The presence and persistence of patriotism in the world as a deep and intense feeling raises questions that are of both theoretical and practical importance. Here we are interested mainly in the relation of patriotism to war. There is a widespread view that may be expressed somewhat as follows. Patriotism and internationalism or cosmopolitanism are two opposites. Patriotism delimits groups, whether rightly or wrongly, and therefore produces antagonism in the world, and either causes wars directly or maintains a continual threat of wars. On the other hand there is cosmopolitanism, a very little too much of which might destroy civilization by removing the inspiration that country gives. Patriotism, standing for the integrity of historic entities, makes the world a world of nations having separate and conflicting wills. Thus we have a choice of evils—between a world of ardent, quarrelsome, but efficient groups and a world in which the chief motive of progress, the vital principle of national growth, is left out.

What is the truth about this? What is the relation of patriotism to war? Confusion and difference of views are likely to arise from a failure to distinguish in the idea of nationalism as a whole, between two very different emotions and purposes. Psychologically, patriotism is a sum of affections. As such, it has a distinct character, constitutes a mood, the possession of which may characterize an individual, and dominance by which may be the main fact in life. As a devotion to certain objects, this motive of patriotism enters into the sphere of motives of war, but it does so mainly, in our view, as a powerful and highly suggestible energy which becomes aggressive only under the stimulus of threat to its objects. Patriotism is indeed tolerant by nature, and one may well doubt whether a genuine love of country is possible without a profound realization of the value of other countries as objects of devotion, and of the validity of the patriotism of every group. True patriotism must always be to some extent devotion to patriotism itself as a progressive force in the world, and it is, therefore, by the very fact of becoming intense and pure, a motive of internationalism.

Such patriotism seems to be free from most of the delusions of greatness that affect national consciousness. Its mood is optimistic and its spirit tolerant and just. We should say that, instead of causing wars, by any initiative of its own, it is itself caused by wars. It grows in a medium of defensive attitudes. It may, of course, play into the hands of all the aggressive motives of war; there are always circumstances creating the illusion of danger, and it is possible, even, that there would be little war if there were no patriotism as love of country to support it. But on the other hand patriotism itself does not seem to be a cause of war. We should say, indeed, that patriotism, to the extent that it becomes intelligent and is a devotion to an ideal of country, and so is not dominated and influenced by other motives is a factor of peace in the world, and is moral in its principles and its nature. This is not the place in which to speak of internationalism as an ideal, but we may at least observe how, conceivably, patriotism may be cultivated, be greatly deepened and intensified, while at the same time and indeed because of this deepening of patriotism all international causes are also served. Such patriotism may leave us with the danger of wars, since it leaves us with a world of individuals having wills and self-interests. But this world, with such a danger of wars, would be better after all than a certain kind of cosmopolitanism in a world such as, for example, might be arranged by an unintelligent socialism.

National Honor

There is another aspect of nationalism, which is psychologically distinct from patriotism as love of country, because primitively it is based upon a different motive. Emotionally it is expressed finally as national pride, as we use the word mainly with a derogatory implication. Just as patriotic feeling is intensified and crystallized by fear, and is in a sense an overcoming of fear, by devotion, so this motive of pride rests upon a basis of jealousy and of hatred, and is essentially a movement in which display is used to obtain prestige, to overcome opposition and to defend consciousness against a sense of inferiority. As a display motive it contains the feeling of anger, and the impulses of combat, and its relation to the reproductive motive is obvious. It is as an aspect of a deeply pessimistic strain in national life, as a process in which an original and naive sense of reality and superiority, challenged and attacked and brought into the field of opposition and criticism and thus negated by a feeling of inferiority, that this motive becomes of special interest to the psychology of nations and of war.

The roots of this pride and honor process we can find in the impulses which lead groups to demonstrate power and prowess to one another, and in the original feeling of reality which is accompanied by the belief on the part of the group that its own ways are normal and right. We might mention as significant the widespread belief on the part of very primitive peoples that they alone are real people, or are the superior people of the world. The Lapps, Sumner (70) says, regard themselves as "men" as distinguished from all other peoples, a form of self-consciousness which lingers in all such antitheses as Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, and the like. This basic idea of difference in reality is not confined to a few peoples, but there is a tendency for every group to divide the world into two parties: selves and outsiders, and this feeling of difference readily develops into the moods in which there is a mystic sense on the part of a people of being the chosen people, and into those specific theories of superiority that run through the history of most if not of all nations. It belongs to the psychology of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, and also to Americans as well as Germans; and we learn that Russian books and newspapers sometimes discuss the civilizing mission of Russia.

That the motives of display and pride have been peculiarly active in Germany in the last few decades has been maintained by many writers. German writers are inclined to believe that the motive for the "attack upon Germany" was jealousy on the part of her enemies, that Germany was supreme in everything and other countries could tolerate this no longer. Germany has talked about her virtues, her rank, her coming place in the world. Bergson says that Germany's energy comes from pride. Some see the source of this alleged conceit of Germany and her excessive self-consciousness in Germany's hard experiences—the recent slavery, Germany's position as the battle ground of Europe, her late arrival among the great nations. Germany still lacks, they say, the quiet assurance that an old culture gives. Some call Germany morbid and quarrelsome. Again we hear the pride of Germany called an adolescent phenomenon, and they say that Germany is fighting not for principle but to see who is superior. Bosanquet (91) thinks that the lack of political liberty in Germany has had the effect of producing self-consciousness, and a morbid interest in small distinctions of title and rank, and that it is thwarted national ambition that has expressed itself in such writers as Treitschke and Bernhardi. Bourdon (67) thinks Germany is jealous of the culture and the glory and the political and literary prestige of France. Collier (68) says that Germany is forever looking into a mirror rather than out the open window and even sees herself a little out of focus. The seriousness of the Germans, others think, is an indication that Germany takes herself too seriously.

But national vanity, we see, is certainly not confined to Germany. The Germans at least think France is highly self-conscious, always thinking of her dignity, glory, prestige and of revenge. Wundt (85) feels much the same about the English. He says they always want to be first in everything, and to dominate the earth. We know that the Confederacy of the United States, at the outbreak of the Civil War, appealed to the world on the ground that it had reached the most noble civilization the world had ever seen. The Japanese (73), we have heard, believe that they are of divine descent, and that they are supreme in manliness, loyalty and virtue. Every nation presumably has somewhere in the back of its mind a belief in its own supremacy in something, and has a sense of being or having something that makes it unique in the world.

We can now see in part how the idea of national honor arises out of the pride of nations. Certain fundamental feelings issue in the form of claims of superiority or supremacy, which may be either vague and unclear or very definite and self-conscious. This claim to superiority is precisely what we mean by national vanity. With this consciousness there goes a knowledge that these claims are in general not recognized by other nations, or that the prestige which the recognition of this superiority presupposes is at least insecure. Since, of course, these claims to supremacy cannot all be valid, there must be a great amount of inferiority parading in the world as superiority, many fictitious and presumably half-hearted assumptions that must not only be defended against outsiders, but must also be internally fortified. The pride and the conceit must be justified by the creation of a fictitious past, and of an impossible future. The motive of these falsifications on the part of race consciousness is clear. A nation is defending its claim to superiority by first establishing the claim in its own mind. These claims being really unfounded must be placed beyond criticism. They must be given a religious form. But also external forms and relations of an artificial nature must be established. Nations always hide behind barriers of formality. They make displays to one another. In this way the feeling and the appearance of superiority are kept up. Everything external to the group and not participating in its illusion of supremacy must be kept external to it. The belief which the nation itself assumes in regard to its virtue must be demanded from all outsiders with whom the nation has relations of any kind. At least the forms of the recognition of the claim must be insisted upon. This is the principle of national honor. It is a defense of certain ideal or fictitious values in which nations insist that others should recognize these claims and values. National honor is an artifice for defending a claim to superiority and concealing an actual inferiority, and it relates to values which, in general, do not exist. Its work is concerned with the maintenance of prestige.

