REFLECTIONS 
 OF A NON-COMBATANT 
 
REFLECTIONS OF 
 A NONGOMBATANT 
 
 BY 
 
 M. D. PETRE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND UFB OF FATHER TYRRELL' 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET. NEW YORK 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1915 
 

vC. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It was the same country that produced two 
 opposite types of national politics — Macchiavelli 
 and Mazzini ; Macchiavelli deals with the 
 exigencies of national life, and nothing- else ; 
 Mazzini is the prophet of a higher conception 
 of international society, in which the good of 
 each nation will contribute to the good of all, 
 and in which humanity, and not nationality, 
 will be the last, though not the only word. Our 
 modern statecraft is not yet wholly Mazzinian, 
 but we are apt to forget how far it is, in some 
 degree, inevitably Macchiavellian. 
 
 In this little work an attempt has been made 
 to show that mankind is working simultaneously 
 on two planes ; the plane of national and inter- 
 national politics, and the plane of human aspira- 
 tion and endeavour, and that the laws of the one 
 are not the laws of the other. Macchiavellism, 
 of which the modern name is Bismarckianism, 
 
 334047 
 
vi Introduction, 
 
 or more popularly, Bernhardism, may be quite 
 right politically, and quite wrong judged from 
 the general human standpoint. Thus the war 
 that is ruthless and uncivilized may be true war, 
 though it be not the war of humane and civilized 
 peoples ; unscrupulous diplomacy may be genuine 
 diplomacy though it be not the diplomacy of a 
 moral and progressive state. Expediency is the 
 last word in purely national politics and war; 
 expediency is not the last word of humanity. 
 But it is humanity which constitutes the deepest, 
 widest, and most universal reality ; and it is, 
 therefore, human considerations which will 
 eventually shape national life, and not national- 
 ism that will shape humanity. 
 
 Meanwhile the states that direct their action 
 and policy according to purely national consider- 
 ations without any regard to the general needs 
 of mankind, have an advantage in their own 
 sphere, from their concentrating all their forces 
 to one end ; while the states whose policy is 
 influenced by wider human motives, are at a 
 temporary disadvantage, though the future is 
 for them. The militarism and the politics of the 
 dawn are militarism and politics that are out- 
 growing their own garments. Yet I believe 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 that a great mistake is made when we fail to 
 recognize that a philosophy may be sound as 
 applied to its own object though its principles be 
 immoral and detestable when moved into another 
 sphere. Macchiavellism is sound as regards the 
 ends to which it was directed ; and it is an error 
 to term it immoral, as exercised in its own 
 domain, because that domain admits of neither 
 moral nor immoral principles and actions. 
 
 The question, then, to ask, of states and 
 statesmen, is not whether their diplomacy be 
 ruled by principles of expediency or morality, 
 whether the war they wage be ruled by laws of 
 humanity or cruelty, but whether both their 
 policy and their militarism be subservient to 
 nobler and more universal ends than those of 
 pure national egotism ; whether, in fact, they 
 are diplomats, and nothing else, generals, and 
 nothing else, or whether they are on the line of 
 progress towards a more comprehensive national 
 life which can be a factor in the universal life of 
 mankind as one great human family. 
 
 The ** reflections of this non-combatant " are 
 not, then, set forth as an indictment of German 
 politics and German military methods, but as an 
 indictment of the temper that lies behind such 
 
viii Introductwn. 
 
 politics and such methods, whether they be 
 found amongst Germans or others ; an indict- 
 ment of the national temper that is opposed to 
 universal human progress and can only find a 
 suitable vent in Macchiavellian diplomacy and 
 barbarous warfare. 
 
 War, in the mind of that non-combatant, is 
 something essentially brutal and terrible ; humane 
 regulations can scratch its surface, but not alter 
 its nature. When we go to war we enter on a 
 condition of things in which ordinary laws of 
 morality are suspended ; in which Christianity, 
 as such, has no true part. The more highly 
 developed races will inevitably carry higher 
 considerations even into their warlike methods, 
 but this is because they are passing out of the 
 military stage of nationalism into a higher plane 
 of human existence. The less highly developed 
 races will pass easily into the most barbarous 
 extremes in their military methods, for the simple 
 reason that their ordinary national temper is one 
 that finds a fitting outlet in such methods. More 
 important, therefore, than the question as to the 
 way in which we make war is the question as to 
 the reasons for which we make it, and the aims 
 we would attain by it ; more detestable than the 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 atrocities and injustices which may be per- 
 petrated during a war is the philosophy of 
 national egotism which regards outrages to 
 humanity as an accidental evil in the develop- 
 ment of its ambitions. 
 
 War will be inevitable until international 
 human justice is supreme ; war will be noble 
 or base according to the ends for which it is 
 waged, and the motives by which it is inspired ; 
 but war, to the end, will be barbarous in a 
 greater or a less degree, and it is the temper 
 which produces it, and not the way in which it 
 is conducted, in which the true injury to human 
 progress consists. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 In Time of War i 
 
 II. 
 
 War a Fatality 
 
 
 
 
 i8 
 
 III. 
 
 ''Kriegist Krieg" 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 IV. 
 
 Diplomacy and War 
 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 V. 
 
 Treaties and Conventions 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 VI. 
 
 Patriotism and War 
 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 VII. 
 
 Democracy and War 
 
 
 
 
 . 77 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Divine Neutrality . 
 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 IX. 
 
 Philosophical Neutrality 
 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 X. 
 
 Peace .... 
 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 XI. 
 
 Sub Specie ^Etemitatis . 
 
 
 
 
 . 131 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 IN TIME OF WAR. 
 
 In this country, as I write, it would almost 
 seem as though our love for one another had 
 kindled and grown strong in exact proportion to 
 our wrath against the enemy. Those who habit- 
 ually live their own lives, in quiet comfort, and 
 trouble little about the needs of others, are now 
 hurrying to the Red Cross depots with offers of 
 service ; are turning their houses into prospec- 
 tive hospitals ; are cutting off their own superflui- 
 ties to provide for the necessities of their poorer 
 brethren. 
 
 Between the classes suspicion is lulled ; a spirit 
 of fraternity and equality makes itself felt. But, 
 above all, those qualities which danger calls forth, 
 and which are generally reserved for heroic oc- 
 casions, blossom like hedge-flowers ; the instinct 
 of self-preservation is absorbed in the desire for 
 service ; men and women scramble for an occa- 
 sion of danger, and it would seem as though 
 death were more highly prized than life. 
 
2 , >>,; 'Re^Uiovs. of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 There are characters, ordinarily worthless and 
 undisciplined, that suddenly develop latent forces 
 of generosity and devotedness ; they have found 
 their opportunity, and their light will burn brightly 
 during this time of crisis and be quenched, if 
 quenched it be, in glory. The world will forget 
 how they lived, and will remember only how they 
 died. 
 
 We see, in fact, for the moment, a prevalence 
 of the soldier type in all its best qualities ; a type 
 that exists in virtue of the possibility of war, and 
 unfolds its latent qualities when war breaks forth. 
 
 For let us remember that the type of humanity 
 which is begotten by war is a type that will always 
 exist so long as war remains a possibility. If 
 centuries passed without any outbreak of hostil- 
 ities, yet the qualities that war demands would 
 never perish as long as its occurrence might be 
 expected. 
 
 In virtue of war then, or of its likelihood, the 
 soldier continues to exist — the man of silent deeds, 
 of unquestioning obedience, of personal self-for- 
 getfulness, of unboasting courage, of cheerful ac- 
 ceptance of danger and death. 
 
 By war too is stimulated that feeling of solid- 
 arity of which we are now so conscious. Indi- 
 vidual value is, for the moment, at a discount ; 
 we are all as atoms in the life of our country. 
 
In Time of War. 3 
 
 To strong personalities this overwhelming 
 sense of incorporation is even painful, because 
 they are, at the same time, conscious that their 
 individual contribution to the common stock is 
 robbed of its full and distinct value — in the 
 massing of energy which a war demands the 
 memory of certain deep and abiding values 
 is effaced ; vast mental treasures become as use- 
 less as gold on a desert island. That intensity 
 of corporate life which gives strength to the weak 
 in some sense weakens the strong, for there is 
 scope for but one common aim and aspiration ; 
 there is no scope for light and shade of expres- 
 sion, for variety of outlook, for richer and nobler 
 grades of perception and effort than the general 
 level of mankind can attain. In fact, our fortunes 
 are pooled ; we are strong as the society to which 
 we belong is strong, but no stronger so far as 
 any form of social achievement is concerned. 
 The great ones amongst us, unless they be mili- 
 tary authorities, can no longer compel attention, 
 because they have been absorbed into the common 
 reservoir of national life. 
 
 This is a psychological phenomenon of which 
 a good many must be dimly aware, though they 
 may not have taken clear account of it. It is an 
 experience that is great indeed, in some sense, 
 but that is also painful and belittling, for if the 
 
4 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 valleys are filled up, the mountains are pulled 
 down. 
 
 Perhaps this psychological effect is more 
 marked in our modern warfare than it was in the 
 days when fighting was general and frequent. 
 It is noteworthy that thought, except on matters 
 of military or historic interest, seems to have 
 stood still ; yet the Elizabethan era was as 
 famous for its intellectual as for its military ex- 
 ploits ; the knapsack of the soldier had place for 
 book and pen and paper as well as objects of 
 material necessity. It is probably a result first 
 of our centralization, secondly of the dependence 
 of intellectual achievement on commercial con- 
 ditions, that in wartime we can now think and 
 talk of nothing but war. 
 
 Then, too, the disasters of modern warfare 
 are so far-reaching and universal, that the world 
 can hardly do other than stand still to see what 
 will be left when the crisis is past. 
 
 Even in the actual mechanism of modern war- 
 fare this suppression of individual merits is to be 
 noted. There is a levelling of values, an efface- 
 ment of personal qualities and distinctions which 
 must steadily increase as war becomes more and 
 more a work of scientific calculation rather than 
 of genius and enterprise Above all in the anti- 
 democratic system of close formation, so much 
 
In Time of War. 5 
 
 employed by the Germans, is this uniformity of 
 values to be noted. A few of the leaders may 
 find scope for special qualities of mind or charac- 
 ter, for the majority there is not any chance of 
 doing more because they would or could do more. 
 A large number of our friends, a larger number 
 of our enemies who have been sacrificed in this 
 war were just food for powder ; their lives were 
 poured forth in a flood so vast that the separate 
 drops could be counted, indeed, with our care 
 for mere number, but could not possibly be 
 valued. The brave man, giving his life gener- 
 ously in the belief that he gave it for a good 
 cause, will have fallen side by side with his selfish 
 or cowardly comrade ; his personal nobility will 
 have furthered the cause no better than the un- 
 willing sacrifice of his companion. A certain 
 number had to be killed, and he was one of them. 
 The fine and the coarse material were woven 
 into one web, and its threads will, perhaps, never 
 be disentangled. This is, indeed, one of the 
 most tragic features of a war ; we lose our best 
 along with our worst, and are not even aware of 
 the difference ; their contribution has been re- 
 duced to one value. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, the very ruthlessness of 
 war has its counter-balancing advantages. When 
 we are face to face with necessity we are freed 
 
6 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 from our slavery to many petty considerations 
 of human respect or self-interest, that restrain 
 us at other times from doing what, at bottom, we 
 know to be best. The most democratic amongst 
 us should have the honesty to recognize that the 
 desire to maintain an appearance of humanity 
 has sometimes a weakening and immoral influence 
 on the measures of a democratic government. It 
 is not always motives of humanity that restrain the 
 action of such a government in its dealings with 
 social evils : it is its fear of not being reckoned 
 humane. In time of war the mercy that is in- 
 spired by unconscientious motives runs dry ; 
 and many social plague-spots are summarily 
 eradicated. We are in a condition in which we 
 act firmly and uncompromisingly according to the 
 light we possess, though we are not in a condition 
 of progress towards yet fuller and clearer light. 
 The best type of soldier is, in short, for the moment 
 our highest ideal ; the moral reformer, the servant 
 or martyr of truth, the prophet of things to come 
 must fall into rank with the rest, working for what 
 is immediately necessary until mankind can again 
 turn to interests that are abiding and eternal. 
 
 But it is important not to forget that we are, 
 indeed, thus waiting for the time when we can 
 again set our feet on the path of the future. For 
 a crisis, such as that which we are undergoing, 
 
In Time of War. 7 
 
 is bound to exercise in some respects a reactionary 
 influence. For example, because there was, be- 
 fore the war, a certain party amongst us which, 
 with or without reasonable grounds for their ap- 
 prehensions, foretold the present crisis, there is a 
 tendency, now that they have been proved right, 
 to pay them more honour than is properly their 
 due. So far as their object was simply to warn 
 their country of a coming danger they deserve 
 nothing but gratitude; so far as they had and 
 have the militarist sense of militarism, we shall 
 look to them only in as much as we desire a 
 permanent condition of militarism. 
 
 Had this section of our community prevailed, 
 in its own day, and swept the country into an 
 earlier, and less obviously unavoidable war, should 
 we have fought with those advantages that we 
 now possess ? should we have gone to battle with 
 the same moral force ? should we have presented 
 the undivided front of men who accept the 
 horrors of warfare in order to end them ? 
 
 To some degree it may be said that the 
 Germanophobes of England are those with the 
 more German and less English outlook. They 
 hate Germany and would fight her because they 
 regard her as a rival in the path of England's 
 ambition. 
 
 Thus Professor Cramb wrote : — 
 
8 Reflections of a N on- Comb at ant. 
 
 What is likely to result when the first nation, though 
 pursuing colossal organic ideals, yet seems to have become 
 almost weary of the glory of empire, expressing frequently 
 the desire for arbitration, for the limitation of armaments, a 
 " naval holiday," peace at any price ; when its war-spirit, its 
 energy, its sense of heroism are apparently diminishing, and 
 the mere craving for life and its comforts seems to be con- 
 quering every other passion — as if to this nation the aim of 
 all life were the avoidance of suffering — what, I say, is likely 
 to result if, confronting this, you have a nation high in its 
 courage, etc.^ 
 
 And again : — 
 
 If these, then, are the legitimate impulses, the just ambi- 
 tions of Germany — and what Englishman remembering the 
 methods by which the British empire has been established 
 in India, in America, in Africa, in Egypt, dare arraign 
 those impulses or those ambitions ? — if these are the modes 
 which the "will to power" assumes in modern Germany, 
 what of England, and those needs of England with which 
 they enter most immediately into collision ? ^ 
 
 These words express not an anti-German at- 
 titude and policy, but the wish to see militarist 
 England the master of militarist Germany. 
 
 Referring to the same party in France, a writer 
 in the ** Entretiens des non-combattants durant 
 la guerre," addressing the Germans, says : — 
 
 Their hostility is against your persons, and not your 
 principles. ... If your principles were transported into 
 
 1 " Germany and England," pp. 42-4. 
 ^ Idetn^ pp. 1 2 1-2. 
 
In Time of War, 9 
 
 France and turned to French ends, they would not object 
 to them. In fact, they reproach you for not being French, 
 which is not your own fault and is therefore irremediable. 
 But because you are not French they are obliged to will 
 your destruction, while secretly desiring to succeed you.^ 
 
 Let those who honestly cherish this form of 
 national ambition stand by their views ; but it 
 would be, from the other point of view, a dis- 
 astrous result of the war if those who regard 
 militarism as a fallacy, who believe in a national- 
 ism that need not express itself in the desire to 
 dominate, who love their own country without 
 wishing that she should oppress others, were to 
 lose confidence in their own ideal because they 
 had not fully gauged the force of the obstacles 
 that opposed its fulfilment, and were to become 
 militarist in virtue of their opposition to militarism. 
 
 A spiritual genius has told us that in times of 
 calm we should remember our periods of trouble, 
 and that in times of trouble we should, similarly, 
 look back to our days of calm. So while brute 
 force, supported by the ingenuity of mechanical 
 science, has to be reinforced by all the moral 
 qualities we can muster to its aid, let us look 
 back and forward to the more normal periods, 
 
 ^ These " Entretiens " from which I shall quote more 
 than once, are published weekly by the "Union pour la 
 Verite," 21, rue Visconti, Paris. 
 
lo Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 when it is the servant, and not the sovereign, of 
 moral and intellectual powers. 
 
 The pacifist is paying for his defiance of facts 
 by being rolled round in a chaos of facts ; but we 
 need not, for this, abandon a philosophy which 
 has room for facts as well as ideals. 
 
 The French were forced, at the very moment 
 when war broke out, to face this problem in a 
 brutal form. Jaures was assassinated — and yet 
 his party rallied, without hesitation, under the 
 banner of its country. Was this the refutation 
 of all that for which Jaures had lived and 
 laboured? So his opponents declared, but so 
 did not those whose patriotism was of a broader 
 character. Jaures may have been mistaken, 
 dangerously mistaken, as to the inevitability of 
 war, but it need not follow therefrom that he was 
 mistaken in everything else. 
 
 At his funeral M. Jouhaux, secretary of the 
 ** General Confederation of Labour," uttered the 
 following words : — 
 
 Jaures was our strength in our ardent efforts for peace. 
 It is not his fault, nor ours, if peace has not prevailed. 
 War has broken out. Before going forth to the great 
 massacre, in the name of those workmen who have departed, 
 in the name of those who will shortly depart, of whom I am 
 one, I declare, before this coffin, our hatred of the savage 
 imperialism that has perpetrated the horrible crime. 
 
 Those who heard the words of Jouhaux (says a writer in 
 
In Time of War. ii 
 
 the * * Entretiens," from which we have drawn the quotation), 
 and the bitterness of his cry, will hear them for ever. They 
 came from the entrails of working France. Jouhaux disa- 
 vowed nothing of the international Jauresian doctrine. He 
 did not shrink when faced by fact. He was right — no fact 
 can refute a doctrine that is established on right. 
 
 Nevertheless Maurras also was right on his own plane, 
 when he said (''Action Frangaise," ii October, 1914) : — 
 
 "We have here the ordinary characteristic of the Jauresian 
 fallacy : a permanent confusion between an order of facts that 
 must be foreseen, calculated and prepared for, and an order of 
 right that must rule our wills, our thoughts, and our desires, 
 but that can establish no material barrier against living reali- 
 ties. . . . 
 
 The Jauresian ideal has, unfortunately, suffered a more de- 
 finitive eclipse than the disappearance of its author. . . . 
 
 It would be hard to point out any hopes that have been 
 more clearly proved fallacious." 
 
 Maurras himself (continues the writer in the '* Entretiens ") 
 is careful not to confound right Sind/acf ; but, on the other 
 hand, he suppresses one of the terms ; he is indifferent to 
 right. And hence the meaning of this war escapes him, its 
 fresh and unique character, its difference from the old wars 
 of Kings. He also misses the secret of the force that urges 
 the people, and the poor, and other peoples than our own, 
 to this war. . . . 
 
 Without this conviction of right ... we could, indeed, 
 resist our enemy because he desires our death and we wish 
 to live ; we could not condemn him as unjust, and seek with 
 our foreign allies, with all just men whose sympathies are 
 with us, to cut off this enemy from the community of nations 
 as being, not only our enemy, but the common enemy of 
 mankind. 
 
12 Reflections of a Non-Combat ant. 
 
 These words indicate how, in times of crisis, 
 there is not only the danger that those who pre- 
 dicted it, being proved right on one point, will 
 assume that they were right on every other, but 
 there is also the danger that those who were 
 opposed to them, not only in the practical esti- 
 mate of the peril, but in their whole theory of 
 political life, will waver in those deeper and 
 more essential convictions which should be 
 strengthened, rather than extinguished, by the 
 war. In such case, so far from this war being a 
 step to the ending of war, it would lead to the 
 stronger establishment of militarism ; it would 
 set in a period of reaction, and throw us back to 
 the policy of the Middle Ages. This would be, 
 indeed, to take from mankind the price and refuse 
 the article ; to pour forth the blood of the people 
 to quench their own aspirations ; to become 
 German in resisting pan-Germanism. 
 
 It must be remembered that non-combatants, 
 not having the same outlet for their energies as 
 the fighters, are more liable to become rancorous 
 and petty in their hate. The soldiers will shout 
 Christmas greetings to the enemy that he means 
 to shoot to-morrow, will chaff him and fling tins of 
 bully-beef from trench to trench ; the non-com- 
 batants will be less large-minded. The spy -panic 
 threatened, at one moment, to assume dangerous 
 
In Time of Wa7\ 13 
 
 dimensions in this country ; and here and there 
 unprincipled methods have been advocated by 
 the non-combatant which the soldier would re- 
 ject. 
 
 The following protest was made by an Eng- 
 lish publisher, in the early days of the war, 
 against the taking of unfair advantage in the 
 matter of copyright : — 
 
 Copyright of German Works. 
 
 To the Editor of'' The Times ". 
 Sir, 
 
 A large number of German copyright works are be- 
 ing offered to publishers at the present time for translation. 
 In many cases the would-be translators have obtained no 
 permission or transfer of rights from the authors of these 
 books, and it is, of course, impossible to do so in existing 
 circumstances. To take advantage of this state of affairs in 
 order to appropriate the property of others would, in the 
 opinion of this Association, not only be a breach of the Beme 
 Convention, but would also do discredit to a nation which is 
 now fighting for the maintenance of honourable obligations. 
 May I express the hope that every publisher in Great 
 Britain and Ireland who is approached in this way will re- 
 fuse to publish works the translation rights of which have 
 not been duly assigned. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 James H. Blackwood, President^ 
 The Publishers' Association of 
 Great Britain and Ireland, 
 
 Stationers' Hall Court, E.G. 
 2 October, 191 4. 
 
