* * * * *

To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies of human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound speculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types. It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education, experience or selective breeding.

Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.

The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, not something that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation to another, the allegiance may shift from one nationality to another, but the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large remains. And it all argues also that no sensible change has taken effect in the hereditary endowment of the race, at least in this respect, during the period known by record or by secure inference,—say, since the early Neolithic in Europe; and this in spite of the fact that there has all this while been opportunity for radical changes in the European population by cross-breeding, infiltration and displacement of the several racial stocks that go to make up this population. Hence, on slight reflection the inference has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that this trait of human nature must presumably have been serviceable to the peoples of the earlier time, on those levels of savagery or of the lower barbarism on which the ancestral stocks of the European population first made good their survival and proved their fitness to people that quarter of the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view; so common as to pass for matter-of-course, and therefore habitually to escape scrutiny.

Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will show. All the European peoples show much the same animus in this respect; whatever their past history may have been, and whatever the difference in past experience that might be conceived to have shaped their temperament. Any difference in the pitch of patriotic conceit and animosity, between the several nationalities or the several localities, is by no means wide, even in cases where the racial composition of the population is held to be very different, as, e.g., between the peoples on the Baltic seaboard and those on the Mediterranean. In point of fact, in this matter of patriotic animus there appears to be a wider divergence, temperamentally, between individuals within any one of these communities than between the common run in any one community and the corresponding common run in any other. But even such divergence of individual temper in respect of patriotism as is to be met with, first and last, is after all surprisingly small in view of the scope for individual variation which this European population would seem to offer.

* * * * *

These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids compounded out of the same run of racial elements, but mixed in varying proportions. On any parallel of latitude—taken in the climatic rather than in the geometric sense—the racial composition of the west-European population will be much the same, virtually identical in effect, although always of a hybrid complexion; whereas on any parallel of longitude—also in the climatic sense—the racial composition will vary progressively, but always within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisation,—the variation being a variation in the proportion in which the several racial elements are present in any given case. But in no case does a notable difference in racial composition coincide with a linguistic or national frontier. But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples are one as good as another, whether the comparison be traced on parallels of latitude or of longitude. And the inhabitants of each national territory, or of each detail locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform in respect of their patriotic spirit.

Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, superficially, appear to run somewhat haphazard. There will, of course, be no traceable difference between social or economic classes, in point of heredity,—as is visibly the case in Christendom. But variation—of an apparently haphazard description—will be large and ubiquitous among the individuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is a matter of course and of easy verification that individual variation within such a hybrid stock will greatly exceed the extreme differences that may subsist between the several racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid stock. Such is the case of the European peoples. The inhabitants vary greatly among themselves, both in physical and in mental traits, as would be expected; and the variation between individuals in point of patriotic animus should accordingly also be expected to be extremely wide,—should, in effect, greatly exceed the difference, if any, in this respect between the several racial elements engaged in the European population. Some appreciable difference in this respect there appears to be, between individuals; but individual divergence from the normal or average appears always to be of a sporadic sort,—it does not run on class lines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at all consistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returns to the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animus are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the general proposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and the European Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the average endowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all differences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in fact, be extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in the ordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diverse samples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the diversity in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced.

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respect the several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existing populations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one as another. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, that since there is, and has from the beginning been, no differential advantage favoring one racial stock or one fashion of hybrid as against another, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be no ground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account as between these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed and undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population, early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last; except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these Europeans, one with another.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, ch. i. and Supplementary Notes i. and ii.]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were an hereditary trait, something after the fashion of a Mendelian unit character. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; but the present argument scarcely needs a closer analysis. Still, in a measure to quiet title and avoid annoyance, it may be noted that this patriotic animus is of the nature of a "frame of mind" rather than a Mendelian unit character; that it so involves a concatenation of several impulsive propensities (presumably hereditary); and that both the concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the response are a product of habituation, very largely of the nature of conventionalised use and wont. What is said above, therefore, goes little farther than saying that the underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frame of mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on this point run with sufficient uniformity to bring a passably uniform result. It may be added that in this concatenation spoken of there seems to be comprised, ordinarily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expression, home-sickness; so also an invidious self-complacency, coupled with a gregarious bent which gives the invidious comparison a group content; and further, commonly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation, self-abasement, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, that inclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to accept and serve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or by customary authority.

* * * * *

The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to the effect that under modern conditions the patriotic animus is wholly a disserviceable trait in the spiritual endowment of these peoples,—in so far as bears on the material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards the cultural interests more at large presumptively; whereas there is no assured ground for a discriminating opinion as touches its possible utility or disutility at any remote period in the past. There is, of course, always room for the conservative estimate that, as the possession of this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in the extinction of the race, so it may also in the calculable future continue to bring no more grievous results than a degree of mischief, without even stopping or greatly retarding the increase of population.

All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as it goes. It must not be taken as intending to say any least word in derogation of those high qualities that inspire the patriotic citizen. In its economic, biological and cultural incidence patriotism appears to be an untoward trait of human nature; which has, of course, nothing to say as to its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its indispensability to a worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these respects deserving of all the esteem and encomiums that fall to its share. Indeed, its well-known moral and aesthetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited on any shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes of the present argument, nothing more than that the patriotic animus meets the unqualified approval of men because they are, all and several, infected with it. It is evidence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable presence of this quality in human nature; all the more since it continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in spite of the fact that a modicum of reflection should make its disserviceability plain to the meanest understanding. No higher praise of moral excellence, and no profounder test of loyalty, can be asked than this current unreserved commendation of a virtue that makes invariably for damage and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep-seated and indefeasible that drives men incontinently to do good that evil may come of it. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

In the light—and it is a dim and wavering light—of the archaeological evidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel or analogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of early neolithic times and later.[5] And so one may form some conception of the part played by this patriotic animus among those beginnings, when, if not the race, at least its institutions were young; and when the native temperament of these peoples was tried out and found fit to survive through the age-long and slow-moving eras of stone and bronze. In this connection, it appears safe to assume that since early neolithic times no sensible change has taken effect in the racial complexion of the European peoples; and therefore no sensible change in their spiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of the spiritual elements that go to make up this patriotic animus the Europeans of today will be substantially identical with the Europeans of that early time. The like is true as regards those other traits of temperament that come in question here, as being included among the stable characteristics that still condition the life of these peoples under the altered circumstances of the modern age.

[Footnote 5: Cf. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, as above.]

The difference between prehistoric Europe and the present state of these peoples resolves itself on analysis into a difference in the state of the industrial arts, together with such institutional changes as have come on in the course of working out this advance in the industrial arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among these peoples have greatly changed; whereas in temperament and capacities the peoples that now live by and under the rule of this altered state of the industrial arts are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, that the fact of their having successfully come through the long ages of prehistory by the use of this mental and spiritual endowment can not be taken to argue that these peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies of this later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume that because these peoples have themselves worked out this modern culture and its technology, therefore it must all be suitable for their use and conducive to their biological success. The single object lesson of the modern urban community, with its endless requirements in the way of sanitation, police, compulsory education, charities,—all this and many other discrepancies in modern life should enjoin caution on anyone who is inclined off-hand to hold that because modern men have created these conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable conditions of life for modern mankind.