These ideal values and the integrity of the appearance of supremacy, are sustained by the assumption of the forms of empire or the imperialistic attitude. Empire is indeed what is dramatized in the forms which nations assume, and this dramatization of imperial form is the background of all the ideas of honor. The maintenance of the integrity of the imperial form, as an ideal realization of the supremacy a nation assumes, becomes more important than even the securing of material possessions, for the imperial form is the very reality and existence of the nation. It is at bottom merely the assertion that its own mores are supreme and entitled to be universal. To admit that this is not so would be to become to some extent unreal, and to lose something essential to a sense of personality. Therefore, there can be thus far no intimate relations among nations. They must present to one another symbolic representations of themselves. It is their flag, the symbol of their place in the world and of their military prowess and courage; their ambassadors, the representatives of their dignity and the symbol of their pretended friendliness; their display of royal forms, which is the sign of their prestige and their imperial nature, about which they are most sensitive. Offenses to these symbols of what a nation assumes itself to be and demands that others should think it, tend to be mortal offenses, because they invade the sphere of what nations hold to be their reality. So the relations of nations to one another must, as we say, always be formal. Nations can allow no intimacy. Why they cannot one can readily see, for it is not difficult to detect the fear, the jealousy, and the inferiority motive behind all this assumption and display. Treitschke shows us what national honor may mean when it is carried out into a philosophy of state. Here is the idea of national self-consciousness at its greatest height. The state must not tolerate equals, or at least it must reduce the number of equals as much as possible. The state must be absolutely independent. The state, furthermore, cannot have too keen a sense of its dignity and position. A state must declare war if its flag is insulted, however slight the circumstances may be.

National honor, its codes and standards and its justification and vindication by combat, present so many resemblances to the practice of dueling and the idea of personal honor once so generally held by the upper class, and still existent where the military spirit prevails, that we ought to study the dueling code with reference to the psychology of war. There are psychological features that appear to be identical. The idea of personal honor is associated with a feeling of superiority that must be defended. Any offense or affront to the individual was a mortal offense. The superiority in question was first of all superiority of ancestry; it was this that constituted the value of the individual and set the standards that he must maintain. This superiority was to be judged not so much by conduct as by an assertion of it represented by certain external forms. The individual by his manners declared himself a gentleman, and laid claim to forms and considerations that must not be omitted in relations with him. The virtues he defended so rigorously did not exist as a rule in calculable or practical form, since they did nothing objective. They might be ornamental or purely fictitious. They existed in the form of claims, and the values assigned to them were arbitrary. The man declared himself possessed of superiority, and was ready uniformly to prove this claim by acts purporting to indicate willingness to die.

This code and belief belonged to a day when relations among individuals were simple and, so to speak, external. They were relations that were readily codified and made invariable, since they had no essential practical content or function. Manners were significant as substitutes for friendly relations, since the system was lacking in moral and social sentiments. Manners were a means of fitting together individuals who really belonged to no functioning whole, except when, for example, they might be united in military exploits. Everything was unitary and independent of everything else in this society.

Now this code and this philosophy of life have declined precisely to the extent that the conception of ideal human life has changed, from that of something ornamental and personal to that of something useful and moral. Life has become organized, and relations have become more practical, so that the values of conduct may now be estimated, and one no longer may maintain a claim to virtue based upon forms expressing intangible or subjective or unreal virtues. The virtues of a man in a democratic society are, indeed, more or less obvious and open. Pride of family, an ornamental mode of life, and a scorn of death are no longer necessary and sufficient guarantees of worth. Evidence of value is both possible and required; before value is admitted it must be shown. Self-defense in a legal and moral society are in the main superfluous, and the values of individuals are so changed that to justify them by the duel would seem out of place. Its service being to defend artificial or arbitrary claims to distinction, it ceases or it falls into disuse when the individual's reality and value come to depend upon his functional place in society. It would be highly illogical to put to test social values by a process that appears to have nothing but anti-social elements in it.

That nations exhibit the same type of relation toward one another that we find in dueling and its code seems to be clear, although we must always avoid pressing any analogy between individual and nation too far. A claim to superiority that is deep and irrational, and which appears on the surface as sensitiveness in regard to honor and vanity, keeps nations always in defensive attitudes, quite apart from the actual fear of aggression. This superficiality or at least externality of relations is the source of actual conflict. The forms employed to maintain these relations are obviously ornamental, are elaborations of the forms of courtesy among individuals, are little dramas of friendship, so to speak, little plays representing friendliness, while the diplomatic motives are simply to obtain everything possible, each nation for itself, without war, and to maintain prestige. These relations are substitutes for social feelings that do not exist. Generally speaking, nations are never friends. They never really share in anything. They are all highly conscious of their own prestige and dignity, and they always communicate with one another in a formal way. In it all, we see the signs of emotions and habits that extend far back to the beginnings of social life and indeed into animal life. The display which takes the form of social relations among nations, represented well by uniformed diplomats, is so plainly archaic and its real meaning so obvious that we can hardly fail to understand what it is all about. That the attitude is really defensive, and the purpose to keep up appearances before strangers, so to speak, can hardly be doubted.

The fact that these questions of national honor are in some respects detached from the main realities of political relations, and are, indeed, fictitious and exist in the region of the imagination, that they pertain to the conventional and ornamental sides of national life, might be supposed to indicate that they could easily be done away with, and all these fertile causes of war be eliminated. That must not be assumed. Vanity has deep roots. The ornamental in life symbolizes the real. It is the point of entrance to the deepest motives. Conventional and archaic forms do not die out, just because we discover that they are irrational and harmful, and the causes they serve seem to us to be unreal. This kind of unreality in the consciousness of nations is in fact the ideal for which nations live. Nations play at being great, and fight to defend their prestige—but this play, as we know, is oftentimes terribly real.



CHAPTER VI

"CAUSES" AS PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES IN WAR

The causes for which wars are fought, or which are asserted to be the causes, make one of the important psychological problems of war. Sometimes these causes are elusive, sometimes they may give occasion for cynicism and a pessimistic view of national morals; again we see self-deception, again ideals seeking for light, peoples trying to find something to live for or to die for. We see in the recent great war as in other wars, a great variety of causes for which men are said to be fighting. Some would say that the war was entirely a war of principles; some take a purely political point of view and say that principles are not involved at all, and others that nothing was displayed at all of motives except primitive passions which are equally devoid of moral issues or any principles.

It would be interesting from the psychological point of view to make, if possible, a complete collection and classification of the causes that have been brought forward as the fundamental things fought for in the late war. Many widely different and divergent views are held. The forms in which the issues of the war have been stated are almost innumerable. New definitions and new statements of old conventional ideas appear continuously. Every writer seems to see the war from a different point of view from all others. Eventually, we may suppose, all this will be clear, since these "causes" of the war will be one of the great themes of future philosophical history. At present we can only formulate such a view as may be suggestive with reference to general interpretations of the place of principles and causes in war.

Let us examine a few of the opinions about the issues fought for in the recent war. MacFall (56) says that the whole strategy of the civilized world is bent upon creating permanent peace. Many speak of the war as a war to overcome war; we are told that one of the most conscious motives of the soldiers in the field has been to make the great war the last war the world should ever see. Something of the same idea is involved in the view each nation has that it was attacked, and that the purpose of the war was to defeat and punish aggressors. Apparently every nation and every army engaged in the war has had the feeling that it was fighting in the interests of world peace.

The German explanations of the war and of its issues have been very numerous and widely varied. The German has had his own interpretation of the "white man's burden," Tower (57) calls attention to the German hybrid word "Sahibthum," expressing the mission of a people. Each nation has its essence, which becomes a deep impulse. The German's impulse is translatable in the words "Be organized." The German has been eager to organize the world. He-believed in all seriousness that he was fighting the fight of order against chaos. It was the fight of the spirit against that which is dead and inefficient. The German believed that the systematic exploitation of the world was his peculiar mission. Ostwald is the great apostle of this view. He said that the war was a battle of the higher life against the lower instincts. Germany represents European civilization. The German emperor said that Germany should do for Europe what Prussia had done for Germany—organize it. In the German philosophy of life this principle of order had become a serious principle. An inefficient and disorderly world had need of Germany. Everywhere there was waste and stupidity, and a want of reason in the world. System was to be the cure. The fundamental fault in all this disorder the German mind recognized as an excessive individualism. Individual instinct and the social order were in eternal conflict, as Dietzel expressed the issue, and Germany stood for the social order, for reason, since reason is precisely the denial of the instincts and the desires of the individual in the interest of a foreseen result.

