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 Cornell University Library 
 JC311 .Z76 1918 
 
 Nationality & aovernment 
 
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 3 1924 030 438 620 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030438620 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
NATIONALITY 
 & GOVERNMENT 
 
 WITH OTHER WAR-TIME ESSAYS 
 
 ^y ..-\ 
 
 ALFRED E.'^'ZIMMERN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE GREEK COMMONWEALTH' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PACB 
 I. GERMAN CULTURE AND THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH I 
 
 3» 
 
 '^ U. NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 III. TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 6l 
 
 , IV. THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY ij 
 
 V, EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL lOI 
 
 VI. THE UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION 127 
 
 VII, PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 136 
 
 VIII. PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 172 
 
 ' IX. THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE FUTURE OF BRITISH INDUSTRY 204 
 
 X. RECONSTRUCTION 24J 
 
 XI. THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY AFTER THE WAR 252 
 
 XII. CAPITALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 278 
 
 XIII. TUB NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 298 
 
 XIV. THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 3JI 
 
 INDEX 363 
 
 iv 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The present volume is not a book in the true sense of 
 the word, but a collection of articles and lectures written 
 at different times during the past few years. In pre- 
 paring these for publication I have made no attempt to 
 bring them up to date or to remove the inevitable 
 element of repetition and minor inconsistency. 
 
 It was after a good deal of hesitation that I yielded 
 to the suggestion that the volume should be compiled. 
 Under ordinary circumstances I should have preferred 
 to wait until I had the opportunity of working out the 
 material in a more close-knit and satisfactory form. But 
 that opportunity is not likely to occur till some time 
 after the end of the war, when irrevocable action may 
 already have been taken on several of the issues discussed 
 in these pages. It seemed to me, therefore, that if I 
 had anything to say which might be of use at the present 
 time it would be pedantic to stand on ceremony as to the 
 mode of saying it. So the book must be judged, not as 
 a finished product or as embodying mature conclusions 
 arising out of the experience of the last four years, but 
 as a contribution to the general stocktaking and re-valua- 
 tion of ideas and opinions to which the war has given 
 rise in every thinking mind. Such unity as it can claim 
 arises from the fact that the problems treated in it, 
 whether international, imperial or domestic, political, 
 industrial or educational, have been thought out in close 
 relation to one another rather than considered, each for 
 itself, in a water-tight compartment. Some readers may 
 
 ix b 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 perhaps find it helpful to have nationality discussed as a 
 problem in education, democracy as a problem in Uni- 
 versity organisation, the future of British industry as a 
 problem in constitutionalism, and the closer union of the 
 British Commonwealth as a problem in practical inter- 
 nationalism. 
 
 All the essays have been written since the outbreak 
 of the war with one exception, that on " Education, 
 Social and National." I have included this partly because 
 it seemed of sufficient intrinsic interest, and partly in 
 order to indicate that my general attftude has not been 
 arrived at under the stress of passing events, but that the 
 war has on the whole confirmed rather than reversed 
 opinions previously formed. On the other hand, I have 
 deliberately refrained from reprinting an essay on " Seven 
 Months in America," written in 191 2, because, although 
 in some important respects events have borne it out, it 
 did far less than justice to the fundamental unity and 
 idealism of the American Commonwealth. 
 
 I have also omitted, as unsuited to a book covering 
 so wide a scope, several essays containing a more detailed 
 treatment of some of the issues discussed here. One of 
 them, a study of the problem of women in industry, has 
 already been in part reprinted. Others may perhaps 
 see the light in another form. In reprinting, as from 
 my own pen, articles which have appeared in the Round 
 Table, I take the opportunity of thanking the friends 
 in collaboration with whom they were written. 
 
 Now that the book as a whole is before me, I may 
 add a few words of prefatory comment. 
 
 Some readers may complain that it is pitched through- 
 out in too intellectual and detached a tone. To that 
 I can only answer that the detachment, if such there is, 
 springs not from defect of feeling, but from anxiety to 
 make as sincere and reasonable a contribution as is 
 humanly possible to the great intellectual debate which 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 is being carried on side by side with the military conflict. 
 It is one of the minor ironies of the war that those who 
 have the most acute personal sense of the internecine 
 character of the struggle are by that very fact the better 
 able to take a relatively detached view of the issues at 
 stake, not for this or that country, but for the world. I 
 hope that there is nothing in this book, however vehe- 
 mently felt or phrased, which could not be read without 
 offence by a sincere and reasonable mind on the other 
 side. Our differences go deep — how deep none know 
 better than those who have sought most earnestly to 
 plumb them. But unless the secession of Germany from 
 the intellectual life of the West is to be permanent, 
 plumbed they must some time be from both sides. 
 
 Another criticism that may occur to the reader is 
 that some of the comments and judgments made in the 
 book are already out of date. Here I would reply that 
 if circumstances may, and indeed must, affect estimates 
 formed on matters of practical policy, the philosophy 
 underlying such statements of opinion may remain un- 
 changed. Thus American readers in particular may feel 
 that I have taken up an unduly critical attitude in the 
 earlier essays towards proposals for a league of nations. 
 But at the time when those essays were written, the 
 United States was still a neutral and autocratic Russia 
 a member of the Alliance. It seemed to me, therefore, 
 wiser, as well as franker, to lay stress on the necessity 
 of consolidating the constitutional fabric of the greatest 
 existing system of international government and to inter- 
 pret its underlying ideals rather than to follow the easier 
 course of pointing out the desirability of building up a 
 still more comprehensive system out of seemingly un- 
 promising materials. To-day, thanks to the policy of 
 President Wilson, the whole outlook is changed. The 
 great schism between the Eastern and Western Hemi- 
 spheres, which future historians will rank with the schism 
 between the Eastern and Western Churches, has been 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 bridged over once and for all. Now that all the leading 
 progressive states have recognised by their actions that 
 in the modern world a man's duty to his neighbour 
 carries with it world-wide obligations, it is possible to 
 look forward with confidence, not merely to the final 
 extinction of the idea of world domination by a single 
 military Power, but to the inauguration of a new inter- 
 national order. Problems which were academic, and 
 even ensnaring, two years ago, have now passed into the 
 region of practical politics. The constitutional diffi- 
 culties, of course, still remain to be surmounted ; and 
 to the statements of principle made in the two earlier 
 essays I unreservedly adhere ; but if I were rewriting 
 them to-day I should throw the greater emphasis on the 
 constructive side of the argument. We cannot aim at 
 more, it is true, even under the present conditions, than 
 at substituting co-ordination for anarchy, co-operation for 
 competition, in interstate relations, and It remains as im- 
 portant as ever to remember that co-operation between 
 independent authorities is a poor and ineffective make- 
 shift for federal institutions. But co-operation has its 
 uses, the most important of which are educational ; and 
 In the new era that will open after the war It Is vital to 
 the future of the world that the fullest possible scope 
 and encouragement should be given to projects and 
 experiments in this field. 
 
 A similar change has taken place In the outlook as 
 regards another problem Incidentally discussed in these 
 pages — the future of the oppressed nationalities of Eastern 
 Europe. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy has finally, 
 as was Inevitable under the system of 1867, linked its 
 fate with that of its German masters ; but the alternative 
 to the Dual Monarchy is no longer, as It long appeared 
 to be, the formation of a number of independent and self- 
 regarding National States. The Conference of repre- 
 sentatives of oppressed nationalities, held in Rome In 
 April, 191 8, is one of the most epoch-making events of 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 the war. It marks the solemn and definite recognition 
 of common ideals and a common policy by the Poles, the 
 Czecho-Slovaks, the Jugo-Slavs, and the Roumanians ; 
 and it is the herald of a new and happier era in which, 
 however much greater the difficulties confronting them, 
 the dwellers in the region between the Baltic and the 
 Mediterranean will evolve for themselves institutions 
 comparable to those enjoyed in North America by the 
 equally mixed races dwelling between the Adantic and 
 the Pacific. The English-speaking peoples are vitally 
 concerned with the reconstruction of Eastern Europe, if 
 only because upon its stability and upon the happiness 
 of its peoples the peace of the world in the future 
 depends, and there is much that both Britain and the 
 United States can do to promote their welfare. Nothing 
 in these pages, I hope, will be taken as indicating any 
 want of sympathy with their aspirations or of under- 
 standing for the peculiar difficulties which they have 
 inherited from an evil past. 
 
 No English-speaking liberal can fail to cherish the 
 same hope of free institutions and federal reconstruction, 
 and to feel an even more compelling spur to active 
 effort and sympathy for the great family of pfeoples 
 between the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific, which, 
 in spite of recent events, is still for us United Russia. 
 In this connection, something must be added in explana- 
 tion of the tone and temper of the concluding essay. 
 
 Since that essay was written, in January of this year, 
 the international intellectual outlook, if I may be per- 
 mitted the expression, has been profoundly modified. 
 The winter of 1917-18 was, for the democracies of 
 Western Europe, the intellectual crisis of the war, just 
 as the spring of 1 9 1 8 has brought the military crisis, and 
 the moral crisis came, for the peoples of the British 
 Commonwealth in August, 1914, and for the people of the 
 United States between February and April, 19 17. The 
 issue at stake last winter was whether the intellectual 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 forces opposed to Prussian militarism should operate in one 
 army or two, whether the war of ideas should be a simple 
 conflict between Law and Violence, between moral 
 idealism and corporate selfishness, or a triangular struggle 
 between two rival conceptions of violence and a wider 
 and more generous doctrine. Had that threatened 
 alignment been maintained, there would have been no 
 new order ; for even if militarism, in its Prussian form, 
 had been overthrown (and its fall would necessarily have 
 been postponed if not averted) the struggle would have 
 been continued over its corpse between the two sur- 
 viving combatants. Upon its issue, probably long 
 delayed, would have depended whether the life of 
 Europe should be rebuilt on a basis of revolutionary 
 despotism or along the lines of the great liberal tradition. 
 To those for whom liberalism is a political religion, 
 the enthusiasm aroused, among certain sections of the 
 Allied peoples, by the high-sounding proclamations of 
 the Bolshevist leaders came as one of the most un- 
 welcome surprises of the war. As so often, in this 
 country at any rate, it was an enthusiasm based on 
 illusions and attributing to its object the generous 
 emotions of those who professed it. But for the moment 
 the army of freedom was in real peril from its worst 
 enemy, Ignorance. 
 
 The crisis ended abruptly with the humiliating col- 
 lapse of the Bolshevist chanipion at the Brest negotiations, 
 and their still more humiliating sequel. Those who had 
 been taking Trotsky's words at their face value awoke 
 with a shock to the realisation that the man who had 
 deliberately cast away the arms of the flesh was equally 
 lacking, when the test came, in the arms of the spirit. 
 From that time forward, Bolshevism, that pale shadow of 
 Prussianism, has been out of the reckoning, at least so 
 far as the English-speaking countries are concerned, and 
 the flighty group of intellectuals whose emotions were 
 stirred by its glittering generalities have either sought 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 new and more sequestered shrines to worship at or 
 silently rejoined the main body of steadfast Allied 
 opinion. 
 
 But the interlude of Bolshevist propaganda, if it has 
 passed as suddenly as it came, has left its lesson behind 
 it. In its brief and meteoric course it illuminated the 
 whole intellectual scene, throwing a glaring light on our 
 prevailing amateurishness and confusion of mind, and 
 revealing how unready we are to face the practical tasks 
 of reconstruction. Unless we can clear our minds of the 
 jungle of catchwords which still obsess them and make 
 sure of the foundations of our liberal faith, we cannot 
 hope, when the moment comes, to embody our ideals 
 into concrete proposals and our cherished opinions into 
 acts of domestic or international policy. After four 
 years, and perhaps longer, in which to prepare for the 
 day of reckoning, we shall be found as helpless and em- 
 barrassed, and as well-meaning, as the foolish virgins of 
 the parable. 
 
 Let us then attempt to draw firm and clear the in- 
 exorable frontier which divides liberalism from the 
 territories of its two opponents. I use the word 
 " liberalism " (without a capital letter) in default of a 
 better term^ to describe the philosophy or attitude of 
 mind which, if not always avowed, does in fact constitute 
 the foundation on which the political opinions and 
 
 ' I prefer " liberalism " to " democracy " because " democracy," although 
 often used in a wider sense, is essentially a constitutional term, whereas 
 " liberalism " denotes a philosophy and habit of mind. Peoples enjoying 
 responsible self-government may, and sometimes have been, illiberal : con- 
 versely, liberalism may flourish among peoples which do not enjoy self-govern- 
 ment, although not indeed unless they are reaching out towards it. Liberalism, 
 for instance, is dominant in the British Dominions, which, as is frequently 
 pointed out in these pages, are not fully self-governing communities. The 
 British Commonwealth itself, the greatest bulwark of liberalism in the world 
 at the present time, is not a Democracy but only the Project of a Democracy. 
 German writers in their criticisms of liberal doctrine often use the term 
 " Christian idealism," with a shadow of contempt resting on both words. But 
 many liberals are not Christians, and if idealism involves refusing to face facts, 
 this may indeed be a besetting sin of liberalism, but it is not essential or 
 peculiar to it. 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 traditions of the English-speaking peoples and of the 
 French and Italian democracies are built up. 
 
 Liberalism is more than a creed : it is a state of mind, 
 a political religion. It has its saints and martyrs as v?ell 
 as its philosophers and teachers, and their numbers in- 
 crease day by day. It is impossible therefore to exhaust 
 its meaning and essence in a few cold phrases. But, 
 viewed simply as a creed, liberalism has two fundamental 
 articles of faith. The first is that right and wrong apply 
 to public affairs. The second is that Justice and Liberty 
 are the chief political goods, and Injustice and Servitude 
 the chief political evils. 
 
 Liberalism thus interpreted covers many minds, many 
 temperaments and many prejudices. It is a doctrine 
 traditional among the allied peoples and common to 
 nearly all their public men. In ordinary times to pro- 
 fess adherence to its tenets might be accounted a 
 commonplace. To-day, when the future of the world 
 is at stake, and the ranks are being closed up in despite 
 of minor differences, it is not simply an opinion or an 
 attitude common to the allied peoples ; it is the cement 
 of their alliance and the hope for the future of the world. 
 The enemies of liberalism, whether within or without 
 the allied countries, are the enemies of the human race. 
 
 Both France and Italy are traditional homes of 
 liberalism. In Italy the stream of political doctrine has 
 never ceased to flow in the channel dug for it by Mazzini, 
 himself the lineal successor, in so much of his teaching, 
 of the great mediaeval Christian exponents of political 
 morality and obligation. Italy, like the rest of us, has 
 her Prussians and her Bolshevists, as the sowers of tares 
 make it their business to let us know, but never in her 
 recent history has the liberal tradition been more firmly 
 grounded, or proved a source of more inspiration, than 
 at the present moment. 
 
 Of the liberalism of France it is almost presumptuous 
 to speak. In the French intellectual tradition, the 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 greatest and most uninterrupted in Europe, politics and 
 morality have never been disjoined, and, unless Prussian- 
 ism dominates the Continent, they never will be. It is 
 mere British wilfulness and insularity on the part of a 
 certain clique of opinion to raise a heresy-hunt whenever 
 a French estimate of the task before us, usually so much 
 more clear-sighted than our own, does not accord with 
 what we should like to believe. Advocacy of a League of 
 Nations comes ill from such parochial and intolerant 
 minds. 
 
 Among the English-speaking peoples liberalism is, 
 and has been throughout their recent history, the pre- 
 vailing and almost universally accepted political creed. 
 The love of Freedom and the respect for Justice, the 
 sense of the close relationship between ethics and politics, 
 between " the dispositions that are lovely in private life," 
 and the policy and conduct of the commonwealth, are 
 so ingrained and traditional with us that we tend to 
 exaggerate the differences of opinion, outlook and tem- 
 perament which must inevitably arise between parties 
 and public men who are agreed on fundamentals. Thus 
 the most far-reaching occasion of difference in the last 
 two centuries, that which led to the Great Schism of 
 1776, arose, not out of a conflict between liberalism and 
 its opposite, but out of the clash of two rival conceptions 
 of freedom and corporate responsibility. Thus, again, 
 to return to our own day, men like the late Lord 
 Salisbury and Mr. Elihu Root appear to some, on their 
 political record, as Conservatives and even Reactionaries ; 
 while, in the eyes of others, the names of Keir Hardie 
 and George Lansbury spell Socialism and even Revolution. 
 In reality, however, seen, as it were, from above, the two 
 former are merely Liberals of the Right, and the two 
 latter Liberals of the Left. Such differences of outlook 
 and judgment form the normal and healthy play of our 
 political system, which could not, indeed, function at all 
 unless both sides were prepared to accept, not simply the 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 constitutional framework inside which their activities are 
 carried on, but the moral ideals and principles which 
 created and sustain it. 
 
 There are, indeed, two small groups in the public 
 life of this island which are avowedly and defiantly anti- 
 liberal — which contumeliously reject one or other or 
 both of the cardinal tenets of liberalism. There is a 
 small group of intellectual Prussians on the extreme 
 Right, and a small group of intellectual Bolshevists on 
 the extreme Left. From the intellectual point of view 
 their influence is, and always will be, negligible ; for the 
 British people will never consciously and with open eyes 
 embrace either the Prussian tenets proclaimed by certain 
 politicians and journalists, or the Bolshevist tenets in 
 fashion among a certain coterie of intellectuals. They 
 will never be argued into seeing the world as a blood- 
 stained panorama of nations red in tooth and claw, or 
 as a cosmopolitan society of individuals engaged in 
 liberating their creative impulses. They have too much 
 humanity for the one and too much humour for the 
 other. But the danger to which liberalism is exposed 
 in this country is not that of direct intellectual assault : 
 it is that of permeation, of the weakening of morale, of 
 the gradual degradation of opinion and sapping of moral 
 fibre by the admittance of alien and treacherous elements 
 into the house of its faith. The two chief weaknesses of 
 British liberalism are ignorance and amiability. 
 
 To this process of permeation many factors have 
 contributed. Two, and two only, can be mentioned 
 here. The first is the influence of the Press. Few 
 civilised nations are so undiscriminating as the British 
 in their mental appetite ; and to the fastidious observer, 
 who knows what is good of its kind, there is something 
 at once pathetic and unnatural in the seeming indifference 
 of the British public as to what it will buy or borrow at a 
 bookshop, or devour in a first- or third-class carriage. 
 Carlyle described the Press as the pulpit of the modern 
 
PREFACE xix 
 
 age ; but within the last generation the cheapjack has 
 climbed the pulpit stairs and used that exalted position 
 purely as a post of commercial vantage. No one can 
 estimate the injury inflicted on the moral and political 
 life of this country by conscienceless vendors of printed 
 matter. It is no palliation of their offence that, when 
 they sold it, most of them knew no better ; and it is a 
 just punishment to some of them for their misdeeds that 
 when, in time of national crisis, they desire to use their 
 influence to better purpose, they are unable to undo the 
 eflFects of their past either upon the public or upon 
 themselves. 
 
 But the most conspicuous instance of British ignor- 
 ance and amiability is provided by the history of the 
 relations between British liberalism of the Left and the 
 Continental Socialist movement. As this raises issues 
 which may be of practical consequence in the near future 
 it may merit a brief explanation. 
 
 Socialism, in this land of mist, is a name for some- 
 thing indistinctly progressive which by its very vagueness 
 has contrived to excite a sense of romance among ardent 
 spirits and of nervous apprehension among persons of 
 more timorous temper. To the great middle body of 
 British opinion it holds out the piquant attraction of the 
 unexplored. At one moment it is the public enemy ; at 
 another, something which all sensible people are without 
 knowing it. 
 
 Not so on the Continent, and more especially in 
 Germany. There Socialism is not a vague opinion but 
 an aggressive force ; not an aspiration but a body of 
 doctrine. This doctrine originated, in its essentials, with 
 Karl Marx and has been mainly worked out by his 
 German and Austrian followers. 
 
 This Socialism has two cardinal tenets. The first is 
 " the materialistic conception of history" — in other words, 
 that human history is not a record of moral efibrt but of 
 a blind conflict of economic forces. The second is " the 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 doctrine of the Class Struggle "—in other words, that 
 this economic conflict has always, of necessity, taken the 
 form of a struggle between rich and poor, between those 
 who hold the keys of economic power and those who are 
 deprived of the control of the instruments of production. 
 
 This is the true Socialist creed, as judged by its 
 literature and history. It is diametrically opposed to 
 liberalism. Liberalism does not deny the importance of 
 economic forces ; but it does deny that they have not 
 been and cannot be directed and controlled by moral 
 action. It does not deny the inequalities of wealth or 
 the advantages enjoyed by the holders of economic 
 power ; but it does deny that the class-struggle is the 
 most important fact in human history, and that there is 
 no higher principle at stake than the ascendancy of the 
 under-dog. To Socialism, economics is the centre of 
 life, and the conquest of wealth and power by the 
 oppressed class the supreme aim. To liberalism spiritual 
 forces are the centre of life ; and the supreme aim is 
 the application of moral and spiritual principles both to 
 politics and to industry. Between these two outlooks 
 there is no compromise. The diflferences go down to 
 the depths. They can be ignored or evaded for a time 
 by ingenious combinations of words ; but sooner or 
 later they must come to a head in questions of policy 
 which raise fundamental issues of principle. 
 
 The Socialist gospel is a false gospel. Nevertheless, 
 Marx, who proclaimed it, was a prophet, and, as is the 
 case with most false prophets, much of what he said was 
 true. The strength of his appeal lay, and lies, not in his 
 gospel, which is sounding brass, but in his genius for 
 propaganda and in the facts to which it can point in its 
 support. As a working faith liberalism is to Socialism 
 as the Sermon on the Mount to the Athanasian Creed 
 or the mysteries of Isis ; but the Socialist analysis of 
 the existing social and economic system has armed its 
 exponents with arguments which are all the more effective 
 
PREFACE xxi 
 
 because of the seeming insincerity and moral bankruptcy 
 of their opponents in the more orthodox political camp. 
 
 It will rank as one of the greatest misfortunes which 
 have befallen modern Europe, and as an important con- 
 tributory cause of the war, that Socialism has displaced 
 liberalism during the last two generations as the chief 
 or at least the most vocal progressive influence on the 
 Continent. It is perhaps not surprising, considering 
 the religious history of Western Europe, that, faced with 
 the devil of Prussian reaction, men should have turned 
 to the Beelzebub of Socialism to cast it out. Beelzebub 
 can always offer to his followers a full measure of blood- 
 lust and the prospect of quick and catastrophic triumphs. 
 But the harm done to the political and moral life of 
 Europe by the concentration of public interest upon the 
 struggle between two such combatants is incalculable ; 
 only those can essay to measure it who have tried 
 honestly to assimilate the ideas of the rival partisans 
 and have thought their way into the secret chambers 
 of the Socialist mind, marking at every turn of the 
 passage how close and intricate are the pathways which 
 connect the iron fatalism of Marx with the iron militarism 
 of Bismarck. 
 
 The North Sea, rightly called by the Germans an 
 ocean, has ever since the seventeenth century been a 
 more effective intellectual frontier than the Atlantic ; and 
 in Britain and the English-speaking countries overseas, 
 where, thanks mainly to the Puritan tradition, political 
 opinions are firmly rooted in moral ideals, the spirit and 
 tenets of Socialism have never found secure lodgment. 
 Germany has of late been the home of what the theo- 
 logians called "reduced Christianities," which resemble 
 the original as a stoned cherry the fruit on the tree. 
 Similarly, England might be called the home of "reduced 
 Socialisms," in which Nonconformist elders proclaim 
 the doctrine of the class-struggle between a prayer and a 
 hymn and Trade Union leaders, who know their New 
 
xxii PREFACE 
 
 Testament far better than their Marx, vainly strive to 
 adjust their minds to the materialistic conception of 
 history; in which, finally, the Socialist Republic, to 
 which the orthodox continental believer looks forward 
 on the morrow of the barricades, is replaced, in a country 
 where Socialist parsons preach at court, by the far more 
 solid and satisfying prospect of a " Co-operative Common- 
 wealth." 
 
 The object of these remarks is not to poke fun at the 
 Labour Party or to discredit the diplomacy by which 
 Mr. Arthur Henderson and others have maintained the 
 precarious intellectual connection between the Continental 
 Socialist movement and what passes in this country by 
 the same name. It is natural and right that the British 
 working-class movement should be in contact with the 
 parallel movement on the Continent, and, things being 
 as they are, the Socialist bodies are the natural point 
 of connection. We are concerned, in these pages, not 
 with policies, but with principles, and no shadow of 
 criticism is intended of the recent Inter-ally Conference 
 or of the concrete recommendations there adopted. But 
 the spectator is entitled to point out that the meeting 
 of minds at that Conference was necessarily in many 
 respects, as the laboured preamble proves, a meeting of 
 opposites ; nor can he repress his natural curiosity to 
 know which side, in the event, will yield to the other 
 when, at the moment of decision, the principles of the 
 preamble come home to roost. 
 
 It is our British habit to sacrifice a great deal for 
 unity ; and in choosing what we shall sacrifice, we 
 mostly begin with the generalities. But we stand at a 
 moment in history in which a policy of intellectual 
 opportunism will no longer avail. Already trouble has 
 befallen us — and more is in store — owing to our thought- 
 less and amiable acceptance of principles drawn from the 
 armoury of an opposing philosophy. Self-determination, 
 for instance, to which homage is being paid by shallow 
 
PREFACE xxiii 
 
 minds, is not a principle of liberalism but of Bolshevism ; 
 and one branch of the English-speaking race waged the 
 greatest war in its history to resist it. It is impossible 
 to believe, at one and the same time, in the teachings of 
 Trotsky and in the political religion of Abraham Lincoln, 
 in Soviet manifestoes and in the Gettysburg speech. 
 " Self-determination " may be a confused attempt to 
 express the desire for freedom and its responsibilities ; 
 or it may be a convenient cover for narrow-heartedness or 
 caprice. But, in the last analysis, it is a doctrine equally 
 alien to the liberal and to the Catholic tradition. It is a 
 poor and unhelpful substitute for the Christian doctrine 
 of human brotherhood and for Lincoln's great formula of 
 dedication. " No annexations," again, which has won its 
 way into favour, is a cynical Socialist catchword invented 
 by those who can conceive of no relation between the 
 strong and weak but one of rapine and exploitation. It 
 is a formula for the priest and the Levite but not for 
 the good Samaritan. The liberal alternative, as it is also 
 the Christian alternative, to " no annexations " is the 
 principle of trusteeship. Unless liberals are to be false 
 to their deepest ideals they must have the sincerity to 
 recognise, and the courage to proclaim, their principles in 
 the face of the world, even at the cost of the familiar 
 charges of hypocrisy and cant. 
 
 But if liberalism of the Left is in danger of compro- 
 mising with its principles, liberals of the Right are in equal 
 danger of forgetting their significance. Liberalism is a 
 far deeper and more revolutionary creed than Socialism : 
 but it has been a plant of slow growth, and we are only 
 just beginning to descry its social applications. The 
 war has brought them suddenly to the front of the scene. 
 " Events are slowly making clear to us that the chief 
 significance of the war is not political but social. ... It 
 will lead, by way of a new economic order, to a new 
 order of society altogether." These words are not quoted 
 from a Socialist politician or a Utopian pamphleteer. 
 
xxiv PREFACE 
 
 but from a recent book by one of the shrewdest 
 and most successful of German industrial magnates/ 
 They are as true of Britain as of Germany, The war 
 is bringing in its train unimagined social and economic 
 changes. It is proving our French Revolution — but 
 a revolution not waged for class-ascendancy or achieved 
 as a result of civil strife, but carried through, so far, 
 by consent in the service of a greater cause. The old 
 Britain of social privilege and economic inequality is 
 being consumed in the furnace of war ; and new ideas 
 and institutions are arising in its stead. It is a world in 
 which liberals both of the older and newer school have 
 not yet found their bearings ; nor will serious differences 
 be avoidable when the new social adjustments come to be 
 made. But if the immediate task of liberalism is to make 
 the world safe for political democracy, its next and 
 equally necessary task is to apply its principles to the 
 system by which the world's work is carried on. If 
 stress has been laid in these pages on that aspect of 
 liberalism which has been defined as "the principle of 
 the Commonwealth," it is because, both in politics and 
 economics, it is not only the best antidote to the 
 peculiar temptations of our time but enshrines the most 
 fruitful lessons for the tasks, imperial, domestic, and 
 international which lie immediately before us. 
 
 A. E. Z. 
 
 April 30, 1 91 8. 
 
 ' Walther Rathenau, Die neue Wirtschap, Berlin, 1917, p. 6. 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 GERMAN CULTURE AND THE BRITISH 
 COMMONWEALTH.^ 
 
 " Peace cannot become a law of human society, except by passing through 
 the struggle which will ground life and association on foundations of justice 
 and liberty, on the wreck of every power which exists not for a principle but 
 for a dynastic interest." — Mazzini in 1867. 
 
 "The greatest triumph of our time, a triumph in a region, loftier than that 
 of electricity or steam, will be the enthronement of this idea of Public Right 
 as the governing idea of European policy ; as the common and precious in- 
 heritance of all lands, but superior to the passing opinion of any. The fore- 
 most among the nations will be that one which, by its conduct, shall gradually 
 engender in the minds of the others a fixed belief that it is just." — Gladstone. 
 
 The war of 19 14 is not simply a war between the Dual 
 Alliance and the Triple Entente : it is, for Great Britain 
 and Germany especially, a war of ideas — a conflict between 
 two different and irreconcilable conceptions of govern- 
 ment, society, and progress. An attempt will be made 
 in this essay to make clear what these conceptions are, 
 and to discuss the issue between them as impartially as 
 possible, from the point of view, not of either of the 
 combatant Powers, but of human civilisation as a whole. 
 
 There are really two great controversies being fought 
 out between Great Britain and Germany : one about the 
 ends of national policy, and another about the means to 
 be adopted towards those or any other ends. The latter 
 is the issue raised by the German Chancellor's plea — not 
 so unfamiliar on the lips of our own countrymen as we 
 are now tempted to believe — that " Necessity knows no 
 
 ' From "The War and Democracy," published December, 1914. 
 
 I B 
 
2 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 law." It is the issue of Law and " scraps of paper " 
 against Force, against what some apologists have called 
 " the Philosophy of Violence," but which, in its latest 
 form, the French Ambassador has more aptly christened 
 " the Pedantry of Barbarism," That issue has lately been 
 brought home, in its full reality, to the British public 
 from the course of events in Belgium and elsewhere, and 
 need not here be elaborated. Further words would be 
 wasted. A Power which recognises no obligation but 
 force, and no law but the sword, which marks the path of 
 its advance by organised terrorism and devastation, is the 
 public enemy of the civilised world. 
 
 But it is a remarkable and significant fact that the 
 policy in which this ruthless theory is embodied com- 
 mands the enthusiastic and united support of the German 
 nation. How can this be explained ? 
 
 It must be remembered in the first place that the 
 German public does not see the facts of the situation as 
 we do. On the question of Belgian neutrality and the 
 events which precipitated the British ultimatum, what we 
 know to be a false version of the facts is current in Ger- 
 many, as is evident from the published statements of the 
 leaders of German thought and opinion, and it may be 
 many years before its currency is displaced. 
 
 This difliculty should serve to remind us how defec- 
 tive the machinery of civilisation still is. One of the 
 chief functions of law is, not merely to settle disputes 
 and to enforce its decisions, but to ascertain the true facts 
 on which alone a settlement can be based. The fact that 
 no tribunal exists for ascertaining the true facts in 
 disputes between sovereign governments shows how far 
 mankind still is from an established " rule of law " in 
 international affairs. Not only is the Hague powerless to 
 give and, still more, to enforce its decision on the 
 questions at issue between the European Powers. It 
 has not even the machinery for ascertaining the facts 
 of the case and bringing them to the notice of neutral 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 3 
 
 governments and peoples in the name of civilisation as a 
 whole. 
 
 But apart from divergent beliefs as to the facts, it is 
 remarkable that thinking Germany should be in sympathy 
 with the spirit and tone of German policy, which led, 
 as it appears to us, by an inexorable logic to the violation 
 of Belgian neutrality and the collision with Great Britain. 
 But the fact, we are told, admits of easy explanation. 
 Thinking Germany has fallen a victim to the teachings of 
 Treitschke and Nietzsche — Treitschke with his Macchia- 
 vellian doctrine that " Power is the end-all and be-all of 
 a State," Nietzsche with his contempt for pity and the 
 gentler virtues, his admiration for " valour," and his 
 disdain for Christianity. 
 
 This explanation is too simple to fit the facts. It 
 may satisfy those who know no more of Treitschke's 
 brilliant and careful work than the extracts culled from 
 his occasional writings by General von Bernhardi and the 
 late Professor Cramb. It may gratify those who, with 
 so many young German students, forget that Nietzsche, 
 like many other prophets, wrote in allegory, and that 
 when he spoke of valour he was thinking, not of 
 " shining armour," but of spiritual conflicts. But careful 
 enquirers, who would disdain to condemn Macaulay on 
 passages selected by undiscriminating admirers from his 
 " Essays," or Carlyk for his frank admiration of Thor and 
 Odin and the virtues of Valhalla, will ask for a more 
 satisfying explanation. Even if all that were said about 
 Treitschke and Nietzsche were true, it would still remain 
 an unsolved question why they and their ideas should 
 have taken intellectual Germany by storm. But it is not 
 true. What is true, and what is far more serious, both 
 for Great Britain and for Europe, is that men like Har- 
 nack, Eucken, and Wilamowitz, who would repudiate all 
 intellectual kinship with Macchiavelii and Nietzsche — 
 men who are leaders of European thought, and with 
 whom and whose ideas we shall have to go on living in 
 
4 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Europe — publicly support and encourage the policy and 
 standpoint of a Government which, according to British 
 ideas, has acted with criminal wickedness and folly, and 
 so totally misunderstands the conduct and attitude of 
 Great Britain as honestly to regard us as hypocritically 
 treacherous to the highest interests of civilisation. 
 
 That is the real problem ; and it is a far more com- 
 plex and difficult one than- if we had to do with a people 
 which had consciously abandoned the Christian virtues 
 or consciously embarked on a conspiracy against Belgium 
 or Great Britain. The utter failure of even the most 
 eminent Germans to grasp British politics, British institu- 
 tions, and the British point of view points to a funda- 
 mental misunderstanding, a fundamental divergence of 
 outlook, between the political ideals of the two countries. 
 It is the conflict between these ideals which forms the 
 second great issue between Germany and Great Britain ; 
 and on its outcome depends the future of human 
 civilisation. 
 
 What is the German ideal ? What do German 
 thinkers regard as Germany's contribution to human 
 progress ? The answer comes back with a monotonous 
 reiteration which has already sickened us of the word. 
 It is Kultur, or, as we translate it, culture. Germany's 
 contribution to progress consists in the spread of her 
 culture. 
 
 Kultur is a difficult word to interpret. It means 
 "culture" and a great deal more besides. Its primary 
 meaning, like that of "culture," is intellectual and 
 aesthetic : when a German speaks of " Kultur " he is 
 thinking of such things as language, literature, philo- 
 sophy, education, art, science, and the like. Children in 
 German schools are taught a suh]&ct CdWed. Kulturgeschkhte 
 (culture-history), and under that heading they are told 
 about German literature, .German philosophy and religion, 
 German painting, German music, and so on. 
 
 So far, the English and the German uses of the word 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 5 
 
 roughly correspond. We should probably be surprised if 
 we heard it said that Shakespeare had made a contribu- 
 tion to English " culture " : but, on consideration, we 
 should admit that he had, though we should not have 
 chosen that way of speaking about him. But there is a 
 further meaning in the word Kultur, which explains why 
 it is so often on German lips. It means, not only the 
 product of the intellect or imagination, but the product 
 of the disciplined intellect and the disciplined imagination. 
 Kultur has in it an element of order, of organisation, of 
 civilisation. That is why the Germans regard the study 
 of the " culture " of a country as part of the study of its 
 history. English school-children are beginning to be 
 taught social and industrial history in addition to the 
 kings and queens and battles and constitutions which 
 used to form the staple of history lessons. They are 
 being taught, that is, to see the history of their country, 
 and of its civilisation, in the light of the life and liveli- 
 hood of its common people. The German outlook is 
 different. They look at their history in the light of the 
 achievements or its great minds, which are regarded as 
 being at once the proof and the justification of its civili- 
 sation. To the question, " What right have you to call 
 yourselves a civilised country ? " an Englishman would 
 reply, " Look at the sort of people we are, and at the 
 things we have done," and would point perhaps to the 
 extracts from the letters of private soldiers printed in the 
 newspapers, or to the story of the growth of the British 
 Commonwealth ; a German would reply (as Germans are 
 indeed replying now), "Look at our achievements in 
 scholarship and science, at our universities, at our systems 
 of education, at our literature, our music, and our paint- 
 ing ; at our great men of thought and imagination : at 
 Luther, Diirer, Goethe, Beethoven, Kant." 
 
 Kultur then means more than " culture " : it means 
 culture considered as the most important element in civilisation. 
 It implies the disciplined education which alone, in the 
 
6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 German view, makes the difFerence between the savage 
 and the civilised man. It implies the heritage of intel- 
 lectual possessions which, thanks to ordered institutions, 
 a nation is able to hand down from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 We are now beginning to see where the British and 
 Gfirman attitudes towards society and civilisation diverge. 
 Broadly, we may say that the first difFerence is that 
 Germany thinks of civilisation in terms of intellect while 
 we think of it in terms of character. Germany asks, 
 "What do you know?" "What have you learnt?" 
 and regards our prisoners as uncivilised because they 
 cannot speak German, and Great Britain as a traitor to 
 civilisation because she is allied with Russia, a people of 
 ignorant peasants. We ask, " What have you done ? " 
 "What can you do?" and tend to undervalue the 
 importance of systematic knowledge and intellectual 
 application. 
 
 But we have found no reason as yet for a conflict of 
 ideals. Many English writers, such as Matthew Arnold, 
 have emphasised the importance of culture as against 
 character ; yet Matthew Arnold's views were widely 
 different from those of the German professors of to-day. 
 If their sense of the importance of culture stopped short 
 at this point, we should have much to learn from 
 Germany, as indeed we have, and no reason to oppose 
 her. What is there then in the German admiration for 
 culture which involves her in a conflict with British ideals ? 
 
 The conflict arises out of the alliance between German 
 culture and the German Government. What British 
 public opinion resents, in the German attitude, is 
 not culture in itself, about which it is little concerned, 
 but what we feel to be its unnatural alliance with 
 military power. It seems to us wicked and hypocritical 
 for a government which proclaims the doctrine of the 
 " mailed fist " and, like the ancient Spartans, glories in 
 the perfecting of the machinery of war, to be at the same 
 
GERM /IN CULTURE 7 
 
 time protesting its devotion to culture, and posing as a 
 patron of the peaceful arts. It is the Kaiser's speeches 
 and the behaviour of the German Government which 
 have put all of us out of heart with German talk about 
 culture. 
 
 Here we come to a fundamental point of difference 
 between the two peoples. The close association between 
 culture and militarism, between the best minds of the 
 nation and the mind of the Government, does not seem 
 unnatural to a modern German at all. On the contrary, 
 it seems the most natural thing in the world. It is the 
 bedrock of the German system of national education. 
 Culture to a German is not only a national possession ; 
 it is also, to a degree difficult for us to appreciate, a 
 State product. It is a national possession deliberately 
 handed on by the State from generation to generation, 
 hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the use of its 
 citizens. When we use the word " culture " we speak of 
 it as an attribute of individual men and women. Ger- 
 mans, on the other hand, think of it as belonging to 
 nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of national 
 education. That is why they are so sure that all Germans 
 possess culture. They have all had it at school. And it 
 is all the same brand of culture, because no other is 
 taught. It is the culture with which the Government 
 wishes its citizens to be equipped. That is why all 
 Germans tend, not only to know the same facts (and a 
 great many facts too), but to have a similar outlook on 
 life and similar opinions about Goethe, Shakespeare and 
 the German Navy. Culture, like military service, is a 
 part of the State machinery. 
 
 Here we come upon the connecting link between 
 culture and militarism. Both are parts of the great 
 German system of State education. 
 
 "Side by side with the influences of German education," 
 wrote Dr. Sadler in 1901,^ "are to be traced the influences of 
 
 ' "Board of Education Special Reports," vol. ix, p. +3. 
 
8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 German military service. The two sets of influence interact on 
 one another and intermingle. German education impregnates the 
 German army with science. The German army predisposes 
 German education to ideas of organisation and discipline. Mili- 
 tary and educational discipline go hand in hand. . . . Both are 
 preserved and fortified by law and custom, and by administrative 
 arrangements skilfully devised to attain that end. But behind all 
 the forms of organisation (which would quickly crumble away 
 unless upheld by and expressing some spiritual force), behind both 
 military and educational discipline, lies the fundamental principle 
 adopted by Scharnhorst's Committee on Military organisation in 
 Prussia in 1807 : 'AH the inhabitants of the State are its 
 defenders by birth.' " 
 
 Here at last we have come to the root of the matter. 
 It is not German culture which is the source and centre 
 of the ideas to which Great Britain is opposed : nor yet 
 is it German militarism. Our real opponent is the system 
 of training and education, out of which both German 
 culture and German militarism spring. It is the organi- 
 sation of German public life, and the " spiritual force " 
 of which that organisation is the outward and visible 
 expression. 
 
 Let us look at the German ideal more closely, for it 
 is worthy of careful study. It is perhaps best expressed 
 in words written in 1830 by Coleridge, who, like other 
 well-known Englishmen of his day (and our own) was 
 much under the influence of German ideas. Coleridge, 
 in words quoted by Dr. Sadler, defines the purpose of 
 national education as " to form and train up the people 
 of the country to obedient, free, useful, and organisable 
 subjects, citizens and patriots, living to the benefit 
 of the State and prepared to die in its defence." In 
 accordance with this conception Prussia was the first 
 Power in Europe to adopt a universal compulsory system 
 of State education, and the first also to establish a 
 universal system of military service for its young men. 
 The rest of Europe perforce followed suit. Nearly 
 every state in Europe has or professes to have a universal 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 9 
 
 system of education, and every State except Great Britain 
 has a system of universal military service. The Europe 
 of schools and camps which we have known during the 
 last half-century is the most striking of all the victories 
 of German " culture." 
 
 Discipline, efficiency, duty, obedience, public service : 
 these are qualities that excite admiration everywhere — in 
 the classroom, in the camp, and in the wider field of life. 
 There is something almost monumentally impressive to 
 the outsider in the German alliance of School and Army 
 in the service of the State. Since the days of Sparta 
 and Rome, there has been no such wonderful govern- 
 mental disciplinary machine. It is not surprising that 
 " German organisation " and " German methods " should 
 have stimulated interest and emulation throughout the 
 civilised world. Discipline seems to many to be just the 
 one quality of which our drifting world is in need. 
 
 " If this war had been postponed a hundred or even fifty 
 years," writes a philosophic English observer in a private letter, 
 " Prussia would have become our Rome, worshipping Shake- 
 speare and Byron as Pompey or Tiberius wrorshipped Greek 
 literature, and disciplining us. Hasn't it ever struck you what a 
 close parallel there is between Germany and Rome ? " (Here 
 follows a list of bad qualities which is better omitted.) ..." The 
 good side of it is the discipline ; and the modern world, not 
 having any power external to itself which it acknowledges, and 
 no men (in masses) having yet succeeded in being a law to them- 
 selves, needs discipline above everything. I don't see where you 
 will get it under these conditions unless you find some one with 
 an abstract love of discipline for itself. And where will you find 
 him except in Prussia ? After all, it is a testimony to her that, 
 unlovely as she is, she gives the law to Germany, and that the 
 South German, though he dislikes her, accepts the law as good 
 for him." And to show that he appreciates the full consequences 
 of his words he adds : " If I had to live under Ramsay MacDonald 
 (provided that he acted as he talks), or under Lieutenant von 
 FSrstner " (the hero of Zabern), " odious as the latter is, for my 
 soul's good I would choose him : for I think that in the end, I 
 should be less likely to be irretrievably ruined.'" 
 
10 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Here is the Prussian point of view, expressed by a 
 thoughtful Englishman with a wide experience of educa- 
 tion, and a deep concern for the moral welfare of the 
 nation. What have we, on the British side, to set up 
 against his arguments ? 
 
 In the first place, we must draw attention to the 
 writer's candour in admitting that a nation cannot adopt 
 Prussianism piecemeal. It must take it as a whole, its 
 lieutenants included, or not at all. Lieutenant von 
 Forstner is as typical a product of the Prussian system 
 as the London policeman is of our own ; and if we adopt 
 Prussian or Spartan methods, we must run the risk of 
 being ruled by him. 
 
 " No other nation," says Dr. Sadler, " by imitating a little bit 
 of German organisation can hope thus to achieve a true repro- 
 duction of the spirit of German institutions. The_ fabric of its 
 organisation practically forms one whole. That is its merit and 
 its danger. It must be taken all in all or else left unimitated. 
 And it is not a mere matter of external organisation. . . . 
 National institutions must grow out of the needs and character 
 (and not least out of the weakness) of the nation which possesses 
 them." 
 
 But, taking the system as a whole, there are, it seems 
 to me, three great flaws in it — flaws so serious and vital 
 as to make the word " education " as applied to it almost 
 a misnomer. The Prussian system is unsatisfactory, 
 firstly, because it confuses external discipline with self- 
 control ; secondly, because it confuses regimentation with 
 corporate spirit ; thirdly, because it conceives the nation's 
 duty in terms of " culture " rather than of character. 
 
 Let us take these three points in detail. 
 
 The first object of national education is — not any- 
 thing national at all, but simply education. It is the 
 training of individual young people. It is the gradual 
 leading-out (e-ducation), unfolding, expanding, of their 
 mental and bodily powers, the helping of therft to become, 
 not soldiers, or missionaries of culture, or pioneers ' of 
 
GERMAN CULTURE ii 
 
 Empire, or even British citizens, but simply human 
 personalities. "The purpose of the Public Elementary 
 School," say the opening words of our English code, " is 
 to form and strengthen the character and to develop the 
 intelligence of the children entrusted to it." In the 
 performance of this task external discipline is no doubt 
 necessary. Obedience and consideration for others are 
 not learnt in a day. But the object of external discipline 
 is to form habits of self-control which will enable their 
 possessor to become an independent and self-respecting 
 human being — and Incidentally, a good citizen. " If I 
 had to live under Ramsay MacDonald, or the Prussian 
 Lieutenant," says our writer, " I would choose the latter, 
 for my soul's good." But our British system of educa- 
 tion does not proceed on the assumption that its pupils 
 are destined to " live under " any one. Our ideal is that 
 of the free man, trained in the exercise of his powers and 
 in the command and control of his faculties, who, like 
 Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior " (a poem which em- 
 bodies the best British educational tradition) : 
 
 "... Through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw." 
 
 Neglect for the claims of human personality both 
 amongst pupils and teachers is the chief danger of a State 
 system of education. The State is always tempted to 
 put its own claims first and those of its citizens second — 
 to regard the citizen as existing for the State, instead of 
 the State for its citizens. It is one of the ironies of 
 history that no man was more alive to this danger than 
 Wilhelm von Humboldt, the gifted creator of the 
 Prussian system of education. As the motto of one of 
 his writings he adopted the words, " Against the govern- 
 mental mania, the most fatal disease of modern governments" 
 and when, contrary to his own early principles, he under- 
 took the organisation of Prussian education he insisted 
 that " headmasters should be left as free a hand as 
 
12 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 possible in all matters of teaching and organisation." 
 But the Prussian system was too strong for him and his 
 successors, and his excellent principles now survive as no 
 more than pious opinions. The fact is that in an un- 
 democratic and feudal State such as Germany then was, 
 and still largely is, respect for the personality of the 
 individual is confined to the upper ranks of society. 
 
 " I do not know how it is in foreign countries," says one of 
 Goethe's heroes,^ " but in Germany it is only the nobleman who 
 can secure a certain amount of universal or, if I may say so, 
 personal education. An ordinary citizen can learn to earn his 
 living and, at the most, train his intellect ; but, do what he will, 
 he loses his personality. . . . He is not asked, " What are you ? " 
 but only, " What have you ? what attainments, what knowledge, 
 what capacities, what fortune ? . . . The nobleman is to act and 
 to achieve. The common citizen is to carry out orders. He is 
 to develop individual faculties, in order to become useful, and it is 
 a fundamental assumption that there is no harmony in his being, 
 nor indeed is any permissible, because, in order to make himself 
 serviceable in one way, he is forced to neglect everything else. 
 The blame for this distinction is not to be attributed to the 
 adaptability of the nobleman or the weakness of the common 
 citizen. It is due to the constitution of society itself." 
 
 Much has changed in Germany since Goethe wrote 
 these words, but they still ring true. And they have 
 not been entirely without jtheir echo in Great Britain 
 itself.^ 
 
 But man cannot live for himself alone. He is a 
 
 » Wilhelm Meister's " Lehrjahre," Book v. chapter iii. 
 
 2 The contrast which has been drawn in the preceding pages, as working- 
 class readers in particular will understand, is between the aints, not the 
 achievements, of German and British education. The German aims are far 
 more perfectly achieved in practice than the British. Neither the law nor the 
 administration of British education can be acquitted of "neglect for the 
 claims of human personality." The opening words of the English code, quoted 
 on p. II above, are, alas ! not a statement of fact but an aspiration. We 
 have hardly yet begun in England to realise the possibilities of educational 
 development along the lines of the British ideal, both as regards young people 
 and adults. If we learn the lesson of the present crisis aright, the war, so far 
 from being a set-back to educational progress, should provide a new stimulus 
 for eftort and development. 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 13 
 
 corporate being ; and, personality or no personality, he 
 has to fit into a world of fellow-men with similar human 
 claims. The second charge against the German system 
 is that it ignores the value of human fellowship. It 
 regards the citizens of a country as " useful and organis- 
 able subjects " rather than as fellow-members of a 
 democracy, bound together by all the various social ties 
 of comradeship and intercourse. 
 
 The Prussian system, with its elaborate control and 
 direction from above, dislikes the free play of human 
 groupings, and discourages all spontaneous or un- 
 authorised associations. Schoolboy " societies," for 
 instance, are in Germany an evil to be deplored and 
 extirpated, not, as with us, a symptom of health and 
 vigour, to be sympathetically watched and encouraged. 
 Instead, there is a direct inculcation of patriotism, a 
 strenuous and methodical training of each unit for his 
 place in the great State machine. We do not so read 
 human nature. Our British tendency is to develop 
 habits of service and responsibility through a devotion 
 to smaller and more intimate associations, to build on a 
 foundation of lesser loyalties and duties. We do not 
 conceive it to be the function of the school to teach 
 patriotism or to teach fellowship. Rather we hold 
 that good education is fellowship, is citizenship, in the 
 deepest meaning of those words ; that to discover and to 
 exercise the responsibilities of membership in a smaller 
 body is the best training for a larger citizenship. A 
 school, a ship, a club, a Trade Union, any free associa- 
 tion of Englishmen, is all England in miniature. 
 
 " To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon 
 we belong to in society," said Burke long ago, " is the first 
 principle,, the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first 
 link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country 
 and mankind. . . . We begin our public affections in our families. 
 No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neigh- 
 bourhoods, to our habitual provincial connections. These are 
 
H NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 inns and resting-places . , , so many images of the great country, 
 in which the heart found something which it could fill." ^ 
 
 There is one fairly safe test for a system of educa- 
 tion : What do its victims think of it ? " In Prussia," 
 says Dr. Sadler, " a schoolboy seems to regard his school 
 as he might regard a railway station — a convenient and 
 necessary establishment, generally ugly to look at, but 
 also, for its purpose efficient." The illustration is an apt 
 one : for a Prussian school is too often, like a railway 
 station, simply a point of departure, something to be got 
 away from as soon as possible. "In England a boy who 
 is at a good secondary school cares for it as an officer 
 cares for his regiment or as a sailor cares for his ship," 
 or, we may add, as a Boy Scout cares for his Troop.^ 
 
 Democracy and discipline, fellowship and freedom, 
 are in fact not incompatible at all. They are comple- 
 mentary : and each can only be at its best when it is 
 sustained by the other. Only a disciplined and self- 
 controlled people can be free to rule itself, and only a 
 free people can know the full meaning and happiness of 
 fellowship. 
 
 Lastly, the German system regards national " culture " 
 rather than national character as the chief element in 
 civilisation and the justification of its claim to a domi- 
 nant place in the world. This view is so strange to those 
 who are used to present-day British institutions that it is 
 hard to make clear what it means. Civilisation is a word 
 which, with us, is often misused and often misunderstood. 
 Sometimes we lightly identify it with motor cars and 
 gramophones and other Western contrivances with which 
 individual traders and travellers dazzle and bewilder the 
 untutored savage. Yet we are seldom tempted to 
 
 1 " Reflections on the French Revolution," pp. 292, 494 (of vol. iii. of 
 " Collected Works," ed. 1899). 
 
 2 "Special Reports," ix. p. 113. Dr. Sadler's article deals with secondary 
 schools only. Unfortunately, no one can claim that the idea of fellowship is 
 as prominent in English elementary schools, or even in all secondary schools, 
 as the quotation inight suggest. 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 15 
 
 identify it, like the Germans, with anything narrowly 
 national ; and in our serious moments we recognise that 
 it is too universal a force to be the appanage of either 
 nations or individuals. For to us, when we ask our- 
 selves its real meaning, civilisation stands for neither 
 language nor culture nor anything intellectual at all. It 
 stands for something moral and social and political. It 
 means, in the first place, the establishment and enforce- 
 ment of the Rule of Law, as against anarchy on the one 
 hand and tyranny on the other ; and, secondly, on the 
 basis of order and justice, the task of making men fit for 
 free institutions, the work of guiding and training them 
 to recognise the obligations of citizenship, to subordinate 
 their own personal interests or inclinations to the common 
 welfare, the " commonwealth." That is what is meant 
 when it is claimed that Great Britain has done a 
 " civilising " work both in India and in backward Africa. 
 The Germans reproach and despise us, we are told,^ for 
 our failure to spread " English culture " in India. That 
 has not been the purpose of British rule, and English- 
 men have been foolish in so far as they have presumed 
 to attempt it : England has to learn from Indian culture 
 as India from ours. But to have laid for India the 
 foundations on which alone a stable society could rest, to 
 have given her peace from foes without and security 
 within, to have taught her, by example, the kinship of 
 Power and Responsibility, to have awakened the social 
 conscience and claimed the public services of Indians in 
 the village, the district, the province, the nation, towards 
 the community of which they feel themselves to be 
 members, to have found India a continent, a chaos of 
 tribes and castes, and to have helped her to become a 
 nation — that is not a task of English culture : it is a task 
 of civilisation. 
 
 Law, Justice, Responsibility, Liberty, Citizenship — 
 the words are abstractions, philosophers' phrases, destitute 
 
 ' For evidence of this see Cramb's " Germany and England," p. 25. 
 
1 6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 it might seem, of living meaning and reality. There 
 is no such thing as English Justice, English Liberty, 
 English Responsibility. The qualities that go to the 
 making of free and ordered institutions are not national 
 but universal. They are no monopoly of Great Britain. 
 They are free to be the attributes of any race or any 
 nation. They belong to civilised humanity as a whole. 
 They are part of the higher life of the human race. 
 
 As such the Germans, if they recognised them at all, 
 probably regarded them. They could not see in them 
 the binding power to keep a great community of nations 
 together. They could not realise that Justice and 
 Responsibility, if they rightly typify the character of 
 British rule, must also typify the character of British 
 rulers ; and that community of character expressed in 
 their institutions and worked into the fibre of their life 
 may be a stronger bond between nations than any mere 
 considerations of interest. Educated Indians would find 
 it hard to explain exactly why, on the outbreak of the 
 war they found themselves eager to help to defend 
 British rule. But it seems clear that what stirred them 
 most was not any consideration of English as against 
 German culture, or any merely material calculations, but 
 a sudden realisation of the character of that new India 
 which the union between Great Britain and India, between 
 Western civilisation and Eastern culture, is bringing into 
 being, and a sense of the indispensible need for the 
 continuance of that partnership.* 
 
 I The reader will again understand that it is British aims rather than 
 British achievements which are spoken of. That British rule is indispensable 
 to Indian civilisation is indeed a literal fact to which Indian opinion bears 
 testimony j and it is the conduct and character of generations of British 
 administrators which have helped to bring this sense of partnership about. 
 But individual Englishmen in India are often Far from understanding, or 
 realising in practice, the purpose of British rule. Similarly, the growth of a 
 sense of Indian nationality, particularly in the last few years, is a striking and 
 important fact. But it would be unwise to underestimate the gigantic diffi- 
 culties with which this growing national consciousness has to contend. The 
 greatest of these is the prevalence of caste .divisions, rendering impossible the 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 17 
 
 It is just this intimate union between different nations 
 for the furtherance of the tasks of civilisation which it 
 seems so difficult for the German mind to understand. 
 " Culture," with all its intimate associations, its appeal to 
 language, to national histdry and traditions, and to 
 instinctive patriotism, is so much simpler and warmer a 
 conception : it seems so much easier to fight for Germany 
 than to fight for Justice in the abstract, or for Justice 
 embodied in the British Commonwealth. That is why 
 even serious German thinkers, blinded by the idea of 
 culture, expected the break-up of the British Empire. 
 They could imagine Indians giving their lives for India, 
 Boers for a Dutch South Africa, Irishmen for Ireland, or 
 Ulstermen for Ulster ; but the deeper moral appeal 
 which has thrilled through the whole Empire, down to 
 its remotest island dependency, lay beyond their ken. 
 
 Let us look a little more closely at the German idea 
 of national culture rather than national character as the 
 chief element in civilisation. We shall see that it is 
 directly contrary to the ideals which inspire and sustain 
 the British Commonwealth, and practically prohibits that 
 association of races and peoples at varying levels of social 
 progress which is its peculiar task, 
 
 "Culture," in the German idea, is the justification of 
 a nation's existence. Nationality has no other claim. 
 Goethe, Luther, Kant, and Beethoven are Germany's 
 title-deeds. A nation without a culture has no right to a 
 ** place in the sun." 
 
 "History," says Wiiamowitz in a lecture delivered in 1898, 
 " knows nothing of any right to exist on the part of a people or a 
 knguage without a culture. If a people becomes dependent on a 
 foreign culture " {i.e. in the German idea, on a foreign civilisa- 
 tion) " it matters little if its lower classes speak a different lan- 
 guage : they, too . . . must eventually go over to the dominant 
 
 free fellowship and social intercourse which alone can be the foundation of a 
 sense of common citizenship. Apart from this there are, according to the 
 census, forty-three races in India, and twenty-three languages in ordinary use. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 langiiage. . . . Wisely to further this necessary organic process 
 is a blessing to all parties ; violent haste will only curb it and 
 cause reactions. Importunate insistence on Nationality has never 
 anywhere brought true vitality into bein^ and often destroyed 
 vitality ; but the superior Culture which, sure of its inner strength, 
 throws her doors wide open, can win men's hearts." ^ 
 
 In the light of a passage like this, from the most 
 distinguished representative of German humanism, it is 
 easier to grasp the failure of educated Germany to under- 
 stand the sequel of the South African War, or the 
 aspirations of the Slav peoples, or to stigmatise the' folly 
 of their statesmen in Poland, Denmark, Alsace-Lorraine, 
 and Belgium. 
 
 With such a philosophy of human progress as this, 
 German thinkers and statesmen look out into the future 
 and behold nothing but conflict — eternal conflict between 
 rival national " cultures," each seeking to impose its 
 domination. " In the struggle between Nationalities," 
 writes Prince Btilow," in defence of his Polish policy, 
 putting into a cruder form the philosophy of Wilamowitz, 
 " one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil ; one 
 is the victor and the other the vanquished. It is a law 
 of life and development in history that when two 
 national civilisations meet they fight for supremacy." 
 
 Here we have the necessary and logical result of the 
 philosophy of culture. In the struggle between cultures 
 no collaboration, no compromise even, is possible. 
 German is German ; Flemish is Flemish : Polish is 
 Polish : French is French. Who is to decide which is 
 the " more civilised," which Is the fitter to survive ? 
 Force alone can settle the issue. A Luther and Goethe 
 may be the puppets pitted in a contest of culture against 
 Maeterlinck and Victor Hugo. But it is Krupp and 
 Zeppelin and the War-Lord that pull the strings. As 
 Wilamowitz reminds us,, it was the Roman legions, not 
 
 » "Speeches and Lectures," pp. 147-148 (1913 edition). 
 * "Imperial Germany," p. 245 (ist edition). ■ 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 19 
 
 Virgil and Horace, that stamped out the Celtic languages 
 and romanised Western Europe, It is the German army, 
 two thousand years later, that is to germanise it. It is 
 an old, old theory ; Prussia did not invent it, nor even 
 Rome. " You know as well as we do," said the 
 Athenians in 416 B,c. to the representatives of a small 
 people of that day.* "that right, as the world goes, is only 
 in question between equals in power, while the strong do 
 what they can and the weak suffer what they must " ; and 
 they went on, like the Kaiser, to claim the favour of the 
 gods, " neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in 
 any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or 
 practise among themselves." There is, in fact, to be no 
 Law between Nations but the Rule of the Stronger. 
 
 Such seems to many the meaning of the present 
 European situation — a stern conflict between nations and 
 cultures, to be decided by force of arms. The bridges 
 between the nations seem broken down, and no one can 
 tell when they will be repaired. The hopes that had 
 gathered round international movements, the cosmo- 
 politan dreams of common action between the peoples 
 across the barriers of States and Governments, seem to 
 have vanished into limbo ; and the enthusiastic dreamers 
 of yesterday are the disillusioned soldiers and spectators 
 of to-day. Nationality, that strange, inarticulate, un- 
 analysable force that can summon all men to her tents in 
 the hour of crisis and danger, seems to have overthrown 
 the international forces of to-day, the Socialists, the 
 Pacifists, and, strongest of all, the Capitalists, as it over- 
 threw Napoleon and his dreams of Empire a hundred 
 years ago. What Law is there but force that can decide 
 the issue between nation and nation ? And, in the 
 absence of a Law, what becomes of all our hopes for 
 international action, for the future of civilisation and the 
 higher life of the human race ? 
 
 But in truth the disillusionment is as premature as 
 
 * Thucydides, Book v, 89 and 105. 
 
20 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the hopes that preceded it. We are still far ofFfrom the 
 World-State and the World-Law which formed the 
 misty ideal of cosmopolitan thinkers. But only those 
 who are blind to the true course of human progress 
 can fail to see that the day of the Nation-State is even 
 now drawing to a close. There is in fact at present 
 working in the world a higher Law and a better patriot- 
 ism than that of single nations and cultures, a Law and 
 a patriotism that override and transcend the claims of 
 Nationality in a greater, a more compelling, and a more 
 universal appeal. The great States or Powers of to-day, 
 Great Britain, the United States, France, ahd (if they 
 had eyes to see it) Russia, Germany and Austria-Hun- 
 gary, are not Nation-States but composite States — States 
 compacted of many nationalities united together by a 
 common citizenship and a common law. Great Britain, 
 the United States, the German Empire, and Austria- 
 Hungary bear in their very names the reminder of the 
 diverse elements of which they are composed ; but France 
 with her great African Empire, and Russia with her 
 multitudinous populations, from Poland to the Pacific, 
 from Finland to the Caucasus, are equally composite. In 
 each of these great States nations have been united under 
 a common law ; and where the wisdom of the central 
 government has not ''broken the bruised reed or 
 quenched the smoking flax " of national life, the nations 
 have been not only willing but anxious to join in the 
 work of their State. Nations, like men, were made not 
 to compete but to work together ; and it is so easy, so 
 simple, to win their good-hearted devotion. It takes all 
 sorts of men, says the old proverb, to make a world. It 
 takes all sorts of nations to make a modern State. 
 
 "The combination of different nations in one State is as 
 necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men 
 in society. ... It is in the cauldron of the State that the fusion 
 takes place by which the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity 
 of one portion of mankind may be communicated to another. . . . 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 21 
 
 If we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral 
 duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those 
 States are substantially the most perfect which, like the British 
 and Austrian Empires, include various distinct nationalities 
 without oppressing them." 
 
 So wrote Lord Acton, the great Catholic historian, fifty 
 years ago, when the watchwords of Nationality were on 
 all men s lips, adding, in words that were pfophetic of the 
 failure of the Austrian and the progress of the British 
 Commonwealth of Nations : 
 
 " The co-existence of several nations under the same State 
 is a test as well as the best security of its freedom. It is also one of 
 the chief instruments of civilisation ; and, as such, it is in the natural 
 and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advance- 
 ment than the national unity which is the ideal of modern 
 liberalism.'" 
 
 Of the Great Powers which between them control the 
 destinies of civilisation Great Britain is at once the freest, 
 the largest, and the most various. If the State is a 
 " cauldron " for mingling " the vigour, the knowledge, 
 and the capacity " of the portions of mankind — or if, to 
 use an apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection 
 consists in the very variety of the functions of its several 
 members — there has never been on the earth a political 
 organism like the British Empire. Its 433 million 
 inhabitants, from Great Britain to Polynesia, from India 
 and Egypt to Central Africa, are drawn from every 
 division of the human race. Cut a section through man- 
 kind, and in every layer there will be British citizens, 
 living under the jurisdiction of British law. Here is 
 something to hearten those who have looked in vain to 
 the Hague. While international law has been brought 
 to a standstill through the absence of a common will and 
 a common executive. Great Britain has thrown a girdle of 
 law around the globe. 
 
 ' Essay on Nationality, in " The Histoiy of Freedom and other Essays," 
 pp. 290, 298. 
 
22 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 What hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, 
 for the future of civilisation ? 
 