In the beginning, that is to say in the European beginning, men lived in small and close groups. Control was close within the group, and the necessity of subordinating individual gains and preferences to the common good was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, on pain of common extinction. The situation and usages of existing Eskimo villages may serve to illustrate and enforce the argument on this head. The solidarity of sentiment necessary to support the requisite solidarity of action in the case would be a prime condition of survival in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which surrounded these early Europeans. This needful sense of solidarity would touch not simply or most imperatively the joint prestige of the group, but rather the joint material interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual support and dependence. Which would be rather helped than hindered by a jealous attitude of joint prestige; so long as no divergent interests of members within the group were in a position to turn this state of the common sentiment to their own particular advantage.

This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively long time; long enough to have tested the fitness of these peoples for that manner of life,—longer, no doubt, than the interval that has elapsed since history began. Special interests—e.g., personal and family interests—will have been present and active in these days of the beginning; but so long as the group at large was small enough to admit of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent and throughout the workday routine of life, at the same time that it was too small and feeble to allow any appreciable dissipation of its joint energies in such pursuit of selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount business of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a common livelihood and a joint fortune would continue to hold any particularist ambitions effectually in check. Had it fallen out otherwise, the story of the group in question would have been ended, and another and more suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place vacated by its extinction.

With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale of operations would grow larger, and the group more numerous and extensive. The margin between production and subsistence would also widen and admit additional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. And as this process of growth and increasing productive efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and sub-groups, would gradually slacken; until by progressive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance; to be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion that the collective interest of the group at large was placed in jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its members from without. The group's prestige at least would be felt to suffer in the defeat or discourtesy suffered by any of its members at the hands of any alien; and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group solidarity, whatever material hardship or material gain might so fall to individual members in their dealings with the alien would pass easy scrutiny as material detriment or gain inuring to the group at large,—in the apprehension of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed with a jealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige.

With continued advance in the industrial arts the circumstances conditioning life will undergo a progressive change of such a character that the joint interest of the group at large, in the material respect, will progressively be less closely bound up with the material fortunes of any particular member or members; until in the course of time and change there will, in effect, in ordinary times be no general and inclusive community of material interest binding the members together in a common fortune and working for a common livelihood. As the rights of ownership begin to take effect, so that the ownership of property and the pursuit of a livelihood under the rules of ownership come to govern men's economic relations, these material concerns will cease to be a matter of undivided joint interest, and will fall into the shape of interest in severalty. So soon and so far as this institution of ownership or property takes effect, men's material interests cease to run on lines of group solidarity. Solely, or almost solely, in the exceptional case of defense against a predatory incursion from outside, do the members of the group have a common interest of a material kind. Progressively as the state of the arts advances, the industrial organisation advances to a larger scale and a more extensive specialisation, with increasing divergence among individual interests and individual fortunes; and intercourse over larger distances grows easier and makes a larger grouping practicable; which enables a larger, prompter and more effective mobilisation of forces with which to defend or assert any joint claims. But by the same move it also follows, or at least it appears uniformly to have followed in the European case, that the accumulation of property and the rights of ownership have progressively come into the first place among the material interests of these peoples; while anything like a community of usufruct has imperceptibly fallen into the background, and has presently gone virtually into abeyance, except as an eventual recourse in extremis for the common defense. Property rights have displaced community of usufruct; and invidious distinctions as between persons, sub-groups, and classes have displaced community of prestige in the workday routine of these peoples; and the distinctions between contrasted persons or classes have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly or indirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pecuniary standing rather than on personal affiliation with the group at large.

So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentiation of a new character sets in and presently grows progressively more pronounced and more effectual, giving rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardless of those frontiers that divide one community from another for purposes of patriotic emulation. So far as it comes chiefly and typically in question here, this regrouping takes place on two distinct but somewhat related principles of contrast: that of wealth and poverty, and that of master and servant, or authority and obedience. The material interests of the population in this way come to be divided between the group of those who own and those who command, on the one hand, and of those who work and who obey, on the other hand.

Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons have any direct material interest in the maintenance of the patriotic community; or at any rate no such interest as should reasonably induce them to spend their own time and substance in support of the political (patriotic) organisation within which they live. It is only in so far as one or another of these interests looks for a more than proportionate share in any prospective gain from the joint enterprise, that the group or class in question can reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the joint venture. And it is only when and in so far as their particular material or self-regarding interest is reenforced by patriotic conceit, that they can be counted on to spend themselves in furtherance of the patriotic enterprise, without the assurance of a more than proportionate share in any gains that may be held in prospect from any such joint enterprise; and it is only in its patriotic bearing that the political community continues to be a joint venture. That is to say, in more generalised terms, through the development of the rights of property, and of such like prescriptive claims of privilege and prerogative, it has come about that other community interests have fallen away, until the collective prestige remains as virtually the sole community interest which can hold the sentiment of the group in a bond of solidarity.

To one or another of these several interested groups or classes within the community the political organisation may work a benefit; but only to one or another, not to each and several, jointly or collectively. Since by no chance will the benefit derived from such joint enterprise on the part of the community at large equal the joint cost; in as much as all joint enterprise of the kind that looks to material advantage works by one or another method of inhibition and takes effect, if at all, by lowering the aggregate efficiency of the several countries concerned, with a view to the differential gain of one at the cost of another. So, e.g., a protective tariff is plainly a conspiracy in restraint of trade, with a view to benefit the conspirators by hindering their competitors. The aggregate cost to the community at large of such an enterprise in retardation is always more than the gains it brings to those who may benefit by it.

In so speaking of the uses to which the common man's patriotic devotion may be turned, there is no intention to underrate its intrinsic value as a genial and generous trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best and chiefly to be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies and ennobles its bearer, and that endows him with the full stature of manhood, quite irrespective of ulterior considerations. So it is to be conceded without argument that this patriotic animus is a highly meritorious frame of mind, and that it has an aesthetic value scarcely to be overstated in the farthest stretch of poetic license. But the question of its serviceability to the modern community, in any other than this decorative respect, and particularly its serviceability to the current needs of the common man in such a modern community, is not touched by such an admission; nor does this recognition of its generous spiritual nature afford any help toward answering a further question as to how and with what effect this animus may be turned to account by anyone who is in position to make use of the forces which it sets free.

Among Christian nations there still is, on the whole, a decided predilection for that ancient and authentic line of national repute that springs from warlike prowess. This repute for warlike prowess is what first comes to mind among civilised peoples when speaking of national greatness. And among those who have best preserved this warlike ideal of worth, the patriotic ambition is likely to converge on the prestige of their sovereign; so that it takes the concrete form of personal loyalty to a master, and so combines or coalesces with a servile habit of mind.

But peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, it is said; and peaceable folk of a patriotic temper have learned to make the best of their meager case and have found self-complacency in these victories of the peaceable order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations look with complacency on their own peculiar Culture—the organised complex of habits of thought and of conduct by which their own routine of life is regulated—as being in some way worthier than the corresponding habits of their neighbors. The case of the German Culture has latterly come under a strong light in this way. But while it may be that no other nation has been so naive as to make a concerted profession of faith to the effect that their own particular way of life is altogether commendable and is the only fashion of civilisation that is fit to survive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to assert that in their own secret mind these others, too, are blest with much the same consciousness of unique worth. Conscious virtue of this kind is a good and sufficient ground for patriotic inflation, so far as it goes. It commonly does not go beyond a defensive attitude, however. Now and again, as in the latterday German animation on this head, these phenomena of national use and wont may come to command such a degree of popular admiration as will incite to an aggressive or proselyting campaign.

