrifice 
 upon the altar of the world's peace. It will be a 
 sacrifice a sacrifice of power, founded on naval 
 strength but to make that sacrifice may be the 
 highest wisdom. 
 
 What are regarded here as the necessary means 
 for securing the permanence of peace the pursuit 
 of justice in national, imperial an'd international 
 affairs, a revision of University education, the abate- 
 ment of Party rancour, the abandonment of a for- 
 midable naval weapon are no small matters. To 
 some it may seem hopeless to make such demands 
 from those who determine the policy of the nation. 
 
 It would be hopeless, perhaps, if the nation is to 
 be, at the conclusion of the war, much as it was 
 before the war began. But two great changes are 
 to be anticipated. After the war is quite over we 
 shall begin to realize what modern war is and not 
 till then. That realization will be the spur driving 
 us to the accomplishment of all that we understand 
 to be necessary for the future maintenance of peace. 
 And, secondly, the decision of national issues will be 
 in the hands of women as well as men. For while 
 the advance of women towards political power has 
 in the past been slow in the extreme, it has been
 
 FUTURE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE 117 
 
 irresistible, and steadily accelerating. The war itself 
 has made all Europe realize that in the supreme 
 struggle between nations, survival depends upon the 
 energies of women being utilized as well as those of 
 men ; and women who have left sheltered homes to 
 face stern responsibilities and difficult duties will not 
 easily return to a vapid existence. Henceforward 
 they will count ; and they will count more and more, 
 though it is not yet possible to see whether complete 
 political equality between the sexes will ever be 
 established. 
 
 Now, while there has been in some quarters gross 
 exaggeration with regard to the difference between 
 men and women in their outlook on peace and war 
 and argument from natural differences in function is 
 partially misleading for reasons shown in Lecture II. 
 yet beyond a doubt there is a difference, and the 
 inevitable advance of Feminism is the world's best 
 security against the destruction of civilization by 
 international war.
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 THE NEED FOR AN INTERNATIONAL COURT 
 OF HONOUR 
 
 IN such time for thought as men have to spare from 
 the problem of carrying on the most deadly war the 
 world has seen, they are gripped by the question, 
 whether there is any possibility of preventing even 
 greater and more terrible wars in the future, which 
 would be waged with weapons enormously developed 
 in death-dealing power, and all too probably utterly 
 destroy the world's civilization, already so sorely 
 damaged. This is surely the greatest question that 
 ever confronted humanity. It is not a question to 
 argue about, but one for individual and collective 
 thinking ; for the most strenuous thought that each 
 individual can compass, and the clearest exposition 
 of whatever result is reached. 
 
 There are some who hold that there is no possi- 
 bility of such an avoidance of war. There are others 
 who almost hope that the realization of what this 
 war is will of itself induce nations to prevent wars 
 and live together in peace, and, by degrees, in amity. 
 Between these two extremes different thinkers hold 
 all sorts of intermediate positions, but there is one 
 conclusion which seems to me to be forcing itself 
 into a very wide acceptance the conclusion that as 
 long as the different sovereign States into which the 
 world is divided are under no control, and in no way 
 subject, either materially or morally, to some Power 
 representing humanity as a whole, peace ran be at 
 the best precarious. When the prospect seems
 
 INTERNATIONAL COURT OF HONOUR 119 
 
 fairest and the sky most untroubled, the volcanic 
 forces beneath will ever be ready to burst forth with 
 redoubled violence. 
 
 If this be so, the problem of peace is the problem 
 of creating this wider authority. It is no easy 
 problem, for how can it be created, except by the 
 combined will of the sovereign States themselves ? 
 And when did any entirely independent and self- 
 govering political units of their own free will create a 
 superior authority and voluntarily submit themselves 
 to it ? According to Hobbes and other theorists, 
 States themselves were created by such a process ; 
 free and independent individual men, being under no 
 authority, and rinding out by dire experience the 
 perils and miseries of anarchy, created the State by 
 selecting a Prince, and contracting to give him 
 obedience for the sake of law and order. But no one 
 supposes that such theories contain any positive 
 historic truth. If history of the evolution of govern- 
 ment over individuals can offer us any guidance for 
 the problem of humanity to-day, it suggests that the 
 new super-State authority cannot be suddenly estab- 
 lished in its final form. In other words, it suggests 
 that something may be created independently of the 
 , volition of sovereign States, which may be subse- 
 quently accepted by them, and ultimately grow into 
 a Power great enough to prevent wars, and to settle 
 international issues on just principles. 
 