 The great, the supreme task of human politics and 
 statesmanship is to extend the sphere of Law. Let others 
 labour to make men cultured or virtuous or happy. 
 These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and the 
 common man. The statesman's task is simpler. It is 
 to enfold them in a jurisdiction which will enable them to 
 live the life of their souls' choice. The State, said the 
 Greek philosophers, is the foundation of the good life ; 
 but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. " There 
 where the State ends," cries Nietzsche,^ echoing Aristotle 
 and the great tradition of civilised political thought, 
 " there men begin. There, where the State ends, look 
 thither, my brothers ! Do you not see the rainbow and 
 the bridge to the Overman } " Ever since organised 
 society began, the standards of the individual, the ideals 
 of priest and teacher, the doctrines of religion and 
 morality, have outstripped the practice of statesmanship. 
 For the polestar of the statesman has not been love, but 
 law. His not the task of exhorting men to love one 
 another, but the simpler duty of enforcing the law, 
 " Thou shalt not kill." And in that simple, strenuous, 
 necessary task statesmen and political thinkers have 
 watched the slow extension of the power of Law, from 
 the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the city, from 
 the city to the nation, from the nation to the Common- 
 wealth of nations. When will Law take its next exten- 
 sion? When will warfare, which is murder between 
 individuals and " rebellion " between groups of citizens, 
 be equally preventable between nations by the common 
 law of the world I 
 
 The answer is simple. When the world has a common 
 will, and has created a common government to express 
 and enforce that will. 
 
 In the sphere of science and invention, of industry 
 
 > " Also sprach Zarathustra," Speech xi. (end). 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 23 
 
 and economics, as Norman Angell and others have taught 
 us, the world is already one Great Society. For the 
 merchant, the banker, and the stockbroker political 
 frontiers have been broken down. Trade and industry 
 respond to the reactions of a single, world-wide, nervous 
 system. Shocks and panics pass as freely as airmen over 
 borders and custom-houses. And not " big business " 
 only, but the humblest citizen, in his search for a liveli- 
 hood, finds himself caught in the meshes of the same 
 world-wide network. 
 
 '* The widow who takes in washing," says Graham Wallas,^ 
 in his deep and searching analysis of our contemporary life, " fails 
 or succeeds according to her skill in choosing starch or soda or a 
 wringing machine under the influence of half a dozen competing 
 world-schemes of advertisement. . . . The English factory girl 
 who is urged to join her Union, the tired old Scotch gatekeeper 
 with a few pounds to invest, the Galician peasant when the 
 emigration agent calls, the artisan in a French provincial town 
 whose industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that 
 unless they find their way among world-wide facts, which only 
 reach them through misleading words, they will be crushed." 
 
 The Industrial Revolution of the past century, steam- 
 power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph, have 
 knit mankind together, and made the world one place. 
 
 But this new Great Society is as yet formless and in- 
 articulate. It is not only devoid of common leadership 
 and a common government ; it lacks even the beginnings 
 of a common will, a common emotion, and a common 
 consciousness. Of the Great Society, consciously or un- 
 consciously, we must all perforce be members ; but of the 
 Great State, the great World-Commonwealth, we do not 
 yet discern the rudiments. The economic organisation 
 of the world has outstripped the development of its 
 citizenship and government : the economic man, with his 
 far-sighted vision and scientific control of the resources 
 of the world, must sit by and see the work of his hands 
 
 » "The Great Society" (1914), p. 4. 
 
24 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 laid in ashes by contending governments and peaples. 
 No man can say how many generations must pass before 
 the platitudes of the market and the exchange pass into 
 the current language of politics. 
 
 In the great work which lies before the statesmen 
 and peoples of the world for the extension of law and 
 common citizenship and the prevention of war there are 
 two parallel lines of advance. 
 
 One road lies through the development of what is 
 known as International, but should more properly be 
 called Inter-Slate Law, through the revival on a firmer 
 and broader foundation of the Concert of Europe con- 
 ceived by the Congress of Vienna just a hundred years 
 ago — itself a revival, on a secular basis, of the great 
 mediaeval ideal of an international Christendom, held 
 together by Christian Eaw and Christian ideals. That 
 ideal faded away for ever at the Reformation, which 
 grouped Europe into independent sovereign States ruled 
 by men responsible to no one outside their own borders. 
 It will never be revived on an ecclesiastical basis. Can 
 we hope for its revival on a basis of modern democracy, 
 modern nationality, and modern educated public opinion ? 
 Can Inter-State Law, hitherto a mere shadow of the 
 majestic name it bears, almost a matter of convention and 
 etiquette, with no permanent tribunal to interpret it, and 
 no government to enforce it, be enthroned with the 
 necessary powers to maintain justice between the peoples 
 and governments of the world ? 
 
 Such a Law the statesmen of Great Britain and Russia 
 sought to impose on Europe in 1 815, to maintain a state 
 of affairs which history has shown to have been intolerable 
 to the European peoples. There are those who hope 
 that the task can be resumed, on a better basis, at the 
 next Congress. 
 
 " Shall we try again," writes Professor Gilbert Murray,i " to 
 achieve Castlereagh's and Alexander's ideal of a permanent 
 * Hibbert Journal, October, 1914, p. 77, 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 25 
 
 Concert, pledged to make collective war upon the peace-breaker ? 
 Surely we must. We must, at all costs and in spite of all 
 diflSculties, because the alternative means such unspeakable failure. 
 We must learn to agree,^ we civilised nations of Europe, or else 
 we must perish. I believe that the chief council of wisdom here 
 is to be sure to go far enough. We need a permanent Concert, 
 perhaps a permanent Common Council, in which every awkward 
 problem can be dealt with before it has time to grow dangerous, 
 and in which outvoted minorities must accustom themselves to 
 giving way," 
 
 Other utterances by public men, such as Mr. Roose- 
 velt and our own Prime Minister, might be cited in the 
 same sense ; but Professor Murray's has been chosen 
 because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. In 
 his words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If 
 Inter-State Law is to become a reality we must " be sure 
 to go far enough." There is no halfway house between 
 Law and no Law, between Government and no Govern- 
 ment, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. If 
 the new Concert is to be effective it must be able to 
 compel the submission of all " awkward problems " and 
 causes of quarrel to its permanent Tribunal at the Hague 
 or elsewhere ; and it must be able to enforce the decision 
 of its tribunal, employing for the purpose, if necessary, 
 the armed forces of the signatory Powers as an inter- 
 national police. " Outvoted minorities must accustom 
 themselves to giving way." It is a bland and easy phrase ; 
 but it involves the whole question of world-government. 
 " Men must accustom themselves not to demand an eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the earliest law-givers 
 might have said, when the State first intervened between 
 individuals to make itself responsible for public order. 
 Peace between the Powers, as between individuals, is, no 
 doubt, a habit to which cantankerous Powers "must 
 accustom themselves." But they will be sure to do so if 
 there is a Law, ai;med with the force to be their school- 
 master towards peaceable habits. In other words, they 
 will do so because they have surrendered one of the most 
 
26 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 vital elements in the independent life of a State — the 
 right of conducting its own policy — to the jurisdiction of 
 a higher power. An Inter-State Concert, with a Judiciary 
 of its own and an Army and Navy under its own orders, 
 is, in fact, not an Inter-State Concert at all ; it is a new 
 State : it - is, in fact, the World-State. There is no 
 middle course between Law and no Law : and the essence 
 of Statehood, as we have seen, is a Common Law. 
 
 Will this new State have the other attributes of 
 Government — a Common Legislature and a Common 
 Executive — as well as a Common Judiciary ? Let us go 
 back to Professor Murray's words. He speaks of " out- 
 voted minorities." Let us suppose the refractory country 
 to be Great Britain, outvoted on some question relating 
 to sea-power. Of whom will the outvoted minority 
 consist ? Of the British members on the " Common 
 Council " of the Concert. But the question at once 
 arises, what are the credentials of these British members ? 
 Whom do they represent ? To whom are they responsi- 
 ble ? If they are the representatives of the British people 
 and responsible to the democracy which sent them, how 
 can they be expected to " accustom themselves to giving 
 way " — perhaps to a majority composed of the representa- 
 tives of undemocratic governments ? Their responsibility 
 is, not to the Concert, but to their own Government 
 and people. They are not the minority members of 
 a democratically-elected Council of their own fellow- 
 citizens. They are the minority members of a hetero- 
 geneous Council towards which they own no allegiance 
 and recognise no binding responsibility. There is no 
 halfway house between Citizenship and no Citizenship, 
 between Responsibility and no Responsibility. No man 
 and no community can serve two masters. When the 
 point of conflict arises men and nations have to make the 
 choice wHere their duty lies. Not the representatives of 
 Great Britain on the International Concert, Isut the people 
 of Great Britain themselves would have to decide whether 
 
GERMAN CULTURE ay 
 
 their real, allegiance, as citizens, was due to tiie World- 
 State or to their own Commonwealth : they would find 
 themselves at the same awful parting of the ways which 
 confronted the people of the Southern States in 1861. 
 When at the outbreak of the Civil War General Lee was 
 oiFered by Lincoln the Commandership of the Northern 
 armies and refused it, to become the Commander-in-Chief 
 on the side of the South, he did so because " he believed," 
 as he told Congress after the war, " that the act of Virginia 
 in withdrawing herself from the United States carried him 
 alpng with it as a citizen of Virginia, and that her laws 
 anjd acts were binding on him." In other words, unless 
 the proposed Common Council is to be made something 
 more than a Council of the delegates of sovereign States 
 (as the Southern States believed themselves to be till 
 1 861), a deadlock sooner or later is almost inevitable, 
 and the terrible and difficult question — so familiar to 
 Americans and recently to ourselves on the smaller stage 
 of Ulster — of the right of secession and the coercion of 
 minorities will arise. But if the Common Council is 
 framed in accordance with a Constitution which binds its 
 representatives to accept its decisions and obey its govern- 
 ment, then the World-State, with a World-Executive, 
 will already have come into being. There will be no 
 more war, but only Rebellion and Treason. 
 
 Such is the real meaning of proposals to give a 
 binding sanction to the decisions of an Inter-State 
 Concert. Anything short of this — treaties and arbitra- 
 tion-agreements based upon inter-State arrangements 
 without any executive to enforce them — may give relief 
 for a time and pave the way for further progress, but can 
 in itself provide no permanent security, no satisfactory 
 justification for the neglect of defensive measures by the 
 various sovereign governments on behalf of their peoples. 
 Mr. Bryan, for the United States, has within the last 
 eighteen months concluded twenty-six general arbitration 
 treaties with different Governments, add may yet succeed 
 
2 8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 in his ambition of signing treaties with all the remainder. 
 Yet no one imagines that, when the immunity of the 
 United States from attack is guaranteed by the promise 
 of every Government in the world, America will rely for 
 her defence upon those promises alone. 
 
 In discussing proposals for a European Council, then, 
 we must be quite sure to face all that it means. But let us 
 not reject Professor Murray's suggestion off-hand because 
 of its inherent difficulties : for that men should be discuss- 
 ing such schemes at all marks a significant advance in our 
 political thought. Only let us be quite clear as to what 
 they presuppose. They presuppose the supremacy, in the 
 collective mind of civilised mankind, of Law over Force, 
 a definite supremacy of what may be called the civilian as 
 against the mihtary ideal, not in a majority of States, but 
 in every State powerful enough to defy coercion. They 
 presuppose a world map definitely settled on lines satis- 
 factory to the national aspirations of the peoples. They 
 presuppose a status quo which is not simply maintained, 
 like that after 1815, because it is a legal fact and its 
 disturbance would be inconvenient to the existing rulers, 
 but because it is inherently equitable.* They presuppose 
 a similar democratic basis of citizenship and representation 
 among the component States. They presuppose, lastly, 
 an educated public opinion incomparably less selfish, less 
 ignorant, less unsteady, less materialistic, and less nar- 
 rowly national than has been prevalent hitherto. Let us 
 work and hope for these things : let us use our best 
 efforts to remove misunderstandings and promote a sense 
 of common responsibilities and common trusteeship for 
 civilisation between the peoples of all the various sovereign 
 States ; but meanwhile let us work also, with better hopes 
 of immediate if less ambitious successes, along the other 
 parallel road of advance. 
 
 1 The same applies to proposals for ensuring permanent peace in the 
 industrial sphere. Neither capital nor labour will abide by " scraps of paper " 
 if they do not feel the status quo (t.e. the conditions under which wage-contracts 
 are made) to be equitable and inherently just, 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 29 
 
 The other road may seem, in this hour of dreams and 
 disaster, of extremes of hope and disillusionment, a long 
 and tedious track : it is the old slow high-road of civilisa- 
 tion, not the short cut across the fields. It looks forward 
 to abiding results, not through the mechanical co-opera- 
 tion of governments, but through the growth of an 
 organic citizenship, through the education of the nations 
 themselves to a sense of common duty and a common 
 life. It looks forward, not to the definite establishment, 
 in our day, of the World-State, but only to the definite 
 refutation of the wicked theory of the mutual Incom- 
 patibility of nations. It looks forward to the expression 
 in the outward order of the world's government of the 
 Idea of the Commonwealth of Nations, of Lord Acton's 
 great principle of the State composed of free nations, of 
 the State as a living body which lives through the organic 
 union and free activity of its several national members. 
 And it finds Its immediate field of action in the deepening 
 and extension of the obligation of citizenship among the 
 peoples of the great, free, just, peace-loving, supra- 
 national Commonwealths whose patriotism has been built 
 up, not by precept and doctrine, but on a firm foundation 
 of older loyalties. 
 
 The idea of the Commonwealth of Nations Is not a 
 European principle : It is a world-principle. It does not 
 proceed upon the expectation of a United States of 
 Europe ; for all the Great Powers of Europe except 
 Austria-Hungary (and some of the smaller, such as Hol- 
 land, Belgium, and Portugal) are extra-European Powers 
 also. Indeed, if we contract our view, with Gladstone 
 and Bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to 
 European issues alone, we shall be ignoring the chief 
 political problem of our age — the contact of races and 
 nations with wide varieties of social experience and at 
 different levels of civilisation. If .is this great and In- 
 sistent problem (call It the problem of East and West, 
 or the problem of the colour-line) in all its difficult 
 
30 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 ramifications, political, social, and, above all, economic, 
 which makes the development of the principle of the super- 
 national Commonwealth the most pressing political need 
 of our age. For the problems arising out of the contact 
 of races and nations can never be adjusted either by the 
 wise action of individuals or by conflict and warfare ; they 
 can only be solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship 
 within the bosom of a single State, through the recogni- 
 tion by both parties of a higher claim than their own 
 sectional interest — the claim of a common citizenship and 
 the interest of civilisation.^ It is here, in the union and 
 collaboration of diverse races and peoples, that the 
 principle of the Commonwealth of Nations finds its 
 peculiar field of operation. Without this principle, and 
 without its expression, however imperfect, in the British 
 Empire, the world would be in chaos to-day. 
 
 We cannot predict the political development of the 
 various Great Powers who between them control the 
 destinies of civilisation. We cannot estimate the degree 
 or the manner in which France, freed at last from nearer 
 preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion 
 the great civilising principles for which her republic 
 stands. We cannot foretell the issue of the great conflict 
 of ideas which has swayed to and fro in Russia between 
 the British and the Prussian method of dealing with the 
 problem of nationality. Germany, Italy, Japan — here, 
 too, we are faced by enigmas. One other great Common- 
 wealth remains besides the British. Upon the United 
 States already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed 
 and, except during a time of internal crisis,* successfully 
 discharged, of securing peace from external foes for 
 scores of millions of inhabitants of the American conti- 
 nent. Yet with the progress of events her responsibilities 
 must yearly enlarge : for both the immigrant nationalities 
 
 1 The most recent example of this is the settlement of the very difficult 
 dispute between India and South Africa. 
 
 " French occupation of Mexico, 1862, during the American Civil War, 
 when the Monroe Doctrine was temporarily in abeyance. 
 
GERMAN CULTURE 31 
 
 within and the world-problems without her borders seem 
 to summon her to a deeper education and to wider 
 obligations. 
 
 But upon the vast, ramifying, and inchoate Common- 
 wealth of the British peoples lies the heaviest responsi- 
 bility. It is a task unequally shared between those of 
 her citizens who are capable of discharging it. Her task 
 within the Commonwealth is to maintain the common 
 character and ideals and to adjust the mutual relations of 
 one quarter of the human race. Her task without is to 
 throw her weight into the scales of peace, and to uphold 
 and develop the standard and validity of inter-State agree- 
 ments. It is a task which requires, even at this time of 
 crisis, when, by the common sentiment of her citizens, 
 the real nature and purpose of the Commonwealth have 
 become clear to us, the active thoughts of all political 
 students. For to bring home to all within her borders 
 who bear rule and responsibility, from the village head- 
 man in India and Nigeria, the Basutu chief and the South 
 Sea potentate, to the public opinion of Great Britain and 
 the self-governing Dominions, the nature of the British 
 Commonwealth, and the character of its citizenship and 
 ideals, and to study how those ideals may be better ex- 
 pressed in its working institutions and executive govern- 
 ment — that is a task to which the present crisis beckons 
 the minds of British citizens, a task which Britain owes 
 not only to herself but to mankind. 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT^ 
 
 The following paper was originally written to be read aloud, without 
 thought of publication. In committing it to the printer it should be stated, 
 to guard against any possible misunderstanding, that it is, purely and simply, a 
 critical examination of ideas, not a condemnation of projects. Criticism of 
 " the principle of Nationality " does not imply any want of sympathy with 
 those who proclaim it as their watchword : nor does criticism of the " inter- 
 national " solutions proposed in some quarters imply any hostility towards the 
 aims of their framers. The sole object has been to pierce below the surface to 
 the real meaning of the ideas and phrases in question in the belief that, as 
 confused thinking must always lead to mistakes and disillusionment, so right 
 thinking is the necessary prelude to a wise and consistent idealism. 
 
 There is no more important duty at the present 
 moment for those who can spare the time and the 
 thought from more practical tasks than the close and 
 searching analysis of political ideas. The war is being 
 waged about ideas^ and the settlement at its close will be 
 determined by ideas. Yet those ideas, and the words in 
 which they are embodied for current discussion, are often 
 vague, confused and even contradictory ; so that different 
 words are used to express the same meaning, and the 
 same word used to express several different meanings. 
 My aim in the present paper is to interpret as clearly 
 and definitely as I can what I conceive to be the meaning 
 and importance of two such ideas, in the name of which 
 thousands have laid down their lives in the last sixteen 
 months — the idea of nationality and the idea of citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 My object is not to persuade or convert, but simply 
 
 ' A paper read before the Sociological Society, November 30, 1915, 
 Professor Graham Wallas in the chair. It was republished in the Sociological 
 Review for January, 1916, with the introductory note here reproduced. - 
 
 32 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 33 
 
 to elucidate and to clarify. To many people my views 
 on the subject, put on half a sheet of nbtepaper, would 
 seem pure platitude : others may think them utterly 
 paradoxical. I shall be satisfied if I really make them 
 plain, and if I succeed in provoking a discussion which 
 ends in everybody feeling clearer in their own minds as 
 to the views they respectively hold. 
 
 Argument on abstract subjects is njuch more inspirit- 
 ing and much easier to follow if it is enlivened by 
 criticism, I propose therefore, not baldly and blankly 
 to state my own views first, but to lead up to them by 
 examining certain prevalent phrases or catch-words which 
 have lately passed into common currency among the 
 public, without perhaps receiving their due share of 
 criticism and cross-examination. 
 
 The first word which 1 will put in the witness-box is 
 the word "international." I am constantly meeting people 
 who profess what they call international sympathies, who 
 belong to international clubs or promote international 
 causes or study international relations. Being inter- 
 national myself, in a precise sense of the word, I am 
 anxious to know exactly what they mean. So far as I 
 am able to make out, the word " international " has about 
 seven different meanings. For the moment I only want 
 to distinguish two of -them — or rather, to divide the 
 seven into 4:wo groups. Half the people who use the 
 word " international " are thinking of something which 
 concerns one or more nations : the other half are think- 
 ing of something which concerns one or more Sovereign 
 States. When we speak of an English international 
 footballer we mean a man who has represented England 
 against Wales or Scotland or Ireland. We are not con- 
 cerned with the purely political question whether Scotland, 
 Ireland, and Wales are SpVerdign States independent of 
 England. Similarly, if we speak of a writer as having an 
 international reputation we mean that his books are read 
 by people of many different nations and have possibly 
 
34 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 been translated into many different languages — into 
 German, Italian, Bohemian, Polish, Finnish, Serbo-Croat, 
 and so on. Similarly, when we speak of an international 
 movement we mean that it has taken root in many 
 different countries — in Germany, Italy, Canada, Finland, 
 Syria, and so on — irrespective of the question whether 
 these countries form part of one or more Sovereign 
 States. But when we talk of " international law " or 
 " an International Concert of the Powers " on the other 
 hand, we are using tbe word in quite a different sense. 
 We are dealing with a different method of classification : 
 we are thinking of the world as consisting, not of 
 nations, but of States. For the international football 
 player Canada, South Africa, and Australia would all be 
 separate units, while the various Central American States, 
 if they wanted to produce a team, would probably have 
 to club together to do so. But for the international 
 lawyet Canada, South Africa, and Australia are merged in 
 the British Commonwealth, Bohemia merged in Austria- 
 Hungary, Syria in the Ottoman Empire and Finland in 
 the Russian, while Nicaragua, Bolivia, Montenegro, and 
 Liberia are classified separately, as Sovereign States, 
 ostensibly on a level mth the Great Powers. Just as 
 Rhode Island and Texas are both equally component 
 members of the American Union, so the representatives 
 of Montenegro and Russia, Ecuador and Great Britain 
 would sit side by side in a world congress of Sovereign 
 States, from which the representatives of great civilised 
 communities like Canada and Australia would be 
 excluded. 
 
 This distinction between Nationality and Statehood, 
 thus revealed in the double use of the word "inter- 
 national," is so simple that it seems strange that it should 
 be necessary to call attention to it at all. Looked at in 
 the light of concrete instances it is as clear as daylight. 
 Scotland is a nation and not a State. So is Poland. So 
 is Finland. So is Australia. Austria-Hungary is a 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 35 
 
 State and not a nation. So is the Ottoman Empire. 
 So is the British Commonwealth. So is the United 
 States. It may not be easy to define exactly what a State 
 is. It is certainly not easy to define exactly what a nation 
 is. But at least it ought to be easy to perceive that 
 there is a difference between the two. 
 
 Yet how many current catchwords there are which 
 have acquired their vogue simply by slurring that difference 
 over ! If matters which affected two or more States 
 were always called " inter-State " instead of " inter- 
 national," and the word " international " confined to its 
 strict sense, some of those who have the word most often 
 on their lips would discover, perhaps with a shock, that 
 much of what they are pleading for is already embodied 
 in contemporary life. We are in fact living in what is, 
 in the strictest sense, an international society. For good 
 or for evil, the modern world is a large-scale world, and, as 
 Mr. Norman Angell truly pointed out, its most charac- 
 teristic institutions, those connected with finapce, industry 
 and commerce, are largely international in character. 
 And not only business, but other departments of life 
 have become international also. Science and art, philan- 
 thropy and even sport have followed the financiers. 
 Toynbee Hall, the mother of settlements, has scores of 
 children in the United States. The hats that are worn 
 in Paris one season are worn at Athens and Bucharest 
 the next : and if the climate forbids young Italians and 
 Greeks from indulging in English athletic pursuits, they 
 can at least pay tribute to the internationalism of sport 
 by appearing in English sporting costumes. The ideas 
 which are in vogue in London and Berlin to-day are the 
 talk of New York and Chicago to-morrow, and long after 
 they have been exploded in the Old World continue to 
 form the staple of leader writers in the New. Good 
 books, and even bad books, if sufficiently striking and 
 well advertised, are read and quoted all over the world. 
 Mr. Norman Angell and General Bernhardi have done 
 
36 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the Grand Tour together : and each is now engaged in 
 the Herculean task of correcting what have become 
 international interpretations or misinterpretations of their 
 views. The modern world is in fact international to the 
 core. Its internationalism lies in the nature of things. 
 It is neither to its credit nor to its discredit. Inter- 
 nationalism Is neither good nor bad in the abstract : it 
 depends on the nature of its manifestations. The 
 German Wolff Bureau is international ; so is the White 
 Slave traffic ; so is the Anti-Slavery Society. It rests 
 with men and women of goodwill to see that the good 
 manifestations prevail over the evil ; but, judging from 
 past history, the devil generally has the first innings. 
 International institutions and international philanthropic 
 efforts have followed international abuses, as the police- 
 man follows the malefactor or as the agents of civilised 
 governments follow, in " undeveloped " countries, the 
 roving emissaries of private capitalist enterprise. 
 
 Nor has this internationalism, this inter-communica- 
 tion between the families of mankind, been abruptly cut 
 short by the war. On the contrary it has been immensely 
 extended. Never before have the communities and races 
 of men met and mingled as they are meeting and 
 mingling to-day. The \yar, which has touched all five 
 continents of the world, has turned the earth into a vast 
 mixing-bowl where men, and to no inconsiderable extent 
 women also, are coming together and exchanging experi- 
 ences. The rival combatants and their prisoners can 
 perhaps learn little from one another : but think of the 
 Allied armies and their encampments on either side ! 
 For the illiterate millions of Russia, with its wonderful 
 assortment of nationalities, war, with its camp-fire talk, 
 has always been a great educator. The Russian army 
 might be described as a great national and international 
 school. But with the Western allies It is almost more 
 so. Was there ever a more International expedition 
 than the army at the Dardanelles ? It comprised English- 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 37 
 
 men, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Frenchmen, Senegalese, Sikhs, 
 Gurkhas, Australians, New Zealanders, Maoris, and a 
 contingent of Hebrew-speaking Jews from Palestine. 
 Compare the catalogue of Sir Ian Hamilton's troops 
 with the catalogue of the Greek and Trojan forces con- 
 veniently provided for us in the second book of the 
 " Iliad," and you will get some measure of the in- 
 creased power of man over nature since Homer's day, 
 and of the internationalism which has inevitably resulted 
 from it. 
 
 What then do a certain school of idealists really mean 
 when they consider themselves a small group of inter- 
 nationalists in a world that will not listen to their 
 doctrine ? What they really mean, of course, is not that 
 the modern world is not international in many of its 
 habits and ways of thought, but that, in spite of its 
 internationalism, it is still a tragically mismanaged place. 
 It may be a single society, but that society has so little 
 control over its life, or the members of it have such low 
 ideals, that it is from time to time rent by such conflicts 
 as we see to-day. Why, they complain, cannot the 
 different communities of the world sit down together and 
 cultivate the arts of Peace ? 
 
 The criticism contained in remarks such as these is 
 really a twofold one. It is one thing to say that the 
 world is wicked. It is quite another to say that it is 
 badly organised. The school of thought to which I am 
 referring really combines two quite separate lines of 
 policy. There is the policy directed towards making 
 the world better, and the policy directed towards making 
 the world better organised, irrespective of the fact 
 whether or not that organisation is based on moral 
 principles. Let us take the former policy first. The 
 policy which seeks to make the world better aims at 
 promoting internationalism in its better, and at counter- 
 acting it in its worse, manifestations. It seeks to promote 
 Anti'Slavery Societies and to counteract the White Slave 
 
38 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 traffic. It seeks to promote happier and friendlier re 
 lations between nations and to counteract the international 
 phenomenon that has become known as " Prussianism " 
 in whatever quarter it originates and over however many 
 countries it may spread. It seeks in fact to serve 
 humanity by raising its moral level. One may criticise 
 the phraseology or note the omissions in the programme 
 of this group of thinkers : but for their outlook and their 
 ideals one can have nothing but admiration. Men like 
 M, Romain RoUand and women like Miss Jane Addams 
 are the salt of the earth ; if everybody were like Miss 
 Addams the evil manifestations of internationalism would 
 disappear for want of a public, and world-government 
 itself— the inter-State problem — would be greatly simpli- 
 fied. It is easy to pick holes in the views expressed by 
 this school of thinkers on the questions at issue in the 
 inter-State sphere, but it is a thankless task to do so, since 
 those problems are not really what they are concerned 
 about. They are not interested in the purely political 
 side of inter-State relations. Their object is not to 
 establish a reasonable minimum of Justice and Liberty 
 in a world of imperfect human beings. Their object is 
 to make those imperfect people better, to combat malice, 
 hatred and uncharitableness among all the belligerent 
 peoples from their rulers and foreign ministers down- 
 Awards. All power to their elbow ! Only let us whisper 
 one caution in their ear as they go on their errand of 
 ^ mercy — the famous caution of George Washington : 
 " Influence is not government." However good and 
 reasonable you may make people, there still remains 
 over, for all of us who are not theoretical anarchists, the 
 technical political question of the adjustment of the 
 relations between the different Sovereign States. 
 
 I pass to the second line of policy — that which is 
 directed not towards making men better (that, it is 
 recognised, is too lengthy a process to meet the immediate 
 emergency), but rather to averting war, by making the 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 39 
 
 world better organised — by improving the efficiency of 
 the world's political machinery. This line of policy aims 
 at the setting up of what is called an international or 
 supernational organisation to ensure the peace of the world. 
 Mr. Sidney Webb, for instance, is giving a lecture this very 
 evening on " The Supernational Authority which will 
 Prevent War," and Mr, J. A. Hobson has written a book 
 on the same theme under the title "Towards Inter- 
 national Government." A pedant might criticise Mr. 
 Hobson's title by saying that international government 
 is a thing we have with us already — in Russia, in 
 Turkey, in Austria-Hungary, in the British Common- 
 wealth. Some of these governments are good and others 
 bad, but they are all international, or, more strictly 
 speaking, multi-national. If he had called his book 
 "Towards Inter-State Goivernment " his theme would 
 have been made clear beyond all confusion ; but he 
 would have been convicted of working for a contradiction, 
 for there is no such thing as inter-State government. If 
 a government cannot give orders and secure obedience 
 to them, it is not a government : but the essence of a 
 State is that it is sovereign and takes orders from no one 
 above it. Inter-State government therefore involves 
 a contradiction. What Mr. Hobson really desires is a 
 World-Government, and I wish he had said so. Probably 
 he did not do so because he thought the title sounded 
 too chimerical. But in reality there is nothing incon- 
 ceivable or intrinsically impossible in the establishment 
 of a world-government. The real difficulty is to 
 establish free world-government — to ensure universal 
 peace without the universal sacrifice of liberty. If it is i 
 better organisation that civilised mankind desires they ' 
 can have it in almost any age for the asking. The 
 Romans were ready to give it them ; so were the great 
 Popes ; so was Napoleon ; so are the Germans, There 
 is no technical objection that I can see to the practicability 
 of schemes like Mr. Hobson's, They involve the 
 
40 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 surrender of British, French, American, and other 
 sovereignties into the hands of a body in which the 
 nominees of Russian, German, Hungarian, and Turkish 
 autocracy would have a proportionate voice. If the 
 citizens of free States wish to surrender their heritage 
 of freedom and to merge their allegiance with that of 
 subjects accustomed to arbitrary rule, there is no more to 
 be said. Peace and order and prosperity they may for a 
 time receive in exchange. These may be goods more 
 valuable than liberty. Many persons think they are, 
 especially for other people. Our existing industrial 
 order, for instance, is based upon the idea that efficiency 
 is more important than liberty. But few Englishmen 
 would hesitate to include liberty as an indispensable 
 element in that " good life " which it is the sole object of 
 politics to promote. Judged by that ultimate test and in 
 the light of the political ideals and constitutions of the 
 existing States of the world, Mr. Hobson's and all other 
 similar schemes fall to the ground. 
 
 So far we have been engaged in cross-examining the 
 word " international," and it has helped to bring out certain 
 important distinctions. I now propose to put into the 
 box a more combative witness, whom I think it will be 
 useful to examine on our way to positive conclusions. 
 I propose to take the third of the four points put 
 forward as the programme of the Union of Democratic 
 Control. It is not very different on the constructive 
 side from suggestions by other writers who hold widely 
 different views on the war. I select it because it 
 crystallises a mass of current thought in a conveniently 
 compact and definite form. The " plank " in question 
 is as follows: — 
 
 "The foreign policy of Great Britain shall not be 
 aimed at creating Alliances for the purpose of maintain- 
 ing the ' Balance of Power ' ; but shall be directed to 
 concerted action between the Powers and the setting up 
 of an International Council whose deliberations and 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 41 
 
 decisions shall be public, with such machinery for securing 
 international agreement as shall be the guarantee of an 
 abiding peace." 
 
 This sentence contains a negative half and a positive 
 half. I will not dwell on the negative half, as it is not 
 relevant to our subject, except to say that it does not 
 seem to be quite fair in its implied statement as to the 
 object of British foreign policy In the past. I pass, 
 therefore, to the second or constructive part of the 
 programme, in which the Foreign Office, and the British 
 democracy whose servant it is, is advised as to what it 
 ought to do. The formula then runs as follows : — 
 
 " The foreign policy of Great Britain shall be directed 
 to concerted action between the Powers and the setting 
 up of an International Council whose deliberations and 
 decisions shall be made public, with such machinery for 
 securing international agreement as shall be the guarantee 
 of an abiding peace." 
 
 There Is nothing much to be said about the proposal 
 for concerted action between the Powers. There is 
 nothing new about it. The Great Powers of Europe 
 have constantly throughout the last hundred years acted 
 together in matters of common concern, especially in 
 Near Eastern questions, and no State has a better record 
 for loyalty and persistence in this direction than Great 
 Britain. But the Concert has never created any organisa- 
 tion for itself beyond temporary conferences and congresses 
 of ambassadors and plenipotentiaries, and It has never 
 shown itself amenable to democratic control. The im- 
 portant part of the suggestion lies In the proposed 
 International Council. 
 
 If this suggestion Is intended to be practicable it 
 presumably means an inter-State Council — that Is to say, 
 a council composed of nominees from all the States or 
 all the leading States of the world. A real International 
 Council in which Poles sat next to Russians and Ar- 
 menians next to Turks can hardly have been intended. 
 
42 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Presumably also the council is to consist of persons nomi- 
 nated by their governments or according to arrangements 
 made by each separate government, and not directly or on 
 a uniform plan by the citizens of the States concerned. It 
 will be a conference of governments with governments, 
 or of superior persons with superior persons, like the 
 British Imperial Conference which meets every four 
 years. Again, there Is nothing particularly novel in the 
 suggestion. The two Hague Conferences have been 
 gatherings of this nature, and their deliberations, like 
 those of our Imperial Conference, have been made public. 
 If our foreign policy is to be directed to getting together 
 a deliberate body consisting of representatives from the 
 leading States of the world, that aim can be quickly 
 attained. 
 
 But the real crux of the formula lies in the word 
 "decisions." In what sense is this council going to 
 decide things .? Are they going merely to make up their 
 own minds and embody the results in a series of resolu- 
 tions ? Or are they going to legislate .' In other words, 
 are they going to be an assembly of envoys or an 
 assembly of representatives, in other words a Parlia- 
 ment ? If the former, I welcome the suggestion. The 
 more discussion and interchange and sifting of views we 
 can have between public men in different States the 
 better. But I see in such a suggestion no " guarantee 
 of an abiding peace." The reason why many well-mean- 
 ing people grow enthusiastic over the idea of such a 
 council is that they look to it as the machinery which 
 will prevent conflicts between States. A body of this 
 character may help to make war less likely ; or, by 
 revealing a deep gulf of principle between two sets of 
 members, it. may (like the second Hague Congress) make 
 it more likely ; but it cannot make war impossible. So 
 far as machinery is concerned, it could only do so if it 
 had an executive responsible to it and obliged to obey its 
 orders ; and if it had armed forces to carry out those 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 43 
 
 orders, backed up by a federal treasury and a federal 
 system of taxation ; if it could quench a smouldering 
 war in Germany or the Balkans as the Home Secretary 
 can quench a riot at Tonypandy. In other words, an 
 International Council can only be effective as an organ 
 of government if it is part of a World-Government acting 
 according to a regular written constitution : and such a 
 constitution could only be set going after it had been 
 adopted by a convention representative of all peoples or 
 governments concerned. Before the suggested council 
 could have authority to decide things, in the sense in 
 which the formula suggests, Frenchmen, Germans, 
 Turks, Russians and citizens of other existing States 
 must have declared their willingness to merge their state- 
 hood in a larger whole and to hand over their armed 
 forces, or the greater part of them, to the new central 
 government. This may be what the formula means. 
 It may be intended to allow a government of Germans, 
 Magyars, Russians, Turks or any other chance majority 
 to use the British and French navies to carry out 
 its purposes. If this is meant it should be said. If it 
 is not meant it should be explained that the council 
 proposed is not an organ of government but an organ of 
 influence or advice, and it] should be made quite clear, 
 to forestall inevitable disillusionments, that, to quote 
 Washington again, " Influence is not government." Such 
 a body might be of very great service to mankind, both 
 as a clearing-house of ideas and as a means for em- 
 bodying agreed solutions in a practical shape. It might 
 become at once a drafting body and an organ for 
 giving expression to the growing unity of civilised 
 public opinion. If it met regularly, and the world 
 became accustomed to look to it for guidance, it might 
 achieve more in both these directions than has been 
 attained along this road hitherto. But it will not be a 
 government. In matters of law and government there is 
 no room for middle paths or soothing formulae. Two 
 
44 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 States are either Sovereign or they are United or 
 Federated : they cannot be half and half. A man must 
 know of what State he is a citizen and to what authority 
 his duty is due. We all have our duty to render to 
 Caesar : but we cannot serve two Caesars at once. Not 
 all the Parliamentary ingenuity in the world can over- 
 come that dilemma, as Virginians found out to their cost 
 when the inexorable question was put to them at the 
 outbreak of the Civil War. To ask British electors to 
 surrender their power of determining the policy of this 
 country to a body over which they have no control is to 
 plunge into a jungle of difficulties and incidentally to set 
 back, perhaps for ever, the cause of free and responsible 
 government for which the Western Powers are trustees. 
 
 The practical programme of the Union of Democratic 
 Control and of other advocates of similar solutions thus 
 turns out to be something of an illusion. What is prac- 
 tical of the suggested machinery is not new, though it is 
 susceptible of fuller and more systematic use than in the 
 past : and what is new is neither practical nor whole- 
 some- — or, at least, would not be regarded as such by 
 most Englishmen if its real meaning were made clear. 
 War cannot be abolished by inventing foolproof political 
 machinery, for no political machinery can overcome 
 ultimate irreconcilable differences of political principle. 
 Political intercourse, like trade relations, may strengthen 
 existing ties and deepen the attachment to common ideals, 
 but it cannot create agreement where a common basis of 
 agreement is not forthcoming. It is well for us to face 
 the fact that there is no short cut to universal peace. 
 War will only become obsolete after far-reaching changes 
 have taken place in the mind and heart of the civilised 
 peoples : and the first and perhaps most important step 
 in that direction is that the civilised peoples should feel 
 called upon to exercise a responsible control over their 
 own governments and armed forces. It is useless to 
 dream of making Europe a federated Commonwealth 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 45 
 
 till the separate units of the potential Federation are 
 themselves Commonwealths. Interpreted as a call to 
 the fuller exercise of responsible citizenship, every be- 
 liever in free government will respond to the watchword 
 of Democratic Control. 
 
 Let us say farewell then, once and for all, to this idea 
 of an " International Council " as providing machinery 
 which shall be an absolute guarantee against war. But 
 before passing on it is worth while spending a parting 
 shot on a phrase with which it is often associated, because 
 it illustrates a typical confusion of thought — I mean the 
 phrase — the United States of Europe. The constant use 
 of this phrase shows how easily such confusions gain 
 vogue. One can see how it originated. America is a 
 continent. Europe is a continent. America has its 
 United States. Why should not the States of Europe 
 unite and so put an end to European wars ? It is 
 not an unnatural train of reasoning for a Western 
 American who knows nothing of Europe or of the 
 causes which tend to produce wars. It escapes his 
 notice that he is using the word " State " in two 
 different senses. State in the word United States means 
 province. The separate States are provinces, or com- 
 ponent members of a Federation. The word " State " 
 was put into the American Constitution as a deliberate 
 misnomer, in order to gratify the thirteen original 
 Sovereign States when they abandoned their sovereignty 
 in entering into the Federation. Similarly the Orange 
 Free State retains its old name in the South African 
 Union. The survival of the word cost the American 
 Commonwealth dear, for the word enshrined, and rightly 
 enshrined, a conception of citizenship and indefeasible 
 loyalty : and it cost the Americans four years of war and 
 a million lives before the confusion inherent in the word 
 " United States " was cleared up and men knew for 
 certain whether the American Commonwealth was one 
 State or several. That is the price men pay for halting 
 
46 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 confusedly between two opinions and trying to serve two 
 Caesars at once. They not only failed to avert war, but 
 actually promoted it. 
 
 I pass now to deal with an objection which must have 
 been in some people's minds when I drew the distinction 
 between Statehood and Nationality. It is quite true, 
 they will say, that Statehood and Nationality are in fact, 
 in the present condition of the world, distinguishable and 
 often distinct — that Finland is a nation but part of the 
 Russian State, and so on — but this is an unsatisfactory 
 condition of things which it should be our hope to abolish. 
 States and nations ought, they will say, to be cotermi- 
 nous. All states, or at any rate most States, ought to be 
 Nation-States : at the very least, all self-governing States 
 ought to be Nation-States. And they will invoke the 
 authority of John Stuart Mill, whose words on the subject 
 in his book on "Representative Government," have passed 
 almost unchallenged for two generations as the pure milk 
 of Liberal doctrine. " It Is," says Mill, " in general a 
 necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries 
 of governments should coincide in the main with those of 
 nationalities." 
 
 This theory that the Nation-State is the normal and 
 proper area of government at which believers in free 
 institutions should aim, is sometimes known as "the 
 principle of Nationality " : and many loose-thinking 
 people believe that it is one of the causes for which we 
 are fighting in the present war. My own view is exactly 
 the contrary. I believe it is one of the most formidable 
 ^nd sinister forces on the side of our enemies »nd one 
 of the chief obstacles to human progress at the present 
 time. 
 
 Let us look into it more closely. What exactly does 
 this belief in the coincidence of Nationality and Statehood 
 mean ? What is the principle underlying the theory of 
 the National State, or of political nationalism, as it is 
 sometimes called ? The theory says that because the 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 47 
 
 Poles feel themselves to be a nation, there ought to be an 
 independent Poland. In other words, the independent 
 Polish kingdom will rest upon the fact that its citizens 
 are Poles. The Polish kingdom will be a kingdom of 
 Poles. Polishness would be its distinguishing mark : 
 the criterion of its citizenship. Districts of the territory 
 or sections of the population which were not Polish, or 
 had ceased to be Polish, would therefore cease to be 
 " national " : and by ceasing to be national would lose 
 their right to membership in the State. In other words, 
 the State is not based on any universal principle, such as 
 justice, or democracy, or collective consent, or on any- 
 thing moral or universally human at all, but on some- 
 thing partial, arbitrary and accidental. 
 
 " By making the State and the nation commensurate with 
 each other in theory, this principle reduces practically to a subject 
 condition all other nationalities that may be within the State's 
 boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality with the ruling 
 nation which constitutes the State, because the State would then 
 cease to be national, which would be a contradiction of the 
 principle of its existence. According, therefore, to the degree of 
 humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which claims all 
 the rights of the community, the inferior races are exterminated, 
 or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of 
 dependence." 
 
 These last three sentences are not my own. They 
 were not written to point the moral of the exterminations 
 promoted by Turkish nationalism in Armenia, or of the 
 various degrees of servitude, oppression and propaganda 
 enforced by German, Magyar, Russian and other domi- 
 nant forms of political nationalism. They were written 
 by Lord Acton fifty years ago, when the Nationalist 
 doctrines which overshadow Eastern Europe and Western 
 Asia to-day were a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. 
 In his essay on " Nationality," published in 1862,^ Acton 
 remorselessly analysed its political claims and predicted, 
 
 ^ Republished in " The History of Freedom and other Essays," 1909. 
 
48 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 with the insight of moral genius, the disastrous conse- 
 quences of basinggovernment on so arbitrary and insecure 
 a foundation. " The theory of Nationality," he said, using 
 the strongest language at his command, " is more absurd 
 and more criminal than the theory of Socialism." Time 
 softens the edge of strong language, but in this case with- 
 out blunting the force of the prediction. 
 
 " Its course," he says, " will be marked with material as well 
 as moral ruin, in order that a new invention may prevail over the 
 works of God and the interests of mankind. There is no principle 
 of change, no phase of political speculation conceivable, more 
 comprehensive, more subversive, or more arbitrary than this. It 
 is a confutation of democracy, because it seta limits to the exercise 
 of the popular will, and substitutes for it a higher principle. . . . 
 Thus, after surrendering the individual to the collective will, the 
 revolutionary system (Acton has been speaking of the theory of 
 Nationality as a phase of revolutionary doctrine) makes the collective 
 will subject to the conditions which are independent of it, only 
 to be controlled by an accident." 
 
 Lord Acton's words were not listened to, for more 
 fashionable doctrines held the field. In England both 
 Liberalism and Conservatism had their own special 
 reasons for espousing the cause of political Nationalism, 
 To the Liberals it seemed to spell liberty, and to the 
 Conservatives it seemed to embody the force of instinct 
 or tradition, as against doctrines which based govern- 
 ment on more universal considerations of Reason and 
 Humanity. But Acton, with his eye ranging over the 
 whole course of human history, cared more for liberty 
 than for any of the temporary formulae in which it was 
 sought to dress her up. He foresaw that to base govern- 
 ment on anything less than a quality common to all 
 the governed, in virtue of their common humanity, was 
 for the State to surrender its moral pretensions and its 
 r6le as a factor in the moral progress of the world. 
 Time has borne him out : and what was injts inception 
 little more than a pardonable aberration, a naturalTesult 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 49 
 
 of strong feeling combined with loose thinking, has 
 become in more than one contemporary State the main- 
 spring of a Realpolitik which avowedly bases policy upon 
 considerations of national selfishness and seeks to propa- 
 gate a dominant nationalism through the power of the 
 government with which it is so unhappily associated. 
 
 Am I out of sympathy then, 1 shall be asked, with 
 political nationalist movements ? Do I look coldly on 
 the record of Mazzini and Garibaldi, or regret the libera- 
 tion of Italy ? Far from it. But I wish to make 
 perfectly clear — what was too easily obscured by the 
 circumstances of the time — that the reason why the 
 people of Sicily, Venetia, Tuscany, and the rest became 
 incorporated with Piedmont in one Italian State was not 
 because they were Italian in speech and culture, but 
 because they deliberately desired thus to dispose of their 
 destiny. Italian national sentiment might, and in fact 
 did, contribute to promote that desire ; but it was not 
 the principle underlying the union of Italy. If it had 
 been the movement would have extended to the Italian 
 cantons of Switzerland, which have remained firm in their 
 allegiance to that free and supra-national Commonwealth. 
 The sentiment of Nationality may, and often does, as in 
 the Trentino, contribute to what is called irredentism, 
 but it is not a justifiable basis of the irredentists' claim 
 to a change of government. One can see that at a glance 
 by considering what would happen if the sentiment of 
 Nationality were admitted as a sole and sufficient claim 
 for a change of government. French Canada would 
 have to pass to France, Wisconsin to Germany, and part 
 of Minnesota to Norway, while the New York police 
 would become the servants of the new Home Rule 
 government in Ireland. I have taken progressively im- 
 possible instances in order to show how easily the theory 
 which makes national feeling the criterion of Statehood 
 can be reduced to an absurdity. But the fact that the 
 theory is absurd does not prevent its being put into 
 
50 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 practice, and instances as absurd as those last drawn from 
 the New World can be drawn in actual fact from the 
 Old. To what State ought Macedonia to belong ? It 
 depends, according to the political nationalist's theory, on 
 the nationality of the people of Macedonia. Magicians 
 are brought upon the scene, in the shape of ethnologists 
 and historians, to determine the question of nationality, 
 and the unfortunate people, instead of being asked what 
 they do desire, are told what they ought to desire, and 
 schools are founded to enforce the lesson. Some friends 
 of mine stayed some years ago in a village which changed 
 its nationality more than once in a season under the per- 
 suasion of the bayonets of rival bands of wandering 
 propagandists. Nationality has in fact become a matter 
 of propaganda, like religion, and the wars that it leads to 
 partake of the aimless and blundering brutality of religious 
 wars in which men try to save other men's souls by 
 offering them the alternatives of conversion or the 
 stake. 
 
 It is not the principle of nationality, as so many 
 English people think, which will bring peace and good 
 government to Macedonia and Eastern Europe gene- 
 rally, but the principle of toleration. It took Western 
 Europe several generations after the Thirty Years' War 
 to realise that religion, being subjective, was no satis- 
 factory criterion of Statehood, and that a wise ruler must 
 allow his subjects to go to heaven by their own road. 
 It may take Eastern Europe as long to reach the same 
 conclusion about Nationality. But in the long run the 
 theory of a National State will go the way of Henry 
 VIII.'s and Luther's theory of a National Church. 
 
 In reality, of course, English people when they 
 invoke the principle of Nationality mean the principle 
 of Democracy — the principle that a people, however 
 constituted, whether homogeneous like the Italians, or 
 closely related like the Southern Slavs, or not homo- 
 geneous at all, like the Belgians and the Swiss, has a 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 51 
 
 right to dispose of its own destiny according to its 
 corporate will. If we mean Democracy, let us boldly say 
 so. It is not indeed a magic formula. It is open to 
 limitations obvious enough to the student of non-adult 
 races. But it is no cause to be ashamed of. 
 
 Having thus cleared the ground, I will proceed to 
 indicate my own view of Nationality and Statehood. I 
 must be very brief; but, if I give little more than defi- 
 nitions, I hope my criticism of other views will have 
 enabled the definitions to explain themselves. 
 
 It is clear that there is a fundamental difference 
 between the two conceptions. Nationality, like religion, 
 is subjective ; Statehood is objective. Nationality is 
 psychological ; Statehood is political. Nationality is a 
 condition of mind ; Statehood is a condition in law. 
 Nationality is a spiritual possession ; Statehood is an 
 enforceable obligation. Nationality is a way of feeling, 
 thinking and living ; Statehood is a condition inseparable 
 from all civilised ways of living. 
 
 What is subjective cannot be defined in strict scien- 
 tific terms : it can only be interpreted ; and the inter- 
 pretation will only have a meaning for those who can 
 appreciate the peculiar quality of the object interpreted. 
 It is impossible to define the quality of a Beethoven 
 symphony so as to make it intelligible to non-musicians. 
 Simuarly it is impossible to define the quality which 
 makes Shakespeare's work characteristically English, or 
 to explain to a German ignorant of England what exactly 
 it is which has evaporated in Schlegel's translation. Jews 
 and Gentiles both rock equally with laughter at " Potash 
 and Perlrautter " ; but the Jews know that they are 
 laughing at the real Jewish humour of the play, while 
 the Gentiles are only laughing at the jokes. Inter- 
 nationalism, in its finest and truest sense, involves an 
 insight into the inner spiritual life of many nationalities 
 and a sensitive palate to many various forms of national 
 quality. A man who has no understanding of Jewish 
 
52 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 humour may have the highest liberal principles and the 
 best and most enlightened intentions ; but he will have 
 an incomplete understanding of Jewish nationality. 
 ^ How then shall we define Nationality ? Nationality, 
 ' I would suggest, is a form of corporate sentiment. I 
 would define a nation as a body of people united by a 
 \ corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, 
 ' related to a definite home-country. Every nation has a 
 home, though some nations, such as the Jews, the Irish, 
 the Norwegians and the Poles, live for the greater part 
 in exile. If the Jews ceased to feel a peculiar aflFection 
 for Palestine or the Irish for Ireland they would both 
 cease to be nations, as the gipsies have ceased to be a 
 nation ; and when an individual Jew ceases to feel 
 affection for Palestine, or an individual Irishman ceases 
 to feel affection for Ireland, he ceases to be a Jew or an 
 Irishman.^ Once an American citizen, a man is always 
 an American citizen until either the State is destroyed 
 or his status is altered by process of law ; but Nationality, 
 being subjective, is often mutable and intermittent. 
 History is full of the deaths and resurrections of nations, 
 and amid the commercialism and cosmopolitanism of 
 to-day many diverse forms of national consciousness are 
 struggling to maintain their hold on the minds and 
 spirits of the scattered races of mankind. Only those 
 who have seen at close quarters what a moral degra- 
 
 ' It may be argued that such men still remained members of their race 
 even though they no longer acknowledged their nationality. This is true. 
 Race is an objective test, and no man can change his race any more than a 
 leopard can change his spots. But this is not the same as to admit that there 
 is such a thing as a Jewish or an Irish race. Race is an ethnological and 
 anthropological term, and much confusion would be avoided if it were kept 
 severely out of political discussions. The current scientific classification of 
 race (homo Alpinus, homo Mediterraneus, etc.) has no bearing on questions 
 of national or political consciousness, except to make it clear that political 
 theories (like that of Houston Stewart Chamberlain) which base themselves on 
 race differences are unscientific and worthless. The world is, of course, full 
 of the descendants of "assimilated" Jews and Irishmen ; but it is equally full 
 of "assimilated " Assyrians, Hittites, Goths, Picts, Angles, and other forgotten 
 nationalities. To lay stress on facts such as these is no more helpful than to 
 recall that we are all children of Adam. 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 53 
 
 dation the loss of nationality involves, or sampled the 
 drab cosmopolitanism of Levantine seaports or American 
 industrial centres, can realise what a vast reservoir of 
 spiritual power is lying ready, in the form of national 
 feeling, to the hands of teachers and statesmen, if only 
 they can learn to direct it to wise and liberal ends. To 
 seek to ignore this force or to humiliate it or to stamp 
 it out in the name of progress or western ideas is un- 
 wittingly to reproduce Prussian methods and to promote, 
 not progress or enlightenment, but spiritual impoverish- 
 ment and moral weakness. Driven from the throne and 
 the altar, national sentiment is at last finding its proper 
 resting-place in the mission school and the settlement 
 and in the homes of the common people. In the world 
 as it is to-day, as educated India is discovering, con- 
 sciousness of nationality is essential to individual self- 
 respect, as self-respect is essential to right living. 
 
 Nationality, in fact, rightly regarded, is not a political 
 but an educational conception. It is a safeguard of self- 
 respect against the insidious onslaughts of a materialistic 
 cosmopolitanism. It is the sling in the hands of weak 
 undeveloped peoples against the Goliath of material 
 progress. The political Prussianism of a militarist 
 government is far less dangerous to the spiritual welfare 
 of its subjects in the long run than the ruthless and 
 pervading pressure of commercial and co smop olitan 
 standards. What is imposed on them by overt tyranny 
 men resist, and win self-respect by resisting ; but the 
 corruption that creeps in as an ''improvement" men 
 imitate and succumb to. The vice of nationalism is 
 Jingoism, and there are always good Liberals amongst 
 us ready to point a warning finger against its manifes- 
 tations. The vice of internationalism is decadence and 
 the complete eclipse of personality, ending in a type of 
 character and social life which good Conservatives in- 
 stinctively detest, but have seldom sufficient patience to 
 describe. Fortunately we possess in Sir Mark Sykes 
 
54 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 a political writer who has the gift of clothing his^ aver- 
 sions in picturesque descriptive writing, and in his books 
 on the Near East English readers can find some of the 
 best examples (which might be paralleled from other con- 
 tinents, not least from America) of the spiritual degra- 
 dation which befalls men who have pursued " Progress " 
 and cosmopolitanism and lost contact with their own 
 national spiritual heritage. Here is his account of one 
 such mis-educated mind, encountered in Kurdistan : 
 
 " He said he was studying to be an ethnologist, psychologist, 
 hypnotist and poet : he admired Renan, Kant, Herbert Spencer, 
 Gladstone, Spurgeon, Nietzsche, and Shakespeare. It afterwards 
 appeared that his library consisted of an advertisement of Eno's 
 Fruit Salt, from which he quoted freely. He wept over what he 
 called the ' punishment of our great nation,' and desired to be 
 informed how, in existing circumstances, he could elevate himself 
 to greatness and power." i 
 
 Those of us who have been teachers have known the 
 genus "prig" in our time and have discovered how to 
 handle him ; but it is not so easy to discover how to handle 
 a whole society of prigs from which the health-giving winds 
 of nationality and tradition have been withdrawn. No task 
 is more urgent among the backward and weaker peoples 
 than the wise fostering of nationality and the main- 
 tenance of national traditions and corporate life as a 
 school of character and self-respect. 
 
 But to return to the definition. National sentiment 
 is intense ; it makes a great deal of difference to a man 
 whether or not he is a Scot or a Jew or a Pole. It is 
 not a thing which he could deny or betray without a 
 feeling of shame. It is intimate : it goes very deep down 
 to the roots of a man's being : it is linked up with 
 his past : it embodies the momentum of an ancient 
 tradition. The older a nation is, and the more it has 
 achieved and suffered, the more national it is. Nation- 
 ality means more to a Jew and an Armenian (probably 
 
 ' "The Caliph's Last Heritage," 191 5, p. 429. 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 55 
 
 the two oldest surviving forms of national consciousness) 
 than to a Canadian ; and, to quote a famous phrase, 
 " it means more to be a Canadian to-day " than it did 
 before the second Battle of Ypres. Thirdly, it is dig- 
 nified. The corporate sentiment of a nation is of a more 
 dignified order than the corporate sentiment of a village. 
 It is as hard to say at what stage of size or dignity 
 nationality begins as to say how many grains are needed 
 to form a heap. One could go through the islands of 
 the world, from a coral-reef to Australia, and find it im- 
 possible to say at what point one reached an island large 
 enough for the common sentiment of its inhabitants to 
 be described as national. Broadly speaking, one can only 
 say that if a people feels itself to be a nation, it is a nation. 
 
 Let us follow out what follows from this definition.V 
 If a group of people have a corporate sentiment, they \ 
 will seek to embody it in a common or similar mode of 1 
 life. They will have their own national institutions. ] 
 Englishmen will make toast and play open-air games and ' 
 smoke short pipes and speak English wherever they go. 
 Similarly Greeks will speak Greek and eat olives (if they 
 can get them) and make a living by their wits. There 
 is nothing in all this to prevent Englishmen and Greeks 
 from being good citizens under any government to whose 
 territory they migrate. The difficulty only arises when 
 governments are foolish or intolerant enough to pro- 
 hibit toast or olives or football or national schools and 
 societies, or to close the avenues of professional life 
 and social progress to new classes of citizens. Arbitrary 
 government, by repressing the spontaneous manifes- 
 tations of nationality, lures it into political channels : 
 for it is only through political activity that oppressed 
 nationalities can gain the right to pursue their distinctive 
 ways of life. Between free government and nationality 
 there is no need, and indeed hardly a possibility, of 
 conflict. This is clear from the fact that, whereas in 
 reactionary States the social manifestations of nationality 
 
56 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 invariably tend to become political, so that literary 
 societies and gymnastic clubs are suspect to the police 
 and constantly liable to dissolution, in Great Britain and 
 America manifestations of nationality tend to become 
 more and more non-political and social in character. 
 Languages banned and prohibited in Germany, Austria- 
 Hungary and Russia as dangerous to the State are freely 
 spoken in the United States ; and, though there are 
 more Poles in Chicago than in Warsaw, and more 
 Norwegians in the North Western States than in Norway, 
 nobody apprehends any danger therefrom to the unity 
 and security of the American Commonwealth. The 
 American Commonwealth may, and indeed must, change 
 Its distinctive character and quality with the lapse of 
 time and the change in the composition of its population ; 
 it may even become multi-lingual. But its governmental 
 institutions will remain untroubled, so long as \t remains 
 a free democracy, by political nationalist movements. 
 America will have to wait long for its Kossuths and 
 Garibaldis. 
 
 Much more could be said about Nationality ; but it 
 is time to pass to Statehood. 
 
 What is a State .? A State can be defined, in legal 
 language, as a territory or territories over which there is 
 a government claiming unlimited authority. This defi- 
 nition says nothing about the vexed question of the 
 relation between the State and the individual, and the 
 rights of conscientious objectors. It only makes clear 
 the indisputable fact that, whatever the response of indi- 
 viduals, the claim to exercise unlimited authority is 
 inherent in Statehood. It is involved in State sove- 
 reignty. The State, as Aristole said long ago, is a 
 sovereign association, embracing and superseding, for 
 the purposes of human life in society, all other associ- 
 ations. The justification of the State's claim to peculiar 
 authority is that experience shows it is mankind's only 
 safeguard against anarchy, and that anarchy involves the 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 57 
 
 eclipse of freedom. Haiti and Mexico to-day are the 
 best commentaries on that well-thumbed text, of which 
 priests and barons in earlier ages, like Quakers and 
 plutocrats and syndicalists in our own, have needed, and 
 still need to be reminded. Freedom and the good life 
 cannot exist without government. They can only come 
 into existence through government. 
 
 But Statehood in itself does not carry us beyond 
 ancient Egypt and Assyria, or beyond Petrograd and 
 Potsdam. Such States have subjects, and these subjects 
 have obligations, both legal and moral : but they are not, 
 strictly speaking, citizens. Citizenship is the obligation 
 incumbent on members of Commonwealths or free States. 
 What is a free State .'' Here again one can give no 
 exact definition ; for freedom, like nationality, is not 
 something tangible, like a ballot-box, but a state of mind 
 in individual men and women. A free State is a State 
 so governed as to promote freedom. What is freedom ? 
 Perhaps the best brief definition of freedom is that lately 
 given by that bold psychologist, our chairman, when he 
 spoke of that " continuous possibility of initiative which 
 we vaguely mean by * freedom.' " ' A man is not free 
 unless he feels free, and in order to feel free he must 
 feel that there is a full range of thought and at least 
 some range of action left open for the determination of 
 his own will. How strong that desire for personal 
 freedom, that sense of the importance of the possibility 
 of initiative, is among Englishmen we have lately seen 
 by their marked preference for being " asked " to enlist 
 as against being " ordered " to enlist. For Englishmen, 
 in fact, and for all men who set store by human values, 
 the sense of personal freedom is an important factor in 
 promoting happiness or a sense of well-being. Freedom 
 may be hard to define in set terms ; but the man who 
 can be perfectly happy without it enjoys the passive 
 
 • Article by Mr. Graham Wallas in The Menu Statesman, September 25 
 1915. 
 
58 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 contentmentof an animal rather than the positive well-being 
 proper to a man. The neglect of this obvious truth in 
 the working of our industrial government is the simplest 
 and most potent element in the inarticulate labour unrest 
 which has so much hampered British trade and industry 
 of recent years. Harmony can only be restored by frankly 
 basing our industrial life, as our political life is already 
 based, on the principle of responsible self-government. 
 
 Freedom and self-government, as this illustration 
 shows, are closely associated : but it is important to 
 recognise that they are not identical. Haiti is more 
 self-governing than its neighbour Jamaica or Nigeria, but 
 Jamaica and Nigeria are the freer countries. If British 
 rule and its accompanying expert knowledge were with- 
 drawn from Nigeria and the country were in consequence 
 ravaged by sleeping sickness, the individual Nigerian 
 would obviously not thereby have increased his freedom 
 of initiative or his personal well-being. At certain 
 stages of knowledge and education free government and 
 responsible self-government are incompatible ; but it is 
 the root principle of democracy that the right, or rather 
 the moral duty, of self-government is an essential element 
 in full personal freedom. No State can be described as 
 free unless it is either self-governing or so organised as to 
 promote self-government in the future. 
 
 If the exercise of self-government is a duty and a 
 privilege without which man cannot grow to his full 
 moral stature or enjoy the full sense of freedom and 
 self-respect, It follows that the object to which it is 
 directed Is a moral object. Citizenship is more than a 
 mere matter of political gymnastics, designed to train the 
 moral faculties of the individual ; it is civilised man's 
 appointed means for the service of mankind. It is 
 through the State, and by means of civic service, that 
 man in the modern world can best do his duty to his 
 neighbour. An ordinary old-fashioned State may be no 
 more than a Sovereign Authority, but a free State or 
 
NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 59 
 
 Commonwealth is and must be invested with what may 
 best be described as a moral personality. It could not 
 claim the free service of its citizens unless it stood for 
 moral ends. In so far as it ceases to stand for moral 
 ends, its citizens cease to be moral agents, and, as we 
 have seen in the case of Germany, this inevitable atrophy 
 of moral action in its citizens means a corresponding 
 decline in their moral freedom. Their sense of civic 
 obligation comes into conflict with their sense of what is 
 right and just, and the conflict ends in a degradation of 
 personal self-respect and in the open acceptance of a two- 
 fold standard of morality for States and for private indi- 
 viduals, resulting in the approbation of what is known as 
 Realpolitik. If the unashamed Italian ministerial phrase, 
 "Sacro egoismo nazionale" (sacred national egoism), 
 which could be paralleled nearer home, really character- 
 ised the guiding motive of the Italian State, as it does 
 that of some others, then the people of Italy would not 
 only be less moral but also less free and self-respecting 
 to-day than they were when they responded to the very 
 different watchwords of Mazzini. 
 
 To maintain and to live up to this high conception 
 of citizenship is no easy task. A great political tradition 
 embodies the work of generations of effort and service. 
 Those who lightly ask us to transcend it and become 
 citizens of Europe or of a World-State have often not 
 made clear to themselves what civic obligation involves, 
 or how necessary it is that, before we ask Europe to 
 accept us as citizens, we must have been faithful in small 
 things, so as to bring her a gift of service worthy of her 
 acceptance. Membership of a free State, such as the 
 British Commonwealth, means more than mere obedience 
 to its laws or a mere emotion of pride and patriotism, 
 more even than an intelligent exercise of political duties : 
 it involves a personal dedication to great tasks and great 
 ideals : it links a man to great causes striven for in the 
 past, and sets him a standard and a tradition to work for 
 
6o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 in the future. The functions of government may con- 
 ceivably be divided ; but dedication, like marriage, must of 
 its nature be undivided. It can only be relinquished when 
 it can be merged in all solemnity and in the fullness of 
 time in a great free federation where the same causes and 
 ideals can be brought to larger and happier fulfilment. 
 