14 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 This letter showed the influence of the war 
 fever in commercial matters, and was a noble 
 appeal for the maintenance of the ordinary laws 
 of justice and fair play, with enemies, as with 
 friends. 
 
 Still more significant was the controversy, 
 which made many of us blush, instituted by Pro- 
 fessor Sayce of Queen's College, Oxford, in re- 
 gard to the intellectual merits of Germany. 
 Though the letter has excited sufficient notice, it 
 is worth while giving some extracts from it : — 
 
 It is astonishing that British scholars and politicians 
 should still be found speaking of "our intellectual debt to 
 Germany ". It might have been supposed that after the 
 lessons of the present war, German bluster would have been 
 taken at its face value. But theories made in Germany 
 have so long been accepted at the valuation of their authors 
 both in this country and in America, where the younger 
 generation has sat obediently at the feet of Teutonic pro- 
 fessors, that it has become difficult to see them in their true 
 light. It is worth while, therefore, examining in the dry 
 light of reason what Germany has really done for culture and 
 scientific progress. 
 
 As to music, I can say nothing, for I am not a musician. 
 In literature Germany has Goethe, who occupies the first 
 rank. Heine was a Jew, who regarded the Germans as 
 barbarians. Schiller, the most characteristically German of 
 German writers, was a milk-and-water Longfellow. In phil- 
 osophy there are Kant and Hegel, but Kant was more 
 than half Scottish in origin, and it is difficult to say what the 
 
In Time of War. 15 
 
 Hegelian philosophy would have been had the German lan- 
 guage been more cultivated. 
 
 In science none of the great names is German. We 
 look in vain for any that can be put by the side of those 
 of Newton, Darwin, Faraday, Laplace, or Pasteur. Even 
 in mechanical science hardly one of the great inventions 
 of modern times — the steam engine, the telegraph and 
 telephone, the motor-car, the aeroplane, the wireless tele- 
 graph — ^has been " made in Germany ". 
 
 This letter was happily not left without 
 answers from other of our English University 
 Professors, from Prof. H. H. Turner, Dr. Percy 
 Gardner, and others. 
 
 But that it should have been written, and 
 even supported by other writers, men of educa- 
 tion, is sufficient proof of the influence of the 
 war-fever on non-combatants. 
 
 If Crusader and Saracen were capable, in 
 their own day, of a chivalrous appreciation of 
 each other's qualities, we should surely, in this 
 century, be capable of distinguishing the Ger- 
 many of Kaiser Wilhelm from the Germany of 
 Goethe and Schiller ; of Beethoven and Wag- 
 ner ; of Kant and Fichte and Hegel and 
 Schopenhauer ; of the vast army of disinterested 
 German critics. 
 
 But, as has been remarked in many places, it 
 is the non-fighters who are liable to take the 
 war-fever In its most pernicious form. Not 
 
1 6 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 only does it beget in them a disposition to rage 
 and rend, but also to turn on those who do not 
 share their desire to do so. They compose 
 their hymns of hate and send them to the battle- 
 field — but those are not the songs the soldier 
 sings. 
 
 Mr. Stephen Graham asked of a young 
 Russian officer : — 
 
 " How did you feel under fire ? " 
 
 "It was unpleasant at first, but after a while it became 
 even pleasant, exhilarating. One feels an extraordinary 
 freedom in the midst of death— with the bullets whistling 
 round. The same with all the soldiers : the wounded all 
 want to get well and return to the fight. They fight with 
 tears of joy in their eyes." 
 
 "They feel active hate towards the Germans? " 
 
 " No, I wouldn't say that. They regard them merely 
 as the enemy, the old enemy." 
 
 " There is a certain beauty in war, in going to death 
 with songs," said I. 
 
 " I would even say there is no greater beauty," says the 
 young officer. 
 
 So war comes into its own in the popular imagination. 
 Despite the praise of peace and the comfort of peace and 
 even the fact that we are fighting to obtain peace, war 
 seems to be a thing that must eternally recur, one of the 
 human liturgies of beauty. ^ 
 
 In the battlefield bravery, self-forgetfulness, 
 tenderness to the wounded comrade, generosity, 
 ^ " The Times," 24 September, 1914. 
 
In Time of War. 17 
 
 in many cases, to the enemy — but also, callous- 
 ness, brutality, and outbreaks of frenzied sav- 
 agery. 
 
 At home, a longing to serve, a cohesion of 
 classes, a sinking of differences, a general de- 
 votedness — but also a tendency to take reprisals 
 on our enemy by imitating what is worst in 
 him, the danger of losing faith in the cause we 
 are out to defend. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 WAR A FATALITY. 
 
 One of our straightest and most honest thinkers 
 has told us that this war is the result of muddled 
 thinking.^ He believes that by thought society- 
 could be saved and ordered ; that we only half 
 know what we are doing, or trying to do, and 
 that we start on our way to learn our lesson as 
 we go along — with the result of many disasters 
 in the course of that lesson. 
 
 Now Mr. Wells has given us no reason to 
 suppose that he is so optimistic as to believe that 
 an invasion of barbarians could be averted by 
 clearer thinking on the part of the civilized in- 
 vaded ; but what we should gather from his re- 
 flections is that, in so far as civilized races have 
 recourse to such methods for settling their dif- 
 ferences, they are convicted of a want of plan 
 and wisdom in their social and political system. 
 
 He says : — 
 
 1 See " Nation," 29 August, article by H. G. Wells—*' The 
 War of the Mind ". 
 
 18 
 
War a Fatality, 19 
 
 All the realities of this war are things of the mind. This 
 is a conflict of cultures and nothing else in the world. All 
 the world-wide pain and weariness, fear and anxieties, the 
 blood and destruction, the innumerable torn bodies of men 
 and horses, the stench of putrefaction, the misery of hun- 
 dreds of millions of human beings, the waste of mankind 
 are but the material consequences of a false philosophy and 
 foolish thinking. 
 
 Some of us can agree with Mr. Wells In his 
 indictment of the stupidity of mankind and his 
 exhortation to renewed and more thoughtful 
 effort, but not in his optimistic conception of all 
 that mankind could do by thinking a little 
 harder. 
 
 Does he not, on this point, fall into the error 
 of the pacifist, and ignore, not, indeed, like him, 
 the plain and surface facts of life which all who 
 will may see, but its deeper, wider, and more or 
 less incalculable realities ? 
 
 Said Juliana of Norwich, of the world as she 
 beheld it : — 
 
 I marvelled how it might last : for methought it might 
 suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. 
 
 At a time like this are we not conscious of the 
 amazing littleness of our world and of all human 
 institutions? and yet are we not also aware of 
 huge forces that have gone to the making of it, 
 forces which man cannot wholly control, and yet 
 in the midst of which he can direct his course ? 
 
20 Reflections of a Non-Combat ant. 
 
 All our building science will not save us from 
 the results of an earthquake ; all our social science 
 will not save us from the results of elemental 
 human passion. 
 
 Man did not plan his own making ; nor does 
 even an individual ever clearly know how far he 
 is responsible for the best and the worst of his 
 actions. That he is, to some extent, responsible, 
 all but pure fatalists believe ; but that he is 
 wholly responsible few, with any profound know- 
 ledge of human nature, can maintain. 
 
 If this be true of the individual, how much 
 more is it true of society ? The collected wisdom 
 of the whole world, even were it seated on the 
 highest throne with universal power of domination, 
 could not either foresee or hinder every human 
 catastrophe. Man is stronger, and greater, per- 
 haps even wiser, that his own conscious strength 
 and wisdom. There are forces within him that 
 must out, in spite of his own protestations. 
 Passion, a poet has told us, is a force 
 
 that makes, not follows, precedent ; 
 
 yet if passion works most of the misery of the 
 world it is also its very life. 
 
 War may be wicked, according to the pacifist ; 
 or a fine healthy exercise according to the mili- 
 tarist ; but both are scratching but the surface of 
 
War a Fatality. 21 
 
 the question until they recognize that it is some- 
 thing more than all this, that it is also a fatality. 
 Mr. Wells is more than right in urging us to 
 think ourselves out of our tangle. Because we 
 are greater than our own minds we cannot tell 
 how far our strength reaches ; yet we know, also, 
 that as we have learned to cross the ocean and 
 to ride through the air, so also we are capable of 
 using and directing, to some extent, the less 
 tangible forces of our moral and spiritual life. 
 If we cannot control immensity, we are, never- 
 theless, fashioned with organs to live in it : — 
 
 Man is made to toil in the deep ; he is born to live in the 
 gloom of life ; to fear his fate is to be as an owl afraid in the 
 dark, a fish with hydrophobia.^ 
 
 It is fatalism to regard fate as the supreme 
 arbiter of our destiny ; to say that what is to be, 
 will be, and make no effort to fashion our own 
 future. It is not fatalism to recognize that the 
 destiny of mankind is too vast to be moulded by 
 any single generation ; that no co-operative effort 
 could focus even the definite knowledge and 
 wisdom of all humanity, much less its inchoate 
 and undefined instincts and aspirations. To a 
 certain extent the union of brains in any collective 
 effort must produce a lower result in the order 
 of intelligence than the single efforts of capable 
 
 1 Brand, 
 
22 Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 individuals. The more we try to think together 
 the stupider we seem to become, and our col- 
 lective stupidity is one great element of that 
 fatality we are bound to recognize. We all of 
 us admit the fatality which is present to us in 
 natural forces and their laws ; we also recognize 
 a certain fatality of circumstances in the history 
 of every nation as of every individual. But we 
 sometimes fail to recognize that social fatality 
 which results from the impossibility of complete 
 co-operation, try for it as we may. We are 
 separated from one another by our mutual ad- 
 vantages and'disadvantages ; every movement we 
 make in support of some one else diverges to some 
 degree from the line that other is following. Mr. 
 Wells points out, with truth, that we cannot act to- 
 gether because we do not think together ; but the 
 difficulty is that we are not able to think together. 
 Our degree of national responsibility, therefore, 
 in any upheaval, is, like our degree of individual 
 responsibility in private matters, one of the 
 mysteries that cannot wholly be solved. We are 
 able to apportion the share of blame to either 
 belligerent up to a certain point only ; but there 
 is a dark background from which all human 
 action only partially emerges. To confess these 
 universal limitations is not to abandon effort, but 
 to recognize the vastness of the enterprise. 
 
War a Fatality. 23 
 
 One painful element of our trial is that we feel 
 there is material in the world sufficient to produce 
 a much better collective result than we actually 
 succeed in achieving. Yet here again is another 
 manifestation of fatality — we cannot bring these 
 saving factors to bear on the entire mass. A 
 man like Bismarck, gifted with his strong mind 
 and strong will, can force on an entire nation a 
 policy of pure political egotism, because such a 
 policy is within the limits of the general under- 
 standing ; even a Bismarck, with a policy of 
 moral and social and national renovation, a policy 
 of the dawn, beyond and above the actual social 
 attainment of mankind, could not enforce it uni- 
 versally and immediately ; he would come up 
 against the law of fatality, which is, amongst 
 societies and nations, the law of co-operative lim- 
 itation. 
 
 Hence the pacifist is wrong in believing that 
 men could, if they would, live in perpetual peace ; 
 but so is the militarist wrong in thinking that 
 they can make war just when and where they 
 will. We are all of us, and nations even more 
 than individuals, the toys as well as the makers 
 of destiny. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 KRIEG 1ST KRIEG! 
 
 A COMMON remark amongst non-combatants in 
 England during the course of the present war 
 has been that '* Germany is not playing the 
 game ". This is not the place in which to discuss 
 the actual details of the German campaign, or 
 to criticize the conflicting statistics ; what we 
 have to study is two different estimates of the 
 character and rules of warfare which have 
 emerged from the present conflict. Of these 
 two estimates one has been more openly pro- 
 fessed by Germany, the other by England and 
 France; the question, for us, is not so much 
 which is the nobler estimate, but which is the 
 truer one. It is one thing, and a good thing, 
 to urge that war should be waged according to 
 the most humane and chivalrous methods ; it is 
 another thing to maintain that these more civilized 
 methods are proper to the very nature of war in 
 
 itself. 
 
 24 
 
Krieg ist Krieg ! 25 
 
 Now the Germans are nothing if not thorough, 
 and nowhere is their thoroughness more char- 
 acteristically displayed than in their philosophy 
 of militarism. The question to be discussed in 
 this place is not as to which form of warfare we 
 should choose — the English or the German ; nor 
 as to which form of warfare is truest to inter- 
 national regulations. There is another question 
 which has, to my mind, been neglected ; and that 
 is the question whether the German conception 
 of warfare, unpleasant as it may be, be not a cor- 
 recter conception of war in itself than that form 
 of warfare which is qualified and mitigated by 
 extraneous laws. Shortly — is German war true 
 war, un tinged by characteristics that belong pro- 
 perly to other domains of life ? Are the Germans 
 right in the place where they stand, though they 
 will be left behind if they do not soon move on ? 
 Is the war that is waged according to humane 
 principles the war that is beginning to be ashamed 
 of itself, and preparing its own extinction ? 
 
 The natural law, to which all laws of Nature can be 
 reduced, is the law of struggle. All intra-social property, all 
 thoughts, inventions, and institutions, as indeed the social 
 system itself, are a result of the intra-social struggle, in which 
 one survives and another is cast out. The extra- social, the 
 super-social struggle which guides the external development 
 of societies, nations, and races is war. The internal develop- 
 ment, the intra-social struggle, is man's daily work — the 
 
26 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 struggle of thoughts, feelings, wishes, sciences, activities. 
 The outward development, the super- social struggle is the 
 sanguinary struggle of nations — war. In what does the 
 creative power of this struggle consist ? In growth and 
 decay, in the victory of the one factor and in the defeat of 
 the other. 1 
 
 War constitutes, in fact, that appeal to physical 
 force than which mankind has hitherto discovered 
 no other final appeal. We have, it is true, 
 another system of values according to which 
 brute strength is not the deciding factor ; there 
 are qualities we estimate more highly than the 
 muscular prowess of the prize-fighter ; but it is 
 a sad consequence of our mixed nature that, at a 
 certain extreme stage of a dispute, physical force 
 becomes the arbiter. As the finest mental quali- 
 ties may be quenched and subdued by physical 
 suffering, so the highest attainments of mankind 
 may be subjected to the test of brute force. The 
 gun becomes, on a wider scale, as almighty as the 
 headache. 
 
 Every science has its own laws ; laws that to 
 be valid must be based on the nature of that 
 science. If then war be a trial of brute force, 
 it is only such laws as guide the operations of 
 
 ^ Clauss Wagner — " Der Krieg als schaffendes Weltprin- 
 zip ". Quoted by Bernhardi in " Germany and the Next 
 War ". 
 
Krieg ist Krieg! 27 
 
 brute force, strengthened, in the case of a human 
 struggle, by the added resources of mind, that 
 will be valid under all circumstances. Other 
 laws, foreign to the true nature of war, may pre- 
 vail by general consent ; but they will not be the 
 laws of war proper, and there will be, on all sides, 
 a tendency to disregard them when necessity 
 urges. In cricket our opponents are our friends, 
 in war they are not ; we shall scarcely be disposed 
 to grant our enemy an artificial advantage when 
 he will make use of it for our entire destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The Germans have accepted the principles of 
 militarism in their full force ; the way to fight 
 has, for them, but one law, and that is the law of 
 the way to win. They are not "playing the 
 game," because, for them, it is not a game. 
 
 I once heard a tale of some English soldiers 
 in the South African war. There was a small 
 detachment of our men, and three Boer soldiers 
 were observed in the distance. The object was, 
 of course, to master them in some way, and it 
 would have been quite easy to do so, given the 
 British superiority of numbers. But inspired by 
 the old sporting spirit of the public school, the 
 Englishmen, seeing that there were but three 
 Boers, sent but three of their own men to attack 
 them. This was not the way to win, nor was it, 
 
28 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 even, the best way to avoid unnecessary blood- 
 shed. 
 
 If old histories and poems may be credited, 
 the Middle Ages knew something of this sporting 
 conception of war, and though certain interna- 
 tional conventions were then non-existent, yet 
 the spirit of chivalry exerted its influence in turn- 
 ing war into a dangerous but noble game. 
 
 There were young French soldiers who em- 
 barked on the present campaign in that spirit, 
 and who were bitterly disillusioned on finding 
 that there was no place for chivalry and ro- 
 manticism ; that the job in front of them was one 
 of deadly, material, unpoetical necessity ; that to 
 be generous was to be conquered. 
 
 A wise lord (says Macchiavelli) cannot, nor ought he, to 
 keep faith when such observances may be turned against him. 
 ... If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, 
 but because they are bad and will not keep faith with you, 
 you too are not bound to observe it with them. 
 
 So of the laws of chivalry in warfare. Their 
 obligation is conditional on the mentality of the 
 opponent. The laws of honourable warfare are 
 the laws of something that is not strictly and ex- 
 clusively warfare at all ; they may be observed 
 by general consent, but should they become thus 
 universally observed it would denote that the 
 appeal to brute force is being superseded by a 
 
Krieg ist Krieg ! 29 
 
 nobler appeal, that nations are passing out of the 
 stage in which warfare is the final solution of 
 their differences. 
 
 In an article quoted from the ** Hamburger 
 Nachrichten " by an English paper, Major- 
 General von Disfurth is said to have thus ex- 
 pressed himself: — 
 
 No object whatever is served by taking any notice of the 
 accusations of barbarity levelled against Germany by their 
 foreign critics. Frankly, we are, and must be, barbarians, 
 if by this word we understand those who wage war relent- 
 lessly to the uttermost degree. It would be incompatible 
 with the dignity of the German Empire and with the proud 
 traditions of the Prussian Army to defend our courageous 
 soldiers from the accusations which have been hurled against 
 them in foreign and neutral countries. We owe no explana- 
 tions to anyone. 
 
 There is nothing for us to justify and nothing for us to 
 explain away. Every act of whatever nature committed by 
 our troops for the purpose of discouraging, defeating, and 
 destroying our enemies is a brave act, a good deed, and is 
 fully justified. There is no reason whatever why we should 
 trouble ourselves about the notions concerning us in other 
 countries. Certainly we should not worry about the opinions 
 and feelings held in neutral countries. Germany stands 
 supreme the arbiter of her own methods, which must in time 
 of war be dictated to the world. 
 
 It is of no consequence whatever if all the monuments 
 ever created, all the pictures ever painted, all the buildings 
 ever erected by the great architects of the world be destroyed 
 if, by their destruction, we promote Germany's victory over 
 
30 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 the enemies who have vowed her complete annihila- 
 tion. 
 
 In times of peace we might perhaps regard the loss of such 
 things : but at the present moment not a word of regret, 
 not a thought, should be squandered upon them. War is 
 war, and must be waged with severity. The commonest, 
 ugliest stone placed to mark the place of burial of a German 
 Grenadier is a more glorious and venerable monument than 
 all the cathedrals of Europe put together. They call us 
 barbarians. What of it? We scorn them and their abuse. 
 
 For my part, I hope that in this war we have merited the 
 title of barbarians. Let neutral peoples and our enemies 
 stop their empty chatter, which may well be compared with 
 the twitter of birds. Let them cease to talk of the cathedral 
 of Rheims and of all the churches and all the castles in 
 France which have shared its fate. These things do not 
 interest us. Our troops must achieve victory. What else 
 matters ? ^ 
 
 Another German writer was quoted in ** The 
 Times "of 6 October, 191 4, as saying, in the 
 ** Cologne Gazette " : — 
 
 The German will always strive against the attempt to 
 measure the whole world from the point of view of the 
 sportsman and the non-sportsman. The German mind is 
 too broad and too great for this. We have given Europe 
 other " cultural " values than records in tennis and rowing. 
 It is putting sport in the wrong place when a people has no 
 
 1 Having quoted this passage just as it appeared in the 
 "Sunday Chronicle " of 15 November, 19 14, 1 have not veri- 
 fied the translation — the interest of the passage is in its being 
 a typical presentment of a certain view. 
 
Krieg ist Kriegf 31 
 
 other ideals than the ideals of sport, and when the language 
 of sport is the expression for all situations in life without 
 distinction. 
 
 The English are evidently lacking in understanding of 
 the high seriousness of the war and totally lacking in ap- 
 preciation of its moral importance. For the Englishman 
 war is a very dramatic, very intense, and very profitable 
 sport. The English will have to accustom themselves to 
 German seriousness. 
 
 But most instructive of all is the handbook on 
 " The Usages of War " issued by the General Staff 
 of the German Army. In this document it is 
 frankly declared that an army fights to win ; that 
 international agreements which prove detrimental 
 to this end have no binding force in warfare ; that 
 many of them only exist for egotistic ends and 
 are only to be observed from the dread of re- 
 prisals, which dread must sometimes be laid 
 aside ; that cruelties of every kind may be greatly 
 regretted on other grounds, but must be toler- 
 ated if they forward the success of the bellige- 
 rent. 
 
 Thus : — 
 
 A war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely 
 against the combatants of the enemy State and the positions 
 they occupy, but it will and must in like manner seek to de- 
 stroy the total intellectual and material resources of the 
 latter. Humanitarian claims, such as the protection of men 
 and their goods, can only be taken into consideration in so 
 far as the nature and object of the war permit. 
 
32 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 Again : — 
 
 The fact that such limitations of the unrestricted and 
 reckless application of all the available means for the con- 
 duct of war, and thereby the humanization of the customary 
 methods of pursuing war, really exist, and are actually ob- 
 served by the armies of all civilized States, has in the course 
 of the nineteenth century often led to attempts to develop, 
 to extend, and thus to make universally binding these pre- 
 existing usages of war ; to elevate them to the level of laws 
 binding nations and armies, in other words to create a codex 
 belli : a law of war. All these attempts have hitherto, with 
 some few exceptions to be mentioned later, completely 
 failed. If, therefore, in the following work the expression 
 " the law of war " is used, it must be understood that by 
 it is meant not a lex scripta introduced by international 
 agreements but only a reciprocity of mutual agreement ; a 
 limitation of arbitrary behaviour, which custom and con- 
 ventionality, human friendliness, and a calculating egotism 
 have erected, but for the observance of which there exists 
 no express sanction, but only " the fear of reprisals " decides. 
 