Shortly after the beginning of the war, we remember, a manifesto appeared signed by three thousand German university professors and other teachers, saying that they, the signers, firmly believed that the salvation of the whole of European civilization depended upon the victory of German militarism. Hintze (49) said that Germany was fighting for the freedom of everybody, meaning presumably according to the German principle that freedom consists in voluntarily submitting to order. This freedom is also in Hintze's view a principle of freedom and equal rights for all nations, in so far as these nations have reached the necessary stage of civilization. The mission of the coming central management of mankind (Menschheitzentralverwaltung) implied in the most ideal theory of Germany's mission is the true German burden. Haeckel says that the work of the German people to assure and develop civilization gives Germany the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and to exclude from those countries the races that occupy them. Schellendorf says that Germany must not forget her civilizing task, which is to become the nucleus of a future empire of the west. Koenig says that the spiritual life of Europe is at stake, Germany's fight is the fight of civilization against barbarism—against Russian barbarism he means. This ought to be the cause of all Western Europe, but England and France have betrayed the western civilization into the hands of the East. This belief gave to Germany's cause a deep impulsion (12).

Another way in which Germany's cause was frequently stated was that Germany was a pure, virile and young race which was fighting the older civilizations of the world. Vigor was assured of victory in any case, but young life had a duty to perform—that of clearing the way for new growth. This has found numerous forms of expression among German writers, some of them highly dramatic and exaggerated; as, for example, that the human race is divided into two species or kinds, the male and the female, assuming that the German is the male among the national spirits.

With these views of the nature of the German ideal or cause there have gone, of course, interpretations of the conscious motives and principles of other nations. In general other nations had no principle. German writers have tended to believe that both England and America were hypocritical and that their pretended democratic cause was at heart only party and political aspiration. These nations, they said, claimed to desire the world to enjoy the rights of democracy, but each country assumed that it itself must be the controller of that democratic principle. Another frequently expressed view of the purposes of England and America is that they have purely sordid interests, that they are capable of fighting only for advantage and material gain.

Many of these German views of the war imply a principle that runs through many fields of German thought—that values are something to be determined objectively. It is a scientific principle. Its conclusions rest upon proof, rather than upon subjective principles of valuation. There is another argument which is in part based upon an interpretation of scientific principles, but is in part also a fatalistic doctrine—confidence in the issues of battle as a means of testing the right and the validity of culture. The right will prevail, on this theory, because the right is the stronger or because in some sense strength is the right, and because the method of selection of the best by struggle is a basic principle, and may be applied to everything that is living or is a product of life.

If the German interpretation of the German cause has been dominated by an ideal of objective proof, we hear on the other side much about subjective rights and subjective evaluations—the right, for example, of every people to determine its own life, to have its own culture, to decide upon its own nationality. The Allies have believed that they were fighting to establish this principle throughout the world, and that this principle is diametrically opposed to the German principle. The thought of centralization, of a hierarchy of nations and the like, is wholly foreign to this democratic principle. Bergson (17) finds in the idea of industry the cause of the war and the principle of opposition in it. The Allies, he says, have been fighting against materialism with the forces of the spirit. Germany's forces are material. A mechanism is fighting against a self-renewing spirit. The ideal of force is met by the force of the ideal.

Boutroux (13) says that France, in the war, has had before her eyes the idea of humanity; France was fighting for the recognition of the rights of personality—rights of each nation to its own existence. France is a champion of freedom; she wants all the legitimate aspirations of peoples to be realized. Germanism, with its ideal of force, is contrasted with the ideal of Greek and Christian culture and philosophy. A cult of justice and modesty is contrasted with the cult of power; in the former, sentiment and feeling have a place as criteria of values; in the latter the appeal is to science and to reason.

Hobhouse (34) says that the war is a conflict of the spirit of the West against the spirit of the East (precisely the same as the German view, we see, but with a very different identification of the champions). Germany has never felt the spirit of the West. The war is for something far deeper than national freedom; it is a war to justify the primary rules of right. Burnet (18) thinks that the great conflict was a conflict between Kultur as nationalistic, and humanism as something international—that Germany, in recent years, had abandoned an ideal of culture for that of specialization in the service of the State. England's answer to the call was not to the specific need and appeal of Belgium, but because England felt that there was something in Germany incompatible with Western civilization.

Le Bon (42) says that we must always remember that the Teuton is the irreconcilable enemy of the civilization of the French and of all it stands for, and that he must always be kept at a distance. Durkheim's view is that Germany's ambition and energy and will antagonize the freedom of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world felt this and the war was the consequence. Dillon (55) says that the future for which Germany has been striving is a future incompatible with those ideals which our race cherishes and reveres, and that we must make a definite choice between our philosophy and religion and our code on one side and those of the German on the other. Drawbridge (19) says that the war has been a conflict between the ideals of gentleness and tact, on one side, and of brutality and ruthlessness on the other. It is the Christian spirit against the Nietzschean.

Again we have been told that the war was simply a war of autocracy against democracy, of mediaevalism against modern life, of progress against stagnation, of militarism and war against peace, of the Napoleonic against the Christian spirit. Occasionally we hear more personal and subjective notes. Redier (30) says that France was fighting solely to retain mastery of her own genius, in order to draw from it noble joys and just profits.

The American point of view has been expressed in several forms by the President of the United States. For example, he has said that we are one of the champions of the rights of mankind. The world must be made safe for democracy. And again, that America is fighting for no selfish purpose, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the aggression of autocratic powers. This view that the war was remedial, that it was in the interest of progress, to prevent that which is belated in civilization from gaining the upper hand, and that it is on the part of America a war of participation and aid in a cause which though supremely good might otherwise be lost, is the prevailing idea. That this spirit of the championship of causes and of justice to other nations is a stronger motive in the Anglo-Saxon peoples than in others appears to be an opinion that history on the whole can confirm.

It is relatively easy to obtain the opinion of philosophers about the "causes" represented in the war; it would be of interest also to know what the millions of men in the field think. Data are not altogether wanting, but there appear to be no general studies. That many men, in more than one army, have no clear knowledge of any cause for which they have fought, except as these causes are nationalistic is certain. That there is ignorance even among the men of our own army in regard to the causes and purposes of the war has been made evident. Knowledge and enlightenment can hardly have been greater elsewhere. German soldiers are credited with believing that they are defending Germany from attack. The French soldier was fighting for France. The invasion of his country left him no doubt and no choice. The English soldier has often said that he was doing it for the women and the children, and one writer says that the deepest motive of two thirds of the British army was to make this war the last. The American soldier, from the nature of the circumstances under which he himself entered the war has been more conscious of a motive of helpfulness and of comradeship with other peoples who are in distress and danger. Probably the idea of America's honor, and the more abstract idea still of the cause of freedom, even though this idea has been, so to speak, our watchword, have not been the most influential motives in the mind of the individual. Germany was attacking people who were in distress, and the American soldier went over to make the scales turn in the direction of victory for the oppressed.

There is, of course, a literature of the war produced by the soldier in the field, in which there are expressed high ideals, abstract conceptions and firm principles. The French soldier has written about liberty, the German soldier has had considerable to say about a Kultur war. An American volunteer in the British army has written, "I find myself among the millions of others in the great allied armies fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane against a power which is evil and which threatens the existence of all the right we prize and the freedom we enjoy" (24). But in general the consciousness of the soldier, from all the evidence we have, was concerned, as presumably was that of most of us, mainly with the most obvious qualities of opposing forces, their concrete actions, and the personal motives of rulers.

Leaving aside so far as one can one's own partisanship and mores (which is not a very easy task), what causes can we say, with a considerable degree of certainty, have actually been issues in the present war? To some extent what one thinks these causes are will remain matters of personal opinion and preference. Are there also principles which, when once observed, will be accepted as the fundamental "causes" of the war? There seem to be three at least which characterize wide differences in the ideals and the civilization of the opposing forces.