 There is no time, at the -end of this long paper, to 
 work out a philosophy of government in detail, but this 
 at least may be said to make clear my attitude to the 
 inter-State problem which in my earlier remarks I ha,ve 
 laid bare rather than attempted to solve. That problem 
 is incapable of solution till men have come to regard 
 States as moral personalities with duties as well as rights : 
 till all the leading States, through the public opinion of 
 their free citizens, have come to regard their duty to 
 humanity as prior to the safe-guarding of their selfish 
 purposes : and until there is a far closer agreernent 
 among the civilised peoples than seems possible to-day 
 as to the principles which should underlie the ultimate 
 organisation of the world on the basis of morality and 
 justice. Government exists to promote the conditions 
 of a good life : and the anarchy and wickedness of the 
 present conflict are a revelation at once of the absence 
 and of the need of a world-government which shall 
 promote those conditions for all mankind. But until 
 mankind are agreed as to those conditions, until they 
 know what kind of a world they desire to live in, and 
 have achieved freedom of action to give effect to their 
 wishes, it is idle to look to statesmen to give us more 
 than a temporary and precarious peace. Peace is not 
 the birthright of the sons of men : it is the prize of 
 right living. Let us first be clear in our minds and 
 hearts as to what is the cause for which we stand, and 
 where our service is due, and let us be faithful in per- 
 forming it : then haply, at the latter end, when the reign 
 of Justice and Liberty has been assured, Peace too may 
 be added unto us. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM i 
 
 You have asked me to speak to you on True and False 
 Nationalism — that is to say, on the sentiment of Nation- 
 ality in its good and its evil manifestations — as the 
 opening lecture in this week's course on International 
 Relationships. I am very glad that you have arranged 
 for the treatment of this subject : for the road to Inter- 
 nationalism lies through Nationalism ; and no theory or 
 ideal of Internationalism can be helpful, in our thinking 
 or effective in practice unless it is based on a right under- 
 standing of the place which national sentiment occupies 
 and must always occupy in the life of mankind. If we 
 believe, as we all of us here do, in the brotherhood of 
 man : if we feel, more than ever at a time like this, that 
 we are all children of one Father, and that men, women, 
 and children, to whatever race they belong and whatever 
 the colour of their faces, are loveable simply in virtue of 
 their mere humanity, yet we must all also admit that " it 
 takes all sorts to make a world." We must admit the 
 uniqueness and individuality of every human soul, and 
 the difficulty which most of us experience in getting 
 behind the barriers of reserve and mutual misunder- 
 standing which shut men and women up in little cages 
 impenetrable to all but those who have the genius of 
 friendship and sympathy. And we must admit, even 
 more poignantly, the unique corporate individuality of 
 social groups and distinctive nationalities, and the terrible 
 difficulty of penetrating unaided through the wire en- 
 tanglements behind which those whom we know and 
 
 I Address to the Inter-denominational Conference of Social Service Unions 
 at Swanwick, June z8, 1915, the Bishop of Lichfield in the chair. 
 
 61 
 
62 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 acknowledge to be our brothers sit in tragic and some- 
 times in sullen resignation. Many kind-hearted English 
 people who talked lightly of international brotherhood a 
 year ago have had their theories rudely challenged, not 
 so much by the war as by the constant daily difficulty of 
 trying to understand and to feel sympathetic towards 
 their Belgian guests, whose modes of thought and corpo- 
 rate idiosyncrasies have seemed so hard to comprehend. 
 Similarly many an enthusiastic young Englishman has 
 gone out to India full of plans for bridging the age-long 
 gulf between East and West and has given up the task 
 disheartened and disillusioned. " Do unto others as you 
 would they should do unto you " sounds such a simple 
 and easy text in theory. You only begin to realise how 
 difficult it is when you discover your total ignorance as 
 to how your alien brother wishes to be treated. It is no 
 good treating him as you would like to be treated. It is 
 no good, for instance, inviting a Belgian to a cricket- 
 match or a high-caste Indian to a dinner-party. You 
 have to penetrate below the surface manners and customs 
 which divide the members of different nationalities and 
 social groups from one another to the eternal things 
 which unite, to the rock-bottom level of our common 
 humanity. But to do that is not easy : it cannot be 
 learnt in a day : it conflicts with our insular habit of 
 mind. Only a genius can do it without knowledge. 
 Most of us can only learn it through careful study of 
 the nations or groups with whom we are dealing and a 
 patient training of our sympathies and insight. 
 
 A right understanding of the meaning and value of 
 Nationality is an indispensable preliminary then to any 
 international programme. That being so, I felt that I 
 could not refuse your invitation to speak on it, as it is a 
 subject which has been much in my mind for some years 
 past. Yet I was conscious in accepting it — and the 
 feeling increased as the date crept nearer — of the great 
 responsibility you have thrown on me by asking me to 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 6^ 
 
 occupy this opening morning. I want to try to discharge 
 it by speaking to you, quite frankly, out of my own per- 
 sonal experience, which is necessarily different from that 
 of any one else present, trusting to the discussion that 
 follows to correct what you may feel to be my one- 
 sidedness or perhaps my excessive detachment. 
 
 Most Englishmen have picked up their ideas about 
 Nationality from the great Liberal and Nationalist 
 thinkers of their generation, and from those who in 
 our own day are applying the nineteenth-century ideas 
 to the problems of Central and South-Eastern Europe. 
 They look upon it, that is to say, as a political question, 
 and as bound up with the assertion of a political ideal. 
 We know the Irish Nationalists as a political party, and 
 we are now familiar with similar political parties in the 
 oppressed or, as the Italians call them, the unredeemed 
 lands of Central and Eastern Europe, in Poland, in 
 Bohemia, in Croatia, and in parts of the Balkans and 
 nearer Asia. Our statesmen have told us that our policy 
 is one of liberation for these races, and our prophets, in 
 the newspapers and elsewhere, have already redrawn the 
 map of Europe so as to group the States so far as pos- 
 sible into national units. English people as a whole 
 have gladly subscribed to these ideas. They may not all 
 be equally sanguine : they may differ in their views as to 
 their practicability, and in their attitude towards Russia ; 
 but there is no difference of opinion as regards the 
 doctrine of Nationality itself. The bitterest opponents 
 of Sir Edward Grey see eye to eye with him on this 
 point. The day is irrevocably past when Bernard Shaw 
 could raise a laugh against the upholders of the Nation- 
 alist traditions of Liberalism by declaring : " A Liberal is 
 d. man who has three duties : a duty to Ireland, a duty 
 to Finland, and a duty to Macedonia." The whirligig 
 of time and of events has made us all Nationalists now — 
 at any rate as regards the Continent ; while even in the 
 vexed question of Ireland many of those who were bitter 
 
64 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 enemies of Irish Nationalism in the past are now heard 
 arguing that Ireland really consists of two nations, not 
 one, and that Ulster ought, therefore, to be under a 
 separate government from the rest of Ireland. The 
 slow-moving English mind has thoroughly grasped the 
 fact that the desire of national groups to live their own 
 life and manage their own affairs is — to say the least — 
 deserving of respectful consideration : and the behaviour 
 of the Germans in Belgium has driven this conclusion 
 relentlessly home. We are not now likely to ignore the 
 political claims of Nationality either in our thinking or in 
 the European settlement. The mistakes we are likely to 
 make lie rather in the opposite direction. The danger 
 of our thought at the moment, as it seems to me, is not 
 that we should ignore the political side of Nationality, 
 but that we should exaggerate its Importance and mistake 
 a temporary expedient and necessary stage in political 
 progress for a permanent political solution and a satis- 
 factory political ideal. 
 
 The danger is a very real one, and I want to join 
 Issue on it at once. The current political theory about 
 Nationality is, I think, fairly expressed in the following 
 'sentence of Mill's " Representative Government " : " It 
 is in general a necessary condition of free institutions 
 that the boundaries of governments should coincide In 
 i the main with those of nationalities." Mill believes, in 
 other words, that citizenship and nationality should be 
 co-extensive : that we should look forward to a world 
 neatly parcelled out into National States, each under its 
 own independent Government, and that all States, or (as 
 we sometimes call them) empires which Include different 
 races and nations are thereby rendered imperfect and 
 ought ultimately to break up. I believe from the bottom 
 of my heart that Mill's idea is fundamentally wrong — 
 wrong in fact, and wrong as an Ideal, and that all for- 
 ward-looking men who desire better International rela- 
 tions and a better political organisation of the world 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 65 
 
 must set their hope, not in the Nation-State, which is 
 only a stage, and in the West an outworn stage, in the 
 political evolution of mankind, but in States which, like 
 the great governing religious systems of the past, like 
 mediaeval Christendom and Islam, find room for all sorts 
 and conditions of communities and nations. 
 
 Having thus thrown down the gauntlet to Mill and 
 the theory of the National State, let me briefly indicate 
 my own personal position towards the problem, and how 
 I came to hold it. I approach the problem, not as a 
 statesman or a student of politics, but simply as a 
 teacher : as one, that is, whose business it is to try and 
 draw out the hidden good and the buried truth that is in 
 every man's soul — to try and get on the right side ot 
 people, to appeal to their higher and deeper nature in 
 such a way that they can understand the appeal and 
 respond to it. That is to me what Education means — 
 not pouring in, but drawing out ; and it is as one inte- 
 rested in education, in this true sense of the word, that 
 I would like to interest you in the question of Nationality. 
 
 Nationality to me is not a political question at all 
 — not a question of Sovereign Governments, armies, 
 frontiers and foreign policy. Or perhaps, I should say 
 it is only accidentally & political question, owing to the 
 operation of certain forces which are really anachronisms 
 in the twentieth century. It is primarily and essentially 
 a spiritual question, and, in particular, an educational 
 question. It is a question for the parent, the teacher, 
 the educational administrator, the missionary, the social 
 worker, for all who are concerned with the life and ideals 
 of the young and with the spiritual welfare of the com- 
 munity. Nationality to me is bound up with the question 
 of corporate life, corporate growth, and corporate self- 
 respect. I learnt to value Nationality, not from reading 
 Mazzini's essays (though I read them enthusiastically as 
 a boy) nor from sympathising with European Nationalist 
 movements (though no one wishes them success more 
 
 F 
 
66 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 fervently or loathes oppression more whole-heartedly 
 than I do), but from realising, as I grew to manhood, 
 that I was not an Englishman, and from my sense of the 
 debt I owe to the heritage with which I am connected by 
 blood and tradition. My own particular national con- 
 nexions are of no concern. But to have discovered 
 that I was not an Englishman in the deeper side of my 
 nature and that yet my opinions on public affairs corre- 
 sponded with those of my fellow-citizens, and that my 
 working life would be spent in England — this carried 
 me beyond the facile philosophy held by the ordinary 
 Englishman, that citizenship and nationality are co- 
 extensive terms. Later experience all tended to confirm 
 this impression. In the Workers' Educational Associa- 
 tion I learnt that the way to give a university education 
 to workpeople is not to impose a standardised culture or 
 knowledge upon them from above, but to seek to under- 
 stand their distinctive corporate modes of life and thought, 
 and so, by accepting and even welcoming their diflferences 
 of experience and outlook, to penetrate through to the 
 eternal things that unite. I learnt, as the nation has 
 learnt in these last few weeks, that the way to enlist 
 working-class devotion is by using the corporate modes 
 of action and organisation which they have evolved as a 
 social group to express their own needs and ideals. 
 Later, I spent a year in the Near East ; there I saw the 
 other side of the picture. I saw the crude and narrow 
 side of political Nationalism, a propaganda in which all 
 the social and ethical values, religion, morality, citizen- 
 ship, were used for the promotion of one single all- 
 absorbing political end. I heard of Macedonian bishops 
 whose chief function was to distribute rifles to guerilla 
 bands, and talked to peasants whom, I am sure, not even 
 our chairman himself could have persuaded that a Turk 
 was a human being like themselves. But I saw also 
 another process : the gradual sapping of Nationality and 
 all the traditional customs and restraints associated with 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 67 
 
 it by the insidious influences of commercialism. I met 
 Levantines who were proud to belong to no nationality, 
 who took greasy American passports out of their pockets 
 and boasted of the immunity from ordinary legal pro- 
 cesses which they thereby enjoyed : and I began to 
 wonder whether the fanatical peasant, for all his Old 
 Testament ferocity, was not preferable to the Levantine 
 lounger along the quayside with his purely economic 
 standards. Then I left the Balkans and spent seven 
 months in the United States, and there, thanks to Jane 
 Addams and some other fine spirits who have had the 
 courage and insight to grapple with the problems of 
 immigration, my conversion to non-political Nationalism 
 was completed. I watched the workings of that ruthless 
 economic process sometimes described as " the miracle of 
 assimilation," I watched the steam-roller of American 
 industrialism — so much more terrible to me in its con- 
 sequences than Prussian or Magyar tyranny — grinding 
 out the spiritual life of the immigrant proletariat, turning 
 honest, primitive peasants into the helpless and degraded 
 tools of the Trust magnate and the Tammany boss : and 
 I realised that only by a conscious attempt to keep alive 
 their links with the past, by an educational movement on 
 the lines and in the spirit of the Workers' Educational 
 Association movement at home, could America be saved 
 from the anarchy with which she is threatened. In other 
 words, I have come to believe in Nationality, not as a 
 political creed for oppressed peoples, but rather as an 
 educational creed for the diverse national groups of 
 which the industrialised and largely migratory democra- 
 cies in our large modern States must be increasingly 
 composed. I believe in Nationality because I believe 
 that the alternative to Nationality in the modern world 
 is not governmental oppression but spiritual atrophy. 
 And I think spiritual atrophy is equally disastrous 
 whether it comes about through the action of a repres- 
 sive Government or through the disintegrating influences 
 
68 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 which are variously described by such names as Progress, 
 Civilisation, Culture, Assimilation, and even, I fear, 
 sometimes in old-fashioned mission schools as Con- 
 version. 
 
 Let me now try to apply this conception of Nation- 
 ality to the facts of the world as we see it to-day. 
 
 The problem of Nationality confronts us to-day in 
 two distinct forms. There is the problem in Central 
 and South-Eastern Europe, which, owing to the war and 
 the long chain of events which preceded it, is primarily a 
 political problem ; and there is the spiritual and educa- 
 tional problem which I have just described — a problem 
 which confronts us in all parts of the world, wherever 
 economic activity or what is called Progress is breaking 
 up old forms of life, whether it be in South Wales or in 
 India, in Nigeria or the United States, among the Irish 
 in Liverpool and Glasgow or among the Jews of the East 
 End of London. 
 
 I do not mean to dwell at length on the political 
 problem in Central and South-Eastern Europe. The 
 facts are familiar to you. You know how the Polish 
 nation was divided into three parts at the end of the 
 eighteenth century, and how both the Prussian and the 
 Russian Governments have done their best to stamp out 
 the Polish language and the sentiment of Polish nation- 
 ality, with the result that the Poles are to-day more alive 
 and more self-conscious than ever. You know how the 
 German Government has behaved towards the Alsatians 
 and Lorrainers, and towards the Danes of Schleswig, 
 crushing out their institutions, and trying to submerge 
 their language and traditions beneath a flood of immi- 
 grants. You know, probably, the still more intolerable 
 behaviour of the dominant Magyars in Hungary towards 
 the Roumanians and the various Slav races who are sub- 
 ject to the Hungarian State : and you know how the 
 Austrian half of the monarchy, heir of a wiser tradition 
 of government, has been forced into line with the 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 69 
 
 Germans and the Hungarians, to the irreparable injury 
 of Europe. It has been difEcult for English people to 
 realise that any modern government could be so wicked 
 or so insane as to adopt the policy which has been pur- 
 sued by the politicians of Berlin and Buda-Pesth and 
 Petrograd for many years past — a policy involving the 
 prohibition of rights, like the use of one's own language, 
 which we hardly realise that we enjoy : we have grown 
 so used to taking them for granted, like the air we 
 breathe. 
 
 This policy of forcible assimilation of Germanisation, 
 of Russification, of Magyarisation, of Turkification is 
 insane. It is like trying by Act of Parliament to whiten 
 the Ethiopian or to change the leopard's spots. It is 
 insane : and it is doomed to failure. The blood of 
 martyrs is the seed of the Church. The Poles, the 
 Ruthenes, the Serbo-Croats and the rest are to-day more 
 conscious of their nationality than ever. It is insane : 
 but we must remember that it is actually going on ; and 
 that it has for years been bearing fruit — not the fruit 
 which the German, the Magyar, the Turkish, and the 
 Russian Governments desire, yet not the fruit which we 
 in the West desire either. 
 
 What is the result which the attempt at the forcible 
 suppression of Nationality has produced in Eastern 
 Europe ? 
 
 It has produced, among the suffering Nationalists, 
 what I fear one can only describe as an abnormal and 
 almost diseased frame of mind. Oppression and sup- 
 pression have vpeighed so heavily upon them that they 
 can think of nothing else, talk of nothing else, work for 
 nothing else. There is a certain melancholy and tire- 
 some monotony about the representatives of oppressed 
 nationalities : their national wrongs and their national 
 hopes are for ever on their lips. One feels as though 
 they were reaching out after something which was in- 
 dispensable to the completion of their manhood. Till 
 
70 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Poland is free, a Pole cannot enter into the full heritage 
 of the modern world, cannot work in modern movements, 
 or take his stand side by side with the members of hap- 
 pier nations. He must remain an outsider, a pariah, a 
 wandering agitator working for that for want of which 
 ordinary life has lost its sweetness for him. When I was 
 in Crete, before its annexation to Greece, even the shep- 
 herds on the topmost slopes of Mount Ida were discuss- 
 ing the secrets of the European Chancelleries and the 
 prospects of a European war, and seeing in every stray 
 traveller a possible wirepuller on their behalf in that 
 diplomatic world where, as political Nationalists so fondly 
 believe, national destinies are made or marred. 
 
 But nations cannot achieve true freedom through 
 diplomacy or even through war. Theiy must win it ror 
 themselves in the region of the spirit. All that statesmen 
 and soldiers can do is to remove from their shoulders 
 the weight of an intolerable oppression and leave them 
 free to work out their own destiny. That oppression, 
 we hope, will be ended, for some at least of the oppressed 
 nationalities of Europe, by the settlement at the close 
 of this war. But we must not fall into the error of 
 Imagining that when we have broken up the Austro-Hun^ 
 garian Monarchy and set up a number of little National 
 States instead the national problem will be solved. On the 
 contrary, it will be more in evidence than ever. All that 
 will have happened is that a great obstacle to the healthy 
 working of national sentiment will have been removed. 
 But the aftermath of oppression will still remain — the 
 bitter memories and the inbred intolerance which are so 
 often the fruit of persecution, and the habits of servility 
 and wire-pulling, of intrigue and agitation which inevi- 
 tably grow upon individuals or groups who have been 
 living for long years amid the excitements of propaganda, 
 instead of leading a normal healthy social existence. We 
 must not expect too much from the liberated national- 
 ities, or we shall be bitterly disillusioned. They have 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 71 
 
 been brought up in a bad school : and their English and 
 French sympathisers will need to exert all their influence 
 and use all their sympathy to exorcise the malign results 
 of long years of oppression and agitation. The emanci- 
 pated slave and the parvenu magnate do not always shine 
 in positions of responsibility and command. History 
 records the same of nations suddenly released from the 
 prison-house. The evil that tyrants do lives after them, 
 whereas, only too often, the good their persecution pro- 
 voked, the heroism, the self-sacrifice, and the devotion, 
 is " interred with their bones." It took Italy more than 
 a generation to recover from the reaction which set in 
 after the triumphs of Garibaldi. 
 
 So much for the peculiar national problem created by 
 misgovernment and oppression in parts of Europe. It 
 is, as I have tried to show, only by accident a political 
 problem. It has become political because wicked and 
 autocratic governments have interfered with the social 
 and traditional life and offended the deepest instincts of 
 the nations concerned. Misgovernment has in its turn 
 provoked a reaction : and this reaction has transformed 
 nationality into a revolutionary political force, which sets 
 before itself the purely political ideal of Nationality, in 
 the form of a national State. Unfortunately, owing 
 to the tragic failure and blindness first of Turkish and 
 then of Austro-Hungarian statesmanship, South-Eastern 
 Europe seems destined to be for some time longer the 
 home of a number of small independent national States, 
 roughly co-extensive with nationalities. This may or 
 may not be the least bad of the possible solutions at the 
 present time. But do not let us imagine, like Mill, that 
 these small national States are an advantage to the world 
 as a whole, or that they are anything but a hindrance to 
 the growth of that internationalism — that mutual tole- 
 rance, understanding and co-operation between nation- 
 alities — which we here have at heart. Sympathy -with 
 small nationalities has led many unthinking people to a 
 
72 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 wholly unjustified admiration for small States, regardless 
 of the fact that, for all practical purposes, they are as 
 great an anachronism in the large-scale world of to-day as 
 the stage-coach and the sailing-ship, ahd other relics of a 
 vanished past. I cannot labour this point at length : nor 
 is it really germane to our subject ; I can only refer you 
 to the searching analysis of the political side of nationalist 
 claims made by Lord Acton in his wonderfully prophetic 
 essay on Nationality written in 1862, in the heyday of 
 Mill and Mazzini. 
 
 " The greatest adversary of the rights of Nationality," says 
 Acton, " is the modern theory of nationality. By making the 
 State and the nation commensurate with each other in theory it 
 reduces practically to a subject condition all other nationalities 
 that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an 
 equality with the ruling nation which constitutes the State, 
 because the State would then cease to be national^ which would 
 be a contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, 
 therefore, to the degree of humanity and civilisation in that 
 dominant body which claims all the rights of the community, the 
 inferior races are exterminated or reduced to servitude, or out- 
 lawed, or put in a position of dependence." 
 
 I quote this passage, not only as a forecast of Prussian 
 and Magyar, and I fear I must add Roumanian methods, 
 but because it points to dangers from which we are not 
 wholly free even in this country. There are many good 
 people who believe, with Mr. Bottomley and Lord North- 
 clifFe, that British citizenship is in some peculiar way the 
 monopoly of Englishmen, and that naturalised British 
 subjects, or persons of foreign extraction, are only, so to 
 speak, admitted into the household on sufferance and 
 ought to apologise for their existence. 
 
 What Acton says about small States is perhaps even 
 more prophetic in view of the sufferings of Belgium and 
 of the smaller neutrals — 
 
 " The progress of civilisation," he says, " deals hardly with 
 small States. In order to maintain their integrity they must 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 73 
 
 attach themselves by confederations or family alliances to greater 
 Powers and thus lose something of their independence. Their 
 tendency is to isolate and shut off their inhabitants, to narrow the 
 horizon of their view, and to dwarf in some degree the pro- 
 portions of their ideas. Public opinion cannot maintain its 
 liberty and purity in such small dimensions. In a small and 
 homogeneous population there is hardly room for a natural classi- 
 fication of society or for those inner groups of interests that set 
 bounds to sovereign power. The government and the subjects 
 contend with borrowed weapons. The resources of the one and 
 the aspirations of the other are derived from some external source, 
 and the consequence is that the country becomes the instrument 
 and the scene of contests in which it is not interested." 
 
 Belgium has indeed been tragically fated for centuries ; 
 but perhaps the worst calamity that has befallen her was 
 the failure, through Dutch misgovernment, of the short- 
 lived Confederation of the United Netherlands which 
 broke down in 1839 and left her independent in name, 
 but in fact dependent upon the good faith of her power- 
 ful neighbours. We shall none of us, I fear, live to see 
 the sentiment of Belgian nationality delivered from the 
 burden of hatred against Germany which the events of 
 this war have fastened upon it. 
 
 But Europe, as the Americans rightly tell us, is in its 
 political arrangements the most backward of the con- 
 tinents. Let us now turn from this stuffy little world 
 with its medley of States and dynasties, its entrenched 
 mediaeval jealousies and antagonisms, its cornplicated 
 State frontiers, bristling with fortresses and studded with 
 custom-houses, its dog-in-the-manger economic arrange- 
 ments by which three of its greatest rivers, the Rhine, 
 the Danube and the Vistula, each run through three 
 customs-areas that thwart the designs of nature, and its 
 largest State is so placed as to be cut off from all free 
 ouuet for the products of its boundless plains. Let us 
 turn from all this aftermath of the political inexperience, 
 stupidity, and wickedness of past centuries to study the 
 problem of nationality in those larger, wider, and, as I 
 
74 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 think, more modern-minded States which are happily 
 unfettered by the legacy of a bad past. In what follows 
 I shall speak principally of the United States, because I 
 have seen the conditions there ; but perhaps the discus- 
 sion will make clear how far the line of thought I put 
 forward applies to the problems of India, of British and 
 French Africa, and of the larger and more stable South 
 American Republics. 
 
 In these transatlantic communities we confront a situa- 
 tion which is, as regards nationality, the exact opposite of 
 'that in Europe. In Europe Nationality is an instinct 
 which has been stung into acute and morbid self-con- 
 sciousness by political oppression. In the large-scale 
 rapidly developing States of the outer world Nationality 
 is an instinct which, if Jeft to itself, would slowly die of 
 inanition, smothered beneath the pressure of the material 
 forces which are the dominating feature in modern trans- 
 atlantic life. In Europe the worst enemy of Nationality 
 is a bad idealism : in the Americas its worst enemy is 
 materialism pure and simple. In Europe Nationalism, 
 whether swollen with too much feeding, as in Germany, 
 or suppressed and embittered by persecution, as in 
 Poland, becomes hypertrophied, and is perverted into 
 a disease : in the non-national States of the outer world 
 it is in imminent danger of atrophy : there it is not 
 Nationalism but Cosmopolitanism which is the disease. 
 In one of the wisest and wittiest books of travel that I 
 know, " Dar-ul-Islam," by Sir Mark Sykes, the author 
 gives a diagnosis of this disease, in a description which 
 any one who has travelled on the confines of civilisation 
 or mixed with an immigrant population will understand 
 and appreciate. He has invented a name of his own for 
 it — Gosmabaleet — and here is his diagnosis. 
 
 " Gosmabaleet : This word is descriptive of that peculiar and 
 horrible sickness which attacks a certain percentage of inhabitants 
 of interesting and delightful lands. The outward symptoms in 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 75 
 
 the East are usually American spring-side boots and ugly European 
 clothes. Internally it is productive of many evil vapours which 
 issue from the lips in the form of catchwords such as ' the Rights 
 of Man,' ' Leebarty,' ' Civilisations,' ' Baleetical Offences.' The 
 origin of this disease is to be traced to an ill-assimilated education 
 of American or European type ; the final stage is that fn which 
 the victim, hating his teachers and ashamed of his parentage and 
 nationality, is intensely miserable." 
 
 It is a disease with which we are all familiar, whether 
 we have followed Sir Mark Sykes in his travels along the 
 coast-towns of Syria and met the former students of 
 Syrian mission schools, or whether we have only had to 
 face the problems arising from the contact of class with 
 class at home. It is the problem arising from the con- 
 tact of races and nations and social groups at different 
 levels of civilisation and social influence and with different 
 standards of life and conduct. Here at home, where, 
 thanks to the essential unity of English life, we have the 
 disease only in its milder forms, we see it in the parvenu, 
 in the snob, in the pushing promoted workman, in the 
 ennobled shopkeeper and his wife, or, most tragic of all, 
 sometimes in the scholarship boy from a working-class 
 home painfully mounting the rungs of the educational 
 ladder. These are the types in our English life of what 
 the French call the man without roots, the diradnL 
 Matter for comedy as they often are, in the hands of a 
 Thackeray or an Arnold Bennett, there is tragedy enough 
 about them to remind us that no man is sufficient unto 
 himself alone, that man is by nature a social being, and 
 that he can only find his full development as a person- 
 ality, and his truest happiness and most useful activity, in 
 a society where he can be truly himself, his best self 
 What is wrong about the snob, or the cosmopolitan, or 
 the degenerate type of native Christian is not his ideals 
 but his personality. ^The snob may rightly admire 
 the English aristocracy ; the cosmopolitan may whole- 
 heartedly re-echo the ideals which we in this gathering 
 
76 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 hope to promote : the mission-house Christian may have 
 sincerely adopted the creed of which he is so poor an 
 advertisement. Their failure is due, not to wrong ideals, 
 but to wrong methods of pursuing them : it is a failure 
 
 "^of education. In reaching out after something which 
 they feel to be higher they have lost themselves : they 
 have severed their links with their past : and with ^that 
 
 j^past has gone a portion of their own soul and strength. 
 They are like shorn Samsons, full of noble purposes, but 
 devoid of the strength to carry them out. Feeling weak 
 and helpless and foolish, cast suddenly into a new world, 
 of which they know nothing in detail, they have no 
 resource but to imitate those great ones whose ideals 
 they share. So they become parasites, pale ghosts of 
 their former selves, reflections, more or less successful, of 
 those whom they have selected for their exemplars. As 
 the scout-boys of Oxford and Cambridge dress up to 
 imitate the young bloods and even bet on the same 
 horses if they can discover their names, so does the 
 ambitious young Boston Jew from a Russian ghetto ape 
 the manners and customs of New England, or the nimble- 
 witted Bengali student adopt the facile phrases and 
 opinions of Macaulay and Mill. 
 
 But, after all, we admire men, and God perhaps 
 judges men, not for their ideals but for their characters, 
 not for what they profess, but for what they are. And if 
 this process of unregulated contact and ill-assimilated 
 education produces poor invertebrate and unamiable 
 characters, if it takes the soul and spirit out of its victims 
 and leaves them miserablcv specimens of civilisation, en- 
 ervated exponents of enlightenment, in place of the 
 young robust barbarians or heathens which they were 
 before the Goddess of Progress laid her seductive hand 
 upon them, the process of their education stands self- 
 condemned. " Wh3.t shall it profit a man if he gain the 
 whole world ^nd lose his own soul ? " What shall it 
 profit him if he gain wealth or social estimation, or even 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 77 
 
 serve the altar of the true faith, if he lose the strength to 
 keep his own soul alive ? 
 
 What exactly is wrong about this education which, as 
 Sir Mark Sykes says, causes the victim to hate his 
 teachers, to feel ashamed of his parents, and to end by 
 becoming intensely miserable himself ? Can we lay our 
 finger on the spot where the defect lies ? I think we 
 can. The defect is that it is an individual education and 
 not a social education. It takes each man as an indi- 
 vidual and flings him alone and unaided into a new 
 environment. It fails! to use, for the purpose of fitting 
 him for his new lifcy that corporate spirit which, in some 
 form or other, was his mainstay in the old. We all owe 
 far more to society than we shall ever know till we are 
 cast ashore on a desert island. The types that I am 
 speaking of, the de-classed, de-localised, uprooted indi- 
 viduals who form a large and increasing proportion of 
 modern communities, are cast ashore on a desert island. 
 If you had been, as I have, to the examining station for 
 immigrants on Ellis Island in New York Harbour, you 
 would appreciate the full force of the metaphor. These 
 poor souls pour out of the steerage of the great liner, 
 and file past the officers singly or in small family groups, 
 sad, bewildered, and hopelessly ignorant. America to 
 them is an unknown land. It is an earthly Paradise, an 
 El Dorado. It is a vision and an ideal. It is Liberty, 
 Equality, Brotherhood. But it is only an abstract ideal. 
 They have no knowledge and no power to weave it into 
 the texture of their lives. And before they have time to 
 look round or think over their new situation, they find 
 themselves with luggage-labels pinned on to their breasts 
 herded into a West-bound train, speeding towards an 
 industrial centre as the raw material of labour for some 
 remorseless business enterprise. 
 
 It is for this problem of the man without roots that~^ 
 Nationality provides a solution. Nationality is the one 
 social force capable of maintaining, for these people, their 
 
78 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 links with the past and keeping alive in them that spark 
 of the higher life and that irreplaceable sentiment of self- 
 respect without which all professions of fine ideals are 
 _but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. It is the 
 one force capable of doing so, because it is the one force 
 whose appeal is instinctive and universal. As a teacher 
 I know that if you really want to influence anybody you 
 must find something in him to work on. It is no use 
 telling people to be virtuous in the abstract. Curates 
 who preach vague sermons which may be summed up in 
 two words — Be Good — generally empty their churches. 
 What people want is to be shown how to apply general 
 principles to the facts of their daily life, and to feel that 
 their adviser understands their particular needs and diffi- 
 culties and desires. Now the only way to teach immi- 
 grants how to become good Americans, that is to say, 
 how to be good in America, is by appealing to that in 
 them which made them good in Croatia, or Bohemia, or 
 Poland, or wherever they came from. And by far the 
 best and the most useful leverage for this purpose is the 
 appeal to Nationality : because Nationality is more than 
 a creed or a doctrine or a code of conduct, it is an In- 
 stinctive attachment ; it recalls an atmosphere of precious 
 memories, of vanished parents and friends, of old custom, 
 of reverence, of home, and a sense of the brief span of 
 human life as a link between immemorial generations, 
 spreading backwards and forwards, " Men may change 
 their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, 
 their philosophies," says a Jewish-American writer, " they 
 cannot change their grandfathers. Jews or Poles, or 
 Anglo-Saxons, in order to cease being Jews or Poles or 
 Anglo-Saxons, would have to cease to be. 
 
 " At his core no human being ... is a mere mathematical 
 unit like the economic man. Behind him in time and tremen- 
 dously in him in quality are his ancestors ; around him in space 
 are his relations and kin, looking back to a remoter common 
 ancestry. In all these he lives and moves and has his being. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 79 
 
 They constitute, literally, his natio, and in Europe every inch of 
 his non-human environment means the effects of their action 
 upon it and breathes their spirit. The America he comes to, 
 beside Europe, is nature virgin and inviolate : it does not guide 
 him with ancestral blazings : externally he is cut off from the 
 past. Not so internally : whatever else he changes, he cannot 
 change his grandfather. ' 1 
 
 The deep truth contained in these words may be 
 unfamiliar to English people : for to them the whole 
 problem is unfamiliar : there is no conflict of sentiment 
 between citizenship and nationality. Their home, their 
 country, their nation, their State are all alike English : if 
 here and there the Roman or the ancient Briton has left 
 his mark on what the writer just quoted calls the " non- 
 human environment," in the form of a place-name or an 
 ancient road or camp, they have been English so long 
 and fit so naturally into the scheme of things that men 
 have forgotten that they were alien in origin. But in 
 America it is not so. The contrast between citizenship 
 and nationality is glaring and constant. Every large city 
 is well-nigh all Europe in miniature, with its streets and 
 quarters set apart, by the mysterious process of social 
 selection, for the different races and social groups : while 
 in some of the most important States and districts some 
 one nationality, the German, the Norwegian, the Italian, 
 the Polish, or the Negro, is clearly predominant. It there- 
 fore seems strange that there should be Americans who 
 still Jiold firmly to the old-fashioned view of what I can 
 only call instantaneous conversion, of the desirability and 
 possibility of the immigrant shedding his whole ancestral 
 inheritance and flinging himself into the melting-pot of 
 transatlantic life to emerge into a clean white American 
 soul of the brand approved by the Pilgrim Fathers. Yet 
 such is the idea still widely entertained : just as a very 
 similar idea dominated our own educational policy in India 
 
 ? From an essay on "Democracy 'versus the Melting Pot," by Horace 
 Meyer Kallen, Ipublished in the New York Nation for February i8 and 25, 
 1915. 
 
8o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 until recently. I believe that in both cases the mistake 
 is due to pure ignorance of human nature — to want 
 of sympathy and insight into the human side of the 
 problem. 
 
 Women are generally wiser in dealing with a human 
 problem than men : and I do not think that I should 
 venture to dogmatise so confidently on this problem 
 unless I could bring up Jane Addams in support. In 
 her book on " Newer Ideals of Peace " she gives some 
 telling instances of the practical difficulties of turning 
 the immigrant into an American by the old-fashioned 
 methods. She describes how on the night of one 
 Thanksgiving Day she 
 
 " spent some time and zeal in a description of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 and the motives which had driven them over the sea, while the 
 experiences of the Plymouth colony were illustrated by stere- 
 opticon slides and little dramatic scenes. The audience of 
 Greeks," she writes, "listened respectfully, although I was un- 
 easily conscious of the somewhat feeble attempt to boast of 
 Anglo-Saxon achievement in hardihood and privation to men 
 whose powers of admiration were absorbed in their Greek back- 
 ground of philosophy and beauty. At any rate after the lecture 
 was over, one of the Greeks said to me, quite simply : 'I wish I 
 could describe my ancestors to you ; they were very different 
 from yours.' His further remarks were translated by a little Irish 
 boy of eleven, who speaks modern Greek with facility and turns 
 many an honest penny by translating, into the somewhat pert 
 statement : ' He says if that is what your ancestors are like, that 
 his could beat them out.' " 
 
 Miss Addams gives one or two other similar in- 
 stances, and then adds in the spirit of the true educator : 
 
 "All the members of the community are equally stupid in 
 throwing away the immigrant revelation of social customs and 
 inherited energy. We continually allow this valuable human 
 experience to go to waste, although we have reached the stage of 
 human itarianism when no infant may be wantonly allowed to 
 die, no man be permitted to freeze or starve, if the State can 
 prevent it. We may truthfully boast that the primitive wasteful 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 8i 
 
 struggle of physical existence is practically over, but no such 
 statement can be made in regard to spiritual life. ... In this 
 country it seems to be only the politician at the bottom, the man 
 nearest the people, who understands that there is a growing dis- 
 interestedness taking hold of men's hopes and imaginations in 
 every direction. He often plays upon it and betrays it : but he 
 at least knows it is there." 
 
 What an irony it is that the kindest people so often 
 will not see what is under their noses, and that it is left 
 for the baser journalist and the political self-seeker to 
 discover the broken reed and the smoking flax and to 
 use them for his own selfish purposes ! 
 
 But, you will say, I am speaking to you of a specific 
 American problem which has no reference to us here as 
 British citizens or workers in religious movements. I 
 believe that the American problem is very relevant indeed 
 to our own British problems ; and for that reason I would 
 like to dwell for a few moments on the application of 
 this conception of Nationality to the thorniest of all the 
 many thorny problems of American life — the problem 
 created by the presence amid the American citizen body 
 of some twelve million negroes and descendants of slaves. 
 If Nationality can help America there, it can help us 
 British citizens also in the many difficult tasks that lie 
 before us in dealing with native races in our Empire. 
 
 Here again I will not venture to dogmatise on my 
 own authority. I will only read to you a passage from 
 the wisest and most philosophic book that has yet been 
 written on this problem, and indeed on the whole pro- 
 blem — so important to all of us as British citizens — of 
 the relation between the black and white races. The 
 writer is a clergyman who has spent his life in Alabama, 
 in the very heart of the problem. He has arrived, out 
 of his own experience, at the same philosophy of Nation- 
 ality, of the value of corporate life and corporate self- 
 respect, which I have been trying to set before you.* 
 
 * " The Basis of Ascendancy," by Edgar Gardner Murphy (Longmans, 
 1909), pp. 78, 79, 80. 
 
82 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 "The deepest thing about any man — next to his humanity 
 itself — is his race. The negro is no exception. The force and 
 distinction of his racial heritage, even where there is much 
 admixture of alien blood, is peculiarly, conspicuously strong. 
 This persisting and pervasive individuality of race is the ground 
 and basis of his essential culture— by which I mean not the 
 formal product of a literature, a religion or a science, but that 
 more intimate possession which a race draws into its veins and 
 blends within the very stuff and genius of its being from the 
 age-long school of its forests, its rivers, its hungers, its battles 
 with beast and fever and storm and desert, that subconscious, 
 ineradicable life which stirs beneath its deliberate will and is 
 articulate through all the syllables of its every stated purpose. In 
 the deeper sense, no negro can escape, or ought to desire to escape, 
 the Africa of his past. 
 
 "In the cosmopolitan sense he has drawn much from us — and 
 will draw still more as the years go by ; just as he will also draw, 
 through an enlarging mind from every rich or liberalising force, 
 whether Ehglish or German or French or Japanese. It is altogether 
 likely that he will learn in every school, and in every school gain 
 something from and for humanity. But also in the interest of 
 humanity, as well as in his own interest, the basis of his more fun- 
 damental culture will be naturally his own. It will take its more 
 intimate force and quality from the depths in him which are 
 deeper than the depths of his life here, which reach back to the 
 store of those fathomless years in comparison with which the 
 period of his existence on this soil is but a single hour. It is a 
 culture which may offer him as yet no established heritage, no 
 accomplished treasury of letters or art or science or commerce — 
 as these are known within the Western world — but like the vast 
 fecundities of the mysterious continent from which he comes, it 
 holds within itself strange, unmeasured possibilities of character 
 and achievement. No one can believe, whether he be Theist or 
 Fatalist or Materialist, that a racial type so old, so persistent, so 
 numerous in its representation, so fundamentally distinctive and 
 vet with so varied a territorial basis, is likely to pass out of human 
 history without a far larger contribution than it has thus far made 
 to the store of our common life and happiness. 
 
 "What other human families can do; what, in their social 
 ends, tjley will do, we largely know. What the negro race, as 
 a race, can do or will do, our own race does not know. Viewing 
 the social achievement of human groups not as a commercial or 
 mechanical condition of affinity, but as a symbol of social self- 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 83 
 
 revelation, our race does not and cannot know what that race is. 
 Its unforgetfiil mystery is itself. The white man fears and 
 shrinks — and sometimes strikes — not primarily because he hates, 
 but because he does not understand. The thing in the ignorant 
 negro from which he withdraws is not the ignorance, but the 
 negro. The subtle tendencies of social approximation, of amal- 
 gamation, of intermarriage, overcome last of all the obstacles of 
 mystery — the barriers of the unintelligible. If there be ignorance, 
 it can be informed ; if there be poverty, it can be enriched ; if 
 there be merely a strange tongue or a new wisdom, these can be 
 put to school, or we can be put to ischool to them ; but if 
 the deeper genius of all relationship — the self-revealing self — be 
 absent, we have not the clues of understanding : that which life 
 seeks through all its seeking is shrouded and hid away. We do 
 not blame Africa for not having created a common art, a col- 
 lective culture, an efficient state. We have instinctively 
 demanded them not because they are indispensable in themselves, 
 but because they are the media of self-revelation. The ultimate 
 basis of intimate social affiliation is not individual (as is so 
 frequently asserted) but social. It is not the inadequacy of 
 exploration which has left Africa in its isolation, so much as the 
 confusions, the ambiguity, the inadequacy of its self-expression. 
 Africa itself, in any of the intelligible terms of social experience 
 or institutional achievement, has never spoken. The race is 
 undiscovered, and its soul unfound. No language, therefore, of 
 other races, no acceptance — however brilliant or faithful or 
 effective — of the formulas and the institutions of other human 
 groups, will quite avail. For that which race would ask of race — 
 as it contemplates the issues of racial and domestic fusion — is 
 not the culture of another, even though that other be itself ; but 
 a culture of its own, its own as the instrument of its self-reveal- 
 ing. Especially is this true when the stronger race is one which, 
 like our own, conceives its very destiny in the terms of social and 
 institutional development." 
 
 Here, far better than I could state it, is an educational 
 programme for our imperial administrators, our Colonial 
 bishops and missionaries, and for all those who, in their 
 social relations, are brought into contact with the 
 problem. 
 
 I would leave the question here : only I feel that 
 there is one natural objection which I must answer. Am 
 
84 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 I not straining the meaning of the word Nationality ? 
 Am I not taking just any or every social group or large 
 corporate body and calling it a nation ? When does a 
 social group or a community become a nation ? The 
 objection is a real one, and I admit the difficulty of 
 framing a clean-cut definition. No one can say why it 
 is that Wales is a nation and Yorkshire, which is more 
 populous and about as large, is not, although it has 
 plenty of corporate feeling. It is difficult to say whether 
 one should describe the Manxman or the Maltese as 
 belonging to a nationality or to a sub-nationality. Every 
 definition involves such border-line cases. But, in 
 general, I think the distinction between nationality and 
 other forms of grouping is quite clear. Nationality 
 implies two things : it implies a particular kind of cor- 
 porate self-consciousness, peculiarly intimate, yet invested 
 at the same time with a peculiar dignity, a corporate con- 
 sciousness in which the element of common race is 
 '^perhaps the most important factor : and it implies, 
 secondly, a country, an actual strip of land associated 
 with the nationality, a territorial centre where the flame 
 of nationality is kept alight at the hearth-fire of home. 
 "When I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand 
 forget its cunning." So long as there is a real Ireland 
 for the Iriph-American whither he can return and feel 
 himself once more among his kind, a real Poland for the 
 Pole exiled in the mean streets of Chicago, a real Pales- 
 tine, open and accessible to Jewish colonists as a home 
 for the scattered denizens of Jewry, so long will the 
 Irishman, the Pole, and the Jew, even when no longer 
 persecuted, be able to retain their hold on their own past 
 and resist the dangers of complete assimilation. It is 
 for that reason — not because I want to get rid of the 
 Jews from the West, but because I want to deepen and 
 dignify their corporate life — that I am interested in the 
 question of Zionism and in the project now being discussed 
 for making Palestine a real homeland for the Jews. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE NATIONALISM 85 
 
 I have talked long enough, and I have come to the 
 end of my subject — Nationalism, I have tried to make 
 clear to you my view that the road to Internationalism 
 lies through Nationalism, not through levelling men down 
 to a grey indistinctive Cosmopolitanism but by appealing 
 to the best elements in the corporate inheritance of each 
 nation. A good world means a world of good men and 
 women. A good international world means a world of 
 nations living at their best. The tragedy of inter- 
 national intercourse to-day is that the contact between 
 nations too often takes place on the lower levels and from 
 material motives. There is too little interchange of the 
 highest ; partly because each nation has nbt yet enough 
 of its best to give. The British Commonwealth and the 
 United States will be happier places when all the latent 
 promise and budding cultures of their component nations 
 have blossomed out into self-expression and the brother- 
 hood which is often so difficult a duty to-day becomes a 
 fascinating voyage of discovery through new areas of 
 originality and achievement. 
 
 But I should not like to close without reminding 
 you that there is a whole political side to this subject 
 which I have ignored. If I distinguish between Nation- 
 ality and Citizenship, it is not because I decry citizenship 
 or undervalue the task which lies before States and their 
 governments to create and maintain the conditions without 
 which no free social or national life is possible. If there 
 are intimate social forces, like Nationality, which we tend 
 to ignore or to undervalue, there are also great common 
 interests, interests which affect all humanity alike, which 
 it is our duty as citizens, to whatever nationality we 
 belong, to promote and to defend. It is not because I 
 deciy political life or the democratic doctrine of the 
 individual's civic responsibility to his State that I am 
 interested in Nationality. It is because I think good 
 Nationalists will be better men and better citizens. The 
 question of the relation of the citizen to the State, and 
 
86 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 of the growth, outside the framework of the State, of 
 forms of Inter-State organisation, will be discussed by 
 later speakers. All that I have tried to do is to show 
 you that, whatever the form of political or religious 
 organisation at which you are aiming, whether you set 
 your hope for the future of mankind in Churches or in 
 States, or in Leagues of Peace or Concerts of the Powers, 
 the way to better things lies through a social education 
 for the individual, through the patient and resolute 
 attempt to draw out all those instinctive and subcon- 
 scious powers, which we may ignore, but can never 
 abolish, powers which we too often leave untended for 
 the Devil to use as he likes, and to employ them to 
 enrich, to diversify, to deepen and to spiritualise the 
 common heritage of humanity. 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 
 
 A lecture delivered at the King's Hall, Covent Garden, on November 
 23, 191 7, on the invitation of Mr. Sidney Webb, in the absence, through 
 illness, of Mr. Graham Wallas, for whom the lecturer had previously been 
 invited to act as chairman. The title of the lecture had been chosen by Mr. 
 Wallas. 
 
 I MUST begin by saying how deeply sorry I am at the 
 absence of Mr. Graham Wallas and at the cause which 
 keeps him away. I first sat at the feet of Mr. Wallas at 
 th? age of eleven, when he taught me Greek grammar 
 and Thucydides at a private school, and I have been 
 learning steadily from him ever since. I venture to say 
 that when, in after generations, the inner history of this 
 age comes to be written, the name of Graham Wallas will 
 stand out as that of one of the most profound, original, 
 and influential thinkers of our time. Historians will 
 always link it with the name of Sidney and Beatrice 
 Webb ; not because Wallas, like the Webbs, was among 
 the early Fabians, but because together they have helped 
 to revolutionise political thought in this country by 
 patiently and fearlessly applying to the problems of 
 politics and society the spirit and methods of the student 
 of natural science. 
 
 I hope it will not be thought impertinent in me, in 
 the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Webb, if I pursue this 
 reflection further, and draw attention to an essential 
 difference between Wallas' work and that of the Webbs. 
 I do so because it is relevant to our subject this evening. 
 I remember Mr. Wallas once saying to me, " The differ- 
 ence between the Webbs and me is that they are interested 
 
 87 
 
88 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 in Town Councils, while I am interested in Town Coun- 
 cillors." Compare the titles and contents of their respec- 
 tive books and you will see what is meant. The Webbs 
 have written on Trade Unionism and industrial democracy, 
 on the Poor Law, on Central and Local Government ; 
 Wallas has written on Human Nature in Politics and on 
 the Great Society, that is, on man's place in the great 
 impersonal world of to-day. The Webbs are interested 
 in administration ; and Mr. Webb is Professor of Public 
 Administration in the University of London. Mr. Wallas 
 is interested in human nature. I can never remember 
 what he is supposed to be Professor of, but if it is not 
 Social Psychology it ought to be. 
 
 Both methods of study are useful and necessary ; 
 indeed, they naturally supplement one another. But, 
 standing in Mr. Wallas' place, I intend to deal with the 
 subject aissigned to me according to his method of treat- 
 ment. In other words, I shall not attempt to give any 
 account of the outward and visible forms of nationality 
 as manifested in institutions or otherwise, but to deal 
 rather with its inward spirit. My subject, then, is " the 
 sentiment of nationality," or, to put it in more concrete 
 language, " the Nationalist." 
 
 I am the more anxious thus to follow Mr. Wallas' 
 method, because unfortunately I disagree with what he 
 was going to say to you, as expressed in his syllabus. 
 Most of all do I disagree with his title. Shall I speak to 
 you on "the Passing of Nationality " on the eve of the 
 redemption of Jerusalem ? The sentiment of Nationality, 
 indeed, is not " passing" ; it is awakening. It is stronger 
 at this moment than it has ever been. It is one of the 
 strongest forces in our modern life. Few other forms 
 of corporate feeling have a firmer or deeper hold on men's 
 minds. Socialism has not ; nor has internationalism : I 
 doubt even if it can be claimed for religion. 
 
 There has indeed, as regards nationality, been a re- 
 markable turn of the tide. Five or six generations ago. 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 89 
 
 towards the end of the eighteenth century, the cause oi 
 nationality was discredited. Nationalism was regarded 
 by philosophers as a mere passing foible. Cosmopoli- 
 tanism was the fashionable creed. One need only recall 
 the serenely indifferent attitude of Goethe towards the 
 young national movements of his time. To-day the 
 whole atmosphere is changed. Everywhere, from Ireland 
 to India and China, from Finland and Poland to South 
 Africa and Australia, the spirit of nationality is abroad. 
 Its power is perhaps best exemplified by the revival ot 
 old forms of national speech. Irish, Albanian, Slovak, 
 Bulgar, and many others have been rescued from rusticity 
 and have assumed literary shape within living memory. 
 It is interesting to recollect that when Kinglake rode 
 through the Balkans in the fifties he still thought of them 
 as Greek lands. 
 
 To what is this revival due ? We shall find no 
 answer to this question by studying the political pro- 
 grammes of nationalism, by looking for the sources ot 
 its strength in constitutions and Parliaments and party 
 agitations. If we would understand the hold of nationalism 
 over men's minds we must look beyond these to some- 
 thing deeper. Perhaps the best way of making clear 
 what I mean by this is by examining an analogous and 
 more familiar case, that of religion. 
 
 No one who wanted to know what religion was, and 
 why it is so deep and abiding an influence in modern 
 life, would sit down to study the Thirty-nine Articles, 
 or the proceedings of the Free Church Council, or the 
 list of sects in a work of reference. However little 
 we may know about religion, we all know that it is 
 something different from churchmanship, that member- 
 ship of a Church does not ipso facto make a man or woman 
 religious. Serious writers on religion to-day, whatever 
 their own views, whether devout Roman Catholics like 
 Baron von Hiigel or detached philosophers like William 
 James, do not concern themselves with Church organisation. 
 
90 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Their subject of study is the human soul and its religious 
 needs and aspirations. 
 
 But go back three centuries, to the time of the re- 
 ligious wars. You will find that people then were very 
 "religious," as intensely so as they are nationalist to-day, 
 yet somehow they could not see that religion, which 
 meant so much to them, was something deeper in its 
 nature and appeal than the ecclesiastical organisation in 
 which it was enshrined. The issue at stake in the struggle 
 of that time seemed to them simply to be which religious 
 body was to be in the ascendant in any given area — 
 whether their country would be coloured Protestant or 
 Catholic on the map. Thus it came about that at the 
 end of the religious wars at the Peace of Westphalia there 
 was drawn up, what we hear so much about to-day, a new 
 map of Europe. It was delimited on the principle oi cujus 
 regio ejus religio. Sects were sorted out according to the 
 religious opinions of the ruling prince. In the reformed 
 communities Protestant State Churches replaced the old 
 Catholic supremacy. 
 
 Now did this " settle " the religious question ? Did 
 it, in other words, satisfy the needs and aspirations of 
 the human soul which constitute religion ? Of course it 
 did not. In many countries, of which Prussia is the 
 most striking example, the institution of a State religion 
 has proved a death-blow to religious faith. Religion fell 
 into a decline and died of inanition. The real settle- 
 ment of the problem which led to the religious wars 
 came a century later with the spread of the idea of 
 Toleration. Lessing's story of the three rings in his 
 " Nathan des Weise," and the spirit it promulgated, 
 did more for religion than all the State Establishments 
 in Europe. 
 
 Why ? Because the tale of the rings (I cannot stop 
 to tell it to those who do not know it) taught men to 
 see religion as something spiritual, something to be ex- 
 pressed in men's lives rather than in institutions, and 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 91 
 
 so set the religious spirit free to run its own course in 
 its own sphere. 
 
 Exacdy the same is true of nationality. The first 
 step towards the settlement of the problem behind the 
 nationality wars of the present day, towards the true 
 understanding of nationality, is to realise that it is some- 
 thing deeper than political organisation, something which 
 should command not only our toleration but our respect. 
 Just as the basis of religious unity in the world must be 
 a spirit of toleration tinged with reverence (the man who 
 knowingly keeps his boots on in a mosque, or takes off 
 his hat in a synagogue, is not worthy to belong to any 
 religious body), so the basis of internationalism must be 
 toleration tinged, if not with reverence, at least with 
 heartfelt respect. The man whose heart is not uplifted 
 on such a spot as the hill of Tara or the plain of Kossovo 
 or the Rtitli meadow, by the lake of the Four Cantons, 
 is dead to some of the best of human feelings. Such 
 places are the shrines of nationality. Whether conse- 
 crated or not in the conventional sense, they are sacred 
 ground. 
 
 Tolerance, then, is the first milestone on the road 
 towards internationalism. Historians will probably Say 
 that England is the country of all others in the modern 
 world where this tolerant respect for other people and 
 nations was earliest and most mlly developed. There is a 
 traditional decency in the race which causes an Englishman 
 to respect the feelings and practices of others, even when 
 (as is often the case) he does not in the least understand 
 them. Yet it is humiliating to reflect how necent, even 
 in this country, the growth of this feeling has been. We 
 took the first step along the road towards internationalism 
 when in 1756, at a time when we were stiir cheerfully 
 persecuting Roman Catholics in Ireland, we pledged our- 
 selves to respect the French language and customs and 
 the Catholic faith of the people of Canada. Yet three 
 generations later even Lord Durham, the fer-sighted 
 
92 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 statesman to whom the development of the great experi- 
 ment of Dominion self-government is due, failed to grasp 
 the significance of the policy to which we had uncon- 
 sciously comniitted ourselves in 1756. Lord Durham, 
 like so many people to-day, was a political nationalist. 
 He wanted to see a united self-governing Canada ; and 
 in order to secure Canadian unity he was prepared to 
 let French-Canadian nationality be abolished, if not by a 
 stroke of the pen, at any rate by the slow operation of 
 political and social forces. 
 
 Lord Durham's attitude on this point was always a 
 puzzle to me till I received a letter the other day from 
 Western Louisiana, from a friend who is himself of 
 French extraction, and lives close to the district where 
 the Acadians (the French-Canadian refugees from Nova 
 Scotia) settled after the events narrated in Longfellow's 
 "Evangeline." He had been paying a flying visit to 
 Canada in his summer holiday, and this is his naive 
 comment on the situation in Quebec. "I was much 
 interested in the problem of the French Canadian ; pos- 
 sibly I was affected by my own French blood and the 
 fact of my being a Catholic, but it is clear to me that the 
 matter must have been muddled at some stage, for here 
 we have no trouble at all. We took their language away 
 without a ripple : it is no longer required (even in New 
 Orleans, where it survived many years after being 
 abolished outside the city) to publish sherifFs sales in 
 French." 
 
 That is the short and simple way, the Prussian way, 
 the "melting-pot" way of dealing with Nationality. 
 "When the victim acquiesces it does indeed " settle " the 
 question. " Stone dead hath no fellow," as Cromwell 
 said of the execution of King Charles. But the victim 
 does not always acquiesce. So far from submitting to 
 this euthanasia, nationality is apt to become intensified 
 under persecution, and, like religion, to take on mor- 
 bid and unhealthy forms. Hence arise the political 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 93 
 
 nationalist movements which have made so much noise 
 in the world. 
 
 The trouble about such movements — just as in the 
 parallel case of political and religious movements — is that 
 those who flock to their banner have no clear aim before 
 their eyes. The political nationalist feels himself driven 
 by an overpowering impulse, which he knows is genuine 
 and springs from the depths of his nature, but he does 
 not know whither it is leading him. It may, indeed, be 
 said of him, as has been said of a kindred agitation, that 
 " he does not know what he wants, and won't be happy 
 till he gets it." 
 
 Meanwhile, the rest of the world, or at least those 
 of us who are sympathetic to the cause of the oppressed, 
 are equally bewildered. We all want to do our duty by 
 him. But what is our duty ? What is the right remedy 
 for the wrongs which the Pole, the Ukrainian, the Slovak, 
 the Sinn Feiner, the Herzogite, and the rest of the 
 political nationalists proclaim ? 
 
 The right remedy, I shall be told, is quite simple. It 
 is to give them what they say they want. They claim to 
 know exactly what they want. They want to set up 
 independent republics. They want to turn Russia, the 
 United Kingdom, South Africa, and the rest into a 
 number of national states. They want to reproduce the 
 mosaic of the religious map of the seventeenth century, 
 only it will be a map coloured according to nationality, 
 not according to religious allegiance. 
 
 This was the view of " national aspirations " on which 
 most of us were brought up. You will find it in John 
 Stuart Mill ; and it still dominates the thinking of most 
 of our political writers and public men. Thus, to quote 
 but one example. Professor Ramsay Muir, who is a 
 fairly faithful exponent of contemporary British political 
 thought, speaking of the settlement which is to follow 
 the present war, remarks : " If the whole of Europe , 
 r could once be completely and satisfactorily divided on I 
 
94 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 national lines there might, be a good hope of cessation of 
 strife." ' 
 
 Now it does not need many words to demonstrate 
 that this mid- Victorian programme is both impossible to 
 carry out and would be undesirable, even if it were 
 possible^ 
 
 First, it is impossible. How many nationalities are 
 there in Europe ? Professor Masaryk, a distinguished 
 authority, in his pamphlet on "Small Nations in the 
 European Crisis," reckons them at sixty-eight. How 
 many states are there ? Twenty-eight, of which only 
 seven are homogeneous — that is, contain no substantial 
 admixture of populations of other nationality. Thus it 
 will be seen what a gigantic piece of tidying up Pro- 
 fessor Muir's programme would require. 
 
 But his programme is not even ideally desirable ; for 
 it would not achieve its object ; it would not satisfy the 
 nationalist aspirations to which it is intended to minister. 
 We can realise this best by. considering the history of the 
 last fifty years. Have the "national states,". Professor 
 Muir's "satisfied" states, been in fact elements making 
 for international tranquillity ? Compare the record of the 
 typical national states, Germany, Italy, France under 
 Napoleon III., the Balkan States, with that of the two 
 great international states, the British and American 
 Commonwealths. Comment is superfluous. Political 
 nationalism does not make for tranquillity. It is too self- 
 centred. It has too little sense of the community of 
 nations. Whether in a family or in a larger community 
 sacra egoismo is a watchword which is bound to lead to 
 disturbance. Need I translate the Italian words into 
 English ? Or into Irish ? 
 
 What, then, is the solution of the national problem ? 
 Before venturing to prescribe a remedy, let us diagnose 
 th& case more carefully. Let us examine the sentiment 
 of nationality in the spirit of Graham Wallas or of William 
 
 ' " Nationalism and Internationalism," p. 56. 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 95 
 
 James in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," Let 
 me give you some "varieties of nationalist experience." 
 First, let us take a case of what I may call morbid or 
 exaggerated nationalist feeling. The most extreme in- 
 stance I can recall is in a tale I once heard of a mythical 
 Balkan potentate to whom the Almighty appeared in a 
 dream ahd offered to bestow upon his people any gift 
 which the Prince cared to name. One condition only 
 was attached to the offer — that a double portion of the 
 same boon would be bestowed upon the neighbouring 
 nation. The Prince asked for a day to reflect. On the 
 following %i9iight, he was ready with his answer. " O 
 God," he replied, "strike all my people blind of one 
 eye " ! 
 
 Such is nationalism in excehis — a raging, tearing 
 hiitred of the alien, . which : would be laughable for its 
 childishness did we not still see it manifested in the 
 world around us. Turn now to the other end of the 
 scale — to nationalism undeveloped and.dying of inanition. 
 I remember a conversation I once had in the market 
 place at Argos — Agamemnon's . Argos — with a Greek 
 emigrant who was home on a holiday, from the United 
 States. He was a greengrocer by tfade, like so many of 
 his compatriots. In the course of the conversation I 
 ventured to ask him, since he had told me he was a 
 bachelor, whether he thought of marrying in the old 
 country. " Not on your life," was his reply. " I mean 
 to marry an American girl. Think of the custom I 
 shall get. from my wife's relations." Here is the working 
 of the melting-pot The nationalist is swallowed up in 
 " the economic man." 
 
 If I were writing . a treatise I could give you a score 
 more instances intermediate between the two extremes. 
 But I must not weary you. I hurry on, therefore, to 
 ask : what is that of which the Balkan Prince had too 
 muph and the Argive greengrocer too little ? For that, 
 if we can define it, is the object of our search. 
 
96 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Let me give you a definition to pick to pieces at 
 your leisure. Nationality is a form of corporate consciousness 
 of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite 
 home-country. A nation is a body of people united by 
 such a common consciousness. 
 
 If this is nationality, how can it be " satisfied " ? 
 What conditions are needed for the harmonious expres- 
 sion of this corporate consciousness } Two positive 
 conditions, and two only, I believe, are needed. 
 
 The first condition is what I would call, in the 
 largest sense of the words, freedom of worship. By this I 
 mean freedom to do the things which your corporate 
 freedom leads you to desire to do, whether it is to talk 
 dialect, or to wear a kilt, or to keep Saturday instead of 
 Sunday or to educate your children in a traditional way. 
 The states of the modern world, if they are to live up to 
 their professions as guardians of freedom, ought to allow 
 the largest possible freedom of conduct and worship to 
 their citizens in these and similar directions. National 
 idiosyncrasies are, of course, troublesome things to the 
 administrative mind. The Prussian way is an easy way. 
 It is inconvenient to have two official languages, as in 
 Belgium and South Africa, or even three, as in Switzer- 
 land ; but such inconvenience is the price of toleration. 
 It is a price the world must pay, and pay gladly and with 
 understanding, for the richness and variety of a real 
 international civilisation. 
 
 The second condition is a national home. A nation, 
 like an individual, cannot lead a normal and happy life 
 unless it has a home of its own, unless there is some 
 place where there is an intimate national atmosphere, 
 where the fire, which is its soul, is kept burning at a 
 central shrine. The modern world is a world of super- 
 states, of constant movement and migration. It is as 
 impossible for all true Irishmen to live in Ireland as it is 
 for all good Etonians to spend their lives at Eton. But 
 so long as the members in exile know that the tradition 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 97 
 
 is being maintained, that somewhere Irish life is being 
 lived under true Irish conditions, and that they can 
 always refresh their spirit at the fountain-head, the soul 
 of the true nationalist is satisfied. 
 
 Such is my interpretation of the sentiment of nation- 
 ality. Let me now turn to face two objections which 
 may spring to your minds from two opposite quarters. 
 
 The political nationalist will complain that I have 
 made nationality a poor and colourless thing ; that I have 
 stripped it of its flags and its fighting banners, of all its 
 romance, so that he can hardly recognise the object of his 
 devotion. I tell him, in reply, that the two nations who 
 do understand nationalism in the purely non-political 
 sense in which I have tried to set it forth are the two 
 most romantic and least colourless nations in the world — 
 — the English and the Jews. You never hear speak of 
 English Nationalism ; and England, as we all know, is 
 not a self-governing country (how many Englishmen are 
 there in the present War Cabinet of seven ?) ; yet is there 
 any nationalism so intense, so intimate, so moving, so 
 pure from all taint of politics or ascendancy, as that 
 which breathes through English literature from Chaucer 
 and Shakespeare to Rupert Brooke ? 
 
 Rupert Brooke's work in this vein is too familiar for 
 quotation. Let me read you, therefore, a few lines from 
 a yet younger poet which embody the true spirit and 
 central tradition of English nationalism : — 
 
 '' Now that I am ta'en away 
 And may not see another day. 
 What is it to my eyes appears ? 
 What sound rings in my stricken ears ? 
 Not even the voice of any friend, 
 Or eyes beloved world without end. 
 But scenes and sounds of the countryside 
 In far England across the tide. . . . 
 
 " The gorse upon the twilit down. 
 The English loam, so sunset-brown. 
 The bowed pines and the sheepbell's clamour, 
 The wet-lit lane and the yellow-hammer, 
 
 H 
 
98 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 The orchard and the chaffinch song 
 Only to the brave belong. 
 And he shall lose their joy for aye. 
 If their price he cannot pay, 
 Who shall find them dearer far 
 Enriched by blood after long war." 
 
 Here, not on the platform or in the House of 
 Commons, you have nationalism in achievement, nation- 
 alism satisfied. 
 
