The Social Fu fiction of War
11-T is the fashion nowadays to decry war, and to -I- subscribe to Mr. Norman Angell's thesis, that war can be profitable neither to the victors nor to the vanquished. That thesis has now been challenged, by Mr. R. G. Hawtrey in Economic Aspects of Sovereignty (Longmans, 9s.). He holds that war has hitherto performed a definite social and economic function. Like a Chinese general, who lately explained that the civil wars in his country are only " an inexperienced method of parliamentary change," Mr. Hawtrey holds that war between nations, is merely an inexperienced method of opening up neglected areas for economic development. He seeks to show that war may be not only profitable to the victors, but necessary to the welfare of human society, and that unless we can devise sonic machinery which will perform its function with less waste of human life and energy, war will continue to be necessary and to recur. He arrives at this 'conclusion by an examination of the economic functions of 'sovereign powers.
Mr. Angell maintains that sovereignty is not the same as possession, and in this Mr. Hawtrey concurs. He argues, however, that the sovereign power exercises over its territory some of the powers which correspond to those of the landlord over a private estate and that these powers are particularly great in relatively un- developed regions. They relate to concessions, safe- guarding of monopolistic industries and services such as the supply of water and electricity, granting of way- leaves, &c. They can all be used to further the advantage of the sovereign power by favouring its own adherents —a new term, carefully defined by Mr. Hawtrey—and conferring on them the opportunities for profit-making which these powers imply. They are therefore very valuable and particularly so in undeveloped regions where the opportunities for profit-making are greater than in " old countries." The opportunities have become particularly valuable since the advent of the industrial revolution increased the power of capital, and modern conditions of war also make the possession of mobile capital resources, such as are fostered by trade between a country and its dependencies, a military asset of the first importance. Power of this sort is therefore' a means to further power and under international anarchy no nation can afford to be left behind in the struggle for power, since discrimination in a new territory may put all other adherents but those of the sovereign at a disadvantage in that territory for centuries.
Nor is this danger averted when all the politically vacant land has been taken up. The decay of the sovereign power, or its inefficiency on the economic side, or the decline in the birth rate of its adherents, may cause a territory to fall behind in development, and thus become a temptation to all those powers who are feeling the pressure of their population on their natural resources. Under the present system, or at least that which prevailed before the establishment of the League of Nations, namely, international anarchy, the common way of transferring territory from the sovereignty of an inefficient power to that of an efficient one, and thus making its resources fully available for development, was by war. War itself is, of course, evil, but the ends for which it is undertaken, even if we take the real and not the ostensible ends, are not evil but good.
Out of this valley of despair there are two possible ways. Machinery must be created which will either prevent discrimination by the sovereign power in favour of its adherents, or will provide without war for the transfer of sovereignty from one power to another, when the transfer shall seem desirable in the economic or other interests of the world. The trouble is that at present the persons exercising the sovereign power in all nations regard discrimination not as an evil, nor even so much as a political necessity or duty, though both these views are current, but as a law of nature. The Mandates system of the League of Nations, following the tradition of the British Empire prevents, in the territories which are administered under it, open discrimination in the form of duties or legal penalties, but it cannot prevent the " natural " discrimination which is based on the sympathy between two adherents of the same Power, and, moreover, it does not cover much of the territory which may come into dispute.
The solution will, in any case, have to be a drastic one. Any possible machinery for conciliation or arbitration must perpetuate the struggle for power, because in the last resort it is power which sways the solution in any such form of organized bargaining. It is difficult to avoid Mr. Hawtrey's conclusion that what is necessary is some super-national authority of a judicial rather than a conciliatory nature, for nothing else can finally override sovereign rights in the same way that a national legislature overrides private rights. This the League does not at present supply, except for mandated territories through the Mandates Commission.
There is another reason. The co-operation of the United States is essential for the proper organization of peace, but she is inhibited from this co-operation very largely by the fear that she may be held to have assumed " moral responsibility for maintaining the political and territorial status quo," to quote Mr. Wickham Steed in the May number of the Review of Reviews. Mr. Steed goes on to quote an article in the New York World, in which it is stated that there is as yet " no adequate political equivalent of war." Without this equivalent it will probably never be possible to convince the United States that Earope is really peaceful in intention, and upon this rock of scepticism will founder all attempts to bring about world-wide co-operation in the work of peace.
NEMO.
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