FROM MACHIAVELLI TO MUSSOLINI
By J. L. HAMMOND IT is an interesting and encouraging commentary on human nature that the word Machiavellian has always had a sinister sound. The pessimist looking at history in the past or politics in the present may be sur- prised that the philosopher who wrote The Prince should have gone down to posterity with such infamy to his name. For statesmen and diplomatists have been ready enough to follow his teaching when circumstances have given them much less excuse than he could plead. He lived in a society that was distracted by war and intrigue. On paper, as Dr. Gooch says in his brilliant lecture,* just Published, " no theoretical distinction between public and private morality was recognised . . . the noble conception of a Republica Christiana coloured the thought of the Western world." In practice Italy was the cockpit of petty princes and barbarian invaders who were utterly Without scruple, and Machiavelli, looking at the confusion of his age, thought that Italy could only be rescued by a man who was' mote skilful than the other schemers in this cheating world, and had in addition the resolution and Will of a Borgia. Contemporary rulers paid a lip service tu Christianity, but in their lives they served the gods Whom Machiavelli proelaimed. The new philosopher Wanted to make these vices effective for good end. Virtu, Fortuna, Necessita ; here was the new trinity Which Machiavelli substituted for the Christian creeds." 4ut he denounced bad rulers; and he regarded himself as a realist who hoped to make a better society by taking men as he found them and trying to give a higher purpose to their aims.
It is significant that all the great prophets of the Quetrine of the absolute State have arisen in societies Where self-conscious unity was a late and difficult develop- ment. In G.ermany and Italy, the countries of Hegel, I,reitseke, Bismarck, Hitler, Machiavelli and Mussolini, tile survival of the international institutions of the Middle Ages long after they had lost effective power delayed and embarrassed the creation of the national State. The 41. udern apostles of the doctrine that the State is an end 111 itself with no higher duty than to maintain itself see In nineteenth-century liberalism the same kind of disorder that their ancestors found in the debris of the Holy Roman empire. The first effort towards unity in Germany was a liberal effort, and if it had succeeded the history of the * Politica and Morals. By G. P. Gooch, (Hogarth Press. ls. 6d.) nineteenth century would have been very different. Its failure gave Bismarck his opportunity, and his success gave a fatal prestige to his methods and his doctrines. All the thinking that preceded the risorgimento in Italy was much More liberal and generous, and the course of the risorgimento was much more promising for liberalism. But the new State suffered at the beginning of its career a terrible calamity. Of the three men who had made the new Italy two were no longer needed. Garibaldi would have lost none of his fanie if he had died in 1861 ; Mazzini would have escaped a bitter old age passed in exile. Unhappily, fate spared them and removed Cavouk, who was still a young man with his work half done. If he had survived, it is possible that the parliamentary system he created would have endured the immense strain that the War and its consequences put on such systems every- where, a strain too severe for any but the strongest.
Dr. Gooch says justly that the doctrine of Mussolini and his school rests ultimately on their view of human nature. " The essence of a State," said Treitscke, " is firstly, power ; secondly, power ; thirdly, power." Dr. Gooch contrasts with this Burke's description of the State as a partnership in all, art, all science, all perfection. It is just because they believe that their view of human nature is truer, that liberals have faith in the ultimate success of political systems which allow of its free play and exercise. But Dr. Gooch points out that the sphere of conflict is no longer the nation but the world. For science has thrown mankind into a unity which gives to the relations of States a greater significance than the unity created by the Christian theology of the Middle Ages. Or perhaps we may say that it has created a world in which civilisation must collapse unless it can bring to life the idea that underlay the old unity of faith. For a series of national States, each pursuing its own selfish ad- vantage as its one exclusive aim, must create in this world just such a confusion and discord as are produced in the State when different classes and different interests so behave. The world just before the War presented in this aspect a, spectacle not unlike that which faced Machiavelli when he looked, at Italy four centuries earlier.
From this disorder there are only two methods of escape open to mankind. Machiavelli's remedy would : demand a super-Borgia, able to create and control a universal Government, making of the world what a successful Borgia might have made of Italy. The alter- native remedy is to build up an international order in which what we call power-polities are controlled by organised moral force. In the nineteenth century efforts were made to substitute some.kind of moral power for the rule of the stronger, by thinkers like Kant and the Abbe Saint Pierre, and by statesmen from the time of the Tsar Alexander to that of Gladstone. The shock of the War gave a new strength to this demand, and the League of Nations is the result. Its weakness is the inability of many who think themselves sincere in admiring and serving it to grasp all that is implied in it. ' Its main principle is the establishment of public law. No more than the law of the State does it demand Christian per- fection from all its members.
' Dr. Gooch has an interesting passage about the difference between public and private morality. " The individual may sacrifice his life ; the community must live on . . . In other words, the action of a government within certain limits is determined by considerations of what we may call a biological rather than a moral order." But public law must rest ultimately on a general confi- dence in its justice ; it creates a relationship between those who live under it which is not merely the relation- ship between power on one side and weakness on the other ; it implies an active spirit of co-operation and sympathy. It may be doubted whether any statesman today is so ready as Gladstone was to ask of his nation the sacrifices that such a system involves. The most lamentable example of failure is provided by the country whose leader was the most energetic apostle of the idea of the League and the most active of its friends at Paris. For unfortunately neither in America nor elsewhere had thinkers grasped the full range of the demand that this revolution was to make on human nature and its sense of property and pride. There, as Dr. Gooch shows, lies the final test for the League.
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