 The English are the great exponents of practical 
 nationalism ; but just because it is always with them, a 
 traditional possession, they have reflected little upon its 
 nature and meaning. The best exponents of nationalist 
 theory in modern times have been the Jews, who have, I 
 believe, made in this region a contribution, if not com- 
 parable, at least worthy to be mentioned side by side 
 with their contribution to the world's advance in the field 
 of religion. I cannot speak of the work of the great 
 Jewish philosopher of nationalism, Asher Ginzberg, 
 known to his fellow-countrymen as Achad Ha'am, who is 
 living here in our midst in London practically unknown 
 to English readers and thinkers. I can only read you a 
 document in which is enshrined the result of the sustained ' 
 thought and devoted work of the Jewish nationalist 
 movement. 
 
 " His Majesty's Government view with favour the establish- 
 ment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and 
 will use their best endeavours to facilitate this object, it being 
 clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may preju- 
 dice the civil and religious rights of existing non- Jewish commu- 
 nities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by 
 Jews in any other country." 
 
 Here we have, in one historic sentence, the complete 
 association of Nationalism and Toleration. I believe this 
 document will be epoch-making, not only for the Jews but 
 for the world. It is the pioneer of a new era — an era 
 which will see the world divided, for political purposes, 
 
THE PASSING OF NATIONALITY 99 
 
 into supernational States or Commonwealths, and ulti- 
 mately unified, but cherishing a large number of national 
 individualities, centres of national tradition and inspira- 
 tion, which will save the soul of mankind from the 
 deadening influences of materialism and uniformity. 
 
 So much for the political nationalist. I turn now to 
 a second criticism raised from the opposite quarter, by 
 the cosmopolitan or, as I would prefer to call him, the 
 agnostic. " Is not your whole idea," he says, "attractive 
 though it may sound, a dream> a delusion, a romantic 
 fiction ? Are not Jews, as a matter of bare fact, a great 
 deal more at home in Monte Carlo than in Jerusalem, 
 ~~"and Irishmen in Tammany Hall than on the Hill of 
 Tara ? Is not this nationalism a foolish childlike phase 
 which^we are happily beginning to outlive ? 
 
 Certainly, I reply, this is true of some Jews and some 
 Irishmen. But is it true of the best Jews and the best 
 Irishmen ? Look closely into the various types and 1 
 think you will conclude that nationalism is not a mere 
 fashion and foible ; not, as Mr. Wallas calls it in his 
 syllabus, " a fact alterable by human will," but springs 
 from deep roots in man's inherited nature. You may 
 cut these if you will, but you cut them at your peril. 
 Whether for individuals or for nations, the Fifth Com- 
 mandment holds. Those who break it, whether indi- 
 viduals or social groups, cannot do so with impunity. 
 
 If you doubt this, just look around you. Compare 
 the nationalists and the cosmopolitans or Bolsheviks of 
 your own acquaintance ; and ask yourself why it is that 
 the latter are so often so arid, so cantankerous, so thin- 
 blooded, so mean-spirited, so unworthy of their cause 
 (which, after all, includes many noble elements, little as 
 one might conclude so from most of its exponents). 
 Such people are like cut flowers : they draw no nourish- 
 ment from their native soil. Or compare the achieve- 
 ment of communities which foster the national tradition 
 with that of those who reject it. Why do Palestine, 
 
loo NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 which is the size of Wales, and Attica, which is smaller 
 than Yorkshire, mean more to mankind than the whole 
 of the New World ? Why do the fruits of the human 
 spirit, as a great Welshman has said, grow best on the 
 little trees — not only Greece and Judea, but Tuscany, 
 Holland, Flanders, Norway, England ? 
 
 The answer is simple. Because it is contact with the 
 past which equips men and communities for the tasks of 
 the present ; and the more bewildering the present, the 
 greater the accumulation of material goods and material 
 cares, the greater the need for inspiration and refresh- 
 ment from the past. It is not the young nations which 
 can best overcome these dragons. It is the old nations, 
 who have learned to cherish internationalism without 
 cutting their own roots and to purify their ambitions and 
 purposes without surrendering their individuality. 
 
 Nationalism, thwarted, perverted, and unsatisfied, is 
 one of the festering sores of our time. But nationalism 
 rightly understood and cherished is a great uplifting and 
 life-giving force, a bulwark alike against chauvinism and 
 against materialism — against all the decivilising imper- 
 sonal forces which harass and degrade the minds and 
 souls of modern men. 
 
 Wise men have known and preached this in all ages, 
 loving their home land as they loved their parents ; and 
 it was one of the wisest teachers among that oldest of the 
 nations whose long exile is just ending who summed up 
 his sense of what he owed to his country in the per- 
 formance of the everyday work of the world, in words 
 with which it is fitting that this- long argument should 
 conclude — 
 
 When I forget thee, O Jermakm^ then let my right hand 
 fotget its cunning. 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL » 
 
 Again and again in discussing social or national or Im- 
 perial problems, when the question at issue has been 
 plumbed to the depths, rival disputants find themselves 
 driven back on to the inevitable conclusion : " It is all 
 a matter of better education." Yet there, as a rule, the 
 issue is allowed to rest ; for the discussion of education 
 opens up dangerous ground which few feel competent 
 to tread. In the eyes of the plain man education, as a 
 subject of public controversy, bears an unfortunate repu- 
 tation. " Education Bills " and " Education Questions " 
 have too often presented him with an ill-assorted com- 
 bination of high-sounding generalities and complicated 
 technical details which have effectually conspired together 
 to destroy his interest in the subject. 
 
 Yet, in spite of the maulings which it has received at 
 the hands of unworthy sponsors, the subject remains all- 
 important for the English-speaking peoples. "What can 
 be more vital to a State than the education of its citizens ? 
 And what more necessary to it, in the performance of this 
 task of civic training, than a clear conception, founded on 
 the underlying facts of human nature and of the national 
 character, of what education really means and is capable 
 of achieving ? 
 
 During the last ten years, undeterred by political 
 controversies and almost unnoticed by the general public, 
 an attempt has been made to approach the subject from a 
 new angle, in a spirit worthy of its importance. The 
 Workers' Educational Association, founded by a group 
 of trade unionists and co-operators in 1903, has from the 
 
 J The Round Table, March, 19 1+. 
 101 
 
102 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 very beginning aimed at nothing less than the restoration 
 of education to its rightful place among the great spiritual 
 forces of the community. If its experiments have been 
 tried, and its successes achieved, among students of the 
 working class, this is not because there is anything narrow 
 or sectional in its message ; but rather because, in the 
 modern world, it is the working class which is in closest 
 touch with the great realities which education seeks to 
 interpret; and because the working people of this country, 
 in particular, have a long and honourable tradition of true 
 educational endeavour.^ 
 
 This movement has now been at work for over ten 
 years, and the principles which inspired it have been 
 thoroughly tested in action. Within the last year it has 
 set foot in Canada and Australia (where it has branches 
 in every State of the Commonwealth) and has attracted 
 widespread attention in Germany, France, and other con- 
 tinental countries. The time seems ripe, therefore, for 
 an endeavour, both to describe the work that it is doing 
 and to interpret its significance ; for we seem to be face 
 to face with nothing less than a new philosophy of educa- 
 tion, full of potentialities unsuspected even by its English 
 originators. In the following article, then, an attempt 
 will be made, first, following out this line of thought, to 
 suggest what education should be in a modern com- 
 munity ; secondly, to describe what has been achieved 
 by the Workers* Educational Association movement ; 
 and, lastly, to inquire what is the national and Imperial 
 significance of the experiments which have been under- 
 taken. 
 
 I 
 
 When people speak of education they are generally 
 thinking of the instruction given to children by profes- 
 
 1 On this point see Chapter 1. of " Oxford and Working-Class Education ; " 
 the Report of a Joint Committee of University and working-class representa- 
 tives on the education of workpeople (Oxford, 1908, is.) ; also Sadler''8 "Con- 
 tinuation Schools in England and Elsewhere." 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 103 
 
 sional teachers in schoolhouses provided for the purpose. 
 This is, of course, the most obvious aspect of education, 
 and the manner in which a modern community carries 
 out its responsibilities in this respect is one of the best 
 tests of its intrinsic health and prosperity. But for our 
 present purpose the subject is best not approached direct. 
 Those who have it in their keeping, politicians and 
 officials, teachers and psychologists and the rest of the 
 tribe of " educationists," have invested it with such an 
 atmosphere of mystery and technicality as to obscure its 
 broader relations. We propose, therefore, for the moment 
 to leave the children and adolescents entirely aside, and 
 to concentrate the reader's attention on a problem with 
 which — if he is not frightened by the name — he is certain 
 to be familiar : the education of the grown-up citizen. 
 
 Any one who has ever sat at the feet of a great 
 teacher, either at school or in the wider life for which 
 school is a preparation, knows what education feels like. 
 But that does not make it easy to define. It is not 
 the storing of the mind with information : it is not the 
 love of knowledge and the search for truth : it is not 
 the training of the judgment or the acquirement of a 
 mental discipline : it is not the strengthening of the 
 will or the building up of character : it is not even the 
 forming of friendships based on that deepest of bonds, a 
 common ideal and a common purpose in life. Educa- 
 tion is something compounded of all these, but greater 
 and deeper and more life-giving. One of the most 
 striking definitions is perhaps that quoted by Dr. Parkin 
 in his "Life of Thring," the famous headmaster of 
 Uppingham School : " Education is the transmission of 
 life." Yet even this is not quite satisfying. Education 
 is, indeed, as high and broad and deep as life itself. 
 Yet it is not life itself, but life with a difference. It is 
 not simply experience, but experience interpreted. Words- 
 worth, in a wonderful phrase, defined poetry as " emotion 
 remembered in tranquillity." Poetry, as he knew, is not 
 
I04 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 born amid the pomp and circumstance of experience, in 
 crowded hours of glorious life ; she is the still small 
 voice of the soul, speaking in the quiet afttr the storm 
 has passed. So it is with education. It is not expe- 
 rience itself, but the effort of the soul to find a true 
 expression or interpretation of experience, and to find it, 
 not alone, but with the help of others, fellow-students ; 
 for without common study — such as in a school or a 
 University — there may, indeed, be reflection ; there can 
 be no true education. But where there is life and honest 
 thinking and the free contact of mind with mind, where 
 thought leaps out to answer thought and there is the 
 sense of the presence of a common spirit, there, even if 
 but two or three are gathered together, whether in a well- 
 appointed building paid for out of rates and taxes, or in 
 a squalid upper room, or in a primitive club house, or 
 in a railway carriage going to work, or on the veldt 
 under the stars, or at a street corner in an industrial 
 town — there is a gathering of students and the nucleus 
 of a university. 
 
 To those who complain that such a definition is too 
 vague to be practically helpful one reminder must be 
 sufficient. The Athenians of the fifth century before 
 Christ are generally regarded as the most cultivated and 
 the best educated community of whom history bears 
 record. They originated or developed many of the most 
 important activities of civilised life. They were, in fact, 
 the great inventors and organisers of the things of the 
 mind. Art and philpsophy, democracy and the drama, 
 we owe, not merely to their unwearying curiosity, their 
 craving for vivid and many-sided experience, but to their 
 supreme power of sifting, verifying, harmonising, in a 
 word interpreting, the problems of the world in which 
 they lived. It was no vain boast of Pericles that Athens 
 was " the school of Greece," and not of Greece only but 
 of all subsequent generations ; the Athenian mind, as we 
 find it in contemporary writings, seems to have been 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 105 
 
 carefully trained to live in the light of eternal realities, 
 to be constantly testing theories by experience, and illu- 
 minating experience by study and discussion. Thus, for 
 instance, Athens gives us not merely the spectacle of the 
 first organised democracy, but also the first and perhaps 
 still the most interesting series of speculations on the 
 theory of democracy. As the Athenian went about his 
 daily civic duties, as a judge or a councillor, a committee- 
 man or a parliamentarian, or on training or active service 
 in the army or navy, he would bring the experience of 
 political life to bear, in discussions with his fellows, on 
 the problems of government. 
 
 Yet, supremely educated as they were, the Athenians 
 had no organised system of national education. During 
 their period of active greatness, primary education was 
 not a State concern, secondary education practically non- 
 existent. In other words, they received their education, 
 not in schools and academies or from professional 
 teachers, but from the daily practice of civic duties in a 
 democratic state and in the university of the camp, the 
 galley, the gymnasium, the workshop and the market- 
 place. This illustration may help, not merely to fill in 
 the vague outline of the definition of education given 
 above, but to explain how it is natural for a new educa- 
 tional philosophy to spring, not from the leisured class, 
 but from the working class. 
 
 It is clear, then, from the example of Athens, as well 
 as from the biographies of great men, that education can 
 and should be continued all through men's active lives, 
 right up to the decay of their physical powers. Education 
 is, in fact, a sort of elixir against the ossifying disease 
 called middle age ; it is the necessary antidote against 
 the routine of the modern world. By bringing in theory 
 to illuminate practice, it corrects the deficiencies of both, 
 and preserves the balance and proportion of mental life. 
 
 Every one engaged in active life is apt to think about 
 his work, and every traveller who has armed himself with 
 
io6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 introductions knows how interesting busy men are when 
 they can be induced to talk. It is a natural and obvious 
 step to give men opportunities to systematise this think- 
 ing for the common benefit. Education simply means 
 drawing-out, and the first task of adult education is 
 simply to afford the active citizen the opportunity of 
 being " drawn out." Socrates used to go to men in 
 their workshops or button-hole them in the market-place, 
 and ask them leading questions. But modern experience 
 has devised a more helpful method — that of the group or 
 college. 
 
 For if there is one thing more than another that the 
 history of schools and universities has taught us, it is 
 that education is not an individual but a corporate matter. 
 The individual by himself is powerless. That he is 
 powerless for action has long been obvious ; the history 
 of all human institutions — of churches, of nations, of 
 colonies, of trade unions — is merely a commentary on 
 this text. But we are now beginning to realise that he 
 is to a large extent powerless for effective thinking also. 
 Solitude may breed the mystic, the philosopher, and even 
 the scientist ; but in all those great departments of know- 
 ledge which concern the thoughts and actions of mankind 
 the thinker needs the stimulus and experience of his 
 fellow-men. The cloister was a better educator than 
 the cave. The university superseded the cloister ; and 
 the modern world, with its immense growth of know- 
 ledge and of the facilities for communication, is learning 
 to supersede, or rather, to re-create the university. What 
 a man needs, if he is to keep his mind alert, to be apply- 
 ing knowledge to experience and to contribute his quota 
 of thinking to his country, is the stimulus of a group of 
 like-minded students. When men study together in this 
 spirit, they not merely help one another by the inter- 
 change of ideas ; if their association is based on a common 
 purpose, they become merged into something akin to a 
 new perspnality. The psychologists are now beginning 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 107 
 
 to make clear to us, what is evident enough to the 
 attentive reader of history, that a homogeneous group is 
 greater and more powerful than the sum of the indi- 
 viduals composing it. A mediaeval guild was more than 
 a mere collection of craftsmen, as the early Church was 
 more than a mere collection of disciples. Man is by 
 nature a social animal, a member of a larger whole. It 
 is one of the main problems of statesmanship to find the 
 groupings in which the national qualities will be displayed 
 to the best effect. It is one of the main problems of 
 education to find similar groupings for students, whether 
 young or old. 
 
 This is what is meant by the common assertion that 
 education is a school of character. A school or a uni- 
 versity is a place where the student becomes something, 
 takes on a new personality. Sometimes he does so 
 without " learning " anything at all — that is, without 
 amassing any information from books. That is a pity. 
 Rut it is a mistake to pit the two processes one against 
 the other, or to assume, with some of the advocates of 
 Latin and Greek, that the value of the schools which 
 teach the dead languages, and send out into the world 
 men of fine character who know and care nothing about 
 them, is in any way bound up with the subjects supposed 
 to be studied there. True education consists, neither in 
 amassing knowledge, nor yet in rejecting it when it seems 
 irrelevant at first sight, but in assimilating it until, by an 
 effort not only of the mind but of the whole spirit, it 
 becomes a part of one's very nature. Thus it is that 
 some of the great educators of the past have had an 
 almost morbid fear of book-learning. Plato in a famous 
 outburst harangued against books because they could not 
 answer an honest reader's questions ; and St. Francis, in 
 a beautiful story, rebuked a too-learned disciple who 
 wished to add to his scanty belongings a copy of the 
 Psalter. "You will be wanting a breviary next," was 
 the Saint's argument. Religion, he felt, was too intimate 
 
io8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 and living a thing to be learned from books. If he felt 
 this about the Bible what would he have said to text- 
 books or newspapers or magazines ? 
 
 Thus, education is evidently necessary for the mental 
 and spiritual health of the individual grown-up person. 
 It has always been necessary ; but never more than to- 
 day, when the haste and hardness of life rub the bloom 
 off men's thoughts and allow them all too little time for 
 quiet and meditation and the deeper needs of the spirit. 
 We have all of us nowadays more thoughts in our heads 
 and more aspirations in our hearts than the rush of life 
 allows us to be conscious of. Education and holidays 
 are safety-valves of the sub-conscious mind. Take them 
 away, and modern man can never be his best self. They 
 are, in fact, as necessary to the true health and freedom 
 of an industrialised population as the recognised neces- 
 saries of which modern governments provide it with a 
 minimum standard. If any one doubts this, let him look 
 into the faces of the workaday inhabitant of London ; or 
 let him reflect on the appalling mental and emotional 
 starvation revealed by the character of the popular enter- 
 tainments and amusements of our large cities. The 
 audience at a music hall or a picture show do not enjoy 
 themselves ; they are far too indolent and s'uperficial for 
 that. They simply sit back and allow paid hypnotists to 
 titivate the repressed instincts and emotions which they 
 have not the vitality to bring into action themselves. 
 
 "All this is very true," the reader may say, "but 
 such is twentieth-century life. We are living in an in- 
 dustrial age, not in ancient Athens or in mediaeval Italy. 
 Show me a body of modern working men who wUI 
 abjure the public house, the picture theatre, and the 
 political club in order to go to school, after their day's 
 work, with a modern Socrates, and I will begin to take 
 your abstractions seriously." 
 
 The sign demanded can be shown. 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 109 
 
 II 
 
 Few parts of industrial England can appear more de- 
 pressing at first sight to the casual visitor than the string 
 of overlapping villages now comprised in the new County 
 Borough of Stoke-on-Trent and known as The Five 
 Towns. Smoke and slag-heaps have done their best to 
 mar the appearance of a once beautiful countryside ; nor 
 have the towns themselves yet been able to do much 
 to remedy the confusion and ugliness inseparable from 
 nineteenth-century industrialism. 
 
 Yet, a few weeks ago, addressing an audience of 
 miners in a village schoolroom on one of the ridges over- 
 looking this vale of smoke, a distinguished student of 
 Sixteenth Century England spoke of what he termed the 
 revival of humanism in the England of to-day. " Early 
 in the sixteenth century," he said, " a great educational 
 movement arose in Europe and penetrated to England. 
 Men felt that new worlds were opening up before their 
 eyes, that there were great kingdoms of the mind to be 
 overrun and possessed. In those days there was a great 
 Dutch scholar named Erasmus. He came to England 
 to meet his fellow-scholars. He went to the seats of 
 knowledge, to Oxford and to Cambridge, where the new 
 learning was at home. If Erasmus were to come to 
 England on such a mission to-day, do you know," he 
 asked the miners, " where he would be directed to come ? 
 He would be taken to the Potteries" The miners looked 
 surprised. Some of them had been in the pit all day ; 
 others were going down on the night shift ; but that so 
 much importance should be attached to their natural 
 human desire to meet at regular intervals for an even- 
 ing's tussle at economics seemed strange to them. Their 
 tutor, for whom the regular five miles missionary journey 
 up the hill at the end of his owa day's work was more of 
 a strain than he let them know, was, however, glad to 
 
no NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 feel that his work linked him with the great scholars of 
 the past. 
 
 Let us follow Erasmus for a day or two as he takes 
 stock of this new educational movement. 
 
 In one of the Five Towns there is a block of school 
 buildings occupying a vacant plot by the side of a factory. 
 Four great ovens, like giant champagne bottles, overlook 
 the premises, and seem to leer wickedly into the play- 
 ground. When Erasmus visits it at night, one of the 
 rooms is still lighted. Some twenty-five men and women 
 are gathered there, of various ages and trades, but pre- 
 dominantly of the working class. They have come 
 together, he is told, for a university tutorial class in 
 philosophy, which meets from 8 to lo. But they have 
 come early : for it is not merely a class, but a club and a 
 college ; several of them are anxious, too, to have a 
 private word with the tutor. The tutor, he learns, is 
 an Oxford graduate with a good honours degree in his 
 subject, but, if he talks to him, he will find that he has 
 learnt most of his philosophy in discussions with working 
 people. For of the two hours of a tutorial class, the first 
 only is used for exposition ; the second is sacred to dis- 
 cussion. So that a class consists, as has been said, not 
 of twenty-five students and a tutor, but of twenty-six 
 students who learn together. There is also a library in 
 the room of some fifty or sixty volumes bearing on the 
 subject : at least, the box is there, but the books are 
 almost all in use, so that only the list of volumes is 
 available for Erasmus's inspection. But the class, which 
 is a democratic organism, has its own elected librarian and 
 secretary, and from them he can learn all that he wishes 
 to know. He will find that the books are not only 
 diligently read, but form a basis for essays which are a 
 regular part of the class work. He will discover how 
 various and vexatious are the obstacles that industrial 
 life sets in the way of this new type of university student 
 — the ravages of overtime, the anxieties of unemploy- 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL ui 
 
 ment, the suspicions of foremen and managers, the diffi- 
 culties of obtaining quiet for reading and writing." He 
 will hear of one student, nearly blind, who came regularly 
 to class and made pathetic attempts to do his paperwork 
 in large letters on a sheet of wallpaper ; of another who 
 found it quietest to go early to bed and rise again after 
 midnight for an hour or two of study ; of another who, 
 joining a class at sixty-nine, attended regularly for six 
 years until the very week of his death. And in the dis- 
 cussion, if he stays for it, he will hear the old problems of 
 philosophy first raised in Plato (who is still used as a 
 text-book) thrashed out anew from the living experience 
 of grown men and women. 
 
 But he cannot stay, for he will be carried off to the 
 parent class of the district, which is holding its 144th 
 continuous winter meeting. Here he will find a new 
 method. The tutor is standing aside : for the class has 
 been turned for once into what university professors call 
 a seminar. Two students are reading papers on special 
 aspects of the year's subject, which is the French Revo- 
 lution. Erasmus is in time for some of the second, a 
 character study of Turgot contributed by a potter's 
 engineer, who, as he afterwards confessed, had got up at 
 4 a.m. for a week to have it finished in time. The matter 
 and the style are fully worthy of a university seminar ; 
 the delivery would do credit to a teacher of elocution. 
 For here is a student who has been in public life and 
 knows the value of a spoken word. He has put his heart 
 into the subject, and is not ashamed to show iti 
 
 Here Erasmus can learn about the inner life and 
 organisation of this educational movement of which the 
 Potteries form but a single centre.^ The Workers' Edu- 
 cational Association was founded by a group of work- 
 people in 1903, with the object of stimulating the demand 
 
 1 See " University Tutorial Classes : a Study in the Development of Higher 
 Education among Working Men and Women," by Albert Mansbridge 
 (General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association). Longmans, 
 191 3 (zs. 6d.). 
 
112 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 for higher education among their fellows. Its astonish- 
 ingly rapid growth has been due mainly to the fact that 
 it provided an outlet for forces that had long been 
 gathering underground, but also, in part, to the method 
 of organisation adopted. The Association is not, like 
 most societies, a collection of individual members ; it has 
 several thousand individual members in its ranks, for it 
 welcomes all without distinction of place, but it is in the 
 main a collection of affiliated societies. Unlike the 
 middle-class, the working-class is habituated to corporate 
 modes of life. The trade union, the club, the chapel, 
 the co-operative society have kept alive for working 
 people the instinct and habit of association ; even the 
 factory is sometimes a kind of college. Hence to 
 approach workpeople for any purpose is very different 
 from approaching the scattered denizens of villadom. 
 They can be approached through their societies, which 
 are represented on the Workers' Educational Asso- 
 ciation by delegates who act as links between the Asso- 
 ciation and a vast potential public of students. There 
 are also numbers of educational bodies affiliated, repre- 
 senting an educational supply corresponding to the 
 working-class demand. The Association, which is, for 
 working purposes, divided into eight districts covering 
 England and Wales, is democratically governed and, of 
 course, holds itself aloof from all political parties or 
 religious ties. 
 
 It was in 1907, after some four years' work in 
 organising the demand among workpeople, that the 
 Association first approached the universities for help. In 
 the summer of that year a National Conference was held 
 at Oxford at which a resolution was passed inviting the 
 co-operation of the University ; and shortly afterwards a 
 Joint Committee of seven University representatives, 
 appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, and seven labour men, 
 appointed by the Association, met to work out a definite 
 scheme. The result of their deliberations was the issue 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 113 
 
 of the Report mentioned above (p. 102) and the establish- 
 ment, on the lines laid down in it, of the University 
 Tutorial Class system. 
 
 The first University tutorial classes were established 
 in Rochdale and the Potteries in 1908. There are now 
 145 in England and Wales, all of the same character as 
 that described : and only difficulties of finance have pre- 
 vented a far more rapid spread. They are the outward 
 and visible sign of an alliance, which by now seems as 
 permanent as it has proved happy and natural, between 
 the universities and the great organisations of the work- 
 ing class. Every university in England has its " Joint 
 Committee " for tutorial class work, consisting of an 
 equal number of university and working-class representa- 
 tives. The Joint Committee, aided by grants from the 
 State, is the controlling authority of the tutorial class ; 
 but the strength of each class is in its local management. 
 Each class is pledged to at least a three years' course, and 
 every student is in honour bound to abide by the con- 
 ditions of the class. The class is, in fact, a little college 
 or entity of its own, and it is the class meeting which 
 chooses the subject of study and approves the tutor sent 
 down by the Joint Committee. 
 
 But the working-class students in the Potteries have 
 done more than abide by the conditions which they 
 pledged themselves to observe. They have set on foot 
 an educational movement of their own. 
 
 The North StaflFordshire coalfield not only embraces 
 the Five Towns but also a number of villages which are 
 scattered around it on every side, at distances of from two 
 to ten or twelve miles. Here coal has been found, and 
 here in rural surroundings an industrial population of 
 miners has settled. These villages are for the most part 
 difficult to reach, and are thus removed from all contact 
 with the ordinary opportunities of civilisation. The 
 university tutorial class students three years ago discerned 
 in these semi-industrial villages a great field for missionary 
 
114 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 work, and as this coincided in point of time with a 
 demand for higher education which came from the 
 miners themselves, the two parties were quickly brought 
 together and a- new educational movement set on foot. 
 By personal effort, pit-head meetings, social evenings and 
 every other means of tactful persuasion they communi- 
 cated their enthusiasm to the villagers, till in the present 
 session (1913-1914) there are not less than twenty- five 
 class centres at work in connexion with what has been 
 christened "The North Staffordshire JVliners' Higher 
 Education Movement." The tutors, who give their 
 services unpaid, are in nearly every instance working men 
 and women, members of tutorial classes in the Potteries, 
 and the subjects studied are in most cases connected with 
 the work in the tutorial class. 
 
 Let us return to Erasmus on the second day of his visit. 
 
 There are no classes during working hours, but his 
 time will not be unoccupied. He may drop into the 
 Labour Exchange to hear about the labour conditions of 
 the district from a student who has work there : or into 
 the Free Library to hear from the librarian about the new 
 demand for serious books : or into the Local Education 
 Office, where a wise official, who knows how not to inter- 
 fere, is keeping friendly watch over developments. But 
 most likely he will have time for none of these : for the 
 miners and the potters among the students will be con- 
 tending for every spare hour of his time in order that he 
 may see at close quarters how their working day is spent. 
 If he has not time for both, let him visit a potteiry, 
 Wedgwood's for preference. And if he has a student 
 with him, he will discover how in one industry at least, 
 philosophy can still animate craftsmanship. " The day I 
 first read Bergson," said the potter who showed him 
 round, " was an epoch in mylife. Creative Evolution — 
 the words were a revelation. Every touch of the clay a new 
 creation. There is the whole philosophy of our work." 
 Thus in friendly talk Erasmus and his new friend 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 115 
 
 wander through the rooms where the wheel is spinning, 
 talking now of philosophy and now of Flaxman, who 
 once worked here, until Erasmus, who has been in Lan- 
 cashire, suddenly pauses to think why, in spite of the 
 forbidding exterior, he has come to feel at home in this 
 smoky and clannish world. Partly, he reflects, because 
 life runs quietly here, because, even in the factories, 
 there is no noise or sense of hurry or rushing, and the 
 mind is free to follow her path undisturbed. 
 
 In the late afternoon, when the factories close down, 
 Erasmus is fetched by another workman student, and 
 carried out first by train and then in an antediluvian 
 carriage (specially provided for this occasion) to an in- 
 accessible village on the top of a hill. There in the 
 schoolroom he finds an eager audience gathered together 
 from this and the neighbouring villages. They have 
 come to hear about the French Revolution, to be thrilled 
 with the story of a great national drama. Erasmus, 
 inured to lucubrations about scientific methods and 
 documentary authorities, had almost forgotten that history 
 is first and foremost a story. This evening reminded 
 him. He saw the Bastille fall under his eyes, and felt 
 the news of its capture reverberating through France. 
 He lived for an hour in 1789, as the story rolled out 
 from the lips of a trained public speaker. The miners 
 and the field labourers and the village shopkeepers and 
 the old village schoolmaster in the chair were in France 
 too ; question after question poured in till the primitive 
 conveyance stood once more at the door. And so back 
 to the wayside station and in the slow train to Stoke, 
 with high converse on the way, of which Erasmus will 
 bear an undying memory back to Holland. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The remarkable educational movement of which the 
 Potteries form but one among many centres, suggests a 
 
ii6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 train of ideas which this is not the place to follow out at 
 length. Time and experience are needed before their 
 full significance can be revealed. But it is clear that the 
 time has come for thinking out afresh, in the light of the 
 changed conditions of modern life, the place and function 
 of universities in the twentieth-century community. For 
 the last four centuries universities have been regarded by 
 English-speaking people mainly as training-grounds for 
 public service, for the professions and for the life of a 
 gentleman. They have, in a word, been finishing schools. 
 The German graduate may be a man of learning, and the 
 French the master of a polite and lucid literary style : 
 but the " Oxford man " has been honoured primarily for 
 what he is, not for anything he knows or does. Alma 
 Mater has taken him to her bosom at an impressionable 
 age and left an imperishable mark on his mind and his 
 manners. But a new field of work is opening out before 
 the English university of the future ; to be the temporary 
 home, not merely of the young who need to be prepared 
 for life, but of students of riper years, who need the 
 spirit of college and cloister in order to reflect on what 
 life has taught them. 
 
 England has never stood in greater need of houses of 
 quiet than to-day, places where men and women can 
 repair for a few weeks or months to reduce their ideas to 
 order, or to refresh their minds and spirits at the deepest 
 springs of inspiration. Already that need is being in 
 some degree satisfied. Oxford is filled summer by 
 summer with tutorial class students, who come for a 
 week or a fortnight or a month for common study and 
 individual tuition. An old mediaeval teacher, who 
 gathered his wandering students from far and wide, 
 would feel more at home in the Long Vacation Oxford 
 of to-day than at any time since the foundation of the 
 Colleges. And though the subjects studied are diiFerent, 
 though history, literature and economics predominate 
 over theology, medicine and law, he would be conscious 
 
 y 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 117 
 
 of the new vitality breathed into these human studies by 
 contact with the living experience of thinking and feeling 
 men and women. Oxford and Cambridge have it, in 
 fact, in their power to become in a wholly new sense the 
 intellectual and spiritual centres of England — and not of 
 England only but of all the lands where their influence 
 extends. Ideals can be better formed and policies thought 
 out in the courts and gardens of a university than in the 
 dusty purlieus of Whitehall or the crowded council rooms 
 of industrial towns. If the great outstanding problems of 
 the twentieth century are to be calmly and fearlessly met 
 — if the old principles of British Government are to stand 
 the test of new conditions, if justice and liberty are to 
 prevail among the mingled races of mankind, if indus- 
 trialism is to be made compatible with a civilised life for 
 the working population, the university must arm the 
 actors in these great causes with the knowledge and the 
 power which come from the honest and fearless dis- 
 cussion of differences in an atmosphere of common study, 
 and from the comradeship which is built up in the hours 
 of insight and decision. Idem sentire de republican to feel, 
 not necessarily to think, alike about public afikirs should 
 be the privilege of university students, and their bond of 
 union in the turmoil of life. In this, as in so many other 
 of his great thoughts, Mr. Rhodes was both a prophet 
 and a pioneer. 
 
 IV 
 
 It remains to pass on to another aspect of this new 
 movement in education. The spirit and methods of the 
 Workers' Educational Association will doubtless prove 
 capable of adaptation to many fields of thought and 
 activity. One such application, in particular, must be 
 treated here, for it is closely relevant to the preceding 
 discussion. 
 
 We have watched the new movement as it affects 
 
ii8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 associations of students inside the English community. 
 We have seen its working on groups of individuals. 
 We must now consider its power to draw out the secret 
 powers, not of individuals, but of nations ; for nations, 
 too, like individuals, need the reinvigoration which comes 
 from an attempt to understand and to interpret the 
 manifold experience of their life and history. 
 
 If education may be defined as the transmission and 
 interpretation of life, what shall we say of National Edu- 
 cation ? The answer is easy. National Education is the 
 transmission and interpretation of national life : its con- 
 stant reinterpretation as the experience of the nation 
 becomes richer and more manifold in its onward career, 
 
 A glance at the history of nations will illustrate what 
 is meant by this rather abstract statement. 
 
 The path of history is strewn with the debris of 
 nations. Some, like Assyria and Babylon, Macedonia 
 and Carthage, have written their names large on some 
 pages of history ; others have passed away without 
 leaving so much as a memorial behind them. Others 
 again have survived, maintaining unimpaired not merely 
 a racial but a national existence. How is this to be 
 explained ? How is It, for instance, that the Jewish 
 nationality is still a living factor in the world of to-day, 
 whilst of the language and culture of the Carthaginians, 
 a Semitic nation of kindred stock, not a trace remains ? 
 Why has Babylon been taken and Armenia left ? Why 
 have Burgundy and Lorraine perished except as provincial 
 names, while Bohemia and Poland still preserve the 
 living seed of nationality ? 
 
 There is no simple answer to these questions ; but 
 one thing is clear. Somehow or other the surviving 
 nations have succeeded in the face of conquest, loss of 
 territory, dispersion, persecution and the temptations of 
 assimilation. In transmitting the essence of nationality 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 What is nationality ? 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 119 
 
 It is not the tie of blood : for that bond is sacred to 
 smaller units, to the family and the tribe. It is not the 
 broader basis of race : for many great nations, such as 
 England herself, have grown out of an amalgamation of 
 races. It is not language, for a nation, such as Switzer- 
 land, may have as many as four languages, none of them 
 peculiar to itself. It is not the possession of territory 
 or of national independence : for nationality is some- 
 times most tenacious when these are absent. It is not 
 religion in the ordinary sense : for many nations, such as 
 Germany and Canada, have more than one Church which 
 is a force in national life ; whereas in the Middle Ages, 
 when Christianity was a reality in the life of Europe, 
 there was a single Church but many nations. It is not 
 mere habit and the lapse of time : for the Jews have 
 been in Europe for nearly two thousand years, yet their 
 separate nationality has not been worn down. It is not 
 merely common action and common suffering and a 
 certain store of common memories : for the Irish have 
 fought side by side with the English on a hundred fields 
 and still remain Irishmen ; and the Greeks and Serbs 
 and Bulgars of Macedonia groaned and struggled for 
 centuries under the Turks without being merged into a 
 common nationhood. It is not the mere passionate 
 attachment to scenes known and loved for centuries : 
 else out of Lombardy and Tuscany and Sicily and the 
 other fair provinces of the peninsula Italy could never 
 have been born. All these are elements in nationality, 
 but they are not its essence. No statesman or philo- 
 sopher, speaking from outside knowledge or calcula- 
 tion, can lay his hand on the map and say, " Here is 
 a nation." For nationality is not of the things which 
 can be manufactured and set on a shelf It needs to be 
 made afresh every year and month and day by the life 
 and thoughts and institutions of the people. In the life 
 of nations there is no age nor youth as in the life of the 
 individual. Nationality is immortal, like the fire in 
 
I20 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Vesta's shrine, so long as men choose to tend it. Some 
 nations, old in years, scarred with the wounds |of cen- 
 turies, are eager and buoyant, looking forward to a 
 limitless future. Others, born but a generation since, 
 are falling into visible decay because those that live 
 within their borders have no care for deeper things. For 
 nationality, like the more intimate affection between 
 individuals, is a thing to be felt rather than to be de- 
 fined ; and in the last analysis, if we ask, " Is Servia or 
 Bohemia or South Africa or Australia a nation ? " the 
 only true answer is through another question, "Will 
 men die for her ? " 
 
 " The man who has no nation," said the Greek philo- 
 sopher long ago, " is either a god or a beast." Despite 
 the forces of commercialism, which break men up into 
 competing units, despite the tendencies of cosmopoli- 
 tanism, fostered by the facilities for travel and for the 
 easy interchange of ideas and standards, nationality 
 remains an essential factor in the life of civilised peoples. 
 
 Yet it is slowly changing its character and becoming 
 educated into self-consciousness ; for in face of the 
 denationalising influences of the day its whole existence 
 is at stake, and it must either become explicit, respon- 
 sible for its own continuance and the interpreter of 
 its own experience, or, like so much that is "old- 
 fashioned," it must pine and wither into a picturesque 
 survival. In the days before railways and steamships 
 and newspapers, before the spread of a few dominant 
 languages over the greater part of the world, before 
 the masterful irruption of Western Europeans into 
 the quiet places of the planet, men needed no edu- 
 cation in nationality, for it grew up in their hearts by 
 habit and instinct out of the spirit of the community of 
 which they formed a part. To-day all this is altered. 
 All over the world, those who care for nationality may 
 observe how nations, caught unguarded by the onrush of 
 new ideas and influences, or by the temptation of new 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 121 
 
 opportunities, are being robbed of half their manhood 
 in the names of progress and education. 
 
 You cannot, by teaching or by environment give a 
 man a new nationality, any more than by watering you 
 can give a cut flower new roots. Yet teachers and mis- 
 sionaries, statesmen and propagandists, idealists and philo- 
 sophers are constantly attempting to do so — sinning at 
 once against humanity and against the dictates of human 
 science. Nationality is an element that springs from 
 the deepest side of men's nature ; you can destroy it 
 by severing men from their past and from the imme- 
 morial traditions, affections and restraints which bind 
 them to their kin and country. But you cannot replace 
 it ; for in the isolated shrunken individual, the cut flower 
 of humanity with whom you have now to deal, you have 
 nothing left to work on. Such education as you can give 
 him will be the education of a slave : a training not of 
 the whole man, but of certain aptitudes which may render 
 him a useful workman, a pushing tout, or even a pros- 
 perous merchant, but never a good citizen. And he will 
 revenge himself on you, in the subtlest and most exas- 
 perating of ways, by triumphantly developing into a bad 
 imitation of yourself. 
 
 Herein lies the central difficulty of education in what 
 is called a " new country." New countries there may 
 be, but there is no such thing as a new man. For man, 
 in the deepest side of his nature, is immemorially old ; 
 and those make the best citizens of a new country who, 
 like the French in Canada and Louisiana, or the Dutch 
 in South Africa (to mention no specifically English 
 examples), bear with them on their pilgrimage, and 
 religiously treasure in their new homes, the best of the 
 spiritual heritage bequeathed them by their fathers. 
 New countries filled with new men are not new at all, 
 but hoary with antiquity, older even than mankind, 
 for the instinct of imitation, with its insatiable craving 
 for the sensation of novelty (which is so often the 
 
122 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 master-motive of their life) is' as old as any of our in- 
 herited instincts. 
 
 But nationality strikes its roots deep, and is happily 
 hard to kill. A single illustration may show its power. 
 In the autumn of 191 2 the English-speaking- people of 
 the United States, basking complacently in the thought 
 that they were annexing new citizens from Southern 
 Europe at the rate of a million a year, were startled to 
 learn that thousands of newly made " Americans " were 
 taking ship to the Balkan peninsula to offer their lives to 
 the old countries. Tens of thousands more, who could 
 not go themselves, sent money. The people of the 
 United States awoke to the strange reality that, in spite 
 of all the visible and invisible agencies of " assimilation," 
 their country was not one nation but a congeries of nations 
 such as the world has never seen before within the limits 
 of a self-governing State. America had, in fact, become 
 almost a school of nationality. Men who, in the scat- 
 tered valleys of the Balkans or the isolated townships 
 of Sicily and Syria, had never known what nationality 
 meant, felt their sentiments expanding in the freer 
 atmosphere of America. " We never knew we were 
 Roumanians till we met our brothers over here," the 
 writer was told by a Koutzo-Vlach from a remote village 
 in the Pindus mountains, as he sat sipping Turkish coffee 
 in an upper room in New York. It was no doubt dis- 
 appointing to the older school of Americans to discover 
 that the qualities and standards of George Washington 
 cannot easily be grafted on to the descendants of The- 
 mistocles and the compatriots of General SavofF. But, 
 even viewed from the standpoint of the American 
 Republic, this outburst of nationality is reason for hope, 
 not for despondency. For there is room in a great 
 Republic or Commonwealth for many diverse nation- 
 alities, and here is evidence to show that the primary 
 condition of successful government — civic devotion — is 
 abundantly present. On a foundation of competing 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 123 
 
 individuals no political edifice can be built ; but self- 
 respecting groups, bodies of men who have merged 
 their personality in a larger whole, are the stuff of which 
 durable Commonwealths can be made. Just as England 
 learnt to see Scotsmen, not as Dr. Johnson saw them, 
 but as Sir Walter Scott saw them, so Americans need to 
 open their eyes to all the human wealth which they have 
 gathered in. 
 
 The problems of nationality which face the British 
 Commonwealth are very different from those which face 
 the United States, for nowhere in the world as in that 
 great Republic have false theories of liberty and education 
 persuaded statesmen on so large a scale (varying an old 
 Roman phrase) to make a Babel and call it a nation. But 
 just because the difficulties of the United States, spiritual, 
 moral, intellectual, political, social and economic, are so 
 acute, they are worth recalling : for the United States with 
 its negroes, its Asiatics, its Slavs, its Italians, its Jews, its 
 Dutch, Irish, and Scandinavians, its Huguenots, Cavaliers, 
 and Puritans, inextricably intermixed and knit together 
 by the bonds, not of nationality but of Statehood, forms, 
 as it were, an epitome of the scattered problems of 
 Britain. 
 
 What, then, is the moral to be drawn ? What should 
 be aimed at in the education of the different nations of 
 the British Commonwealth. 
 
 The most essential element in the education of 
 nations, as of individuals, is self-respect. You cannot 
 educate a man until he is a man. Neither can a nation 
 be fitted for the arts of progress and the lessons of civi- 
 lization till it feels itself to be a nation. Education 
 without self-respect is not the drawing-out of gifts and 
 virtues. It is the smearing of a polish or the practice 
 of a hideous mimicry. There is a clear and definite line, 
 familiar to all who have travelled in " newly-developed " 
 countries, between communities which are undergoing 
 the process of education, enriching their national life 
 
124 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 with what they are able to assimilate of the gifts of the 
 age, and communities which are studying the arts and 
 ingenuities of imitation, attempting feverishly to keep 
 pace with the newest devices of industrialism or the 
 latest fashions of the great world. That way lies deca- 
 dence. It was trodden of old by the Roman provincials 
 when, in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, at 
 the height of apparent prosperity, a slow torpor cr^pt 
 over the vast bulk of the Roman Empire. It has been 
 trodden since by many races whom it would be invidious 
 to mention. Yet the path can be retraced ; and the 
 history of Italy, from the end of the eighteenth century 
 onward, affords an example of how a nation can win 
 back its soul by drawing inspiration from the true springs 
 of national life. 
 
 There is another point to be noted. National Edu- 
 cation is too often regarded as a mere training of each 
 generation for the tasks of its own day. We are exhorted 
 to turn out well-equipped workmen and commercial 
 travellers — " economic men," in fact — in order success- 
 fully to compete with our rivals in prosperity. But true 
 National Education is not so ephemeral in its aims. Its 
 gaze is also on the past and future. Looking backward 
 and forwards, it sees in each generation a group of torch- 
 bearers who will hand on their light to the next. Thus, 
 it will look far beyond the mere formal requirements of 
 a modern school curriculum. It will seek aids for the 
 work of national education wherever the genius of the 
 nation has set its peculiar mark — in folklore,' in songs, in 
 the drama, in history, local and national, in poetry, in 
 sport, in a knowledge of the countryside, and in every 
 form of study or activity which tends to draw men 
 together in a common purpose for the enrichment of the 
 national life. National education is, in fact, as wide and 
 various as the nation itself Nihil humani alienum a se 
 putat. A wise system of education, whether among the 
 child-races of Africa or among the dominant nations who 
 
EDUCATION, SOCIAL AND NATIONAL 125 
 
 control them, will seek to follow the national bent in all 
 things wholesome and of good report, relying always, in 
 its sympathetic direction, upon that sense of respon- 
 sibility which is innate in all men who have not been 
 robbed of their manhood. 
 
 And so the argument comes back, on a deeper level, 
 to the idea of democracy ; for national education should 
 always be, in the truest sense, democratic. Those who 
 are learning must feel, not that something is being done 
 to them, but that they are achieving it for themselves. 
 The miners and potters of North Staffordshire make 
 sacrifices in the cause of education, because they them- 
 selves bear the responsibility of management ; and the 
 movement with which they are connected is democratic 
 in the further sense that it is for the benefit of the group 
 as a whole, not of isolated individuals. The miner who 
 studies the French Revolution, the potter who reads 
 Bergson, have no ulterior ambitions : they are proud of 
 North Staffordshire, proud of the working class, and 
 envy no man his birthright. What is true of groups 
 and classes within a nation is true also of nations. Edu- 
 cation affords a nation a means of working out its own 
 destiny, of making clear to itself what is the nature of 
 its mission — its distinctive contribution to the common 
 stock of civilisation. 
 
 No nation can presume to prescribe its destiny to 
 another. Imperialism, as we have learned to understand 
 it of late, chastened and deepened by contact with other 
 great forces of our time, has indeed a high and inspiring 
 mission. There is a solemn responsibility on the part of 
 the great organised States of the world, and especially of 
 the British Commonwealth, towards communities which 
 are still struggling with the elementary difficulties of 
 political life. But those who believe most passionately 
 that Britain, like Rome, has much to teach, must never 
 forget, as Rome forgot, that she has much also to learn. 
 If the British peoples are strong by virtue of their 
 
126 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 national character and history, they can only hope to 
 impart strength to those other peoples towards whom 
 their duty lies, not merely by training them in the 
 common lessons of Statehood, but by joining with them 
 in a voyage of discovery, as a wise tutor with his students, 
 towards the secret springs of their national life. For in 
 Empire, as in education, giving and receiving go hand in 
 hand ; and freedom, of which we often speak so lightly 
 as though it were a boon to be bestowed, can never be 
 given at all : it can only be shared. 
 
 There are many problems yet awaiting the united 
 wisdom of the British nations ; yet the real hope that 
 they will be nobly met lies in the generous and manly 
 freedom of which England is the traditional repository. 
 Not by rule or measure, not by any State-made enact- 
 ments nor by imperial or international tribunals, but 
 through the frank comradeship of free peoples, ever 
 drawing fresh strength from the living experience of 
 nationality, and enlightened and confirmed by education in 
 their distinctive powers and destiny, can the problem of 
 the world's government find an ultimate solution. 
 
 This essay has been left as it was written, early in 191+. It seemed fairer 
 not to attempt to bring its practical details up to date or to force its state- 
 ments of theory into verbal conformity on every point with later essays. 
 During the war the work of the Workers' Educational Association has been 
 extended and developed both at home and overseas. Moreover, its methods 
 have been widely recognised and adopted by other agencies, not only by 
 voluntary bodies like the Y.M.C.A., but even, with the necessary adap- 
 tations, by the military authorities. The offices of the Association are at 
 16, Harpur Street, W.C. i. 
 
THE UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION ' 
 
 What is the place and function of Universities in a 
 modern democratic community ? What can a democracy 
 reasonably expect from its great seats of learning, which, 
 whatever their mode of government, are in effect, and are 
 rightly regarded by the public, as national institutions ? 
 How can Universities best make their own special con- 
 tribution to the life of a democratic Commonwealth ? 
 
 The extension of the franchise lends point to such 
 inquiries, for it confronts British Universities with new 
 problems and opportunities which will at once test the 
 wisdom and public spirit of their rulers and inmates and 
 determine the nature and extent of their influence in the 
 post-war generation. 
 
 Fifty years ago, when the franchise was first extended 
 to the working class, Robert Lowe, in a memorable 
 sentence, declared that " we must educate our masters," 
 The words were spoken half in jest, but they bear a 
 deeper meaning than their author realised. When he 
 spoke of " our masters " he was thinking q{ the newly 
 enfranchised working class. But the real masters of 
 Britain, as of every community, are those who control 
 the sources of knowledge. It was at. least as important 
 in 1867, if Robert Lowe had only known it, to educate 
 the Universities in their civic and national responsibilities 
 as to set up schools in every parish, for if the great store- 
 houses of the nation's knowledge are divorced from the 
 general life of the community the very foundations of 
 
 ' From the "Educational Year Book," issued by the Workers' Educational 
 Association, 191 8. 
 
 127 
 
128 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 popular government are undermined. Power, whether 
 political or of any other kind, is simply applied know- 
 ledge. It can only be wielded effectively by men and 
 women who know, instead of merely "thinking" or 
 " believing " or " understanding " or " guessing " or 
 taking on trust because they have heard it on a platform 
 or " seen it in print." If the opinions in accordance 
 with which the country is governed are based on ignorance 
 and prejudice, and the knowledge upon which they should 
 be based is stored up and jealously withheld in exclusive 
 corporations, the last state of democracy will be worse 
 than the first. 
 
 The power of the people must be based, in a word, 
 not on opinion, but on knowledge, and on a recognition 
 of the large and important mass of " hard facts " which 
 it is beyond the power of organised opinion to alter. 
 The tendency to forget this, the temptation to believe 
 that parliamentary majorities and conference resolutions 
 are trumpet-blasts at which the walls of Jericho will fall 
 down, is the besetting sin of modern popular movements, 
 and its wide prevalence is perhaps the main reason why, 
 in spite of several generations of skilful and sustained 
 agitation, democracy in Europe and overseas is not yet 
 master in its own house. It must win the keys of know- 
 ledge before it can wield the sceptre of power. 
 
 Happily, in England at any rate, some of the 
 " masters " took the hint in a way unintended by Robo-t 
 Lowe. The last two generations bear witness to a 
 gradual awakening of a sense of national responsibility 
 on the part of the British Universities, and to their 
 increasing desire to emerge from academic seclusion, and 
 to extend the range of their activities and influence. 
 The success of the W.E.A. in recent years has, perhaps, 
 tended to throw somewhat unduly into the shadow the 
 achievements of the pioneers of the various forms of 
 " University Extension "—a work which was due, unlike 
 the W.E.A., to the initiative of University men, and has 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION 129 
 
 done, and is doing, much to sow seed which has borne 
 fruit in numerous ways throughout the community. 
 
 Relatively small in bulk as such work has been, we 
 may, nevertheless, regard it as having established the 
 broad principle that the University in a modern com- 
 munity cannot remain a self-centred and exclusive 
 corporation living for itself alone. Its knowledge, its 
 opportunities, its equipment, its "atmosphere" are 
 national possessions, held in trust by each passing 
 generation of students and teachers for the benefit of the 
 community as a whole. But the wider possibilities in- 
 herent in this recognition are still imperfectly realised. 
 It is worth while trying to see whither it leads us. 
 
 The work of a modern University is, in the broadest 
 sense, of two kinds — teaching and thinking. It is at 
 once a school and an intelligence department ; or, to put 
 it in army language, it is both an officers' training corps 
 and the General Staff of the community. It exists both 
 to prepare young people in body, mind, and character for 
 the active work of life, and to help people of all ages to 
 gain an understanding of the meaning of life in all its 
 different phases. It is faced with a twofold task of 
 training and of interpretation. 
 
 Of the work of the University as a training school 
 little need be said here. Mr. Sidney Webb, with his 
 love for enshrining romantic themes in committee-room 
 phraseology, has described this side of University work 
 as that of a " technical school for the brain-working 
 classes." However much such a definition may grate 
 upon all to whom college life calls up indelible memories 
 of friendship and happiness in grey quadrangles and 
 spacious gardens, it stresses the undeniable fact that for 
 entry into certain kinds of employment a University 
 education, that is, an education prolonged for three or 
 four or even more years beyond the secondary school 
 stage, will always remain, if not indispensable (as in 
 Germany) at any rate extremely useful. Happily, it is 
 
130 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 becoming increasingly recognised, both by psychologists 
 and by practical men, that a prolonged general education is 
 the best preparation for most occupations which require 
 a high level of brain power and concentration, so that 
 British Universities are not likely to fall into the German 
 error of turning what should be a seat of education and 
 of the liberal arts, of training for skilled service, into a 
 battleground of competing and unrelated specialisms. 
 The danger, however, does exist, and no one who has 
 watched the reaction of British academic opinion to the 
 war can be quite easy in his mind as to the future of the 
 broader traditions of the British University course. Yet 
 the response of the Universities to the call of the war 
 should be sufficient to show that, with all their undeni- 
 able intellectual shortcomings, the Universities have not 
 failed to give their inmates a sense of the paramount 
 duty of national and social service, which is, or should be, 
 the first element in a technical or professional equipment. 
 On this side of University work, apart from the 
 maintenance of the liberal tradition, and its perpetual 
 enrichment by contact with life and experience, the main 
 problem is that of securing access for all those young 
 people who are capable and desirous of receiving such a 
 training. This is an immense task, but the main burden 
 of it, in England at any rate, must fall for the next few 
 years on the secondary schools. There is, unhappily, 
 little ground for thinking that the University provision 
 of the country, meagre though it is compared with what 
 it might be, is not adequate to meet the needs of the 
 young people who are capable of profiting by it. A 
 University is not a glorified high school. It is not 
 meant for boys and girls who are still in the text-book 
 stage and unable to study without spoon feeding and 
 direction. It is intended for students who, however 
 scanty their knowledge, however vague and chaotic their 
 ideas as to their future occupation, have some inde- 
 pendent intellectual life of their own, who value ideas 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION 131 
 
 and the contact of mind with mind, and who come to a 
 seat of learning, not simply to scramble through some 
 bread-winning test, but, whether consciously or not, to 
 satisfy the needs of their growing spirit. It is not easy 
 to devise tests which shall attract all those, however 
 " wild," for whom the University has something to offer, 
 and exclude all those, however bookish, for whom, at this 
 stage, direct contact with life would be a better education ; 
 existing scholarship and matriculation arrangements, still 
 more, existing scales of fees, are plainly not contrived for 
 this end ; but to suggest their amendment in detail goes 
 beyond the scope of this paper. It is sufficient to say 
 that, in exercising their function of selecting students for 
 admission to their ordinary courses, Universities are per- 
 forming a national service, and that if they do not, or 
 cannot, exercise it in the best interests of the nation, it is 
 the duty of the nation to interfere. 
 
 The other side of University work, what has been 
 called the work of thinking or of interpretation, is too 
 broad and various to be described in detail, but perhaps 
 it can be summarised under three heads : — 
 
 First, it is the duty of a University to maintain a high 
 standard in all studies and subjects which come within its 
 range. Perhaps it would be simpler to say that its duty 
 is to foster a love of truth ; but truth in the ordinary 
 sense of the word is too narrow and intellectual a term. 
 A University should be a centre of taste, of the love of 
 beauty, as well as of truth ; its concern is with all the 
 large and enduring interests of life, and those who are 
 following the quest of the spirit in any field of endeavour, 
 whether the world calls them artists or architects or 
 musicians, philosophers or historians, biologists or 
 chemists, social workers or statesmen in politics or in- 
 dustry, should feel equally at home within its walls. 
 Modern life with its sick hurry and divided aims, its 
 ruthless and mechanical " drive," is in ceaseless conflict 
 with the healthy creative instincts of the artist, and with 
 
132 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the scholar's sensitive love of accuracy and balance and 
 intellectual justice. It is the function of the University 
 to maintain and diffuse respect for all sincere and funda- 
 mental achievement, to proclaim the cause of quality 
 against quantity, of simplicity against showiness, of 
 honesty against flattery, of precision against phrase- 
 making ; to cause men to feel shame at the hasty 
 production and shallow judgment which pass muster in 
 the crowded metropolis ; to be a haven of refuge where 
 men acquire or renew kinship with the spirit of truth 
 which must preside over every fruitful undertaking or 
 activity of mankind. If the Universities do no more for 
 us in the next generation than reform the headlines of 
 our newspapers and banish shop-window methods from 
 our public life, they will have served democracy well. 
 
 Secondly, it is the duty of a University to undertake 
 what is called " research," that is, to increase human 
 knowledge, or, by interpreting existing knowledge, to 
 increase our understanding of it. That is a task which 
 has always been associated with Universities, but in 
 recent times, when the teaching function of Universities 
 has come more to the front, it has been apt to be 
 neglected or relegated to the interstices of a busy teacher's 
 time. It is often forgotten that teaching and research 
 are different kinds of work, and often best undertaken by 
 different persons. The "researcher" is primarily in- 
 terested in his subject : the teacher is primarily in- 
 terested in his students. The two interests, happily, are 
 often combined ; but all modern Universities should find 
 room for a certain number of those rare and difficult 
 minds who find their highest satisfaction in simply 
 adding to the accumulated store of human knowledge. 
 
 Thirdly, the University exists to perform what can be 
 called a function of mediation ; to bring its knowledge and 
 outlook to bear, as a helpful and reconciling influence, 
 on the problems of the day. The true University spirit 
 is not dry, thin, vacuous, pedantic, superior, or, as the 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION 133 
 
 phrase goes, academic ; it is understanding, and sympa- 
 thetic, health-giving and vitalising, A democracy in 
 which the University played its proper part in public life 
 would be equally free from pedantry in its professors, and 
 from vulgarity and rant in its politicians. There would 
 be constant action and inter-action between theory and 
 practice, between book-learning and experience, between 
 students of all ages and occupations. Political science 
 would no longer be reserved for University lectures and 
 remain conspicuous by its absence on party platforms or in 
 election literature ; and our elder statesmen, men who had 
 acquired ripe wisdom in the service of the State, would 
 be chosen naturally, and as of right, to positions of 
 influence and authority over young minds, which are too 
 often reserved at present for teachers who have long since 
 ceased to learn. Elections would still preserve the old- 
 time fighting flavour so dear to the heart of the pugna- 
 cious Briton, but the issues to be decided in them would 
 be thrashed out in fair-tempered, if vivacious, discussion 
 between speakers and voters who had acquired intellectual 
 seriousness and a due sense of civic responsibility. 
 Candidates would learn to revise their traditional methods 
 and would find it fatal to be convicted of ignorance of 
 the tasks which they are asking authority to undertake. 
 Men would learn to look constantly to the Universities 
 for guidance and inspiration. Constitutional problems 
 would be discussed at leisure, as in Ireland at this 
 moment, within the four walls of a University, with a 
 library within call. Nor would experiments be made 
 upon the long-suffering body politic by practitioners 
 imperfectly acquainted with social anatomy. 
 
 It is one of the ironies of the modern age that 
 Democracy has become the dominant political creed at a 
 time when the problems of society and government are 
 more difficult and complex, less easy of understanding by 
 the plain man, than ever before in human history. 
 Simple solutions are preached on every hand, but every 
 
134 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 fresh attempt to apply them breeds fresh disillusionment, 
 till " the revolutionary tradition " has been worn thread- 
 bare and men are tempted to relapse into a cynical and 
 contemptuous despair. For the problems of the modern 
 time defy simple solutionSj as Russia is learning to her 
 cost ; and it is Plato's philosopher-king rather than a 
 many-headed multitude of tired toilers who is really 
 required to solve them. If Democracy is to survive 
 as an effective force, if government by the people is not 
 to perish from the earth, the people itself must strive to 
 acquire the spirit and temper of the philosopher ; it must 
 learn to recognise wisdom and sincerity when it sees 
 them ; it must fortify itself against the attempted tyranny 
 of the expert and the assaults of reaction by making the 
 UnivCTsity aware of its needs, and securing that its know- 
 ledge and equipment are made freely and constantly 
 available for the service of Democracy. 
 
 What does such a policy involve in practice ? 
 Nothing less than a new system of education for adult 
 citizens superimposed upon ■ the system already provided 
 for young people. Perhaps " system " is the wrong word 
 for something that must of necessity be voluntary, elastic, 
 spontaneous, and largely self-governing, as the experi- 
 ments made by the W.E.A. in that direction have shown. 
 But our statesmen and Universities have still to realise, 
 in full measure, that it is farcical to call a community 
 " democratic " unless its citizens have adequate leisure for 
 attention to public affairs, and unless those who hold the 
 keys of knowledge provide the opportunities for the wise 
 and profitable use of such leisure* Democracy has still 
 to win its spurs. It is living to-day upon the failures 
 of alternative systems of government. Only through 
 the fruits of adult education can it secure an intrinsic and 
 lasting justification. When every town and village in 
 Britain is a home of University study, in the widest sense 
 of the word, then we can say with assurance that our 
 country is made " safe for Democracy." 
 
UNIVERSITIES AND PUBLIC OPINION 135 
 
 Have the British Universities realised the work that 
 lies ready to their hands in this task of interpretation and 
 mediation ? Can they do so until their personnel has 
 been largely humanised and enriched, and their range of 
 interest and study extended and broadened ? Is it likely 
 that the necessary changes in University policy and 
 government will be effected in time to meet the urgent 
 needs of the enlarged democracy ? Will war, the greatest 
 of educators for a nation like ours, which has always 
 learnt best in the school of experience, send a freshening 
 breeze through the cloisters and council rooms of our 
 academies ? The optimist will not offer a direct answer 
 to these questions. He will prefer to leave them with a 
 question mark. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT' 
 
 When I was asked to speak to you on the subject of 
 Progress in Government I gladly accepted, for it is a 
 subject on which I have reflected a good deal. But when 
 I came to think over what I should say, I saw that you 
 had asked me for the impossible. For what is Govern- 
 ment ? I do not know whether there are any here for 
 whom Government means no more than a policeman, or 
 a ballot-box, or a list of office-holders. The days of such 
 shallow views are surely over. Government is the work 
 of ordering the external affairs and relationships of men. 
 It covers all the activities of men as members of a com- 
 munity — social, industrial, and religious as well as political 
 in the narrower sense. It is concerned, as the ancients 
 had it, with " that which is public or common," what 
 the Greeks called to koivov and the Romans res publica. 
 The Old English translation of these classical terms is 
 *' The Commonwealth " or Common Weal ; and I do 
 not see that we can do better than adopt that word, with 
 its richness of traditional meaning and its happy associa- 
 tion of the two conceptions, too often separated in modern 
 minds, of Wealth and Welfare. 
 
 Our subject, then, is the Progress of the Common- 
 wealth, or, in other words, the record of the course of the 
 common life of mankind in the world. It is a theme 
 which really underlies all the other subjects of discussion 
 at this week's meetings : for it is only the existence of 
 the Commonwealth and its organised efforts to preserve 
 
 ' This and the following lecture were delivered at the Woodbrooke 
 Summer School, near Birmingham, in August, 1916, and reprinted in "Progress 
 and History," Oxford, 1916. 
 
 136 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 and sustain the life of the individuals composing it, which 
 have made possible the achievements of mankind in the 
 various separate fields of effort which are claiming your 
 attention. Lord Acton spent a lifetime collecting material 
 for a History of Liberty. He never wrote it ; but, if he 
 had, it would have been a History of Mankind. A 
 History of Government or of the Commonwealth would 
 be nothing less. Such is the nature of the invitation so 
 kindly given to me and so cheerfully accepted. If you 
 could wait a lifetime for the proper treatment of the 
 subject I would gladly give the time ; for, in truth, it is 
 worth it. 
 
 What is the nature of this common life of mankind 
 and with what is it concerned ? The subjects of its 
 concern are as wide as human nature itself. "We cannot 
 define them in a formula : for human nature overleaps 
 all formulas. Whenever men have triedjto rule regions 
 of human activity and aspiration out of the common life 
 of mankind, and to hedge them round as private or 
 separate or sacred or by any other kind of taboo, human 
 nature has always ended by breaking through the hedges 
 and invading the retreat. Man is a social animal. If 
 he retires to a monastery he finds he has carried problems 
 of organisation with him, as the promoters of this gather- 
 ing would confess you have brought with you here. If 
 he shuts himself up in his home as a castle, or in a work- 
 shop or factory as the domain of his own private power, 
 social problems go with him thither, and the long arm of 
 the law will follow after. If he crosses the seas like the 
 Pilgrim Fathers, to worship God unmolested in a new 
 country, or, like the merchant- venturers, to fetch home 
 treasure from the Indies, he will find himself unwittingly 
 the pioneer of civilisation and the founder of an Empire 
 or a Republic. In the life of our fellows, in the Common 
 Weal, we live and move and have our being. Let us 
 recall some wise words on this subject from the Master 
 of Balliol's book on the Middle Ages, 
 
138 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 " The words ' Church ' and ' State,' " he writes, " represent 
 what ought to be an alliance, but is, in modern times, at best a 
 dualism and often an open warfare. . . . The opposition of 
 Church and State expresses an opposition between two sides of 
 human nature which we must not too easily label as good and 
 evil, the heavenly and the earthly, the sacred and the profane. 
 For the State, too, is divine as well as the Church, and may have 
 its own ideals and sacramental duties and its own prophets, even 
 its own martyrs. The opposition of Church and State is to be 
 regarded rather as the pursuit of one great aim, pursued by con- 
 trasted means. The ultimate aim of all true human activity must 
 be in the noble words of Francis Bacon ' the glory of God and 
 the relief of man's estate.' " ^ 
 
 Bacon's words form a fitting starting-point for our 
 reflections : for they bring vividly before us both the 
 idealism which should inspire all who labour at the task 
 of government and the vastness and variety of the field 
 with which they are concerned. Looked at In this broad 
 light, the history of man's common life in the world will, 
 I think, show two great streams of progress — the progress 
 of man over Nature, or, as we say to-day, in the control 
 of his environment, and the progress of man in what is 
 essentially a moral task, the art of living together with 
 his fellows. These two aspects of human activity and 
 effort are in constant contact and interaction. Studied 
 together, they reveal an advance which, in spite of man's 
 ever-present moral weakness, may be described as an 
 advance from Chaos to Cosmos in the organisation of 
 the world's common life, yet they are so distinct in 
 method and spirit that they can best be described sepa- 
 rately. 
 
