TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHY SHOULD THE NATIONS WAGE WAR?
IN writing last week on the need for "a new way of life" we were obliged to leave one aspect of the problem now before the nation almost untouched. We expressed our earnest belief that for the immediate future the nation's motto must be "Prepare, Prepare, and again Prepare," and that this preparation for war must not be merely physical, but must also be moral and intellectual. It was not enough, we urged, for the Government to build battleships and make gun-mountings and armourplates. Every man and woman in the land must engage in a work of self-preparation which shall make them, and therefore the nation which they compose, fit to bear the coining strain. We must now deal with the chief objection to our contention. It is the objection of those well-meaning and often great-hearted people, the advocates of universal peace. "Instead of urging the nation to bend all its energies to preparation for war, why," they ask, "do you not bid us prepare for peace ? You are falsely and wickedly assuming that war is the natural and inevitable fate of mankind. You have no right to make an assumption so horrible. Assume instead the humane, the Christian view that wars can cease and must cease, and you will be helping to make them cease" Behind those who take this frankly Quaker view are those troubled souls who, though they are not prepared to go the whole length of bidding the nation lay down its arms and trust to the forces of reason and humanity, yet raise the cry: "Why, oh why cannot we have peace ? Why should men want to waste their treasure and their energies in killing each other ? Why cannot they agree to rise above the savage state and settle their disputes by reason and goodwill Private individuals no longer have recourse to killing each other in order to compose their differences. Why should the nations? "
These are questions which it is most important that the nation should ask and answer. To turn aside from them half answered is to do the very thing which we are imploring our countrymen not to do,—to refuse to face the real facts, and to live in an unreal world of sentiment and emotion. Until the nation as a whole is willing to accept the hard, nay, pitiless, answer which must be given to these questions, it cannot truly prepare itself for the task before it or begin the "new way of life." The honest pilgrim when he reaches the foot of the Hill Difficulty begins at once to brace himself for the effort before him, and sets forward up the ascent. He does not stray about the meadows at the foot gathering flowers, and, while he admires their beauty, assert the belief that He who made things so beautiful and sent such sweet airs rustling through the grass could never have intended that men should toil and faint upon the dreary hillside, chilled by the biting winds or crushed by the avalanches that sweep down from the snowfields. The pilgrim grasps his staff and bends his body to the task, content that the hill is before him, and determined to delude himself with no idle dreams that if only he will have faith the mountain will fade away into the plain, and the pilgrimage become a delightful saunter through flower-strewn fields.
Still, is there any good reason why wars must continue and battle remain the last argument of nations ? Yes. They will and must continue because communities of men will always differ from each other upon many questions, and differ so fundamentally that they will not yield save to the only argument which all men admit to be unanswerable, the argument of proved superiority in physical force. Wars do not come about by accident, or through the influence of the stars, or no man knows how, but always in the last resort through the clash of human wills. Analyse any diplomatic correspondence or negotiation which has ended in war, and you will find that it falls at last into a formula of this kind :- One nation says to another : "We desire that you will refrain from taking such-and-such a course of action."
The other nation replies : "We have a right to take it, and mean to take it." The following are the next steps in the dialogue: "We warn you that if you do, we shall prevent you by force of arms."
" We will not yield to your threats. We main- tain our right to do what we will with our own."
"Then there is no way but war, and may God defend the right! "
" So be it."
"That is all very well," it will be urged, "but private. individuals are quarrelling like that and saying just such things every day, and yet no physical struggle occurs. The world has found a way out of the difficulty. It has found it in a Court of Law. Surely it must be quite as easy to apply this remedy to nations as to individuals." Alas I this hope rests on a delusion. Why do men have recourse to a Court of Law in private quarrels, however heated they become, and. however con- vinced each may be that he is morally and legally in the right ? Because they are forced to do so, and are allowed to use no other arbitrament. Does any one suppose, however, that when a litigant is beaten in a Court of Law, and believes, as one of the litigants almost always does believe, that he is suffering a gross injustice, lie would obey the order of the Court unless he knew that he would be compelled to do so ? In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred men submit to an injunction or mandamus or an order to pay damages, not because they are persuaded that their antagonists are in the right and they in the wrong, but simply and solely because they know that the whole force of the community will be set in motion to oblige them to do so. The power behind the Court of Lew is capable of crushing every obstacle that comes in its way. No doubt if one could imagine an international Court of Law armed with powers so tremendous, powers of coercing States as surely and as rapidly as private men are coerced by private Courts of Law, it would then be easy enough to substitute arbitration for war and the decision of a Hague Tribunal for the last argument of sovereign States. Unfortunately, mankind has never been able to create such a Court, and to arm it with powers sufficient to enforce its decrees. Stay, it has certainly found a method of pre- venting the clash of will in human communities, but the method is one which the free .men of Europe reject in- stinctively as bringing greater evils in its train even than the reign of war. That method is universal monarchy. If one Power in the world, or in one portion of the world, rises to such a height of strength and power that its decrees are irresistible, it becomes in fact, if not in name, the universal Sovereign, and will force the smaller States that surround it, or are embodied in it, to keep the peace. Such was the Pax Romana. So irresistible was the force of the Roman Empire that it was able to lap the world in universal peace. If during the sway of the Antonines any kinglet or chief threatened to fight with his neighbour or to resist the Imperial power, Rome spoke her final word, and crushed out opposition as the High Court crushes out opposition to an injunction or a mandamus. We see the same results in British India. India, bounded by the ocean on two sides, and on the third by a vast semicircle of mountains, ie like another world. Iu that world British power has become so supreme that wars between native States have stopped for the last seventy years. No Rajah within the Fax Brigannica dare lift his sword against his neighbour. This is not because the various peoples are not inclined to quarrel with each other or with us, but because they know that the whole weight of our power would be instantly brought into action to prevent recourse to arms. Those who think they suffer injury have to accept the decision of the Government of India in lieu of settling their disputes by war.