In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind. The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets of self-complacency are, indeed, to be rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without afterthought. These aspirations and enthusiasms would perhaps be rated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bounded by the main chance; but they make up that substance of things hoped for that inflates those headlong patriotic animosities that stir universal admiration.

So also, men find an invidious distinction in such matters of physical magnitude as their country's area, the number of its population, the size of its cities, the extent of its natural resources, its aggregate wealth and its wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreign trade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phenomena of physical magnitude and pecuniary traffic are no better and no worse than such immaterial assets as the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections of the language. They are matters in which the common man is concerned only by the accident of domicile, and his only connection with these things is an imaginary joint interest in their impressiveness. To these things he has contributed substantially nothing, and from them he derives no other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He takes pride in these things in an invidious way, and there is no good reason why he should not; just as there is also no good reason why he should, apart from the fact that the common man is so constituted that he, mysteriously, takes pride in these things that concern him not.

* * * * *

Of the several groups or classes of persons within the political frontiers, whose particular interests run systematically at cross purposes with those of the community at large under modern conditions, the class of masters, rulers, authorities,—or whatever term may seem most suitable to designate that category of persons whose characteristic occupation is to give orders and command deference,—of the several orders and conditions of men these are, in point of substantial motive and interest, most patently at variance with all the rest, or with the fortunes of the common man. The class will include civil and military authorities and whatever nobility there is of a prescriptive and privileged kind. The substantial interest of these classes in the common welfare is of the same kind as the interest which a parasite has in the well-being of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt, but there is in this relation nothing like a community of interest. Any gain on the part of the community at large will materially serve the needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument is only that their material or other self-regarding interests are of such a nature as to be furthered by the material wealth of the community, and more particularly by the increasing volume of the body politic; but only with the proviso that this material wealth and this increment of power must accrue without anything like a corresponding cost to this class. At the same time, since this class of the superiors is in some degree a specialised organ of prestige, so that their value, and therefore their tenure, both in the eyes of the community and in their own eyes, is in the main a "prestige value" and a tenure by prestige; and since the prestige that invests their persons is a shadow cast by the putative worth of the community at large, it follows that their particular interest in the joint prestige is peculiarly alert and insistent. But it follows also that these personages cannot of their own substance or of their own motion contribute to this collective prestige in the same proportion in which it is necessary for them to draw on it in support of their own prestige value. It would, in other words, be a patent absurdity to call on any of the current ruling classes, dynasties, nobility, military and diplomatic corps, in any of the nations of Europe, e.g., to preserve their current dignity and command the deference that is currently accorded them, by recourse to their own powers and expenditure of their own substance, without the usufruct of the commonalty whose organ of dignity they are. The current prestige value which they enjoy is beyond their unaided powers to create or maintain, without the usufruct of the community. Such an enterprise does not lie within the premises of the case.

In this bearing, therefore, the first concern with which these personages are necessarily occupied is the procurement and retention of a suitable usufruct in the material resources and good-will of a sufficiently large and industrious population. The requisite good-will in these premises is called loyalty, and its retention by the line of personages that so trade on prestige rests on a superinduced association of ideas, whereby the national honour comes to be confounded in popular apprehension with the prestige of these personages who have the keeping of it. But the potentates and the establishments, civil and military, on whom this prestige value rests will unavoidably come into invidious comparison with others of their kind; and, as invariably happens in matters of invidious comparison, the emulative needs of all the competitors for prestige are "indefinitely extensible," as the phrase of the economists has it. Each and several of them incontinently needs a further increment of prestige, and therefore also a further increment of the material assets in men and resources that are needful as ways and means to assert and augment the national honor.

It is true, the notion that their prestige value is in any degree conditioned by the material circumstances and the popular imagination of the underlying nation is distasteful to many of these vicars of the national honour. They will incline rather to the persuasion that this prestige value is a distinctive attribute, of a unique order, intrinsic to their own persons. But, plainly, any such detached line of magnates, notables, kings and mandarins, resting their notability on nothing more substantial than a slightly sub-normal intelligence and a moderately scrofulous habit of body could not long continue to command that eager deference that is accounted their due. Such a picture of majesty would be sadly out of drawing. There is little conviction and no great dignity to be drawn from the unaided pronouncement:

"We're here because, We're here because, We're here because We're here,"

even when the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical benefit of a "Tenure by the Grace of God." The personages that carry this dignity require the backing of a determined and patriotic populace in support of their prestige value, and they commonly have no great difficulty in procuring it. And their prestige value is, in effect, proportioned to the volume of material resources and patriotic credulity that can be drawn on for its assertion. It is true, their draught on the requisite sentimental and pecuniary support is fortified with large claims of serviceability to the common good, and these claims are somewhat easily, indeed eagerly, conceded and acted upon; although the alleged benefit to the common good will scarcely be visible except in the light of glory shed by the blazing torch of patriotism.

In so far as it is of a material nature the benefit which the constituted authorities so engage to contribute to the common good, or in other words to confer on the common man, falls under two heads: defense against aggression from without; and promotion of the community's material gain. It is to be presumed that the constituted authorities commonly believe more or less implicitly in their own professions in so professing to serve the needs of the common man in these respects. The common defense is a sufficiently grave matter, and doubtless it claims the best affections and endeavour of the citizen; but it is not a matter that should claim much attention at this point in the argument, as bearing on the service rendered the common man by the constituted authorities, taken one with another. Any given governmental establishment at home is useful in this respect only as against another governmental establishment elsewhere. So that on the slightest examination it resolves itself into a matter of competitive patriotic enterprise, as between the patriotic aspirations of different nationalities led by different governmental establishments; and the service so rendered by the constituted authorities in the aggregate takes on the character of a remedy for evils of their own creation. It is invariably a defense against the concerted aggressions of other patriots. Taken in the large, the common defense of any given nation becomes a detail of the competitive struggle between rival nationalities animated with a common spirit of patriotic enterprise and led by authorities constituted for this competitive purpose.

Except on a broad basis of patriotic devotion, and except under the direction of an ambitious governmental establishment, no serious international aggression is to be had. The common defense, therefore, is to be taken as a remedy for evils arising out of the working of the patriotic spirit that animates mankind, as brought to bear under a discretionary authority; and in any balance to be struck between the utility and disutility of this patriotic spirit and of its service in the hands of the constituted authorities, it will have to be cancelled out as being at the best a mitigation of some of the disorders brought on by the presence of national governments resting on patriotic loyalty at large.

But this common defense is by no means a vacant rubric in any attempted account of modern national enterprise. It is the commonplace and conclusive plea of the dynastic statesmen and the aspiring warlords, and it is the usual blind behind which events are put in train for eventual hostilities. Preparation for the common defense also appears unfailingly to eventuate in hostilities. With more or less bona fides the statesmen and warriors plead the cause of the common defense, and with patriotic alacrity the common man lends himself to the enterprise aimed at under that cover. In proportion as the resulting equipment for defense grows great and becomes formidable, the range of items which a patriotically biased nation are ready to include among the claims to be defended grows incontinently larger, until by the overlapping of defensive claims between rival nationalities the distinction between defense and aggression disappears, except in the biased fancy of the rival patriots.

Of course, no reflections are called for here on the current American campaign of "Preparedness." Except for the degree of hysteria it appears to differ in no substantial respect from the analogous course of auto-intoxication among the nationalities of Europe, which came to a head in the current European situation. It should conclusively serve the turn for any self-possessed observer to call to mind that all the civilised nations of warring Europe are, each and several, convinced that they are fighting a defensive war.