 Let us first, then, consider the history of Government, 
 as a record of the progress of man's power over Nature. 
 
 Human history, in this sphere, is the story of man 
 making himself at home in the world. When human 
 history begins we fin^ men helpless, superstitious, ignorant, 
 the plaything of blind powers in the natural and animal 
 
 ' A. L. Smith, "Church and State in the Middle Ages," pp. loy-zoS. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 139 
 
 world. Superstitious because he was helpless, helpless 
 because he was ignorant, he eked out a bare existence 
 rather,by avoiding than by controlling the forces in the little 
 world by which he found himself surrounded. Human 
 life in its earliest stages is, as Hobbes described it, nasty, 
 brutish, and, short. Man was the slave of his environ- 
 ment. He has risen to become its master. The world, 
 as the prophetic eye of Francis Bacon foretold, has become 
 " The Kingdom of Man." 
 
 How complete this conquest is, can best be realised 
 perhaps by considering man's relation to the lower animals. 
 When history opens, the animals are in their element ; it 
 is man who is the interloper. Two thousand years ago 
 it was not the Society of Friends but wolves and wild 
 boars who felt themselves at home on the site of Bourn- 
 ville Garden Village. To-day we are surprised when we 
 read that in remote East Africa lions and giraffes venture 
 occasionally to Interfere in the murderous warfare between 
 man and man. Man has imposed himself on the animals, 
 by dint of his gradual accumulation of knowledge and 
 his consequent power of organisation and government. 
 He has destroyed the conditions under which the animals 
 prospered. He has, as we might say, destroyed their 
 home life, exposing them to dangers of his own making 
 against which they are now as powerless as he was once 
 against them. 
 
 "It is a remarkable thing," writes Sir E. Ray Lankester, 
 "which possibly may be less generally true than our present 
 knowledge seems to suggest — that the adjustment of organisms 
 to their Surroundings is so severely complete in Nature apart 
 from Man, that diseases are unknown as constant and normal 
 phenomena under those conditions. It is no doubt difficult to 
 investigate this matter, since the presence of Man as an observer 
 itself implies human intervention. But it seems to be a legitimate 
 view that every disease to which animals (and probably plants 
 also) are liable, excepting as a transient and very exceptional 
 occurrence, is due to Man's interference. The diseases of cattle, 
 sheep, pigs, and horses are not known except in domesticated 
 
HO NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 herds and those wild creatures to which Man's domesticated pro- 
 ductions have communicated them. The trypanosome lives in 
 the blood of wild game and of rats without producing mischief. 
 The hosts have become tolerant of the parasite. It is only when 
 man brings his unselected, humanly-nurtured races of cattle and 
 horses into contact with the parasite, that it is found to have 
 deadly properties. The various cattle-diseases which in Africa 
 have done so much harm to native cattle, and have in some 
 regions exterminated big game, have per contra been introduced 
 by man through his importation of diseased animals of his own 
 breeding from Europe. Most, if not all, animals in extra- 
 human conditions, including the minuter things such as insects, 
 shellfish, and invisible aquatic organisms, have been brought into 
 a condition of ' adjustment ' to their parasites as well as to the 
 other conditions in which they live : it is this most difficult and 
 efficient balance of Nature which Man everywhere upsets.^ 
 
 And Sir E. Ray Lankester goes on to point out the 
 moral to be drawn from this development. He points 
 out that 
 
 " civilised man has proceeded so far in his interference with 
 extra-human nature, has produced for himself and the living 
 organisms associated with him such a special state of things by 
 his rebellion against natural selection and his defiance of Nature's 
 pre-human dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire 
 firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the 
 vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great 
 affairs. We may indeed compare civilised man to a successful 
 rebel against Nature, who, by every step forward, renders himself 
 liable to greater and greater penalties, and so cannot afford to 
 pause or fail in one single step. Or again we may think of him 
 as the heir to a vast and magnificent kingdom, who has been 
 finally educated so as to take possession of his property, and is at 
 length left alone to do his best ; he has wilfiiUy abrogated, in 
 many important respects, the laws of his mother Nature by which 
 the kingdom was hitherto governed ; he has gained some power 
 and advantage by so doing, but is threatened on every hand by 
 dangers and disasters hitherto restrained : no retreat is possible — 
 his only hope is to control, as he knows that he can, the sources 
 of these dangers and disasters." 
 
 ' Lankester, "Nature and Man," Romanes Lecture, 1905, pp. 27-»9, 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 141 
 
 The time will come, not too long hence, as I believe, 
 when men have realised, with the scientists, that the 
 world is one kingdom, not many, and these problems of 
 man's relation to his non-human environment will be the 
 first concern of statesmen and governors. In some of 
 our tropical colonies they have, perforce, become so 
 already. If you live on the Gold Coast, the war against 
 malaria cannot help seeming more important to you than 
 the war against German trade : and in parts of Central 
 Africa the whole possibility of continued existence centres 
 round the presence or absence of the tsetse fly which is 
 the carrier of sleeping sickness. Some day, when means 
 have been adopted for abating our fiercer international 
 controversies, we shall discover that in these and kindred 
 matters lies the real province of world-politics. When 
 that day comes the chosen representatives of the human 
 race will see their constituents, as only philosophers see 
 them now, as the inheritors of a great tradition of service 
 and achievement, and as trustees for their successors of 
 the manifold sources of human happiness which the 
 advance of knowledge has laid open to us. 
 
 If the first and most important of these sources is the 
 discovery of the conditions of physical well-being, the 
 second is the discovery of means of communication 
 between the widely separate portions of man's kingdom. 
 The record of the process of bringing the world under the 
 control of the organised government of man is largely the 
 record of the improvement of communications. Side by 
 side with the unending struggle of human reason against 
 cold and hunger and disease we can watch the contest 
 against distance, against ocean and mountain and desert, 
 against storms and seasons. There can be few subjects 
 more fascinating for a historian to study than the record 
 of the migrations of the tribes of men. He might begin, 
 if he wished, with the migrations of animals and describe 
 the westward progress of the many species whose course 
 can be traced by experts along the natural highways of 
 
142 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Western Europe. Some of them, so the books tell us, 
 reached the end of their journey while Britain was still 
 joined to the continent. Others arrived too late and 
 were cut off by the straits of Dover. I like to form an 
 imaginary picture, which the austerity of the scientific 
 conscience will, I know, repudiate with horror, of the 
 unhappy congregation, mournfully assembled bag and 
 baggage on the edge of the straits and gazing wistfully 
 across at the white cliffs of England, which they were not 
 privileged to reach — tendentesque manus ripae ulterioris 
 amove, " stretching out their paws in longing for the 
 further bank." 
 
 Our historian would then go on to describe the 
 early "wanderings of peoples" {Volkerwandefungen), how 
 whole tribes would move off in the spring-time in the 
 search for fresh hunting-grounds or pasture. He would 
 trace the course of that westward push which, starting 
 from somewhere in Asia, brought its impact to bear on 
 the northern provinces of the Roman Empire and even- 
 tually loosened its whole fabric. He would show how 
 Europe, as we know it, was welded into unity by the 
 attacks of migratory warriors on three flanks — the Huns 
 and the Tartars, a host of horsemen riding light over the 
 steppes of Russia and Hungary : the Arabs, bearing 
 Islam with them on their camels as they moved westward 
 along North Africa and then pushing across into Spain : 
 and the Northmen of Scandinavia, those carvers of 
 kingdoms and earliest conquerors of the" open sea, who 
 left their mark on England and northern France, on 
 Sicily and southern Italy, on the Balkan Peninsula, on 
 Russia, on Greenland, and as far as North America. 
 Then passing to Africa and Asia, he would describe the 
 life of the pack-saddle and the caravan, the long and 
 mysterious inland routes from the Mediterranean to 
 Nubia and Nigeria, or from Damascus with the pilgrims 
 to Medina, and the still longer and more mysterious 
 passage through the ancient oases of Turkestan, now 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 143 
 
 buried in sand, along which, as recent discoveries have 
 shown us, Greece and China, Christianity and Buddhism, 
 exchanged their arts and ideas and products. Then he 
 would tell of the great age or maritime discovery, of the 
 merchant-adventurers and buccaneers, of their gradual 
 transformation into trading companies, in the East and in 
 the West, from companies to settlements, from settle- 
 ments to colonies. Then perhaps he would close by 
 casting a glimpse at the latest human migration of all, 
 that which takes place or took place up to 19 14, at the 
 rate of a million a year from the Old World into the 
 United States. He would take the reader to Ellis 
 Island in New York harbour, where the immigrants 
 emerge from the steerage to face the ordeal of the Immi- 
 gration Officer. He would show how the same causes, 
 hunger, fear, persecution, restlessness, ambition, love of 
 liberty, which set the great westward procession in motion 
 in the early days of tribal migration, are still alive and at 
 work to-day among the populations of Eastern Europe. 
 He would look into their minds and read the story of 
 the generations of their nameless forerunners ; and he 
 would ask himself whether rulers and statesmen have 
 done all that they might to make the world a home for 
 all its children, for the poor as for the rich, for the Jew 
 as for the Gentile, for the yellow and dark skinned as for 
 the white. 
 
 Let us dwell for a moment more closely on one phase 
 of this record of the conquest of distance. The crucial 
 feature in that struggle was the conquest of the sea. The 
 sea-surface of the world is far greater than its land-surface, 
 and the sea, once subdued, is a far easier and more natural 
 means of transport and communication. For the sea, the 
 uncultivable sea, as Homer calls it, is itself a road, 
 whereas on earth, whether it be mountain or desert 
 or field, roads have first painfully to be made. Man's 
 definitive conquest of the sea dates from the middle of 
 the fifteenth century when, by improvements in the art 
 
144 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 of sailing and by the extended use of the mariner's 
 compass, it first became possible to undertake long voyages 
 with assurance. These discoveries are associated with 
 the name of Prince Henry of Portugal, whose life-long 
 ambition it was, to quote the words engraved on his 
 monument at the southern extremity of Portugal, " to 
 lay open the regions of West Africa across the sea, 
 hitherto not traversed by man, that thence a passage 
 might be made round Africa to the most distant parts of 
 the East." 
 
 The opening of the high seas which resulted from 
 Prince Henry's activities is one of the most momentous 
 events in human history. Its effect was, sooner or later, 
 to unite the scattered families of mankind, to make the 
 problems of all the concern of all : to make the world one 
 place. Prince Henry and his sailors were, in fact, the 
 pioneers of internationalism, with all the many and varied 
 problems that internationalism brings with it. 
 
 " In i486," says the most recent history of this development, 
 " Bartholomew Dias was carried by storm beyond the sight of 
 land, round the southern point of Africa, and reached the Great 
 Fish River, north of Algoa Bay. On his return journey he saw 
 the promontory which divides the oceans, as the narrow waters 
 of the Bosphorus divide the continents, of the East and West. 
 As in the crov^ded streets of Constantinople, so here, if anywhere, 
 at this awful and solitary headland the elements of two hemi- 
 spheres meet and contend. As Dias saw it, so he named it, 
 * The Cape of Storms.' But his master, John II., seeing in the 
 discovery a promise that India, the goal of the national ambition, 
 would be reached, named it with happier augury, * The Cape of 
 Good Hope.' No fitter name could have been given to that 
 turning-point in the history of mankind. Europe, in truth, was 
 on the brink of achievements destined to breach barriers, which 
 had enclosed and diversified the nations since the making of the 
 World, and commit them to an intercourse never to be broken 
 again so long as the World endures. That good rather than 
 evil may spring therefrom is the greatest of all human re- 
 sponsibilities." ^ 
 
 I "The Commonwealth of Nations," edited by L. Curtis, Part I. p. 130. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 145 
 
 The contrast between Constantinople and the Cape, 
 so finely drawn in these lines, marks the end of the age 
 when land-communications and land power were pre- 
 dominant over sea-power. The Roman Empire was, and 
 could only be, a land-power. It is no accident that the 
 British Commonwealth is, as the American Commonwealth 
 is fast becoming, predominantly a sea-power. 
 
 How was "the greatest of all human responsibilities," 
 arising from this new intercourse of races, met ? Know- 
 ledge, alas ! is as much the devil's heritage as the angels' : 
 it may be used for ill, as easily as for good. The first 
 explorers, and the traders who followed them, were not 
 idealists but rough adventurers. Breaking in, with the 
 full tide of Western knowledge and adaptability, to the 
 quiet backwaters of primitive conservatism, they brought 
 with them the worse rather than the better elements of 
 the civilisation, the control of environment, of which they 
 were pioneers. To them Africa and the East represented 
 storehouses of treasure, not societies of men ; and they 
 treated the helpless natives accordingly. 
 
 "England and Holland as well as the Latin monarchies 
 treated the natives of Africa as chattels without rights and as 
 instruments for their own ends, and revived slavery in a form and 
 upon a scale more cruel than any practised by the ancients. The . 
 employment of slaves on her own soil has worked the permanent 
 ruin of Portugal. The slave trade with America was an im- 
 portant source of English wealth, and the philosopher John 
 Locke did not scruple to invest in it. There is no European 
 race which can afford to remember its first contact with the 
 subject peoples otherwise than with shame, and attempts to assess 
 their relative degrees of guilt are as fruitless as they are invidious. 
 The question of real importance is how far these various states 
 were able to purge themselves of the poison, and rise to a higher 
 realisation of their duty towards their races whom they were 
 called by the claims of their own superior civilisation to protect. 
 The fate of that civilisation itself hung upon the issue." ^ 
 
 The process by which the Western peoples have risen 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 166. 
 
146 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 to a sense of their duty towards their weaker and more 
 ignorant fellow-citizens is indeed one of the chief stages 
 in that progress of the common life of mankind with which 
 we are concerned. 
 
 How is that duty to be exercised ? The best way in 
 which the strong can help the weak is by making them 
 strong enough to help themselves. The white races are not 
 strong because they are white, or virtuous because they 
 are strong. They are strong because they have acquired, 
 through a long course of thought and work, a mastery 
 over Nature and hence over their weaker fellow-men. It 
 is not virtue but knowledge to which they owe their 
 strength. No doubt much virtue has gone to the making 
 of that knowledge — virtues of patience, concentration, 
 perseverance, unselfishness, without which the great 
 body of knowledge of which we are the inheritors could 
 never have been built up. But we late-born heirs of the 
 ages have it in our power to take the knowledge of our 
 fathers and cast away any goodness that went to its 
 making. We have come into our fortune : it is ours to 
 use it as we think best. We cannot pass it on wholesale, 
 and at one step, to the more ignorant races, for they 
 have not the institutions, the traditions, the habits of 
 mind and character, to enable them to use it. Those too 
 we must transmit or develop together with the treasure 
 of our knowledge. For the moment we stand in the 
 relation of trustees, teachers, guides, governors, but 
 always in their own interest and not ours, or rather, in 
 the interest of the commonwealth of which we and they, 
 since the opening of the high seas, form an inseparable 
 part. 
 
 It has often been thought that the relation of the 
 advanced and backward races should be one purely of 
 philanthropy and missionary enterprise rather than of 
 law and government. It is easy to criticise this by 
 pointing to the facts of the world as we know it — to the 
 existing colonial empires of the Great Powers and to 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 147 
 
 the vast extension of the powers of civilised governments 
 which they represent. But it may still be argued that 
 the question is, not Have the civilised powers annexed 
 large empires ? but Ought they to have done so ? Was 
 such an extension of governmental authority justifiable 
 or inevitable ? Englishmen in the nineteenth century, 
 like Americans in the twentieth, were slow to admit 
 that it was ; just as the exponents of laissez-faire were 
 slow to admit the necessity for State interference with 
 private industry at home. But in both cases they have 
 been driven to accept it by the inexorable logic of facts. 
 What other solution of the problem, indeed, is possible ? 
 
 " Every alternative solution," as a recent writer remarks,^ 
 " breaks down in practice. To stand aside and do nothing under 
 the plea that every people must be left free to manage its own 
 afiairs, and that intervention is wicked, is to repeat the tragic 
 mistake of the Manchester School in the economic world which 
 protested against any interference by the State to protect workmen 
 . . . from the oppression and rapacity of employers, on the 
 ground that it was an unwarranted interference with the liberty 
 of the subject and the freedom of trade and competition. To 
 prevent adventurers from entering the territory is impossible, 
 unless there is some civilised authority within it to stop them 
 through its police. To shut ofF a backward people from all con- 
 tact with the outside world by a kind of blockade is not only 
 unpracticable, but is artificially to deny them the chances of 
 education and progress. The establishment of a genuine govern- 
 ment by a people strong enough and liberal enough to ensure 
 freedom under the law and justice for all is the only solution. 
 . . . They must undertake this duty, not from any pride of 
 dominion, or because they wish to exploit their resources, but in 
 order to protect them alike from oppression and corruption, by 
 strict laws and strict administration, which shall bind the foreigner 
 as well as the native, and then they must gradually develop, by 
 education and example, the capacity in the natives to manage 
 their own afeirs." 
 
 Thus we see that the progress in knowledge and in 
 
 * P. H. Kerr in " An Introduction to the Study of International Relations,"' 
 '9>S. P- 149- 
 
148 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the control of their environment made by the civilised 
 peoples has, in fact and inevitably, led to their leadership 
 in government also, and given them the predominant 
 voice in laying down the lines along which the common 
 life of mankind is to develop. If we are to look for the 
 mainspring of the world's activities, for the place where 
 its new ideas are thought out, its policies framed, its 
 aspirations cast into practical shape, we must not seek 
 it in the forests of Africa or in the interior of China, 
 but in those busy regions of the earth's surface where the 
 knowledge, the industries, and all the various organisa- 
 tions of government and control find their home. Because 
 organisation is embodied knowledge, and because know- 
 ledge is power, it is the Great Powers, as we truly name 
 them,i who are predominantly responsible for the govern- 
 ment of the world and for the future of the common life 
 of mankind. 
 
 In the exercise of this control the world has already, 
 in many respects, become a single organism. The conquest 
 of distance in the fifteenth century was the beginning 
 of a process which led, slowly but inevitably, to the 
 widening of the boundaries of government. Two dis- 
 coveries made about the same time accentuated the same 
 tendency. By the invention of gunpowder the people of 
 Europe were given an overwhelming military superiority 
 over the dwellers in other continents. By the invention 
 of printing, knowledge was internationalised for all who 
 had the training to use it. Books are the tools of the 
 brain-worker all the world over ; but, unlike the file and 
 the chisel, the needle and the hammer, books not only 
 create, but suggest. A new idea is like an electric 
 current set running throughout the world, and no man 
 can say into what channels of activity it may not be 
 directed. 
 
 But neither travel nor conquest nor books and the 
 spread of ideas caused so immense a transformation in the 
 1 A still better name would be the Great Responsibilities. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 149 
 
 common life of mankind as the process beginning at the end 
 of the eighteenth century which is known to historians as 
 the Industrial Revolution. As we have spoken of the con- 
 quest of distance perhaps a better name for the Industrial 
 Revolution would be the Conquest of Organisation. For it 
 was not the discovery of the steam-engine or the spinning- 
 jenny which constituted the revolution : it was the fact 
 that men were now in a position to apply these discoveries 
 to the organisation of industry. The ancient Greeks played 
 with the idea of the steam-engine : it was reserved for 
 eighteenth-century England to produce a generation of 
 pioneers endowed with the knowledge, the power, the 
 foresight, and the imagination to make use of the world- 
 transforming potentialities of the idea. The Industrial 
 Revolution, with its railways and steamships, telegraphs 
 and telephones, and now its airships and submarines 
 and wireless communication, completed the conquest 
 of distance. Production became increasingly organised 
 on international lines. Men became familiar with the 
 idea of an international market. Prices and prospects, 
 booms and depressions, banking and borrowing, became 
 international phenomena. The organisation of produc- 
 tion led to an immensely rapid increase of wealth in 
 Western Europe. The application of that wealth to the 
 development of the world's resources in and outside 
 Europe led to a correspondingly huge advance in trade 
 and intercourse. The breakrast-table in an ordinary 
 English home to-day is a monument to the achievements 
 of the Industrial Revolution and to the solid reality of 
 the economic internationalism which resulted from it. 
 There is still poverty in Western Europe, but it is 
 preventible poverty. Before the Industrial Revolution, 
 judged by a modern standard, there was nothing but 
 poverty. The satisfying physical and economic con- 
 dition which we describe by the name of comfort did not 
 exist. The Italian historian Ferrero, in one of his essays, 
 recommends those who have romantic yearnings after the 
 
150 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 good old times to spend one night on what our forefathers 
 called a bed. Mr. Coulton, in his books on the Middle 
 Ages, has used some very plain language on the same 
 text. And Professor Smart, in his recently published 
 posthumous work, pointing a gentle finger of rebuke at 
 certain common Socialist fantasies, remarks : 
 
 " There never was a golden age of equality of wealth : there 
 was rather a leaden one of inequality of poverty, . . . We should 
 speak more guardedly of the riches of the old world. A careful 
 examination of any old book would show that the most splendid 
 processions of pomp and luxury in the Middle Ages were poor 
 things compared to the parade of a modern circus on its opening 
 day."i 
 
 Such prosperity as we enjoy to-day, such a scene as 
 we can observe on these smiling outskirts of Birming- 
 ham, is due to man's Conquest of Organisation and to 
 the consequent development and linking-up, by mutual 
 intercourse and exchange, of the economic side of the 
 world's life. 
 
 So far we have been watching the progress of man in 
 his efforts to " make himself at home " in the world. We 
 have seen him becoming more skilful and more masterful 
 century by century, till in these latter days the whole 
 world is, as it were, at his service. He has planted his 
 flag at the two poles : he has cut a pathway for his ships 
 between Asia and Africa, and between the twin continents 
 of America : he has harnessed torrents and cataracts to 
 his service : he has conquered the air and the depths 
 of the sea : he has tamed the animals : he has rooted 
 out pestilence and laid bare its hidden causes : and he is 
 penetrating farther and ever farther in the discovery of 
 the causes of physical and mental disease. He has set 
 his foot on the neck of Nature. But the last and greatest 
 conquest is yet before hirri. He has yet to conquer 
 himself Victorious against Nature, men are still at war, 
 nay, more than ever at war, amongst themselves. How is 
 
 1 '.'Second Thoughts of an Economist," 1916, pp. 17-18, zz. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 151 
 
 It that the last century and a half, which have witnessed 
 so unparalleled an advance in the organisation of the com- 
 mon life of man on the material side, should have been 
 an age of wars and rumours of wars, culminating in the 
 vastest and most destructive conflict that this globe of 
 ours has ever witnessed ? What explanation could we give 
 of this to a visitor from the moon or to those creatures 
 of inferior species whom, as Sir E. Ray Lankester has told 
 us, it is our function, thanks to our natural superiority, 
 to command and control ? 
 
 This brings us to the second great branch of our 
 subject — the progress of mankind in the art of living 
 together in the world. 
 
 Government, as we have seen, covers the whole social 
 life of man : for the principles that regulate human 
 association are inherent in the nature of man. But in 
 what follows we shall perforce confine ourselves mainly 
 to the sphere of what is ordinarily called politics, that is 
 to the recognised and authoritative form of human 
 association called the State, as opposed to the innumer- 
 able subordinate or voluntary bodies* and relationships, 
 which pervade every department of man's common life. 
 
 The progress of Government in this second sphere 
 may be defined as the deepening and extension of man's 
 duty towards his neighbour. It is to be reckoned, not in 
 terms of knowledge and organisation, but of character. 
 The ultimate goal of human government, in the narrower 
 sense, as of all social activity — let us never forget it — is 
 liberty, to set free the life of the spirit. " Liberty," said 
 Lord Acton, who could survey the ages with a wealth 
 of knowledge to which no other man, perhaps, ever 
 attained, " Liberty is not a means to a higher political 
 end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for 
 the sake of a good public administration that it is 
 required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest 
 objects of civil society and of private life." ^ Government 
 
 ' " Freedom and other Essays,'' p. 22. 
 
152 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 is needed in order to enable human life to become, not 
 efficient or well-informed or well-ordered, but simply 
 good ; and Lord Acton believed, as the Greeks and 
 generations of Englishmen believed before him, that it is 
 only in the soil or liberty that the human spirit can grow 
 to its full stature, and that a political system based upon 
 any other principle than that of responsible self-govern- 
 ment acts as a bar at the outset to the pursuit of what he 
 called "the highest objects of civil society or of private 
 life." For though a slave, or a man living under a servile 
 political system, may develop many fine qualities of 
 character : yet such virtues will, in Milton's words, be 
 but "fugitive and cloistered," "unexercised and un- 
 breathed." For liberty, and the responsibilities that it 
 involves, are the school of character and the appointed 
 means by which men can best serve their neighbours. 
 A man deprived of such opportunities, cut off from the 
 quickening influence of responsibility, has, as Homer 
 said long ago, " lost half his manhood." He may be a 
 loyal subject, a brave soldier, a diligent and obedient 
 workman : but he will not be a full-grown man. Govern- 
 ment will have starved and stunted him in that which it 
 is the supreme object of government to develop and set 
 free. 
 
 It is idle, then, to talk in general terms about the 
 extension of government as a good thing, whether in 
 relation to the individual citizen or to the organisation of 
 the world into an international State. We have always 
 first to ask : What kind of Government ? On what 
 principles will it be based ? What ideal will it set forth ? 
 What kind of common life will it provide or allow to its 
 citizens ? If the whole world were organised into one 
 single State, and that State, supreme in its control over 
 Nature, were armed with all the knowledge and organisa- 
 tion that the ablest and most far-seeing brains in the world 
 could supply, yet mankind might be worse off under its 
 sway, in the real essentials of human life, than if they 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 153 
 
 were painted savages. "Though 1 have the gift of 
 prophecy and understand all mj^steries and all knowledge : 
 and though I have all faith, so that I could remove 
 ■ mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." Govern- 
 ment may be the organisation of goodness, or the organi- 
 sation of evil. It may provide the conditions by which 
 the common life of society can develop along the lines of 
 man's spiritual nature : or it may take away the very 
 possibility of such a development. Till we know what a 
 Government stands for, do not let us judge it by its 
 imposing externals of organisation. The Persian Empire 
 was more imposing than the Republics of Greece : 
 Assyria and Babylon than the little tribal divisions of 
 Palestine : the Spanish Empire than the cities of the 
 Netherlands. There is some danger that, in our new- 
 found sense of the value of knowledge in promoting 
 happiness, we should forget what a tyrant knowledge, 
 like wealth, can become. No doubt, just as we saw that 
 moral qualities, patience and the like, are needed for the 
 advancement of knowledge, so knowledge is needed, and 
 greatly needed, in the task of extending and deepening 
 the moral and spiritual life of mankind. But we cannot 
 measure that progress in terms of knowledge or organisa- 
 tion or efficiency or culture. We need some other 
 standard by which to judge between Greece and Persia, 
 between Israel and Babylon, between Spain and the 
 Netherlands, between Napoleon and his adversaries, and 
 between contending Powers in the modern world. "What 
 shall that standard be ? 
 
 It must be a similar standard — let us boldly say it — 
 to that by which we judge between individuals. It must 
 be a standard based on our sense of right and wrong. 
 But right and wrong in themselves will not carry us very 
 far, any more than they will carry the magistrate on the 
 bench or the merchant in his counting-house. Politics, 
 like business, is not the whole of life — though some 
 party politicians and some business men think otherwise 
 
154 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 — but a department of life : both are means, not ends ; 
 and as such they have developed special rules and codes 
 of their own, based on experience in their own special 
 department. In so far as they are framed in accordance 
 with man's spiritual nature and ideals these rules may be 
 considered to hold good and to mark the stage of progress 
 at which Politics and Business have respectively arrived 
 in promoting the common weal in their own special 
 sphere. With the rules of business, or what is called 
 Political Economy, we have at the moment no concern. 
 It is the rules of politics, or the working experience 
 of rulers, crystallised in what is called Political Science 
 or Political Philosophy, to which we must devote a few 
 moments' attention. 
 
 We are all of us, of course, political philosophers. 
 Whether we have votes or not, whether we are aware of 
 it or not, we all have views on political philosophy and 
 we are all constantly making free use of its own peculiar 
 principles and conceptions. Law, the State, Liberty, 
 Justice, Democracy are words that are constantly on our 
 lips. Let us try to form a clear idea of the place which 
 these great historic ideals occupy in the progress of 
 mankind. 
 
 The great political thinkers of the world have always 
 been clear in their own minds as to the ultimate goal of 
 their' own particular study. Political thought may be 
 said to have originated with the Jewish prophets, who 
 were the first to rebuke kings to their faces and to set 
 forth the spiritual aims of politics — to preach Righteous- 
 ness and Mercy as against Power and Ambition and Self- 
 interest. Their soaring imagination, less systematic than 
 the Greek intellect, was wider in its sweep and more far- 
 seeing in its predictions. " As the earth bringeth forth 
 her bud and as the garden causeth the things sown in it 
 to spring forth," says Isaiah, in magnificent anticipation 
 of the doctrine of Natural Law, " so the Lord God will 
 cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 155 
 
 the nations." " Peace, peace, to him that is far ofF, and to 
 him that is near, saith the Lord, and I will heal him : but 
 the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, 
 whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, 
 saith my God, for the wicked." " Out of Zion shall go 
 forth the Law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 
 And he shall judge between the nations and shall reprove 
 many peoples ; and they shall beat their swords into 
 plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks : nation 
 shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they 
 learn war any more." ^ 
 
 It was, however, Plato and Aristotle who first made 
 politics a branch of separate study : and, unlike many of 
 their modern successors, they pursued it throughout in 
 close connexion with the kindred studies of ethics and 
 psychology. Their scope was, of course, confined to the 
 field of their own experience, the small self-contained 
 City-States of Greece, and it did not fall within their 
 province to foreshadow, like the Jewish Prophets, the 
 end of warfare, or to speculate on the ultimate unity of 
 mankind. Their task was to interpret the work of their 
 own fellow-countrymen on the narrow stage of Greek life. 
 Their lasting achievement is to have laid down for man- 
 kind what a State, is, as compared with other forms of 
 human association, and to have proclaimed, once and for 
 all, in set terms, that its object is to promote the " good > 
 life " of its members. " Every State," says Aristode in 
 the opening words of his " Politics," " is a community of 
 some kind." That is to say. States belong to the same 
 genus, as it were, as political parties, trade unions, cricket 
 clubs, business houses, or such gatherings as ours. What, 
 then, is the difference between a State and a political 
 party ? " If all communities," he goes on, " aim at some 
 good, the State or political community, which is the 
 highest of all and which embraces all the rest, aims, and 
 in a greater degree than any other, at the highest good." 
 
 * Isaiah Ixvi. 2 ; Ivii. 19, zi ; ii. 3, 4. 
 
156 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Why is the State the highest of all forms of associa- 
 tion ? Why should our- citizenship, for instance, take 
 precedence of our trade unionism or our business obliga- 
 tions ? Aristotle replies, and in spite of recent critics I 
 think the reply still holds good : because, but for the 
 existence of the State and the reign of law maintained by 
 it, none of these associations could have been formed or 
 be maintained. " He who first founded the State was the 
 greatest of benefactors. For man, when protected, is 
 the best of animals, but when separated from law and 
 righteousness, he is the worst of all." Or, to put it in 
 the resounding Elizabethan English of Hooker : " The 
 public power of all societies is above every soul contained 
 in the same societies. And the principal use of that 
 power is to give laws to all that are under it ; which laws, 
 in such case, we must obey, unless there be reason showed 
 which may necessarily enforce that the law of Reason or 
 of God doth enjoin the contrary. Because except our 
 own private and probable resolutions be by the law of 
 public determinations overruled, we take away all 
 possibility of social life in the world." * The Greeks did 
 not deny, as the example of Socrates shows, the right of 
 private judgment on the question of obedience to law, 
 or the duty of respect for what Hooker calls the Law of 
 Reason or of God. Against the authentic voice of con- 
 science no human authority can or should prevail. But 
 Aristotle held, with Hooker, that obedience to law and 
 faithful citizenship are themselves matters normally 
 ordained by the law of Reason or of God and that, as 
 against those of any other association {^KoivcovCa), the 
 claims of the State are paramount. In other words, he 
 would deny what is sometimes loosely called the right of 
 rebellion, whilst not closing the door to that duty of 
 rebellion which has so often advanced the cause of liberty. 
 When Aristotle speaks of the State, moreover, he does 
 not mean a sovereign authority exercising arbitrary power, 
 
 I " Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I. ch. xvi. 5. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 157 
 
 as in Persia or Babylon : he means an authority admin- 
 istering Law and Justice according to recognised stan- 
 dards : and he is thinking of Law and Justice, not simply 
 as part of the apparatus of government but as based upon 
 moral principles. "Righteousness," he says, "is the 
 bond of men in States and the administration of Justice, 
 which is the determination of what is righteous, is the 
 principle of order in political society." " Of Law," says 
 Hooker,^ here as elsewhere echoing the ancients, " there 
 can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
 bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world." 
 The State takes precedence of the party or the trade 
 union because, however idealistic in their policy these 
 latter may be, the State covers all, not merely a section of 
 the community, and is able not merely to proclaim but 
 to enforce the rule of law and justice. Put in modern 
 language, one might define the Greek idea of the State 
 as the Organisation of Mutual Aid. 
 
 The Greek States did not remain true to this high 
 ideal. Faced with the temptations of power they 
 descended almost to the level of the Oriental monarchies 
 with which they were contrasted. But even had they 
 remained faithful to their philosophers' ideal of public 
 service they would not have survived. Unable to tran- 
 scend the limits of their own narrow State-boundaries 
 and to merge. their ideals with those of their neighbours, 
 they were helpless in the face of the invader. First 
 Macedonia and then Rome swept over them, and political 
 idealism slumbered for many centuries. Rome gave the 
 world, what it greatly needed, centuries of peace and 
 order and material prosperity ; it built up an enduring 
 fabric of law on principles of Reason and Humanity : 
 it did much to give men, what is next to the political 
 sense, the social sense. It made men members of one 
 another from Scotland to Syria and from Portugal to 
 Baghdad. But it did not give them " the good life " in 
 
 > End of Book I. of the " Ecclesiastical Polity." 
 
158 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 its fullness : for it did not, perhaps it could not, give them 
 liberty. Faced with the choice between efficiency and 
 the diffusion of responsibility, the rulers of the Roman 
 Empire unhesitatingly chose efficiency. But the atrophy 
 of responsibility proved the canker at the heart of the 
 Empire. Deprived of the stimulus that freedom and the 
 habit of responsibility alone can give, the Roman world 
 sank gradually into the morass of Routine. Life lost its 
 savour and grew stale, flat and unprofitable, as in an old- 
 style Government office. " The intolerable sadness in- 
 separable from such a life," says Renan, " seemed worse 
 than death." And when the barbarians came and over- 
 turned the whole fabric of bureaucracy, though it seemed 
 to educated men at the time the end of civilisation, it was 
 in reality the beginning of a new life. 
 
 Amid the wreckage of the Roman Empire, one govern- 
 ing institution alone remained upright — the Christian 
 Church with its organisation for ministering to the 
 spiritual needs of its members. With the conversion of 
 the barbarians to Christianity the governing functions 
 and influence of the Church became more and more 
 important ; and it was upon the basis of Church govern- 
 ment that political idealism, so long in abeyance was re- 
 awakened. The thinkers who took up the work of 
 Plato and Aristotle on the larger stage of the Holy 
 Roman Empire boldly looked forward to the time when 
 mankind should be united under one government and 
 that government should embody the highest ideals of 
 mankind. Such an ideal seemed indeed to many one 
 of the legacies of the Founder of Christianity. The 
 familiar petition in the Lord's Prayer : thy kingdom comCy 
 thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven sounded, in the 
 ears of Dante and Thomas Aquinas and innumerable 
 theologians and canonists, as a prayer and a pledge for 
 the ultimate political unity of mankind on the basis of 
 Christian Law. Such a belief was indeed the bedrock of 
 mediaeval political thought. To devout Christians, 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 159 
 
 brought up in the oecumenical traditions of the Roman 
 Empire, 
 
 " every ordering of a human community must appear as a com- 
 ponent part of that ordering of the world which exists because 
 God exists, and every earthly group must appear as an organic 
 member of that Civitas Dei, that God-State, which comprehends 
 the heavens and the earth, i . . . Thus the Theory of Human 
 Society must accept the divinely created organisation of the 
 Universe as a prototype of the first principles which govern the 
 construction of human communities. . . . Therefore, in all 
 centuries of the Middle Age, Christendom, which in destiny is 
 identical with Mankind, is set before us as a single, universal 
 Community, founded and governed by God Himself. Mankind 
 is one ' mystical body ' ; it is one single and internally connected 
 ' people ' or * folk * ; it is an all-embracing i corporation, which 
 constitutes that Universal Realm, spiritual and temporal, wjiich 
 may be caQed the Universal Church, or, with equal propriety, the 
 Commonwealth of the Human Race. Therefore, that it may 
 attain its one purpose, it needs One Law and One Government." ^ 
 
 But the mediaeval ideal, like the Greek, broke down 
 in practice. " Where the Middle Ages failed," says the 
 Master of Balliol, continuing a passage already quoted, 
 " was in attempting ... to make politics the handmaid 
 of religion, to give the Church the organisation and form 
 of a political State, that is, to turn religion from an in- 
 dwelling spirit into an ecclesiastical machinery." In other 
 words, the mediaeval attempt broke down through neg- 
 lecting the special conditions and problems of the political 
 department of life, through declining, as it were, to 
 specialise. "While men were discussing the Theory of 
 the Two Swords, whether the Emperor derived his power 
 directly from God or indirectly through the Pope, or 
 whether the sword should be used at all, the actual work 
 of government in laying the foundations of the good life 
 was neglected. Not only Liberty but Justice and Order 
 were largely in abeyance and the range of State action 
 which we to-day describe as " social legislation " was not 
 
 1 Gierke, "Political Theories of the Middle Age," pp. 8 and lo. 
 
i6o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNM^ENT 
 
 even dreamed of. Absorbed in theory or wrapped in 
 ignorance, men forget the practical meaning of State- 
 hood and its responsibilities. Central Europe languished 
 for centuries, under a sham Empire, in the unprogressive 
 anarchy of feudalism. " The feudal system," it has been 
 said,* " was nothing more nor less than the attempt of 
 a society which had failed to organise itself as a State, 
 to make contract do the work of patriotism." It is the 
 bitter experience which Germany went through under the 
 anarchy of feudalism and petty governments, lasting to 
 well within living memory, which by a natural reaction 
 has led the German people, under Prussian tutelage, to 
 cling to the conception of the State as Power and nothing 
 more. 
 
 The study of politics had to become secular before it 
 could once more become practical, and, by being practical, 
 ministering to practical ideals and enlisting practical devo- 
 tion, become, as it were, sacred once more. Where the 
 well-being of our fellow-men is concerned it is not enough 
 to be well-meaning. Government is an art, not an aspira- 
 tion : and those who are concerned with it, whether as 
 rulers or voters, should have studied its problems, reflected 
 on its possibilities and limitations, and fitted themselves 
 to profit by its accumulated experience. 
 
 Since the close of the Middle Ages, when politics 
 became secular, the art of government has advanced by 
 giant strides. Invention has followed invention, and 
 experiment experiment, till to-day skilled specialists in 
 the Old World and the New are at hand to watch and 
 to record the latest devices for dealing with a hundred 
 difficult special problems — whether it be the administra- 
 tion of justice or patronage, the organisation of political 
 parties, the fixing of Cabinet responsibility, the possi- 
 bilities and limits of federalism, the prevention of war. 
 There has, indeed, been as great an advance in the poli- 
 tical art in the last four centuries and particularly in the 
 
 1 "The Commonwealth of Nations," Part I. p. yj. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT i6i 
 
 last century, as in the very kindred art of medicine. The 
 wonderful concentration of energy which the various 
 belligerent Powers have been able to throw into the 
 present war is at once the best and the most tragic 
 illustration of this truth. Man's common life in the 
 State is more real, more charged with meaning and re- 
 sponsibility, more potent for good or for ill than it has 
 ever been before — than our predecessors even in the time 
 of Napoleon could have dreamed of 
 
 The greatest inventors and most skilful practitioners 
 of the political art in the modern world have been the 
 English, for it is the English who, of all nations, have 
 held closest to the ideal of freedom in its many and 
 various manifestations. Superficially regarded, the Eng- 
 lish are a stupid people, and so their continental neigh- 
 bours have often regarded them. But their racial heritage 
 and their island situation seem to have given them just 
 that combination of experience and natural endowment 
 necessary to success in the task of government. Taken 
 as a whole, the English are not brilliant, but they are 
 clear-headed : they are not far-sighted, but they can see 
 the fact before their eyes : they are ill equipped with 
 theoretical knowledge, but they understand the working 
 of institutions and have a good eye for judging character : 
 they have little constructive imagination of the more 
 grandiose sort, but they have an instinct for the " next 
 step " which has often set them on paths which have led 
 them far further than they dreamed ; above all, they have 
 a relatively high standard of individual character and 
 public duty, without which no organisation involving the 
 free co-operation of man and man can hope to be effective. 
 It is this unique endowmfcnt of moral qualities and practica 
 gifts, coupled with unrivalled opportunities, which has 
 made the English the pioneers in modern times in the art 
 of human association. Englishmen, accustomed to what 
 eighteenth-century writers used to call " the peculiar 
 felicity of .British freedom," do not always remember 
 
1 62 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 how far their own experience has carried them on the 
 rpad of political progress. They do not realise how many 
 problems they have solved and abolished, as the art of 
 medicine has abolished diseases. When they hear speak 
 of the eternal conflict between Nationality and Nationality, 
 they often forget that a war between England and Scotland 
 has long since become unthinkable and that the platitudes 
 of St. Andrew's Day are still paradoxes in Central and 
 Eastern Europe. When they are told of States where the 
 spontaneous manifestations of group-life, non-conforming 
 sects, workmen's associations, and ordinary social clubs, 
 are driven underground and classed as dangerous secret 
 societies, they should realise how precious a thing is that 
 freedom of association which is one of the dearest attri- 
 butes of English liberty. So too when they read of 
 monarchical and military supremacy in a country like 
 Germany, which is still politically speaking in the stage 
 of England under the Tudors, or of Russian autocracy, 
 or of the struggle over the King's prerogative which has 
 been taking place in Greece. If we believe, as we must, 
 in the cause of liberty, let us not be too modest to say 
 that nations which have not yet achieved responsible 
 self-government, whether within or without the British 
 Commonwealth, are politically backward, and let us recall 
 the long stages of political invention by which our own 
 self-government has been achieved. Representation, trial 
 by jury, an independent judiciary, equality before the 
 law, habeas corpus, a limited monarchy, the practice of 
 ministerial responsibility, religious toleration, the freedom 
 of printing and association, colonial autonomy — all these 
 are distinctly English inventions, but time has shown that 
 most of them are definite additions to the universal art 
 of government. We can survey the Balkans, for instance, 
 and say with confidence that one thing, amongst others, 
 that those nations are in need of is toleration, both in the 
 sphere of nationality and of religion : or declare of the 
 United States that their industrial future will be menaced 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 163 
 
 till they have freed Trade Unionism from the threat of 
 the so-called law of Conspiracy : or ask of our own so- 
 called self-governing Dominions whether they are content 
 with a system that concedes them no responsible control 
 over the issues of peace and war. This is not to say 
 that our own governmental machinery is perfect. Far 
 from it. It was never in greater need of overhauling. 
 It is only to reaffirm the belief, which no temporary 
 disillusionment can shake, that it is founded on enduring 
 principles which are not political but moral. To compare 
 a system which aims at freedom and seeks to attain that 
 aim through the working of responsible self-government 
 with systems, however logically perfect or temporarily 
 effective, which set no !value on either, is, as it were, 
 to compare black with white. It is to go back on the 
 lessons of centuries of experience and to deny the cause, 
 not of liberty alone, but of that progress of the spirit of 
 man which it is the highest object of liberty to promote. 
 
 We have no time here to discuss in detail the various 
 English inventions in the art of politics, but we must 
 pause to consider two of the most important, because 
 they are typical of British methods. The first is the 
 invention called the Principle of Representation. Repre- 
 sentation is a device by which, and by which alone, the 
 area of effective government can be extended without the 
 sacrifice of liberty. It is a device by which the scattered 
 many can make their will prevail over the few at the centre. 
 Under any non-representative system, whether in a State 
 or a Church or a Trade Union or any other association, 
 men always find themselves set before the inexorable 
 dilemma between freedom and weakness on the one hand 
 and strength and tyranny on the other. Either the State 
 or the association has to be kept small, so that the mem- 
 bers themselves can meet and keep in touch with all that 
 goes on. Or it is allowed to expand and grow strong, in 
 which case power becomes concentrated at the centre 
 and the great body of members loses all effective control. 
 
1 64 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 The ancient world saw no way out of this dilemma. The 
 great Oriental monarchies never contemplated even the 
 pretence of popular control. The city-states of Greece, 
 where democracy originated, set such store in consequence 
 by the personal liberty of the individual citizen, that 
 they preferred to remain small," and suffered the inevitable 
 penalty of their weakness. Rome, growing till she over- 
 shadowed the world, sacrificed liberty in the process. 
 Nor was the Christian Church, when it became a large- 
 scale organisation, able to overcome the dilemma. It was 
 not till thirteenth-century England that a way out was 
 found. Edward I., in summoning two burgesses from each 
 borough and two knights from each shire to his model 
 Parliament in 1295, ^'^^ "'^ ^ method of doing business 
 which was destined to revolutionise the art of government. 
 He stipulated that the men chosen by their fellows to 
 confer with him must come, to quote the exact words 
 of the summons, armed with " full and sufficient power 
 for themselves and for the community of the aforesaid 
 county, and the said citizens and burgesses for themselves 
 and the communities of the aforesaid cities and boroughs 
 separately, there and then, for doing what shall then be 
 ordained according to the Common Council in the premises, 
 so that the aforesaid business shall not remain unfinished 
 in any way for defect of this power." In other words, 
 the members were to come to confer with the king not as 
 individuals speaking for themselves alone, but as repre- 
 sentatives. Their words and acts were to bind those on 
 whose behalf they came, and those who chose them were 
 to do so in the full knowledge that they would be so 
 bound. In choosing them the electors deliberately sur- 
 rendered their own share of initiative and sovereignty 
 and combined to bestow it on a fellow-citizen whom they 
 trusted. In this way, and in this way alone, the people 
 of Cornwall and of Northumberland could bring their 
 wishes to bear and play their part, together with the 
 people at the centre, in the government of a country 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 165 
 
 many times the size of a city-state of ancient Greece. 
 There had been assemblies before in all ages of history : 
 but this was something different. It was a Parliament. 
 
 Representation seems to us such an obvious device 
 that we often forget how comparatively modern it is and 
 what a degree of responsibility and self-control It demands 
 both in the representative and In those whom he repre- 
 sents. It is very unpleasant to hear of things done or 
 acquiesced In by our representatives of which we dis- 
 approve, and to have to remember that it is our own fault 
 for not sending a wiser or braver man to Westminster In 
 his place. It is still more unpleasant for a representative 
 to feel, as he often must, that his own honest opinion and 
 conscience draw him one way on a matter of business and 
 the opinions of most of his constituents another. But 
 these are difficulties inherent in the system, and for which 
 there Is no remedy but sincerity and patience. It Is part 
 of the bargain that a constituency should not be able to 
 disavow a representative : and that a representative should 
 feel bound to use his own best judgment on the issues 
 put before him. To turn the representative, as there Is a 
 tendency to do in some quarters. Into a mere mouthpiece 
 with a mandate, Is to Ignore the very problem which made 
 representation necessary, and to presume that a local 
 mass-meeting can be as well informed or take as wide a 
 view as those who have all the facts before them at the 
 centre. The ancient Greeks, who had a strong sense of 
 Individuality, were loth to believe that any one human 
 being could make a decision on behalf of another. In 
 the deepest sense of course they were right. But govern- 
 ment, as has been said, Is at best a rough business. 
 Representation is no more than a practical compromise : 
 but it is a compromise which has been found to work. It 
 has made possible the extension of free government to 
 areas undreamed of. It has enabled the general sense of 
 the inhabitants of the United States, an area nearly as 
 large as Europe, to be concentrated at Washington, and 
 
1 66 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 it may yet make it possible to collect the sense of self- 
 governing Dominions in four continents in a Parliament 
 at London. All this lay implicit in the practical instruc- 
 tions sent by the English king to his sheriffs ; but its 
 development would only have been possible in a com- 
 munity where the general level of character was a high 
 one and where men were, therefore, in the habit of placing 
 implicit trust in one another. The relationship of con- 
 fidence between a member of Parliament and his con- 
 stituents, or a Trade Union leader and his rank and file, 
 is a thing of which public men are rightly proud : for it 
 reflects honour on both parties and testifies to an under- 
 lying community of purpose which no passing disagree- 
 ment on details can break down. 
 
 Representation paved the way for the modern de- 
 velopment of responsible self-government. But it is im- 
 portant to recognise that the two are not the same thing. 
 Responsible self-government, in its modern form, is a 
 separate and more complex English invention in the art 
 of government. A community may be decked out with 
 a complete apparatus of representative institutions and 
 yet remain little better than an autocracy. Modern 
 Germany is a case in point. The parliamentary suffi-age 
 for the German Reichstag is more representative than 
 that for the British House of Commons. The German 
 workman is better represented in his Parliament than 
 the British workman is in ours. But the German work- 
 man has far less power to make his will effective in 
 matters of policy than the British, because the German 
 constitution does not embody the principle of respon- 
 sible self-government. Sovereignty still rests with the 
 Kaiser as it rested in the thirteenth century with 
 Edward I. The Imperial Chancellor is not responsible 
 to the Reichstag but to the Kaiser, by whom he is 
 appointed and whose personal servant he remains. The 
 Reichstag can discuss the actions of the Chancellor : it 
 can advise him, or protest to him, or even pass votes of 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 167 
 
 censure against him ; but it cannot make its will efFective. 
 We can observe the working of similar representative 
 institutions in different parts of the British Common- 
 wealth. The provinces of India and many British 
 Colonies have variously composed representative assem- 
 blies, but in all cases without the power to control their 
 executives. The self-governing Dominions, on the other 
 hand, do enjoy responsible self-government, but in an 
 incomplete form, because the most vital of all issues of 
 policy are outside their control. On questions of foreign 
 policy, and the issues of war and peace, the Parliaments 
 of the Dominions, and the citizens they represent, are, 
 constitutionally speaking, as helpless as the most ignorant 
 native in the humblest dependency. Representative in- 
 stitutions in themselves thus no more ensure real self- 
 government than the setting up of a works committee 
 of employees in a factory would ensure that the work- 
 men ran the factory. The distinction between repre- 
 sentation and effective responsibility is so simple that it 
 seems a platitude to mention it. Yet it is constantly 
 ignored, both in this country by those who speak of 
 Colonial self-government as though the Dominions 
 really enjoyed the same self-government as the people 
 of these islands, and by the parties in Germany whose 
 programme it is, not to make Germany a truly con- 
 stitutional country, but td assimilate the retrograde 
 Prussian franchise to the broader representation of the 
 Reichstag. 
 
 Wherein does the transition from representation to 
 full responsibility consist ? It came about in England 
 when Parliament, instead of merely being consulted by 
 the sovereign, felt itself strong enough to give orders to 
 the sovereign. The sovereign naturally resisted, as the 
 Kaiser and the Tsar will resist in their turn ; but in this 
 country the battle was fought and won in the seventeenth 
 century. Since that time, with a few vacillations. Parlia- 
 ment has been the sovereign power. But once this 
 
1 68 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 transfer of sovereignty has taken place, a new problem 
 arises. A Parliament of several hundred members, even 
 though it meets regularly, is not competent to transact 
 the multitudinous and complex and highly specialised 
 business of a modern State. The original function of 
 Parliament was to advise, to discuss, and to criticise. It 
 is not an instrument fit for the work of execution and 
 administration. Having become sovereign, its first busi- 
 ness must be to create out of its own members an instru- 
 ment which should carry out its own policy and be 
 responsible to itself for its actions. Hence arose the 
 Cabinet. The Cabinet is, as it were, a distillation of Par- 
 liament, just as Parliament itself is a distillation of the 
 country. It consists of members of Parliament, and it 
 is in constant touch with Parliament ; but its methods 
 are not the methods of Parliament but of the older, 
 more direct, organs of government which Parliament 
 superseded. It meets in secret : it holds all the strings 
 of policy : it has almost complete control of political and 
 legislative initiative : it decides what is to be done and 
 when and how : it has its own staff of agents and con- 
 fidential advisers in the Departments and elsewhere 
 whose acts are largely withdrawn from the knowledge 
 and criticism of Parliament. A modern Cabinet in fact 
 is open to the charge of being autocracy in a new guise. 
 Such a charge would, of course, be a gross overstate- 
 ment. But there is no doubt that the increasing com- 
 plexity in the tasks of government has led to a corre- 
 sponding growth of power and organisation at the centre 
 which has strengthened the Cabinet immeasurably of 
 recent years at the expense of the direct representa- 
 tives of the people. There are, however, powerful 
 influences at work in the opposite direction, towards 
 decentralisation and new forms of representation, which 
 there! is no space to touch on here. Suffice it to say 
 that here, as elsewhere, the price of liberty is eternal 
 vigilance. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 169 
 
 England, then, and all who enjoy the full privileges 
 of British citizenship have been placed by the progress 
 of events in a position of peculiar responsibility. The 
 twentieth century finds us the centre of the widest 
 experiment of self-government which the world has ever 
 seen ; for the principles of liberty, first tested in this 
 island, have approved themselves on the soil of North 
 America, Australasia, and South Africa. It finds us also 
 responsible for the government and for the training in 
 responsibility of some 350,000,000 members of the more 
 politically inexperienced and backward races of mankind, 
 or about one-fifth of the human race. The growth of 
 the British Commonwealth, about which so astonish- 
 ingly little is known either by ourselves or by other 
 peoples, is not a mere happy or unhappy accident. It 
 is one of the inevitable and decisive developments in 
 the history of mankind. It is the direct result of that 
 widening of intercourse, that internationalising of the 
 world, to which reference has already been made. It 
 represents the control of law and organised government 
 over the blind and selfish forces of exploitation. In the 
 exercise of this control we have often ourselves been 
 blind and sometimes selfish. But " the situation of 
 man," as Burke finely said of our Indian Empire, " is 
 the preceptor of his duty." The perseverance of the 
 British character, its habit of concentration on the work 
 that lies to hand, and the influence of our traditional 
 social and political ideals, have slowly brought us to a 
 deeper insight, till to-day the Commonwealth is becoming 
 alive to the real nature of its task — the extension and 
 consolidation of liberty. If it has thus taken up, in 
 part, the work of the mediaeval Empire and has had a 
 measure of success where the other failed, it is because 
 of the character of its individual citizens, because de- 
 spite constant and heart-breaking failures in knowledge 
 and imagination, we are a people who, in the words of a 
 stern, if friendly, critic, "with great self-assertion and a 
 
I70 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 bulldog kind of courage, have yet a singular amount of 
 gentleness and tenderness."^ 
 
 We have come to the end of our long survey. Some 
 of you may feel that I have fetched too wide a compass 
 and given too wide an extension to the meaning of 
 government. But if I have sinned I have sinned of set 
 purpose. I refuse to confine government within the 
 limits of what is ordinarily called politics, or to discuss 
 the association called the State in isolation from other 
 sides of man's community life. To do so, I feel, is to 
 lay oneself open to one of two opposite errors : the 
 error of those for whom the State is the Almighty, and 
 who invest it with a superhuman morality and authority 
 of its own : and the error of those who draw in their 
 skirts in horror from the touch of what Nietzsche called 
 this " cold monster " and take refuge in monastic detach- 
 ment from the political responsibilities of their time. 
 We must be able to see politics as a part of life before 
 we can see it steadily and see it whole. We must be 
 able to see it in relation to the general ordering of the 
 world and to connect it once more, as in the Middle 
 Ages, with religion and morality. No thinking man can 
 live through such a time as this and preserve his faith 
 unless he is sustained by the belief that the clash of 
 States which is darkening our generation is not a mere 
 blind collision of forces, but has spiritual bearings which 
 affect each individual living soul born or to be born in 
 the world. It is not for us to anticipate the verdict of 
 history. But what we can do is to bear ourselves 
 worthily, in thought and speech, like our soldiers in 
 action, of the times in which we live — to testify, as it 
 were, in our own lives, to that for which so many of our 
 friends have laid down theirs, We are met at a cul- 
 minating moment of human fate — when, so far as human 
 judgment can discern, the political destinies of this 
 
 1 "Memoirs and Letters of Sir Robert Morier," ii. 276. 
 
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT 171 
 
 planet are being settled for many generations to come — 
 perhaps for good. If the task of leadership in the arts 
 of government remains with us, let us face the respon- 
 sibility conscious of the vast spiritual issues v?hich it 
 involves, and let us so plan and act that history, looking 
 back on these years of blood, may date from them a new 
 birth of freedom and progress, not for ourselves in this 
 country alone, but throughout that kingdom of Man 
 which must one day, as we believe, become in verv 
 truth the kingdom of God. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 In our study of Government we traced the upward course 
 of the common life of mankind in the world. We saw 
 it in the increasing control of Man over his physical en- 
 vironment, and we saw it also in his clearer realisation of 
 the ultimate ideal of government — the ordering of the 
 world's affairs on the basis of liberty. We have now to 
 turn aside from this main stream of social development 
 to watch one particular branch of it — to survey man's 
 record in the special department of economics. We shall 
 no longer be studying human history, or the history of 
 human society, as a whole, but what is known as economic 
 or industrial history. 
 
 It is important to be clear at the outset that economic 
 or industrial history is a tributary stream and not the 
 main stream : for there are a number of people who are 
 of the contrary opinion. There has been an increasing 
 tendency of recent years to write human history in terms 
 of economic or industrial progress. " Tell me what men 
 ate or wore or manufactured," say historians of this 
 school, " and we will tell you what stage of civilisation 
 he had reached. We will place him in his proper pigeon- 
 hole in our arrangement of the record of human progress." 
 Did he use flint instruments or fight with nothing but 
 a bow and arrow .? Did he use a canoe with a primitive 
 pole which he had not even the sense to flatten so as to 
 make it into a serviceable paddle ? Then our sociologist 
 will put him very low down on his list of the stages of 
 human progress. For the modern sociologist is a confirmed 
 plutocrat. He measures the character of men and races 
 by their wealth. Just as old-fashioned people still think 
 
 172 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 173 
 
 of the society of our own country as a hierarchy, in which 
 the various classes are graded according to their social 
 prestige and the extent of their possessions : so students 
 of primitive civilisation classify races according to their 
 material equipment, and can hardly help yielding to the 
 temptation of reckoning their stage of progress as a wh6le 
 by the only available test. Thus it is common, especially 
 in Germany and the United States, to find histories of 
 what purports to be the progress of mankind which show 
 man first as a hunter and a fisherman, then as a shepherd, 
 then as a tiller of the soil, and then work upwards to the 
 complicated industrial system of to-day. We are asked 
 to accept the life of Abraham or David among the sheep- 
 folds as the bottom of the ladder, and the life of a modern 
 wage-earner under the smoky sky of a manufacturing 
 area as the top ; and when we compiain and say, as men 
 like William Morris and Stephen Graham are always 
 saying, that we would far prefer to live in David's world, 
 in spite of all its discomforts, we are told that we have 
 no right to quarrel with the sacred principle of Evolution. 
 To interpret human history in this way is, of course, 
 to deny its spiritual meaning, to deny that it is a record 
 of the progress of the human spirit at all. It is to read it 
 as a tale of the improvement, or rather the increasing 
 complication, of things, rather than of the a4vance of 
 man. It is to view the world as a Domain of Matter, not 
 as the Kingdom of Man — still less, as the Kingdom of 
 God. It is to tie us helplessly to the chariot wheels of 
 an industrial Juggernaut which knows nothing of moral 
 values. Let the progress of industry make life noisy and 
 ugly and anxious and unhappy : let it engross the great 
 mass of mankind in tedious and uncongenial tasks and 
 the remainder in the foolish and unsatisfying activities 
 of luxurious living ; let it defile the green earth with pits 
 and factories and slag-heaps and the mean streets of those 
 who toil at them, and dim the daylight with exhalations 
 of monstrous vapour. It is not for us to complain or to 
 
174 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 resist : for we are in the grip of a Power which is greater 
 than ourselves, a Power to which mankind in all five 
 continents has learnt to yield — that Economic Process 
 which is, in truth, the God, or the Devil, of the modern 
 world. 
 
 No thinking man dare acquiesce in such a conclusion 
 or consent to bow the head before such fancied necessities. 
 The function of industry, he will reply, is to serve human 
 life, not to master it : to beautify human life, not to 
 degrade it : to set life free, not to enslave it. Economics 
 is not the whole of life : and when it transgresses its 
 bounds and exceeds its functions it must be controlled 
 and thrust back into its place by the combined activities 
 of men. The soul is higher than the body, and life is 
 more than housekeeping. Liberty is higher than Riches, 
 and the welfare of the community more important than 
 its economic and material progress. These great pro- 
 cesses, which the increase of man's knowledge has set 
 in motion, are not impersonal inhuman forces : men 
 originated them : men administer them : and men must 
 control them. Against economic necessity let us set 
 political necessity : and let the watchword of that political 
 necessity, here as always, be the freedom and the well- 
 being of mankind. 
 
 With this caution in mind, then, let us approach our 
 subject. 
 
 What is Economics ? Economics is simply the Greek 
 for " house-keeping." If writers and tliinkers on the 
 subject had only kept this simple fact in mind, or used 
 the English word instead of the Greek, the world would 
 have been saved much misery and confusion. Political 
 economy is not, what Mill and other writers define it to 
 be, "the Science of Wealth." It is the art of com- 
 munity-housekeeping, and community-housekeeping, as 
 every woman knows, is a very important if subsidiary 
 branch of the art of community-management or govern- 
 ment. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 175 
 
 Housekeeping, of course, is not a selfish but a social 
 function. Housewives do not lay in bread and chepse 
 simply to gratify their own desire to be possessors of 
 a large store, but for the sake of their household. The 
 true housekeeper or economic man is the man who is con- 
 sciously ministering to the real needs of the community. 
 Like the ruler or minister in the political sphere, he is a 
 man who is performing a public service. 
 
 This is equally true whether the housekeeper has a 
 monopoly of the purchase of bread and cheese for the 
 household, or whether he or she has to compete with 
 others as to which is to be allowed to serve the public 
 in that particular transaction. Just as, under the party 
 system, which seems to be inseparable from the working 
 of democratic institutions, men stand for Parliament and 
 compete for the honour of representing their neighbours, 
 so in most systems of industry men compete for the 
 honour of supplying the public. Competition in industry 
 is .practically as old as industry. In the earliest picture 
 that has come down to us of Greek village life we read 
 of the competition between potter and potter and between 
 minstrel and minstrel — a competition as keen and as fierce, 
 we may be sure, as that between rival shopkeepers to-day. 
 For the opposite of competition, as has been truly said, 
 is not co-operation but monopoly or bureaucracy : and 
 there is no short and easy means of deciding between 
 the rival systems. Sometimes the community is better 
 served by entrusting one department wholly to one pur- 
 veyor or one system of management — as in the Postal 
 Service, or the Army and Navy. Sometimes it is clearly 
 better to leave the matter open to competition. Nobody, 
 for instance, would propose to do with only one minstrel, 
 and seal the lips of all poets but the Poet Laureate. 
 Sometimes, as in the case of the organised professions 
 and the liquor trade, a strictly regulated system of 
 competition has been considered best. No doubt the 
 tendency at the present time Is setting strongly against 
 
176 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 competition and towards more unified and more closely 
 organised systems of doing business. But it is important 
 to make quite clear that there is nothing immoral or 
 anti-social about the fact of competition itself, and 
 nothing inconsistent with the idea of service and co- 
 operation which should underlie all social and economic 
 activity. It is not competition itself, as people often 
 wrongly think, which is the evil, but the shallow and 
 selfish motives and the ruthless trampling down of the 
 weak that are too often associated with it. When we 
 condemn the maxim, " the Devil take the hindmost," it 
 is not because we think we ought to treat the hindmost 
 as though he were the foremost — to buy cracked jars or 
 patronise incapable minstrels. It is because we feel that 
 there is a wrong standard of reward among those who 
 have pushed to the front, and that the community as 
 a whole cannot ignore its responsibility towards its less 
 fortunate and capable members. 
 