 Further on : — 
 
 But a still more severe measure is the compulsion of the 
 inhabitants to furnish information about their own army, 
 its strategy, its resources, and its military secrets. The 
 majority of writers of all nations are unanimous in their 
 condemnation of this measure. Nevertheless, it cannot be 
 entirely dispensed with ; doubtless it will be applied with 
 regret, but the argument of war will frequently make it 
 necessary. 
 
 Lastly, speaking of certain treatment adopted 
 to quell a civil population, it declares : — 
 
Krieg ist Krieg ! 33 
 
 Herein lies its justification under the laws of war, but 
 still more in the fact that it proved completely successful.* 
 
 Krieg ist Krieg and the Germany of 
 Bernhardi will not admit that it is anything else. 
 With German thoroughness, with moral un- 
 scrupulousness, it has shown us what unadulter- 
 ated militarism can be. 
 
 To be quite honest, must we not admit that 
 they have some truth and logic on their side ; 
 even though we would rather be illogical and 
 disagree with them ? 
 
 The observance of treaties has nothing to do 
 with the appeal to brute force, and so it has 
 nothing to do with warfare, qua warfare. It 
 may be a law of international justice not to 
 cross a certain boundary in order to crush our 
 enemy, but no animal would observe such a law 
 in attacking its adversary, and in so far as war 
 is strictly a trial of brute force neither will man 
 observe it. A gun can only be silenced by an- 
 other gun, it cannot be plugged with " a piece 
 of paper " ; and if some nations respect such 
 pieces of paper, while others do not, it is because 
 
 ^The German War Book. Being " The Usages of War 
 on Land," issued by the Great General Staff of the German 
 Army. (London : John Murray. Price 2s. 6d.) (Quoted 
 in "The Times " of 22 January, 1915.) 
 
 3 
 
34 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 some nations decline the test of sheer brute 
 supremacy, in which warfare truly consists. 
 
 Our troops must achieve victory — what else 
 matters ? General Disfurth is correct in his 
 description of the war his country has waged ; 
 and are we not quite correct when we term this 
 German warfare, and not rather warfare un- 
 qualified by other principles, and stripped of 
 those ethical wrappings which are no part of its 
 natural clothing ? War, in itself, knows not 
 conventions, and is deaf to humane entreaties. 
 It is a brute struggle, of which victory is the 
 single aim. 
 
 Germany even urges, and not always without 
 truth, that humanitarian war may sometimes 
 prove the more cruel of the two. Thus, in the 
 document from which we have already quoted, 
 we read : — 
 
 By steeping himself in military history an officer will be 
 able to guard himself against excessive humanitarian 
 notions, it will teach him that certain severities are in- 
 dispensable to war, nay more, that the only true humanity 
 very often lies in a ruthless application of them. 
 
 Macchiavelli had said long before : — 
 
 Cesare Borgia was considered cruel ; notwithstanding, his 
 cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it 
 to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he 
 will be seen to have been much more merciful than the 
 
Krieg ist Krieg ! 35 
 
 Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, 
 permitted Pistoja to be destroyed. 
 
 War such as this, presents indeed a horrible 
 spectacle, and there are nations that can no longer 
 fight according to its methods ; but if they fight 
 at all they may have to meet those who recognize 
 no others. For war is not sport, as the English- 
 man would regard it ; nor is it a tournament 
 waged according to the laws of chivalry, as 
 the French would have it. War is war in 
 the German sense, it is not cricket. Let the 
 world judge it for what it is, and then decide 
 whether or not it is to be a lasting factor of in- 
 ternational life. Let the decision not be based 
 on false premisses, on a conception of war that is 
 sporting or chivalrous, but not true. We say that 
 the Germans are the militarist race of Europe ; 
 let us then admit that it is they who know most 
 about militarism. 
 
 There are, indeed, cases in which not even any 
 military object has been achieved by ruthless and 
 cruel actions — such then must be ascribed to 
 temperament, and not to militarism. But in so 
 far as success is promoted by inhuman methods, 
 those methods are warlike methods, however de- 
 testable they may be. 
 
 The world is slowly, but surely, rising up 
 against such a philosophy ; and all its courage 
 
 3* 
 
36 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 and ability will not eventually save the nation 
 that continues to be ruled by it. But this is be- 
 cause the world is slowly, but surely, rejecting 
 the test of brute force. We think we are civiliz- 
 ing warfare — we are actually working for its 
 abolition ; for civilization and warfare are irrecon- 
 cilable opposites, though they may be bound to 
 temporary co-existence. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DIPLOMACY AND WAR. 
 
 In some respects mediaeval warfare was not so 
 productive of international prejudice and hatred 
 as our modern warfare. It was frankly accepted 
 as the natural occupation of man ; little effort was 
 made to set forth its justification ; it was a tussle 
 of contending forces, and the object was to prove 
 oneself the strongest, and not to prove oneself in 
 the right. 
 
 Nowadays war is preceded by a lengthy 
 phase of negotiation in which the respective rights 
 of either side are set forward, contested, defended, 
 adjusted, readjusted, until there ensues so vast 
 and so tangled a web that it is easy for the rulers 
 of both contending parties to persuade their 
 people of the absolute justice of their own cause, 
 and the perfidy of their opponents. Had they 
 entered on war, as often in olden days, from 
 avowed motives of conquest or ambition, there 
 would not have been occasion for this added 
 bitterness of moral indignation. 
 
 In fact, although there may be fairly clear 
 
 37 
 
^S Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 proof that one side, or the other, is waging an 
 unjust war of aggression, we European nations 
 have at least attained a degree of civilization at 
 which we do not care to avow such purely egotis- 
 tic motives. Even Germany, in her official pro- 
 nouncements, has made no open profession of 
 Bismarckianism, and has avoided the expression 
 of such views as those with which the school of 
 Treitschke has familiarized us. She has declared 
 that she is fighting for her existence ; and only 
 because she must fight. 
 
 As a consequence of this general attitude di- 
 plomacy has come to be regarded as, in some 
 sense, the opposite in method and end to mili- 
 tarism ; many people believe that it is exercised 
 solely in the interests of peace, and that the 
 breakdown of diplomacy is the beginning of war. 
 At the outbreak of hostilities the ambassador, 
 who has been the much courted guest of the 
 country in which he resides, is furnished with his 
 passport and departs ; and to the public this seems 
 as though he were the messenger of peace, and 
 that the closing of the embassy shutters is our 
 modern equivalent of the opening of the temple 
 of Janus.^ 
 
 It is obviously not our diplomats themselves 
 
 ^ On this subject see the excellent chapter on Foreign 
 Policy in " The War and Democracy ". Macmillan & Co. 
 
Diplomacy and War. 39 
 
 who will endeavour to disturb such Illusions ; and 
 yet an illusion it is. For although diplomacy, 
 like militarism, has been influenced by the pro- 
 gress of humanity at large, and has become, es- 
 pecially in some countries, and as exercised by 
 certain personalities, not pure diplomacy, but 
 diplomacy mingled with and qualified by wider 
 ethical considerations, yet this latter form of di- 
 plomacy is not diplomacy in its true and rigorous 
 sense. Diplomacy, in fact, is not the opposite 
 of war, but is another form of warfare. The 
 enemy's ambassador departs, on the outbreak of 
 hostilities, not because he is the representative of 
 peace, but because the war of statesmanship and 
 diplomacy is at an end, and the war of militarism 
 and force has begun. The tongue has ended its 
 contest, the right arm has entered on its work ; 
 speech is over, blows have begun. 
 
 In making such a statement one need not over- 
 look the immense services rendered by the 
 Foreign Offices of each country to the people 
 under their care. As far as the influence of a 
 Government extends, so far its subjects can 
 rely on its guidance and protection. But this is 
 another department of the business with which 
 we are not here concerned. 
 
 Neither is it to be denied that diplomacy is 
 largely exercised in the interests of peace ; and 
 
40 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 we have certainly had good example, in this 
 country, of what a Foreign Office can and will 
 do to compose differences and avert hostilities. 
 But this does not alter the main issue. The 
 Foreign Office of each country and its Diplo- 
 matic Service exist for the interests of that 
 country, and no other ; they do not exist for the 
 cause of humanity at large, nor for the disin- 
 terested pursuit of the good of all. Hence they 
 do not exist for the cause of peace, but to protect 
 the interests of the country which they represent 
 in time of peace. In so far as a wider and more 
 universally human spirit is beginning to permeate 
 the diplomatic system, that system is being trans- 
 formed into something other and higher than pure 
 diplomacy. 
 
 We owe it to the thoroughness of the 
 German work and character, to their power of 
 concentration on a single aim, as well as to a 
 certain lack on their part of tact and delicacy 
 and subtle deception, that they give us a thing 
 just for what it is, in its breadth and its length, 
 its force and its meaning, without any deceiving 
 admixture of foreign elements. When they take 
 up a thing it is to use it for what it is worth ; to 
 make it go as far as ever it can go ; to work 
 it according to its own laws and nature without 
 regard to other objects which may be affected 
 
Diplomacy and War, 41 
 
 by its use. Thus when the Germans took up 
 criticism, it became the higher criticism, i.e. crit- 
 icism and nothing else ; criticism ruthless and 
 unfettered, unaffected by old established traditions 
 or sacred values. To their concentrated scholar- 
 ship in this field we owe, at least in part, our ac- 
 ceptance of the rights of criticism in its own 
 domain. 
 
 In like manner when Germans discuss the 
 philosophy of war, whether we accept that 
 philosophy or not in its practical bearings, we 
 have at least to acknowledge that war with them, 
 as we have seen in the last chapter, is war, and 
 not a kind of cricket, as with the English, nor 
 tinted with the romantic pursuit of glory, as with 
 the French. German books are the longest 
 books, and German guns are the biggest guns, 
 and German war is just war and nothing else, an 
 effort to obtain supremacy by sheer brute force. 
 
 So too with diplomacy ; and here we have the 
 Maker of Germany to enlighten us. The diplo- 
 macy of Bismarck was genuine, naked diplomacy, 
 with no touch of idealism ; it was the effort to 
 obtain supremacy, not by force of arms, but by 
 foresight, and craft, and the uncompromising 
 pursuit of the interests of the country he served. 
 He was a diplomat, and not a warrior — but he 
 was no anti-militarist — the soldier was, in his con- 
 
42 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 ception, the tool of the statesman, as the states- 
 man was the servant of his king and country. 
 National politics, or diplomacy, were not only, 
 in his mind, a form of war, but were the highest, 
 the supreme form of war. It was the duty of 
 the statesman to keep himself in a condition of 
 complete detachment from all outside sympathies 
 or inclinations ; his attitude towards another 
 country was to be one of neither love nor hatred, 
 but of perfect indifference as regarded the interests 
 or existence of that country in itself, and of fore- 
 sight and promptitude to seize any occasion in 
 which it might serve the interests of his own 
 country. 
 
 This policy of blood and iron was, in a certain 
 sense, singularly bloodless. Coldly, dispassion- 
 ately, the statesman looked forth to see how the 
 welfare or destruction of the rest of the world 
 would affect his own land. Anything in the 
 nature of world-wide sympathies, or broad inter- 
 national aims of an ethical character, would have 
 been, in the opinion of Bismarck, almost immoral 
 and quite treasonous. 
 
 Thus he writes to Gerlach on 1 1 May, 1857 : — 
 
 I have always answered the question as to whether my 
 sympathies were Russian or Westerly by the reply that I am 
 Prussian^ and that my ideal for Foreign Ministers is that 
 their decisions should be unprejudiced and free from all 
 
Diplomacy and War. 43 
 
 impressions of aversion or preference for foreign lands and 
 their rulers. ... I would with perfect contentment direct 
 our troops against the French or the Russians, the English 
 or the Austrians, so soon as I was convinced as to what was 
 to the best interest of sound and considered Prussian 
 policy.^ 
 
 In another place he says to the same : — 
 Sympathy or antipathy with foreign powers or personal- 
 ities is not compatible with my sense of duty as Foreign 
 Minister of my country . . . such sentiments contain a 
 germ of infidelity to one's Master or one's country. 
 
 And he believes that all other statesmen are 
 inspired by the same belief, for 
 Every other government measures its actions strictly accord- 
 ing to its own interests, however much it may drape its con- 
 duct with honest or sentimental motives.* 
 
 To the same he says, further on, that the ap- 
 paratus of Diplomacy is but a vain expenditure 
 of revenue if it be not thus directed to definite 
 national gain. 
 
 In all this we behold complete detachment, 
 not only from all romantic or sentimental instincts, 
 but also from any kind of ethical considera- 
 tion. Statesmen cannot do wrong in a universal 
 sense because they have no universal duty. 
 Bismarck would have scorned an attempt to rouse 
 moral indignation in a national dispute, whether 
 
 1 "Gedanken und Erinnerungen," Vol. I, p. 171. 
 ^ Idem, p. 158. 
 
44 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 on behalf of his own country or of any other ; 
 each side did its duty in seeking its own interests 
 whether by methods of statesmanship or of war. 
 
 Bismarck was responsible for the war with 
 Austria, but he was also responsible for its inter- 
 ruption in the full tide of Prussian victory, so soon 
 as the political end was gained. Soldiers might 
 win glory so long as it suited the interests of the 
 politician that they should do so ; but they must 
 dance to another tune when they had achieved 
 the end for which they were put in action. 
 
 When his King urged the moral necessity of 
 chastening the guilty enemy, his minister calmly 
 answered that : — 
 
 We have not to fulfil the office of judges, but to advance 
 the German policy ; Austria's rivalry with us is no more 
 reprehensible than ours with her; our single duty is the 
 formation or preparation for German national unity under 
 the King of Prussia.^ 
 
 He sees that a pursuit of justice, even towards 
 his own country, will not further the single end 
 he has in view ; useless possessions will weaken 
 and embarrass her. 
 
 With the help of the Crown Prince Frederick, 
 he attained his end on this occasion ; and the 
 King yielded to his minister and abandoned the 
 
 ^ " Gedanken und Erinnerungen," Vol. I, p. 46. 
 
Diplomacy and War. 45 
 
 path of military glory on which he was making 
 such rapid progress. 
 
 It may now be urged that it is not from 
 Bismarck that we are to draw our conception of in- 
 ternational statesmanship ; that it is perfectly plain 
 that there have been, and are, statesmen whose 
 international philosophy and ethical code are other 
 and better ; that the Germans themselves, in their 
 official utterances during the course of this war, 
 have professed contrary views and doctrines ; 
 have declared that it is they who have been forced 
 into war, and that their national aims were upright 
 and disinterested. 
 
 Evidently all official diplomatic announce- 
 ments, with very few exceptions, must be taken 
 with regard to the source whence they eman- 
 ate ; as, to a greater or lesser extent, utterances 
 of the word- war of diplomacy. Yet, on the whole, 
 the political creed of a country is displayed in such 
 a crisis as the present one ; and I will again dare 
 to maintain that the Germans, with their intellect- 
 ual thoroughness, give us the most genuine and 
 real presentment of diplomacy as of militarism. 
 
 Now let us turn to the speech of one of our 
 statesmen during the course of this war. Mr. 
 Lloyd George, speaking at the City Temple on 
 10 November, 191 4, declares that, even in war, 
 it is not strength nor military efficiency, nor politi- 
 
46 Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 cal wile and craft, that will be the supreme decid- 
 ing factors. Even in international politics, even 
 in international war, the higher and more remote 
 considerations that are based on ethical dictates 
 will avail the party that is guided by them. 
 
 The fundamental error of the German calculation is becom- 
 ing more manifest every day. They are beginning to realize 
 that justice is the greatest of all military assets. In a long 
 struggle it is the heart that tells, and injustice weakens the 
 heart of nations. . . . This war is demonstrating that the 
 justice of a nation's cause is, in itself, a military equipment 
 of the first magnitude and importance. 
 
 May such words be placed over against those 
 of Bismarck or Bernhardi, -as representative of 
 another, and nobler, form of politics ? 
 
 I think not ; I think that they are the utter- 
 ances, not of diplomacy or national politics, but 
 of a wider and more human philosophy which is 
 struggling to supersede them. I think that just 
 as some nations are developing beyond the stage 
 of militarism so too they are developing beyond 
 the stage of purely national politics, whose aim 
 is one of self-interest, whose weapon is diplomacy. 
 I think that all the civilized races of mankind are 
 in a transitional stage in which old methods are 
 being employed under the guidance of new 
 principles, and that the result is a somewhat per- 
 plexing mixture of moral and non-moral laws 
 
Diplomacy and War. 47 
 
 and motives. To some extent this confusion was 
 bound to result so soon as mankind passed out of 
 a condition of pure savagery, in which force and 
 wile were the laws of existence ; but it becomes 
 more and more acute as the world advances to a 
 yet higher and more spiritual phase of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 War is, in its true essence, a trial of brute 
 force, with none of the varnish and gilding which 
 is added to it by a gentlemanly code of sport and 
 honour. Diplomacy is, in its true essence, a war 
 of wits, which should be untouched by moral 
 considerations. 
 
 But human progress is made by slow and pro- 
 longed stages ; and the methods of the lower 
 stage will be tinctured and transformed by prin- 
 ciples proper to a higher stage before they are 
 actually abandoned. War becomes in part a 
 sport, a game with its laws of honour and fair 
 play, before its horrors are finally condemned 
 and abandoned. Diplomacy gets coloured with 
 moral and humane considerations, before it can 
 be set aside for international intercourse based on 
 human brotherhood and co-operation. Mean- 
 while diplomacy has for its part to avert war, 
 and will probably outlive it — yet its true aim 
 is not contrary to militarism though its methods 
 are different. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS. 
 
 How far may we count on the observance of 
 treaties and conventions in time of war ? This is 
 surely a question that must be asked at the next 
 Peace Conference unless we still prefer to take 
 for granted pledges that are eminently risky and 
 uncertain. 
 
 First of all let us have the courage to acknow- 
 ledge that, when countries go to war, it is be- 
 cause the ordinary methods of international 
 justice have failed. The adversaries practically 
 say to one another — '* I know I am right, but 
 since you do not admit it, and there is no one to 
 make you do so, I shall take by force what you 
 will not yield to any other form of persuasion ", 
 
 It is both sides that make this declaration, 
 hence it is obvious that the adjustments of inter- 
 national politics have broken down, and that 
 each side is now determined to get what it can 
 by ultimate and extreme methods. 
 
 Now war, like everything else, has its own 
 48 
 
Treaties and Conventions. 49 
 
 laws and constitutions : its character is ruthless, 
 its methods violent. It is a life-and-death 
 struggle, in which both sides aim, at least so far 
 as military considerations reach, at mutual de- 
 struction. Their object is to break each other's 
 strength, and not to spare each other needless 
 suffering ; and, indeed, the amount of needless 
 suffering spared by the observance of Red Cross 
 Conventions will always be small in comparison 
 with the amount inflicted by the accepted code of 
 belligerents. 
 
 In primitive warfare the observance of previous 
 agreements had no place ; and primitive warfare 
 was warfare in its genuine and unqualified char- 
 acter. How far, then, have we a right to count 
 on the maintenance of treaties and conventions 
 when the struggle is vital and intense? Must a 
 nation perish, for instance, rather than break the 
 word it has written on an international document ? 
 or does the law of life, in such a crisis, supersede 
 all other laws ? 
 
 Mr. Hilaire Belloc wrote some strong words 
 in his article of 16 January, 191 5, in '' Land and 
 Water," on the blockade system. These words 
 were written after the American protest, and im- 
 plied, perhaps, more than the writer could openly 
 say : — 
 
50 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 If you do not (he writes) prevent everything you possibly 
 can prevent from going into the blockaded area, then your 
 blockade is imperfect and will almost certainly fail. You 
 may have excellent moral, religious, or political reasons for 
 thus running the risk of losing the war ; but you can have 
 no military reason. As a military operation, to allow cotton, 
 let us say, to go into Germany, and to forbid copper, is 
 meaningless. What you are fighting is the whole nation 
 with all its resources, economic and social, and inasmuch as 
 you allow those resources to be fed, by so much do you in- 
 crease the chances of the enemy's winning and your losing, 
 and by so much do you kill and wound your own soldiers, de- 
 plete your own wealth, and prolong the duration of hostili- 
 ties. 
 
 In a previous paragraph we read : — 
 
 If the German Empire had the luck to cripple the 
 English fleet and its lesser Allies, it would establish a block- 
 ade with these islands. It would not allow cotton to go 
 through and thus keep Lancashire in employment while 
 forbidding rubber to go through, or copper, because these 
 two articles were supposed to be of special military value. 
 It would allow nothing to go through, for its aim would be 
 the reduction of the blockaded party. 
 
 The laws and conventions of international 
 warfare have been established for many motives 
 of very different moral grade. The same must 
 be said in regard to political treaties. There are 
 laws of humanity that have been laid down for 
 the common advantage of all contending parties ; 
 there are clauses of a treaty that are established 
 
Treaties and Conventions. 51 
 
 in the interest of the balance of powers, and that 
 are yet more to the interest of one or two nations 
 than of others ; there are conventions of a mixed 
 order, with a political as well as a humane char- 
 acter, such as those in favour of the neutrality of 
 small countries, which are established, not only 
 in the interest of those countries, but also in the 
 interest of those which would be affected by the 
 violation of their neutrality ; there are also con- 
 ventions directed towards a wider aim of general 
 humanity, an aim which can only be ultimately 
 and perfectly attained by the total cessation of 
 war. And in regard to all these varied classes 
 of convention, there are men who adopt them for 
 political, and men who adopt them for humane, 
 ends. The latter are often the instruments of 
 the former, though, in the long run, they will be 
 their masters ; when, that is to say, the general 
 human interest has become supreme. 
 