There is, first of all, an issue between the ideals of a relatively autocratic form of government and a relatively more democratic form of government. This was a cause of the intellectuals, but it was also a popular cause. Men in general like the form of government under which they live. From the standpoint of those who hold that a democratic form of government is right, the war seemed to be a conflict between a modern and progressive regime and an old and vicious one. So far as this autocratic principle aimed to suppress the rights of individuals, or to menace the liberties of small nations, so far as it was aggressively militaristic and had imperial ambitions, which could be achieved only by force, it stood clearly opposed to democracy. Democracy and autocracy were plainly at war with one another, and yet if we look closely we shall see that neither one can offer any actual demonstration of its validity as the most superior or the final form of government. In part they may appeal to the observable course of history for their justification, but the final source of judgment seems to rest in the mass of opinion in the world. Questions of form and taste are not wholly absent. But the believer in democracy and the believer in autocracy will both assert that deep differences in principle are involved. They will not admit that democracy and autocracy are superficial forms, and are questions of taste, and they will not agree with Munsterberg, who says that the two forms tend inevitably toward a compromise, by a process of alternation in which first one and-then the other is the dominant form in the world.

The war, in another aspect of it, has been a conflict between the idea of nationalism and that of internationalism. It is a conflict between an ideal of state, represented in the German philosophy of state by the principle of complete autonomy of the individual nation, and one which assumes that states, while retaining their rights of sovereignty are to be governed by laws which regulate their conduct as functioning members of a society of nations. The difference is that, relatively, between a state of anarchy among nations and a state of order. To some extent there has been a conflict between the idea of rights and the idea of duties of nations. This internationalism is not merely a sociological principle, something academic and scientific, as a theory of state or society; it is an ethical principle, which contains some recognition of justice as a subjective principle. It has some roots in theory, but it is also based upon the immediate recognition of the rights of peoples to their own individual lives. Its ideal is a world containing many nations, cooerdinated by natural processes and not a world in which a single nation or a few may hold the supreme place, except as this supremacy might come by a process of natural development.

The third conflict of the war was one which we may call a psychological conflict. It was a conflict between two ideas of life, one based upon a belief in the supremacy of reason, the other implying that the final test of values in life remains in the sphere of the feelings, or is a matter of appreciation. Germany, in her recent history, has stood conspicuously for the belief that human society may and indeed must be controlled and regulated by definite principles—principles that must be determined according to the methods of science. These principles take the place, in this philosophy of life, of certain typical human reactions that are believed to be demonstrably irrational. In its visible and most practical form the application of this principle is through organization.

This characterization of German life reveals something very much like a paradox in the principles of the war. We see a conflict in one direction between a certain mediaevalism in government and social forms and a more modern and progressive type; we see also a conflict of a modernism of an extreme form, represented by a scientific civilization, united with this mediaevalism, and in opposition to a conception of life which is in some respects more naive and more primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that Germany offers an illustration of a phenomenon of development that has been seen before in history, of an excess of development and specialization in a direction that appears to be off the main line of progress, or at least is an anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of rationalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied reason. This rationalism is certainly in part a product of systematic education and propaganda, a conscious exploitation of science, and it is in part temperamental. Such a result is always possible in a small state with a highly centralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by persuasion nor by force. If we may apply a biological analogy we may say that German Kultur in its modern form cannot survive. That this German civilization has been felt by the world at large to be abnormal and of the nature of a monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to some extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank growth. Germany, seeing in her own civilization only the appearance of modernism, has been inclined to regard all other civilizations as decadent.

Germany, governed by the ideals of rationalism, has assumed that history can be made, wars conducted, life regulated in accordance with a program. On the other side we see a very general acceptance of a philosophy of life in which many evils of disorder and waste and the necessity of an experimental attitude toward life are accepted as necessary consequences of the life of freedom. We see implied in this philosophy of life a belief in a morality and a religion that are based upon feeling rather than upon objective evidences, and a way of judging conduct more or less naively and simply or according to methods of appreciation that are essentially aesthetic, using the term in a wide sense. This mode of life is accepted in the belief that order in due season will come out of relative disorder, by a natural process or by a gradually increasing organization and voluntary adjustment. If we accept the validity of this attitude in life we shall be inclined to regard rationalism as it is manifested to-day in German life as an evil. We may believe that in the end the cure for this rationalism will not be less reason but rather more, but we shall see also that it is possible for reason to outstrip and pervert life, and indeed involve life in an absurdity, simply because as a method of dealing with the whole of life it cannot be sufficiently comprehensive.

Are these and all such issues that we find in war, causes of war? Do nations fight for principles? Opinions certainly differ on this point. Some think of wars, we say, as essentially conflicts of principles; some interpret wars wholly in terms of political issues. We should say that the truth lies between these assertions or is the sum of their half-truths. Wars are not in their origin wars of principle. The political, the personal, the concrete aspects of the relations of nations are always in the foreground in causing wars. Wars become wars of principle after they have been begun for other reasons. Sanctions and motives appear after the fact. Fundamental differences of mores which include the raw material, so to speak, of principles and causes are factors in wars in so far as they create misunderstanding and antipathy, but in so far as these differences of nature and of principle do not enter into the sphere of politics and of national honor, they do not as such cause wars Those deep moods which accumulate in the minds of peoples and enter into the causes of war are not convictions about principles. They are more generic and natural. History does not seem to show us wars caused by pure principles. We sometimes say that the Civil War in our own country was fought over a principle, but that is something less than the truth. The fundamental question at issue was plainly that of the rights of certain states at a particular time to be independent and free.

Principles emerge in war, we say, and then they become secondary causes. And it is precisely this emergence of principles from fields of battle that perhaps constitutes the greatest contribution of wars to the civilization of the world. We need to reflect upon this deeply, since the whole philosophy of history is concerned in it. The virtues that nations discover in themselves in war they elaborate in peace. Nations at war become conscious of their spiritual possessions. Since their existence, they believe, is at stake, it is a part of their self-defense to justify their value in the world. They discover in themselves that which is most characteristic of them, and this becomes their principle. The principle of a nation is that which the national consciousness fixates itself upon as the title of the nation to continued existence. Nations do not go to war over their causes, or about their distinctive virtues and missions in the world. Rather it is their likenesses that precipitate wars,—their resemblances and identities in being the same in ambition, and having the same conceptions of national honor and the same motives for war and desiring the same objects. Nations in general do not go to war over principles because they are not motivated by principles in their historical course. The principles of nations are aspects of their inner development. The "causes" of nations at war, according to our view, are these inner qualities of which they have become conscious. Nations discover them in the stress of war, and it is quite natural also that in such times they should not always judge them fairly, and that they should often make for themselves a fictitious character.



CHAPTER VII

PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES

Philosophy, in the minds of many writers, must be given a high place among the causes of war, and a considerable fraction of the literature of the late war is devoted to the problem of discovering, in the field of abstract thought, the influences that led to the great conflict. Nietzsche, especially, seems to have been held responsible for the European conflagration. As the philosopher of the New Germany, as the chief expositor of the doctrine of force, the inventor of the super-man and of the idea of the beyond-good, Nietzsche seems to stand convicted of furnishing precisely the concepts that have become the German's gospel of war; and since the German is prone to be guided by abstractions, the evidence, even though circumstantial, seems to many to be convincing.

Schopenhauer, also, as the great pessimist; Hegel, with his doctrine of the supremacy of the State as the representative of the Idea on earth; Kant, as the discoverer of the subjective moral principle; English utilitarianism as the doctrine of the main chance; empiricism, as the philosophy of inconsistency and dual principles of thought and conduct; even the whole spirit of the English philosophy, which Wundt says is nothing but an attempt to reconcile thought with the ideas of peace and comfort—all these have been charged with being instigators of the war.