To return to the analogy of the Roman Empire, does anY man seriously desire the establishment of a Power so strong that all Europe must obey its decisions, even though an end could thereby be put to wars, and to the practice of settling by the sword disputes that can be settled in no other way ? Next, even if the States groaning under the burden of armaments were theoretically willing to see such a condition of things established, which Power would they choose to endow with the attributes of the Roman Em pi re,— the attributes of universal sovereignty? One has only to ask the question to see that it is unanswerable. Can one imagine the Powers agreeing to disarm while, la.Y, Russia or Germany remained armed, and endowed with the function of keeping order,—for that would be the Practical way of producing the desired result ? "Ah!" the friends of arbitration may say, "but you do not state the case fairly. We would put the universal sovereignty in eoMmission, and entrust it to an International Council in Which all the States would be represented. This Council would have at its disposal the only armed force in Europe, and therefore would always be able to carry out its decrees, which would naturally be the decrees of the majority." , Alas ! what a vista of international quarrel and Intrigue is opened up by such a prospect. Either the Illen composing the great Council would become completely denationalised, in which case the world would be ruled by a lifeless cosmopolitan oligarchy, or else it would be a Mere hotbed of international intrigue. In the first-named ease, imagine the kind of influences which would be at work In the armed force. Presumably that force would have to be composed of sections representing all nationalities. But Some nations are admittedly more warlike than others, and very soon it would be well understood that there were only three or four sections which counted. This would mean that if the officers of the majority of these put their beads together, they would be able to dominate the whole world. What a chance for turning the International Council into a universal military dictatorship I To speak Plainly, the whole idea is preposterously absurd, unless, of Course, we assume human nature completely altered and bleu grown like angels. But in that case there would be no beed. of an International Council or anything of the sort. Alen would not want to be restrained by the sword, for they would be vying with each other as to who should give way in case of a clash of wills.
Remember, however, that, as far as human experience goes, a reign of peace does not breed men less inclined for intrigue or for quarrelling, or for trying to get the better of each other. Human nature in Southern Judie, where peace has reigned for two generations, has not; been altered. Again, take Italy from 1715 to the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars. The peninsula was 4Pped in peace, but men degenerated instead of improved, d no one will dare to say that Florence and Venice in .„1790 presented, a, worthier spectacle than Florence and venice in less peaceful times. In truth, universal peace, whether produced by a universal Empire or by some ace, idea, does not breed. worthier men and women. That la not a pleasant fact. On the contrary, it is a very sad fact, but it is one which we are bound to face, for if we do not face it we shall delude ourselves with shams and shadows.
, Must the world, then, continue fighting, and is there no Hope .for peace, or, to put it in another way, is that deep a. nd instinctive desire for peace which unquestionably is Planted in the minds of the best of human beings a (mare and a delusion ? How naturally arises in every woman's heart an echo of the old song :— "Oh, were I King of France, Or better, Pope of Rome,
I'd have no fighting men abroad, No weeping maids at home."
Is that cry always to be denied ? We are far from saying that it must be, and far from denying that war is !). terrible evil. That it dominates the world as it does lo a. riddle which we have not the power to solve, and Witleh we will make no pretence at explaining. All can do is to point out to our countrymen that 'L.,. must face the fact that war is the law of the civIllsed world quite as much as of the uncivilised. aud ,that mankind has as yet found no other way of settling which will is to prevail when what we have te, rifled a clash of wills takes place between communities 1‘,110 believe themselves equal in physical force. Such „clash of wills among nittious is as certain to take place tune to time in the future as in the past. We rue.'llde ourselves if we think that arbitration and the Nil of peace and reason constitute one of the ways by which the British nation may escape from the anxieties difficulties which now beset it. That door is 14°8ed..at any rate for this generation, and he is no irtle friend of his country who pretends otherwise. To r_eturn to our metaphor. The Hill Difficulty is before us, ,aad the sooner we bend our backs and our wills to the teak of surmounting it the better for us. It is true that the icy whirlwind and the avalanche bear death and destruction in their train, and may overwhelm us. Nevertheless, to the bold, the cautious, and the strong- hearted climber the summits offer clear air, wide prospects, bracing winds, and with them health and strength. If love and delight are of the valley, truth, freedom, and independence belong to the mountain-top. In any case, and whatever the future, our path is now onward and upward. We have stayed already too long among the meadows and by the reed-fringed streams.
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