 But meanwhile a war is, in its very essence, 
 the reduction to nought of a treaty ; it is, in 
 many cases, the ultimate result of some inade- 
 quate treaty, and a proof of its futility. How 
 far, then, can we expect belligerents to stand by 
 those treaties in its conduct? 
 
 As to those laws which have been established 
 for the mutual advantage of both contending 
 parties, they have the best chance of being 
 
 4* 
 
52 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 maintained, in the stress of war, in so far as 
 both sides find their own interest in their 
 observance. Such are the Red Cross Conven- 
 tions, and others directed to the mitigation of 
 needless suffering, or the establishment of rules 
 of fair play, which are for the good of both 
 sides. 
 
 Yet even these conventions are liable to be 
 violated by nations in which the old primitive 
 and barbaric conceptions still hold ; in which 
 militarism is supreme, and war is war and noth- 
 ing else. Such conduct would be wholly im- 
 politic if it resulted, as it might do, in retaliation 
 from the other side ; yet a nation whose aim is 
 military success might even risk such reprisals. 
 On the whole, however, they might derive 
 from their methods more than the just measure 
 of advantage, for it will sometimes happen that 
 the other side, from the fact that it has reached 
 a higher grade of refinement and civilization, and 
 from very pride and sense of honour, will not 
 retaliate by the same barbarous methods. The 
 only resource of countries which remained faith- 
 ful, under stress of war, to the laws they had 
 established for the general advantage in time of 
 peace, would be, in future, to decline such con- 
 ventions with the nation that had violated them ; 
 and to wage war, in future, with such, as they 
 
Treaties and Conventions. 53 
 
 would with barbarous races ; not therefore, we 
 would hope, becoming barbarous themselves, 
 but neither granting, nor accepting, the mutual 
 obligations of a common code. 
 
 But with regard to those other conventions, 
 which have been established in the interest of 
 political considerations, is it not somewhat dis- 
 honest to refuse to admit that every country will 
 violate them in cases of vital and immediate 
 necessity ? If our national existence were doomed 
 to extinction unless we marched through a 
 neutral territory, should we feel ourselves bound 
 to sign the death-warrant of our country rather 
 than violate a political compact ? Those nations 
 which have advanced beyond the stage of un- 
 qualified ego-centricism, which are already on the 
 road to a higher civilization in which the argu- 
 ment of war will become obsolete, will, indeed, 
 only disregard their political promises when they 
 find themselves with their backs to the wall, and 
 would have to abandon, with their national ex- 
 istence, all the reasons they had for entering on 
 that past contract, and all the strength they have 
 to defend it ; but if that hour should strike, and 
 the choice lay between national life and national 
 extinction, who will maintain that their duty 
 would be to die ? An individual may die in 
 such an instance, because he casts away his in- 
 
54 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 dividual interests for a common cause ; a nation 
 will not die in such an instance, because the 
 common cause is not yet sufficiently living and 
 defined to demand such a sacrifice. And before 
 the common cause has become thus living and 
 defined, it is likely that war will have come to 
 an end. 
 
 On the whole, then, is it not more true and 
 just to condemn the national selfishness and am- 
 bition and arrogance which drive a country to 
 make a war of aggression, than to concentrate 
 our blame on her breach of international treaties 
 in its conduct? Germany did not, as we should 
 have done, wait till she was in extremis before 
 repudiating the contract to which she had set her 
 seal ; but any of us might have been forced to 
 such repudiation had our life depended on it. 
 The violation of Belgian neutrality was the last 
 weight in the scale that determined England to 
 make war ; but some of us are glad to think that 
 she should have made it, even without that com- 
 pelling argument, to save her French ally from 
 extinction. The brutality with which Belgium 
 was penalized for her most legitimate resistance 
 to an outrage, is, it must be remembered, a second 
 ground of indictment, far more grievous than the 
 violation of her neutrality, but of another order. 
 Germany would seem, indeed, not even to have 
 
Treaties mid Conventions. 55 
 
 granted this neutral country the ordinary rights 
 of a belligerent, but to have disregarded her 
 neutrality in order to pass through her territory, 
 and to have punished her for not being neutral 
 when she resisted the aggression. 
 
 But this is, as I have said, another, and a yet 
 more grievous charge than the first, which is the 
 breach of an international treaty. It is with this 
 first one that we are concerned, and, in the eyes 
 of some of us, this breach of international faith 
 was not so grave an international and human 
 crime as the ambition which inspired it — the am- 
 bition to wreck that fair land, of higher than 
 German refinement and civilization, that lay on 
 the other side of the Belgian frontier. 
 
 France was ever conscious of this menace, of 
 the close neighbourhood of a boastful and violent 
 power that was waiting to destroy her. 
 
 Our pacific people (writes a Frenchman) was already 
 watched by its enemy with a view to its extermin- 
 ation. We were not wholly ignorant of the fact. But 
 what we did not believe, in spite of warnings, was that we 
 were already sapped and mined, perforated, hollowed out, 
 paralysed in our vital centres by a vanguard installed amongst 
 us in time of peace, and concentrating its deadly preparations 
 under the cloak of seeming co-operation. . . . We were be- 
 trayed. We were no longer in our own home. They knew 
 us in more detail than we knew ourselves.^ 
 
 ^ " Entretiens des non-combattants," etc. 
 
56 Reflectmis of a N on- Comb at ant. 
 
 This vampire-like policy of Germany was her 
 true crime, and not her conduct of the war which 
 it inspired. She has violated treaties more 
 suddenly and shamelessly than some of us would 
 have done ; she has set aside conventions for the 
 softening of warfare, when they proved in any 
 way a hindrance to her aims. But, once again, 
 war is war, and, sooner or later, any nation may 
 be reduced to more brutal methods than it first 
 contemplated. Useless atrocities will always be 
 a blot on the name of the country that is guilty 
 of them — such atrocities, if they be not merely 
 the result of the innate savagery of men let loose 
 for destruction, but the deliberate policy of their 
 leaders, cannot be justified even by the essential 
 character of warfare. But, on the whole, the 
 worst is what goes before ; the policy of deliber- 
 ate selfishness that is cherished by a nation that 
 ought to be in the van, and not the rear, of the 
 great world-movement. 
 
 Thus I would maintain that, worse than 
 the violation of neutral territory in time of 
 war, is the doctrine that small countries and 
 nationalities have no right to exist, and are 
 the legitimate prey of their stronger neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 Thus Herr Friedrich Naumann writes ;— 
 
Treaties and Conventions, 57 
 
 Even assuming that there had been in Belgium as 
 honourable a sentiment of neutrality as we assume, for 
 example, in Switzerland, the question remains whether a 
 small individual state can, in all possible circumstances, 
 have a right to stand aside from a historical process of 
 reconstruction. \Vars to-day are no longer quarrels which 
 are undertaken for the employment of superfluous forces. 
 They are changes of organization in the process of human 
 evolution. ... As there are some states and people that 
 are rising, and some states and people that are falling, there 
 must be days of reckoning when the shares in the central 
 government of the world are settled afresh. Such a day of 
 reckoning has dawned now. The struggle is about the 
 leadership of mankind. However friendly and sympathetic 
 one's attitude may be towards the wishes of neutrals, one 
 cannot in principle admit their right to stand aside from 
 the general process of centralization in the leadership of 
 humanity. In economics we constantly see small concerns 
 trying to remain outside the syndicates. Often they suc- 
 ceed, but often they do not. The same thing happens also 
 in the sphere of high politics.^ 
 
 If a modern nation, which can claim no excuse 
 on intellectual and practical grounds, which is 
 the peer of others in mental and material 
 achievements, will not march along with them 
 on the line of general human progress, she is 
 convicted of being a clog on the wheel of inter- 
 
 ^ Quoted in "The Times," 21 October, 191 4, from an 
 article in "Die Hilfe", 
 
58 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 national prosperity. We have all sinned, and 
 do yet sin, but the question is — do we want to 
 do better ? Is national aggressiveness or inter- 
 national co-operation our last word in interna- 
 tional politics ? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND WAR. 
 
 Mr. Angell s indictment of war as an economic 
 disaster would possess but little originality if 
 that indictment were not further, and chiefly, 
 directed against the ordinary estimate of the 
 results of war ; it is in his theory as to those 
 results that the force and originality of his work 
 consist. The " great illusion " of which he treats 
 is the illusion as to the advantage to any nation 
 of the acquisition of conquered territory ; which 
 acquisition is the ordinary consequence of a 
 victorious war. Even the exaction of a war 
 indemnity is, in his mind, an entirely fallacious 
 proceeding ; for it is trade which rules the ma- 
 terial well-being of the modern world, and the 
 payment of a large sum of money by one 
 country to another is contrary to sound com- 
 mercial principles. He points out that no 
 country can be annexed without its inhabitants, 
 hence it is they who remain, in spite of any 
 political changes, its true possessors ; while the 
 
 59 
 
6o Reflections of a Non-Combat ant. 
 
 money extracted from a conquered country will 
 stimulate the conquered to further exertion, 
 while the artificial influx of monetary wealth 
 will damage the trade of the country which 
 absorbs it. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose, as some have 
 done, that because Mr. Angell confined himself 
 to an exposition of the economic argument 
 against war he has no regard for other con- 
 siderations ; yet the commercial factor is un- 
 doubtedly the mainspring of his philosophy ; 
 while the hostile criticism to which his views 
 have been subjected is, for the most part, not 
 inspired so much by disbelief in the soundness of 
 his data as by indignation at the economic 
 factor being regarded as supreme in such a 
 discussion. Mr. Angell's book, in fact, raises 
 the question as to how far anti-militarism is 
 consistent with patriotism, and whether it be 
 possible to have an end of war until we have an 
 end of separate nations. 
 
 It is a pity that this question is not treated 
 more exprofesso in Mr. Angell's work, for sup- 
 posing all to agree with him that war is bad from 
 a business point of view, the question still re- 
 mains as to whether it be bad from the national 
 point of view. Mr. Angell would seem to hold 
 thcit this is a matter which would not much 
 
Patriotism and War. 6i 
 
 signify, because there are, he maintains, stronger 
 bonds of union and deeper lines of cleavage than 
 those constituted by likeness or difference of race 
 and nationality. The question, for him, is not 
 as to what is best for England or Germany, but 
 what is best for Englishmen and Germans. 
 
 Indeed (he writes) where the co-operation between the 
 parts of the social organism is as complete as our mechanical 
 development has recently made it, it is impossible to fix the 
 limits of the community, and to say what is one community 
 and what is another. Certainly the state limits no longer 
 define the limits of the community ; and yet it is only the 
 state limits which international antagonism predicates. 
 
 There is much closer intercommunication between Britain 
 and the United States in all that touches social and moral 
 development than between Britain and, say, Bengal, part of 
 the same state. An English nobleman has more community 
 of thought and feeling with a European continental aristo- 
 crat (will marry his daughter, for instance), than he would 
 think of claiming with such " fellow " British countrymen as 
 a Bengal babu, a Jamaica negro, or even a Dorset yokel. 
 A professor at Oxford will have closer community of feeling 
 with a member of the French Academy than with, say, a 
 Whitechapel publican, (p. 153. 3rd edition.) 
 
 It would be better to drop the example of the 
 " Bengal babu " and '* Jamaica negro," which 
 introduces the racial, though not the national, 
 distinction, and confine ourselves to the examples 
 of the "Dorset yokel" and the ''Whitechapel 
 publican ". Here we have the view that intel- 
 
62 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 lectual and moral affinities are stronger than 
 national kinship; with the suggested corollary 
 that, in fighting for nationality, we are fighting 
 for an illusion. 
 
 It so happens that another book, which was 
 likewise honoured by the award of the Nobel 
 prize, contains the same implicit, though not de- 
 finitely avowed, or perhaps fully conscious, re- 
 pudiation of the national factor as a justification 
 of war. 
 
 Mr. Angell maintains that not a single English- 
 man would be the richer for a victory over 
 Germany, nor a single German more prosperous 
 for the defeat of England : — 
 
 Let us assume that at the cost of great sacrifice, the 
 greatest sacrifice which it is possible to imagine a civilized 
 nation making . . . Belgium, Holland and Germany, 
 Switzerland and Austria, have all become part of the great 
 German hegemony, is there one ordinary German citizen who 
 would be able to say that his well-being had increased by such 
 a change ? (p. 39.) 
 
 Baroness von Suttner, on the other hand, who, 
 as a woman, deals with the immediate values of 
 life, and not with its machinery, maintains that 
 not a single individual of either country, con- 
 queror or conquered, is any happier for war ; 
 suffering of mind, suffering of heart, suffering of 
 body, are the only true results, against which 
 
Patriotism and War. 63 
 
 may be set off a little satisfied vainglory on the 
 part of the successful soldiers : — 
 
 "Yes, we are beaten," sadly repeated my father, as he 
 sank on to the bench. 
 
 " So the victims were a needless sacrifice," I sighed. 
 
 " Indeed they are to be envied, for they know nothing of 
 the disgrace which has come upon us. But we shall gather 
 ourselves together soon, though they say that peace must 
 now be concluded." 
 
 " May God grant it ! " I interrupted. " Though it is 
 too late for my poor Arno, yet thousands of others will 
 be spared." 
 
 '* You seem to think only of your own sorrow, and that 
 of private individuals. This is Austria's affair." 
 
 " But is not Austria made up of individuals ? " ^ 
 
 On the whole it may surely be admitted that 
 the arguments of both writers are sound ; that, 
 as individuals, we are not richer or happier for 
 any war ; whatever its result may be, our strictly 
 private fortunes remain the same. Yet on the 
 other hand, if both these writers have set aside 
 the national argument, Mr. Angell because he 
 holds that the world is now one huge emporium 
 of buyers and sellers. Baroness von Suttner be- 
 cause it is a vast family of human lives and 
 hearts, it may reasonably be urged against them 
 that they should have made a more definite and 
 detailed profession and defence of their repudia- 
 
 ^ " Disarm," Book I, chap. v. 
 
64 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 tion of this great factor. Especially in **The 
 Great Illusion," which is a scientific treatise, the 
 omission of the patriotic argument should have 
 been more explicit and not so much an unex- 
 pressed consequence of the main thesis of the 
 book. 
 
 But if these two writers hold that universal 
 peace is attainable because race and nationality 
 may be regarded as negligible factors, their argu- 
 ments will only convince those who agree with 
 them on this important point. Those who dis- 
 pute it may regard their respective theses as ad- 
 mirable and convincing so far as they go, but as 
 incomplete by their neglect of one great factor. 
 
 In November, 1859, Giuseppe Mazzini, ad- 
 dressing the youth of Italy, says : — 
 
 Thus does God teach you through history, which is the 
 successive incarnation of His plan, that humanity cannot 
 prevail until every people has won its own land. 
 
 The individual cannot hope to achieve, by his feeble 
 capacity, the great aim of universal brotherhood ; he must be 
 supported by the strength, the wisdom and the labour of 
 those who share his tongue, his tendencies, .his traditions, 
 his civil customs. 
 
 The . Fatherland is the centre of the balance of which the 
 individual and the nation occupy the two scales. 
 Each nation has its special mission.^ 
 
 1 Phrases dTa.vfn J>assim from the address " To the Young 
 Men of Italy," November, 1859. 
 
Patriotism and War. 65 
 
 Thus as Mr. Angell would maintain that 
 nationality is unimportant in comparison with 
 material prosperity, Mazzini, on the contrary, 
 held that the first is deserving of the sacrifice of 
 the second. 
 
 Just as in the economic sphere, writes Mr. Angell, factors 
 peculiar to our generation have rendered the old analogy as 
 between States and persons a false one, so do these factors 
 render the analogy in the sentimental sphere a false one. 
 
 No one thinks of respecting a Russian mujik because he 
 belongs to a great nation, or despising a Scandinavian or 
 Belgian gentleman because he belongs to a small one. 
 (p. 154.) 
 
 And again : — 
 
 We shall come to realize that the real psychic and moral 
 divisions are not as between nations but as between oppos- 
 ing conceptions of life. (p. 155.) 
 
 One of the arguments that Mr. Angell employs 
 to prove the possibility of the entire extinction 
 of war between nations is drawn from the 
 abandonment of religious wars in the modern 
 world. He describes a scene painted by a 
 Spanish artist of the burning of a child for its 
 faith in 1 680, and asks : — 
 
 How long after that scene . . . was it before the renewal of 
 such became a practical impossibility ? It was not a hundred 
 years. Or do those who talk of " unchanging human nature " 
 . . . really plead that we are in danger of a repetition of such 
 a scene ? In that case our religious toleration is a mistake. 
 
 S 
 
66 Reflections of a N on- Comb at ant. 
 
 ..." Men are savage bloodthirsty creatures, and will fight 
 for a word or a sign," the " Spectator " tells us, when their 
 patriotism is involved. Well, until yesterday it was as true 
 to say that of them when their religion was involved. 
 Patriotism is the religion of politics. . . . But is it likely that 
 a general progress which has transformed religion is going 
 to leave patriotism unaffected? (pp. 310-1.) 
 
 There are several objections which may be 
 raised against this argument. 
 
 First of all, a return to old methods is more 
 absolutely possible than Mr. Angell believes, 
 and is rendered impracticable more by out- 
 side pressure than by a complete conversion 
 of humanity from such methods. In the great 
 Christian Churches persecution is still not only 
 possible, but actual, though it does not openly 
 assume the form of physical torture. A good 
 deal of moral suffering is still inflicted in the name 
 of orthodoxy ; and even a certain measure of 
 physical penalty in the form of starvation, as a 
 result of the cutting off of the means of livelihood. 
 And if yet stronger measures are not sometimes 
 adopted this is rather for want of the means than 
 for want of the will. 
 
 Secondly, savagery is, in all domains of life, 
 though repressed by advancing civilization, 
 much nearer the surface than Mr. Angell admits. 
 On the whole, it is rather our customs that have 
 
Patriotism and War. 67 
 
 been refined than our nature. The motorist was 
 a terror to his neighbours until motorism was 
 regulated and civilized — a proof that it is not the 
 motorist who is a Christian, but motor traffic 
 which has been Christianized. With the least 
 disturbance of use and wont primitive passions 
 make their presence felt as strongly as ever — 
 religious persecution will not reappear unless, at 
 any moment, religious rulers and enthusiasts are 
 freed from the check of the general system of law 
 and order. 
 
 Thirdly, and chiefly, we have to ask how far 
 the subsidence of religious persecution is due to 
 the subsidence of religions themselves, and how 
 far to the progressive civilization of the religious 
 world. It must surely be acknowledged that, 
 to a great extent, there is less religious perse- 
 cution because there is less religious belief — and 
 that, on the same principle, there would only be 
 less war between nations in proportion as there 
 was less national spirit. 
 
 But are we not then admitting Mr. Angell's 
 supposition that the spirit of nationality is one 
 that is to be gradually eliminated with the ad- 
 vance of civilization, and that peace will be an 
 attainable ideal in proportion to its extinction ? 
 
 So that one of the noblest and most romantic 
 instincts of humanity is to be ruled out of ex- 
 
 5* 
 
68 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 istence in the world that is to be. Is it to be a 
 choice between patriotism, with the possibility of 
 war, or no patriotism, with the certainty of peace ? 
 
 Mazzini's ideal was neither of these — for him 
 war was necessary until the ideals of patriotism 
 were attained ; but meanwhile it was better to die 
 for one's country than to live without one. 
 
 On the whole the ideal of Mazzini is the ideal 
 of those for whom this war is a great human 
 effort, and not a game of political chess ; for it is 
 the preservation and freedom of the various 
 nationalities concerned that is, for such, its ulti- 
 mate aim. If then, to those of us who cherish 
 and uphold the national spirit and glory in our 
 patriotism, it were proved that the ideal of uni- 
 versal peace was incompatible with such love of 
 our country, we might be tempted to accept the 
 sad conclusion that war was, after all,! inevitable ; 
 that if we wish to remain English we must con- 
 tinue to prepare for war with Germany, and if 
 we wish to remain German we must continue to 
 prepare for war with England. For in spite of 
 our intellectual and spiritual affinities with indi- 
 viduals or classes of other countries, we might 
 still find, in our blood and bones, a something 
 that constituted us English, or German, or Rus- 
 sian, or French ; a something that made us feel, 
 in spite of individual friendships, strangers in a 
 
Patriotism and War. 69 
 
 foreign land ; a something that urged us home as 
 strength declined, and the evening of life drew 
 on ; a something that made our heart beat and 
 our blood course quickly when a national joy or 
 a national sorrow drew our separate consciousness 
 into the united consciousness of our land and our 
 people. 
 
 Duke et decorum est pro patria mori; and that 
 because our life is centred in the country for which 
 we would so gladly die. May we not then love 
 our country and also love humanity at large and 
 aim at a future of universal peace ? 
 
 One thing or the other — patriotism, as the 
 world is at present constituted, must be included 
 in the peace ideal, or that ideal must be abandoned 
 save by those whose hearts have never beat fast 
 in the interest of the land that has protected their 
 youth, developed their manhood, guarded their 
 rights and liberty, shaped their social and political 
 outlook. 
 
 How far then is international warfare a neces- 
 sary corollary of national existence ? 
 