 It is, indeed, quite impossible to abolish competition 
 for the patronage of the household without subjecting its 
 members to tyranny or tying them down to an intoler- 
 able uniformity — forcing them to suppress their own 
 terflporary likes or dislikes and to go on taking in the 
 same stuff in the same quantities world without end. 
 For the most serious and permanent competition is not 
 that between rival purveyors of the same goods, between 
 potter and potter and minstrel and minstrel, but between 
 one set of goods and another : between the potter and 
 the blacksmith, the minstrel and the painter. If we 
 abolished competition permanently between the British 
 railways we could not make sure that the public would 
 always use them as it does now. People would still be at 
 liberty to walk, or to drive, or to bicycle, or to fly, or at 
 the very worst to stay at home. Competition, as every 
 business man knows, sometimes arjses from the most 
 unexpected quarters. The picture-house and the bicycle 
 have damaged the brewer and the publican. Similarly 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 
 
 177 
 
 the motor-car and the golf links have spoilt the trade in 
 the fine china ornaments such as used to be common in 
 expensively furnished drawing-rooms. People sit less 
 in their rooms, so spend less on decorating them. The 
 members of the household always retain ultimate control 
 over their economic life, if they care to exercise it. "Whoso 
 has sixpence," as Carlyle said, "is sovereign (to the length 
 of sixpence) over all men ; commands Cooks to feed 
 him, Philosophers to teach him. Kings to mount guard 
 over him," — to the length of sixpence. Passive resistance 
 and the boycott are always open to the public in the last 
 resort against any of their servants who has abused the 
 powers of his position. A good instance of this occurred 
 in the events which led to the so-called Tobacco riots 
 in Milan in 1848. The Austrians thought they could 
 force the Italians in their Lombard provinces to pay 
 for a government they hated by putting a heavy tax on 
 tobacco. But the Italians, with more self-control than 
 we have shown in the present war, with one accord gave 
 up smoking. Here was a plain competition between a 
 monopoly and the consumer, between tobacco and pat- 
 riotism : between a united household and an unpopular 
 servant : and the household won, as it always can unless 
 its members are incapable of combined action or have 
 been deprived by governmental tyranny of all power to 
 associate and to organise. 
 
 We are faced then with a community or household 
 which has certain wants that need to be supplied. The 
 individual members of the community are justified, 
 within the limits of general well-being,^ in deciding what 
 are their own wants and how to satisfy them. They 
 claim the right to demand^ as the economists put it, the 
 goods and services they require, bread and cheese, poetry, 
 tobacco, motor-bicycles, china ornaments. In order to 
 meet those demands, which are stable in essentials but 
 
 1 Including the well-being of the producers— a point which is too often 
 overlooked. 
 
178 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 subject to constant modification in detail, there is cease- 
 less activity, rivalry, competition, on the part of the 
 purveyors — on the side of what economists call supply. 
 The business of housekeeping, or what is called the eco- 
 nomic process, is that of bringing this demand and this 
 supply into relation with one another. If the members of 
 the household said they wanted to eat the moon instead of 
 sugar, their demand would not be an economic demand : 
 for no housekeeper could satisfy it. Similarly on the 
 supply side : if the baker insisted on bringing round bad 
 epics instead of bread and the grocer bad sonatas instead 
 of sugar, the supply, however good it might seem to the 
 baker and the grocer, and however much satisfaction 
 they might personally have derived from their work, 
 would not be an economic supply : for the housekeeper, 
 acting on behalf of the household, would not take it in. 
 But if the demand was for something not yet available, 
 but less impossibly remote than the moon, the house- 
 keeper might persuade the purveyors to cudgel their 
 brains till they had met the need. For, as we know. 
 Necessity, which is another word for Demand, is the 
 mother of invention. Similarly, if a purveyor supplied 
 something undreamed of by the household, but otherwise 
 good of its kind, he might succeed in persuading the 
 household to like it — in other words, in creating a demand. 
 The late Sir Alfred Jones, by putting bananas cheap on 
 the market, persuaded us that we liked them. Similarly 
 Mr. Marvin, who deals in something better than bananas, 
 has persuaded us all to come here, though most of us 
 would never have thought of it unless he had created the 
 demand in us. 
 
 Economic progress, then, is progress both on the side 
 of demand and on the side of supply. It is a progress in 
 wants as well as in their means of satisfaction : a progress 
 in the aspirations of the household as well as in the 
 contrivances of its purveyors : a progress in the sense 
 of what life might be, as well as in the skill and genius 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 179 
 
 and organising powers of those to whom the community 
 looks for help in the realisation of its hopes. It is im- 
 portant that this double aspect of our subject should be 
 realised, for in what follows we shall have no opportunity 
 to dwell further upon it. Space compels us to leave the 
 household and its wants and aspirations out of account 
 and to direct our attention solely to the side of supply ; 
 although it must always be remembered that no real and 
 permanent progress in the organisation of production is 
 possible without improvements in the quality and reduc- 
 tion in the number of the requirements of what is called 
 civilisation.^ What we have to watch, in our study of 
 progress in industry, is the history of man as a purveyor 
 of the household : in other words, as a producer of goods 
 and services : from the days of the primitive savage with 
 his bark canoe to the gigantic industrial enterprises of 
 our own time. 
 
 We can best do so by dividing our subject into two 
 on somewliat similar lines to the division in our study of 
 government. Let us consider industry, first as an activity 
 involving a relationship between man and Nature ; 
 secondly, as involving what may be called a problem of 
 industrial government, a problem arising out of the co- 
 operation between man and man in industrial work. 
 In the first of these aspects we shall see man as a maker, 
 an inventor, an artist ; in the second as a subject 
 or a citizen, a slave or a free man, in the Industrial 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 Man as a maker or producer carries us back to the 
 dawn of history. Man is a tool-using animal, and the 
 early stages of human history are a record of the elabora- 
 tion of tools. The flint axes in our museums are the 
 earliest monuments of the activity of the human spirit. 
 We do not know what the cave men of the Old Stone 
 Age said or thought, or indeed whether they did 
 
 I On this point see "Poverty and Waste," by Hartley Withers, 19 14, 
 written before the war, which has driven its lessons home. 
 
i8o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 anything that we should call speaking or thinking at all ; 
 but we know what they made. Centuries and mil- 
 lenniums elapsed between them and the first peoples of 
 whom we have any more intimate record — centuries 
 during which the foundations of our existing industrial 
 knowledge and practice were being steadily laid. 
 
 " One may say in general," says Mr. Marvin,* " that most of 
 the fruitful practical devices of mankind had their origin in pre- 
 historic times, many of them existing then with little essential 
 difference. Any one of them affords a lesson in the gradual 
 elaboration of the simple. A step minute in itself leads on and 
 on, and so all the practical arts are built up, a readier and more 
 observant mind imitating and adapting the work of predecessors, 
 as we imagined the first man making his first flint axe. The 
 history of the plough goes back to the elongation of a bent stick. 
 The wheel would arise from cutting out the middle of a trunk 
 used as a roller. House architecture is the imitation with logs 
 and mud of the natural shelters of the rocks, and begins its great 
 development when men have learnt to make square corners, 
 instead of a rough circle. And so on with all the arts of life or 
 pleasure, including clothing, cooking, tilling, sailing, and fighting." 
 
 How did this gradual process come about .'' Mr. 
 Marvin himself supplies the answer. Through the 
 action of the " readier and more observant minds " — in 
 other words, through specialisation and the division of 
 labour. As far back as we can go in history we find a 
 recognition that men are not all alike, that some have one 
 gift and some another, and that it is to the advantage of 
 society to let each use his own gift in the public service. 
 Among primitive peoples there has indeed often been a 
 belief that men are compensated for physical weakness 
 and disability by peculiar excellence in some sphere of 
 their own. Hephaestos among the Greek gods was lame : 
 so he becomes a blacksmith and uses his arms. Homer 
 is blind : so instead of fighting he sings of war. They 
 would not go so far as to maintain that all lame men 
 must be good blacksmiths or all blind men good poets : 
 
 ' "The Living Past," pp.Jzo, ji. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY i8i 
 
 but at least they recognised that there was room in the 
 community for special types and that the blacksmith and 
 the poet were as useful as the ordinary run of cultivators 
 and fighting men. The Greek word for craftsman — 
 Syifuovpyo? — " worker for the people," shows how the 
 Greeks felt on this point. To them poetry and crafts- 
 manship were as much honourable occupations or, as we 
 should say, professional activities as fighting and tilling. 
 Whether Homer took to poetry because he could not 
 fight or because he had an overwhelming poetic gift, he 
 had justified his place in the community. 
 
 Specialisation is the foundation of all craftsmanship 
 and therefore the source of all industrial progress. We 
 recognise this, of course, in common speech. " Practice 
 makes perfect," " Genius is an infinite capacity for taking 
 pains," are only diflTerent ways of saying that it is not 
 enough to be " ready " and " observant," but that con- 
 tinued activity and concentration are necessary. A 
 perfect industrial community would not be a community 
 where everybody was doing the same thing : nor would 
 it be a community where every one was doing just what 
 he liked at the moment : it would be a community where 
 every one was putting all his strength into the work 
 which he was by nature best qualified to do — where, in 
 the words of Kipling : 
 
 " No one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, 
 But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star. 
 Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They Are.'' 
 
 Progress in industry, then, on this side, consists in in- 
 creasing specialisation and in the perfection of the rela- 
 tionship between the workman and his work. Man in 
 this world is destined to labour, and labour is often 
 described as the curse of Adam. But in reality, as every 
 one knows who has tried it, or observed the habits of 
 those who have, idleness is far more of a curse than 
 labour. Few men — at any rate in the temperate zone — 
 
1 82 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 can be consistently idle and remain happy. The born 
 idler is almost as rare as the born poet. Most men, and, 
 it must be added, most women, are happier working. If 
 holidays were the rule and work the exception the world 
 would be a much less cheerful place than it is even to- 
 day. Purposeful activity is as natural to man as playing 
 is to a kitten. From a purely natural point of view, no 
 one has ever given a better definition of happiness than 
 Aristotle when he defined it as «» activity of the soul in the 
 direction of excellence in an unhampered life. By excellence, 
 of course, in this famous definition, Aristotle does not 
 mean simply virtue : he means excellence in work. It is 
 impossible, as we all know, to be good in the abstract. 
 We must be good in some particular directions, at some 
 particular thing. And the particular thing that we are 
 good at is our work, our craft, our art — or, to use our 
 less aesthetic English word, for which there is no equiva- 
 lent in Greek, our duty. If happiness is to be found in 
 doing one's duty, it does not result from doing that duty 
 badly, but from doing it well — turning out, as we say, a 
 thoroughly good piece of work, whether a day's work or 
 a life's work. There is a lingering idea, still held in 
 some quarters, that the more unpleasant an activity is the 
 more virtuous it is. This is a mere barbarous survival 
 from the days of what Nietzsche called slave-morality. 
 We are each of us born with special individual gifts and 
 capacities. There is, if we only knew it, some particular 
 kind or piece of work which we are pre-eminently fitted 
 to do — some particular activity or profession, be it held 
 in high or in low repute in the world of to-day, in which 
 we can win the steady happiness of purposeful labour. 
 Shall we then say that it ministers to human progress and 
 to the glory of God deliberately to bury our talent out of 
 sight and to seek rather work which, because it is irksome 
 and unpleasant to us, we can never succeed in doing 
 either easily or really well ? No one who knows any- 
 thing of education or of the training of the young, no 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 183 
 
 one, indeed, who has any love for children, would dare 
 to say that we should. Our State educational system, 
 miserably defective though it is in this regard, is based 
 upon the idea of ministering to the special gifts of its 
 pupils — of trying by scholarships, by Care Committees, 
 by the institution of schools with a special " bias," to 
 meet the needs of different kinds of young people and to 
 set them in the path on which they are best fitted to 
 travel. 
 
 In doing this the modern State is only trying to carry 
 out the principle laid down in the greatest book ever 
 written on education — Plato's " Republic." Plato's object 
 was to train every citizen to fill the one position where 
 he could lead the best life for the good of the State. His 
 aim was not to make his citizens happy but to promote 
 goodness ; but he had enough faith in human nature — 
 and who can be an educational thinker without having 
 faith in human nature ? — to be convinced that to enable 
 men to " do their bit," as we say to-day, was to assure 
 them of the truest happiness. We of this generation 
 know how abundantly that faith has been confirmed. 
 And indeed we can appeal in this matter not only to the 
 common sense of Education Authorities or to the philo- 
 sophy of the ancients, but to the principles of the Christian 
 religion. The late Professor Smart, who was not only 
 a good economist but a good man, has some very per- 
 tinent words on this subject. 
 
 " If for some reason that we know not of," he remarks,^ " this 
 present is merely the first stage in being; if we are all at school, 
 and not merely pitched into the world by chance to pick up our 
 living as best we can ... it seems to me that we have reason 
 enough to complain of the existing economic system. ... I 
 imagine that many of our churchgoing people, if they ever get to 
 the heaven they sing about, will find themselves most uncomfort- 
 able, if it be a place for which they have made no preparation 
 but in the ' business ' in which they have earned their living. . . . 
 
 1 " Second Thoughts of an Economist," p, 89. 
 
1 84 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 A man's daily work is a far greater thing towards the develop- 
 ment of the God that is in him than is his wealth. And, how- 
 ever revolutionary the idea is, I must say that ail our accumulations 
 of wealth are little to the purpose of life if they do not tend 
 towards the giving to all men the opportunity of such work as 
 will have its reward in the doing." 
 
 And of his own particular life-work, teaching, he 
 remarks, in words that testify to his own inner peace 
 and happiness, that " some of us have got into occupa- 
 tions which almost seem to guarantee immortality." 
 
 Let us, then, boldly lay it down that the best test of 
 progress in industry and the best measure of success in 
 any industrial system is the degree to which it enables 
 men to " do their bit " and so to find happiness in their 
 daily work, or if you prefer more distinctively religious 
 language, the degree to which it enables men to develop 
 the God that is in them. Let us have the courage to say 
 that in the great battle which Ruskin and William Morris 
 fought almost single-handed against all the Philistines of 
 the nineteenth century, Ruskin and Morris, however 
 wrong they may have beeh on points of practical detail, 
 were right in principle. Let us make up our minds that 
 a world in which men have surrendered the best hours of 
 the day to unsatisfying drudgery, and banished happi- 
 ness to their brief periods of tired leisure, is so far from 
 civilised that it has not even made clear to itself wherein 
 civilisation consists. And when we read such a passage 
 as the following from a leading modern economist, let us 
 not yield to the promptings of our lower nature and 
 acquiesce in its apparent common sense, but remember 
 that economists, like all workmen, are bounded by the 
 limits of their own particular craft or study. 
 
 "The greater part of the world's work," says Professor 
 Taussig,' the leading exponent of Economics at Harvard, " is not 
 
 ' "Principles of Economics," vol. i. p. ii. It is interesting to note that 
 in his latest book, " Inventors and Money-making, Lectures on some Relations 
 between Economics and Psychology "(1915), Professor Taussig to some extent 
 goes back upon the point of view of the extract given above. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 185 
 
 in itself felt to be pleasurable. Some reformers have hoped to 
 reach a social system under which all work would be in itself a 
 source of satisfaction. It is probable that such persons are made 
 optimistic by the nature of their own doings. They are writers, 
 schemers, reformers; they are usually of strongly altruistic 
 character, and the performance of any duty or set task brings to 
 them the approval of an exacting conscience ; and they believe 
 that all mankind can be brought to labour in their own spirit. 
 The world would be a much happier place if this state of mind 
 could be made universal. But the great mass of men are of a 
 humdrum sort, not born with any marked bent or any loftiness of 
 character. Moreover, most of the world's work for the satisfac- 
 tion of our primary wants must be of a humdrum sort, and often 
 of a rough and coarse sort. There must be ditching and delving, 
 sowing and reaping, hammering and sawing, and all the severe 
 physical exertion which, however lightened by tools and machinery, 
 yet can never be other than labour in the ordinary sense of the 
 word." 
 
 When Professor Taussig assures us that " the great 
 mass of men are of a humdrum sort, not born with any 
 marked bent or loftiness of character " he is simply deny- 
 ing the Christian religion. To argue the point with him 
 would carry us too far. We will do no more here than 
 remind him that the people to whom the Founder of 
 Christianity preached, and even those who were chosen 
 to be its first disciples, were, like this audience, distinctly 
 humdrum, and that assuredly the American Professor 
 would not have discerned in them promising material for 
 a world-transforming religious movement. What people 
 see in others is often a mirror of themselves. Perhaps 
 Professor Taussig, in spite of his excellent book, is rather 
 a humdrum person himself. 
 
 When, however, Professor Taussig declares that " the 
 greater part of the world's work is not in itself felt to be 
 pleasurable " he is saying what, under existing conditions, 
 we must all recognise to be true. A year or two ago 
 Mr. Graham Wallas made an investigation into this very 
 question, the results of which confirmed the general 
 impression that modern workmen find little happiness in 
 
1 86 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 their work/ But two of the conclusions which he reached 
 conflict in a rather curious way with the statement of 
 Professor Taussig. Mr. Wallas's evidence, which was 
 largely drawn from students of Ruskin College, led him 
 to the conclusion " that there is less pleasantness or happi- 
 ness in work the nearer it approaches the fully organised 
 Great Industry." The only workman who spoke enthusi- 
 astically of his work was an agricultural labourer who 
 "was very emphatic with regard to the pleasure to be 
 obtained from agricultural work." Professor Taussig, 
 on the other hand, selects four agricultural occupations, 
 ditching, delving, sowing, and reaping, as characteristically 
 unpleasant and looks to machinery and the apparatus of 
 the Industrial Revolution to counteract this unpleasant- 
 ness. But the most interesting evidence gathered by 
 Mr. Wallas was that relating to women workers. He had 
 an opportunity of collecting the views of girls employed 
 in the laundries and poorer kinds of factories in Boston. 
 
 " The answers," he says,^ " surprised me greatly. I expected 
 to hear those complaints about bad wages, hard conditions and 
 arbitrary discipline which a body of men working at the same 
 grade of labour would certainly have put forward. But it was 
 obvious that the question, 'Are you happy? ' meant to the girls, 
 ' Are you happier than you would have been if you had stayed at 
 home instead of going to work ? ' And almost every one of them 
 answered ' Yes.' " 
 
 Why were they unhappy at home .'' Let Professor 
 Taussig reflect on the answer. Not because they had 
 " rough " or " coarse " or " humdrum " work to do, as in 
 a factory or laundry, but because they had nothing to do, 
 and they had found idleness unbearable. " One said that 
 work ' took up her mind,' she had been awfully discon- 
 
 1 A similar inquiry on a much larger scale was made by Adolf Levinstein 
 in his book " Die Arbeiterfrage " (Munich, 1 9 1 o). He examined four thousand 
 workpeople, consisting of coal-miners, cotton-operatives, and engineers. With 
 the exception of a few turners and fitters almost all replied that they found 
 little or no pleasure in their work. 
 
 2 "The Great Society," p. 363. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 187 
 
 tented." Another that "you were of some use." 
 Another thought " it was because the hours went so 
 much faster. At home one could read, but only for a 
 short time ; there was the awful lonesome afternoon ahead 
 of you." "Asked a little girl with dyed hair but a good 
 little heart. She enjoyed her work. It made her feel 
 she was worth something." And Mr. Wallas concludes 
 that it is just because " everything that is interesting, 
 even though it is laborious, in the women's arts of the 
 old village is gone : " because " clothes are bought ready- 
 made, food is bought either ready-cooked, like bread . 
 and jam and fish, or only requiring the simplest kind of 
 cooking: " in fact just because physical exertion has been 
 lightened by books and machinery, that " there results 
 a mass of inarticulate unhappiness whose existence has 
 hardly been indicated by our present method of sociological 
 inquiry." 
 
 It would seem, then, that the task of associating 
 modern industrial work with happiness is not impossible, 
 if we would only set ourselves to the task. And the 
 task is a twofold one. It is, first, to make it possible 
 for people to follow the employment for which they are 
 by nature best fitted ; and secondly, to study much more 
 closely than heretofore, from the point of view of happi- 
 ness, the conditions under which work is done. The 
 first task involves a very considerable reversal of current 
 educational and social values. It does not simply mean 
 paving the way for the son of an engine-driver to become 
 a doctor or a lawyer or a cavalryman. It means paving 
 the way for the son of a duke to become, without any 
 sense of social failure, an engine-driver or a merchant 
 seaman or a worker on the land — and to do so not, as 
 to-day, in the decent seclusion of British Columbia or 
 Australia, but in our own country and without losing 
 touch, if he desires it, with his own natural circle of 
 friends. The ladder is an old and outworn metaphor in 
 this connection. Yet it is still worth remembering that 
 
i88 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the Angels whom Jacob observed upon it were both 
 ascending and descending. It is one of the fallacies of 
 our socijd system to believe that a ladder should only be 
 used in one direction — and that the direction which tends 
 to remove men from contact and sympathy with their 
 fellows. But in truth we need to discard the metaphor 
 of the ladder altogether, with its implied suggestion that 
 some tasks of community-service are more honourable 
 and involve more of what the world calls " success " than 
 others. We do not desire a system of education which 
 picks out for promotion minds gifted with certain kinds 
 of capacity and stimulates them with the offer of material 
 rewards, while the so-called humdrum remainder are left, 
 with their latent talents undiscovered and undeveloped. 
 
 Recent educational experiments,^ and not least that 
 most testing of all school examinations, the war, have 
 shown us that we must revise all our old notions as to 
 cleverness and stupidity. We know now that, short of 
 real mental deficiency, there -is or ought to be no such 
 personage as th^ dunce. Just as the criminal is generally 
 a man of unusual energy and mental power directed into 
 wrong channels, so the dunce is a pupil whose special 
 powers and aptitudes have not revealed themselves in the 
 routine of school life. And just as the criminal points to 
 serious defects in our social system, so the dunce points 
 to serious defects in our educational system. The striking 
 record of our industrial schools and reformatories in the 
 war shows what young criminals and dunces can do when 
 they are given a fair field for their special gifts. One of 
 the chief lessons to be drawn from the war is the need for 
 a new spirit and outlook in our national education from 
 the elementary school to the University. We need a 
 system which treats every child, rich or poor, as a living 
 and developing personality, which enables every English 
 boy and girl to stay at school at least up to the time when 
 
 ' Especially the wonderful results obtained from the young criminals at 
 the Little Commonwealth in Dorsetshire. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 189 
 
 his or her natural bent begins to disclose itself, which 
 provides for all classes of the community skilled guidance 
 in the choice of employment based upon psychological 
 study of individual gifts and aptitude/ which sets up 
 methods of training and apprenticeship in the different 
 trades — or, as I would prefer to call them, the different 
 professions — such as to counteract the deadening influence 
 of premature specialisation, and which ensures good 
 conditions and a sense of self-respect and community- 
 service to all in their self-chosen line of life, whether their 
 bent be manual or mechanical or commercial or adminis- 
 trative, or for working on the land or for going to sea, or 
 towards the more special vocations of teaching or scholar- 
 ship or the law or medicine or the cure of souls. No one 
 can estimate how large a share of the unhappiness 
 associated with our existing social system is due to the 
 fact that, owing to defects in our education and our 
 arrangements for the choice of employment, there are 
 myriads of square pegs in round holes. This applies with 
 especial force to women, to whom many of the square 
 holes are still inaccessible, not simply owing to the lack 
 of opportunities for individuals, but owing to the inhibi- 
 tions of custom and, in some cases, to narrow and retro- 
 grade professional enactments. The war has brought 
 women their chance, not only in the office and the 
 workshop, but in higher administrative and organising 
 positions, and not the least of its results is the revelation 
 of undreamt-of capacities in these directions. 
 
 In the second task, that of perfecting the adaptation 
 between men and their took, we have much to learn from 
 the industrial history of the past. It is natural for men 
 to enjoy " talking shop," and this esoteric bond of union 
 has existed between workmen in all ages. We may be 
 sure that there were discussions amongst connoisseurs 
 in the Stone Age as to the respective merits of their 
 
 I See "Readings in Vocational Guidance," by Meyer Bloomfieid (Boston, 
 J9"5)- 
 
I90 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 flint axes, just as there are to-day between golfers about 
 niblicks and putters, and between surgeons as to the 
 technique of the extraction of an appendix, A good work- 
 man loves his tools. He is indeed inseparable from them, 
 as our law acknowledges by forbidding a bankrupt's 
 tools to be sold up. Give a good workman, in town or 
 country, a sympathetic listener and he is only too ready 
 to expatiate on his daily work. This sense of kinship 
 between men and their tools and material is so little 
 understood by some of our modern expert organisers of 
 industry that it is worth while illustrating it at some 
 length. I make no apology, therefore, for quoting a 
 striking passage from an essay by Mr. George Bourne, 
 who is not a trade unionist or a student of Labour 
 politics but an observer of English village life, who has 
 taken the trouble to penetrate the mind of what is com- 
 monly regarded as the stupidest and most backward — 
 as it is certainly the least articulate — class of workmen in 
 this country, the agricultural labourer in the southern 
 counties. 
 
 " The men," he writes, " are commonly too modest about 
 their work, and too unconscious that it can interest an outsider, 
 to dream of discussing it. What they have to say would not 
 therefore by itself go far in demonstration of their acquirements 
 in technique. Fortunately, for proof of that we are not dependent 
 on talk. Besides talk there exists another kind of evidence open 
 to every one's examination, and the technical skill exercised in 
 country labours may be purely deduced from the aptness and 
 singular beauty of sundry country tools. 
 
 "The beauty of tools is not accidental, but inherent and 
 essential. The contours of a ship's sail bellying in the wind are 
 not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an 
 adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the grace- 
 fulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, 
 yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank 
 verse. It changes for different soils : it is widened out or nar- 
 rowed ; it is deep-grooved or shallow ; not because of caprice at 
 the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical 
 demands of the expert ploughman. The most familiar exathple 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 191 
 
 of beauty indicating subtle technique is supplied by the admired 
 shape of boats, which, however, is so variable (the statement is 
 made on the authority of an old coast-guardsman) that the boat best 
 adapted for one stretch of shore may be dangerous, if not entirely 
 useless, at another stretch ten miles away. And as technique 
 determines the design of a boat, or of a waggon, or of a plough- 
 share, so it controls absolutely the fashioning of tools, and is 
 responsible for any beauty of form they may possess. Of all tools 
 none, of course, is more exquisite than a fiddle-bow. But the 
 fiddle-bow never could have been perfected, because there would 
 have been no call for its tapering delicacy, its calculated balance 
 of lightness and strength, had not the violinist's technique reached 
 such marvellous fineness of power. For it is the accomplished 
 artist who is fastidious as to his tools ; the bungling beginner can 
 bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only 
 one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many 
 humbler tools. Quarryman's peck, coachman's whip, cricket- 
 bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill 
 of those who use them ; and like animals and plants, adapting 
 themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain 
 to beauty by force of being fit. That law of adaptation which 
 shapes the wings of a swallow and prescribes the poise and elegance 
 of the branches of trees is the same that demands symmetry in 
 the corn-rick and convexity in the beer-barrel ; the same that, 
 exerting itself with matchless precision through the trained senses 
 of haymakers and woodmen, gives the final curve to the handles 
 of their scythes and the shafts of their axes. Hence the beauty of 
 a tool is an unfailing sign that in the proper handling of it tech- 
 nique is present. . . . 
 
 "It is not the well-informed and those eager to teach," he 
 says in another passage, "who know the primitive necessary lore 
 of civilisation ; it is the illiterate. In California, Louis Stevenson 
 found men studying the quality of vines grown on different pockets 
 of earth, just as the peasants of Burgundy and the Rhine have 
 done for ages. And even so the English generations have watched 
 the produce of their varying soils. When or how was it learnt — 
 was it at Oxford or at Cambridge ? — that the apples of Devonshire 
 are so specially fit for cider ? Or how is it that hops are growing 
 — some of them planted before living memory — all along the strip 
 of greensand which encircles the Weald — that curious strip to 
 which text-books at last point triumphantly as being singularly 
 adapted for hops? Until it got into the books, this piece of 
 knowledge was not thought of as learning ; it had merely been 
 
192 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 acted upon during some centuries. But such knowledge exists, 
 boundless, in whatever direction one follows it : the knowledge 
 of fitting means to ends ; excellent rule-of-thumb knowledge, as 
 good as the chemist uses for analysing water. When the peculiar 
 values of a plot of land have been established — as, for instance, 
 that it is a clay ' too strong ' for bricks — then further forms of 
 localised knowledge are brought to supplement this, until at last 
 the bricks are made. Next, they must be removed from the field ; 
 and immediately new problems arise. The old farm-cart, designed 
 for roots or manure, has not the most suitable shape for brick- 
 carting. Probably, too, its wide wheels, which were intended 
 for the softness of ploughed land, are needlessly clumsy for the 
 hard road. Soon, therefore, the local wheelwright begins to 
 lighten his spokes and felloes, and to make the wheels a trifle less 
 ' dished ' ; while his blacksmith binds them in a narrower but 
 thicker tyre, to which he gives a shade more tightness. For the 
 wheelwright learns from the carter — that ignorant fellow — the 
 answer to the new problems set by a load of bricks. A good 
 carter, for his part, is able to adjust his labour to his locality. A 
 part of his duty consists in knowing what constitutes a fair load 
 for his horse in the district where he is working. So many 
 hundred stock bricks, so many more fewer of the red or wire-cut, 
 such and such a quantity of sand, or timber, or straw, or coal, or 
 drain-pipes, or slates, according to their kinds and sizes, will make 
 as much as an average horse can draw in this neighbourhood ; but 
 in London the loads are bigger and the vehicles heavier ; while in 
 more hilly parts (as you may see any day in the West Country) 
 two horses are put before a cart and load which the London carter 
 would deem hardly too much for a costermonger's donkey. 
 
 " So it goes throughout civilisation : there is not an industry 
 but produces its own special knowledge relating to unclassified 
 details of adjustment." * 
 
 It is this craft-knowledge and common professional 
 feeling which is at the basis of all associations of work- 
 people, from the semi-religious societies of ancient times, 
 which met in secret to worship their patron-god — He- 
 phaestos, the god of the metal-workers, or Asclepios, the 
 god of the doctors — through the great guilds of the Middle 
 Ages to the trade unions and professional organisations 
 of to-day. Trade unions do not exist simply to raise 
 
 1 "Lucy Bettesworth," pp. 178-180 and 214.-216. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 193 
 
 wages or to fight the capitalist, any more than the British 
 Medical Association exists simply to raise fees and to 
 bargain with the Government. They exist to serve a 
 professional need : to unite men who are doing the same 
 work and to promote the welfare and dignity of that 
 work. It is this which renders so difficult the problems 
 of adjustment which arise owing to the introduction of 
 new and unfamiliar processes. Professional associations 
 are, and are bound to be, conservative : their conservatism 
 is honourable and to their credit : for they are the 
 transmitters of a great tradition. The problem in every 
 case is to ensure the progress necessary to the community 
 without injury to that sense of " fellowship in the mystery" 
 on which the social spirit of the particular class of work- 
 men depends. It is from this point of view that recent 
 American proposals in the direction of " scientific manage- 
 ment " are most open to criticism : for they involve the 
 break-up of the craft-spirit without setting anything 
 comparable in its place. In fact, Mr. F. W. Taylor, 
 one of the inventors of what is called the " system " of 
 scientific management, frankly ignores or despises the 
 craft-spirit and proposes to treat the workman as a being 
 incapable of understanding the principles underlying the 
 practice of his art. He goes so far as to lay it down as 
 a general principle that " in almost all the mechanic arts 
 the science which underlies each act of each workman is 
 so great and amounts to so much that the workman who 
 is best suited to actually doing the work is incapable of 
 fully understanding this science, without the guidance 
 and help of those who are working with him or over him, 
 either through lack of education or through insufficient 
 mental capacity." ' Along the lines of this philosophy 
 no permanent industrial advance is possible. It may 
 improve the product for a time, but only at the cost of 
 degrading the producer. If we are to make happiness 
 
 ' This sentence is practically an unconscious paraphrase of a passage from 
 Aristotle's defence of slavery. 
 
 O 
 
194 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 our test, and to stand by our definition of happiness as 
 involving free activity, such a system, destructive as it is 
 of any real or intense relationship between the workman 
 and his work, stands self-condemned. If we are looking 
 for real industrial progress it is elsewhere that we must 
 turn. 
 
 This leads us naturally on to the second great division 
 of our subject : progress in the methods of co-operation 
 between man and man in doing industrial work. For if 
 man is a social animal his power to do his bit and his 
 consequent happiness must be derived, in part at least, 
 from his social environment. The lonely craftsman 
 perfecting his art in the solitude of a one-man workshop 
 does not correspond with our industrial ideal any more 
 than the hermit or the monk corresponds with our general 
 religious ideal. It was the great apostle of craftsmanship, 
 William Morris, who best set forth the social ideal of in- 
 dustry in his immortal sentence : " Fellowship is Life and 
 lack of Fellowship is Death." Our study of the workman, 
 then, is not complete when we have seen him with his tools : 
 we must see him also among his workmates. We must 
 see industry not simply as a process of production but 
 as a form of asspciation ; and we must realise that the 
 association of human beings for the purpose of industrial 
 work involves what is just as much a problem of govern- 
 ment as their association in the great political community 
 which we call the State. 
 
 It is difficult to see the record of the progress of in- 
 dustrial government in clear perspective for the simple 
 reason that the world is still so backward as regards the 
 organisation of this side of its common life. The theory 
 and practice of industrial government is generations, even 
 centuries, behind the theory and practice of politics. We 
 are still accustomed in industry to attitudes of mind and 
 methods of management which the political thought of the 
 Western World has long since discarded as incompatible 
 with its ideals. Two instances must suffice to illustrate 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 195 
 
 this. It is constantly being said, both by employers 
 and by politicians, and even by writers in sympathy with 
 working-class aspirations, that all that the workman nefeds 
 in his life is security. Give him work under decent 
 conditions, runs the argument, with reasonable security 
 of tenure and adequate guarantees against sickness, dis- 
 ablement and unemployment, and all will be well. This 
 theory of what constitutes industrial welfare is, of course, 
 when one thinks it out, some six centuries out of date. It 
 embodies the ideal of the old feudal system, but without 
 the personal tie between master and man which human- 
 ised the feudal relationship. Feudalism, as we saw in our 
 study of political government, was a system of contract 
 between the lord and the labourer by which the lord and 
 master ran the risks, set on foot the enterprises (chiefly 
 military), and enjoyed the spoils, incidental to mediasval 
 life, while the labourer stuck to his work and received 
 security and protection in exchange. Feudalism broke 
 down because it involved too irksome a dependence, 
 because it was found to be incompatible with the personal 
 independence which is the birthright of a modern man. 
 So it is idle to expect that the ideal of security will 
 carry us very far by itself towards the perfect industrial 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Take a second example of the wide gulf that still 
 subsists between men's ideas of politics and men's ideas 
 of industry. It is quite common, even in these latter days, 
 and among those who have freely sacrificed their nearest 
 and dearest to the claims of the State, to hear manu- 
 facturers and merchants say that they have a " right to 
 a good profit." The President of the Board of Trade 
 remarked openly in the House of Commons after many 
 months of war that it was more than one could expect 
 of human nature for coal-owners not to get the highest 
 price they could. Such a standpoint is not merely 
 indecent : it is hopelessly out-of-date. Looked at from 
 the political point of view it is a pure anachronism. 
 
196 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 There used to be times when men made large fortunes 
 out of the service of government, as men still make them 
 out of the service of the community in trade and industry 
 to-day. In the days of St. Matthew, when tax-gathering 
 was let out by contract, the apostle's partners would 
 probably have declared, as Mr. Runciman does to-day, 
 that it was more than one could expect of human nature 
 that a publican who had a government contract for the 
 collection of the taxes should not get all he could out of 
 the tax-payer. It is, indeed, little more than a century 
 ^go since it was a matter of course in this country to 
 look upon oversea colonies merely as plantations — that 
 is, as business investments rather than as communities 
 of human beings. The existence of Chartered Company 
 government marks a survival of this habit of mind. 
 The old colonial system, which embodied this point of 
 view, proved demoralising not only to the home govern- 
 ment but to the colonists, as a similar view is to the 
 working class, and it led to the loss of the American 
 colonies as surely as a similar attitude on the part of 
 employers leads to unrest and rebellion among work- 
 people to-day. 
 
 We have thus a long way to travel before the ideals 
 of politics have been assimilated into the industrial life 
 of the community and have found fitting embodiment 
 in its kindred and more complex problems. But at 
 least we have reached a point where we can see what the 
 problem of industrial government is. "We can say with 
 assurance that a system which treats human beings 
 purely as instruments or as passive servants, and atro- 
 phies their self-determination and their sense of individual 
 and corporate responsibility, is as far from perfection in 
 industry as the Roman Empire was in politics. Renan's 
 words about " the intolerable sadness " incidental to such 
 a method of organisation apply with redoubled force 
 to occupations which take up the best part of the day 
 of the mass of the working population. The bleak and 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 197 
 
 loveless buildings, with their belching chimneys,' which 
 arrest the eye of the thoughtful traveller in the industrial 
 districts of England are not prisons or workhouses. But 
 they often look as if they were, and they resemble them in 
 this — that they too often stand for similarly authoritarian 
 ideas of government and direction. Industry is still an 
 autocracy, as politics was in the days before the supremacy 
 of Parliament. Power still descends from above instead 
 of springing from below. It is a power limited no doubt 
 by trade union action and parliamentary and adminis- 
 trative control : but it is in essence as autocratic as the 
 government of England used to be before the transference 
 of sovereignty from the monarch to the representatives 
 of his subjects. It was recently announced in the Press 
 that Lord Rhondda had bought a group of Welsh collieries 
 for 2 millions, and that as a result " Lord Rhondda now 
 controls over 3^ millions of capital, pays 2^ millions in 
 wages every year, and is virtually the dictator of the eco- 
 nomic destiny of a quarter of a million miners. Rumours 
 are also current," the extract continues, " that Lord 
 Rhondda is extending his control over the Press of 
 Wales." ^ The existence of such power in this twentieth 
 century in the hands of single individuals, not selected 
 from the mass for their special wisdom or humanity, is a 
 stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who 
 is inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial 
 progress. In days gone by political power was as irre- 
 sponsible as the economic power wielded to-day by 
 Lord Rhondda ; and it descended from father to son 
 by hereditary right in the same way as the control over 
 the lives of countless American workers descends to-day 
 as a matter of course from John D. Rockefeller senior to 
 John D. Rockefeller junior. If there is any reality at 
 all in our political faith we must believe that a similiar 
 development towards self-government can and must take 
 place in industry. It may be that generations will elapse 
 
 1 The Welsh Outlook, Au^st, 1916, p. 272, 
 
198 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT ? 
 
 before the problems of industrial government find a final 
 and satisfactory constitutional solution. But at least we 
 can say that there is only one basis for that solution which 
 is compatible with a sound ideal of government, or indeed 
 with any reasoned view of morality or religion — the basis 
 of individual and corporate freedom with its corresponding 
 obligations of responsibility and self-respect. No nation, 
 as Abraham Lincoln said, can remain half-slave , and 
 half-free : and it was a greater than Lincoln who warned 
 us that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. It is 
 this underlying conflict of ideals in the organisation of 
 our existing economic system which is the real cause of 
 the "Labour unrest" of which we have heard so much 
 in recent years. 
 
 With this warning in our minds as to the imperfec- 
 tions of our modern industrial organisation, let us briefly 
 survey the record of the forms of economic association 
 which preceded it. 
 
 The earliest form of industrial grouping is, of course, 
 the family ; and the family, as we all know, still retains 
 its primitive character in some occupations as a convenient 
 form of productive association. This is particularly the 
 case in agriculture in communities where peasant holdings 
 prevail. But the family is so much more than an in- 
 dustrial group that it hardly falls to us to consider it 
 further here. 
 
 Outside the family proper, industrial work among 
 primitive peoples is often carried on by slaves. It was 
 a step forward in human progress when primitive man 
 found that it was more advantageous to capture his 
 enemies than to kill or eat them ; and it was a still greater 
 step forward when he found that there was more to be 
 got out of slaves by kind treatment than by compulsion. 
 This is not the place in which to go into the vexed ques- 
 tions connected with various forms of slavery. SuflRce 
 it to say that it is a profound mistake to dismiss the whole 
 system in one indiscriminating condemnation. Slavery 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 199 
 
 involves the denial of freedom, and as such it can never 
 be good. But other systems besides slavery implicitly 
 involve the denial of freedom. Some of the finest artistic 
 work in the world has been done by slaves — and by 
 slaves not working under compulsion but in the company 
 of free men and on terms of industrial equality with them. 
 This should serve to remind us that, in judging of systems 
 of industry, we must look behind the letter of the law to 
 the spirit of the times and of social institutions. Slavery 
 at its best merges insensibly into wage-labour at its 
 lower end. Many of the skilled slaves of ancient Greece 
 and Rome are hardly distinguishable in status from a 
 modern workman bound by an unusually long and strict 
 indenture and paid for his work not only in money but 
 partly in truck. In order to stimulate their productive 
 capacity it was found necessary in Greece and Rome to 
 allow skilled slaves to earn and retain money — although 
 in the eye of the law they were not entitled to do so ; and 
 they were thus frequently in a position to purchase their 
 own freedom and become independent craftsmen. Slavery 
 in the household and in small workshops is open to many 
 and serious dangers, which need not be particularised here ; 
 but the worst abuses of slavery have always taken place 
 where slaves have been easily recruited, as in the early 
 days of European contact with Africa, and when there 
 were large openings for their employment in gangs on 
 work of a rough and unskilled character. The problem 
 of slavery in its worse forms is thus at bottom a cheap- 
 labour problem analogous to that which confronts North 
 America and South Africa to-day ; and there is an 
 essential difference which is often ignored between the 
 educated slave in a Roman Government office who did 
 the work of a First Division Civil Servant for his imperial 
 master and his compeer working in the fields of South 
 Italy ; and between the household servants of a Virginian 
 iumily and the plantation-slaves of the farther South. Let 
 us remember, in passing judgment on what is admittedly 
 
200 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 an indefensible system, that during the war which re- 
 sulted in the freeing of the American slaves the slave- 
 holders of the South trusted their household slaves to 
 protect the women and children during their absence from 
 home, and that that trust was nowhere betrayed. There 
 is another side to " Uncle Tom's Cabin " as surely as 
 there is another side to Mr. Carnegie's paean of modern 
 industrialism in his " Triumphant Democracy." 
 
 Systems of serfdom or caste which bind the workman 
 to his work without permitting him to be sold like a slave 
 may be regarded as one step higher than slavery proper. 
 Such systems are common in stable and custom-bound 
 countries, and persisted throughout the European Middle 
 Ages. We need not describe how the rising tide of change 
 gradually broke up the system in this country and left the 
 old-time villein a free but often a landless and property- 
 less man. The transition from serfdom to the system of 
 wage-labour which succeeded it was a transition from 
 legal dependence to legal freedom, and as such it marked 
 an advance. But it was also a transition from a fixed 
 and, as it were, a professional position of service to the 
 community to a blind and precarious individualism. It 
 was a transition, as Sir Henry Maine put it, from status to 
 contract. This famous nineteenth-century aphorism is 
 eloquent qf the limitations of that too purely commercial 
 age. Every thinking man would admit to-day that 
 status at its best is a better thing than contract at its 
 best — that the soldier is a nobler figure than the army 
 contractor, and that corporate feeling and professional 
 honour are a better stimulus to right action than business 
 competition and a laudable keenness to give satisfaction 
 to a valuable customer. We have always suffered from 
 the temptation in this country of adapting business 
 methods and ideals to politics rather than political 
 ideals and methods to business. Our eighteenth-century 
 thinkers explained citizenship itself, not as a duty to our 
 neighbours, but as the fulfilment of an unwritten contract. 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 201 
 
 Our nineteenth-century legal writers elevated the idea 
 of free contract almost to an industrial ideal ; while, in 
 somewhat the same spirit, the gutter journalists of to-day, 
 when they are at a loss for a popular watchword, call for 
 a business government. Such theories and battle-cries 
 may serve for a " nation of shopkeepers " ; but that 
 opprobrious phrase has never been true of the great 
 mass of the English people, and it was never less true 
 than to-day. 
 
 The idea of industrial work as the fulfilment of a con- 
 tract, whether freely or forcibly made, is thus essentially 
 at variance with the ideal of community service. It is 
 difficult for a man who makes his livelihood by hiring 
 himself out as an individual for what he can get out of 
 one piece of work after another to feel the same sense 
 of community service or professional pride as the man 
 who is serving a vocation and has dedicated his talents 
 to some continuous and recognised form of work. It 
 is this which makes the system of wage-labour so unsatis- 
 factory in principle compared with the guilds of the 
 town workmen in the Middle Ages and with the organised 
 professions of to-day ; and it is this which explains why 
 trade unions of recent years have come to concern 
 themselves more and more with questions of status rather 
 than of wages, and to regard the occupation which they 
 represent more and more as a profession rather than a 
 trade. No one has laid bare the deficiencies of the wage- 
 system more clearly than Adam Smith in the famous 
 chapter in which he foreshadows the principle of collective 
 bargaining. 
 
 " What are the common wages of laboiir," he there remarks,^ 
 " depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between 
 those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. 
 The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, 
 as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, 
 the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour. . . . We rarely 
 
 J « Wealth of Nations," Book I. ch. viii. 
 
202 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though 
 frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon 
 this account, that masters rarely combine is as ignorant of the 
 world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in 
 a sort of tacit but constant and uniform combination not to raise 
 the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this 
 combination is everywhere a most unpopular action and a sort of 
 reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We 
 seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, 
 and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever 
 hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combina- 
 tions to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These 
 are always conducted with the utmost secrecy till the moment of 
 execution ; and, when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do 
 without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never 
 heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are 
 frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the 
 workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this 
 kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labour. 
 Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, 
 sometimes the great profit which the masters make by their 
 work." 
 
 These words were written 140 years ago, but, as we 
 all know, they are still true of the working of the system 
 too-day. Indeed, the war has served to emphasise their 
 truth by showing us how deeply entrenched are the habits 
 of bargaining and of latent antagonism which the working 
 of the wage-system has engendered. It is the defect of 
 the wage-system, as Adam Smith makes clear to us, that 
 it lays stress on just those points in the industrial pro- 
 cess where the interests of employers and workpeople 
 run contrary to one another, whilst obscuring those far 
 more important aspects in which they are partners and 
 fellow-workers in the service of the community. This 
 defect cannot be overcome by strengthening one party 
 to the contract at the expense of the other, by crushing 
 trade unions or dissolving employers' combinations, or 
 even by establishing the principle of collective bargaining. 
 It can only be overcome by the recognition on both sides 
 
PROGRESS IN INDUSTRY 203 
 
 that industry is in essence not a matter of contract and 
 bargaining at all, but of mutual interdependence and 
 community service : and by the growth of a new ideal 
 of status, a new sense of professional pride and corporate 
 duty and self-respect among all who are engaged in the 
 same function. No one can say how long it may take 
 to bring about such a fundamental change of attitude, 
 especially among those who have most to lose, in the 
 material sense, by an alteration in the existing distribution 
 of economic power. But the war has cleared away so 
 much of prejudice and set so much of our life in a new 
 light that the dim ideals of to-day may well be the 
 realities of to-morrow. This at least we can say : that no 
 country in the world is in a better position than we are to 
 redeem modern industry from the reproach of materialism 
 and to set it firmly upon a spiritual basis, and that the 
 country which shall first have had the wisdom and the 
 courage to do so will be the pioneer in a vast extension 
 of human liberty and happiness and will have shown 
 that along this road and no other lies the industrial 
 progress of mankind. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE 
 FUTURE OF BRITISH INDUSTRY^ 
 
 Among the many far-reaching questions which the war 
 has brought into fresh prominence none is more im- 
 portant in its relation to the future welfare of Great 
 Britain than that of the organisation of industry. The 
 war has laid bare serious defects in our existing arrange- 
 ments, and, as a result, large changes in methods and 
 policy are being put forward in many quarters. The 
 object of the following pages is to examine the situation 
 in the industrial world more particularly as it affects the 
 working class, and to discuss it with special reference to 
 the character and aspirations of the British Labour move- 
 ment. Labour is the factor most vitally and intimately 
 concerned in questions of industrial organisation, and no 
 broad changes in policy can hope to be effective unless 
 they are made with Labour's assent and co-operation. 
 The day is past — as the events of the war have proved 
 — when reforms, however desirable, could be imposed 
 from above over the head of the representatives of the 
 working class. On the other hand, no Labour policy, 
 however idealistic, can hope to achieve its ol^ect unless 
 it is based on an understanding of the facts of the world 
 as it is to-day. Labour has to face not merely a national 
 but an international economic situation and to realise its 
 bearing upon its own domestic problems. The example 
 of the Germans compels employers and work-people alike 
 to view industrial methods and policies in a new light, 
 and to take stock of their survival-value. Whatever 
 our ideals and prepossessions, we cannot afford to sit 
 
 1 From Tie Round Table, June, 1916. 
 204 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 205 
 
 down helplessly before the competition of better educated 
 brains or to ignore the latest improvements — if im- 
 provements they turn out to be — in industrial training 
 and organisation. 
 
 I. Labour during the War 
 
 Before discussing what we have to learn from Ger- 
 many it will be well to cast our eyes back over the 
 industrial record of this country during the last two years 
 of war ; for it is only by seeing the whole record in 
 perspective that we can appreciate the bearing of the 
 different forces and factors involved. 
 
 At the end of July, 19 14, the situation as between 
 Capital and Labour was more disquieting than it had been 
 at any time since the great strikes of 191 1. Both sides 
 had drawn their lesson from that conflict, and were pre- 
 paring their forces for another. In particular the railway- 
 men were looking forward to the expiration of their Con- 
 ciliation Boards' agreement in the early winter, and plans 
 were being concerted which have since been carried 
 through — though in a different spirit — for a Triple 
 Alliance, primarily devised for defensive purposes, pro- 
 viding for joint action in cases of common interest, 
 between the miners, the transport workers, and the 
 railwaymen, amounting to a million and a quarter 
 workers in all. 
 
 At the outbreak of war the situation changed as by 
 magic. It was some weeks and even months before the 
 mass of the people realised, mainly through the arrival of 
 the Belgian refugees, what was actually at stake in the 
 war ; but the national instinct asserted itself at once, and 
 the settlement of all outstanding disputes and the pro- 
 clamation of an industrial truce were matters of days 
 rather than of weeks. The Trade Union leaders instandy 
 undertook to postpone or to forego their demands and 
 called upon their members to put country before class, 
 
2o6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 and to do their utmost to see the war through. A joint 
 Parliamentary Recruiting Committee was formed, and 
 Labour members, with few exceptions, made strenuous 
 efforts in response to the Government's appeal to secure 
 volunteers, many of whom, as was afterwards found out, 
 would have been far better left at their own trades. 
 
 During the first few months of fighting nobody 
 thought out the reaction of the war upon industry. The 
 Government's War Book had been drawn up on the 
 supposition that only a small Expeditionary Force would 
 be employed, and it does not seem to have dealt with the 
 industrial aspects of the problem of military supply. The 
 first obvious effect of the war on industry was to create 
 instability and unemployment, and the prevalent idea 
 during those months was that there would be serious and 
 widespread distress among the poorer classes. It was 
 under this impression that the Prince of Wales's Fund 
 was raised and that prominent economists urged, the 
 undertaking of public works and improvements by 
 municipalities in order to provide employment. There 
 was, in fact, for a time very considerable distress, es- 
 pecially among women workers, and unemployment un- 
 doubtedly was a contributing factor in the enlistments. 
 There was reduction of wages in some quarters and a 
 considerable amount of short time in most industries. 
 The Factory Inspectors' Report for 19 14 records the 
 efforts that were made in many cases by employers, 
 themselves hard hit and uncertain of their future, to 
 keep their staffs together and to secure them from 
 destitution. 
 
 Towards the end of 19 14 and the beginning of 19 15 
 two tendencies began increasingly to make themselves 
 felt. Prices began to rise ; and skilled labour began to 
 run short, owing to the demand for munitions and the 
 success of the recruiting campaign. These two causes 
 together operated to disturb the harmonious atmosphere 
 that had been brought about at the beginning of the war ; 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 207 
 
 but they need not have done so had the Government 
 understood what was happening, and taken steps to 
 deal with it in time. When prices began to rise so as to 
 make serious inroads on the household budget, there was 
 a confident expectation in Labour circles that the Govern- 
 ment would somehow intervene to keep them down — 
 in the same way as it had intervened in the autumn on 
 behalf of the banks and the accepting houses. The 
 matter was raised in the House of Commons in February, 
 and the Prime Minister replied in what has become known 
 as the " Wait till June " speech, which created a most 
 unfortunate impression, and greatly strengthened the force 
 behind the wages demands which were then beginning 
 to be made. These demands were aimed at the main- 
 tenance of the pre-war condition of real wages, and much 
 recrimination would have been avoided if this point had 
 been stipulated for when the industrial truce was pro- 
 claimed or, at least, when the Government's Arbitration 
 Committee was appointed. Meanwhile the shortage of 
 labour, combined with the wide and unregulated extension 
 of Government contracts, was leading to an ever-fiercer 
 competition among employers to secure the services of the 
 available skilled men. For some time great confusion 
 reigned. Every device was used to attract men from one 
 situation to another — with demoralising effects on the 
 general progress of the work. The effect on output of the 
 restrictive Trade Union regulations in the engineering 
 trades also began to be seriously felt about this time, and 
 the shortage of skilled workers in various crafts led to 
 constant minor troubles on questions of demarcation. It 
 was in these circumstances that, on February 8, the Under- 
 Secretary of State for War, for the first time awaking 
 to the problem, made a somewhat naive appeal to the 
 Trade Union leaders in Parliament to abandon their 
 restrictive rules and to " organise the forces of labour." 
 Soon after this, when the situation began to look serious 
 the Government appointed the Committee on Production 
 
2o8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 consisting of Sir George Askwith, Sir George Gibb, and 
 Sic Francis Hopwood, to arbitrate in the disputes that 
 might arise, but without laying down any principle on 
 which to base their awards. It was a little later, at the 
 end of February, that the first strike took place on the 
 Clyde ; it only lasted a few days, but it drew the notice 
 of the country to the widespread existence of industrial 
 unrest. About the same time Mr. Lloyd George made 
 his first speech about the importance of munitions and 
 described the war as " an engineers' war." 
 
 Attention now began to be directed increasingly to the 
 question of Trade Union rules, especially as regards the 
 training of the new workers who were seen to be 
 necessary. The Government at last realised that some- 
 thing more was needed than a mere appeal to Members 
 of Parliament without any corresponding agreement or 
 guarantee. The result was a series of conferences in 
 March, 191 5, between Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. 
 Runciman, as representing the Government, and the 
 representatives of the engineering Trade Unions. The 
 Trade Union repfesentatives undertook to recommend 
 to their members to agree to compulsory arbitration for 
 the period of the war and to waive all rules in restriction 
 of output or of the training of new workers. In return 
 they demanded and secured through the Government 
 from the employers promises of ( i ) the limitation of war- 
 profits and (2) restoration of pre-war Trade Union con- 
 ditions and reinstatement of men with the Colours. 
 These conditions were formally accepted by the members, 
 who did not, however, realise what they implied or how 
 widespread were the changes that were to take place in 
 the industry. Soon afterwards the Ministry of Muni- 
 tions was created, and immense new plans began to be 
 developed for the building of shell factories and the 
 extension of orders, necessitating the tapping of fresh 
 sources of labour. 
 
 Meanwhile it was found that the March agreement, 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 209 
 
 although embodying the views of the vast majority of 
 Trade Unionists, provided no means of controlling the 
 minority. This difficulty could only be met by embody- 
 ing the agreement in statutory form. Legislation was 
 also felt to be needed to curtail the bargaining power of 
 the workman and to restrict the rise of wages. The 
 result of this was the Munitions Act, which created a 
 class of "controlled establishments," the workers in which 
 were exempted from recruiting and guaranteed security 
 of employment, but could receive no rise in wages or 
 salary except after permission from Whitehall. The Act 
 also put an end to the " pilfering " of labour by com- 
 peting employers, which was still causing serious con- 
 fusion. This was done by including a clause that tied 
 workmen engaged on munitions work to their job by 
 making it illegal for an employer to take them on within 
 six weeks without a certificate of discharge from their 
 previous employer. The bearings of this clause were 
 not understood either by Parliament or by the workers 
 when the Bill was passed, and it has proved a fruitful 
 cause of friction in the working. Workmen who, for 
 domestic or other reasons, desired to change their em- 
 ployment found that they had to come before a court 
 before they icould do so, and resented what they con- 
 sidered a vexatious interference with personal freedom. 
 Various minor possibilities of abuse were revealed in the 
 course of the Act's working and were remedied in an 
 amending Act of last January. But the Act is still 
 resented, not only because of its restrictive character in 
 general, but also because it sets up what the workers 
 regard as inequitable distinctions between different classes 
 of labour. For instance, the engineering trade has had 
 its mobility, and thereby its bargaining power, restricted, 
 whereas seamen, dockers, coal trimmers, and others are 
 not affected by it and can bring what pressure they like 
 to improve their position. The working of the Act did 
 much to rouse the suspicions of the workers, and to 
 
2IO NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 confirm their rooted objection to " industrial conscription " 
 — that is to say, the subjection of civilian workers to 
 military law with the consequent limitation of their 
 freedom of association. It should be added that a similar 
 discrimination under the Act exists in the case of em- 
 ployers, ship-owners, for instance, being free to make 
 much larger profits than armament makers. 
 
 The labour events of the last twelve months can be 
 briefly dismissed. The most notorious was the short- 
 lived strike of 120,000 Welsh miners in June, 19 15, in 
 successful defiance of the compulsory arbitration clause of 
 the Munitions Act, which was adopted by Proclamation 
 to include their case. Sporadic further trouble due to 
 the non-Unionist question has been met by a remarkable 
 agreement signed in March, 1 9 1 6, establishing compulsory 
 Trade Unionism in the South Wales coalfield for the 
 period of the war. The only other serious industrial 
 trouble has taken place in the Clyde area, where local 
 causes have combined to maintain an undercurrent of 
 intense bitterness and suspicion. A small strike of some 
 1500 highly skilled men broke out at the end of March 
 on a question of workshop management. It was 
 vigorously opposed by the local officials of the Amalga- 
 mated Society of Engineers and six of the leading men 
 involved were deported from the district, but otherwise 
 left free. The strike did not last more than a few days. 
 
 Much more serious in its eflFects on the war than 
 these two disputes has been the difficulty about enforcing 
 the agreement as to the abandonment of Trade Union 
 regulations regarding the training of new workers. The 
 workers concerned proved intensely conservative, and in 
 many shops months elapsed before the promised arrange- 
 ments for dilution, that is, for the training of the new 
 workers, could be proceeded with — although, as always 
 happens with the working class, when the need was really 
 borne in upon them they fell "in willingly. Still more 
 serious has been the problem of Trade Union rules in 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 211 
 
 restriction of output. Progress here has not been easy. 
 Mr. Lloyd George paid visits to the Trade Union Cop- 
 gress at Bristol in September and to Glasgow at Christ- 
 mas in an endeavour to improve matters, but was very 
 unfortunate in his methods on both occasions. A con- 
 ference with Mr. Asquith just after Christmas led to 
 more satisfactory results, and incidentally revealed to 
 the public the nature of the psychological obstacles that 
 had to be overcome. But the force of circumstances is 
 gradually proving too strong, and the engineering 
 industry has, in fact, been transformed, both in material 
 and in personnely during the last twelve months. The 
 Ministers and the responsible Trade Union leaders con- 
 cerned have, however, not yet publicly acknowledged that 
 in pledging themselves to restore pre-war conditions they 
 pledged themselves to the impossible, and that a new 
 policy must be devised to meet the new conditions. 
 
 Several conclusions emerge from this brief review. 
 Judgments on it will vary according to the standard 
 adopted. Let us first judge it, as Ministers and Govern- 
 ment officials tend to do, by what we may call a " pre-war 
 standard " — that is, by what we have been in the habit of 
 expecting from ourselves, both in respect of organisation 
 and public spirit. 
 
 Looked at in this light the record, so far as employers 
 and workpeople are concerned, is not only not discredit- 
 able but very much tl\e reverse. On the one hand, em- 
 ployers, by repute a conservative class, have carried 
 through, practically on their own initiative, immense 
 changes and improvements in plant, organisation, and the 
 training of labour, and, while doing so, have been con- 
 tent to sacrifice the major proportion of their excess 
 profits. No doubt the limitation of profits leaves open 
 many loopholes, but employers, as a whole, can fairly 
 claim to have adhered to their bargain with the Govern- 
 ment ; and any one who thinks the limitation of profits 
 a small change should consider what an alteration in 
 
212 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 traditional standards and motives its enactment implies, 
 and ask himself how it would be likely to be received, 
 say, in the United States.^ On the other hand, labour, 
 as a whole, has done its share far more eiFectively than 
 the public — who hear only of isolated disputes — has been 
 able to realise, and has maintained the productive capacity 
 of the country, in spite of the withdrawal of some 
 4,000,000 workers, in a manner that is truly surprising. 
 Sir George Paish lately estimated that the national 
 income, which before the war stood at ;^2,400,ooo,ooo, 
 had been increased for the year 19 15 to ;^3,ooo,ooo,ooo. 
 This estimate makes no allowance for the rise in prices ; 
 but even with this deduction it is a remarkable tribute to 
 the work of the civilian population. Moreover, of the 
 extra values thus created, considerably the lesser propor- 
 tion has found its way into working-class pockets. The 
 Board of Trade returns record an addition of ;^45,ooo,ooo 
 to the wages bill in 191 5 ; independent authorities, calcu- 
 lating for additional sources of increase not covered by the 
 official figures, raise the sum to between £1 50,000,000 
 and ;C2oo,ooo,ooo, or even higher ; but even this leaves 
 some two-thirds of the extra value to the other factors in 
 production. In other words, the working class, faced 
 with a situation in which its bargaining power was greater 
 than at any time since the Black Death, has not only had 
 its own monopoly value curtailed by legal enactment, in 
 the Compulsory Arbitration and leaving certificate clauses 
 of the Munitions Act, but has acqiiiesced in a serious 
 reduction of the rate of wages in comparison with prices. 
 These concessions could only have been secured by con- 
 sent ; and the fact, in consequence, that Labour has, as it 
 were, been taken into partnership by being officially con- 
 sulted on questions of industrial policy has created a 
 precedent which may lead to far-reaching results. The 
 
 1 1918. I leave this sentence as it was written in 1916. The reader will 
 not think that I have overlooked the developments that have since occurred in 
 the United States. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 213 
 
 opposition of principle between the two parties remains, 
 however, unaltered ; in some respects it has even been 
 intensified ; and nothing that has happened so far is 
 sufficient to prevent a speedy resumption of conflict on 
 the old lines as soon as the war is over. 
 
 So much for the point of view of the disillusioned 
 official, who has learnt to depreciate sanguine expecta- 
 tions and is agreeably surprised to discover that human 
 nature can respond to ideal motives at all. Let us now 
 take higher ground and survey the record from the point 
 of view of that large section of the nation, drawn from 
 every class and occupation, which has put all thought of 
 self aside. How does this record read in the trenches ? 
 
 The first and most natural reflection is the com- 
 parison with the French. France has not, indeed, as is 
 sometimes imagined, been exempt during the war from 
 selfishness and even corruption amongst her employing 
 class, or from labour criticism and discontent. In the 
 prostration at the beginning of the war, says an official 
 British summary* of a French report, " more than half 
 the industrial and commercial establishments of France 
 closed their doors, and most of those who kept open did 
 so with reduced staflFs working short time." Of the 
 5,000,000 persons employed in private industry, 2,000,000 
 were thrown out of work, and the remaining 3,000,000 
 " did not by any means receive their normal wages." 
 Both wages and employment seem to have improved 
 more slowly after the shock than in this country. By 
 the end of 1 9 1 5 wages had " recovered to an appreciable 
 extent." " They tend more and more to become 
 normal, and, for certain group of workers " — the car- 
 penters, masons, bricklayers, and builders' labourers, 
 engaged in the Calais ^district on making barracks for the 
 British troops, are given as an example — " they exceed 
 the normal rates." The reference in the report is 
 apparently to money wages. It appears, therefore, that, 
 
 > Board of Trade Labour Gazette, April, 1916. 
 
214 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 though, in France as in this country, " the increase in 
 the cost of living has instigated the workers to demand 
 corresponding advances in their daily wages," they have 
 only to a very partial extent been successful, " Men," 
 says the report, i"have been more successful than 
 women, and industrial workers than commercial or do- 
 mestic employees." Strikes have been rare, only ninety- 
 seven being recorded / between August i, 1914, and 
 December i, 1915. 
 
 But it is not in the sphere of general industrial 
 organisation but in that of the productions of munitions 
 that France rightly deserves to be held up as a model. 
 There, thanks to the sense of overwhelming need and 
 to the clearsightedness of the authorities and the 
 patriotism of the workers, the long-drawn negotiations 
 and the recurring friction which occurred in this country 
 have been successfully avoided. No difficulty whatever 
 seems to have been experienced either as regards Trade 
 Union regulations or the introduction of unskilled male 
 and female labour. No strikes have taken place ; and, 
 in view of the military situation, they would have been 
 unthinkable. "Time-keeping," says the British depu- 
 tation report, " is remarkably good, the time lost owing 
 to avoidable causes not exceeding on the average i per 
 cent.," and the arrangement for training new workers 
 and the avoidance of fatigue seem to be markedly 
 superior to our own. It is undoubtedly largely because 
 we have been so slow to deal with these problems of 
 health in this country that our output of munitions has 
 fallen far short of what it might have been. The result 
 is that France, with her best industrial regions torn from 
 her and a very large proportion of her adult male popu- 
 lation in the field, has undoubtedly handled her munitions 
 problem more successfully than we in this country. 
 This is not a pleasing reflection for the premier industrial 
 country in the world, to whom our Allies naturally look 
 as an arsenal and a storehouse. Nor does this greater 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 215 
 
 efficiency of the French munitions supply spring out of 
 the system of compulsory military service : men can be 
 compelled to work, but they cannot be compelled to 
 do good work ; the evidence as to the increasing in- 
 tensity of production in France shows indisputably that 
 the driving force was not military law but patriotic 
 zeal.^ 
 
 The war has also served to throw a fierce light upon 
 the inefficiency of our pre-war industrial arrangements. 
 Quite apart from the class struggle, British industry 
 was slowly losing ground owing to the superior skill of 
 our rivals. Both employers and workpeople were too 
 old-fashioned and too easy-going. Restriction of output 
 has been rife in every direction. The upper ranks of 
 industry have largely been manned through social or 
 hereditary influence, with the result that businesses have 
 often been overstaffisd and underworked. The con- 
 nection between research and industry, between exact 
 knowledge and business enterprise, has been heglected, 
 and while " the University doctor " in Germany and the 
 " College man " in the United States have been applying 
 their brains to production and the development of new 
 markets, our own University output — relatively far too 
 small in numbers owing to the long-standing defects of 
 our secondary education — has remained almost wholly 
 out of touch with the industrial and commercial life of 
 the country, and our technical institutions have lan- 
 guished owing to the lack of good openings for their 
 students. Meanwhile, the same vicious tendency has 
 affected labour. " Ca' canny " has gained ground in 
 many quarters, both among skilled and unskilled, with 
 the result that the whole community is taxed for their 
 relative inefficiency of particular groups of workers. 
 The war has brought the problem conspicuously before 
 
 ' See the report of the mission sent to investigate labour conditions in the 
 French munitions factories, printed in the Board of Trade Labour Gazette 
 for January, 1916. Compare the Health of Munition Worlcers Committee 
 Report on Industrial Fatigue; (Cd. 8213. ^\d.) 
 