 It is on these lines that the proposal for an Inter- 
 national Court of Honour has been conceived. The 
 idea is that it shall be created in the first place by a 
 voluntary international association, with a constitu- 
 tion framed to give as real and equal representation 
 to all members as possible ; and that this association 
 shall, when appealed to by either party in any inter- 
 national difficulty, appoint as assessors the ablest 
 and most impartial men whose services can be
 
 120 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 secured, and these assessors shall investigate the 
 issue, inviting both parties to submit their case, and 
 declaring what, in their opinion, the justice of the 
 quarrel was. It would not, in the proper sense of 
 the word, make an award like a Court of Arbitra- 
 tion, and therefore no question would arise as to 
 whether its award would be accepted. What it 
 would do would be to enlighten public opinion through- 
 out the world. Yet the mere fact that nations find it 
 worth while now to appeal to general public opinion 
 shows that the International Court of Honour would 
 exercise a very real force. That force would grow 
 just in proportion to the weight, enlightenment, and 
 justice of its pronouncements; and, therefore, since 
 all human organizations have in themselves a force 
 working for their own existence and growth, the 
 Association for maintaining the International Court 
 of Honour would strive continually to uphold its pres- 
 tige by appointing for each inquiry the most authori- 
 tative Court it could discover and induce to serve. 
 
 The Court of Honour would not be confined to 
 questions at issue between Governments. One of 
 its most important functions would be to exercise a 
 control over the diffusion of false and misleading 
 statements in the world's Press if of a character to 
 aggravate international relations. To take a par- 
 ticular example : In the period immediately preceding 
 the South African War, public opinion in Great 
 Britain was inflamed by statements, circulated Very 
 widely and with the greatest prominence, that two 
 Englishmen had been unwarrantably put to death 
 by the Transvaal Government. Actually, they had 
 not even received any physical injury. It would be 
 the function of the International Court of Honour 
 in such circumstances, on complaint from any 
 Government maligned in the Press of a foreign 
 country, to invite the newspaper concerned to justify
 
 INTERNATIONAL COURT OF HONOUR 121 
 
 its statement, and if it failed or refused to make 
 the attempt, to publish the fact to the world. 
 Similarly, private individuals, associations, and cor- 
 porations would have the right of appealing to the 
 Court of Honour against stigmas laid upon them by 
 State officials if the case had an international char- 
 acter, and was outside the cognizance of all other 
 Courts. Of the various developments of the Court, 
 of its possible extension into internal affairs where 
 what is most important is to ascertain and publish 
 facts, as frequently is the case in labour disputes, it 
 is not necessary to speculate here. 
 
 The International Court of Honour, while resting 
 on the power of public opinion, would enormously 
 increase that power. Public opinion is, under 
 present conditions, rendered relatively powerless by 
 the lack of independent access to the facts ; it is 
 confused and puzzled ; whatever information comes 
 before it is reasonably suspected of being evoked for 
 some particular end, but what that end may be few 
 people are in a position to guess. From such 
 shackles it would be freed, to a great extent, by the 
 Court. 
 
 Many doubts will arise with regard to this pro- 
 posal. First, it will be asked whether there is power 
 in the world for its creation. The answer is that the 
 supreme interest of most people is international 
 peace, and among this great majority there are 
 thousands of men of great wealth and influence. If 
 they believe that the International Court of Honour 
 will have the influence which is hoped for it, it will 
 be common sense on their part to see that it is created. 
 
 Secondly, it will be asked whether the Govern- 
 ments of States will allow such a power to be formed 
 independently of them, and to grow to such influence 
 as to exercise any real control over their actions 
 without being itself controlled by them. Frankly, I 
 
 16
 
 122 PEACE AND WAR IN EUROPE 
 
 do not believe that they will. But once a sufficiently 
 powerful international association has been built up 
 and has begun its work, the one effective move that 
 they will be able to make against it will be to compete 
 with it. They will naturally be moved to create an 
 International Court on the principle of representa- 
 tion from sovereign States, and once this is estab- 
 lished, there will be in existence the germ of a federal 
 authority for the world as a whole. 
 
 Minor federal authorities, as those of the Swiss 
 and American Federations, have grown up under the 
 pressure of a common danger. The common danger 
 exists, and grows ever more threatening and terrible, 
 to impel the world, once the germ of the world- 
 federal authority is there, to foster its growth and in- 
 fluence. And, just as in each nation the affairs of the 
 Central Government draw from all over the country 
 the most energetic minds from the service of localities 
 and private businesses, so the World's Federal Court 
 would draw to itself the ablest men from national 
 Governments. 
 
 These, then, are the questions for which I crave 
 consideration : 
 
 1. Can the world's peace be permanently secured 
 except by the evolution of a super-national authority? 
 
 2. Can States be brought to acquiesce in the 
 existence of such an authority, and to concede it 
 sufficient power for effectiveness, unless the germ of 
 it is created and fostered up to a certain point, inde- 
 pendently of their volition ? 
 
 3. Can any better way of creating the germ of the 
 Confederation of the World be suggested than the 
 International Court of Honour for the purpose of 
 ascertaining truth, and investigating the application 
 of the principle of justice, in issues between nations? 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND.
 
 56" 
 
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