Bergson (17) takes a different view. He says that the desire comes first, the doctrine afterwards. Germany, determined upon war, invokes Nietzsche or Hegel. Germany in a moral temper would appeal to Kant, or in still a different mood to the Romanticists. Le Bon (42) says that nations are pushed forward by forces which they cannot understand, and that rational thoughts and desires play but a little part in war. That appears to be true. We cannot say that philosophies do not enter at all into the causes of war, but among these causes they must be insignificant as compared with other causes that neither arise from abstract thought nor are greatly modified by reason in any way. Consider the influence of Napoleon (himself so little a product of any philosophical influence), as compared with Hegel; or of Bismarck as compared with Nietzsche, and this will be apparent. There are in the course of the centuries books and men that, as rational forces, do exert profound effect upon the practical life, but they must be rarer than is sometimes supposed. It is all too easy to assume a relation of cause and effect when there is only a similarity between thought and subsequent conduct. Rousseau may or may not have inspired the French Revolution. Probably he did not. The recent great war, we might say, has occurred in spite of philosophy, and if Nietzsche's influence gravitated toward war, it can hardly be thought to have had any deciding force in turning the scales already so overloaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his thought as a contribution to philosophy.

Darwin, as the great force behind a new and varied development of science, has had the fate to be, in some sense, a factor in the moods and the new habits of life that led toward the final issue in the great war. It is not so much that his principle, misapplied, or applied uncritically may become a justification of war or even its basic principle that has made him so great an influence, but precisely because his thought, by becoming one of the great coordinating principles of all the natural sciences has given power to a movement which has had various practical consequences, not all of them good, or at least not all yielding fruit for our own age. Darwin's great influence as a force turning scholarly interest toward naturalism and away from classicism, as a factor in modern materialism and even pessimism, as a background, if no more, for the Haeckels and Ostwalds of science is no inconsiderable factor in the scientific and objective spirit of the day.

Facts must be faced. It is not such influences as that of Schopenhauer, who expresses a logical or at least an abstract and we might add literary form of pessimism, that in the generations just past have transformed most of the conceptions of religion, with all the effects upon the practical life that have followed, but the force of our modern science combining with tendencies which it fosters but perhaps does not create, giving momentum to industrialism and specialization,—it is this change in the ideas of men that we must suspect of being implicated in the present catastrophe of the world, if any influence from the rational life is to be counted at all. Hegel and Kant hover in the background. The author of the plan for universal peace provides us with a subjective principle of morality which can be distorted into a philosophy of moral independence and even of independence from morality, and Hegel must have helped to establish the German theory of the State, although with Treitschke and with the practical state-makers like Frederick the Great and his followers, we can hardly believe Hegel indispensable. The causes of war are too general, too old and too fundamental to be greatly added to or detracted from as yet by philosophy. Philosophy is the hope of the world, it may be, and by no means a forlorn hope, but it is not yet one of the great powers. When philosophy is a mere endorsement by reason of some motive that has arisen in the practical life, or is a literary expression of views about life, it may give the appearance of being a profound force in the world. But this is not real philosophy, in any case. Philosophy has not as yet shown itself highly creative even in the calm fields of education and the moral life.

No! Philosophy is a factor in the motives of war rather by reason of what it has not done, than because of its positive teachings. To-day we ought no longer to be under illusions on that point. Neither Christianity nor philosophy can make or prevent wars as yet. They have not been able to cope with the practical forces of the world which make for nationalism, partisanship and personal interests. It would require a greater amount both of religion and of philosophy than we now can bring to bear upon the world to offset the influence of Napoleon alone in the practical life of nations. It is the Napoleonic spirit that still governs Europe. Philosophy has been thus far a science of being an explanation of the world after the fact, and not even to any great extent a science of its progress, except in so far as, we may say, beginning with Hegel and with Spencer, there has been some development of the methods and the most formal conceptions of such a science. It is asking too much of philosophy, in its present stage, to expect it to preach the gospel, or to teach school, or to direct politics, and for the same reason it is unjust to charge philosophy with having created the greatest catastrophe of history. If philosophy cannot wield any great power now in those parts of life that are by their nature presumably most amenable to reason, its effect upon those events that express the supreme force of human passions and the totality of life will not be very important. The influences of philosophy are academic, and presumably any doctrine of life that preaches achievement, virility and unmorality will include in some degree war among the interests that it will affect, within the limits of its academic nature. But youth is inherently warlike, because above everything else it seeks to realize life in its fullness, and war at least does symbolize this reality and abundance of life. A philosophy which preached peace would hardly become a great influence with youth. A philosophy advocating the cause of war would form a natural background for the essential motives of youth. If the scales were evenly balanced, it might turn them. It is hard at least to see the relations of philosophy to the practical life in any other light to-day. Philosophies are tenuous and adaptable things. We see them used to support opposite causes, and they change color under the influence of strong desires. Bosanquet (91) shows us how Hegel's noble conception of the State, if we but substitute for its central thought of welfare of the State, that of selfish interest, may be made to change before our eyes into the meanest of maxims. This process is, however, not unique in the history of the relations of thought and life.

A detailed study of the relations of intellectual factors to war would need to consider the effects of a great number of more or less philosophical ideas which throw their weight on the side of war. So far as these ideas are simple and clear, and especially if they can be conveyed in the form of the phrase, their influence cannot wholly be ignored. Some we have already referred to. The doctrine that might makes right, the conception of state as supreme, the belief in the divine right of kings, the belief in the ordained rights of aristocracy, belief in militarism as a social institution, the doctrine that life may be controlled by reason, all intellectual pessimism, skepticism, any form of concept-worship, whether Hegelian or other, acceptance of the methods of science and the results of science as applicable to all the problems of life—all such principles which inhabit the region, so to speak, between philosophy and the practical life manifestly have some relation to the spirit of war. In a very general way they may be counted as philosophical factors in war. For the most part, however, those ideas that have been accused of abetting war are exaggerations and perversions of philosophical ideas. Nietzsche, Darwin and Hegel have all been exploited and made to stand sponsor for specific philosophies of war. In the new philosophy of life which Patten thinks has greatly influenced German conduct, and which may be expressed in the words Dienst, Ordnung, and Kraft, we can see both the effects of impulses that have grown out of the new life itself, and the influences of formal philosophy. That such ideas have had relatively a greater influence in Germany than elsewhere must be admitted, but that either this devotion to ideas or the ideas themselves have been derived from philosophical interests and from philosophies that have played any important part in the history of thought we may well doubt. We should suspect that the same practical interest that works unceasingly to distort and popularize philosophy would help to create such pseudo-philosophy.

Von Buelow (65) says that the German people have a passion for logic, and that this passion amounts to fanaticism:—that when an intellectual form or system has been found for anything, they insist with obstinate perseverance on fitting realities into the system. Durkheim (16) says that the Germans' organized system of ideas is a cause of war. It is also true, we should say, that the tendency to organize ideas and even the fundamental ideas by which the Germans have been guided are deeply rooted in temperament, in history and in the social order of the past. Boutroux (13) says that the Germans themselves regard the war as the culmination of their philosophy. We should say on the contrary that the whole war philosophy of Europe is almost wholly a product of strife and comes from impulses that arise irresistibly in the practical life. Into these movements philosophy fits or may be made to fit, and the presence of ideas in a society in which the academic life has great prestige, ideas which coincide with beliefs readily gives an illusion of an order governed by the higher reason. The fact that Germany's recent wars had all been highly successful, the fact that Germany had learned to depend upon her good sword in time of need are the chief sources of Germany's doctrines of war: the Hegelian background in the light of what we have learned in recent times about the psychology of nations, must seem to be rather of the nature of the ornamental. The ideal of the Prussian State to be a power directed by intelligence suggests Hegel, but it seems highly improbable, to say the least, that Hegelian philosophy has had much to do with shaping this ideal. Behind all this is the necessity of shaping German life in the form which it has taken—necessity if we accept, at least, Germany's national temperament itself as a necessity. That other belief, widely held by German intellectuals and officers that war is the testing of the validity of national cultures would also probably never have appeared on the scene had not Germany been secure in the belief that she herself had both the right and the might on her side. It is possible, of course, that the war has distorted our vision so that the relations of the practical life and the life of reason have all been thrown out of focus, but when we see what forces have been at work, and what they have done, it is difficult to escape the conviction that we have been inclined to believe too much in the power of mere ideas. This may be the great lesson of the war. We may learn from it how to make ideas become the power that hitherto they have failed to be.



