COMMERCE AND WAR.
IN speaking the other day at Taunton, Sir Henry James touched with force and dignity on the sufferings which a war would cause. "I know," he said, "that there are men listening to me now who have to struggle hard to keep on the right side of the line which separates sufficiency from want ; and when I listen to carpet-knights talking largely about England's prestige requiring us to go to war ; when I read this pretty language about laurels and lilies, I have to recall to mind—it is my duty to have it ever before me—how much uffering war will inflict, not only upon the soldiers in the field, but upon men and the households of men who know little about prestige, and who will have very little to do with these laurels of victory." And a moment before he had said, "Go where you will, among the miners of Northumberland, the traders of Lancashire or Yorkshire, the industries of South Wales, or the Forest of Dean, can you find anything but en- forced idleness, half-time work, and low wages ? Can any one discern signs of prosperity in our Customs and Excise returns? Is this the time to cripple our commerce and in- crease the price of food ?" There is some truth, no doubt, in this view of the situation, but we greatly doubt whether the proportion of truth in it is nearly so large as Sir Henry James imagines, and we are quite clear that even if it were as large, it would be very possible to make too much account of it. Of course, money spent in making war is in the end money wasted. There is a positive consumption of capital, with no material gain in return. Conquest is at best a doubtful ad- vantage from the point of view of profit and loss, and even if the balance were oftener on the credit side, England has given up making conquests in Europe, and is not likely to renew the practice. All that is spent upon powder and upon com- missariats might as well be spent upon champagne or upon truffles, for any permanent effect which the outlay has upon the community. The cost of the war has to come out of the pockets of the nation somehow, and either in increased present taxation to avoid a loan, or in increased future taxa- tion to pay the interest on a loan, or in both ways, the whistle is paid for to the last farthing. But it does not follow that it is paid for in the way which Sir H. James seems to suppose. It is quite conceivable that some, perhaps many, of those very constituents whose possible suffer- ings he had in view—the men who have to struggle hard to keep on the right side of the line which separates sufficiency from want —would be actually benefited by a war, benefited, at all events, for the moment ; and when men are in as bad a plight as this, the moment is all that they have to consider. The im- mediate suffering caused by the war would no doubt be con- siderable, but it would fall chiefly upon the classes with fixed incomes, the clergy, annuitants, and all who manage just to make both ends meet out of realised capital. They would suffer doubly, by increased taxation and by increased prices. They would have to pay more for everything they bought, the Government would claim a larger share of their incomes, and they would have no more money to meet either drain with. But every one of the industries which Sir Henry James enumerates would receive an artificial stimulus from a war. The miners of Northumberland would for the time be able to make their own terms, for the demand for coal would at once revive; every English coaling-station would have to be supplied to guard against possible contingencies, since it is impossible to say where British ships might not be needed to protect British commerce. The various smaller industries which would be put in motion by the requirements of an army in the field would have to review their machinery, and the repairs and additions which such a review would necessitate would give new life to the iron trade. Ships would no longer lie useless in dock, a source of expense, not of profit. Every vessel that could not be better employed in other ways would be taken up by the Government. The prospect of high prices and possible difficulties in bring- ing home cargoes would of itself give an immense impetus to the import trade, so that between this and the Government de- mand the shipping interest would see a suddenness of revival which the most assured peace would hardly bring it. In the agricultural districts the rise in the price of wheat consequent on the cessation of Russian supplies would make the heart of the British farmer leap for joy. He would lay down all his available land in corn, hire additional labourers, and go to bed to dream that the good old times had come back. What with the demand for men created in these several ways and the daily rivalry of the recruiting-serjeant, wages would every- where go up, and for a time whatever warlike enthusiasm was to be found in the nation would be fanned by a gale of factitious prosperity. All the calls upon the markets arising directly from this war would have this in common,—that they would be additional to the ordi- nary and calculated demands. When war breaks out in a time of general prosperity, all the labour that goes to carrying it on is labour diverted from more profitable uses. But when war breaks out in a time of universal depression, the labour that goes to carrying it on is labour that is standing idle in the market-place. The ships and the materials that are pressed into the Government service are the balance of unused ships and unused materials ; consequently the profit arising from the use of them counts, in comparison with the time before the war, as so much clear gain. By-and-by, no doubt, all this sudden prosperity would have to be paid for. It would be as though, when bread was plentiful and the bakers' trade dull, all the loaves in a village should suddenly be bought up to be used in a street-fight in the place of stones. Business would go briskly enough till supper-time, but then the discovery would be made that though war prices had filled the bakers' tills, they had left the stomachs of the villagers empty. Yet even this result might seem preferable in the eyes of the bakers to the alternative of having bread left on their hands, and in the event of war coming now, there is hardly a trade in the country that would not for the time be in a similar position. The truth is Sir Henry James does not sufficiently distinguish between the consumer and the producer. War means high prices ; therefore, he argues, it means an aggravation of the existing distress. But high prices mean high wages, or at all events, they mean wages ; and though every workman is a con- sumer as well as a producer, and consequently suffers in one capacity by the very circumstance that benefits him in another, there is no proportion between the suffering and the benefit. It is easier to buy bread at a shilling the quartern loaf when you are in full work, than to buy it at sixpence the quartern loaf when you are working two days a week. "Go where you will," says Sir H. James, "you find nothing but- enforced idleness, half-time work, and low wages." Granted, but the effect of any sudden stimulus applied to many branches of trade at once would be to turn idleness into industry, half-time into whole time, low wages into high wages. How long the improvement would last i another question, how great would be the collapse that would f011ow upon it is another question ; but it is not true that war would, in the present circumstances of England, be an immediate and unmistakable disaster.
It maybe said that we are arguing against our own interest in thus depriving war of its terrors. Not at all. There is nothing that would give us less pleasure than to see Englishmen re-, fusing to fight for a good cause, whether that cause were the deliverance of a weak but gallant Power from unprovoked in- vasion, or the defence of our own hardly-won Empire against insidious attack, because they are afraid to face the conse- quences to their persons or pockets. We are not afraid of the truth about war. If it is right to fight on behalf of Turkey, let England fight, even though she have to face all the evils that Sir Henry James pictures. If it is wrong to fight on behalf of Tarkey, let England refuse to fights, even though she would not have to encounter one of the evils which Sir Henry James pictures. We have no wish to make unreal capital out of common-places about the evils war. We are rather afraid that if too much reliance is placed on this argument, the common-sense of the English workman may discover that these evils have been exaggerated, and that the pluck of the English work- man may resent the imputation that rather than let ,trade suffer he would see Imperial duties neglected and Imperial interests compromised. England is neutral, and must remain neutral in the war between Russia and Turkey, because to inter- vene in it at this stage and under this Government would be to intervene in it to the advantage, if not on the aide, of the Turks, and to identify English interests with the maintenance of a deeaying,tyranny. It is not well to mix up this para- mount consideration with another which is at best problema- tically true, and which may be demonstrably false. Our abstinence from war will be far more improving to the national character, and make a far greater impression on the public mind. of Europe, if it is based not on any nervous dread of sufferings and disasters which may never be realised, but on the resolution that, be it profitable or unprofitable, we will not fight in a bad cause, or build up the fabric of English expire on delegated oppression. The peace whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and whose paths are peace, is not the peace of those whose only aim is to sit by the flesh-pots and to eat bread to the full ; it is the peace of those who will dare to face the sea and the desert, rather than remain themselves or help to keep others in the house of bondage.
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