 If we turn to the German theories on this sub- 
 ject we shall find here good proof of their acknow- 
 ledged thoroughness ; and if that thoroughness 
 err by the omission of the qualifying influences of 
 life as a whole on each section of life, we shall, 
 nevertheless, understand the particular section 
 
JQ Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 better for seeing it treated by special scientific 
 methods. 
 
 Here again Germany would seem to be in an 
 earlier stage of social and political development 
 than the other leading races of Europe. She 
 cherishes that national spirit which manifests it- 
 self in the fervour of patriotism, but so do we. 
 She defends her national rights by force, and 
 furthers her national aspirations by war ; but so 
 do we, and it is absurd to deny it. For her, as 
 for us, physical force is the last appeal in any 
 national crisis ; therefore, here again, German 
 patriotism is like any other patriotism. She 
 makes mistakes in matters of justice, and defends 
 her procedure by what we regard as untrue argu- 
 ments ; but in some degree or other we all make 
 mistakes, and defend them by the best reasons 
 we can adduce. 
 
 And yet German patriotism is marked by 
 certain characteristics utterly repugnant to the 
 international ethical code as professed by Eng- 
 land, France, and other modern countries. 
 
 The reason is that German national sentiment 
 is the sentiment of an earlier civilization, which 
 has, on the one hand, been preserved intact from 
 the influence of modern social life, with its fuller 
 sense of humanity as a whole ; while it has, on 
 the other hand, been elaborated into a science 
 
Patriotism and War. 71 
 
 and philosophy by the far from backward German 
 intellect. Politically Germany is in a more 
 primitive stage of development than England or 
 France ; intellectually, she is fully their equal, 
 and can defend her political outlook with all the 
 wealth of her intelligence. 
 
 And yet, once more, in a sense, she is more 
 right than we are, so far as the actual subject 
 in hand is concerned. Her war is real war, un- 
 coloured by international ethics that should, 
 eventually, do away with war altogether. Her 
 diplomacy is genuine diplomacy ; a determined 
 use of all political methods in the cause of un- 
 shamed national egotism. So too, her patriotism 
 is unqualified patriotism ; the national sentiment 
 carried to its extreme limit, without regard for 
 those wider human considerations which are 
 gradually modifying the national sentiment of 
 other lands, and are preparing a spirit of kinship 
 between nations which must eventually pro- 
 foundly transform the quality of our patriotism. 
 Not all, nor even the majority, of any country are 
 moved by such considerations ; but their presence 
 is felt in the political effort after a higher code of 
 international ethics. 
 
 It is a paradoxical, and yet a perfectly natural 
 result, of the fact that Germany cherishes a fiercer 
 and more unqualified patriotism than the rest of 
 
72 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 us, that she is the enemy of the national senti- 
 ment of other countries and races. For as every 
 living religion seeks converts and, when it ceases 
 to do so, has ceased, to some extent, to believe in 
 itself, so every country that cherishes certain 
 national ideals will seek to win converts to them. 
 Germany believes in herself, and therefore she 
 wants others to believe in her ; and, being in the 
 more primitive stage of political development, her 
 method of making others believe in her is to knock 
 them down until they do. 
 
 Legally and socially, writes Bernhardi, all denominations 
 enjoy equal rights, but the German state must never renounce 
 the leadership in the domain of free spiritual development. 
 To do so would mean loss of prestige.^ 
 
 Hence follow two contradictory results — first, 
 that Germany is the enemy of national sentiment 
 and patriotism because she has so much of them 
 herself ; secondly, that she is more backward than 
 countries that are actually less advanced in 
 general civilization just because of her high in- 
 tellectual development. 
 
 As to the first point, we charge her with such 
 an overflow of German feeling and German 
 aspirations, that she is blunt to French, and 
 Serbian, and Polish, as well as English feelings 
 and aspirations. 
 
 ^ " Germany and the Next War," pp. 75-6. 
 
Patriotism and War, 73 
 
 As to the second point, she is so entirely 
 equal in mental development and intellectual 
 achievements to the best of other European 
 races, that she is able to make a philosophy of 
 barbarism, and to set out on a campaign of 
 aggression in order to impose her own ad- 
 vantages on others, whether they want them or 
 not. As in the Middle Ages Spanish soldiers set 
 forth to conquer savage races inspired by a 
 religious ideal as well as greed and self-interest ; 
 as they imposed the Christian faith, along with 
 the Spanish dominion on the countries they had 
 quelled and devastated, so Germany has aimed 
 at giving all the world a share in her Kultur in 
 return for their acceptance of her rule. If they 
 do not see what is best for them, she will open 
 their eyes in her own way. 
 
 It is this characteristic of German policy of 
 which French thinkers have been conscious, 
 deeply conscious, long before we were fully 
 aware of it. They had had experience of 
 German methods, and they knew, not only what 
 Germany had done, but what she was yet pre- 
 pared to do. 
 
 Thus a French professor addressing the Ger- 
 man nation writes in the " Entretiens" : — 
 
 We French detest in you an evil of which you may perhaps 
 be cured, but of which you are undoubtedly guilty, an evil of 
 
74 Reflections of a Non-Combatant . 
 
 which we ourselves have had some experience, thanks to 
 Louvois and Bonaparte : the evil of a self-centred will 
 drunk with good fortune ; the evil ambition to pursue 
 sterile enterprises by brutal methods ; the evil stupidity of 
 not being able to imagine that anybody else exists, or that, 
 existing, they have any rights ; the evil blindness of pushing 
 cherished principles to an extreme without having examined 
 them. We French intend therefore to conquer you, de- 
 finitely and without illusion, and to convince you. 
 
 We have no design of wickedly and foolishly exterminating 
 a people much more numerous than ourselves ; a people 
 with many good amongst them; a people not lacking in 
 great philologists ; a people of musicians, and more gifted 
 than ourselves in music. . . . We do not desire your blood. 
 Neither do we desire your lands, we only need our own and 
 the restoration of our separated and captive countrymen. 
 But we do intend to beat the persistency of our enemy, to 
 force him, by defeat, to renunciation, and thereby to com- 
 prehension. We must, in the old French words, force him 
 to " recreire " ^ (cry off I). 
 
 Or else — die ourselves ! 
 
 Mazzini saw that each nation had to make its 
 contribution to the spiritual and material wealth 
 of the whole human family. The question is in 
 what way that contribution is to be made. The 
 modern world, which is, in its highest repre- 
 
 ^From "Entretiens des non-combattants durant la 
 guerre," Union pour la Verit6, 21, rue Visconti, Paris. 
 " jusqu'il seit morz o tut vifs recreant." 
 
Patriotism and War, 75 
 
 sentatives, seeking an interchange of national 
 values and influences which shall be to the 
 common good of all, strives for a fuller inter- 
 national life that shall preserve and perpetuate, 
 and yet harmonize, the separate forms of 
 national life in one great whole. The German, 
 or more primitive political world, seeks her 
 expansion by the elimination of other national 
 factors and the supremacy of her own. In both 
 cases political amity is the ideal, but in the case 
 of Germany patriotism is to be supreme, in the 
 case of the modern world patriotism is to be a 
 factor of the whole. German patriotism is 
 patriotism and nothing else ; modern patriotism 
 is patriotism in process of transformation to a 
 wider human ideal. 
 
 The mediaeval patriotism, of which Germany 
 furnishes an example, and of which something 
 yet lives in every nation, will ever need, at recur- 
 ring periods, to prove itself by war. Through 
 patriotism the citizen lives in the heart of his 
 country. So long as that heart beats but for 
 itself, the love of one s country will imply, as oc- 
 casion arises, the hatred of other countries. Even 
 a peaceable contribution to the life of the world 
 may demand a domination of spiritual influence, 
 if not of physical force. 
 
 If, at long last, mankind become in truth one 
 
76 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 vast family, we cannot now foresee what changes 
 may, by then, have been wrought in the char- 
 acter of national life ; nor how far strictly national 
 sentiment will survive at all. We cannot work 
 for ideals that are beyond our powers of concep- 
 tion ; and meanwhile patriotism is an essential 
 element of political life, though the patriotism of 
 the dawn is already tempered by wider human 
 influences. The goal to which the best elements 
 of the modern political world are tending, is that 
 of Mazzini — an international commonwealth in 
 which the love of each man for his own country 
 will be his most definite expression of his love for 
 all the nations of the world. This is the higher 
 patriotism, which is already something more, 
 something greater, than undiluted patriotism. 
 As Mazzini tells us, we may have to fight in the 
 interests of this narrower patriotism until we have 
 reached one that is more universal. Only then 
 will the love of our nearest be compatible with 
 the love of our farthest, and international anthems 
 with patriotic hymns. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND WAR. 
 
 Before the outbreak of this war it was thought 
 by some, though not by those most intimately 
 acquainted with German political life, that the 
 Socialist party in Germany would offer powerful 
 opposition to it. Such hopes proved vain. 
 
 Socialists have fought and fallen on both sides : 
 and have declared that it was for the cause they 
 professed that they fought and fell. A small 
 section has stood aloft, but its influence has been 
 null. How could it be otherwise? How could 
 a party that was deeply rooted in the life of a 
 nation cut itself off from all share in the life of 
 that nation ? 
 
 On the other hand there has been in this 
 country, as also in Russia, a very marked expres- 
 sion of hope that this war will advance the cause 
 of an enlightened socialism. 
 
 In his speech at the Queen's Hall on 19 
 September, 19 14, Mr. Lloyd George said : — 
 
 77 
 
y^ Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 We are not fighting the German people. The German 
 people are just as much under the heel of this Prussian 
 military caste, and more so, thank God, than any other 
 nation in Europe. It will be a day of rejoicing for the 
 German peasant and artisan and trader when the military 
 caste is broken. 
 
 There is another blessing infinitely greater and more 
 enduring, which is emerging already out of this great 
 contest — a new patriotism richer, nobler, more exalted than 
 the old. I see a new recognition amongst all classes high 
 and low, shedding themselves of selfishness — a new recog- 
 nition that the honour of a country does not depend merely 
 upon the maintenance of its glory in the stricken field, but 
 in protecting its homes from distress as well. It is a new 
 patriotism which is bringing a new outlook over all classes. 
 The great flood of luxury and of sloth which had submerged 
 the land is receding, and a new Britain is appearing. We 
 can see, for the first time, the fundamental things that matter 
 in life, and that had been obscured from our vision by tropical 
 growth of prosperity. 
 
 May I tell you in a simple parable what I think this war 
 is doing for us ? I know a valley in the North of Wales 
 between the mountains and the sea — a beautiful valley, snug, 
 comfortable, sheltered by the mountains from all the bitter 
 blast. It was very enervating, and I remember how the boys 
 were in the habit of climbing the hill above the village to 
 have a glimpse of the great mountains in the distance, and 
 to be stimulated and freshened by the breezes which came 
 from the hill-tops, and by the great spectacle of that valley. 
 We have been living in a sheltered valley for generations. 
 We have been too comfortable, too indulgent, many, 
 perhaps, too selfish, and the stern hand of fate has scourged 
 
Democracy and War. 79 
 
 us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting 
 things that matter for a nation — the great peaks of honour 
 we had forgotten — Duty, Patriotism, and — clad in glittering 
 white — the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged 
 finger to Heaven. We shall descend into the valleys again, 
 but as long as the men and women of this generation last 
 they will carry in their hearts the image of these great 
 mountain peaks, whose foundations are not shaken though 
 Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war. 
 
 From Russia came the following letter, ad- 
 dressed by Prince Kropotkin to Mr. T. Fisher 
 Unwin : — 
 
 You saw, I suppose, my friend Bourtzeff's letter to " The 
 Times " of September 1 8. Apart from the sentence where 
 he says that all parties are at one with the Government, this 
 letter expresses, I should say, the opinion of most of those 
 who have always fought for freedom in Russia. Most of us 
 feel that Russia is now living through a moment which will 
 be the turning point in her political development. Not only 
 will the Russian Government see itself bound to make some 
 small concessions to the demands of liberty which come 
 from all layers of society, such as it has already begun to 
 make, but, after the remarkably united action of all classes 
 of society, parties, and nationalities for the defence of Russia, 
 more important concessions and much deeper changes are 
 bound to follow, whatever the issue of the war may be. 
 
 True, the old habits and conceptions of the rulers of 
 Russia are so deeply rooted that up till now a general amnesty 
 has not yet been granted, and the thousands of exiles, 
 scattered in the North of Russia and Siberia, have not yet 
 received the right of returning to their homes^ notwithstand- 
 
8o Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 ing the demands already made in this sense by some of the 
 Liberal organs of the Russian Press. 
 
 True also that, apart from the law passed by the Duma 
 and the Council of the State in their sittings before the war, 
 which law grants to all the non- Russian inhabitants of the 
 Empire the right of opening their own primary, intermediary, 
 and higher schools, with teaching in their own languages, 
 after having made a simple declaration to the authorities to 
 this effect, there are yet no signs of relaxation of the prose- 
 cutions that have hitherto been directed against the non- 
 Russian populations of the Empire. But, just as all over 
 Europe, with the exception of Germany, there grows a 
 feeling about the necessity of re-modelling the map of Europe 
 in conformity with the demands of independence of the 
 smaller nationalities, so also within Russia grows the idea 
 that the autonomy of the different nationalities of the Empire 
 will have to be recognized, after the wonderful readiness dis- 
 played by them to support Russia in her fight against Germany 
 and Austria. 
 
 It is generally understood that, if the promises given to 
 the Poles by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army 
 remained a dead letter, such a breach of faith would create, 
 not only in Poland, but also in Finland and the Caucasus, 
 dangerous conditions of serious resentment and discontent. 
 It is remarkable how the feelings I speak of are general all 
 over Russia, as well as in the countries where there are 
 Russian refugees. 
 
 A still more striking feature of the present day is that a simi- 
 lar feeling is spread all over Europe. Everywhere on the Con- 
 tinent the thought is expressed that " this war must be the 
 last one " ; that it must be " the end of the period of general 
 armaments we have lived through " ; and that the institutions 
 under which Europe has hitherto lived have seriously to be 
 
Democracy and War. 8i 
 
 revised. And when we see the horrors accompanying the 
 present war, and the abominations to which the Bismarckian 
 contempt of international treaties and obligations and 
 militarist education have brought Germany, we cannot but 
 feel certain that German militarism cannot be victorious. 
 When it has been defeated by the common efforts of all 
 nations, Europe is sure to enter a period of evolution which 
 will be the negation of those principles that have plunged 
 our civilization into the murderous struggles of the present 
 day. 
 
 There is a two fold hope which emerges from 
 these utterances ; first, the hope that in this war 
 is to be laid the foundation of a more genuine and 
 lasting peace between nations ; secondly, that it 
 is also to prepare a yet more intimate peace be- 
 tween classes — or, rather, their obliteration in so 
 far as they stand for a conflict of interests and a 
 struggle to exploit one element of society in the 
 interest of another. 
 
 We were mistaken in our belief as to the in- 
 fluence and action of Socialism before the war ; 
 are we cherishing kindred illusions as to the 
 influence of the democratic spirit after the 
 war? 
 
 The immediate influence of the war has cer- 
 tainly been in the direction of those hopes. 
 Never have opposed schools of political thought 
 had so excellent an opportunity of understanding 
 
 and learning from one another ; never has there 
 
 6 
 
82 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 been a warmer and more living fusion of parties 
 and classes. 
 
 The war has imposed on all of us the duty of 
 social service ; of supporting the community by 
 which our personal interests are protected, and in 
 which they are rooted. 
 
 It has also taught us sobriety of life — how 
 to do without many of its vain and useless ac- 
 companiments. It has furthermore made us 
 realize that it is not enough to be in the right, 
 we must also be strong and self-sacrificing in the 
 defence of right. 
 
 Lastly, it has taught us the value of union, 
 and that such union cannot exist without discip- 
 line, and without a strong and clean government. 
 
 This war has given us another grave lesson in 
 bringing to light the existence of a bottom-most 
 layer of society in which it was difficult to kindle 
 any keen sense of patriotism. This is a state of 
 things qui donne furieusement a penser, and to 
 the conservative rather than to the socialist, who 
 was not only aware of the existence of such a 
 class, but also of the reason for its existence. 
 No one is unpatriotic who feels that his own life, 
 and that of his family, is rooted in the life of the 
 country from which it draws its sustenance. If 
 the arterial system of a country is not strong 
 enough to pump the blood to its extremities, 
 
Democracy and War. 83 
 
 those extremities will be inevitably lacking in 
 patriotic sacrifice and sentiment. Therefore, if 
 certain classes of our community manifest genuine 
 indifference in time of national danger, this must 
 be either in virtue of their ignorance or because 
 they feel they have no stake in the country, and 
 would be unaffected by its greatest changes. In 
 either case there is proof of an unsatisfactory con- 
 dition of things, and one which the present 
 mutual understanding of political parties should 
 help to remedy. The whole country should blush 
 for its unpatriotic elements, and not only those 
 classes in which such elements exist. If a por- 
 tion of the people are lacking in public spirit such 
 a fact may be used to prove not only their own 
 unfitness for taking a part in national life, but still 
 more the inadequacy of the methods by which 
 they are instructed and governed. 
 
 And yet all these lessons may be lost as easily 
 as they were gained unless a strong and persis- 
 tent effort be made to apply them when the crisis 
 is past. This war may be a step towards the 
 eventual elimination of war from international 
 life, but it might also be the preparation for many 
 more wars. And so, too, the present mutual 
 understanding of classes and parties might be 
 lost and forgotten and the old struggle for supe- 
 riority return in all its force. 
 
 6 * 
 
84 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 Just as the existence of separate nationalities 
 has for its result the possibility of international 
 war until the good of each one comes to be recog- 
 nized as the good of all, and the good of all as 
 the good of each one ; so the existence of distinct 
 classes of society has for its result the possibility 
 of internal, though bloodless warfare, until, in like 
 manner, the good of each class is recognized as 
 the good of all society. 
 
 War has not permanently effaced our differ- 
 ences, but it has given us a magnificent occasion 
 of solving them by mutual understanding ; and 
 it has taught us that effort, strong and sustained, 
 bloody or bloodless, of sword or of spirit, is 
 needed for the prosecution or attainment of any 
 ideal. 
 
 If socialism was not potent to avert this world- 
 wide catastrophe, this was not only because of the 
 fatality of war nor because of the futility of a 
 paper pacificism — even had war been politically 
 avoidable socialism must have failed because the 
 form of socialism with which we are acquainted 
 has not been as wide as humanity in its aims. 
 It has educated the people to a sense of their 
 needs and of their rights ; it has not yet taught 
 them to interest themselves in the highest welfare 
 of the whole world. Their representatives have 
 fought for the advancement of one class ; they 
 
Democracy and War, 85 
 
 have not fought for an idea of justice which should 
 be common to all classes. 
 
 Socialism might well learn a modified lesson 
 from Germany, with her lust for world dominion. 
 Its ambitions have been too narrow, its methods 
 too one-sided ; it cannot hope to influence the 
 whole world until it loves the whole world. The 
 democratic party has complained of the existence 
 of secret treaties unknown to the people that 
 would have to pay the price of their fulfilment ; 
 but what has it done to fit itself for being entrusted 
 with such secrets ? It has not only been ignorant, 
 it has likewise been indifferent tojthe vast questions 
 of international life, to its huge and complicated 
 problems, and has thought they might be met by 
 the utterance of a little cheap sentiment, while to 
 economic questions, in which the working classes 
 were interested, it has devoted the best of its 
 brains and abilities. We cannot expect to handle 
 things unless we take the trouble to hold them, 
 or accept the labour of carrying them — responsi- 
 bility must be accepted with its burdens as well 
 as its rights. Who would seriously trust the 
 wheel of the state to men who have never ex- 
 plored the ocean, beset with rocks and dangers, 
 through which it has to be guided? On the 
 whole all classes can exercise political influence 
 in the matters in which they are interested ; but 
 
86 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 their Interest must be a serious and intelligent 
 one. 
 
 We really have (says a recent writer), if we care to use it, 
 as much democratic control over the Foreign Office under 
 our constitution as over any Government department, for 
 the Foreign Office, like every other department, is under 
 the control of a member of Parliament, elected by the people. 
 But we are more interested in social reform, in labour legis- 
 lation, and in constitutional reform, than in foreign politics ; 
 and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and 
 unmake Governments.^ 
 
 But those questions of Foreign policy cannot 
 be adequately treated from a purely party or class 
 standpoint ; and this is why those Labour leaders 
 who have meddled with them have too often 
 proved their inadequacy, and given grounds for 
 the belief that democracy has no world-wide mis- 
 sion. 
 
 On the whole the heart of the people is sound 
 and its conscience is just. During the present 
 war some of us may have heard wider and juster 
 judgments from the mouths of the working class 
 than from those of the educated. But the vox 
 populi vox Dei dictum is misleading in its choice 
 of the word voice, for collectively the people have 
 an unclear thought and an inefficient power of 
 expression. They are not so often right in what 
 
 1 "The War and Democracy," Chap. vi. pp. 231-2. 
 
Democracy and War. 87 
 
 they clearly say as in what they unclearly think 
 and feel. 
 
 Now every government is in some sense at 
 the tail end of progress ; it is there to guard and 
 enforce the good that has been attained, and it 
 has little heed for what is merely attainable. 
 The official world is never the best world, what- 
 ever individual statesmen may be ; it is at most 
 the average world, and often not even that. 
 Every office, though established for the general 
 interest, comes to exist in great measure for its 
 own ; it is therefore incapable of progress or self- 
 reform. Kings will not end the abuses of the 
 crown ; soldiers will not lessen the evils of mili- 
 tarism ; diplomats will not reform diplomacy ; 
 leaders will not strip their own cause of its vices 
 and egotism. 
 