2i6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the public in the case of the engineering trade, but the 
 difficulty is one which is not confined to any one trade or 
 group of trades. It is bound up with the whole Trade 
 Union trad/tion of collective bargaining and the standard 
 rate. As Mr. and Mrs. Webb remarked in their clas- 
 sical treatment of this subject twenty years ago, " It is 
 a necessary incident of the collective bargain that one 
 man should not underbid another, and this underbidding 
 can as easily take place by the ofFer of more work for 
 the same hour's wage as by the offer of a normal amount 
 of work for a lower hourly wage." The solution of the 
 problem is not incompatible with Trade Unionism, but 
 it raises difficult questions of Trade Union policy and 
 workshop organisation and control which require broad 
 and careful reconsideration in the light of the war.^ 
 
 German Industrial Organisation and its Ideals 
 
 Let us set side by side with this review of industrial 
 conditions in our own country a brief account of what 
 has been going on in Germany in face of similar diffi- 
 culties. Fortunately, we possess in a book published 
 last autumn a vivid and enlightening sketch of the 
 reaction of the war both upon German industrial condi- 
 tions and upon German economic ideas. " Mittel-Europa," 
 by the ex-pastor Friedrich Naumann, a well-known 
 German writer and thinker, and- the founder of the 
 German " Christian Social " movement, is a book worthy 
 of the close attention of British readers ; ^ for it is 
 written in a moderate and at times even in a subdued 
 
 1 The chapter on the standard rate in Sidney and Beatrice Webb's "Indus- 
 trial Democracy " is still the best treatment of this vexed question. On the 
 question of our failure to keep up to date in scientific and mechanical im- 
 provements, see a remarkable table of comparisons between the United King- 
 dom and the United States, drawn up by Mr. Charles Booth and printed in 
 his " Industrial Unrest and Trade Union Policy," p. 27. (Macmillan, 191 3. zd.) 
 
 '^ Published by Reimer, Berlin. For details about the author and his 
 position in the political and religious life of Germany, see " The German 
 Soul," by Baron von Hiigel. (Dent, 1916,) 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 217 
 
 tone, and is comparatively free from the rhodomontade 
 characteristic of so much recent German professional and 
 journalistic writing. The book has had a very wide 
 circulation, and the economic facts and tendencies which 
 it brings out are, it may be added, confirmed from more 
 recent sources. Its pages are worth extensive quotation 
 as an illustration of the intellectual world in which 
 German " advanced " thinkers are living to-day, and of 
 the way in which the various elements in the German 
 system, parts of which, taken in isolation, appeal to the 
 most diverse schools of thought in this country, dove- 
 tail into one another to form a complete and consistent 
 whole. 
 
 The purpose of the book is to promote the closer 
 union of Germany and Austria-Hungary, or rather — to 
 use the author's own word — to plead the cause of a new 
 territorial entity, " Central Europe." Just as Chamber- 
 lain called upon us to " think imperially," so Naumann 
 calls upon his readers to " think in terms of Central 
 Europe." It is characteristic of German methods that 
 he begs historians and teachers of the young to teach 
 history henceforward in this sense, and that he should 
 give a brilliant if wilfixlly one-sided account of German 
 history to show how the thing can be done. 
 
 But " Central Europe " is not to be a single sovereign 
 State, like the British Empire, nor is it to be based on 
 any principle of justice or liberty or, indeed, on any 
 ideal at all. Although he is, or has been, a clergyman, 
 Naumann is not an idealist ; he does not appear even to 
 have asked himself what the object of a State is or what 
 it is that Governments exist to promote ; he thinks 
 purely in terms of wealth and power ; swelling statistics 
 (of which his appendix is full) are his tests of excellence. 
 It is natural, therefore, that what he should aim at is not 
 the political union of the Central European States, but 
 their economic union. He does not even suggest a 
 federation of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The 
 
2i8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 sentimental objections, as he knows, would be insuper- 
 able. Nor does he suggest a Customs union or Zolhereitty 
 for the conflict of interests renders it impossible ; the 
 Prussian Junkers, for instance, would bar the free 
 import of Hungarian grain. What he suggests instead 
 is a common economic policy ; and that policy, which 
 he sets out with great charm of style, is simply the 
 development, out of the existing war-time control of 
 foodstuffs, munitions, and other commodities, of a 
 system of chartered trusts or monopolies operating over 
 the whole area of Central Europe. He looks forward 
 to the creation of a Central European Economic Com- 
 mission manned by " experts," which shall supervise the 
 economic organisation of the territory, adjust the claims 
 of the various monopolies, and receive deputations from 
 the representatives of the workmen and other employees. 
 He is, in fact, proposing to form a State somewhat on 
 Syndicalist lines, based on the economic rather than on 
 the political side of community life — but with this all- 
 important difference, that the controlling power will be 
 in the hands not of guilds of workers, but of corpo- 
 rations working for private profit. It wUl be a govern- 
 ment not unlike what critics of America sometimes 
 declare to be the de facto government of the United 
 States. 
 
 The following is an extract from his account of how 
 the German Government met the situation caused by the 
 British blockade and the unexpectedly large requirements 
 of the army : 
 
 " Since military law prevailed, a few months suflSced for a step 
 which would otherwise have required a generation of negotiation 
 — the declaring of all necessary commodities to be State property 
 and the replacing of private trade by public departments and State 
 administrative commissions. State Socialism moved forward over- 
 night by gigantic strides. Before the war a man had the right to 
 say : 'I can do what I like with my own potatoes.' Now the 
 State says : ' Your potatoes are my potatoes.' . . . All this in- 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 219 
 
 volved an immense task of organisation ; for the adjustment 
 between the men called out on military service and the increasing 
 unemployment at home is by no means automatic, and the takihg 
 over of raw materials and foodstuflfe by the War Supply Com- 
 mission and the Corn or Potato Commission was and is no small 
 trouble. The Government Departments would have been very 
 shy to undertake either task in time of peace ; but now they had 
 to face it with a diminished staff of officials to do the work, and 
 they succeeded. In peace time things would have gone much 
 worse ; for every one would have insisted on his customary right ; 
 but the war brought with it undreamed-of strength : you must, 
 you shall, you will, you can ! A willing people with a voluntarily 
 accepted economic dictatorship can achieve anything. The 
 dictatorship was incomplete, for the preliminary inventory had 
 not been undertaken ; but this defect was gradually repaired. 
 The condition we see before us to-day is certainly not quite what 
 is known, in Karl Marx's phrase, as the ' Dictatorship of the Prole- 
 tariat,' yet one cannot help, in some aspects, being reminded of 
 that expression. It is a step towards Socialism under Government 
 leadership. It is an Economic Dictatorship of the Government 
 Departments most closely concerned." 
 
 So much for what has actually taken place — for the 
 German analogue to our controversies about munitions 
 and prices. No doubt there have been serious lapses in 
 the organising process there described ; ^ but, broadly 
 speaking, the successful industrial dictatorship of the 
 German War Office and of the various Food Commis- 
 sions is a well-established fact. Let us now turn to the 
 reaction of these developments upon German economic 
 thinking ; for it is here that Naumann's book is most 
 suggestive for us in this country. 
 
 " That we Germans have glided into this State Socialism, or, 
 to use the strict term, this 'public,' as opposed to private, 
 * economic activity ' as if it had always been our mode of life — 
 that is our great discovery of ourselves in the war. When we 
 emerge from the war, we shall no longer be the same economic 
 men as before. The period of absolute individualism, the period 
 
 • Some of them are described in an article by Mr. John Hilton, written 
 from a close study of the German sources, in Tht Nineteenth Century and After 
 for January, 191 6. 
 
220 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 of the imitation of the English economic system, which was 
 already in decline, will then be over — so too will be all thoughts 
 of an internationalism that boldly transcends the limits of the 
 State of to-day. On the basis of our experiences in the war, we 
 demand a regulated economy : the regulation of production from the 
 point of view of State necessity. . . . This involves a certain re- 
 conciliation between middle-class and Socialistic economic con- 
 ceptions. Before the war one realised already that the sharp 
 opposition was being toned down ; for our manufacturers were 
 organising and the workers were developing a strong and realistic 
 Trade Union policy on the basis of the existing order. . . . Now 
 that the war has for a time freed us from all doctrinaire thinking 
 and forced us to face the practical task of organisation, it has 
 become apparent that State Departments, Employers' Associations 
 and Trade Unions are merely members of a common organism — 
 of the community viewed from the point of view of livelihood or 
 economy." 
 
 There is nothing inherently new in this idea of 
 government by chartered companies. What is new is 
 the German author's and his enthusiastic public's con- 
 fident belief in the virtues of large-scale official organisa- 
 tion, as against the free enterprise of groups of individuals 
 and voluntary associations ; and, above all, their belief 
 that such an organisation will commend itself to the 
 German and Austro-Hungarian working class. For the 
 author sets out to be a liberal advocate of the claims of 
 Labour and, more especially, of Trade Unionism, and 
 he proposes to conciliate Labour by weaving Trade 
 Unionism into the texture of this new monopolistic 
 system. " Monopolies," he declares, " without a sta- 
 tutory limitation of their autocracy over the workers 
 would involve what would be regarded by present-day 
 public opinion as an intolerable infringement on personal 
 freedom." But to meet this difficulty he does not pro- 
 pose to establish responsible political government, or a 
 measure of Trade Union control, or representation, or 
 even recognition, on questions of workshop conditions, 
 or anything that is to be found in British labour pro- 
 grammes either political or industrial ; but simply a vague 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 221 
 
 and undefined plan of unemployment insurance. Just 
 as Central Europe itself is to be based not on Liberty 
 but on "Organisation," so he offers its workers not 
 Responsibility but Security. It is true that he repeatedly 
 describes his scheme as Socialistic ; but if this is what 
 Socialism really means to a German advanced thinker, 
 Socialism and Prussianism must be much nearer akin 
 than they have hitherto been considered to be in this 
 country. 
 
 Before asking ourselves what we have to learn from 
 these far-reaching ideas and proposals, it is important 
 that we should realise the nature of the human material 
 with which they are to be carried out. We are often 
 told, in connection with Socialism and other proposals, 
 that they assume a *' change in human nature." Naumann 
 accepts this view, and his argument for these radical 
 transformations in industrial organisation and ideals is 
 precisely that the Germans have evolved a new type of 
 man, who is capable of efforts and' subordinations un- 
 acceptable to any other people. The pages in which he 
 develops this thesis are so interesting and so true to life 
 that they must be given at some length : 
 
 "The distinguishing peculiarity of the German is not his 
 possession of some new quality not otherwise to be found in the 
 world, but the methodical and disciplined heightening of a 
 capacity which did and does exist amongst the peoples who used to 
 lead the world, but was never deliberately and carefully developed. 
 No doubt we feel that we are far, very far, from having reached 
 the end of our organisability, but in the eyes of our neighbours 
 we have already departed widely from their mode of life. To 
 them we are a people of slaves, because we have learnt better 
 than they how to do our work according to a common plan and 
 a common rhythm. This is true of work of every kind. It is 
 not as if industrialism were the special German characteristic, for 
 in industry, machinery, and craftsmanship the English were and 
 are our superiors, and the special German spirit to which I refer 
 is just as much in evidence in our agriculture as in our industry. 
 
 "In the last twenty years our German industries have assumed 
 
222 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 a wholly new appearance. Whilst growing, they have grown 
 into one another. Through employers' associations, buying 
 arrangements, agreements as to prices and selling areas, a complex 
 system of mutual attachments and dependences has come into 
 being. A stranger no doubt would find all this too intricate to 
 unravel, but it has grown up bit by bit to meet one need after 
 another, and has quietly, in the course of one generation, carried 
 over the old-fashioned individual employer, even if he originally 
 set his face against it, into an ordered industrial community-life. 
 . . . From personal motives he becomes a member of impersonal 
 institutions and works for them as for himself. This dovetailing 
 of the individual self into the community-self is what we are pre- 
 eminently able to achieve. . . . What forty years ago seemed a 
 remote and idealistic project of Socialist and State Socialist 
 dreamers has firmly and visibly taken shape in our existing 
 economic institutions, Germany is not simply becoming an 
 Industrial State ; she is becoming an Organised State in the full 
 sense of the term. 
 
 " Corresponding with this is the development we are witnessing 
 amongst the wage-earners and, after their model, among all the 
 groups of higher employees. The old ideal of the individual 
 worker who sells his labour-power when, where, and how he 
 wishes, has almost disappeared before the social ideal of association 
 for common wages and work. The non-Unionist does indeed 
 still survive in considerable numbers, but he has wholly lost the 
 leadership. And what distinguishes the German Trade Unionists, 
 so far as we can see, from the older English movement is their 
 greater sense of solidarity and discipline, which they have won 
 for themselves against the wishes of the Government and the 
 employing class, in spite of anti-Socialist laws and police perse- 
 cution. The German masses are determined to be organised ; 
 that is their principle of life. It is not a sufficient explanation to 
 say that they have organised to increase their power to bargain 
 for higher wages. Any one who is in touch with Trade Unionists 
 knows that a reasonable private selfishness is only one element in 
 their policy, and in the case of the leading men not the dominant 
 element. They have worked out for themselves their Trade 
 Union ideal of life — an ideal narrow and stifF, no doubt, as was 
 only to be expected from small men with a small scope and 
 horizon, but firm and consistent and clear in itself. The idea of 
 the impersonal industrial guidance of the masses as regards the 
 sale and utilisation of labour is winning its way through and 
 becoming self-evident. In this respect the German worker 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 223 
 
 difiers from his Latin neighbours : for what is called Socialism 
 in France and Italy, although nominally and theoretically related 
 to the German Trade Union movement, lacks the hard core of 
 inner firmness attained by our Socialist and other Trade Union 
 corporations. 
 
 " And not only the wage-earner but the middle class is tread- 
 ing the same path ; the scientists, the teachers of various grades, 
 the scholars, the doctors, even the artists. The old craftsmen's 
 guilds are breaking out into new life and adapting themselves to 
 the changed conditions of the time. With all the strife of our 
 conflicting interests and associations we are a homogeneous people 
 — magnificently homogeneous in this mode of practical organisa- 
 tion of our work and life, the joint product of the elementary 
 school, universal military service, the police system, organised 
 knowledge and Socialist propaganda. We hardly knew that at 
 bottom we all had the same ideal — that of the regulation of labour, 
 the mark of the second phase of capitalism, which can be de- 
 scribed as the transition from private capitalism to Socialism, 
 provided the word Socialism is interpreted, not as a proletarian 
 phenomenon merely, but in a wide and free sense as the ordering 
 of the people with a view to the increase of the common pro- 
 duction of all for all. 
 
 " It is this new German man who is so unintelligible to the 
 individualist peoples. He seems to them partly a relapse into old 
 unfree medixval days and partly an artificial creation which 
 denies and does violence to humanity. In the educated circles of 
 Paris and London men regard this German type with mingled 
 feelings of pity, awe, respect, and repulsion. Even if they were 
 capable of achieving the same there, they would not wish to do 
 so, for they have not this discipline of soul, nor do they desire it, 
 for it would mean the surrender of their own soul. No one can 
 understand this fully unless he has on occasion tried to see 
 Germany from outside through the eyes of strangers. From the 
 German who only knows Germany the inner strength of this 
 contrast must remain hidden ; he does not feel how strange he 
 has become to just the best men among the Western peoples, not 
 through any single thing that he does, but simply through what 
 he is." 
 
 The joint product of the elementary school^ universal 
 military service^ the police system, organised knowledge, 
 and Socialist propaganda — there we get the scheme of 
 
224 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 modern German life in its totality. It is only by study- 
 ing the new German type of man in the light of this 
 commentary that we can understand the inner connection 
 between the various elements in German life which, seen 
 from the outside, seem so discordant, but yet have com- 
 bined to produce this " homogeneous " result. Patriotism 
 and Socialism, Syndicalism and Militarism, philosophy 
 and Bureaucracy and Trade Unionism have all contributed 
 their part towards the construction of the modern German 
 ideal : and the name of that ideal is Organisation : 
 
 " In these days," says our author, " every Government office, 
 every party and every society is pulling out its notebook and 
 putting down ideas for improvements after the war. I would 
 wager that three-quarters of these notebooks contain the words. 
 Better Organisation ! . . . Fichte and Hegel nod approval from 
 the walls. The German after the war will be a servant of the 
 State as never before in his daily work. His ideal is and remains 
 Organisation, not random impulse : Reason, not a blind struggle 
 for existence. This is our freedom, our self-development. It is 
 with this that we shall have our great period in history, like other 
 victorious peoples in other times with other arts and excellences. 
 It is our period that is dawning, now that English Capitalism has 
 reached and passed its zenith, and for this our period we have 
 been prepared by the joint work of Frederick the Great, Kant, 
 Scharnhorst, Siemens, Krupp, Bismarck, Bebel, Legien, Kirdorf, 
 and Ballin." 
 
 How do we in Britain stand in relation to this 
 phenomenon, and what have we to learn from it, and 
 in particular, how does it stand in relation to the tradi- 
 tions and ideals of our own Labour Movement ? 
 
 III. Principles and Ideals of the British Labour 
 Movement 
 
 England is the oldest of the industrial countries. 
 Her inventors and manufacturers were the pioneers of 
 modern industrial development and her idealists and 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 225 
 
 reformers were the pioneers of the modern Labour Move- 
 ment. She has the oldest industrial tradition and the 
 oldest, most highly skilled, and most firmly rooted work- 
 ing class. To the dweller in a Cathedral city or a county 
 town in the south of England, cities like Manchester and 
 Birmingham, and still more Huddersfield and Rochdale 
 and Stoke-on-Trent may seem crude and raw and modern ; 
 but compared with Essen and Elberfeld and Chemnitz, 
 as with Kansas City and Pittsburg, they are stable and 
 venerable communities. They have long since passed 
 through their industrial revolution and settled down. 
 Changes in machinery and organisation there must always 
 be, but the tingling excitement that thrills through our 
 German author's pages, springing from a sense of new 
 worlds just discovered, with immeasurable reactions upon 
 human life and association, has long since passed away. 
 The mental experience that England passed through 
 between 1780 and 1840 and France, in a lesser degree, 
 under Louis Philippe and Napoleon III., Germany is 
 passing through under William II,, and is inviting Austria- 
 Hungary and the Balkans to enjoy under her aegis in the 
 coming generation. British readers may be excused, 
 therefore, for detecting, beneath all the pomp of German 
 verbiage and all the undeniable record of German achieve- 
 ment, something a little naive and mediaeval and almost 
 childlike in their general outlook. The British workmen, 
 too, once worshipped Reason with a capital " R " in the 
 pages of Tom Paine, and set all his hopes, with Robert 
 Owen, on the Principle of Association. But he has learnt 
 much and suffered much since that first schoolboy flush 
 of idealism, and more especially he has learnt, in his social 
 ideas and projects of organisation, to keep his feet firmly 
 fixed upon the ground of experience and common sense. 
 He does not, like the German, worship Organisation as 
 an ideal, but prefers to refer new ideas to a rough standard 
 of human values which he has worked out for himself, 
 and to ask what effect they would have on life as he 
 
226 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 knows it at present and as, in his moments of insight 
 and inspiration, he thinks it may yet become. 
 
 The modern British Labour Movement originated^ in 
 1 792 with the foundation of the London Corresponding 
 Society by Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker's assistant from 
 Stirling. During the five generations that have since 
 elapsed it can claim to have led the way for the world 
 both in ideas and achievements. " The working class," 
 the writer once heard a Russian exile declare to an audience 
 of American working men, " the working class, comrades, 
 has four legs, and unless it has all four at once it cannot 
 stand upright. These four are the Trade Union, the 
 Co-operative Movement, the Political Movement, and 
 Education. We in Russia have had the last without any 
 of the others, and what good has it done us ? ^ Here, 
 in America, where the working class is free, there is no 
 Co-operative Movement, and the Political Movement is 
 slow to come to birth. England has had the first two 
 for many generations, she has the third in the Political 
 Labour Party, and now she is growing the fourth in the 
 Workers' Educational Association." In truth, the out- 
 standing events In working-class development thrpughout 
 the world during the last century were all due to British 
 initiative. Trade Unionism, Co-operation, Mutual In- 
 surance, Socialism, Factory legislation, working-class 
 political organisation, all originated in this country. 
 Just as our scientists and manufacturers and merchants 
 and bankers invented the steam-engine, the spinning 
 jenny, the limited company, and the cheque-book, so our 
 workmen both at home and in the Dominions have been 
 feeling their way through many failures, as all Inventors 
 do, towards stable and satisfactory ways of harmonising 
 modern Industrial life, in all its ruthlessness, with indi- 
 vidual security, political freedom, and social well-being. 
 
 Yet, though the British Labour Movement, in the 
 
 1 The reference was to the revolutionary educational movement of the 
 mid-nineteenth century, which was carried on largely by university students. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 227 
 
 widest sense of the words, has been a model for the world, 
 it has retained certain characteristics of its own which 
 mark it out from parallel movements in other countries. 
 " Economic conditions," says one of the profoundest of 
 our living historians,* "will not of themselves produce 
 a Trade Union nor religious convictions a church. . . . 
 There is nothing in which the different races of mankind 
 and the separate branches of these races differ so much as 
 in their aptitude for free association, and in the forms 
 which that aptitude takes. It is a divergence not so much 
 of religious convictions as of social characteristics which 
 makes the Christian Church such a different institution 
 in Germany and in England, in Scotland and in South 
 Africa." The Socialist Movement in the various forms 
 of its appeals and propaganda, as adapted to different 
 countries in which it works, would have been an equally 
 apt illustration. " Social character of this kind," Pro- 
 fessor Unwin continues, "must not be thought of as 
 innate and as springing up spontaneously in each fresh 
 generation. To a large extent it is transmitted through 
 conscious imitation of the older generation by the younger, 
 of the class which has achieved organisation by that which 
 has not." There are few countries in which this process 
 of social imitation works more strongly than in England, 
 or in which, as a result, a sense of social continuity and 
 the force of tradition are more marked. Two charac- 
 teristics of that tradition must be mentioned here : for 
 they are essential to an understanding of the inner spirit 
 of the Labour Movement. 
 
 In the first place, the Labour Movement in this 
 country has always set before itself a moral and social 
 ideal. It has never conceived of itself as engaged simply 
 in a struggle for ascendancy, and for the material fruits 
 which ascendancy would bring with it. It has never 
 preached the doctrine of the class-struggle in the way in 
 
 ' "Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," 
 by George Unwin, p. i. 
 
228 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 which many Continental Socialists have preached it, and 
 as the struggle between nations and " cultures " is being 
 preached in Germany to-day. The thinkers and writers 
 and speakers who have been influential in the British 
 movement have almost all been moralists — that is, men 
 interested in human nature and in the betterment of 
 human life rather than in the promotion of outward forms 
 of equality or the working out of tidy and logical methods 
 of organisation. Tom Payne and Cobbett and Robert 
 Owen, the early Chartists and Co-operators, Carlyle and 
 Ruskin, Arnold Toynbee, and William Morris, Keir 
 Hardie and Robert Blatchford of the Clarion, they have 
 alljlike their earliest predecessor John Ball in the fourteenth 
 century, and the Levellers in the seventeenth, been 
 prophets and preachers rather than economists or devotees 
 of *' organisation." Even when, like Robert Owen, they 
 set their whole hope in " a New View of Society," they 
 did so with a clear and definite moral end, and the open- 
 ing page of Owen's collected writings, not unlike 
 Naumann in its naivety, may serve to mark the contrast 
 between the spirit of the two men and their countries. 
 " These writings" he says, in a statement printed in capital 
 letters, "are intended to effect an entire Revolution in the 
 spirit, mind, manners, habits, and conduct of the human race ; 
 . . . a Revolution which will destroy every ignorant selfish 
 feeling, will unite man to man and will then harmonise all to 
 Nature and God, making the Globe an ever improving earthly 
 Paradise, which is now evidently the intention of our Creator^ 
 This characteristic of the British movement is due 
 partly to the close connection which has always existed — 
 even in the time of Tom Paine and Shelley — between the 
 Labour Movement and the religious spirit, and especially 
 to its contact with Nonconformity. This is, perhaps, the 
 greatest point of difference between the British and 
 Continental movements, for if there is one thing more 
 difficult than another to explain to an intelligent foreigner 
 it is Nonconformity. No one who only knew the British 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 229 
 
 Labour Movement from outside and from its journals 
 could realise how many and intimate are its connections 
 with religion and to how large an extent it is the legiti- 
 mate descendant, adapted to altered circumstances, of 
 the old Puritan spirit. " You jeer at the name Leveller," 
 wrote Winstanley in 1649, "I tell you Jesus is the 
 head Leveller." " To none in my peculiar mental make- 
 up," wrote Blatchford in his burning chapter in " Merrie 
 England " on " the self-made man," " am I more indebted 
 than to Jesus Christ, . . . His will expressly bids me 
 treat all men as brothers. And to the extent of my 
 indebtedness to Christ am I bound to pay all men his 
 heirs." In its hatred of oppression and injustice ; in its 
 unexpected outbursts of sentiment (as in its spasmodic 
 interest in the problems of native races or foreign affairs) ; 
 in its tenacity and grit and patience ; in its power of 
 self-deception which its enemies like to call cant ; above 
 all in its native manliness and its healthy and never-failing 
 idealism, the spirit of the seventeenth century is still 
 alive amongst us. It was Cromwell who used the power 
 of England to intervene on behalf of the oppressed 
 mountaineers of Savoy. It was his spiritual descendants 
 who understood in a flash the meaning of the invasion of 
 Belgium. 
 
 This leads us on to the second great distinguishing 
 mark of the British movement — the stress it has always 
 laid on the importance of personal independence. " York- 
 shire people," remarks Charlotte Bronte,^ who knew them 
 well, " are as yielding to persuasion as they are stubborn 
 against compulsion," adding, in Victorian idiom, that 
 '* taken as they ought to be," they are " ladies and gentle- 
 men every inch of them." The remark applies far beyond 
 the bounds of her own W^est Riding. It is, indeed, one 
 of the keynotes of English working-class history from the 
 days of John Ball and the Peasants' Revolt onward. To 
 the British workman freedom has never meant " perfect 
 
 ' " Shirley," chap. xx. 
 
230 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 service " or " self-realisation " or " organisation " or 
 anything else so metaphysical. It has always meant the 
 sense of being personally and individually free, or, as a 
 recent psychological writer has put it, a sense of " the 
 continuous possibility of initiative." The British work- 
 man would rather " feel free " than be a part of the most 
 efficient " organism " in the world. This does not mean 
 that he prefers anarchy to obedience or licence to govern- 
 ment. Our political and industrial record is the b^st 
 answer on that point. But it does mean that the British 
 workman has a rooted objection, which no amount of 
 argument will remove, to institutions and forms of organi- 
 sation which in Naumann's phrase, " deny and do violence 
 to humanity." He dislikes the feeling of being a cog in a 
 machine : he rebels against " impersonal economic guid- 
 ance" : he objects to becoming a standardised human unit ; 
 and where he suspects standardisation and mechanical 
 uniformity and the pressure of a soul-destroying discipline 
 or organisation his soul is instinctively in revolt. One 
 need not search far for illustrations of this deep-lying 
 truth. It accounts for a number of phenomena which 
 must be a puzzle to Continental observers — for the tradi- 
 tional abhorrence of the workhouise and the equally deep- 
 rooted dislike of the benevolent feudalism of " model 
 employers " and " model landlords," for the essentially 
 voluntary character of British Trade Unionism, in spite 
 of the obvious advantages of using the law to make them 
 " black-leg " proof, for the reluctance to submit to com- 
 pulsory arbitration and compulsory military service, for 
 the distrust of Government interference even when 
 accompanied (as in the Insurance Act) by the best inten- 
 tions, for the chaotic growth and easy-going methods of 
 Trade Union organisation, the dislike of centralisation 
 with its consequent loss of personal touch and the slow- 
 ness in adopting schemes of amalgamation,* above all, 
 
 1 There are about 4,000,000 Trade Unionists in the United Kingdom, 
 divided between 1,135 separate Unions, whereas the main division of the 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 231 
 
 for the steady increase in the feeling that the real problem 
 before the working class is that of counteracting the 
 dehumanising tendencies of modern large-scale production 
 by securing for the workers a greater share in the control 
 of the conditions under which they labour. 
 
 All this amounts to little more than saying that the 
 British Labour Movement is not French or German or 
 American, but British, It has grown out of the British 
 character, like the British Commonwealth, and reflects 
 that character both in its strength and in its weakness. 
 It is as different from the German movement as a British 
 Colony from a German Colony. It is, in fact, intensely 
 national. The rich are often national in their sentiments 
 but cosmopolitan in their mode of life : the poor, by 
 necessity, are national in both. 
 
 But the British Labour Movement is far more national 
 than either the German or the American, for, unlike them, 
 it has its roots in a historic past There is little of the 
 traditional Germany to be seen in the organised " Central 
 European " of to-day. " Entry into the Central European 
 economy," says Naumann, "is a soul-transforming 
 decision," just as, for the hundreds of thousands of 
 immigrants who pass the Statute of Liberty every year, 
 entry into the United States means an irrevocable break 
 with their Old World past. The German workman, like 
 the American, is first and foremost an " economic man." 
 It is not nationality but the economic machine, which 
 knows nothing of nations and persons, that has set the 
 distinctive mark, which we know so well, on their souls 
 and faces. The true national quality is underneath, sub- 
 merged and forgotten, " hustled " or " organised " out of 
 consciousness. Just as behind the cold, set, expression- 
 less features of the German under his helmet there lurks a 
 reminiscence at moments of the good-natured sentimental 
 
 German Labour Movement — that affiliated to the Social Democratic Party — 
 numbered in 191 3 about 2,500,000 members, divided between only forty-eight 
 Mparate unions. 
 
232 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 " dear, stupid Germans " of the days of Queen Vic- 
 toria, so the face of the typical American " hustler " is 
 as a mask behind which one can detect Puritan England 
 or Ireland or Bohemia or Italy or Jewry or whatever his 
 spiritual heritage may happen to be.' 
 
 It is because Germany and the United States have cut 
 themselves ofF from the past in their industrial develop- 
 ment that their efficiency seems to us so sinister and im- 
 personal in its manifestations. They have a tabula rasa 
 to work on, and we feel as if they could make of it what 
 they will ; they have sloughed off the old world with its 
 limitations and deficiencies and weaknesses. But we may 
 easily forget they have sloughed off with it great elements 
 of strength and idealism also. Their choice of efficiency 
 against tradition is not pure gain, nor is ours pure weak- 
 ness. Be that as it may, we have made our choice. It is 
 made for us by our national history, which has given us 
 the character we have to-day. We cannot standardise or 
 Prussianise our workers. We cannot submit them to the 
 industrial conscription {Arbeitsmilitarismui) of Germany 
 or the " scientific management " of America. Our em- 
 ployers and government officials are too tolerant and 
 our workmen are too independent. The masters are not 
 cold-blooded enough and the men too little submissive. 
 All parties, in short, are too British. "Scientific managers," 
 says a recent American investigator, " by the very nature 
 of their occupations and experiences, cannot approach 
 any real comprehension of the peculiar conditions and 
 relations that create the aims, attitudes, problems, stan- 
 dards, and ideals of the workers." ^ Our captains of 
 industry cannot so ignore human nature, nor would the 
 British workman put up with it if they did. 
 
 What, then, are we to do in view of our admitted 
 deficiencies .'' How are we to meet the world after the 
 war — the ruthless, efficient, organised, large-scale world in 
 
 1 "Scientific Management and Labour,'' by R. F. Hoxie, New York, 
 1915. Page 120. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 233 
 
 which the Germans have set the pace ? Our duty is clear. 
 It is frankly to set up our industrial ideal and our system 
 of life against theirs. Not to bow down in blind adoration 
 before the demigods of efficiency and the latest exponents 
 of Divine right, but to use our own talents, and to bring 
 forth out of our national treasurehouse things both old 
 and new. To repair, to correct, to improve, to build up, 
 but always in the light of our own tradition, which has 
 made us what we are. To maintain and deepen and justify 
 our faith in the unity of the spirit of man. To preserve 
 and extend that inner flow and connection between the 
 soul and the intellect, between knowledge and virtue, 
 which, by sweetening the mind and purifying the purpose 
 of the brain worker and blessing the manual worker with 
 a deep wisdom of his own, enables each to supplement 
 the other and draws both within the circle of a common 
 humanity. To believe that since men are men and not 
 gods or machines, an organisation so ordered and so 
 manned as the German must ultimately fail through the 
 human limitations of its directors and the moral atrophy 
 of the slaves who man it. Not to concentrate power and 
 initiative into the heads of a few experts, but to diffuse 
 responsibility as widely as possible amongst a community 
 of free men. "Heroes and great men," wrote a great 
 Russian writer recently,^ " are to be found everywhere, 
 in Germany as well as in England, but no other country 
 can boast so extraordinarily good a type of average man 
 as England. . , . No other literature has given us such 
 an attractive, lovable and, above all, familiar type of the 
 average person. I look at the Englishman of Kipling 
 and of Dickens with the greatest reverence and affection, 
 and I shake them by their strong reluctant hands." Let 
 us take courage by seeing ourselves as our best friends 
 see us. The stuff of which our writers made their heroes 
 is still with us. We are still, what AndreiefF calls us, 
 
 1 «' God Save England," by Leonard Andreieff : Times Literary Supple- 
 ment. March i, 1916. 
 
234 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 before all else " a nation of men," and not in machinery 
 nor in experts but in character of the average man lies 
 our salvation. 
 
 IV. Industrial Policy after the War 
 
 In what direction, if not to Germany, are we to look 
 for the changes that, as is generally admitted, are neces- 
 sary in our social economy ? 
 
 This is not the place to outline a programme in detail, 
 but a few suggestions must be added in order to indicate 
 the bearings of the foregoing remarks. Only strictly 
 labour problems will be touched on : nothing can be said 
 about other matters, such as education and housing, 
 which, though of predominant interest to the working 
 class, are not industrial problems in the strict sense of 
 the term. 
 
 The British working class is divided, and some- 
 what sharply divided, into two sections. Out of some 
 1 5,000,000 manual workers, male and female, 4,000,000 
 are organised into Trade Unions, and the remaining 
 1 1,000,000 are unorganised. It is this latter class which 
 has the most pressing claim on the attention of Parlia- 
 ment : for it consists of men and women who are, for the 
 most part, not in a position to overcome their difficulties 
 without the aid of the State. 
 
 It is this miscellaneous, unorganised working-class 
 population, in town and country, both in the army and 
 at home, which has been most affected in its ideas and 
 demands by the war. These are the men and women 
 who form the material of Mr. Rown tree's and Professor 
 Bowley's appalling statistics of " primary poverty " ; 
 these are the " 1 2,000,000 always on the verge of starva- 
 tion," of whom Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman used 
 to remind us. The lower stratum of this section of 
 the population presents, or presented before the war, 
 a spectacle of helplessness and wretchedness unique 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 235 
 
 in the industrial life of the modern world. They are 
 the wreckage of five generations of the modern industrial 
 system. '* It is hardly disputable," says a recent writer/ 
 in words which observers from the Continent and America 
 have often endorsed, " that millions of electors in the 
 greater British cities have reached a point of personal 
 decadence — physical, mental, and moral — to which no 
 Continental country furnishes a parallel on any comparable 
 scale." This is the other side of the medal — the converse 
 to the self-help and personal independence of the organised 
 Labour Movement. Just as our best is the best in the 
 world, so our worst is among the worst. Those who 
 wish to live in imagination through the daily round of the 
 unorganised worker and the casual labourer, to share its 
 racking anxieties, its bitter humiliations, its joyless excite- 
 ments, should turn from statistics and sociological gene- 
 ralisations to the poignant self-revelation of one of their 
 own members. "TheRagged-TrouseredPhilanthropists,"^ 
 by Robert Tressall, house-painter and sign writer, is not 
 only a precise and careful record, written with a realism 
 and a firmness of touch that are almost French, of a certain 
 section of working-class life, but it also enables the thinking 
 regder to form some conception of the immense revolu- 
 tion which the war must have caused in thousands of 
 working-class minds and households. 
 
 For to this section of the population the war is the 
 beginning of a new life. It has broken the crust of imme- 
 morial custom. It has given them what they lacked 
 before : a horizon. It has brought comparative plenty in 
 many cases where before there was perpetual want. It has 
 brought health where before there was perpetual lassitude. 
 It has brought hope where before there was dull despair. 
 For such as these there can be no relapse into the old 
 morass. It remains for the State by deliberate action to 
 fortify this new sense of hopefulness and self-respect. 
 
 1 Ensor, R. C. K. " Modern Socialism," p. xlvii. 
 ^ Grant Richards, 1913. 
 
236 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 A bold extension of the Trade Boards Act to large new 
 classes of workers both in town and country, coupled with 
 the assertion, on Australian lines, of the principle of the 
 living wage, would seem to be one natural way of coping 
 with this inevitably pressing problem.^ 
 
 Passing from the unorganised to the organised workers, 
 perhaps the clearest need is for internal changes in the 
 Trade Union movement as a whole and in the separate 
 Unions, which shall make the industrial democracy and 
 responsible Government of the working class more of a 
 reality. Constitutional reorganisation and a closer touch 
 between the leaders and the rank and file is urgently 
 required. The Trade Union Movement is built up on 
 the same principles as political democracy. It aims at 
 introducing, so far as possible, into industrial life the 
 principles of free and responsible government. Yet it 
 has not yet succeeded in securing full acceptance for those 
 principles even among the ranks of its own members, 
 among whom there has been an increasing tendency in 
 recent years to substitute Prussian for British models of 
 policy and action. An article, signed Rob Roy, in the 
 editorial page of the Glasgow Forward of April 8 puts the 
 case with great clearness : 
 
 " The members of a Trade Union frame a constitution, enact 
 rules, elect officials to administer their affairs and enforce their 
 rules. When the strain comes, they throw their rules and their 
 
 1 What constitutes a minimum living wage was laid down in connection 
 with ithe Federal Act by Mr. Justice Higgins in the Federal Arbitration 
 Court of Australia on November ?, 1907, in the following terms, quoted in 
 the British report on the Australian system, Cd. 4.167, p. 217 : " If ' A ' lets 
 ' B ' have the use of his horses, on the terms that he gives them fair and 
 reasonable treatment, I have no doubt that it is ' B's ' duty to give them 
 proper food and water and such shelter and rest as they need ; and, as wages 
 are the means of obtaining commodities, surely the State, in stipulating for 
 fair and reasonable remuneration for the employees, means that the wages 
 shall be sufficient to provide these things, and clothing, and a condition of 
 frugal comfort estimated by current human needs." The British Trade 
 Boards are not at present guided in their determinations of minimum rates by 
 the principle of the living wage. 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 237 
 
 leaders overboard. If this sort of strain comes often, Trade 
 Unionism may order its coffin. That is anarchy, not organisation. 
 *Our only hope lay in drastic action by ourselves.^ I regref to 
 say it, but the last words seem to me to bear their own condemna- 
 tion. If every group is to take drastic action when its grievance 
 is not remedied at once, and according to its wishes, then Trade 
 Union brothers may write ' Ichabod ' on their offices. If a group 
 has a good case it can surely rely on convincing its own officials 
 of the justice of the case. Should that process fail, the appeal to 
 all fellow-members is still open to it. If the common sense of 
 all refuses to be convinced, then the group must put its case 
 better, or acknowledge that that case is so weak as to be uncon- 
 vincing. Industrial Democracy can't justify itself on Anarchist 
 principles. An instinctive appeal to violence, h la Sore/, is a 
 denial of Democracy — industrial and otherwise. 
 
 "But I am told the men distrust their official leaders. Who 
 elected the leaders ? To take the measure of a man's ability and 
 character, after years of observation, is a comparatively easy task 
 for the human mind. On the whole the Trade Unions choose 
 well. They may miss a genius, but they keep out rank incom- 
 petents. Prestige of birth and connection or inherited privilege 
 doesn't count with them, and by so much they are better in their 
 methods than, let us say, a good many established European 
 institutions, which shall be nameless. Trade Union officials may 
 be all that impatient and insurgent minorities call them. Will 
 those minorities devise better methods of getting the right man 
 into the right place ? If they can't — and they have never shown 
 how — will they accept the disagreeable and slow compulsion of 
 the appeal to reason ? They have a free field and no favour. 
 They can bring the majority round to their way of thinking, or 
 they can adopt the Prussian method of imposing their will on the 
 plea of necessity and force, Prussianism crops up in queer ways 
 and queer quarters — not least among our pacifist friends, who 
 would assume all the privileges of Junkerdom right off the reel 
 if only they could." 
 
 This spirit will, however, not be exorcised by the 
 mere preaching of obedience. It has partly arisen from 
 inelastic constitutional methods which throw too little 
 responsibility and initiative upon the local ofHcials, and 
 partly from the inevitable disabilities under which they 
 suffer. Under the existing system of Trade Union 
 
238 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 organisation, by which the local officials attend to their 
 work in their spare time, it is impossible that they should 
 have an adequate sense of the relation between central 
 and local problems. To preserve unity and continuity 
 of policy without atrophying responsibility among the 
 local leaders and the rank and file is the problem in 
 democratic government which Trade Unionism has to 
 solve. 
 
 So far as to the internal organisation of the Trade 
 Union movement. But for what is that organisation to 
 be used ? The war may well prove a turning-point in 
 Trade Union policy and history. When Mr. Tennant, 
 on February 8, 19 15, Called upon the Labour leaders to 
 help the Government and employers out of a difficulty 
 by " organising the forces of labour," he was creating a 
 far-reaching precedent, which the successive subsequent 
 consultations of representative labour bodies have con- 
 firmed. Difficulties had arisen in the workshops all over 
 the country. Whose business was it to deal with them ? 
 On the old theory of what may be called industrial auto- 
 cracy it was solely the business of the " master " to deal 
 with "his men." On the new theory, now acknowledged 
 almost as a matter of course, it is also the business of the 
 leaders of the industrial democracy to which the men 
 belong. The various consultations and conferences that 
 have taken place mark the devolving of a share of the 
 responsibility for the carrying on of the industrial work 
 of the country on to the Trade Unions and their leaders. 
 How far this new development will ultimately go no one 
 can yet say. What is certain, however, is that this accept- 
 ance of responsibility by Labour is in the straight line of 
 the British political and industrial tradition. 
 
 The next step in advance seems clearly marked out. 
 It is the extension and development of the system of 
 Joint Committees which the War has brought into the 
 foreground. Joint Committees, both local and central, 
 of employers and Trade Union leaders have existed for 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 239 
 
 some years in most of the leading industries ; but their 
 functions have been confined to the discussion and, where 
 possible, the settlement of disputes. Even before the 
 war, Mr. Charles Booth, in an interesting pamphlet, had 
 suggested their extension into a more permanent form 
 of organisation with enlarged functions. He advocated 
 a scheme of " reciprocal recognition " of Trade Unions 
 by employers and of employers by Trade Unions, and 
 the establishment in this connection of " permanent Joint 
 Committees, representing masters and men, for consul- 
 tative purposes." These Joint Committees should, in 
 his view, be at liberty to discuss *' all matters of mutual 
 concern," amongst which he especially mentions questions 
 of apprenticeship and juvenile labour.^ 
 
 Mr. Booth's suggestion of " reciprocal recognition " 
 raises a point which must not be ignored. When matters 
 afFecting a trade or industry as a whole are under dis- 
 cussion it is as important to secure the collective consent 
 of the employers as that of the men. The non-federated 
 master is just as much a problem as the non-Unionist or 
 " rebel " group of workmen. " As the difficulties in the 
 Docks of London made clear only two years ago," writes 
 Professor Ashley, "the great obstacles in the way of 
 industrial peace are not only the extremists on the 
 Labour side, but also the employers (often comparatively 
 small employers) who refuse to be bound by an em- 
 ployers' agreement to which they were not individually 
 parties." * 
 
 Such an extension of the functions of Joint Com- 
 mittees as Mr. Booth suggests would not prevent 
 disputes or even strikes ; but it would lead to a state 
 of feeling whjch would make disputes less likely to occur, 
 and easier to settle when they did occur. Such Joint 
 Boards would have the great advantage of keeping the 
 
 ' " Industrial Unrest and Trade Union Policy," pp. 24-25. 
 * "The Economic Organisation of England ; an Outline History." 1914. 
 Page 190. 
 
240 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 two sides in constant touch. If set up not only nationally 
 but locally they might be of very great help in questions 
 of workshop discipline and supervision, where there are 
 far larger economies to be made than is generally realised 
 in the avoidance of friction and the improvement of 
 relations between the two parties. Friction is not only 
 unpleasant : it is expensive : it reduces output and costs 
 money in supervision. 
 
 There is another more important duty which would 
 fall to the share of such Joint Boards. They would have 
 to deal with the difficult questions opened up by the 
 Governnlent's pledge for the restoration of Trade Union 
 rules. Trade Union regulations are, in effect, an 
 endeavour on the part of the workers to control the 
 conditions of their industrial life. They deal with such 
 questions as wages, hours of labour, overtime and Sunday 
 work, apprenticeship and method of entry into an occupa- 
 tion, the kind of work to be done by different classes 
 of workers, method of negotiation with employers, and 
 other similar matters. In other words, they attempt to 
 substitute for the supreme and autocratic control of the 
 employer over the working lives of his employees (which 
 before the days of Trade Unionism and the awakening of 
 the public conscience on the matter led to grave injury 
 to the community) a greater and greater degree of self- 
 direction by the organised workers themselves through 
 their representatives. But, hitherto, the Trade Unions 
 have had no place in the administration of the industrial 
 society, and such control as they have in the past obtained 
 has been exerted from without and not from within. This 
 is not the place to discuss the character and scope of 
 Trade Union rules. It is, however, not unlikely that the 
 changes brought about by the war will render some of 
 the more important of them inapplicable ; in which case 
 the nation will be able to fulfil its promise only by offer- 
 ing an alternative solution. 
 
 The conditions of such a solution would naturally 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 241 
 
 form the subject of discussion in the joint bodies already 
 suggested. No doubt they would first be discussed 
 separately both by employers and by labour: and they 
 will also have formed a subject of careful study, con- 
 ducted, industry by industry, on the part of the Govern- 
 ment. But the final adjustment of the problem, and the 
 settlement of the conditions under which the nation is to 
 be launched on its work of industrial reconstruction, can 
 only be reached at a series of national conferences at which 
 both sides are represented. It will be for the Govern- 
 ment to convoke such conferences and to have its own 
 schemes ; but only through an agreement of the re- 
 presentatives of the two parties can they be carried 
 into execution and the nation be saved from drifting 
 back into the precarious condition of "armed peace" 
 which characterised British industrial life before the 
 war. 
 
 There is no space here to develop these suggestions 
 further : to indicate them is enough: to show that there 
 is a British alternative to Prussian methods of industrial 
 regulation : that the adaptation to industrial life of the 
 spirit and principles of our political institutions is judged 
 by cool heads to be practicable : and that it is likely to 
 develop, as British inventions do, through being tested by 
 piecemeal experiments adapted to the peculiar conditions 
 in each particular case. " Society is feeling the way," to 
 quote Professor Ashley again, " with painful steps towards 
 a corporate organisation of industry on the side alike of 
 employer and employed : to be then more harmoniously, 
 let us hope, associated together — with the State alert and 
 intelligent in the background to protect the interests of 
 the community." It should be the privilege of Britain 
 to base that new corporate association on those principles 
 which, as embodied in political institutions, we and our 
 Allies are pledged to uphold. For, in the industrial field, 
 as in the political, there is a clear conflict of spirit and 
 principles between Prussianism and the Commonwealth : 
 
242 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 and we shall be false to ourselves and to posterity did we 
 not strive, without haste yet without rest, to apply to our 
 own domestic problems those very ideals, home-grown 
 and familiar, yet sufficing, which our dead have entrusted 
 to our keeping. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION » 
 
 During the last two months a change has come over the 
 people of this country so noteworthy, and yet so silent 
 and indefinable, as to deserve attention in these pages ; 
 for no outside observer could discover it for himself 
 from our newspapers, nor could he easily interpret it 
 from the external demeanour of the population in street 
 or train or office. It is a change of which most men and 
 women are aware within themselves and of which, if they 
 are observant and sensitive, they are conscious also in 
 those around them, but which few care to acknowledge, 
 still less to analyse, for to do so would stir the depths, 
 and that the Englishman dislikes. This silent revolution 
 is the reaction upon Britain of the great advance. 
 
 The greatest revolutions in this country have always 
 been silent revolutions. We have always realised that 
 outward changes are of no avail unless men's minds have 
 been prepared beforehand to profit by them. We know 
 that new social classes cannot be created in a moment to 
 undertake the new tasks which may be ready for them. 
 We have always believed in progress as a broadening 
 down from precedent to precedent, and attempted to 
 make ready the workmen before summoning them out 
 to the harvest-field. English history is a record of 
 startling achievements ushered in by silent revolutions. 
 Without Wiclif and the Lollards there would have been 
 no Reformation ; without the Puritans no Revolution ; 
 without Wesley and the Evangelicals no abolition of the 
 slave trade and no Factory Acts ; without the philosophic 
 
 ' From The Round Table, September, 191 6. 
 243 
 
244 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Radicals no colonial self-government ; without Thomas 
 Arnold and the public school system no Indian Civil 
 Service ; without the forty years' devoted labour of the 
 elementary teacher no Kitchener's Army. It is the quiet 
 work of the mind that makes revolutions possible. With- 
 out a change of outlook all external change is meaning- 
 less. But if the inner change has taken place, everything 
 is possible, even the moving of mountains. And it is 
 this silent inner change which is preparing the way for 
 the new world after the war. 
 
 It is a change which is strangely compounded of the 
 spirit of hope and the spirit of sacrifice — of the sense of 
 coming victory and the ache of personal loss. We know 
 now that the Empire and what it stands for are saved, 
 that the old country will " carry on " for generations to 
 come. But we know, too, that for tens of thousands life 
 has henceforth lost much of its personal meaning, that 
 there are gaps in the home circle which will never be 
 filled, and that life will be a lonely pilgrimage to the end. 
 Personal affections and ambitions have made way for a 
 bigger cause. Life seems wider and more impersonal. 
 Our fellow-countrymen seem nearer to us. Rank and 
 class seem to count for less. All have suflFered alike and 
 all have served alike, and all have the same world to live 
 in and to repair — a world that seems lonely at times 
 beyond all bearing, yet is lit up with the flame of sacrifice 
 and the undying memory of those who are gone. 
 
 How can we best bear our testimony to the spirit in 
 which they died ? That is the question which underlies 
 the activity which has sprung up during the last few 
 months round the idea of reconstruction after the war. 
 When reconstruction was first publicly mentioned in a 
 House of Lords debate last December the idea that was 
 in most men's minds was the difficulty of the sudden 
 transition from a war to a peace footing. The Govern- 
 ment was urged to prepare a " Peace-book " on the 
 analogy of the " War-book " prepared by the Committee 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 245 
 
 of Imperial Defence. But in the months that have since 
 intervened reconstruction has taken on a wider scope. 
 People have come to realise that what is needed is not a 
 mere transitory programme to enable life to resume its 
 normal pre-war channel, but some larger and more per- 
 manent policy, conceived in the spirit which the war has 
 revealed. Less and less do we feel inclined to go back 
 to " Business as usual," with all the narrow habits of 
 thought and action that it implies. It cannot, we feel, 
 ever really be " business as usual " with so many gone. 
 There is a sense that an effort must be made to lift our 
 whole public life, both on its political and economic sides, 
 above the petty and disastrous contentiousness which 
 disfigured it before the war. Men who have breathed 
 the larger air of common sacrifice are reluctant to return 
 to the stuffy air of self-seeking. 
 
 There is another respect in which a change is to be 
 felt. "We have become more acutely conscious than ever 
 before that there have been two Englands — one the 
 England of tradition, of the public, of the Army, of 
 Parliament, in later years of industry and finance, the 
 other the England of individuals who have maintained 
 their personal independence, but have had but a dependent 
 share in the great historic past. Many have discovered 
 for the first time, what every foreigner sees, and what 
 every Briton from across the oceans knows, that the 
 British are not a nation as the French are a nation, be- 
 cause the revolution of social equality has never yet been 
 made. The great mass of the nation are fighting even 
 now not for an England which is themselves, but for an 
 England which inherits noble traditions and fine qualities, 
 but which is separated from them by the impalpable barrier 
 of caste. This separation which has added bitterness to 
 every political and economic dispute, has been wonder- 
 fully bridged in the trenches. There is a growing sense 
 that it must be bridged at home. Social superiority and 
 privilege must give way to common humanity and 
 
246 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 common sacfifice. In future we must be a more united 
 and a more equal people than we have been in the past. 
 
 The efFects of these tendencies are still obscure, but 
 they are already to be seen in the programme of the work 
 allotted by the Government to the Reconstruction Com- 
 mittee presided over by the Prime Minister. The sub- 
 jects that are being inquired into by that body, working 
 through a number of carefully manned sub-committees, 
 cover a wide range of social and economic interest. Its 
 investigations are not confined merely to problems of 
 demobilisation, but cover " the entire range of subjects 
 which will call for immediate treatment at the close of 
 the war." The two most important of these are certainly 
 education and the organisation of industry. It has already 
 been announced that a Committee, presided over by Lord 
 Crewe, the new President of the Board of Education, has 
 been appointed to review the whole question of national 
 education in the light of the war. The industrial inquiry, 
 it may be imagined, will be on a similarly comprehensive 
 scale, designed to probe into the causes of the contrast 
 between the spirit of public service which the war has so 
 strikingly revealed in all classes of the community and 
 the habits and traditions of self-interest and class- 
 antagonism which have become endemic in our com- 
 mercial and industrial life. 
 
 Such inquiries go down to the very roots of our 
 national life. If the recommendations put forward are 
 wise and far-reaching, and the country is in a mood to 
 adopt them, we may see the beginning of a new epoch of 
 regenerative activity. For the most critical points in our 
 national defences are, and have been for some time, the 
 school, the workshop, and the slum. The war, as a 
 whole, has been a triumphant vindication of the spirit of 
 the country. But it has brought to light grave short- 
 comings, which it will need a generation of active work 
 to repair. And it is work that needs most of all to be 
 set on foot in the homes in which our children are reared, 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 247 
 
 both in town and country, in the classroom and the 
 teachers' training college whence their education proceeds, 
 and in the office and workshop where they spend the 
 greater part of their lives. 
 
 With the question of housing we do not propose to 
 deal. It is a large and complex problem for itself. What 
 was wrong with our pre-war organisation of industry can 
 be stated in one word. It was inhuman. The coming 
 of the joint-stock company and the growth of large-scale 
 undertakings had destroyed the old personal tie between 
 masters and men and the sense of common service to the 
 community that was associated with it. It has been 
 replaced by mechanical profit-making organisations, which 
 have not yet either been humanised or related to public 
 service. Trade Unions and Employers' Associations are 
 necessary parts of the organisation of a modern State, 
 and collective bargaining is clearly an advance on the 
 old unequal system of individual wage-contracts. But 
 collective bargaining between large-scale organisations of 
 employers and workmen involves a piling up of arma- 
 ments on both sides not unlike that of the rival European 
 groups before the war. At its best it preserves the peace 
 by establishing a precarious balance of power : at its 
 worst it precipitates a disastrous conflict : and, in either 
 case, whether it works well or ill for the moment, it is 
 non-moral and inhuman, for it has no basis in a sense of 
 common service or public duty. Hence it creates a 
 feeling of divided interest and permanent estrangement 
 which has been all too visible to the rest of the com- 
 munity during the recurring industrial crises of the last 
 ten years. 
 
 In this vicious situation a great national responsibility 
 rests upon the leaders of both groups of combatants. 
 " The ftiture of the community depends on them working 
 with and into one another." " The issues are too 
 tremendous to be left to tests of strength." These words 
 are quoted from the last book written by one who was 
 
248 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 both an employer and a teacher of economics, the late 
 Professor Smart of Glasgow : ^ and he goes on to give his 
 own remedy for improving the relations between Capital 
 and Labour. "If they are not to be regulated," he says, 
 " by a kind of martial law from above " (and Professor 
 Smarts who was no Socialist, had no love for State inter- 
 vention), " they must be regulated by conscience." It is a 
 very simple remedy — but how much more effective, if 
 men would adopt it, than Compulsory Arbitration or the 
 Munitions Act ! And Professor Smart goes on, out of his 
 own experience, to make a special appeal to employers. 
 
 " Personally," he says, " I count it (the employers' function) 
 the noblest profession of all, though, as a rule, it is taken up froin 
 anything but the noblest motives : and what I ask is — just this 
 and no more — that the traditions of the professions be transferred 
 to it — the noblesse oblige of living for their work and, if necessary, 
 dying for it. If an employer has any faith in the well-worn 
 analogy of an * army of industry ' he must believe in the necessity 
 of Captains of Industry, who think first of their country and their 
 men, and only second of their pay. ... He must take the sins 
 of his order upon himself and win back the confidence that mean- 
 while has disappeared. His task to-day, in fact, is very much that 
 of a philosopher-king who comes to his throne after many days of 
 misrule by his predecessors. He has no right to his honourable 
 position but that he governs divinely. And, if I am not mistaken, 
 the first thing that will test his worthiness for high office is the 
 attitude he takes up to Trade Unionism." 
 
 Partnership and a sense of common duty, in other 
 words, can only spring up out of mutual knowledge and 
 understanding ; and these cannot arise except as a result 
 of ordinary unrestrained human intercourse — of frank 
 and open conference by the leaders of both sides in the 
 questions of common interest to them both. The first 
 step to put into action the aspirations towards good will 
 which the sacred memories of the war are stirring on both 
 sides is the establishment of joint representative Com- 
 mittees in the various industries to meet and discuss the 
 
 1 "Second Thoughts of an Economist," 1916, pp. 152-3. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 249 
 
 problems of their common work. While we are thinking 
 of reconstruction and of re-establishing the Public Law 
 of Europe let us not forget the work of constructive 
 organisation on similar lines that awaits us at home. 
 
 The work that lies before us in the field of national 
 education is of a somewhat different kind. Here it is not 
 so much a change of spirit and system that are required, 
 but encouragement, consolidation, invigoration. The 
 war has indeed revealed grave shortcomings of detail in 
 English education, especially in its higher branches ; but 
 on the whole it has been a vindication of its essential 
 soundness. It has proved, us a nation not only sound 
 and strong in character but far more adaptable, both in 
 soldiering and in industry, than either we or our enemies 
 suspected. The number of our volunteers and the suc- 
 cess of the New Army in France are a historic tribute not 
 only to our homes but to our schools. Whatever may 
 be said in criticism of British education, let this outstand- 
 ing fact always be remembered. 
 
 But the grave defect of our national education is that 
 there is not enough of it. There are not enough children 
 in our elementary schools. There are not enough teachers 
 to teach them. There is not enough provision for edu- 
 cating the teachers, either before or after they have begun 
 teaching. There are not enough classrooms to make 
 good teaching in small classes possible. There are not 
 enough playing-fields to enable the elementary schools to 
 develop the corporate spirit by which battles are won. 
 There are not enough secondary schools available for the 
 children of the great mass of the population or sufficient 
 facilities for the children of poor parents to reach those 
 that exist. There is not enough access to the Universities, 
 either from the schools or for adult students. There is 
 not enough support for voluntary agencies, such as the 
 Workers' Educational Association and the Adult Schools, 
 which are trying to make democracy a reality by creating 
 an educated public opinion on current problems. There 
 
2 so NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 is not enough contact between the great organised pro- 
 fessions, including commerce and industry, and the 
 national centres of knowledge. In a word, we have a 
 system of education which, excellent in many of its parts, 
 and filled with devoted workers, is lacking in unity and 
 coherence, and testifies to a want of thought or of faith 
 on the part of the nation as a whole. 
 
 Such a condition of affairs cannot continue into a time 
 when men's minds will be concentrated on making up in 
 the next generation what they have lost in their own. 
 Great and far-reaching developments and extensions will 
 be demanded. Three only can be mentioned here. The 
 status of the teaching profession will need to be raised so 
 as to attract more teachers. Already before the war and 
 its wastage began the prospects for the profession were 
 not bright. Of the 14,000 elementary teachers annually 
 required to fill up vacancies, only about 5000 were forth- 
 coming, leaving an annual deficiency of 9000. Moreover, 
 of the total of 160,000 only some 60,000 were fully 
 trained. These deficiencies can only be redressed by 
 very largely increasing the present rates of pay and 
 pension — especially for assistant teachers. Teachers 
 should be paid enough to have money for books and a 
 good holiday and ordinary social intercourse. It is the 
 monotony and loneliness of so many teachers' lives, 
 especially in the country, which deters so many from the 
 profession. Secondly, no class should contain more than 
 30 pupils except in subjects where practically no indi- 
 vidual teaching is required. This would transform the 
 whole conditions of elementary school life and would 
 attract to the profession thousands of " born teachers " 
 who dare not face it at present. Thirdly, all exemptions 
 under 14 should be abolished and provision should be 
 made for part-time continuation education up to the age 
 of 17 or 18. The years between 14 and 18 are perhaps 
 the most important in life, and our social and industrial 
 problems will never be solved so long as we continue to 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 251 
 
 waste the fruits of the elementary school and to throw 
 our young people out into the competitive struggle just 
 at the age when they most want shielding. We have 
 only to think of the children of the poor as though they 
 were our own to realise what this means. The New 
 Army has shown us how what is called " the public 
 school spirit " can develop in new soil when it gets the 
 chance. The Boy Scout Movement points the same 
 moral. A Continuation School system not devoted to 
 purely technical ends but laying stress on corporate life 
 and on character will mean giving everybody the oppor- 
 tunity of passing through the stage of "public school 
 life." 
 
 These changes will cost much money and we shall all 
 be poorer after the war. They may more than double 
 our education estimates. But even if the richer classes 
 have to live much more wholesomely than they have 
 hitherto, we must secure the health of the coming gene- 
 ration so that they can hand on the torch which the dead 
 have so nobly borne. 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY AFTER 
 THE WAR^ 
 
 The title which the Ruskin College Executive selected 
 some six months ago for my paper, "The Control of 
 Industry After the War," is well adapted to these 
 troublous and uncertain times, for it is capable of at 
 least two quite different interpretations. It may be taken 
 to refer to the probable extension of the control by the 
 State over privately owned industry after the war, or to 
 the increase of the control by the workers themselves over 
 the conduct of the industry in which they are employed. 
 I propose to interpret it according to the second of these 
 meanings — the control by the workers. As regards the 
 extension of the control by the State I shall have nothing 
 to say, and that for two very good reasons. Firstly, 
 because Mr. Sidney Webb has already dealt with that 
 subject. Secondly, because, in my opinion, the problem 
 of the workers' control, though less familiar to the 
 general public, is beyond all doubt the more important of 
 the two. Indeed, it is not only important, it is urgent, 
 and it is just because I am convinced of its urgency that 
 I shall make no apology for attempting to deal with it in 
 an absolutely practical manner, even at the risk of weary- 
 ing you with the discussion of details of organisation. 
 
 Before coming to details, however, it seems necessary 
 to make clear wherein the importance of the problem 
 consists. The best way of doing so, I think, is to show 
 how intimately it is related to the objects and ideals 
 
 ' A Paper read at a Conference of working-class organisations convened 
 at Oxford, under the auspices of Ruskin College, on July 21-23, 1916, 
 
 252 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 253 
 
 towards which Ruskiti College and the Labour Movement 
 as a whole are directed. 
 
 "What is the object of the Labour Movement — I mean 
 its object in the widest sense, as opposed to the particular 
 programme on which it may have agreed at the moment 
 as the next step towards the attainment of that object ? 
 Its object is surely to provide the conditions of a good 
 life for the working class. The object of all government 
 is, or ought to be, to provide the conditions of a good 
 life for mankind. The object of the Labour Movement 
 is to do the same for those on whose behalf it is more 
 specially working. 
 
 But then the question arises. What do we mean by 
 the conditions of a good life ? What sort of a life do 
 the workers want ? What is it that the workers regard 
 as a good life ? 
 
 These arc not at all easy questions to answer. There 
 are a good many people, however, who are prepared to 
 answer them offhand ; generally, I notice, people who 
 do not belong to the working class themselves. I came 
 across two perfectly definite answers lately which are 
 worth quoting, as they are both by well-known writers 
 on industrial subjects. Mr. F. W. Taylor, the inventor 
 of the system of scientific management, remarks in 
 advocacy of his plan, that it " has for its foundation the 
 firm conviction . . . that it is possible to give the work- 
 man what he most wants — high wages — and the employer 
 what he most wants — a lower labour cost for his manu- 
 factures." Mr. Taylor is quite clear in his mind as to 
 what it is that the workman most wants — it is high wages. 
 And if he is right there is a good deal to be said for his 
 system, for it has undoubtedly led to higher wages, at 
 any rate for certain individual workers. The other writer 
 whose definition I shall quote is Mr. Harold Cox, the 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review. Writing recently in 
 that periodical on the subject of industry after the war 
 he lays it down that what every workman wants for his 
 
254 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 life is security. He goes on to argue that in these times, 
 under the existing system of industry, a skilled workman 
 can always be sure of employment, and that for such a 
 man the existing system, though it may sometimes 
 impatiently be described as " wage-slavery," " offers the 
 highest attainable form of liberty." 
 