CHAPTER VIII

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INFLUENCES

That war and religion have always been closely associated with one another is one of the outstanding facts of history. This is true both of primitive warfare and of warfare to-day. Yet we cannot say that religion as such has been a cause of war. Religious wars are almost invariably also political wars, and as soon as religion and politics are separated, religion no longer appears to be a war motive. When religion becomes associated with worldly ideas which it supports and makes dynamic it may become a strong factor in the spirit of war, but as a means of segregating men, and giving them unity of action religion can no longer be regarded as a power, if it ever was. Any motive that will not so segregate men and break up all other bonds cannot be said to be a very fertile cause of war. Religion as a cause of war belongs to a day in which the spirit of nationalism was weak, and when religious empire had a visible and political position in the world. Nationalism, growing stronger, became the supreme force dominating the motives and interests of men and governing the formation of groups, or at least the actions of groups as interrelated units. In the recent war we have seen how the sense of national unity has been able to hold in check all other motives. Neither religion nor any class or clan or guild interests could trace the faintest line of cleavage so long as the motive of war remained.

The mood of war always contains a religious element. Not only is this shown in primitive wars, where the relations of religion, war and art are indicated in such phenomena as the war dance, which is of the nature of a magic weapon, but we see it also in the complex moods of the present war spirit of the world. The idea and mood of valor have a religious significance. Cramb says that we can trace in Germany before the war, showing through the transient mists of industrialism and socialism, the vision of the religion of valor which runs through all German history. The craving for a valorous life, for reality, the desire to lose one's own individuality—these moods of war are religious or mystic whatever else they may be or contain. The inseparable relation of war and death necessarily inspires a religious consciousness. Without exalted moods which in some way contain religious faith—faith on the part of the individual in the eternal values which he represents and in his own security in the hands of fate, and in the immortality of the country which he serves, war could not exist.

The mood of war always contains a religious sanction, and every important religion sanctions war. This explicit relation between religion and war is seen very early. Wherever there is ghost worship, and the warriors justify war and fortify themselves for it by believing that their ancestors still participate in the combats of their children, and that in waging war they are doing a duty in keeping up the traditional feuds of their race there is found the root of the relation between war and religion. Every war is a holy war; it is but a change in degree from these primitive wars in which the ideas of ghosts must have had almost the clearness of reality to our modern wars with their deeper but more indefinite religious sanctions. Since war always creates the need of moral justification, the war mood at all times tends to seek religious sanctions. Christianity, the doctrine of peace and good will, very readily lends its support to war, since wars are almost invariably regarded as defensive by all who participate in them. War in the service of the weak and endangered can always invoke the spirit of Christianity. The logical ground for this has been laid for us by many writers; Drawbridge (19), one of the most recent, finds no support in Christianity for the doctrines of pacifism. All nations, when they fight, fight for God, for liberty and the right, with the implied belief that their own country has a mission in the world, supported by divine authority.

All governments have in them a strain of theocracy. We see this in many degrees and forms, from the original totemistic belief in descent from animals that are also gods to the vaguest remnants of the habit of interpreting national interests as guarded by divine powers that we often see in the language of practical statesmen. The doctrine of the divine rights of kings of course had its origin in that of divine descent. The most striking revelation of the place such theories may have, even in modern times and in enlightened nations, is to be seen in the revival and deliberate use of the doctrine of divine descent as a fundamental principle of the government and theory of State in the New Japan. All nations hold something of this philosophy; God and State are always related and all wars, whatever else they may be, are waged in the service of religion and with the sanction of it. This spirit is not wanting even in the most modern democracy. The historians of Germany have shown us to what an extent the theory of the divinity of state and its divine mission may be intermingled with practical politics and have helped to bring to light the psychology of this movement in history.

Several writers, but especially Le Bon (42), have written about the relation of mysticism to war. Le Bon said indeed that the main causes of war, including the most recent one, are mystical causes. By mysticism he means unconscious factors which are religious in quality and which contain a race ideal which is both powerful and irrational. German mysticism appears to have attracted much attention during the years of the war. Germany has presented the picture, we are told, of a people becoming dangerous by couching national ambition and honor in terms of religion. This mysticism of the German contains a powerful belief in race superiority, and in the supremacy of the culture of their own nation, beliefs which have the clear marks of mysticism about them. The traces of the theory of divine origin still cling to them. Boutroux (13) says the Prussian State is a synthesis of the divine and the human. Another writer observes that the Germans believe in the altogether unique and quasi-divine excellence of the German race, and of Germanism, and that the Germans have a new religion which they believe in spreading by the sword. Some see in Germany a serious demand for the revival of the religion of Odin and Thor, the religion of conflict of primeval forces, and of the triumph of might. Literary expressions of this religion are certainly to be found, and it may fairly be maintained that Germany has never become Christianized to the extent that most modern nations have.

That mysticism has been a large factor in the war spirit of the Germans in the late war can hardly be doubted, or at least that a religious element of some kind has played a great part in it. The war began as Germany's holy war. A cult of State and of self-worship are involved in it. If not, innumerable expressions of Germany's cause among German writers are simply literary exaggerations. The Germans have believed that they are God's chosen people, that they represent God, and since the German civilization grew up in antagonism to the Graeco-Roman civilization, God must have adopted the one and discarded the other. One German writer says that we must eliminate from our belief the last drop of faith in the idea of a progressive movement of humanity as a whole. Reality is represented in one nation at a time, and the chosen nation is the leader of all the rest.

While such mysticism as this (if it be mysticism) is most conspicuous in aristocratic and imperialistic nations, we find it elsewhere. It is a powerful force in imperialistic Japan and in Russia. We find it everywhere in history in some form. In France it is still the "saintly figure" of France that inspires the soldier and induces a religious mood. There is no longer a vision of an empire of the future, perhaps, and this mysticism of France has not in recent history shown itself in the form of aggression, but French mysticism clings to the ideal and the hope of a glorious future for a deathless France soon to be renewed. All peoples that have declined or suffered an adverse fate, even the pathetic remnants of the American Indians, expect the return of their lost power. Such mysticism is, we may think, the only condition under which national life in many cases can continue. The religious or the mystical mood of nations is created by the need of making belief dynamic, of overcoming doubts and fears. Hence the exaggerated and irrational claims peoples make in regard to the value of their culture and about their mission on earth. By their mysticism nations justify their aggressive wars and fortify themselves in their defensive wars. Thus nations acquire a feeling of security. They believe in their star of destiny. They feel that their life which is of supreme value to the world cannot perish. It is this spirit that nations take with them into battle. It is a mystic force, and this mystic force is, in great part, we may believe, one of the by-products of the tragedy of history. Faith and hope have one of their roots at least in fear and pessimism.

Moral Motives and War

That the attitude of nations toward one another is not, generally speaking, an ethical attitude and that moral principles do not motivate the conduct of peoples we have already suggested. Sumner (70) says that the whole history of mankind is a series of acts open to doubt, dispute and criticism as to their right and justice. Differences end in force, and the defeated side always protests that the results are unjust. And yet wars are always conducted with moral justification and in the belief that moral principles are involved. These moral principles, however, are not the points of difference upon which the beginning of wars depends. Nations never go to war for purely moral reasons. Moral feeling may coincide with the interests of state, and a defensive war may of course be conducted in the spirit of deep moral right and duty, but plainly it is never the sense of right and duty alone that is the motive of defense. Perhaps after all this question of the moral element in the causes of war is a futile one, and leads to casuistry. There are always political and other practical questions involved, whenever strain occurs between nations, so that wholly moral issues can never arise.