 Thus Democracy, in face of this world-wide 
 catastrophe, should have learned something of 
 its own inadequacies. When the crisis came it 
 could not rise above its own level, and that level, 
 as established by the parties that represented it, 
 was not a high one. They were well equipped 
 for dealing with labour complications ; they had 
 not trained themselves by the study of world-wide 
 problems. The Socialist party, like every other 
 party, was representative, in fact, of the average 
 and not of the best. 
 
88 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 The Germans have sought world-dominion, 
 but they have not obtained it, because they 
 sought to Germanize and not to humanize the 
 world. The Democracy could not prevent this 
 war because its ambitions have been confined to 
 the welfare of one class. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DIVINE NEUTRALITY. 
 
 Should God, in time of war, be addressed and 
 regarded as a neutral power, as the Father of all 
 mankind, not more desirous for the victory of one 
 side than of another, willing only the eventual 
 good of both ; or should we implore Him frankly 
 and uncompromisingly to take part with us, and 
 aid us to confound our enemies ? Should we point 
 out to Him the justice of our own cause and the 
 perfidy of our opponents, as both sides have done 
 in their relations with the United States ; should 
 we even go further still, and assume as an obvi- 
 ous proposition that God is with us and against 
 our enemies ; or should we, on the contrary, re- 
 spect Divine Neutrality and temper our prayers 
 in accordance with it ? 
 
 First of all let it be noted that, so far from war 
 tending to quench the instinct to pray, it has at 
 present, as it has usually had in the past, a directly 
 opposite effect. 
 
 It may be safely said that in England and 
 
 89 
 
90 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 Germany, both mainly Protestant in their creed, 
 as in France, whose people, though not their 
 Government, are chiefly Catholic, and Russia, the 
 land of Orthodox Christianity, the churches have 
 been better filled this year than in times of peace. 
 We are all praying and, singular to say, we are 
 all praying, as we believe, to the same God. 
 
 It is interesting, however, to note that some 
 are conscious of the paradox, while others are 
 not ; and that the character of the prayers 
 offered varies according to the presence or ab- 
 sence of this consciousness. We have, thus, two 
 very distinct categories of prayer, and those cate- 
 gories are quite irrespective of the international 
 division. We have, on the one side, the Old 
 Testament type of prayer, definite and uncom- 
 promising ; an appeal to the God of armies to 
 place His strong right hand at the disposition of 
 our forces. We have, on the other side, a more 
 qualified supplication ; an appeal for help, along 
 with an admission that God may take some 
 interest in our enemies as well as ourselves. 
 
 Germany has certainly distinguished herself in 
 the production of the more uncompromising type 
 of prayer, though others have not been far be- 
 hind. 
 
 In his proclamation of 6 August, 19 14, the 
 Kaiser exclaims : — 
 
Divine Neutrality. 91 
 
 To be, or not to be, is the question for the Empire which 
 our fathers founded. To be, or not to be, German power 
 and German existence. We shall resist to the last breath of 
 man and horse, and shall fight out the struggle even against 
 a world of enemies. Never has Germany been subdued 
 when it was united. Forward with God, Who will be with 
 us as He was with our ancestors. 
 
 Nor has he ever omitted a prayerful allusion 
 in the various utterances which have reached us. 
 He has ever confidently proclaimed his entire 
 trust in Divine pro-Germanism, and ended his 
 addresses with a pious acknowledgment of the 
 same. 
 
 In the ** Militarwochenblatt " of Berlin, 4 
 August, we read : — 
 
 If there be a God in Heaven, and there is, we may count 
 on the victory of the just cause of our German arms. 
 
 The Emperor of Austria ended his procla- 
 mation of 28 July, 191 4, with the following 
 words : — 
 
 I trust in the Omnipotent God, Who will render my 
 armies victorious. 
 
 At the outbreak of war the Tsar of Russia 
 prayed with his own soldiers in the hall of the 
 Winter Palace, and a few days later addressed 
 the Duma in the same place, ending with the 
 impassioned cry : — 
 
92 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 Great is the God of the Russian Land ! 
 
 Later on he replied to the patriotic addresses 
 offered him in the Kremlin, and ended his speech 
 with the following words : — 
 
 I send a warm greeting to my gallant troops and to our 
 brave Allies, who are making common cause with us to safe- 
 guard the downtrodden principles of peace and truth. May 
 God be with us ! 
 
 The proceedings were closed by a Te Deum 
 at the Uspensky Cathedral. 
 
 In the Old Testament we find the classic models 
 of this form of prayer. 
 
 Thus the Psalmist prays ^: — 
 
 I will pursue after my enemies, and overtake them ; and 
 I will not turn again till they are consumed. 
 
 I will break them, and they shall not be able to stand ; 
 they shall fall under my feet. 
 
 And thou hast girded me with strength unto battle ; and 
 hast subdued under me them that rose up against me. 
 
 And thou hast made my enemies turn their back upon me, 
 and hast destroyed them that hated me. They cried' but there 
 was none to save them, to the Lord, but he heard them not. 
 
 In the Books of the Maccabees we get a certain 
 difference of character, for in those books we have 
 the story of a struggle for the preservation of 
 nationality, while the Psalms are more suggestive 
 of a war of conquest. The Maccabees are fight- 
 
 ^ Ps. XVII. — Douay Bible. 
 
Divine Neutrality. 93 
 
 ing pro aris et focis, for sheer self-preservation ; 
 they are the Belgians of our present contest. 
 
 And now let us cry to Heaven (says Judas Maccabaeus) 
 and the Lord will have mercy on us, and will remember the 
 covenant of our fathers, and will destroy this army before 
 our face this day ; 
 
 And all nations shall know that there is one that re- 
 deemeth and delivereth Israel. 
 
 Yet in this, as in the former instance, there is 
 the same note of assurance that God is on their 
 side ; the same expression of certainty that they 
 have only to do their duty to Him, and that He 
 will then undertake all responsibility for their 
 cause. 
 
 To turn now to the prayers of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, we find, in the " Mass in time of 
 war," the following collect : — 
 
 O God Who dost make war to cease, crushing by the might 
 of Thy strong defence the foes of them that put their trust 
 in Thee ; succour us Thy servants who entreat Thy mercy, 
 and break down the savage power of our enemies, that with 
 increasing thanksgiving we may give praise to Thee. 
 
 This collect is not, of course, of recent com- 
 position, and need not therefore be a direct 
 reflection of the present mind of the Church ; for 
 this we should have to turn to the unprinted, 
 unpublished prayers of individuals. Its spirit is, 
 in some respects, as uncompromising as that of 
 
94 Reflections of a N on- Comb at ant. 
 
 the Kaiser ; it is a prayer for protection against 
 the wicked assaults of an unjust enemy. Yet, on 
 the other hand, it clearly presupposes that those 
 using it are the attacked and not the attackers ; 
 it contains not the faintest suggestion of the 
 conquering spirit. We imagine it composed for 
 a country like Belgium, the victim of a direct, 
 ferocious, and unprovoked invasion. 
 
 When we turn to the consideration of the 
 prayers in use in the Church of England we are 
 at once aware of a difference in tone, reflective of 
 the social and religious progress of the last 
 century. The petitions are not so uncompromis- 
 ing, and they evince a certain regard for Divine 
 neutrality. The '' Form of Intercession " in- 
 cludes certain psalms and readings, not of as 
 militarist a character as might easily have been 
 selected, and after the Lord's Prayer the prayers 
 of the people are asked as follows : — 
 
 For the King and all in authority, the sailors and 
 soldiers, the sick and wounded, and those who minister to 
 them, for those in anxiety and sorrow, and those in poverty 
 and need, and lastly, " that the present distress may be 
 overruled for the advancement of God's Kingdom ". 
 
 The prayer for the sailors and soldiers is as 
 follows : — 
 
 O Almighty Lord God, the Father and Protector of all 
 that trust in Thee, we commend to Thy fatherly goodness 
 
Divine Neutrality. 95 
 
 the men who through perils of war are serving this nation ; 
 beseeching Thee to take into Thine own hand both them 
 and the cause wherein their King and country send them. 
 Be Thou their strength when they are set in the midst of so 
 many and great dangers. Make all bold through death or 
 life to put their trust in Thee, Who art the only giver of 
 victory and canst save by many or by few ; through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 In "The Times" of 21 August, 1914, the 
 following letter appeared, suggesting a form of 
 intercession for the Navy : — 
 
 Prayer for our Sailors. 
 
 The officers and men of our Navy have always held a 
 warm place in the affections of the British people, and I 
 know there are many who are now daily offering up special 
 intercessions for Divine protection and help for our ships at 
 sea. But we want as many of our countrymen as possible 
 to intercede for us at this anxious time, and I am therefore 
 suggesting the following prayer as most suitable for our 
 needs, in the great hope that all who read it will help us by 
 making use of it in their daily devotions. It is a slight 
 modification of the beautiful prayer from our Prayer Book 
 which is used in the Navy every day; and part of the 
 prayer used by Nelson before going into action at the 
 Battle of Trafalgar is embodied. 
 
 It is one of the splendid traditions of the Navy that, 
 before (going into action, officers and men have joined in 
 special united prayer asking God to help them in fighting 
 for their country and a just cause. It will be a great help 
 to our officers and men to know that, during the trying 
 time of possible waiting and when the supreme moment of 
 
96 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant, 
 
 going into action comes, they are in the thought and 
 prayers of their fellow-countrymen. 
 
 Prayer for the Navy. 
 
 O Eternal Lord God, Who alone spreadest out the 
 heavens and rulest the raging of the sea ; Who hast com- 
 passed the waters with bounds until day and night come to an 
 end ; be pleased to receive into Thy almighty and most gra- 
 cious protection the persons of Thy servants the officers and 
 men of our Navy and the Fleets in which they serve. Pre- 
 serve them from the dangers of the sea and from the vio- 
 lence of the enemy, that they may be a safeguard unto our 
 most gracious Sovereign Lord, King George, and his do- 
 minions. O Great God, Whom we worship, grant to our 
 country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great 
 and glorious victory, and may humanity after victory be the 
 predominant feature in the British Fleet. Vouchsafe to 
 those who lay down their lives for their country Thy Eternal 
 Rest. Amen. 
 
 H. S. Wood, Archdeacon^ 
 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 
 This prayer expresses a distinct longing for 
 victory, yet so tempered by other sentiments that 
 one feels it is addressed, not only to the God of 
 England, but to the God of all the world. 
 
 Another little Navy prayer was sent to his 
 betrothed by one of the victims of the '* Path- 
 finder" : — 
 
 Heavenly Father, forgive my sins and strengthen me in 
 all that is right ; grant me help to carry out my duties 
 faithfully and bravely ; bless and protect the officers and 
 
Divine Neutrality. 97 
 
 men of this ship ; shield all I love from harm in my ab- 
 sence, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 
 
 Of private prayers which have come under the 
 notice of the present writer, may be mentioned 
 particularly the ** Hour at the Front," by the Rev. 
 Ronald Knox, of Trinity College, Oxford, of 
 which the following lines may be selected as 
 characteristic of the whole : — 
 
 Commend your country to the care of God simply be- 
 cause it is your country. 
 
 And:— 
 
 Pray . . . that the war may be finished and victory 
 secured with as little suffering as possible; by sinking of 
 ships rather than men, by the fall of fortresses rather than 
 of their defenders, etc. 
 
 The following is an unpublished prayer, com- 
 posed for family devotions by a Roman Ca- 
 tholic: — 
 
 Spare, O Lord, spare Thy people ! 
 
 Mercifully grant, O Lord, to our countrymen who are 
 fighting for those of us who cannot fight, that they may be 
 brave in battle, courageous in defeat, gentle in victory. 
 May their labours and sufferings in our cause pujify their own 
 souls and bring them closer to Thee. May this war re- 
 generate the whole world and those who take part in it. 
 May it free us from self-indulgent habits, and make us more 
 generous in the service of others. May it draw rich and 
 poor into one brotherhood and extinguish class hatred. May 
 it lead us, through much pain and sorrow, to a true and 
 
 7 
 
98 Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 lasting peace. May we fight without hatred and at last lay 
 down our arms without bitterness. Protect our soldiers in 
 the midst of moral as well as physical danger. Have pity 
 on our enemies as well as our friends, and unite us at length 
 in peace and brotherhood. May Thy Will be done on earth 
 as it is in Heaven, and may we all assist in the doing of it. 
 May we love and serve Thee in good or in evil fortune, and 
 may our trial, in Thy mercy, be quickly ended. 
 Give us peace, O Lord, in this our day. 
 
 This prayer is obviously composed by one who 
 would have fought to win and who would gladly 
 have prayed to win, but who was deterred from 
 any form of unqualified petition by a sense of 
 reverence for the universal Fatherhood of God. 
 
 Paradoxical, then, as it might seem to inhabi- 
 tants of a neighbouring planet, were there such 
 in a position to observe us, we are all praying ; 
 Protestant Germany and Catholic Austria, Pro- 
 testant England and Catholic France and Or- 
 thodox Russia ; and not only are we all praying, 
 but, as already observed, we all claim to be pray- 
 ing to the same God. 
 
 Here is an inconsistency of which the opposed 
 armies of pre-Christian times were not guilty ; 
 for then, though all, like we in our own day, 
 prayed, they did not profess to pray to the same 
 God : each side prayed to its own God. Indeed, 
 warfare was, in those days, not only for home 
 and country, but for temple and altar ; the success 
 
Divine Neutrality, 99 
 
 of one people over another was the success of the 
 God of that people over the God of Its enemies. 
 Rightly did each side invoke its God, for on its 
 victory depended the honour of that God. Even 
 the Jews, though they escaped Polytheism, had 
 to pass through Monolatry, or the worship of 
 God as the God of a people, to Monotheism, or 
 the worship of God as a God of the universe. 
 In his study of the *' Religion of Israel," M. 
 Loisy describes to us the Jewish transition from 
 tribal to universal religion. There was a time 
 when Jahveh was a God 
 
 owning a name, like his neighbour gods, and having like them, 
 too, a people to watch over, 
 
 but was nevertheless 
 
 a definite and limited God, very powerful, no doubt, 
 within His own sphere of action, and working marvels in the 
 interest of His worshippers, but still a God amongst other 
 gods, though undoubtedly the strongest, the greatest, and 
 perhaps already the best. . . . 
 
 " Let Yahweh arise, and let his enemies be scattered, 
 
 Let them also which hate him flee before him ! " 
 Such was the battle hymn with which the ark of Shiloh 
 was greeted, when the armies of Israel moved against the 
 enemy. And when they halted, to encamp after the battle : — 
 "Halt! Yahweh, 
 With the battalions of Israel ! " 
 On these occasions Yahweh fought for his people less 
 ostentatiously than the Homeric gods, but just as the god 
 
 7* 
 
lOO Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 Ashur did with the Assyrians and Ammon of Thebes with 
 Rameses. At Gibeon he killed more enemies with his hail- 
 stones than the warriors of Israel did with their swords.^ 
 
 Such prayer was suitable to the Jew of those 
 days, but is it fitting to the Christian of our own 
 times ? 
 
 May we not say that the deep line of cleavage 
 which exists between the two categories of prayers 
 above described is, in fact, a line of cleavage be- 
 tween a religion of monolatry and a religion of 
 monotheism ; and that pro-German and pro- 
 Austrian prayers for victory are a survival of 
 other forms of religion not properly belonging to 
 monotheistic Christianity. Put such prayer into 
 paraphrase and the contradiction will be obvious. 
 
 Thus : — 
 
 Father of all mankind, strengthen our right hand for 
 the destruction of our enemies, Thy children ! Uphold this 
 country, whose God Thou art, and humble that other 
 country, whose God Thou likewise art ! We will honour 
 Thee by our victory, and may our enemies honour Thee by 
 their defeat ! May we be sanctified by success, and may 
 they be sanctified by humiliation. May Thy Will be done, 
 and may that Will be the glorification of Germany ? Russia ? 
 etc. 
 
 And yet can we, any of us, avoid this con- 
 tradiction without giving up every form of 
 
 1 " The Religion of Israel," by Alfred Loisy, translated 
 by Arthur Galton, pp. loo, iii, 112. 
 
Divine Neutrality. lOi 
 
 prayer? Is It possible to pray disinterestedly 
 when the whole future of our country, and the 
 lives of those dear to us, depend on a certain 
 issue of the struggle ? To what conclusion does 
 this inevitable inconsistency lead us ? 
 
 To what other conclusion than that the religion 
 of war is more or less irresistibly a religion of 
 monolatry, of tribal religion, of denial of the uni- 
 versal Fatherhood of God ? From this conclusion 
 there is no escape. Not only has war no true 
 place In the scheme of Christianity, but it has, 
 still less, any true place in the scheme of mono- 
 theism. 
 
 We must accept it, then, as one of the contra- 
 dictions of a state of war, that we cannot pray 
 without some treason, either to our monotheistic 
 beliefs, or to our patriotic sentiments. It Is an 
 Impasse from which there is no escape until in- 
 ternational politics have been shaped in accord- 
 ance with our highest human religion and 
 morality. We cannot uphold the universal 
 Fatherhood of God without admitting, as Its 
 corollary, the universal brotherhood of mankind ; 
 yet how are we to combine the two in time of 
 war? 
 
 There is only one answer to the difficulty, and 
 that is to combine them in time of peace. War 
 has become a monstrosity, while it yet remains a 
 

 102 Rejections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 necessity. It is a monstrosity, because it is ab- 
 solutely uncombinable with the laws of our own 
 highest life, and follows a code of its own. Yet 
 it is not in itself the cause, but rather the result, 
 of that ego-centric national spirit which cannot 
 love without hating, nor labour without competing, 
 nor cherish its own life without seeking to absorb 
 that of others ; of that nationalism that cannot 
 yet greet the coming of another race with the 
 words — 
 
 Ecco chi crescera i nostri amori ! 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL NEUTRALITY. 
 
 At an early stage of the war a notable event oc- 
 curred : an event whicli may have made but little 
 general impression, but which was, nevertheless, 
 highly significant in the thinking world. A large 
 majority of German professors followed the mili- 
 tary example — and as the Kaiser and lesser 
 dignitaries had returned their honorary commis- 
 sions in the English army, so the philosophers 
 of Germany returned their honorary degrees in 
 English universities. To some of us this was a 
 cause of frank astonishment, though later de- 
 velopments enabled us to understand it better. 
 What had learned degrees to do with war? 
 Were philosophical problems to be decided by 
 the sword ? 
 
 Some few German professors protested against 
 the movement, but their objections were over- 
 ruled, and even Dr. Hans Richter, the idol of 
 the English musical public, thought that German 
 music must utter its protest, and returned his de- 
 gree politely but firmly. 
 
 103 
 
I04 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 After this came the uncompromising manifesto 
 of the German professors, with its unconditional 
 declaration of solidarity, not only with the Ger- 
 man military cause, but with every detail of the 
 conduct and methods of the German military 
 campaign, including the reprisals of the soldiery 
 on the civilians and peasantry of Belgium, and 
 the burning of Louvain university and library. 
 This manifesto also definitely declares that Ger- 
 man ** culture " depends, for its existence, on Ger- 
 man militarism. 
 
 To quote one or two paragraphs : — 
 
 It is not true that the life and property of a single Belgian 
 citizen has been touched by our soldiers except when the 
 bitterest necessity for self-defence rendered it unavoid- 
 able. . . . 
 
 The paragraph dealing with Louvain be- 
 gins :— 
 
 It is not true that our troops raged like brutes in Louvain. 
 With heavy hearts they were obliged to take reprisals against 
 a furious population by bombarding a portion of the town. 
 
 The last section runs : — 
 
 It is not true that the fight against our so-called militarism 
 is not, as our enemies hypocritically aver, a fight against our 
 culture. Without German militarism German culture would 
 long ago have been swept off the face of the earth. . . } 
 
 Previous to these collective utterances a dis- 
 iFrom "The Times," 8 October, 19 14. 
 
Philosophical Neutrality, 105 
 
 tinguished German philosopher, who had exer- 
 cised no small influence on the thinking world 
 in England as elsewhere, had prepared us, in some 
 degree, for this new conception of learning as an 
 appendage of militarism. And this was one of 
 the philosophers from whom it was least to be 
 expected, not because of his personal acquaint- 
 ance with England, but because his work was of 
 the character which would be described as ex- 
 clusively philosophical, and nothing else. Dr. 
 Rudolf Eucken has not, like Professor Harnack 
 and others, devoted himself to critical and his- 
 torical labours, but has dealt with the over- and 
 underlying truths of life, and has been the pro- 
 tagonist of a spiritual conception thereof '* Der 
 Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt " — "The 
 struggle for the spiritualization of Life" — this 
 is the work by which some of us know him 
 best, and its title is descriptive of its author's 
 outlook. The whole burden of that book lies in 
 its insistence on the need of passing through life, 
 in its surface and average presentment,^ with its 
 triviality, its partizanship, its inconstancy, its 
 shallowness to life in its deepest and most spir- 
 itual reality. 
 