The aspiration of all right-minded citizens is presumed to be "Peace with Honour." So that first, as well as last, among those national interests that are to be defended, and in the service of which the substance and affections of the common man are enlisted under the aegis of the national prowess, comes the national prestige, as a matter of course. And the constituted authorities are doubtless sincere and single-minded in their endeavors to advance and defend the national honour, particularly those constituted authorities that hold their place of authority on grounds of fealty; since the national prestige in such a case coalesces with the prestige of the nation's ruler in much the same degree in which the national sovereignty devolves upon the person of its ruler. In so defending or advancing the national prestige, such a dynastic or autocratic overlord, together with the other privileged elements assisting and dependent on him, is occupied with his own interest; his own tenure is a tenure by prestige, and the security of his tenure lies in the continued maintenance of that popular fancy that invests his person with this national prestige and so constitutes him and his retinue of notables and personages its keeper.

But it is uniformly insisted by the statesmen—potentates, notables, kings and mandarins—that this aegis of the national prowess in their hands covers also many interests of a more substantial and more tangible kind. These other, more tangible interests of the community have also a value of a direct and personal sort to the dynasty and its hierarchy of privileged subalterns, in that it is only by use of the material forces of the nation that the dynastic prestige can be advanced and maintained. The interest of such constituted authorities in the material welfare of the nation is consequently grave and insistent; but it is evidently an interest of a special kind and is subject to strict and peculiar limitations. The common good, in the material respect, interests the dynastic statesman only as a means to dynastic ends; that is to say, only in so far as it can be turned to account in the achievement of dynastic aims. These aims are "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory," as the sacred formula phrases the same conception in another bearing.

That is to say, the material welfare of the nation is a means to the unfolding of the dynastic power; provided always that this material welfare is not allowed to run into such ramifications as will make the commonwealth an unwieldy instrument in the hands of the dynastic statesmen. National welfare is to the purpose only in so far as it conduces to political success, which is always a question of warlike success in the last resort. The limitation which this consideration imposes on the government's economic policy are such as will make the nation a self-sufficient or self-balanced economic commonwealth. It must be a self-balanced commonwealth at least in such measure as will make it self-sustaining in case of need, in all those matters that bear directly on warlike efficiency.

Of course, no community can become fully self-sustaining under modern conditions, by use of the modern state of the industrial arts, except by recourse to such drastic measures of repression as would reduce its total efficiency in an altogether intolerable degree. This will hold true even of those nations who, like Russia or the United States, are possessed of extremely extensive territories and extremely large and varied resources; but it applies with greatly accentuated force to smaller and more scantily furnished territorial units. Peoples living under modern conditions and by use of the modern state of the industrial arts necessarily draw on all quarters of the habitable globe for materials and products which they can procure to the best advantage from outside their own special field so long as they are allowed access to these outlying sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation on this freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much harder, and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the community by that much. National self-sufficiency is to be achieved only by a degree of economic isolation; and such a policy of economic isolation involves a degree of impoverishment and lowered efficiency, but it will also leave the nation readier for warlike enterprise on such a scale as its reduced efficiency will compass.

So that the best that can be accomplished along this line by the dynastic statesmen is a shrewd compromise, embodying such a degree of isolation and inhibition as will leave the country passably self-sufficient in case of need, without lowering the national efficiency to such a point as to cripple its productive forces beyond what will be offset by the greater warlike readiness that is so attained. The point to which such a policy of isolation and sufficiency will necessarily be directed is that measure of inhibition that will yield the most facile and effective ways and means of warlike enterprise, the largest product of warlike effectiveness to be had on multiplying the nation's net efficiency into its readiness to take the field.

Into any consideration of this tactical problem a certain subsidiary factor enters, in that the patriotic temper of the nation is always more or less affected by such an economic policy. The greater the degree of effectual isolation and discrimination embodied in the national policy, the greater will commonly be its effect on popular sentiment in the way of national animosity and spiritual self-sufficiency; which may be an asset of great value for the purposes of warlike enterprise.

Plainly, any dynastic statesman who should undertake to further the common welfare regardless of its serviceability for warlike enterprise would be defeating his own purpose. He would, in effect, go near to living up to his habitual professions touching international peace, instead of professing to live up to them, as the exigencies of his national enterprise now conventionally require him to do. In effect, he would be functus officio.

There are two great administrative instruments available for this work of repression and national self-sufficiency at the hands of the imperialistic statesman: the protective tariff, and commercial subvention. The two are not consistently to be distinguished from one another at all points, and each runs out into a multifarious convolution of variegated details; but the principles involved are, after all, fairly neat and consistent. The former is of the nature of a conspiracy in restraint of trade by repression; the latter, a conspiracy to the like effect by subsidised monopoly; both alike act to check the pursuit of industry in given lines by artificially increasing the cost of production for given individuals or classes of producers, and both alike impose a more than proportionate cost on the community within which they take effect. Incidentally, both of these methods of inhibition bring a degree, though a less degree, of hardship, to the rest of the industrial world.

All this is matter of course to all economic students, and it should, reasonably, be plain to all intelligent persons; but its voluble denial by interested parties, as well as the easy credulity with which patriotic citizens allow themselves to accept the sophistries offered in defense of these measures of inhibition, has made it seem worth while here to recall these commonplaces of economic science.

The ground of this easy credulity is not so much infirmity of intellect as it is an exuberance of sentiment, although it may reasonably be believed that its more pronounced manifestations—as, e.g., the high protective tariff—can be had only by force of a formidable cooperation of the two. The patriotic animus is an invidious sentiment of joint prestige; and it needs no argument or documentation to bear out the affirmation that its bias will lend a color of merit and expediency to any proposed measure that can, however speciously, promise an increase of national power or prestige. So that when the statesmen propose a policy of inhibition and mitigated isolation on the professed ground that such a policy will strengthen the nation economically by making it economically self-supporting, as well as ready for any warlike adventure, the patriotic citizen views the proposed measures through the rosy haze of national aspirations and lets the will to believe persuade him that whatever conduces to a formidable national battle-front will also contribute to the common good. At the same time all these national conspiracies in restraint of trade are claimed, with more or less reason, to inflict more or less harm on rival nationalities with whom economic relations are curtailed; and patriotism being an invidious sentiment, the patriotic citizen finds comfort in the promise of mischief to these others, and is all the more prone to find all kinds of merit in proposals that look to such an invidious outcome. In any community imbued with an alert patriotic spirit, the fact that any given circumstance, occurrence or transaction can be turned to account as a means of invidious distinction or invidious discrimination against humanity beyond the national pale, will always go far to procure acceptance of it as being also an article of substantial profit to the community at large, even though the slightest unbiased scrutiny would find it of no ascertainable use in any other bearing than that of invidious mischief. And whatever will bear interpretation as an increment of the nation's power or prowess, in comparison with rival nationalities, will always be securely counted as an item of joint credit, and will be made to serve the collective conceit as an invidious distinction; and patriotic credulity will find it meritorious also in other respects.