If wars are not moral in the making they are always justified morally, whatever the motives may have been that caused them. Without this moral sanction it is doubtful whether wars could be conducted at all, although this moral sanction may be based upon very superficial grounds. The higher patriotic feeling runs, says Veblen (97), the thinner may be the moral sanction that satisfies the public conscience. On the other hand moral sentiment may often be strong and deep in the minds of the masses of people in a nation, and the public feeling of obligation to enter a war may be strong, but in general such moral feeling does not lead to war. Righteous indignation lacks initiative. Honor as moral obligation requires the aid of honor as national pride and dignity. The relations among allies may at first thought seem to be moral relations, but when we observe closely we see that usually nations go to war together because their common interests are endangered. When their common interests are not involved they usually break treaties and so do not stay together. Actions directed offensively against one member of a coalition are usually directed against the others, so that in most cases the allies of a nation have no choice, but must defend themselves.

The relative importance of moral principles in the motives of war may be observed by comparing the motives assigned by the nations that participated in the late war with the motives which a study of the history and political situations of these countries reveals. There are wide disparities between these historical causes and the assigned causes. These need not, however, lead us to take a cynical view of history as many sociologists and students of politics do. We have as yet no organized world in which moral principle can operate. The world, we might say, is still infantile or immature. The world is still unmoral. We cannot say that nationalism as the principle of the conduct of nations is a wholly selfish principle as contrasted with a moral or altruistic motive, since such an analogy with individual morality fails to take into account the complex nature of nationalism, and overlooks the social qualities of patriotism.

England's purpose in entering the war has been freely discussed in England. The popular impression is that England declared war upon Germany in order to defend Belgium and to keep her treaty obligations. If we consider conduct in a certain abstraction from the practical setting in which it is performed such a conclusion can be drawn. There was a moral stirring in England, and several writers have commented upon the fact that England subverted her own conscious purposes by her unconscious and instinctive morality. There was a strong feeling against war, even a widespread moral sense that England had become too civilized to wage war. There was a shrinking from the economic hardships that war would entail. Against these strong tendencies there prevailed, at least in popular sentiment, a profound feeling that in some way Germany's civilization was incompatible with England's, and this feeling was in part of the nature of moral aversion. Dillion (55), at least, sees a profound ethical motive in Italy in the late war. After a pro-German party had won out in favor of war, he says, a deus ex machina in the shape of an indignant nation descended upon the scene. But after making allowance for all moral feeling and the unusual and dramatic manner in which moral issues, to a greater degree than ever before in modern history, were brought to the front, we must admit that the political and diplomatic interests and manners of nations have taken their usual course in the war. Nations have been governed by the motives that have always dominated the relations of groups to one another.

Germany presents the most glaring example of the contrast between public opinion and expressed motives and political facts. Such expressions as these: that Germany's ideal is one that does violence to no one; that humanity and all human blessings stand under the protection of German arms; that, where the German spirit obtains supremacy, there freedom reigns; that in regard to England's downfall, there can be but one opinion—it is the very highest mission of German culture; that Germany's war is a holy war—such expressions as these, which are psychologically explicable without questioning their sincerity, seem out of harmony, to say the least, with what we know of Germany's political aspirations. Germany's desire for England's downfall does not appear to us to be based upon a moral motive; Germany's war seems far from being a holy war, and it is hard to see in it a means of spreading culture abroad in the world. We cannot give any place in the causes of this war to a moral desire to make the world better. However much Germany may have been convinced that Germany was destined to be a civilizing force in the world, the moral obligation thus aroused, we may be sure, did not become the real motive of the war.

The moral justifications of war are very numerous, and that this belief in war has some effect upon the spirit of war and helps to perpetuate it, and is not a mere reflection of the warlike spirit itself, may of course be admitted. Many believe that war accomplishes work in the world; war is a great organizing force. There is also a view that war is good as a moral stimulant, or as a creative moral force. War is often regarded as the means of moral revival of a people that has become sordid and dull. Schmitz (29) says that war gives reality to a country. War strengthens national character, some think. It purges nations. In war people grow hard but pure. Irwin (25) says that such war philosophy as this is to be heard broadly in Europe, chiefly in Germany, but also in France and in England. Mach (95) says that disintegration takes place in times of peace. Schoonmaker says that war has taught men socialization. Again we hear that wars are just and right because they are necessary. Redier (30) says that war is a way of giving back courage to the men of our times. This praise of war which comes from the depths of feelings, we must suppose helps to give continuity and force to these feelings.

Institutional Factors

If the spirit of war is to any extent educable, and is created in national life and is not merely something instinctive, it is presumably modified in one way and another by all those institutions that are educational in their effect. Perhaps one of the most pressing problems of education in the near future will be that of the relation of education to war. We shall need to know what the school has done to cause wars, what changes should be made in the future with reference to this influence of education upon the fundamental motives of national life. The schoolmaster has been indicted among other instigators of war. We must see how much truth there is in this allegation. We must understand also how the whole educational process, as we may see it now after the war, may be made if possible to become a greater factor in life than it has been in the past, if it is at all an important element in the development and the control of the psychic powers of nations.

Schmitz (29) says that the eighteenth century and the French Revolution were dominated by the phrase, the nineteenth by money, and that there was a danger that the twentieth century would be dominated by the schoolmaster and by the concept, but that this danger is past because life has become so full of realities. Russell says, we know, that men fight because they have been governed in their beliefs and in their conduct by authority. If this be true the authority exercised upon the mind of the child by all his teachers may be suspected of having been in one way or another an influence in creating the moral attitudes that prevail in regard to war and peace. We have heard the question raised as to whether in the past the teaching of history as the story of wars, and the presentation of the facts of history from the nationalistic point of view, have not been morally wrong.

German schools, and the method of public education the sinister effects of which we have abundantly felt—that is, the propaganda, show us educational phenomena that are psychologically of great interest and which are also unique from the educational point of view. The influence of schools seems in general so negative, and there is so little connection between what is learned as fact and conduct in the practical life that, even in the case of the German teaching of war philosophy we must suspect that this teaching has been successful only because it has gone with the strong tide of feeling in the popular mind. That the German schools have directly and indirectly fostered the development of ideas that lead in the direction of war there is no doubt. Even more influential than the specific ideas that have been implanted, is the spirit of these schools: it is their militaristic and routine life, the great authority assumed by the teacher, the specialization, that has helped to nourish the warlike spirit of Germany, quite as much as the fact, for example, that Daniel's Geography teaches that Germany is the heart of Europe, surrounded by countries that were once a part of Germany and will be again.

German education, we say, seems to be unique in the extent to which it influences public sentiment and national conduct. In general, education has appeared among the influences that lead to war rather by default of positive teaching than by anything positive it has done. Even in Germany, we should say, the spirit of war has been made to flourish less by the teaching of a narrow nationalism, by inculcating hatred, and implanting wrong conceptions of German history than by failing to provide youth with means of deep satisfaction, by failing to coordinate deep desires of the individual, and to organize individuals in a normal social life. This is true everywhere. Education has not affected life as a whole, and it has not thus far been an influence which, to any appreciable extent, has accelerated the development of peoples in their especially national aspects and relations. It has nowhere fostered any conception of the whole world as an object of social feeling. It has everywhere accepted a certain provincialism as natural and necessary, and has tacitly assumed that national boundaries are the horizon of the practical life of the child. The school has in fact failed to take advantage of its unmatched opportunity to use the imagination of the child to develop his social powers. Sociologists say that if sociologists had been more diligent in spreading abroad information about the social life, the great war would perhaps never have happened. That we may certainly doubt; something more profound must be done by education than to disseminate knowledge, if it would undertake to be a power in the world and to do anything more than add its influence to the tendencies of the day, or perhaps temporarily change the direction of these tendencies.



CHAPTER IX

ECONOMIC FACTORS AND MOTIVES

Thus far we have considered the motives of war mainly from the psychological point of view, discovering its main movement and development in the world to be a product of the psychic forces in the social order. This method, however, did not exclude the objective facts, and did not ignore the practical motives. We found that war is a manifestation of many tendencies, and in fact is related to all the deep movements in the life of society and of the individual. War comes out of the whole of life in a way to preclude the interpretation of it in terms of any single principle, or at least to prevent our finding a single cause of war. We ought to try to see now how such a psychological view of war stands in relation to certain more objective views of it, which in a very general way may be said to be centered in two closely related views. One is that war is almost exclusively an economic phenomenon, and the other that war is the work of individuals. One is the economic interpretation of history, and the other is the great man view of history.