 To apprehend his point of view we need not 
 search any of his works for special passages ; we 
 ^ "Durchschnittsleben." 
 
io6 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 need only open them at haphazard and take those 
 that present themselves. Thus, speaking of the 
 eternal conflict of freedom and necessity, he 
 writes : — 
 
 There is no other way of salvation than to lift ourselves 
 above the region of conflict ; this world of mutual opposition 
 cannot be accepted as the last and only one ; the impasse 
 cannot represent the full depth and reality of life, if we are 
 to preserve the will and the strength to live. Hence arises 
 an insistent question whether there be not some activity 
 of reason beyond the entanglement, and whether we cannot 
 invariably inhabit that higher region, and from its vantage 
 point attack the contradiction.^ 
 
 Earlier in the same work he speaks of 
 
 the sharp contrast between life in its philosophical and 
 its superficial meaning ; what is self-evident to the former is 
 a problem to the latter, the first principles of the former are 
 folly and exaggeration to the latter.^ 
 
 And in another place he uncompromisingly 
 declares that the state is inadequate to the fulfil- 
 ment of the spiritual ideals of mankind : — 
 
 The state can only consider and maintain the common 
 level of spiritual life, not its wider and more spontaneous 
 experiences ; it is closely entangled with the necessities of 
 life and cannot act save through their influence ; it is moved 
 by the change and movement of time, and even by the 
 fluctuations of the moment ; with its huge forces it becomes 
 the battlefield of violent passions and interests, it can never 
 
 ^ Op. cit. p. 267. ^ Idem^ p. 39. 
 
Philosophical Neutrality. 107 
 
 suffice for the attainment of the inward and eternal aims of 
 mankind.^ 
 
 The Durchschnittsleben, the surface or average 
 field of life of Professor Eucken, is the world of 
 material necessities, and of action and thought 
 guided by those necessities. In this world there 
 exists, indeed, a certain form of freedom, but it is 
 a strictly conditioned freedom. Our body is free, 
 but only within the domain of physiological law ; 
 our mind also is free, but within the laws of its 
 imprisoned condition. So, too, society is free, 
 but only in the measure of its own cultural de- 
 velopment, and the limits of that development 
 cannot be suddenly broken through at will, but 
 only by a general movement of progress. 
 
 In his spiritual life, on the other hand, man 
 reaches into a realm of complete freedom, in 
 which each action is a new attainment, and not 
 merely a modification of something that is already 
 there. For Eucken, as for Bergson, the spirit is 
 a creative agency. 
 
 Now whatever our national sympathies, and 
 whatever our political opinions, we must all admit 
 that the world in which men fight for goods of a 
 limited and material order, whether it be a struggle 
 between labour and capital, or a war between 
 nation and nation, is a world of at least partial 
 iQp. cit. p. 331. 
 
io8 Refiections of a Non-Combat ant, 
 
 necessity, and only restrained and conditioned 
 freedom. Indeed, every mass movement of man- 
 kind suffers under the same limitation. One man 
 may move and act in complete freedom ; many 
 men together cannot do so. 
 
 Even if we were to adopt as our ultimate phil- 
 osophy one of physical well-being, we are still 
 constrained to raise our ideals above the general 
 press of human life ; to admit that the average 
 life lies under a law of necessity which prohibits 
 its common pursuit of that which the single mind 
 can recognize as best. 
 
 We are therefore compelled to the conclusion 
 that philosophy can deal with the general questions 
 of war and peace, and with the underlying prin- 
 ciples of political life ; but that to throw its weight 
 into one side or the other in the practical details 
 and methods of the concrete actions that result 
 from those principles, is to cease to be philosophy, 
 and to compromise its own value and influence. 
 
 So much for philosophy — and now what about 
 the philosopher ? Is he to be a bloodless being of 
 abstract views ? or is he to live the human life of 
 those around him ? 
 
 Obviously we do not want an English phil- 
 osopher to be pro-German, or a German phil- 
 osopher to be pro- English. Nor do we want any 
 philosopher to shirk military service, if he be fit 
 
Philosophical Neutrality. 109 
 
 for it ; or to neglect any duty he may be able to 
 render for the good of his country. Nor should 
 we resent his giving vent to any, the most ener- 
 getic, utterances as a German or an Englishman 
 in favour of his people and their cause. 
 
 But, in the name of philosophy, we have a 
 right to ask one thing, and that is that philosophy 
 be not turned into politics, whether social or 
 national ; and that the all-embracing ideals of 
 humanity, in its spiritual and eternal character, 
 be not compromised by an attempt to entangle 
 them with the conduct and methods of a 
 struggle which, however terrible, is a passing 
 one. 
 
 Furthermore, we have a right to ask of the 
 philosopher that, even in war time, when the lesser 
 members of society may be excused for losing 
 their heads, he should show himself worthy of his 
 profession by keeping his own, and that we 
 should feel, in his treatment of the subject, that 
 he regards it not only from the point of view of 
 his own nation but from a more remote stand- 
 point ; that he should occupy a position from 
 which not one side only, but the whole, can be at 
 least dimly apprehended ; from which he may be- 
 hold, indeed, a war of principles, with which phil- 
 osophy is concerned, but from which he can also 
 behold a huge tangle of right and wrong, and the 
 
I lo Reflections of a N on-Combatant, 
 
 pitiful struggles of humanity to break the meshes 
 of its captivity. 
 
 Such a view will not preclude the possibility of 
 one side being mainly in the right and the other 
 mainly in the wrong — but it will embrace the 
 whole subject under a wider, more universally 
 human aspect. 
 
 Expectations such as these were doomed to 
 disappointment. First of all, those for whom 
 Professor Eucken had been one of the great spirit- 
 ual teachers of our modern world, had to bear the 
 brunt of an uncompromising pronouncement of 
 opinion in which he was joined by Professor 
 Hackel. In the **Vossische Zeitung" of 20 
 August, these two philosophers published an un- 
 qualified condemnation of their adversaries, and 
 an equally unqualified assertion of the righteous- 
 ness of the German cause : — 
 
 What is happening to-day will be inscribed in the annals 
 of history as an indelible shame to England. England fights 
 to please a half-Asiatic Power against Germanism. She 
 fights not only on the side of barbarism, but also of moral in- 
 justice, for it is not to be forgotten that Russia began the 
 war because it was not willing that there should be a thorough 
 expiation of a wretched murder. 
 
 It is the fault of England that the present war is extended 
 to a world-war, and that all culture is thereby endangered. 
 And why all this ? Because she was envious of Germany's 
 greatness, because she wished at all costs to hinder a further 
 
Philosophical Neutrality. iii 
 
 extension of this greatness. She was only waiting for a 
 favourable opportunity to break out to the detriment of 
 Germany, and she therefore seized most promptly on the 
 necessary German advance through Belgium as a pretext in 
 order to cloak her brutal national selfishness with a mantle 
 of respectability. 
 
 Before the war we should have said that the 
 differences of these two men reached deeper — 
 or higher — than any military considerations ; 
 that it was with the value of life as a whole, and 
 with the interests of mankind as one vast family, 
 that their work was concerned. For the one 
 the value of life was mainly spiritual, for the 
 other material progress was the sole aim ; one 
 would have imagined this difference to be too 
 fundamental to allow of close agreement in their 
 views of a great international catastrophe. 
 
 But the spirit was willing and the flesh was 
 not weak, and these two minds found that they 
 could agree more closely as to the rights and 
 wrongs of a war in this world of material forces 
 than they had ever differed as to the value or 
 existence of a world of spiritual forces. 
 
 In ''The Times" of 5 October, 1914, was 
 published another utterance of Professor Eucken, 
 contained in a letter to Dr. Wendte, the well- 
 known organizer of ** Free Religious World 
 Conferences " : — 
 
1 1 2 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 Jena, 17 August. Our plans for travel have been 
 destroyed by the world- war. We had arranged for our 
 journey to Japan, and had secured passages on the Siberian 
 Railway for the beginning of September, but now comes 
 suddenly the great overturn, and transforms Europe into an 
 armed camp. But there is something great and uplifting in 
 the unity, firmness, and assurance of victory which Germany 
 displays in this state of affairs. Certainly never in its 
 history was Germany so united and so great. Our two sons 
 also have gone to the war, and the youngest is probably 
 already in the midst of battle. All men competent for 
 military service present themselves. Everything presses 
 forward to take up arms. The feeling of embitterment is 
 strongest against England. It will hereafter always be 
 counted our worst enemy, and our intellectual work to- 
 gether will be ended for an incalculable time. The more, 
 however, do we hope for a close and friendly relation with 
 America. — (Signed) Rudolf Eucken. 
 
 The example had been set, and unfortunately 
 it was followed by some in other countries as 
 well as Germany. We have referred to the 
 discussion inaugurated by Professor Sayce — this 
 came later as the war-fever increased in intensity. 
 But the collective manifesto of the German 
 professors drew forth an English reply which, 
 if reasoned and just, as we in England hold it to 
 be, yet erred by its departure from the stand- 
 point of philosophy and intellectual life. It 
 would have been better to decline, qua learned 
 professors, to do more than rebuke the use of 
 
Philosophical Neutrality, 113 
 
 learning in the cause of militarism — to denounce 
 the confusion of Kultur with army tactics. 
 
 As was to be expected, the popular English 
 response to the German philosophical attitude 
 was still less detached and comprehensive in 
 character. ** German culture" became a byword 
 and the target of witty or dull, wise or foolish 
 satire. 
 
 Before long one had hints that the reactionary 
 was at work. " German culture " was to be re- 
 garded as identical with German militarism, 
 hence all inconvenient results of German scholar- 
 ship might be swept on to the dust-heap ; and 
 we could settle down comfortably, once more, to 
 the lazy beliefs that German criticism had 
 disturbed. 
 
 On this subject a note — an ominous note — was 
 struck by a letter in *' The Times " of 7 Sep- 
 tember, signed Fides, 
 
 The very spirit of the blasphemer (he writes) seems to 
 have passed into the armies of his country. The ruins of 
 Louvain show us the interesting theory of the " will to 
 power " put into practice. And if Nietzsche blasphemously 
 challenged the ethical teaching of Christ, what have German 
 theologians of the twentieth century done but attack and 
 minimize His unique claims ? According to Jensen His 
 existence is a myth, according to Schweitzer and Weiss His 
 ethical teaching is based on a false view of the Second 
 Advent, and can no longer be thought to hold good. 
 
 8 
 
1 1 4 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 In the sphere of religious ideals the main contribution of 
 German scholars of the twentieth century has been not merely 
 to seek to shatter traditional views of orthodoxy, but to 
 strike a blow at those very laws of Christian ethic upon 
 which, with whatever failure and imperfection, the edifice of 
 Christendom is based. The present war is to Russia a war 
 of the Russian people, and it is the Russian mujik for whom 
 Dostoievsky has made the claim that he shall save the world. 
 He is the embodiment of those " slave-virtues " against 
 which Nietzsche raved ; he is not led by the brute-ideal of 
 the Superman, but by the Divine ideal of the Crucified. 
 Against the gospel of force he stands for humility, patient 
 suffering, loving-kindness. There are no dreams of world 
 dominion in the heart of the Russian people ; dreams they 
 have, but not of world empire. They stand, if any nation 
 on earth does, for that " foolishness of God which is wiser 
 than men," that " weakness of God which is stronger than 
 men," in fact for that very type of the supernatural power of 
 humility and simplicity which of all St. Paul's teaching 
 roused the most maniacal of Neitzsche's outbursts. 
 
 No nation lives up to its ideals consistently, nevertheless 
 it is ideals that count. General von Bernhardi's doctrine 
 that in international politics might is right is clear and plain. 
 The German nation do their best to act upon it. The 
 strongest motive power of the Russian people is religion, 
 and that the religion of the Gospel ; the suffering Christ, not 
 the triumphing Napoleon, is and always has been their ideal. 
 It is between these two ideals that the European struggle is 
 to be contested. Before a horrified world Germany is put- 
 ting into practice on the battle-field the theories which her 
 academic teachers have long been teaching in the study. 
 The anti-Christ ethics of Nietzsche, coupled with the re- 
 duced Christianity of Liberal German Protestantism, with 
 
Philosophical Neutrality, 1 1 5 
 
 the theories of the Christ-myth, the Interimsethik, the 
 PauHne origin of Christianity, the indebtedness of Paul and 
 the mystery religions — all this body of thought, ranging from 
 direct antagonism to subtle undermining of Christian faith 
 and Christian moral law, stands face to face with the simple 
 belief of the most religious nation in Europe. Is this culture 
 versus barbarism ? 
 
 This is a form of retaliation suggestive of weak- 
 ness ; as indeed are most forms of retaliation. 
 
 Thought and learning, art and music, may- 
 bear certain characteristics of the country in which 
 they are begotten ; but they are also the products 
 of humanity itself, or they would make no appeal 
 to the world at large. The monuments of the 
 German mind are no more robbed of their intel- 
 lectual value by the national crime of this war 
 than German mountains are robbed of their 
 natural grandeur ; German forests of their 
 solemnity ; German rivers of their width and 
 volume. 
 
 We can be perfectly determined on the 
 
 destruction of German militarism without refusing 
 
 to listen to the sonatas of Beethoven and the 
 
 operas of Wagner ; to delight in the poetry of 
 
 Goethe and Heine ; to study Kant and Fichte and 
 
 Schopenhauer ; to absorb the learning of the great 
 
 German school of criticism. 
 
 True conquest is consummated by a process of 
 8 * 
 
ii6 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 assimilation ; a process, by the way, in which 
 the Anglo-Saxon race may claim a certain ex- 
 cellence. They have a knack of swallowing 
 their invaders and bringing them up more English 
 than themselves ; and this because they have 
 drawn from them elements to strengthen their 
 own life. It would be one of the saddest results 
 of war if this characteristic were weakened or 
 effaced. 
 
 But such an illusion cannot last long. The 
 great thinkers of Germany, France, and England, 
 the historians, the critics, above all the poets and 
 the musicians are waiting, with perhaps an in- 
 dulgent smile, to come into their own once more. 
 Men will not refuse the bread of life for ever, in 
 whatever mill it was ground. The mutual un- 
 derstanding of Shakespeare and Goethe lies 
 deeper than the antagonism of their countrymen ; 
 and one sonata of Beethoven might suffice to 
 loose the deeper springs of life and melt the frozen 
 waters of national egotism. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 It is easier to die well than to live well ; it is 
 easier to make war than to make peace. Europe 
 has made many treaties, she has never yet made 
 peace. Is there any justification for the hopes 
 of those who trust that this war will lead to some- 
 thing in the nature of an abiding peace ? that if 
 not actually the last one it will mark a stage in 
 the process of the definite destruction of mili- 
 tarism ? 
 
 I am avoiding, in this place, every kind of 
 directly political and technical question. Much 
 will depend on the wisdom and self-restraint 
 shown by both sides in the rearrangement of the 
 European map. Mistakes will, sooner or later, 
 entail their inevitable consequences, and the 
 statesmen who have agonized most in the effort 
 to avert war will not agonize less when the time 
 has come to end it. There are international 
 problems to which the success of neither side will 
 
 have contributed a solution ; for it is not by 
 
 117 
 
1 1 8 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 victory, and it is still less by defeat, that either 
 party can be brought to admit of any grain of 
 justice on the other side ; which is, after all, the 
 only way in which an international dispute can be 
 peaceably solved. 
 
 It is in virtue of the existence of those problems 
 that we find ourselves at war ; it is not always in 
 virtue of our understanding of them. Each side 
 has its own point of view ; an international pro- 
 blem is the tangled web of all those points of 
 view. Justice lies, in the main, in most cases, on 
 one side or the other ; yet no side is ever so 
 wholly in the right as not to be in the least degree 
 in the wrong. As a rule the country that wins 
 believes that success has crowned the justice of 
 its cause ; while the defeated nations believe that 
 wrong has triumphed, and that it is their busi- 
 ness to await another chance. Thus it is that 
 we end up with a treaty, but not with peace, for 
 peace demands a perfection of adjustment, a 
 clearness of perception, of which we are not 
 capable. 
 
 We may, indeed, cherish a certain confidence 
 that in so far as a nation based its policy on pure 
 militarism, a military failure may lead it to recon- 
 sider its philosophy ; that in so far as a policy of 
 pure national egotism found itself in contradiction 
 with the general movement of humanity, it may 
 
Peace. 119 
 
 ask itself whether the day for that policy be not 
 drawing to a close. But, on the other hand, 
 from the merely political, and not the human, 
 standpoint, neither victory nor defeat will neces- 
 sarily bring either side to view the matter in the 
 light of pure justice and objective truth. 
 
 Meanwhile the diplomat will take the place of 
 the soldier ; not with the idea of final occupa- 
 tion, but to carry on the business by different 
 methods until the turn of the soldier has again 
 come round. Thus we might be no nearer the 
 attainment of an ideal of universal peace than 
 before the war began. 
 
 And yet, in spite of all past disappointments, 
 there is a steadily growing minority — a minority 
 only in point of publicity, not in point of sheer 
 numbers — who believe that war should end ; 
 that it is not only a disgrace to our common 
 humanity, but, what is as ridiculous as it is im- 
 moral, an anachronism ; and who do firmly hope 
 that this present war, with its monstrous waste of 
 life, and the goods of life, should at last convert 
 Europe from its use. Is their hope a vain or a 
 reasonable one ? 
 
 First of all let us remember that the advocates 
 of war and of peace do not constitute two ab- 
 solutely opposed camps, but are blended at one 
 end as they are sharply opposed at the other. 
 
I20 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 War and peace are the two great ruling cate- 
 gories, with many subordinate ones, which may 
 be qualified as pacifist or militarist according to 
 the extreme with which we may contrast them. 
 
 Thus militarism, pure and simple, may be de- 
 fined as the uncompromising advocacy of war 
 as not only a necessity, but a beneficial necessity ; 
 a wholesome corrective of the vices of peace ; an 
 indispensable stimulus to spiritual as well as 
 material development. This is not only German 
 militarism, but the militarism of every race that 
 upholds war as an essential and permanent ele- 
 ment of international life. 
 
 A more modified militarism regards war as a 
 standing possibility, as an evil, indeed, but an evil 
 with counter-balancing advantages. This form 
 of militarism would diminish, as far as possible, 
 the occasions of war, and soften its methods, but 
 would not aim at its wholesale abolition. 
 
 Pacifism, at the opposite end, uncompromising 
 pacifism, regards universal peace as an immediate 
 and attainable ideal. For it the army is an im- 
 moral institution ; every war, on both sides, an 
 unjust war. Peace begets peace, and war begets 
 war ; disarmament and arbitration are the only 
 remedies. 
 
 Then there is the more philosophic attitude of 
 those who regard universal peace as a remote, 
 
Peace, 121 
 
 but not immediately attainable, ideal. A selfish 
 peace is as bad as a selfish war ; it may be our 
 duty to fight for others as well as ourselves. 
 
 With many light shades and differences these 
 are the conflicting views which hold the field. 
 
 As to militarism, we have studied it in study- 
 ing that ruthlessness which is one of the char- 
 acteristics of war. According to the qualified, or 
 unqualified, militarism of a race will be the quali- 
 fied, or unqualified, relentlessness of its military 
 methods. But war, in itself, is not meek and 
 gentle, or chivalrous and generous, or just and 
 dispassionate, but angry and vindictive, cunning 
 and crafty, fierce and one-sided. Civilized war- 
 fare is, properly and strictly, not warfare at all. 
 The semi-militarist races, just because they have 
 mixed sentiments as to the right and wrong of 
 war in itself, will wage it under laws and condi- 
 tions not rigidly military in their character. 
 
 As for pacifism, how does it stand after the 
 present experience ? Are the pacifists still alive 
 at all ; or, at any rate, are there any left in the 
 belligerent countries ? And are the few that re- 
 main wandering like ghosts amidst the ruins of 
 their shattered hopes ? 
 
 We are here speaking, first, of that sheer, un- 
 qualified pacifism that will have war at no price 
 and peace at any ; that would rather expose a 
 
122 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 country, unarmed, to the onslaught of its foes, than 
 permit it to do evil in order to avoid destruction ; 
 that would dissolve the force of an army by break- 
 ing up its discipline. And we are speaking, next, 
 of the more thoughtful and measured pacifism, that 
 believes in the possibility of ending international 
 war by a tribunal of international justice, supported 
 by an army of international police. 
 
 As to the first of these forms of pacifism, is it 
 not one of those ideals based on the defiance of 
 facts, and doomed to worse than failure : to 
 working injury to its own cause? Those who 
 would weaken military discipline in the belief 
 that, war being wrong, the forces of war should 
 be disintegrated ; those who would risk the ex- 
 istence of their own country in the endeavour to 
 make of the whole world but one country, are 
 imposing on others standards of duty and sacri- 
 fice that they have only a right to exact of them- 
 selves. In the name of liberty they are exercising 
 unjust domination, and, in spite of their anti- 
 militarism, are driving men into ranks and order- 
 ing" their movements. 
 
 Such pacifism is a form of political /^//^m;;^. 
 
 Now futurism, again, is of more than one kind. 
 The futurist may be one who sees, more or less 
 dimly or more or less distinctly, things that are to 
 come, but thc^t have not yet arrived. He is more 
 
Peace. 1 2 3 
 
 long-sighted than his average neighbours, but his 
 focus is correct, and he does not make the mistake 
 of fancying that the distant mountain range is on 
 his own garden lawn. He may be anxious to reach 
 that mountain range, but he is conscious of the 
 intervening country, and does not imagine that 
 he will find it at the other end of his telescope. 
 Such a futurist may not be able to persuade the 
 world of the truth of his vision, yet he can have 
 reasonable confidence that his sight is correct, and 
 there are those who will believe that, though they 
 may not see that vision for themselves, they 
 have proof of its reality in seeing the one who 
 sees it. This is the rational form of futurism, a 
 recognition of the fact that the world goes on, 
 and advances, we hope, on the whole, to some 
 good purpose, and that there is always a vanguard 
 possessed of higher perceptions than those of the 
 general mass of mankind. No progress has been 
 effected in science without the mind that dared 
 an unproved guess ; in art without the hand that 
 dared an incomplete expression ; in social reform 
 without the prophet that put forward an, as yet, 
 unattainable ideal. This is the true futurism — a 
 futurism that does not give the lie to its own name 
 by declaring itself to be present. 
 