So, e.g., it is past conception that such a patent imbecility as a protective tariff should enlist the support of any ordinarily intelligent community except by the help of some such chauvinistic sophistry. So also, the various royal establishments of Europe, e.g., afford an extreme but therefore all the more convincing illustration of the same logical fallacy. These establishments and personages are great and authentic repositories of national prestige, and they are therefore unreflectingly presumed by their several aggregations of subjects to be of some substantial use also in some other bearing; but it would be a highly diverting exhibition of credulity for any outsider to fall into that amazing misconception. But the like is manifestly true of commercial turnover and export trade among modern peoples; although on this head the infatuation is so ingrained and dogmatic that even a rank outsider is expected to accept the fallacy without reflection, on pain of being rated as unsafe or unsound. Such matters again, as the dimensions of the national territory, or the number of the population and the magnitude of the national resources, are still and have perhaps always been material for patriotic exultation, and are fatuously believed to have some great significance for the material fortunes of the common man; although it should be plain on slight reflection that under modern conditions of ownership, these things, one and all, are of no consequence to the common man except as articles of prestige to stimulate his civic pride. The only conjuncture under which these and the like national holdings can come to have a meaning as joint or collective assets would arise in case of a warlike adventure carried to such extremities as would summarily cancel vested rights of ownership and turn them to warlike uses. While the rights of ownership hold, the common man, who does not own these things, draws no profit from their inclusion in the national domain; indeed, he is at some cost to guarantee their safe tenure by their rightful owners.

In so pursuing their quest of the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, by use of the national resources and by sanction of the national spirit, the constituted authorities also assume the guardianship of sundry material interests that are presumed to touch the common good; such as security of person and property in dealings with aliens, whether at home or abroad; security of investment and trade, and vindication of their citizens before the law in foreign parts; and, chiefly and ubiquitously, furtherance and extension of the national trade into foreign parts, particularly of the export trade, on terms advantageous to the traders of the nation.

The last named of these advantages is the one on which stress is apt to fall in the argument of all those who advocate an unfolding of national power, as being a matter of vital material benefit to the common man. The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection, are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The common man—that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation's common men—has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist, trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security of person or property under circumstances that raise any remotest question of the national prowess or the national prestige; nor does he seek or aspire to trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or otherwise, or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, or to exploit concessions or take orders, for acceptance or delivery; nor, indeed, does he at all commonly come into even that degree of contact with abroad that is implied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtually the sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world beyond the frontier is when, and if, he goes away from home as an emigrant, and so ceases to enjoy the tutelage of the nation's constituted authorities. But the common man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, who touches foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers only at the second or third remove, if at all, in the occasional purchase of foreign products, or in the sale of goods that may find their way abroad after he has lost sight of them. The exception to this general rule would be found in the case of those under-sized nations that are too small to contain the traffic in which their commonplace population are engaged, and that have neither national prowess nor national prestige to fall back on in a conceivable case of need,—and whose citizens, individually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their workday foreign relations, without a background of prowess and prestige, as the citizens of the great powers who are most abundantly provided in these respects.

With wholly negligible exceptions, these matters touch the needs or the sensibilities of the common man only through the channel of the national honour, which may be injured in the hardships suffered by his compatriots in foreign parts, or which may, again, be repaired or enhanced by the meritorious achievements of the same compatriots; of whose existence he will commonly have no other or more substantial evidence, and in whose traffic he has no share other than this vicarious suffering of vague and remote indignity or vainglory by force of the wholly fortuitous circumstance that they are (inscrutably) his compatriots. These immaterial goods of vicarious prestige are, of course, not to be undervalued, nor is the fact to be overlooked or minimised that they enter into the sum total of the common citizen's "psychic income," for whatever they may foot up to; but evidently their consideration takes us back to the immaterial category of prestige value, from which the argument just now was hopefully departing with a view to consideration of the common man's material interest in that national enterprise about which patriotic aspirations turn.

These things, then, are matters in which the common man has an interest only as they have a prestige value. But there need be no question as to their touching his sensibilities and stirring him to action, and even to acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Indignity or ill treatment of his compatriots in foreign parts, even when well deserved, as is not infrequently the case, are resented with a vehemence that is greatly to the common man's credit, and greatly also to the gain of those patriotic statesmen who find in such grievances their safest and most reliable raw materials for the production of international difficulty. That he will so respond to the stimulus of these, materially speaking irrelevant, vicissitudes of good or ill that touch the fortunes of his compatriots, as known to him by hearsay, bears witness, of course, to the high quality of his manhood; but it falls very far short of arguing that these promptings of his patriotic spirit have any value as traits that count toward his livelihood or his economic serviceability in the community in which he lives. It is all to his credit, and it goes to constitute him a desirable citizen, in the sense that he is properly amenable to the incitements of patriotic emulation; but it is none the less to be admitted, however reluctantly, that this trait of impulsively vicarious indignation or vainglory is neither materially profitable to himself nor an asset of the slightest economic value to the community in which he lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. So also is it true that the common man derives no material advantage from the national success along this line, though he commonly believes that it all somehow inures to his benefit. It would seem that an ingrown bias of community interest, blurred and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends his faith uncritically to match his inclination. His persuasion is a work of preconception rather than of perception.

But the most substantial and most unqualified material benefit currently believed to be derivable from a large unfolding of national prowess and a wide extension of the national domain is an increased volume of the nation's foreign trade, particularly of the export trade. "Trade follows the Flag." And this larger trade and enhanced profit is presumed to inure to the joint benefit of the citizens. Such is the profession of faith of the sagacious statesmen and such is also the unreflecting belief of the common man.

It may be left an open question if an unfolding of national prowess and prestige increases the nation's trade, whether in imports or in exports. There is no available evidence that it has any effect of the kind. What is not an open question is the patent fact that such an extension of trade confers no benefit on the common man, who is not engaged in the import or export business. More particularly does it yield him no advantage at all commensurate with the cost involved in any endeavour so to increase the volume of trade by increasing the nation's power and extending its dominion. The profits of trade go not to the common man at large but to the traders whose capital is invested; and it is a completely idle matter to the common citizen whether the traders who profit by the nation's trade are his compatriots or not.[6]

[Footnote 6: All this, which should be plain without demonstration, has been repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace advocates, typically by Mr. Angell.]

The pacifist argument on the economic futility of national ambitions will commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedly as need be that national ambition and all its works belong of right under that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put out of the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. So with the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, rather than to be exorcised.

As has been remarked above, in the course of time and change the advance of the industrial arts and of the institutions of ownership have taken such a turn that the working system of industry and business no longer runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of national frontiers,—except in so far as the national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings of trade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient working of the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is therefore detrimental to the material interests of the common citizen. But the case is not the same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is a competitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the traders engaged in any given line of business to extend their own markets and to exclude competing traders. Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly is necessarily the aim of every trader. And the national organisation is of service to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far as it furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as against their competitors, whether at home or abroad. The gain that so comes to the nation's traders from any preferential advantage afforded them by national regulations, or from any discrimination against traders of foreign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It is of no benefit to any of their compatriots; since there is no community of usufruct that touches these gains of the traders. So far as concerns his material advantage, it is an idle matter to the common citizen whether he deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens; both alike will aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will charge him "what the traffic will bear." Nor does it matter to him whether the gains of this trade go to aliens or to his compatriots; in either case equally they immediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally removed from any touch of joint interest on his part. Being private property, under modern law and custom he has no use of them, whether a national frontier does or does not intervene between his domicile and that of their owner.