We still see a lingering theory that war is a result of the ancient migratory or expansion impulse—that over-population and the pressure of various economic conditions are the source of the impulses that lead to war. We have seen reasons for believing, however, that war, even in the beginning, has not been a wholly practical matter. Hunger, pressure of population, migratory movements because of economic conditions, will not explain the origin and the persistence of wars. Wars are not simple as these views would imply, at any stage. That at the present time economic advantage, whether or not it be the motive of war, is in general not gained seems to be very clearly indicated. The taking of colonies and other lands may be a detriment rather than a gain to the conquering nation. The industry and the finance, of all concerned in war, are likely to suffer disaster. Peace is the great producer of wealth. War is a terrible destroyer of it. Ross says that as industry progresses, wars become continually more expensive and less profitable, that the drain is not upon man power so much as upon economic power; nations bleed the treasure of one another until some one of them is exhausted and must yield.

The theory that war is caused by the pressure of population, especially as applied to the recent war, now appears to have been very naive. It was maintained that Germany needed more room for her growing population, that Germany must have more land at home and more colonies. Claes (46), among several writers, shows that this is not true. Germany had no pressing need of more land, except for political purposes, or such land as provided the raw materials for her military industries. Bourdon (67) maintains that it is not true that Germany's population was becoming excessive. Le Bon (42) says that this theory of over-population is a myth. Still others have shown that in a country that is rapidly becoming industrial, as was Germany, where population is becoming massed in the great cities, emigration ceases; and that actually, in Germany's case, labor was imported every year, and that there are great tracts of arable land in Germany still but sparsely populated. Nicolai (79) also attacks the theory that war is sought for economic gain and says that an economic war among the European states is an absurdity.

The need of colonies is often put forward as a real and also a legitimate motive for war. Colonies must be provided, they say, for the overflow of population from the homeland; colonies are the foundation of the trade of nations—trade follows the flag. They think of colonies as the offspring of nations, and nations without colonies seem sterile and destined to extinction. We know that Germany's desire for colonies is one of the causes of the European crisis, and that the colonial question has been a fertile cause of trouble in Europe for many years. And yet we have evidence that in the present economic stage of the world, colonies do not perform to any great extent either of the functions that are claimed for them. Trade does not in general follow the flag; industrial nations do not need colonies either to provide for over-population or for commercial reasons. The acquisition of colonies does not as such benefit the great industrial and financial interests. Why, then, do nations so ardently desire colonies; and why, without colonies, do they feel themselves inferior and at a disadvantage? Why, in a stage of industry, in which it is presumably more to their advantage to conduct aggressive campaigns in countries already densely populated, are nations so willing even to fight to obtain colonies? Powers (75) says that the desire for colonies comes from the idealistic tendencies of nations. This appears to be true. Correspondingly we find that colonies are of more interest to general staffs and admiralties than to captains of industry. Colonies are wanted for military reasons, more than for trade reasons. Colonies are desired as bases of operation in the game of empire building by conquest. There is still another reason. The race for colonies perpetuates an ideal which has grown out of an earlier stage of the life of nations. Colonies were once actually the means of the greatness of nations. The longing for colonial possessions, for the extension of commerce, the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples in regard to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and conditions, hark back to an old romance of the sea. The waterways of the world, the islands and new continents have a traditional appeal, which comes down to us from the days when the small countries of Europe, one after another—Portugal, Holland, Spain, England—became great in wealth, and grew to be world powers, by their commerce and their colonial possessions. In those days the expansion of nations was not at all due to economic pressure at home. The landowners, the rules, the privileged class in general were interested in colonies, because in that direction stretched the path to fabulous wealth, and because over the seas were the lands of adventure. The seeking of colonies was both the business and the pleasure of the nations. To-day the gaining of colonies may be only a loss to nations economically, but they satisfy the craving for visible empire, and also a longing that is deep and intense because tradition and romance are deeply embedded in it.

Probably no one now believes that war among modern nations is due to a pure predatory instinct or to a migratory instinct which is supposed to have led primitive hordes to seek new habitats and to prey upon other peoples. Hunger does not now drive people in companies from their homes and pour them into other lands, although it is true that any threat which excites the old hunger-fear tends to arouse the war spirit and to stir the migratory impulse; and a deep sensitiveness to climatic conditions and a claustrophobia of peoples have remained long after the need of land urged as the main cause of war, and we hear war justified on the ground that crowded peoples require more land. This land hunger is an old motive and it still remains deep in the consciousness of peoples long after its economic significance has ceased. Just as we say the threat of hunger is often imagined, and the fear of hunger and a deep and persistent fear of peoples and the sense of danger of being engulfed and destroyed by other peoples linger in consciousness, so the consciousness of the old struggle for land remains as one of the most powerful of traditions, and any threat, near or remote, to a nation's land arouses all the forces of the war spirit, and the thought of aggression as a means of conquest of land is always alluring.

Land was once the main possession and the main need. To-day it is the chief symbol of the power of a nation. The possession of it is desired when it gives nothing in return, certainly when there are no valid economic reasons for taking it. This land hunger becomes the excuse of nations for their sins of aggression. A differentiated society, so organized that only the few, if any at all, can by any possibility profit by the taking of lands still hungers for this primitive possession. To a great extent land as a national possession has an ideal rather than a practical value. It was one of the original sources of prestige and distinction, having become the main material interest of man as soon as he came to have fixed abode. The whole historic period of the world has been a story of a struggle for land. It is the memory of this land struggle, which is one of the deep motives of war, which often determines the strategy of war, and the policies of nations.

Precisely how the system of great land ownership originated is obscure. Sumner (70) says that the belief that nobles have always held lands, and are noble by reason of this possession, is false. Nobles have in one way and another enriched themselves and bought land; or rather having acquired land they have succeeded in acquiring titles of nobility, and establishing their lines. In all nations which have retained any traces of the feudalistic form, and to some extent everywhere, land continues to be the basis of wealth, and also of power, and the land-owning classes are still mainly the ruling classes. This land-owning class is still dominated by the old traditions of the landed aristocracy. It is the fighting class, and supplies great numbers of officers for the armies. It upholds the idea of national honor in its ancient forms as related to private honor; it provides the great number of diplomatic and decorative officers. Japan, Russia, Germany and to some extent England, at least up to the time of the war, have retained feudalistic institutions, and the land interest still remains as a motive of war. In all these nations, certainly in those which have remained feudalistic in fact, it is the aristocratic and owning class that usually represents the war interest. It both rules and owns. It sends out the peasant and the worker to extend the state. It is the protected class. Laws and constitutions favor it. Taxes fall lightly upon it. Originally this was the class that received all the benefits of war. To-day it suffers less from war than do other classes. Even when it does not gain by war in a material way, it is likely to gain in power (100).

We have seen this system of class rule at work in very recent times, and it is a question whether the old ideal of land possession did not work to the ruin of Germany economically, and indirectly antagonize the industrial interests of the nation. German politics had been trying to serve two masters, who were not entirely in agreement. Germany was still a country of landed proprietors, and these proprietors always have thrown their weight to the side of war. They were by no means dominated by a motive of pure greed, and they did not seek war entirely for their own advantage, but because, we might say, they are ruled through and through by motives that can be satisfied only in a militaristic state of society. Their gain from a successful war is mainly a gain in prestige and distinction. An unsuccessful war, as we have seen, threatens their extinction as a class. All democratic movements tend toward land division, or is indeed in part precisely this process. Aristocracy without land cannot maintain itself.

The economic theory of war comes to its own in the view that industry now controls the world, that industry is the power behind politics, and that industrial needs are the real energies that make wars. We live in an industrial age, they say, and industry rules. Plainly to find the whole truth about this relation of industry to war is no simple matter. There are at least three more or less separate questions involved in it. We need to know whether an industrial state of society, or the industrial stage of economic development, is especially prone to cause wars, as distinguished from more general political and economic interests. We need to know whether wars, in an industrial stage, do really serve either the interests of industry or countries as a whole. Finally, there is the question whether those who control industry and finance do actually create wars.