 The other form of futurism is one that exists in 
 virtue of the ignorance of those to whom it makes 
 
124 Reflections of a N on-Combatant, 
 
 its appeal. It is not an effort to reach what we 
 have not yet attained, but it is the proclamation 
 that we have attained it. It has no sense of dis- 
 tance, and little sense of size. It is based on a 
 vain conviction that man can create whatever he 
 wants instead of slowly and laboriously preparing 
 himself for its advent. 
 
 When, then, pacifism, of the extreme form, 
 honestly avows itself a dream and a hope, but a 
 dream that may some day come true, and a hope 
 that may some day be fulfilled, and an ideal that 
 can meanwhile stimulate mankind to lofty effort, 
 he does his own part in the life of the world, and 
 will leave it the better, and not the worse, for his 
 passage through it. 
 
 Aspera turn positis mitescent saecula bellis ; 
 
 . . . dirae ferro et compagibus arctis 
 Claudentur Belli portae. 
 
 The second, and more scientific form of pacifism, 
 finds its expression in the dream of our English 
 poet of a world in which 
 
 The war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were 
 
 furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 
 This is the pacifism which advocates the use 
 of arbitration for the definite establishment of 
 peace — an arbitration that is not to be accepted 
 
Peace. 125 
 
 or rejected at will, but to be enforced by interna- 
 tional agreement based on the employment of 
 international force. 
 
 But is there not an obvious sophism in the 
 juxtaposition of these two factors — international 
 justice and international force ? 
 
 In the great Schism of the West, when there 
 were two rival Popes, an unfortunate effort was 
 made to end the trouble by electing a third, and 
 deposing the other two. Unfortunately the other 
 two declined to be deposed, and thus the Church 
 was left with three rivals instead of two. 
 
 Might not the same disaster ensue from the 
 establishment of an international army for the en- 
 forcement of international justice ? What if the 
 two countries refuse the decision of the interna- 
 tional tribunal and take up arms against one an- 
 other ? Then the international army must take 
 up arms against both, and the whole world will 
 be in flames. 
 
 On the whole Bernhardi's arguments against 
 the practicability of arbitration between states 
 are sound. 
 
 On what right (he asks) is the finding of this Arbitration 
 Court based ? and what sanctions ensure that the parties will 
 accept this finding ? 
 
 He points out that : — 
 
126 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 A quite different consciousness of right and wrong de- 
 velops in individuals, whether persons or peoples, and this 
 consciousness finds its expression in most varied forms, and 
 lives in the heart of the people by the side of, and frequently 
 in opposition to, the established law. 
 
 Even if a comprehensive international code were drawn 
 up, no self-respecting nation would sacrifice its own concep- 
 tion of right to it.i 
 
 These are not only the sentiments of German 
 national egotism, but of all national politics. The 
 nation that is strong enough to secure what it 
 believes to be its rights, would never submit the 
 discussion of those rights to a third party. 
 France would not have submitted the question 
 of Alsace and Lorraine to an international tri- 
 bunal ; nor Russia the political existence of 
 Serbia ; nor England the neutrality of Belgium. 
 It is extremely difficult to get two contending in- 
 dividuals to accept the principle of arbitration ; 
 and if they do so, it is only because, in any case, 
 they have to submit to some kind of neutral tri- 
 bunal. I fear that none of the European powers 
 would accept the principle of arbitration, and sub- 
 mit to the rulings of an impartial international 
 tribunal, in case of the uprising of a native savage 
 race against the severity, or injustice, of their rule. 
 
 1 " Germany and the Next War," pp. 30-32. 
 
Peace. 127 
 
 Might is Right, but the sort of might which enables one 
 nation to govern another in time of peace is very unlike the 
 armoured thrust of the war-engine. It is a power com- 
 pounded of sympathy and justice. The English (it is ad- 
 mitted by many foreign critics) have studied justice and 
 desired justice. They have inquired into and protected 
 rights that were unfamiliar, and even grotesque, to their 
 own ideas, because they believed them to be rights . . . 
 they have a genius for equality ; and they do try to put 
 themselves in the other fellow's place, to see how the posi- 
 tion looks from that side. What has happened in India may 
 perhaps be taken to prove, among other things, that the in- 
 habitants of India begin to know that England has done her 
 best and does feel a disinterested solicitude for the peoples 
 under her charge.^ 
 
 These words are true and Englishmen may be 
 proud to read them. Yet, because E ngland is large- 
 minded and just in her methods of government, 
 we must not think that egotism is peculiar to 
 Germany. We did not conquer India, nor have 
 we continued to rule her, solely, or mainly, for 
 the sake of the Indians. It may be, indeed it 
 almost undoubtedly is^ for their good that we 
 should govern them ; but we should flatter our- 
 selves too much by supposing this to be our single 
 motive. And if the Indians are loyal to our 
 government, that is not because they think we 
 are there for their sake, but because they know 
 
 1 '' Might is Right," by Walter Raleigh. Oxford Pam- 
 phlets, No. 8. 
 
128 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 that politically they would be ruined without us, 
 and would fall under some other less enlightened 
 form of foreign government. 
 
 And yet, if the more politically advanced 
 nations of Europe are not free from that national 
 egotism, which Germany so shamelessly professes, 
 yet the fact that they are applying, as far as 
 possible, the political code and free charter of 
 their own constitutions to the peoples they 
 govern, is a sign that they are advancing towards 
 a higher international standard of ethics. They 
 are not yet governing for the sake of the governed, 
 but in so far as they are beginning to govern 
 with fairness and sympathy they are on the way 
 to do so. Whether that ideal will ultimately be 
 attained is a question which only the future will 
 decide. But it is something if certain nations of 
 Europe have come even to wish to attain it, 
 though they may overrate their own achieve- 
 ments in the matter. 
 
 The conclusion of all these conflicting consider- 
 ations is surely that the reign of universal peace 
 and justice is a human, and not an international 
 aim and ideal ; and can therefore only be ulti- 
 mately attained by methods proportioned to its 
 character. Mankind absolutely desires peace ; 
 nations only desire it under certain conditions, and 
 justly so. 
 
Peace. 129 
 
 Macchiavelli is deeply right when he says : — 
 
 Many have pictured republics and principalities which 
 in fact have never been known or seen, because how one 
 lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he 
 who neglects what is done for what ought to be done sooner 
 effects his ruin than his preservation ; for a man who wishes 
 to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with 
 what destroys him among so much that is evil. 
 
 And again : — 
 
 In the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a 
 place there only when the many have no ground to rest on. 
 
 So long as "peace at any price" may signify 
 peace with dishonour, it is not the noblest races 
 that will refuse, under any considerations, to 
 fight, whether for themselves or for others. 
 
 But national life is not the supreme form of 
 human life, and humanity is a deeper reality 
 than race. It may be that national distinctions 
 will gradually be eliminated as a higher civiliza- 
 tion makes its way in the world ; but it is 
 not even necessary to suppose this in order to 
 believe in a future wherein brute force will have 
 ceased to be the supreme arbiter. Nationality 
 may still exist, and as strongly as it does now, 
 but it may become just the manifestation of 
 human life instead of being, as at present, its 
 ruling element. In a measure we have now to 
 be Englishmen or Germans in order to be men ; 
 
 9 
 
130 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 eventually our English and German charac- 
 teristics may be simply the form and character in 
 which our humanity expresses itself. National 
 life and ideals must lag behind human life and 
 ideals ; yet woe to the world that would abolish 
 them before mankind is ready. 
 
 Who can say that mankind is yet ready ? 
 Can we live without effort ? and can we discard 
 our present form of effort until we have reached 
 the plane of higher and more spiritual effort ? 
 Can we escape the struggles of the brute and 
 the sufferings of the brute, so long as we are still 
 brutal and sensual ? Can we avoid the penalty 
 of rival egotisms until we have ceased to be 
 egotistic ? Can we evade the uprising of the 
 oppressed so long as a single tyrant exists ? Can 
 we enjoy the peace of the wise while we are yet 
 so pathetically stupid ? Can we live as spirits 
 while we are still sunk in materialism ? 
 
 An ideal is a great and inspiring object for 
 action and effort ; but it is a mischievous element 
 in life when it tempts men to behave as though 
 they were already in the place where they hope, 
 some day, to be. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SUB SPECIE ^TERNITATIS. 
 
 Peace will come at last, and we shall go back to 
 our old interests, wondering to find life so much 
 the same as it used to be. 
 
 We are but a generation on the life of this 
 globe ; our joys and sufferings are woven into one 
 great tissue of past, present, and future ; as we did 
 not make our own conditions so neither can we 
 make the conditions of the generations that are 
 to follow us ; we can do our part, we can do no 
 more. 
 
 Hence there is, I fear, a certain Utopianism in 
 the views of those who think that a totally new 
 world should emerge from this conflict ; a world 
 in which all the desired social reforms will at once 
 be set on foot, in which muddles will be ended 
 and life reshaped on perfect conditions of physical 
 and moral health. 
 
 Half our lesson we shall quickly forget ; many 
 of our former squabbles we shall quickly resume ; 
 
 131 9* 
 
132 Reflections of a Non-Combatant, 
 
 most of our old faults and vices we shall find as 
 vigorous as ever. 
 
 The passions that go to the making of war are 
 elemental, and so are the passions that have their 
 play in time of peace. We were united by the 
 presence of a common foe ; when that foe is van- 
 quished or reconciled we shall find something to 
 criticize amongst our own friends. Until all 
 classes and individuals of a community are united 
 in the pursuit of a common end, or the destruc- 
 tion of a common foe, they will be liable to 
 internal warfare, just as nations will be liable to 
 international warfare until they too are united 
 against a common enemy, or in the pursuit of a 
 common end. 
 
 If a neighbouring planet made war on this one 
 there would be, at once, not only a united Europe, 
 but a united world to face it ; when that planet 
 withdrew its baneful forces we should again be 
 conscious of separate continents, countries, and 
 races. 
 
 Hence it is wiser to accept the fact of our little- 
 ness, and to recognize that our generation cannot 
 produce a new and perfect society, but can only 
 do its part towards that end. Each individual can, 
 to some extent, modify and strengthen his own 
 character ; but he cannot change it for another. 
 Each class of individuals can labour at the cor- 
 
Sub Specie ^ternitatis. 133 
 
 rection of its own vices, and can learn from other 
 classes, but it cannot, in an instant, transform it- 
 self into a super-class, possessing the virtues of 
 them all. Each nation can learn from enemies 
 and from friends, but it cannot acquire the quali- 
 ties of them all, nor prevent the friction of con- 
 trary aims and interests. The whole world can 
 only take its own place in the scheme of the uni- 
 verse, a universe of vast forces, material and 
 spiritual ; it can advance to more perfect union, 
 but it can only attain it in so far as a wider destiny 
 is unfolded to it. 
 
 We can none of us tell of what evolution man- 
 kind may eventually be capable. If material 
 interests gradually yield the way to spiritual and 
 intellectual ideals this world of ours may be trans- 
 formed to a very different place from what it now 
 is, and the martial qualities of man may go to the 
 pursuit of aims far beyond any within the actual 
 general horizon. We know little of what we are ; 
 we know still less of what we may become. 
 
 Let us make sure, then, that this war will leave 
 us no more omniscient or omnipotent than it 
 found us ; that it will have taught us something, 
 and strengthened us in some respects, but that 
 our task will still be in front' of us, to be done, if 
 done at all, by ever-renewed exertions. 
 
 The period of reaction will be a dangerous one, 
 
134 Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 and will demand the exercise of character and 
 firmness in a higher degree than the actual time of 
 war. During that period there may be sown the 
 seeds of undying international hatred, to bring 
 forth, perhaps in many years to come, a fresh 
 outbreak of the horrors we have witnessed, unless 
 all the best that is in mankind be brought to bear 
 on the making of peace. Pacifism has proved 
 itself helpless to avert this awful international 
 catastrophe ; it does not follow that peace is not 
 the true ideal of humanity. 
 
 When we look back on the continual tribal 
 warfare of earlier humanity we feel that our world 
 is not the same one ; the day will probably come 
 when posterity will look back with yet greater 
 horror on the events of this year. Yet we, who 
 have lived through it, know that it was not so 
 entirely horrible as it may some day appear. 
 Our far, far away descendants may -fail to realize 
 how much they themselves owe to noble qualities 
 that were at work in this war, which was, on 
 some sides, a vast effort for the elimination of the 
 reign of brute force. It was a step in the process 
 of the world's evolution ; but it was a step up 
 which we had to climb and on which others will 
 stand. 
 
 One thing this war should have taught those 
 who were in too great a hurry for the accomplish- 
 
Sub Specie yEternitatis. 135 
 
 ment of their ideals, and that is, a fuller respect 
 for the irresistible forces of life. Pure idealism, 
 without due regard for facts, has proved its inef- 
 fectualness. It is useless to say that war is a bad 
 thing, so long as it is an inevitable thing. Life 
 will out — the strong will seek for expansion, the 
 weak will seek to grow strong ; the forces of life 
 will clash until they find their right issue. The 
 only way to avoid war is to respect the laws of 
 life, whether it be the life of the strong or the life 
 of the weak. Every genuine need of any nation 
 is an incentive to war so long as that need is un- 
 satisfied, or repressed by sheer ''force majeure''. 
 Let the pacifist take to heart this lesson, that, 
 as there are causes for which it is worth while to 
 die, so there are causes for which it is worth 
 while to kill, and that a struggle which demands 
 of men the sacrifice of their private interests and 
 their life must, even at its worst, comprehend 
 certain noble elements. Indeed, as life is at pre- 
 sent constituted, it is hard to see where we should 
 find the substitute for those ennobling dangers 
 which produce the soldier type, in its best sense. 
 Love peace as we may, it is good to have always 
 before our eyes examples of perfect discipline and 
 unquestioning devotedness ; the existence of the 
 soldier is a lesson to those who are not soldiers. 
 He need not have all the best qualities of man- 
 
136 Reflections of a Non-Combatant. 
 
 kind, but he has some of them in a higher degree 
 than average mankind. 
 
 Terrible as this war has been, there are many 
 whom it has raised to nobler exertions than they 
 would ever have undertaken without it. It 
 would have been wholly and entirely sad had it 
 dragged all Europe from the pursuit of higher 
 things to a brutal, material struggle ; but it has 
 disturbed low and mean and selfish levels of life 
 as well as high ones. 
 
 " I rejoice," wrote a Frenchman, in a private 
 letter, at the outbreak of war, ** that my eyes have 
 not closed before beholding this awakening of my 
 people, somewhat spoiled by a course of material 
 prosperity." 
 
 This is deeply true of England as of France ; 
 just as it is also true that war put an end, tem- 
 porarily, to the pursuit of spiritual and intellectual 
 interest. 
 
 War is an anomaly ; but so also is human 
 nature. Flesh and spirit are curious partners, 
 and till their union is more perfectly adjusted the 
 anomaly must make itself felt in national as in 
 individual life. Yet the aim in both is harmony 
 and peace ; and life would indeed be robbed of 
 its beauty and glory if an aim were abandoned 
 because its attainment lay beyond the reach of our 
 generation. 
 
Sub Specie ^ternitatis. 137 
 
 But meanwhile we cannot afford to lose any of 
 the values of life, and a peace that was to be 
 gained by the loss of those qualities of moral and 
 physical courage, of generosity and self-sacrifice, 
 that have hitherto found their object and expres- 
 sion in war, would be a peace that brought great 
 losses along with its gains. We feel that those 
 qualities must find another outlet, and that the 
 field of battle must be changed for some realm of 
 higher endeavour before material warfare can 
 cease. So long as international life is beset by 
 evils which only international warfare can end, 
 war must remain a possibility ; when those cruder 
 material evils are eradicated, then fresh fields of 
 effort will be open to mankind, in which his de- 
 sire to live or die for something greater than his 
 private existence will find its satisfaction. 
 
 But our generation, in its positiveness, is in- 
 clined to block the future by its determination to 
 work only for an end it can clearly perceive. 
 Anything else is denounced as dreamy and un- 
 practical, and the pacifist is pointed out as a proof 
 of the futility of such dreaming. But in this our 
 practical people are as much mistaken as the 
 dreamers. The dreamers deny what is^ the 
 practical people deny what will be. The dreamer 
 may be dreaming true dreams, though he sees 
 as present what is future ; the practical man may 
 
1 38 Reflections of a N on-Combatant. 
 
 be dogmatizing as to a future of which he knows 
 nothing. 
 
 But if we know nothing of it, is it not mis- 
 chievous to let it influence our working life ? It 
 will be mischievous if we try to get the results be- 
 fore we have earned them ; it will not be mis- 
 chievous if we set our life and efforts in the 
 direction of those results. Every action is more 
 or less incalculable in its effects ; and the action 
 of nations evidently more so than that of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 There is a just agnosticism which refuses to 
 drag the unknown into the category of the known ; 
 there is a false agnosticism which denies the un- 
 known. This latter agnosticism is deadening in 
 its influence ; it robs man of his state in the future. 
 
 Mazzini, who was a political prophet even 
 though he may have been unpractical as to im- 
 mediate contingencies, insisted on this respect for 
 the unknown when he upheld the necessity of a 
 religious element in politics. For religion, put- 
 ting aside all consideration of its definite and 
 characteristic forms, stands for the belief in the 
 unknown and yet unachieved possibilities of man- 
 kind. It is in those unknown possibilities that the 
 hopes of true human life reside. We could none 
 of us live wholly content with what we have 
 fathomed to its last depth. The most practical 
 
Sub Specie j^ternitatis, 139 
 
 minds must admit that the unknown element of 
 to-morrow is what lends to-day a good part of its 
 value. To refuse the possibilities of the unknown 
 would be to confine ourselves within the four 
 walls of our own limitations, without a hope of 
 exit. 
 
 Political parties fail and die (wrote Mazzini),^ religious 
 parties never die until after they have achieved their victory ; 
 until their vital principle has attained its fullest development 
 and become identified with the progress of civilization and 
 manners. 
 
 Then, and not before then, does God infuse into the 
 heart of a people, or the brain of an individual strong in 
 genius and love, a new idea, vaster and more fruitful than 
 the idea then expiring; the centre of faith is moved one 
 degree onwards, and only they who rally round that centre 
 constitute the party of the future. . . No, eternal God! 
 Thy Word is not all fulfilled ; thy thought, the thought of the 
 world, not all revealed. That thought creates still, and will 
 continue to create for ages incalculable by man. The ages 
 that have passed have but revealed to us some fragments of 
 it. Our mission is not concluded. As yet we scarcely know 
 its origin, we know not its ultimate aim. . . . From initia- 
 tion to initiation, throughout the series of thy successive in- 
 carnations, this mission has purified and enlarged the formula 
 of sacrifice ; it learns the path it has to follow by the study 
 of an eternally progressive faith. . . . Who shall tell how 
 many stars, secular thoughts, liberated from every cloud, 
 shall arise and take their place in the heaven of intellect, ere 
 
 1 " Faith and the Future " — Essays of Mazzini. (Walter 
 Scott Pub. Co.) 
 
140 Reflections of a N on-Combatant, 
 
 man, the living summary of the terrestrial Word, may declare : 
 " I have faith in myself, my destiny is accomplished ". 
 
 Every epoch is essentially synthetic ; every epoch is or- 
 ganic. The progressive evolution of the thought of God, of 
 which our world is the visible manifestation, is unceasingly 
 continuous. The chain cannot be broken or interrupted. 
 The various aims are united together — the cradle is linked 
 to the tomb. 
 
 Only in some such faith can practical politics 
 and the pursuit of the ideal be united ; if we 
 abandon the former we break ourselves on the 
 rock of material necessity, if we renounce the 
 latter it will seem to the best of the world that it 
 would not much matter if we were thus broken 
 and destroyed. 
 
 We fight then, in our days, no longer for the 
 sake of fighting, as primitive man fought, and 
 the savage yet fights. We fight no longer, at 
 least according to the professions of those states- 
 men we trust as interpreters of modern political 
 life, for the sake of conquest and domination. We 
 fight to deliver ourselves from a state of things 
 which impedes human progress ; and we fight in 
 order to return to those higher interests we have 
 had to set aside while fighting. 
 
 Furthermore, and it is more truthful and more 
 chastening to own than to deny it, we fight also 
 because we cannot, on either side, in all prob- 
 
Sub Specie y^ternitatis. 141 
 
 ability help it ; because our best, as well as our 
 worst, efforts have combined to produce a tangle 
 which can only be torn to pieces by violence. 
 
 I compare Fortune to one of those raging rivers, which 
 when in flood overflows the plains sweeping away trees and 
 buildings ... yet ... it does not follow that men, when 
 the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision. 
 
 Fate, or fortune, has swept us into the catas- 
 trophe of this war, as well as the ambition of 
 rulers, or the perfidy of statesmen, or any other 
 cause. 
 
 We shall come out of it better — but not better 
 in every respect. We shall be liable to those 
 reactionary vices which are the consequences of 
 a reactionary condition of things. The un- 
 suspicious and generous may have learned to 
 suspect ; the trusting and tolerant may have 
 learned to hate ; the disinterested may have 
 learned a lesson of egotism. 
 
 To counteract such unhappy possibilities we 
 need all the faith and idealism of those whose 
 social trust has been sorely tried by this tempo- 
 rary suspension of their hopes. The heart of 
 the people is sound, and it is the people who 
 lose most and gain least by war. We know 
 now what modern warfare is. We still believe 
 that it is better than slavery, or dishonour, or 
 injustice, but we see too that it is hideous, and 
 
142 Reflections of a Non-Comb at ant. 
 
 brutal, and destructive of things that no power 
 on earth can replace. We shall be on the right 
 line of progress if we aim, not at the abolition of 
 war, but at the transformation of the social and 
 political and international conditions that render 
 war inevitable. 
 
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