These are facts that every man of sound mind knows and acts on without doubt or hesitation in his own workday affairs. He would scarcely even find amusement in so futile a proposal as that his neighbor should share his business profits with him for no better reason than that he is a compatriot. But when the matter is presented as a proposition in national policy and embroidered with an invocation of his patriotic loyalty the common citizen will commonly be found credulous enough to accept the sophistry without abatement. His archaic sense of group solidarity will still lead him at his own cost to favor his trading compatriots by the imposition of onerous trade regulations for their private advantage, and to interpose obstacles in the way of alien traders. All this ingenious policy of self-defeat is greatly helped out by the patriotic conceit of the citizens; who persuade themselves to see in it an accession to the power and prestige of their own nation and a disadvantage to rival nationalities. It is, indeed, more than doubtful if such a policy of self-defeat as is embodied in current international trade discriminations could be insinuated into the legislation of any civilized nation if the popular intelligence were not so clouded with patriotic animosity as to let a prospective detriment to their foreign neighbors count as a gain to themselves.

So that the chief material use of the patriotic bent in modern populations, therefore, appears to be its use to a limited class of persons engaged in foreign trade, or in business that comes in competition with foreign industry. It serves their private gain by lending effectual countenance to such restraint of international trade as would not be tolerated within the national domain. In so doing it has also the secondary and more sinister effect of dividing the nations on lines of rivalry and setting up irreconcilable claims and ambitions, of no material value but of far-reaching effect in the way of provocation to further international estrangement and eventual breach of the peace.

How all this falls in with the schemes of militant statesmen, and further reacts on the freedom and personal fortunes of the common man, is an extensive and intricate topic, though not an obscure one; and it has already been spoken of above, perhaps as fully as need be.



CHAPTER III

ON THE CONDITIONS OF A LASTING PEACE

The considerations set out in earlier chapters have made it appear that the patriotic spirit of modern peoples is the abiding source of contention among nations. Except for their patriotism a breach of the peace among modern peoples could not well be had. So much will doubtless be assented to as a matter of course. It is also a commonplace of current aphoristic wisdom that both parties to a warlike adventure in modern times stand to lose, materially; whatever nominal—that is to say political—gains may be made by one or the other. It has also appeared from these considerations recited in earlier passages that this patriotic spirit prevails throughout, among all civilised peoples, and that it pervades one nation about as ubiquitously as another. Nor is there much evidence of a weakening of this sinister proclivity with the passage of time or the continued advance in the arts of life. The only civilized nations that can be counted on as habitually peaceable are those who are so feeble or are so placed as to be cut off from hope of gain through contention. Vainglorious arrogance may run at a higher tension among the more backward and boorish nations; but it is not evident that the advance guard among the civilised peoples are imbued with a less complete national self-complacency. If the peace is to be kept, therefore, it will have to be kept by and between peoples made up, in effect, of complete patriots; which comes near being a contradiction in terms. Patriotism is useful for breaking the peace, not for keeping it. It makes for national pretensions and international jealously and distrust, with warlike enterprise always in perspective; as a way to national gain or a recourse in case of need. And there is commonly no settled demarkation between these two contrasted needs that urge a patriotic people forever to keep one eye on the chance of a recourse to arms.

Therefore any calculus of the Chances of Peace appears to become a reckoning of the forces which may be counted on to keep a patriotic nation in an unstable equilibrium of peace for the time being. As has just been remarked above, among civilised peoples only those nations can be counted on consistently to keep the peace who are so feeble or otherwise so placed as to be cut off from hope of national gain. And these can apparently be so counted on only as regards aggression, not as regards the national defense, and only in so far as they are not drawn into warlike enterprise, collectively, by their more competent neighbors. Even the feeblest and most futile of them feels in honour bound to take up arms in defense of such national pretensions as they still may harbour; and all of them harbour such pretensions. In certain extreme cases, which it might seem invidious to specify more explicitly, it is not easy to discover any specific reasons for the maintenance of a national establishment, apart from the vindication of certain national pretensions which would quietly lapse in the absence of a national establishment on whom their vindication is incumbent.

Of the rest, the greater nations that are spoken of as Powers no such general statement will hold. These are the peoples who stand, in matters of national concern, on their own initiative; and the question of peace and war at large is in effect, a question of peace and war among these Powers. They are not so numerous that they can be sifted into distinct classes, and yet they differ among themselves in such a way that they may, for the purpose in hand, fairly be ranged under two distinguishable if not contrasted heads: those which may safely be counted on spontaneously to take the offensive, and those which will fight on provocation. Typically of the former description are Germany and Japan. Of the latter are the French and British, and less confidently the American republic. In any summary statement of this kind Russia will have to be left on one side as a doubtful case, for reasons to which the argument may return at a later point; the prospective course of things in Russia is scarcely to be appraised on the ground of its past. Spain and Italy, being dubious Powers at the best, need not detain the argument; they are, in the nature of things, subsidiaries who wait on the main chance. And Austria, with whatever the name may cover, is for the immediate purpose to be counted under the head of Germany.

There is no invidious comparison intended in so setting off these two classes of nations in contrast to one another. It is not a contrast of merit and demerit or of prestige. Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan are, in the nature of things as things go, bent in effect on a disturbance of the peace,—with a view to advance the cause of their own dominion. On a large view of the case, such as many German statesmen were in the habit of professing in the years preceding the great war, it may perhaps appear reasonable to say—as they were in the habit of saying—that these Imperial Powers are as well within the lines of fair and honest dealing in their campaign of aggression as the other Powers are in taking a defensive attitude against their aggression. Some sort of international equity has been pleaded in justification of their demand for an increased share of dominion. At least it has appeared that these Imperial statesmen have so persuaded themselves after very mature deliberation; and they have showed great concern to persuade others of the equity of their Imperial claim to something more than the law would allow. These sagacious, not to say astute, persons have not only reached a conviction to this effect, but they have become possessed of this conviction in such plenary fashion that, in the German case, they have come to admit exceptions or abatement of the claim only when and in so far as the campaign of equitable aggression on which they had entered has been proved impracticable by the fortunes of war.

With some gift for casuistry one may, at least conceivably, hold that the felt need of Imperial self-aggrandisement may become so urgent as to justify, or at least to condone, forcible dispossession of weaker nationalities. This might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently perplexing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios of national honour and as regards an equitable division between rival Powers in respect of the material means of mastery. So in private life it may become a moot question—in point of equity—whether the craving of a kleptomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable pitch of avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever valuables he can safely lay hands on, to ease the discomfort of ungratified desire. In private life any such endeavour to better oneself at one's neighbors' cost is not commonly reprobated if it takes effect on a decently large scale and shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or with the connivance of its officers. Governing international endeavours of this class there is no law so inflexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fit particular circumstances. And in the absence of law the felt need of a formal justification will necessarily appeal to the unformulated equities of the case, with some such outcome as alluded to above. All that, of course, is for the diplomatists to take care of.

But any speculation on the equities involved in the projected course of empire to which these two enterprising nations are committing themselves must run within the lines of diplomatic parable, and will have none but a speculative interest. It is not a matter of equity. Accepting the situation as it stands, it is evident that any peace can only have a qualified meaning, in the sense of armistice, so long as there is opportunity for national enterprise of the character on which these two enterprising national establishments are bent, and so long as these and the like national establishments remain. So, taking the peaceable professions of their spokesmen at a discount of one hundred percent, as one necessarily must, and looking to the circumstantial evidence of the case, it is abundantly plain that at least these two imperial Powers may be counted on consistently to manoeuvre for warlike advantage so long as any peace compact holds, and to break the peace so soon as the strategy of Imperial enterprise appears to require it.

There has been much courteous make-believe of amiable and upright solicitude on this head the past few years, both in diplomatic intercourse and among men out of doors; and since make-believe is a matter of course in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of course, that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be allowed to traverse this run of make-believe within the precincts of diplomatic intercourse. But in any ingenuous inquiry into the nature of peace and the conditions of its maintenance there can be no harm in conveniently leaving the diplomatic make-believe on one side and looking to the circumstances that condition the case, rather than to the formal professions designed to mask the circumstances.

* * * * *

Chief among the relevant circumstances in the current situation are the imperial designs of Germany and Japan. These two national establishments are very much alike. So much so that for the present purpose a single line of analysis will passably cover both cases. The same line of analysis will also apply, with slight adaptation, to more than one of the other Powers, or near-Powers, of the modern world; but in so far as such is held to be the case, that is not a consideration that weakens the argument as applied to these two, which are to be taken as the consummate type-form of a species of national establishments. They are, between them, the best instance there is of what may be called a Dynastic State.

Except as a possible corrective of internal disorders and discontent, neither of the two States "desires" war; but both are bent on dominion, and as the dominion aimed at is not to be had except by fighting for it, both in effect are incorrigibly bent on warlike enterprise. And in neither case will considerations of equity, humanity, decency, veracity, or the common good be allowed to trouble the quest of dominion. As lies in the nature of the dynastic State, imperial dominion, in the ambitions of both, is beyond price; so that no cost is too high so long as ultimate success attends the imperial enterprise. So much is commonplace knowledge among all men who are at all conversant with the facts.

To anyone who harbors a lively sentimental prejudice for or against either or both of the two nations so spoken of, or for or against the manner of imperial enterprise to which both are committed, it may seem that what has just been said of them and their relation to the world's peace runs on something of a bias and conveys something of dispraise and reprobation. Such is not the intention, however, though the appearance is scarcely to be avoided. It is necessary for the purposes of the argument unambiguously to recognise the nature of these facts with which the inquiry is concerned; and any plain characterisation of the facts will unavoidably carry a fringe of suggestions of this character, because current speech is adapted for their reprobation. The point aimed at is not this inflection of approval or disapproval. The facts are to be taken impersonally for what they are worth in their causal bearing on the chance of peace or war; not at their sentimental value as traits of conduct to be appraised in point of their goodness or expediency.

So seen without prejudice, then, if that may be, this Imperial enterprise of these two Powers is to be rated as the chief circumstance bearing on the chances of peace and conditioning the terms on which any peace plan must be drawn. Evidently, in the presence of these two Imperial Powers any peace compact will be in a precarious case; equally so whether either or both of them are parties to such compact or not. No engagement binds a dynastic statesman in case it turns out not to further the dynastic enterprise. The question then recurs: How may peace be maintained within the horizon of German or Japanese ambitions? There are two obvious alternatives, neither of which promises an easy way out of the quandary in which the world's peace is placed by their presence: Submission to their dominion, or Elimination of these two Powers. Either alternative would offer a sufficiently deterrent outlook, and yet any project for devising some middle course of conciliation and amicable settlement, which shall be practicable and yet serve the turn, scarcely has anything better to promise. The several nations now engaged on a war with the greater of these Imperial Powers hold to a design of elimination, as being the only measure that merits hopeful consideration. The Imperial Power in distress bespeaks peace and good-will.

Those advocates, whatever their nationality, who speak for negotiation with a view to a peace compact which is to embrace these States intact, are aiming, in effect, to put things in train for ultimate submission to the mastery of these Imperial Powers. In these premises an amicable settlement and a compact of perpetual peace will necessarily be equivalent to arranging a period of recuperation and recruiting for a new onset of dynastic enterprise. For, in the nature of the case, no compact binds the dynastic statesman, and no consideration other than the pursuit of Imperial dominion commands his attention.

There is, of course, no intention to decry this single-mindedness that is habitually put in evidence by the dynastic statesmen. Nor should it be taken as evidence of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the result of a peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such statesmen, and in its degree also habitual to their compatriots, and is indispensably involved in the Imperial frame of mind. The consummation of Imperial mastery being the highest and ubiquitously ulterior end of all endeavour, its pursuit not only relieves its votaries from the observance of any minor obligations that run counter to its needs, but it also imposes a moral obligation to make the most of any opportunity for profitable deceit and chicanery that may offer. In short, the dynastic statesman is under the governance of a higher morality, binding him to the service of his nation's ambition—or in point of fact, to the personal service of his dynastic master—to which it is his dutiful privilege loyally to devote all his powers of force and fraud.

Democratically-minded persons, who are not moved by the call of loyalty to a gratuitous personal master, may have some difficulty in appreciating the force and the moral austerity of this spirit of devotion to an ideal of dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how its paramount exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personal rectitude and veracity, as being a shabby with-holding of service due.

To such of these doubters as still have retained some remnants of their religious faith this attitude of loyalty may perhaps be made intelligible by calling to mind the analogous self-surrender of the religious devotee. And in this connection it may also be to the purpose to recall that in point of its genesis and derivation that unreserved self-abasement and surrender to the divine ends and guidance, which is the chief grace and glory of the true believer, is held by secular students of these matters to be only a sublimated analogue or counterfeit of this other dutiful abasement that constitutes loyalty to a temporal master. The deity is currently spoken of as The Heavenly King, under whose dominion no sinner has a right that He is bound to respect; very much after the fashion in which no subject of a dynastic state has a right which the State is bound to respect. Indeed, all these dynastic establishments that so seek the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are surrounded with a penumbra of divinity, and it is commonly a bootless question where the dynastic powers end and the claims of divinity begin. There is something of a coalescence.[7]

[Footnote 7: "To us the state is the most indispensable as well as the highest requisite to our earthly existence.... All individualistic endeavor ... must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim.... The state ... eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of all the individuals within its jurisdiction." "This conception of the state, which is as much a part of our life as is the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be found in the English Constitution, and is quite foreign to English thought, and to that of America as well."—Eduard Meyer, England, its Political Organisation and Development and the War against Germany, translated by H.S. White. Boston 1916. pp. 30-31.]

The Kaiser holds dominion by divine grace and is accountable to none but God, if to Him. The whole case is in a still better state of repair as touches the Japanese establishment, where the Emperor is a lineal descendant of the supreme deity, Amaterazu (o mi Kami), and where, by consequence, there is no line of cleavage between a divine and a secular mastery. Pursuant to this more unqualified authenticity of autocratic rule, there is also to be found in this case a correspondingly unqualified devotion in the subjects and an unqualified subservience to dynastic ends on the part of the officers of the crown. The coalescence of dynastic rule with the divine order is less complete in the German case, but all observers bear witness that it all goes far enough also in the German case. This state of things is recalled here as a means of making plain that the statesmen of these Imperial Powers must in the nature of the case, and without blame, be drawn out from under the customary restraint of those principles of vulgar morality that are embodied in the decalogue. It is not that the subject, or—what comes to the same thing—the servant of such a dynastic State may not be upright, veracious and humane in private life, but only that he must not be addicted to that sort of thing in such manner or degree as might hinder his usefulness for dynastic purposes. These matters of selfishly individual integrity and humanity have no weight as against the exigencies of the dynastic enterprise.

These considerations may not satisfy all doubters as to the moral sufficiency of these motives that so suffice to decide the dynastic statesmen on their enterprise of aggression by force and fraud; but it should be evident that so long as these statesmen continue in the frame of mind spoken of, and so long as popular sentiment in these countries continues, as hitherto, to lend them effectual support in the pursuit of such Imperial enterprise, so long it must also remain true that no enduring peace can be maintained within the sweep of their Imperial ambition. Any peace compact would necessarily be, in effect, an armistice terminable at will and serving as a season of preparation to meet a deferred opportunity. For the peaceable nations it would, in effect, be a respite and a season of preparation for eventual submission to the Imperial rule.

By advocates of such a negotiated compact of perpetual peace it has been argued that the populace underlying these Imperial Powers will readily be brought to realise the futility and inexpediency of such dynastic enterprise, if only the relevant facts are brought to their knowledge, and that so these Powers will be constrained to keep the peace by default of popular support for their warlike projects. What is required, it is believed by these sanguine persons, is that information be competently conveyed to the common people of these warlike nations, showing them that they have nothing to apprehend in the way of aggression or oppressive measures from the side of their more peaceable neighbours; whereupon their warlike animus will give place to a reasonable and enlightened frame of mind. This argument runs tacitly or explicitly, on the premise that these peoples who have so enthusiastically lent themselves to the current warlike enterprise are fundamentally of the same racial complexion and endowed with the same human nature as their peaceable neighbours, who would be only too glad to keep the peace on any terms of tolerable security from aggression. If only a fair opportunity is offered for the interested peoples to come to an understanding, it is held, a good understanding will readily be reached; at least so far as to result in a reasonable willingness to submit questions in dispute to an intelligent canvass and an equitable arbitration.

Projects for a negotiated peace compact, to include the dynastic States, can hold any prospect of a happy issue only if this line of argument, or its equivalent, is pertinent and conclusive; and the argument is to the point only in so far as its premises are sound and will carry as far as the desired conclusion. Therefore a more detailed attention to the premises on which it runs will be in place, before any project of the kind is allowed to pass inspection.

As to homogeneity of race and endowment among the several nations in question, the ethnologists, who are competent to speak of that matter, are ready to assert that this homogeneity goes much farther among the nations of Europe than any considerable number of peace advocates would be ready to claim. In point of race, and broadly speaking, there is substantially no difference between these warring nations, along any east-and-west line; while the progressive difference in racial complexion that is always met with along any north-and-south line, nowhere coincides with a national or linguistic frontier. In no case does a political division between these nations mark or depend on a difference of race or of hereditary endowment. And, to give full measure, it may be added that also in no case does a division of classes within any one of these nations, into noble and base, patrician and plebeian, lay and learned, innocent and vicious, mark or rest on any slightest traceable degree of difference in race or in heritable endowment. On the point of racial homogeneity there is no fault to find with the position taken.

If the second postulate in this groundwork of premises on which the advocates of negotiable peace base their hopes were as well taken there need be no serious misgiving as to the practicability of such a plan. The plan counts on information, persuasion and reflection to subdue national animosities and jealousies, at least in such measure as would make them amenable to reason. The question of immediate interest on this head, therefore, would be as to how far this populace may be accessible to the contemplated line of persuasion. At present they are, notoriously, in a state of obsequious loyalty to the dynasty, single-minded devotion to the fortunes of the Fatherland, and uncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this frame of mind there is nothing that is new, except the degree of excitement. The animus, it will be recalled, was all there and on the alert when the call came, so that the excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on the first touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people at large was evidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so that an unexampled enthusiasm of patriotic self-sacrifice followed immediately on the first incitement to manslaughter, very much as if the nation had been held under an hypnotic spell. One need only recall the volume of overbearing magniloquence that broke out all over the place in that beginning, when The Day was believed to be dawning.

Such a popular frame of mind is not a transient episode, to be created at short notice and put aside for a parcel of salutary advice. The nation that will make such a massive concerted move with the alacrity shown in this instance must be living in a state of alert readiness for just such an onset. Yet this is not to be set down as anything in the way of a racial trait specifically distinguishing the German people from those other adjacent nationalities that are incapable of a similarly swift and massive response to the appeal of patriotism. These adjacent nationalities are racially identical with the German people, but they do not show the same warlike abandon in nearly the same degree.

But for all that, it is a national trait, not to be acquired or put away by taking thought. It is just here that the line of definition runs: it is a national trait, not a racial one. It is not Nature, but it is Second Nature. But a national trait, while it is not heritable in the simple sense of that term, has the same semblance, or the same degree, of hereditary persistence that belongs to the national institutions, usages, conventionalities, beliefs, which distinguish the given nation from its neighbors. In this instance it may be said more specifically that this eager loyalty is a heritage of the German people at large in the same sense and with the same degree of permanence as the institution of an autocratic royalty has among them, or a privileged nobility. Indeed, it is the institutional counterfoil of these establishments. It is of an institutional character, just as the corresponding sense of national solidarity and patriotic devotion is among the neighboring peoples with whom the German nation comes in comparison. And an institution is an historical growth, with just so much of a character of permanence and continuity of transmission as is given it by the circumstances out of which it has grown. Any institution is a product of habit, or perhaps more accurately it is a body of habits of thought bearing on a given line of conduct, which prevails with such generality and uniformity throughout the group as to have become a matter of common sense.

Such an article of institutional furniture is an outcome of usage, not of reflection or deliberate choice; and it has consequently a character of self-legitimation, so that it stands in the accredited scheme of things as intrinsically right and good, and not merely as a shrewdly chosen expedient ad interim. It affords a norm of life, inosculating with a multiplicity of other norms, with which it goes to make up a balanced scheme of ends, ways and means governing human conduct; and no one such institutional item, therefore, is materially to be disturbed, discarded or abated except at the cost of serious derangement to the balanced scheme of things in which it belongs as an integral constituent. Nor can such a detail norm of conduct and habitual propensity come into bearing and hold its place, except by force of habituation which is at the same time consonant with the common run of habituation to which the given community is subject. It follows that the more rigorous, comprehensive, unremitting and long-continued the habituation to which a given institutional principle owes its vogue, the more intimately and definitively will it be embedded in the common sense of the community, the less chance is there of its intrinsic necessity being effectually questioned or doubted, and the less chance is there of correcting it or abating its force in case circumstances should so change as to make its continued rule visibly inexpedient. Its abatement will be a work not of deliberation and design, but of defection through disuse.

Not that reflection and sane counsel will count for nothing in these premises, but only that these exertions of intelligence will count for relatively very little by comparison with the run of habituation as enforced by the circumstances conditioning any given case; and further, that wise counsel and good resolutions can take effect in the way of amending any untoward institutional bent only by way of suitable habituation, and only at such a rate of change as the circumstances governing habituation will allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shift the settled lines of any community's scheme of common sense. Now, national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning loyalty to the sovereign and the dynasty, is a matter of course and of commonsense necessity with the German people. It is not necessary to call to mind that the Japanese nation, which has here been coupled with the German, are in the same case, only more so.

Doubtless it would be exceeding the premises to claim that it should necessarily take the German people as long-continued and as harsh a schooling to unlearn their excess of chauvinism, their servile stooping to gratuitous authority, and their eager subservience to the dynastic ambitions of their masters, as that which has in the course of history induced these habits in them. But it would seem reasonable to expect that there should have to be some measure of proportion between what it has cost them in time and experience to achieve their current frame of mind in this bearing and what it would cost to divest themselves of it. It is a question of how long a time and how exacting a discipline would be required so far to displace the current scheme of commonsense values and convictions in force in the Fatherland as to neutralise their current high-wrought principles of servility, loyalty and national animosity; and on the solution of this difficulty appear to depend the chances of success for any proposed peace compact to which the German nation shall be made a party, on terms of what is called an "honorable peace."