 Now if Mr. Taylor and Mr. Cox were right, if the 
 workman's ideal of life was summed up in high wages or 
 security, or a combination of the two, there would be 
 no object in composing this paper, for that ideal would 
 be sufficiently met by the extension of the methods ot 
 State ownership and control described by Mr. Sidney 
 Webb. Make all the workers Government servants, and 
 so provide them with security ; guarantee them high 
 rates of wages, adjusted to the state of prices, and there, 
 so far as Mr. Taylor and Mr. Cox are concerned, you 
 have the workers' millennium." Being secure of their 
 job and of a pension at the end of it, they will have 
 nothing to worry about ; their souls wiU be at peace ; 
 and, as for the material side, they will be able to satisfy 
 their simple aspirations in the way of furniture and trips 
 to the seaside, and even rise to the possession of the 
 much criticised cottage piano. What more could man 
 desire ? What more, indeed ! One feels incfined to 
 echo the question Browning asked long ago in his 
 " Rabbi Ben Ezra "— 
 
 " Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast ? " 
 
 Yet we all know very well from our own experience 
 that Mr. Cox and Mr. Taylor are wrong. Their answers 
 do not give a complete account of the workman's 
 psychology. Indeed, they do not give a complete account 
 of any one's psychology. It is not the case that security 
 and a competence necessarily lead to a happy life. Some 
 people are so constituted as to prefer insecurity to security, 
 as, for instance, those who deliberately choose to spend 
 their life at sea or go on Arctic expeditions. Some 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 255 
 
 rich people are very unhappy and would undoubtedly be 
 happier poor, however much some of us may feel inclined 
 to exchange places with them. Care, in fact, does irk the 
 crop-full bird. Doubts do fret the maw-crammed beast. 
 The Bible told us this long ago, but we have had a curious 
 confirmation of it lately in the remarkable decline in 
 nervous and mental diseases among the well-to-do as a 
 result of the war. Having something outside themselves 
 to think about, they have less time to brood over their 
 own ailments. It is as though our physical nature itself 
 protested against ease and security and echoed the words 
 of Browning — 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough. 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go. 
 Be our joy three parts pain ! 
 Strive and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe." 
 
 No doubt if the workman were a mere animal he 
 would be satisfied with the solutions offered him by such 
 men as Mr, Cox and Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor, in fact, 
 gives the whole case away on a later page of his book, 
 where he says that certain work for which, under his 
 system, he offers the sure inducement of higher wages is 
 so crude and elementary that he firmly believes that it 
 would be possible to train an intelligent gorilla to do it. 
 If the object of the Labour Movement is to create the 
 conditions of a good human life, not a good animal life, 
 such a statement carries with it its own condemnation. 
 We all know that it is what we do that makes us what 
 we are ; and if a man spends the best part of his day 
 doing what could be equally well done by a gorilla, no 
 amount of wages or of security can make up for the 
 continuous degradation to which he must thereby be 
 exposed. 
 
 It is clear, then, that any one who thinks that what is 
 called " the Labour problem " can be " solved " simply 
 
256 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 by " feeding the beast," by higher wages and increased 
 security of employment, is ignoring some of the deepest 
 factors in the situation. He is thinking of the workman 
 as though he were an animal and not a man. If J did 
 not know that Mr. Cox and the late Mr. Taylor (whom 
 I once had the pleasure of meeting in the United States) 
 were high-minded and public-spirited men, I should be 
 tempted to say that they had constructed an imaginary 
 workman in the image of their own materially minded 
 selves. As it is, I can only suppose that they are the 
 victims of that common English malady — want of imagina- 
 tion ; that they have conveniently forgotten that the 
 workman is a man with similar passions to themselves, 
 and that he is not likely to acquiesce in systems and 
 solutions which they and their friends would not dream 
 of putting up with. In discussing these questions with 
 people who are not in actual contact with working-class 
 reeling I often feel inclined to adapt the famous outburst 
 which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Shylock when 
 he is being mocked by a Christian : " Hath not a work- 
 man eyes ? Hath not a workman hands, organs, dimen- 
 sions, senses, affections, passions .? Fed with the same 
 food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same 
 diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled 
 by the same winter and summer as an employer is ? If 
 you prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us, do we 
 not laugh .'' If you poison us, do we not die ? And if 
 you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? " To those, if any 
 there be, who would answer these questions in the negative 
 I have no more to say. To them the problem with 
 which this paper deals can be of no concern. They will 
 still continue to believe that the Trade Union movement 
 is out for higher wages and nothing more. But to those 
 who are prepared to regard the workman as a human 
 being, with human feelings and desires and aspirations, 
 it will be clear that it is idle to talk of a good life for 
 the workman if the conditions under which he works, 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 257 
 
 however princely his pay, are degrading to his self- 
 respect and injurious to his moral and spiritual health. 
 
 A good life for the workman, then, does not mean 
 simply the provision of facilities for his leisure hours. 
 It means that there must be something good, something 
 worth while, about the work itself To those of us who 
 are not members of the working class but know some- 
 thing of its conditions, nothing is more saddening, or 
 indeed, I would say, more maddening, than the thought 
 that millions of our fellow-countrymen are cut off from 
 one of the chief sources of joy — the joy that it is natural 
 for men to feel in their work. " What he wished most 
 for men in this world," writes Mr. Thomas Jones in his 
 recently published memoir of Professor Smart, of Glas- 
 gow, " was that they should find their deepest happiness 
 in their daily work." Professor Smart was only echoing 
 what "William Morris and John Ruskin had thought and 
 felt before him. It is indeed one of the chief contribu- 
 tions that this country has made to the international 
 Labour Movement that its thinkers and leaders have 
 always laid stress on the effect of economic conditions 
 upon human character, and have never despaired of the 
 task, however difficult it might seem, of counteracting 
 the dehumanising tendencies of modern large-scale pro- 
 duction and restoring to the workman something of the 
 dignity, the independence, and the happiness which he 
 enjoyed in the days before the division of labour. 
 
 The first step in that direction is clear before us. It 
 is to create conditions which will enable the workman to 
 feel that his work is fulfilling a social purpose. So long 
 as work is looked upon as a charity which the employing 
 classes provide for the workers in order to save them 
 from destitution it is idle to talk of the dignity of labour. 
 Nor is the situation much improved when the structure 
 of industry is set upon a purely commercial foundation 
 and employers and workpeople both agree to look upon 
 it merely as a means of profit or livelihood. There is a 
 
 S 
 
258 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 cynical phrase which has lately become prevalent amongst 
 us, though it originates, I believe, like many other 
 business expressions, in the United States. Employers, 
 we are told, are " not in business for their health." The 
 people who use the expression do not usually go on to 
 tell us what employers are in business for if it is not for 
 their health, but they generally let it be inferred what 
 they mean. They mean they are in business for what 
 they can get out of it for themselves. Under those 
 circumstances it is not unnatural that the workers, who 
 often have very good reasons for knowing that they are 
 not in business for their health, should act on similar 
 principles. " If you prick us do we not bleed ? And 
 if you wrong us do we not revenge } " But, in truth, 
 there is a deeper meaning than those who use it are 
 aware of behind the slang American phrase. Neither 
 employers nor workmen are in business for their own 
 health, it is true, but they are, or ought to be, in 
 business for the health of the community. Every 
 trade and every industry is, or ought to be, serving 
 a public need. That indeed is the only justification for 
 their existence. If people did not want boots there 
 would be no boot industry. If people did not want to 
 travel or to send goods there would be no railway service. 
 If people did not want to write letters there would be no 
 postal service. If people did not go to law there would 
 be no lawyers. If people kept in perfect health and 
 never got old there would be no doctors. There is not 
 the slightest difference in this respect between what are 
 called trades and what are called professions. A postman 
 is as necessary as a doctor ; a miner as a lawyer ; an 
 engine driver as a clergyman ; a printer as a schoolmaster. 
 It is only because of the way we have become used to 
 regarding their work, and more especially because of the 
 conditions under which it is performed, that people re- 
 gard the services of the working class as in any way less 
 dignified, or self-respecting, or socially useful than those 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 259 
 
 of the members of what are sometimes called the learned 
 professions. 
 
 There is, then, no reason in the nature of things why 
 printers, miners, railwaymen, and postal workers should 
 not find as much satisfaction in their daily work as 
 doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and schoolmasters. No 
 work that is worth doing is easy or can be done without 
 toilsome effort. It may, perhaps, seem easier to write 
 a sermon than to set up a newspaper, or to bamboozle 
 a jury than to drive the Plymouth express; but not all 
 so-called professional activity is comfortable or even clean. 
 Chopping off arms or legs is no more pleasant than hew- 
 ing coal, and managing a large class of unruly boys may 
 be as irksome as sorting letters or trying to decipher the 
 addresses on the envelopes of University dons. The dis- 
 tinction between the trades and the professions is not one 
 between manual work and brain work, for all manual work 
 (except under the Taylor system) involves brain work, and 
 all brain work involves more or less of manual work, even 
 if it is no more than driving a pen or wielding a cane ; 
 nor is it one between work involving education and work 
 involving none, for in the skilled trades, as in agriculture, 
 a good general education is more and more being found 
 to be necessary, while there are professions, at least back- 
 waters of professions, in which extraordinary tracts of 
 ignorance may be found to prevail. The distinction is 
 more and more being seen to be one of idea rather than 
 of fact. It arises out of the part which those concerned 
 feel that they are playing rather than out of their real 
 social function. And this self-respect, or absence of 
 self-respect, is bound up with the question of professional 
 organisation and the control of the conditions under 
 which the work is done. 
 
 The idea that industry exists to perform a social 
 function is still so strange to some people that it is worth 
 while trying to make it clearer by an illustration. Many 
 people still think it no shame to assert that the primary 
 
26o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 object in the conduct of any trade or Industry is to get 
 rich. When' we speak of a " successful " business man 
 or manufacturer we do not, I fear, mean in ordinary 
 speech a man who has successfully served the public and 
 supplied its wants, but a man who has grown rich out of 
 the public. The late Sir Alfred Jones is regarded as a 
 successful shipowner because he left a large fortune, not 
 because he guessed that the public would like bananas 
 and succeeded in putting them cheap upon the market. 
 Yet we should be somewhat ashamed of applying the 
 same test to doctors and schoolmasters and clergy- 
 men. We do not look up in a reference book to find 
 out what the salary of the Master of Balliol is before 
 venturing to call the good friend of Ruskin College, who 
 has so lately been chosen to that office — what we all 
 know him to be — one of the most successful teachers of 
 our time. Nor do we judge of the success of the Bishop 
 of Oxford as a clergyman by the size of the stipend by 
 which he is burdened. Still less do we apply this scale 
 of measurement to the field of politics and government. 
 We should all regard Mr. Gladstone as a successful 
 statesman. Whatever judgment history may pass upon 
 his policies, he retained the confidence of his fellow- 
 countrymen, and was able to serve them longer and more 
 continuously than any public man of his time. Yet how 
 many people know what he got out of it ? No doubt 
 he was not in politics for his health, though he lived to 
 be a very old man. But nobody is interested to know 
 how much money he left, or whether he was the richer 
 or the poorer for having been four times Prime Minister. 
 And who is going to apply the miserable commercial 
 yard rule of success to a great public servant like Lord 
 Kitchener ? 
 
 If any one doubts that the day will come when the 
 same high standard of public service will be applied to 
 industry let him consider how often the low standard, 
 which we have happily superseded, has been regarded a? 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 261 
 
 inevitable in the service of government. In his fascinat- 
 ing book on Turkey, Sir Charles Eliot has an illuminating 
 chapter on the provincial government of the Turkish 
 Empire. Turkish governors, we learn, are like business 
 men, they are not in office for their health. As in the 
 instability of Turkish affairs they are apt not to be in 
 office long, they have to make haste to feather their nest 
 while they are there, which Turkish methods of levying 
 and transmitting taxation render it an easy thing to do. 
 So recognised a practice is this extortion, and so resigned 
 have the people become to it, that their one desire, when 
 a new appointment is made, is not to have an honest 
 governor — for none such exist — but one, as they put it, 
 " whose eye is full " — that is to say, who has already 
 made his pile and is not likely to be so extortionate. 
 This view of the profits to be derived from the public 
 service is not confined to the East. I have no personal 
 experience of English municipal government, but I once 
 had the privilege of spending an evening with a leading 
 Tammany official in New York. He was what is known 
 as a professional politician — surely if) we understood the 
 words rightly the noblest of all professions. I remember 
 asking him why he had gone into politics. He told me 
 it was because he was left an orphan with a large family 
 of young brothers and sisters to look after, and it seemed 
 to him the quickest way of making enough money to 
 give them a decent start in life. I wonder how many 
 of those present took office in the Trade Union movement 
 with any such object. Like many other people whose 
 principles are not above suspicion, he was, personally, a 
 most agreeable and sympathetic personality. Like so 
 many employers and workmenj in this country, he was 
 the victim of a bad system. Brought up in a selfish 
 school, he never had a chance of realising what public 
 service means. 
 
 Industry and politics are ^ two very closely related 
 functions. The object or politics or government is to 
 
265 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 carry on the public business of the community ; to pass 
 the laws and make the administrative arrangements which 
 are needed in the interests of the community as a whole. 
 The object of trade and industry is very similar. It is 
 to serve the needs of the community ; to provide the 
 goods and services which are necessary to its existence 
 and well-being. It is, therefore, not at all surprising that 
 the same standard should tend to be adopted in both, 
 and that that standard should conform to the general 
 view of life in vogue in the country. In a community 
 where life is organised on a commercial basis and men's 
 thoughts run in a money-making channel it is natural that 
 politics should tend to become commercialised. In a 
 community where higher ideals prevail and men's thoughts 
 are directed rather towards public service, it is equally 
 natural that trade and industry should tend to become, as 
 it were, professionalised ; that those whose life is spent 
 in them should think first of the service they are render- 
 ing to the community rather than of the material reward 
 to be derived from performing it. We should all agree 
 that the labourer, whether in politics or industry, is 
 worthy of his hire. The question is wliether he does the 
 work for the work's sake or only because of the hire. 
 
 But industry and politics do not resemble one another 
 only in their objects. They resemble one another also in 
 their methods. Both have certain work to get done for 
 the community, and in both cases the question arises 
 how that work shall be organised. Both industry and 
 politics are faced by what in politics is called the constitu- 
 tional problem and in industry the problem of manage- 
 ment — that is, the question of who is to be ultimately 
 responsible for the conduct of the work and how that 
 responsibility is to be exercised. In politics, so far as this 
 and most Western countries are concerned, this problem 
 of management has been decided in favour of democracy. 
 The people as a whole have taken into their hands the " 
 ultimate responsibility for the conduct of public business, 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 263 
 
 and entrust its direction to Ministers or servants, who 
 are responsible to the people for their acts and policy. 
 In industry, however, the problem of management is still 
 unsolved, or rather it has hitherto been decided in a 
 direction adverse to democracy. The manager in industry 
 is not like the Minister in politics : he is not chosen by 
 or responsible to the workers in the industry, but chosen 
 by and responsible to partners or directors or some other 
 autocratic authority. Instead of the manager being the 
 Minister or servant and the men the ultimate masters, the 
 men are the servants and the manager and the external 
 power behind him the master. Thus, while our govern- 
 mental organisation is democratic in theory, and by the 
 extension of education is continually becoming more so 
 in practice, our industrial organisation is built upon a 
 different basis. It is an autocracy, but not an untempered 
 autocracy. It may perhaps be described as autocracy 
 modified by Trade Union criticism and interference and 
 by Parliamentary and administrative control. 
 
 To say that industry is carried on by methods of 
 autocracy is not necessarily to impute the blame to those 
 who are responsible for the system. It has yet to be 
 proved that it can be carried on in any other way. Nay, 
 more ; it has yet to be shown that those who live under 
 the system desire that it should be carried on differently. 
 But the contrast between political democracy and industrial 
 autocracy — between the workman as a free citizen and 
 the workman as a wage-earner — is so glaring that it 
 has become obvious that it cannot indefinitely continue 
 in its present form. Men who have tasted what free- 
 dom and responsibility mean in one department of 
 life are not likely to acquiesce in remaining mere irre- 
 sponsible instruments of production in the industrial 
 sphere. The problem of management, what I would 
 call the constitutional problem in industry, the ques- 
 tion as to how the industrial process shall be controlled, 
 is already, and is likely to continue, the burning issue in 
 
264 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 industrial policy. Thus after our long excursion in the 
 philosophy of politics we are brought back to the practical 
 subject of this paper. 
 
 The problem of management is certain to become 
 increasingly acute in the near future as a direct result of 
 the war. Every one is agreed that the only way in which 
 we can make good the losses of the war and meet the 
 heavy charges incurred is by increasing our industrial 
 efficiency. That involves not only working harder but 
 improving the methods of organising our work. This at 
 once brings us up against the question of management. 
 Broadly speaking, there are two schools of opinion, or 
 two tendencies, on the subject of management. There is 
 the tendency of those who would improve efficiency by 
 concentrating knowledge and responsibility for workman- 
 ship in the hands of expert directors, and the policy of 
 those who believe rather in the diffusion of responsibility 
 among the workers. The first tendency is represented 
 by the advocates of scientific management, who propose, 
 in Mr. Taylor's words, that " the management must take 
 over and perform much of the work which is now left to 
 the men," and desire " that there shall be a far more 
 equal division of the responsibility between the manage- 
 ment and the workman than exists under any of the 
 ordinary types of management." If you read Mr. Taylor's 
 book you will find that what he means by " a more equal 
 division of the responsibility " is that the management is 
 to do all the thinking and the workman all the toiling ; 
 that the scientific manager is to use his head and the 
 workmen merely their arms and legs. This is autocratic 
 rule with a vengeance ; it takes one back to the days of 
 slavery and of the Pyramids, or of those Assyrian reliefs 
 in the British Museum where you may see scores of 
 labourers harnessed like animals toiling for the Great 
 King. To use the workman's arms and legs and to 
 ignore that he has a brain is to ruin him as a craftsman 
 and to degrade him as a man. The American official 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 265 
 
 investigators into the working of the system leave no 
 doubt on this point. 
 
 "Scientific management, fully and properly applied," they 
 write, " inevitably tends to the constant breakdown of the estab- 
 lished crafts and craftsmanship and the constant elimination of 
 skill in the sense of narrowing craft knowledge and workmanship, 
 except for the lower orders of workmen. . . . Some scientific 
 management employers have asserted their belief in their ability 
 to get on a paying basis within three months should they lose 
 their whole working force, except the managerial staff and enough 
 others to maintain the organisation, if they had to begin all over 
 again with green hands. ... It enables the employer constantly 
 to lop off portions of the work from a certain class, and thus con- 
 stantly to create new classifications of workers with new con- 
 ditions of work and pay. Add to this the advantage gained by 
 the employers in the progressive gathering up and systemisation 
 of craft knowledge for their own uses, and the destruction of 
 apprenticeship, which cuts the workers off from the perpetuation 
 among them of craftsmanship, and the destructive tendencies of 
 scientific management, so far as present-day unionism and col- 
 lective bargaining are concerned, seem inevitable." 
 
 Scientific management breaks down, then, not because 
 of the labour-saving devices of its inventors — many of 
 which may be worthy of adoption — but because of the 
 system of management with which it is associated. Mr. 
 Taylor and his associates may be perfectly right when 
 they are talking of improved tools ; it is when they are 
 discussing the government of men that they are at fault. 
 We in this country, if we believe in democracy, are 
 compelled to look for the solution of the problem of 
 management in the opposite direction — not in the manage- 
 ment encroaching on the brainwork of the men, but in 
 the men being more closely associated with the manage- 
 ment, understanding its difficulties, discussing its pro- 
 blems, and sharing its responsibilities. Our policy must 
 be, not to make output mechanically perfect by turning 
 the workman himself into a mere machine, but to make 
 our organisation scientific in the widest sense by the 
 
266 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 voluntary and harmonious co-operation of all the human 
 factors concerned. It is along this road, and no other, 
 that we shall reach the industrial democracy of the future, 
 towards which the English industrial idealists of the 
 nineteenth century — Ruskin, William Morris, and John 
 Stuart Mill — were bold enough to point the way. 
 
 Industrial democracy is a big word. Let us try to 
 bring it down from the clouds. What sort of organisa- 
 tion does it mean in actual practice ? First, let us make 
 clear what it does not mean. It does not mean handing 
 over the control of matters requiring expert knowledge 
 to a mass of people who are not equipped with that 
 knowledge. Under any system of management there 
 must be division of labour ; there must be those who 
 know all about one subject and are best fitted to deal with 
 it. Democracy can be just as successful as any other form 
 of government in employing experts. Nor does demo- 
 cratic control, in the present stage at any rate, involve a 
 demand for control over what may be called the com- 
 mercial side of management — the buying of the raw 
 material, the selling of the finished article, and all the 
 exercise of trained judgment and experience that are 
 brought to bear by business men on these questions. I 
 do not mean to say that workpeople are constitutionally 
 incapable, as some employers seem to believe, of running 
 a business. The existence of the co-operative movement 
 is a sufficient answer on that point. Some day the Trade 
 Union movement may follow the example of the co- 
 operative movement and go into business — possibly on 
 rather different lines from what is considered business 
 to-day — but at present at any rate the workers' demand 
 for democratic control is not a demand for a voice in the 
 business, but for control over the conditions under which 
 their own daily work is done. It is a demand for control 
 over one side, but that the most important side because 
 it is the human side, of the industrial process. 
 
 Having thus cleared the ground, I propose to devote 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 267 
 
 the remainder of this paper to showing that the time is 
 ripe for an experiment in one of the principal businesses 
 of the country, and to a detailed examination of the 
 changes which such an experiment will involve. 
 
 English people are in the habit of believing that ideas 
 are " all very well in theory," but will never work in 
 practice. The reason why ideas which are theoretically 
 sound do not work out in practice is generally because 
 they are applied without sufficient consideration of the 
 conditions of the particular case, or because those who 
 are entrusted with the task of carrying them out are not 
 in sympathy with them. It is clear that not all the 
 British industries are ripe for changes in the direction 
 of democratic control. There are a number of previous 
 conditions which it would be well to satisfy if an experi- 
 ment is to have a good chance of success. I think we 
 may broadly lay down seven conditions which the business 
 or industry we are looking for should satisfy : — 
 
 1. It should be a nationalised industry — that is to 
 say, an industry which is recognised to be a public 
 service and a permanent part of the national life. Such 
 an industry is at once more removed from the atmosphere 
 of commercialism and immune from the dangers, if also 
 from the stimulus, of competition and to liability from 
 sudden changes on the side of demand. It would be 
 possible, of course, to choose a municipalised industry, 
 but a nationalised industry is more likely to yield the 
 broad outlook required on both sides. 
 
 2. It should be an industry where the amount of 
 labour employed is relatively large compared with the 
 fixed capital invested, and where prosperity, therefore, 
 depends principally upon the efficiency of the workers. 
 Such an industry obviously affords a better ground for 
 experiments in labour management. 
 
 On the labour side it should be an industry where 
 the workers are — 
 
 3. Highly skilled. 
 
268 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 4. Have a relatively high standard of general educa- 
 tion and intelligence. 
 
 5. Have a high general level of personal character. 
 
 6, Where Trade Unionism is well organised both as 
 regards numbers and spirit and has been afforded recogni- 
 tion by the employing authority. 
 
 7, Where there are no serious demarcation difficulties 
 between the various Trade Unions concerned. 
 
 In the case which 1 propose to submit for experiment, 
 the case of the Post Office, all these conditions would 
 seem to be fulfilled. 
 
 1. It is a nationalised service. 
 
 2. The labour force — 253,750 in all, or 230,000 on 
 the manipulative side — is relatively large compared with 
 the fixed capital. 
 
 3. The work is for the most part highly skilled, as 
 is indicated by the fact that — 
 
 4. The great majority of postal workers have to pass 
 a general examination at the age of 1 6 or over. 
 
 5. The morale of the service is uncommonly good. 
 In spite of obvious temptations, the number of dismissals 
 from the service is negligible. The average annual per- 
 centage of dismissals in the manipulative branch of the 
 service is 0*25 per cent. 
 
 6. Trade Unionism is powerful and well organised 
 in spite of the large number of girls employed. Prac- 
 tically all the men are organised. 
 
 7. The unions concerned are on good terms with 
 one another and are organised for common action in a 
 National Joint Committee. 
 
 How is the work of the Post Office at present 
 organised ? There is, as already mentioned, a broad 
 division of the employees between what is called the 
 clerical staff and the manipulative staff. With the clerical 
 staff, which has organisations of its own, I do not propose 
 to deal in what follows. I shall confine myself to the 
 manipulative staff, consisting principally of postmen, 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 
 
 269 
 
 sorters, telegraphists, telephonists, and engineering grades, 
 who are represented on the National Joint Committee of 
 Post Office Associations. That Committee consists of 
 the following organisations : — 
 
 
 
 Official 
 'lEstablish- 
 
 Membership 
 of Associa- 
 tion. 
 
 Name of Association. 
 
 Class or Classes represented. 
 
 ment of 
 Classes. 
 
 Postmen's Federation 
 
 Postmen, assistant and auxiliary 
 postmen. 
 
 68,000 
 
 51,500 
 
 Postal and Telegraph 
 
 Telegraphists, counter clerks and 
 
 35,000 
 
 Z2,00O 
 
 Clerks' Association. 
 
 telegraphists, sorting clerks 
 and telegraphists, telephonists, 
 and learners. 
 
 
 
 Fawcett Association 
 
 Sorters, London Postal Service. 
 
 7,021 
 
 6,430 
 
 Engineering and Stores 
 
 Skilled and unskilleji workmen. 
 
 13,000 
 
 7,000 
 
 Association (Postal, 
 
 etc., in Engineering and Stores 
 
 
 
 Telegraph, and 
 
 Department. 
 
 
 
 Telephone). 
 
 
 
 
 National Federation 
 
 Scale payment sub-postmasters. 
 
 22,658 
 
 9,400 
 
 of Sub-Postmasters. 
 
 
 
 
 Let us now turn to the organisation of the manage- 
 ment side. The control of the Post Office is vested, 
 subject to the supremacy of the Cabinet and of Parlia- 
 ment, in the Postmaster-General and his permanent 
 Secretary, known as the Secretary of the Post Office. 
 The control of the service thus centres in the Secretary's 
 office at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The work of the Secre- 
 tary's office is carried on under his supervision in five 
 departments, dealing respectively with questions of 
 establishment, staff, buildings and equipment, organisa- 
 tion (i.e. mails, train services, collection of letters, etc.), 
 and engineering. There are also Secretaries for Scotland 
 and Ireland, who exercise a general control over the staff 
 in those countries, subject, however, to the control of the 
 Secretary's department in London. All dismissals, for 
 instance, must be referred to London. 
 
 As regards local administration, the country is divided 
 into 14 districts, each of which is in charge of an official 
 
270 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 called the Surveyor. Surveyors are allowed fairly wide 
 powers of organisation and control, subject, however, in 
 the case of the staff to the right of appeal to the Secretary 
 in Loiidon in all cases affecting either an individual or a 
 group of individuals. 
 
 Below the Surveyors are the Postmasters. In every 
 Surveyor's district there are a number of Postmasters 
 responsible for the business of the head office and certain 
 sub-offices. Postmasters are giyen a fairly free hand in 
 matters of organisation, but in the more important 
 matters affecting their subordinates they are required to 
 obtain the Surveyor's sanction. 
 
 Let us now turn to the question of the relation 
 between the governing authorities and the staff, so far as 
 staff conditions are concerned. Those conditions are 
 laid down in a series of regulations which may be 
 summarised as follows : The associations of postal 
 employees have been accorded recognition by the Post 
 Office authorities ; that is, they are recognised as having 
 the right to represent the interests of individual workers 
 or groups of workers. The conditions under which this 
 right may be exercised are carefully defined by the 
 authorities. The general procedure is for the central 
 office of the association concerned to submit a memorial 
 on the point at issue to the Secretary or to the Post- 
 master-General. Such memorials are invariably acknow- 
 ledged, and it is possible for the representatives of the 
 association to meet the authorities at periodical intervals 
 to discuss matters already submitted in writing. The 
 matters on which the associations are free to submit 
 memorials are defined as " general questions relating to 
 the conditions at work, i.e. wages, hours of duty, leave, 
 meal reliefs, etc." Memorials on local questions and on 
 individual questioi^s other than those affecting discipline 
 or the conduct of supervising officers have to be sub- 
 mitted in the first instance by the local branch of the 
 association concerned to the local responsible official 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 271 
 
 [i.e. the Postmaster or Surveyor). The local official first 
 deals with representations, and, failing satisfaction, the 
 association is at liberty to carry the matter further to 
 headquarters and obtain a reply. No memorials are 
 allowed to be submitted on questions relative to pro- 
 motion. The liberty of action of the associations is also 
 limited in the case of questions of discipline. The 
 provision in this connection is sufficiently important to 
 be quoted in full : — 
 
 " Memorials respecting disciplinary measures that 
 have been taken against individual officers may be 
 submitted to the Secretary or the Postmaster-General 
 by the central body of the association in serious cases, 
 where appeals by the individuals, made first to the local 
 authorities and then to the Secretary or Postmaster- 
 General, have not been successful, and where the central 
 body have satisfied themselves by a full investigation of 
 the circumstances that they can present new facts or 
 considerations which render further review desirable." 
 
 It will thus be seen that the Trade Unions are put in 
 the position of a sort of permanent and official opposition. 
 Their function is not to co-operate with the management, 
 but to criticise, not to prevent complaints, but to endeavour 
 to remedy them ; and in certain cases, such as discipline, 
 where feeling is likely to run highest, they are precluded 
 from interfering till the matter has already been declared 
 upon by the Secretary and has become the subject of 
 serious and probably bitter controversy. 
 
 How can this system of management be modified in 
 the direction outlined ? An attempt will be made in the 
 following remarks to suggest how this might be done. 
 The object of the reforms suggested is not to revolutionise 
 the organisation of the postal service or to turn the 
 Department upside down ; it is to take the existing 
 organisation as it stands and to make the least possible 
 change compatible with granting to the staiF that measure 
 of responsibility which is increasingly felt to be necessary 
 
272 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 in order to secure the efficiency and harmony of the 
 service. I am indebted in what follows to my friend 
 Mr. J. G. Newlove, a distinguished ex-student of Ruskin 
 College and now General Secretary of the Postal and 
 Telegraph Clerks' Association, who has given much 
 time and thought to the improvement of the service 
 with which he is connected, and is willing to accept full 
 responsibility for the constructive side of this paper. 
 
 The first suggested change is that machinery shall be 
 set up which will give the central bodies of the associa- 
 tions representation on a committee of each branch of the 
 Secretary's office. Where the interests of each grade are 
 peculiar, as in the establishment branch, there should be 
 a representative of each grade ; where their interests are 
 identical, as on building questions, less would suffice. 
 
 Similar machinery should be set up in each Surveyor's 
 district. Advisory Committees should be formed to 
 discuss with the Surveyor questions of policy affiscting 
 his district, and these committees should contain a 
 representative of each grade to co-operate with the 
 Surveyor's staff. 
 
 Passing down to the individual office — ^what corre- 
 sponds in other -industries to * the " workshop " — it 
 should be one of the duties of the Postmaster to consult 
 with representatives of the staff on all questions affecting 
 the particular office. This should extend to all questions 
 without exception which affect the office as a whole, for 
 all such questions must in some way reflect on the 
 organisation of the office. Even a matter like complaints 
 from the public can be traced back to office organisation. 
 
 A difficulty arises at this point as to the procedure 
 in very small offices. The associations find by experience 
 that is is often difficult in such offices to find a local 
 secretary who is sufficiently well trained to deal with 
 questions of policy. Yet it is just in such small offices 
 that precedents distasteful to the staff are apt to be 
 created. Such offices, therefore, require special treatment. 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 273 
 
 and it is suggested that a representative of the Executive 
 of the associations should be able, if necessary, to act as 
 a medium of advice for the smaller offices. It might 
 prove desirable in this connection to rearrange the 
 boundaries of the associations' districts so as to harmonise 
 them with the Surveyors' districts. 
 
 This procedure is in itself no great innovation. 
 Many Postmasters do already adopt means of consulta- 
 tion with their staff, and are indeed definitely encouraged 
 to do so by the rules of the Department. The new 
 arrangement will merely serve to regularise this and to 
 level up the procedure in the various offices. It is not 
 suggested that the new committees shall have a deciding 
 voice. Where no agreement can be reached in them the 
 decision must continue to rest, as now, with the super- 
 vising authorities. If on matters of importance a policy 
 were to be adopted contrary to the wishes of the 
 associations it woidd always be possible to them to 
 reopen the matter through their annual conference and 
 to approach the Postmaster-General as at present. But 
 the criticism which they would then bring to bear would 
 be bred of inside knowledge, and it would of necessity 
 be constructive rather than critical in tone. 
 
 This change of spirit would be likely to apply in 
 special degree to questions of financial policy. One of 
 the chief functions of the new central machinery would 
 be to discuss questions involving expenditure, and in 
 particular questions of wages or salaries. The procedure 
 at present in this connection is not satisfactory. No 
 scheme involving fresh expenditure can be adopted until 
 it has been approved by the Treasury. The present 
 method of dealing with such schemes is to refer them to 
 a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry. The members 
 of such Committees are necessarily not conversant with 
 the whole inner working of a huge organisation like the 
 Post Office, and are, therefore, unable to form a judgment 
 at first hand on the problems submitted to them for 
 
274 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 decision. They must inevitably rely for their special 
 knowledge upon the high officials of the Department. 
 This, it will be seen, naturally tends to place those at 
 present responsible for the policy of the Department in 
 a preferential position as compared with the representa- 
 tives of the staff. As under existing conditions the 
 Department is bound to consider the interests of the 
 taxpayer, its natural r61e is that of opposition to increases 
 in pay. This is intensified by the fact that the Post 
 Office is run at a considerable profit, amounting to no 
 less than ;^6,ooo,ooo in the last year before the war, and 
 that there is a tendency to adopt purely commercial 
 standards of successful administration. If the procedure 
 by Parliamentary Committee were abandoned and ques- 
 tions of wages and conditions were threshed out on the 
 proposed central committees before being submitted to 
 a Parliamentary body for ratification, or final decision in 
 cases of disagreement, the arrangement would work more 
 fairly for all parties concerned, including the Treasury. 
 The elimination of friction and the consequent increase 
 of esprit de corps should go further towards true efficiency 
 and economy than the existing methods, lending them- 
 selves, as unequal contests always do, to undesirable and 
 often unpleasant methods of influence and agitation. If 
 it were found possible not to pay the profits of the Post 
 Office into the ordinary revenue, but to earmark them 
 for special purposes of social usefulness, in the choice of 
 which the associations might have a voice, this would 
 remove any feeling on the part of the staflF that they 
 were being "exploited" in a commercial spirit, and 
 would act as a strong incentive to them to use every 
 eflFort to improve the service. 
 
 This brings us to the functions of the central and 
 local committees. The most important and difficult of 
 these would be the discussion of questions of discipline. 
 Discipline is really the crux of the whole change of 
 method and spirit proposed. The existing rule, which 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 275 
 
 forbids the associations to interfere except after judgment 
 has already been passed both locally and at the centre, is 
 based on the root principle of the old system, that power 
 is exercised from above and that the prestige of the ruling 
 authority must not be infringed. It is also based upon 
 reasons of practical convenience in that most men 
 extremely dislike the responsibility of sitting in judgment 
 on their companions and workmates. If the associations 
 are to receive the right of co-operating with the super- 
 visory staff in dealing with cases of discipline they will 
 be assuming responsibility for giving what must some- 
 times be very unpleasant decisions against their members. 
 But because a thing is unpleasant there is no reason for 
 not facing it. Democracy involves the extension of 
 responsibility in things pleasant and unpleasant alike. If 
 the associations were ready to deal with pay, but shirked 
 dealing with punishment, they would be felse to their 
 principles. Fortunately, the number of serious cases 
 which arise in the service is extremely small, but these 
 are just the cases which the associations ought to deal 
 with. The best arrangement would seem to be to leave 
 minor breaches of discipline to be dealt with as at present 
 by the individual Postmaster, but that serious cases 
 referred by him to the Surveyor should be dealt with 
 by the Surveyor's committee, where the representatives 
 of the association would be less subject than on the local 
 committee to the bias of personal feeling. Matters dealt 
 with by the Postmaster would be brought before the 
 association through the local committee if it were found 
 necessary. 
 
 Questions of recommendation for promotion should 
 also be dealt with by the Surveyor's committee. Pro- 
 motion and discipline really hang closely together ; both 
 involve difficult decisions and the danger of heart- 
 burning. But there seems no way out except through 
 the extension of the principle of responsibility. 
 
 As regards the rest of the committee's work, it can 
 
276 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 be summed up under the general heading of " conditions " 
 — hours, leave, meal reliefs, improvements in office 
 equipment, etc. Most questions of this kind would be 
 settled locally. Only questions of principle would be 
 referred to the central committee for decision. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, is the way in which the 
 principle of democratic control might be introduced into 
 the largest single business in the country. The changes 
 suggested may seem modest in scope, but they would be 
 far-reaching in effect. The Postmaster-General who had 
 imagination enough to adopt a scheme of this nature 
 would be conferring a benefit alike on the postal workers, 
 the Labour Movement, and the whole nation. To the 
 postal workers the change would bring a new sense of 
 dignity and self-respect and satisfaction in their work, 
 and, more important perhaps even than these, it would 
 leave them free to exercise their citizen rights as pure 
 citizens without the constant temptation to use political 
 influence as a means for remedying grievances arising out 
 of their employment under Government. It would thus 
 be a charter not only of economic, but of political 
 emancipation. To the Labour Movement it would be 
 an example and an inspiration to apply the same principle 
 of responsible democracy to the far more difficult 
 problems of private employment which still lie unsolved 
 before it. To the community it would mean a trans- 
 formation in the spirit of one of the chief of those public 
 services on the efficiency of which we shall be so much 
 dependent in the work of national reconstruction after 
 the war, A keen, willing, and enterprising Post Office 
 can be of far more service to us than we realise at present. 
 But most of all the community will benefit from the 
 knowledge that the qualities of mind and character 
 necessary to the working of self-governing institutions 
 are not confined to any one class or section, that 
 democracy is a plant which, properly tended and safe- 
 guarded, can grow and prosper in other than its familiar 
 
THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 277 
 
 soil, and that our country, which has led the world in the 
 institutions of politics and government, is ready and 
 eager to apply the same enduring principles to wider and 
 wider fields of public business. 
 
 Note. — Since this paper was written its main position has been adopted in 
 the report of the Whitley Committee, and accepted by the Government. 
 Curious to relate, however, the Government, whilst recommending joint 
 control to private employers throughout the well-organised industries, has 
 as yet taken no steps to apply its own precepts to the Post Office. 
 
CAPITALISM AND INTERNATIONAL 
 RELATIONS ' 
 
 Some months ago, before the United States entered the 
 war, a distinguished and benevolent Jewish- American 
 millionaire, Mr. Jacob SchifF, was invited to give his 
 opinion on the project of a League of Nations to prevent 
 future wars. His reply was short and to the point, as 
 befits a successful business man. '* Tour league does ftot 
 meet the difficulty : the root of the trouble is economic." As 
 every sermon must have a text, this utterance by Dives 
 may serve as an introduction to the subject which I want 
 to bring before you. 
 
 How far are economic causes at the root of the 
 present war .? What is the connection, if any, between 
 the existing economic system and the international 
 antagonisms out of which the war has sprung } What 
 exactly is meant by the phrase which is not uncommonly 
 heard that the war is a "capitalist" war, or, as the 
 Russian Extremists put it, a war waged by bourgeois 
 governments in which the working class as such has no 
 concern ? And, if we can answer these questions, what 
 bearing has our answer on the problem of the better 
 organisation of international relations after the war ? 
 
 These are thorny subjects, which cannot be disposed 
 of in a short paper ; but so much confusion of thought 
 and perplexity of spirit prevail about them that an 
 attempt to clear the issue may be worth the attention of 
 
 ' _A paper read at a Conference of working-class organisations convened at 
 Birmingham, under the auspices of Raskin College, on September ai and it, 
 1917. 
 
 278 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 279 
 
 a conference concerned with the problem of reconstruc- 
 tion. For we cannot apply remedies till we have 
 ascertained the disease ; and if Mr. SchifF's words are 
 strictly true, some of the remedies which are just now 
 being most confidently proposed do not "meet the 
 difficulty " at all. 
 
 Let us begin by defining our terms. I think we had 
 better drop the term " bourgeois." It is a Continental 
 expression which defies exact definition, but I fear that 
 if one looked into it too closely, a fair proportion of 
 those present might have to plead guilty to the soft 
 impeachment. Do not some of us live in villas, and do 
 not most of us wear dark coats and stiff collars ? But 
 what is meant by a " capitalist " ? I suppose it means 
 some one who has resources, in money or its equivalent, 
 in addition to his natural labour-power, whether of hand 
 or brain. A penniless artist is not a capitalist ; nor is 
 a landless agricultural labourer ; but the capitalist class, 
 in this sense, would include the whole body of people 
 from the millionaire to the workman with a few pounds 
 in war loan or in the " Co-op," who have something 
 *' put by," whether in securities or in land, or in a little 
 business, or in bricks and mortar. 
 
 I do not think any one can honestly pretend that this 
 body of people, in this or any other country, either 
 provoked the war or stand to derive any benefit from its 
 continuance. To begin with, they are not organised in 
 such a way as to have any common will or policy, or any 
 means of enforcing it ; and, in the second place, if they 
 had, they would certainly be in favour of peace, retrench- 
 ment, and prosperity, with low prices and low taxes, just 
 as, when they organise municipally, they are invariably 
 in favour of low rates. 
 
 An able American Socialist writer, Mr. L. B. Boudin, 
 in his " Socialism and War," ^ puts this point very clearly : 
 
 1 New York: New Review Publishing Association, 1916, p. 34. The 
 lectures reprinted in it were delivered in the first winter of the war. 
 
28o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 " I know it is the fashion among Socialists," he writes, " to 
 assume and assert that the burdens and miseries of war are borne 
 wholly by the working class, and that for the capitalist class it is 
 a sort of picnic, abounding in fun and excitement, besides being a 
 good business, ... As to the present war, I must say the idea is 
 utterly baseless. This war is certainly no picnic for any social 
 class. Certainly not to the capitalist class, either in the Alliance 
 or in the Entente countries. It is even doubtful whether it is 
 good business — the destruction of property is altogether too great 
 for that. As to the destruction of life, it is so appalling and so 
 indiscriminate as to class as to make the sacrifices of the capitalist 
 class very real and very substantial." 
 
 These words were written early in the war, but its 
 prolongation has only confirmed them. In another 
 American publication I find a definite estimate as to the 
 effect of the war upon the capital values of the possessing 
 class. The New Republic, of June 2, 191 7, quotes the 
 British Bankers' Magazine as saying that the average 
 value of 387 representative securities has declined 20 per 
 cent, since the outbreak of war. In other words, the 
 capitalists who hold these securities are, on the average, 
 20 per cent, poorer with respect to them than on the 
 outbreak of war. This is not nearly such a disastrous 
 slump, after three years of war, as Mr. Norman Angell 
 taught us to expect, but it fully bears out his general 
 contention that " war is bad business." 
 
 This war, then, is certainly not in the interests of the 
 capitalist class in general ; and I think the same can be 
 said of any war or scare of war which either causes a 
 slump in capital values or involves Governments in large 
 expenditure on armaments and mobilisation. 
 
 But, it will be said, there are sections of the capitalist 
 class which have benefited, and benefited greatly, by the 
 war. Undoubtedly this is true : the figures of the 
 Excess Profits Tax returns reveal it for all to see. Large 
 numbers of traders and manufacturers have taken advan- 
 tage of the temporary scarcity of something which they 
 had to sell, whether it be cargo-space or wooden huts, or 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 281 
 
 potatoes, or various kinds of munitions and equipment, 
 and have exacted their pound of flesh from the purchaser 
 according to the recognised rules of the commercial 
 game. The war has undoubtedly brought about a great 
 transference of wealth among the property-owning and 
 investing class, not only in this country, but in all 
 countries, belligerent and neutral alike. Most capitalists 
 are considerably poorer, some are much richer, and some 
 people who were not capitalists at all have recently 
 become so. A correspondent in Italy writes to me, in 
 words which have a familiar ring : " Here, too, there is 
 a great deal of profiteering, and all sorts of common 
 people are getting rich, and even say, 'Long live the 
 war ' " ; whilst a very well-informed neutral with whom 
 I recently had a talk declared that if the war led to social 
 upheavals, as he considered very likely, they would most 
 likely break out first in the neutral countries, where the 
 intense class-bitterness aroused by the working of the 
 capitalist system under the present abnormal conditions 
 is not held in check by any of the influences which may 
 make for national unity in the belligerent countries. 
 
 That any one at all should become richer or more 
 comfortable at a time when hundreds of thousands of his 
 fellow-men are making the supreme sacrifice has struck 
 public opinion in all countries as incongruous, and indeed 
 deplorable. It illustrates in a flash the measure of the 
 difference between the appeal of duty and the appeal of 
 self-interest — a difference of which we were all dimly 
 aware in pre-war days, but which it has taken the experi- 
 ence of the war to burn in upon our minds. But it 
 would, nevertheless, be very diflScult to prove that all or 
 any section of those who have improved their material 
 position as a result of the war either helped to bring the 
 war about, or even desired it. Many of them have 
 suffered personal losses which they would have given 
 their new-gotten wealth many times over to escape ; and 
 of the great majority I think it may be said with truth 
 
282 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 that they made money because they could hardly avoid 
 it. Merchants and manufacturers, like most Englishmen, 
 are very conservative in their habits, especially when they 
 are getting on in years. When such a man has been 
 accustomed all his life to working along certain lines, he 
 cannot easily adapt himself to new standards. Mr. 
 Runciman, for instance, is reputed to be a man of un- 
 usual ability, yet he saw nothing to be ashamed at in 
 saying from his place in the House of Commons, when 
 he was President of the Board of Trade, that it was more 
 than one could expect of human nature for a coalowner 
 not to exact the highest possible price for his coal.^ Mr. 
 Runciman has not even the saving grace of being elderly, 
 and he has had an experience of public life which might 
 have made him familiar with other standards. If a 
 Liberal Cabinet Minister speaks and thinks in this way, 
 it may be presumed that thousands of ordinary people 
 who live according to habit, without trying to put their 
 policy into words, are acting along the lines he indicated. 
 Their actions may set a deplorable and demoralising 
 example ; but they are not necessarily bad people. They 
 are only the victims of habit — the followers of a vicious 
 tradition. It is true that they might have risen superior 
 to the tradition, as many of them have done ; but if we 
 look at the matter in the broadest light and judge them 
 as we should desire to be judged ourselves, we must 
 conclude that it is not they who are at fault, but the 
 system in which they are working — the system which 
 has made it second nature for them to make the highest 
 possible profit on a commercial transaction. 
 
 But, I shall be told, to say that the individual 
 capitalist is the victim of a bad system does not prove 
 
 1 Mr. Runciman's words were : " The coalowners are pretty shrewd 
 business men, and if they find offers coming along week by week at increased 
 prices, it is more than one can expect of human nature that they should refuse 
 these offers made to them." In reply to an interruption he added j " All 
 business men are anxious to get the largest amount they can for what they 
 have to sell." — House of Commons debates, July 19, 19:5. 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 283 
 
 that the war is not a " capitalist war." In fact, it is 
 rather an argument the other way. This or that capitalist, 
 or group of capitalists, may not have brought about or 
 desired the war. The American Socialist editor who, in 
 August, 1 9 14, explained what was going on in Europe 
 as " a frame-up by Rothschild " may have been some- 
 what out of his depth ; we may grant that the ship- 
 owners, provision merchants, and others, who are alleged 
 to have made money out of the war, had nothing 
 whatever to do with the " ten years of secret diplpmacy " 
 which preceded the outbreak of hostilities ; but was not 
 the capitalist system itself the canker at the root of our 
 civilisation which is responsible for its sudden collapse ? 
 Is it not, to say the least, profoundly disquieting that a 
 crisis in the nation's history should reveal so profound 
 a discrepancy between the spirit of national service which 
 animates its soldiers and sailors and the motive of profit 
 by which its merchants and manufacturers are expected, 
 almost as a matter of course, to be actuated ? If war 
 brings out so much unselfish heroism among the fighting 
 men, and so much selfish greed among the business men, 
 is not the spirit of business — the spirit which animates 
 the existing economic order — an even greater enemy to 
 human progress than the menace of German domination 
 against which we are contending ? Is not the real enemy, 
 perhaps, not the spirit of militarism, as embodied in the 
 Kaiser's armies, but the spirit of profiteering as embodied 
 in the normal life of all the contending parties ? If we 
 want to secure a truly just and stable peace, had we not 
 better take Mr. SchifFs hint and look beyond the 
 League of Nations, with its machinery — so familiar to 
 workmen from its operation in other spheres — for the 
 upholding of public right and the enforcement of inter- 
 national agreements ? Will it not be quicker, in the 
 long run, to touch the evil at its source, and abolish 
 an economic system which is admittedly on a lower plane 
 than the majority of those who are enmeshed in its toils ? 
 
2 84 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Three years ago I should have answered these ques- 
 tions with an emphatic " No ! " — not because I did not 
 desire to see extensive changes in the existing economic 
 system, but because I believed in doing one job at a 
 time and doing It thoroughly. War may or may not be 
 the most dangerous and deep-rooted disease of modern 
 civilisation, but it is certainly the most absorbing in its 
 claim on the attention and the energies of peoples. It 
 demands stern, continuous, and undivided concentration. 
 And as 1 believed, and believe still, that the decisive 
 defeat of German militarism is indispensable to the future 
 progress and happiness of the peoples of Europe, I was 
 inclined to lay aside speculations as to the reform of our 
 industrial system till " after the war." There were many 
 who thought with me on the same lines, who, as one 
 soldier put it, went out to France to finish the work of 
 the French Revolution in Europe, meaning to come back 
 to help on the social revolution at home. 
 
 But in thinking we could thus separate the two great 
 problems which rack the peoples of Europe, we were 
 wrong. Students and statesmen cannot choose the order 
 in which great and long-standing issues will allow them- 
 selves to be dealt with, and to expect the problems 
 created by the Industrial Revolution to be frozen into 
 immobility while Europe devoted itself with a single 
 mind to solving those created by the French Revolution 
 was to demand a second miracle of Joshua — to ask the 
 sun, which rises afresh every morning above the smoke- 
 cloud of our industrial centres, to stand still in its course. 
 Capitalism did not cause the war, it is true ; it was the 
 Kaiser, not Rothschild, who pulled the trigger ; but 
 capitalism and the philosophy of self-interest on which it 
 reposes were intimately connected with the atmosphere 
 of selfishness and domination which made the war possible. 
 The two sets of causes, political and economic, lay 
 smouldering together beneath the crust of European 
 society. When one erupted, it should have been possible 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 285 
 
 to foresee that it would bring the other with it to the 
 surface. 
 
 But perhaps not even the most clear-sighted observer 
 of the problems of modern society could have predicted 
 the closeness of the relationship which the course of the 
 military operations would establish between political and 
 economic issues and forces. Blinded by precedent, states- 
 men and economists alike thought of war in terms of 
 armies ; or, if they saw a little further, of finance. A 
 few months of war, waged on a modern scale, showed 
 that victory depended neither on courage in the field 
 nor on gold and credit, but on industrial power. The 
 struggle was transferred, or rather extended, from the 
 trenches to the workshop and the shipyard ; and the clash 
 of the fighting men became a mere section of a vaster 
 conflict between the entire working force of the con- 
 tending peoples. Thus the problems connected with the 
 working of the economic system, instead of lying dormant 
 " for the duration of the war," were everywhere discussed 
 and considered afresh, not only by the workers but by 
 Governments, and all over Europe able administrative 
 brains began to consider them from a standpoint which 
 had never before, in this country at any rate, been adopted 
 in public policy — the standpoint not of profit but of use — 
 how best to enable our industries to supply the immediate 
 and pressing needs of the community. 
 
 After three years of destruction the interrelation of 
 the two sets of problems— the political and the economic 
 — has become more intimate than ever. The British and 
 German blockades which threaten to denude both countries 
 — happily not in equal degree — of their stock of raw 
 material and imported foodstuffs, together with the with- 
 drawal of labour from peace-time activities over a large 
 part of the world, are bringing statesmen face to face with 
 a situation in which all the old landmarks of capitalist 
 economics and fiscal controversy are submerged. The 
 end of the war will find Europe — especially Central 
 
2 86 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Europe — poor, exhausted, and largely deprived of its 
 means of support and supply. As a recent writer puts 
 it, in an article bearing] the ominous title **A World 
 Famine " : " Unless some very drastic and very far- 
 reaching measures are taken in time, and taken on a 
 sufficiently large scale, there will be many millions of 
 families in parts of Europe and South-Eastern Asia 
 without employment and without means to buy the 
 scanty supplies of extremely dear food that will be locally 
 accessible to them. ... It is [not too much to say that 
 there will be places within a day's journey of European 
 capitals where society, with an extremity of want not 
 paralleled in Europe since the Thirty Years' War, may 
 be near dissolution." ^ Already we can see that among 
 the questions with which the Peace Congress will have 
 to deal will not only be the establishment of public right 
 and the redrawing of the map of Europe, but the more 
 urgent problem of how to provide food, clothing, and 
 other necessaries to the distressed peoples of Europe, a 
 task which the existing economic system has not per- 
 formed with conspicuous success in peace time, and is 
 certainly not qualified to cope with in the unprecedented 
 conditions of the immediate post-war period. 
 
 So far from setting back industrial change, then, the 
 war has brought it in its stride ; and the discussion of 
 economic problems is not only not irrelevant to the 
 problems of the war and the settlement, but is vitally 
 bound up with them. The war has shown that modern 
 life is all of one piece : that its separate problems cannot 
 be isolated and taken one at a time for special treatment ; 
 and that when statesmen inscribe liberty and justice on 
 their banners and bid their fellow-citizens die for them, 
 they are stirring up feelings and drawing attention to 
 contrasts for which, sooner or later, they are certain to 
 be called to account. 
 
 Now perhaps we are in a position to sum up this 
 
 ' Netu Statesman, August 25, 1917. 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 287 
 
 rather abstract discussion as to the relation between 
 capitalism and the war. To those who say : " Leave the 
 economic issue aside and concentrate all on winning the 
 war," the answer is : The war itself will not allow us to 
 leave the economic issue aside ; and, that being so, 
 winning the war necessarily takes on a wider significance. 
 It means the triumph of liberty and justice, not only on 
 the battlefield but at home : the extension to the economic 
 sphere of the principles which the Allies have proclaimed 
 in the political. It means accepting Mr, SchiflF's challenge, 
 and grappling with the deep-seated industrial problem 
 which, if not, as Mr. Schiff declares, the root of the 
 trouble, is certainly one of its twin roots. To the smaller 
 group on the other hand who say : " Leave the war to 
 take its own course and concentrate all on abolishing the 
 existing economic order," the answer is : You are no 
 more free than the politicians to select one problem for 
 treatment and ignore the rest. You may ignore the 
 war, but the war will not ignore you. Moreover, the 
 existing economic order which you are out to " abolish," 
 is in process of transformation before your eyes. Much 
 better watch what is happening and try to learn from it, 
 rather than stand aside and denounce profiteering whilst 
 you allow militarism to take its course. 
 
 How can the ideals of the Allies be applied to our 
 industrial system at home ? To attempt an answer to 
 this question lies beyond the scope of this paper. I will 
 only say this : that the war has effectually disposed of 
 the idea that a simple and sufficient remedy for our 
 industrial ills is to be found in abolishing the system of 
 privately owned enterprise and replacing it by a system 
 of State ownership. The war has certainly dealt a heavy 
 blow at the capitalist system : the system which relied 
 on the self-interest of competing producers and middle- 
 men to supply the needs of the community. But the 
 State, which has been enthroned in their stead, has not 
 proved itself able unaided to organise our industrial life 
 
288 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 on a better basis. State officials are not actuated, it is 
 true, by niotives of pecuniary gain ; but humanity has 
 other failings besides those which used to be attributed 
 as virtues to " the economic man," and some of these can 
 put grit into the machine quite as effectually as the greed 
 of the most thoroughgoing capitalist. The war has, in 
 fact, modified, if not transformed, the attitude of British 
 Socialists towards bureaucracy ; and I suspect that, when 
 the curtain is lifted, we shall find the same to be the case 
 on the Continent, The result of the intervention of the 
 State has been not altogether unlike what happens when 
 a bystander interferes in a street brawl between a drunken 
 couple. Workmen and employers have discovered that 
 their familiarity with their own trade and their long 
 association together, even on cat and dog lines, have 
 given them a certain common stock of sympathy as 
 against an intruder from outside. The intruder, on the 
 other hand, is beginning to wonder whether he has not 
 shown a certain want of tact in his interference. The 
 resulting situation may be judged from the nature of 
 the proposals put forward with official sanction in the 
 Whitley Report, and from the favourable reception 
 accorded to them. Between State Socialism and private 
 capitalism we have discovered that there is an intermediate 
 region : industrial self-government. The association of 
 the two parties who understand their own business, in 
 an equal partnership in a common service, will itself go 
 far to redeem the organised industries from the domina- 
 tion of pecuniary motives. There is no space to pursue 
 this line of thought further. Moreover, many of those 
 present, who know the working of some of the Boards 
 of Control already set up for certain industries, can speak 
 with more knowledge than an outsider. But if, when 
 war-time pressure is removed and the State has once 
 more retired to a discreet distance, the self-governing 
 institutions — national, local, and in the workshop — which 
 are now being officially advocated become a living reality, 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 289 
 
 it will be true to say that one of the results of the war 
 has been to promote our declared national aims of justice 
 and liberty among important sections of our own people. 
 
 But the most urgent economic task which the settle- 
 ment will impose will not be domestic, but international : 
 it will be concerned, as we have already suggested, with 
 the securing of supplies upon which the recuperation of 
 the peoples, and, more especially, of the industrial 
 peoples, depends. How can this problem best be dealt 
 with ? It is worth while trying to answer this question ; 
 for upon its successful solution in the months following 
 the signing of peace the international " atmosphere " of 
 the post-war period will very largely depend. 
 
 Private capitalism, as we have seen, must prove un- 
 equal to the task. Nor will " industrial self-government " 
 help us ; for we are dealing with what is essentially a 
 problem of foreign trade and foreign policy. The 
 responsibility for supplying the needs of their exhausted 
 populations must, in one form or another, be borne by 
 the various Governments. 
 
 What form should this action take ? The natural 
 course might seem to be for the various Governments 
 concerned to deal with the matter themselves ; and, in 
 point of fact, enough is known for the conjecture to be 
 hazarded that every Government in Europe, belligerents 
 and neutrals alike, is already setting on foot an official 
 organisation to deal with the problem of post-war supplies. 
 Self-preservation alone demands it. No belligerent 
 Government dare demobilise its armies till it can provide 
 employment for its workers ; and employment depends 
 in its turn upon industrial raw material, and raw material 
 upon shipping. There is therefore urgent need for all 
 the Governments to organise what resources they can lay 
 their hands on with at least the same thoroughness as 
 they have devoted to the business of mobilisation or 
 making war. In spite of the perilous uncertainty of many 
 of the factors involved, dependent as they are on the 
 
290 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 terms of peace, Government "Reconstruction Depart- 
 ments " are probably everywhere at work on the twin 
 problems of demobilisation and supplies. 
 
 But, here again, can we rely upon the replacement of 
 private capitalism by State action to solve the problem 
 satisfactorily ? The individual officials acting on behalf 
 of the various Governments may not be "profiteers," 
 but what assurance is there that the Governments for 
 whom they will be acting will not be actuated by motives 
 at least as unworthy as those of the capitalist ? Is com- 
 petition between Government and Government, whether 
 for wealth or for territory or for power, any less danger- 
 ous to the world's welfare than the competition between 
 trader and trader or syndicate and syndicate ? Is it not, 
 in fact, far more dangerous, owing to the far greater 
 concentration of power in the hands of the Governments 
 that are competing and owing to the whole armoury 
 of weapons, military and diplomatic as well as com- 
 mercial, which they can bring to bear on the attainment 
 of their purposes ? Is not, indeed, the association 
 between Governments and economic enterprises one of 
 the most sinister features of the diplomatic history of the 
 years before the war ? In so far as the war was the 
 product of the capitalist spirit, was it not the economic 
 projects and ambitions of Governments rather than of 
 individual capitalists which brought it about ? In 
 Morocco, for instance, though the private firm of 
 Mannesmann Brothers had something to do with the 
 international troubles that arose, could Mannesmann 
 Brothers by themselves have created an international 
 crisis or brought about a European war ? It is said that 
 certain American interests in Mexico have tried on 
 numerous occasions to involve the United States in war 
 with Mexico. They have hitherto failed, owing to the 
 attitude of the United States Government. Similarly 
 neither in Morocco nor in Persia nor in Turkey nor in 
 China would the penetration of European capitalists have 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 291 
 
 been a contributory cause of the present war had not the 
 Governments taken up their stand behind the private 
 trading interests ' and associated themselves and ' their 
 prestige "with their enterprises. Left to themselves, 
 capitalists may be selfish and grasping ; but they canndt 
 bring about war, for they do not wield the power of the 
 State. 
 
 It is for this reason that private capitalism, so far 
 from being recognised as a war-making force, was for 
 many years regarded, and is still regarded in many 
 quarters, as pre-eminently pacific in its influence on 
 international relations. Cobden, for instance, was a 
 capitalist to the backbone ; no man in his day held a 
 firmer belief in the virtues of the existing economic 
 order. But he was also a staunch and lifelong advocate 
 of peace at a time when pacifism was a far less popular 
 creed than now. And he was an advocate of peace 
 because he was a man of business : his pacifism and his 
 internationalism sprang directly out of his belief in the 
 harmonious and satisfactory working of the capitalist 
 system. Just as he believed in unrestricted private 
 enterprise at home and resented the interference of the 
 State with the natural working of economic laws, so 
 he believed in the mission of the private trader, un- 
 assisted and unhampered by his own or other Govern- 
 ments, to spread prosperity and harmony throughout the 
 world. Hands off. Governments ! was his perpetual 
 cry ; leave international politics to the private trader, and 
 he will keep you clear of war. What he dreaded above 
 all else, and surely, as the event has shown, not without 
 reason, was the concentration of political and economic 
 power in the same hands — the hands, moreover, which 
 hold in their keeping the keys of war and peace. As 
 the motto of his earliest political writing he adopted a 
 fumous sentence from Washington's farewell address to 
 the American people : " The great rule of conduct foi" 
 us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our 
 
292 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 commercial relations, to have with them as little political 
 connection as possible." To the spirit of that motto 
 Cobden remained true all his life. Like Mr. SchiflF, he 
 doubted the value of international political machinery. 
 He did not wish to see any sanction provided for inter- 
 national agreements or to see his own country involved 
 in the quarrels of other nations. " Non-intervention " 
 was his motto. Let each country keep to itself and keep 
 its own peace. In case of quarrel, he favoured settle- 
 ment by arbitration ; but far better avoid a quarrel, if 
 possible, by maintaining a placid and dignified isolation. 
 Much the same view is held — or was held up to the eve 
 of the war — by his latter-day successors, Mr. Norman 
 Angell and his group. They sought to divert men's 
 minds from thoughts of war by taking the businesslike 
 attitude that war does not pay. They appealed to reason 
 against passion, to self-interest against patriotism, to solid 
 considerations of profit against romantic dreams of 
 national greatness. 
 
 Alas ! it is proved to demonstration that war does 
 not pay ; but the deduction which Cobden and Norman 
 Angell drew from that fact — namely, that Governments 
 should go on governing and leave trading to the traders, 
 has been falsified once and for all. The war has shown 
 that you cannot draw a sharp line between "govern- 
 ment " and " politics " on the one hand, and " trade " 
 on the other. That indeed might seem to be the moral, 
 not simply of the war, but of the history of the com- 
 mercial and colonial policy of the Great Powers during 
 the half-century between Cobden's French Treaty and 
 to-day. Considerations arising out of foreign trade, 
 questions of fiscal policy at home and in overseas depen- 
 dencies, cannot be kept out of the political arena. They 
 do not simply concern the livelihood of traders. They 
 vitally affect the life of nations. The same is true of 
 the many commercial questions which the war has shown 
 us to be bound up with the problem of national defence. 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 293 
 
 The true moral to be drawn from the fact that war is 
 bad business is not that Governments should eschew 
 business for fear of burning their fingers at it, but that 
 Governments should go into business in a spirit calculated 
 to maintain the world's peace. This is equally true 
 whether the " business " in question consists in devising 
 a tariff or negotiating a commercial treaty, or subsidising 
 a " key industry," or in actual commercial transactions 
 in the world's markets, 
 
 "What is the bearing of all this on the imrhediate 
 question at issue — that of post-war supplies ? It is that 
 the war will have been fought in vain if it finds the 
 various Governments, in their mutual business relations, 
 actuated by the same grasping and anti-social spirit as 
 too often characterised their pre-war commercial activities. 
 If the problem is left to be solved on competitive lines, 
 with the Governments outbidding one another, there will 
 be a scrambling and pushing and threatening and bully- 
 ing such as the world has never seen before, and the 
 League of Nations will perish in its cradle amid the 
 wrangles of the rival disputants. The problem is one 
 that can only be handled successfully on co-operative 
 lines, both in the interests of the world as a whole and 
 of the populations concerned. And once it is realised 
 that co-operation between the various Governments is the 
 only policy compatible with a tolerable state of inter- 
 national relations after the war, it will not take long to 
 draw the further conclusion that the wisest course would 
 be to set the whole matter on an international basis ; in 
 other words, for the various Governments to delegate 
 powers to purchase, allocate, and convey supplies on 
 their behalf to an international Commission. Such a 
 Commission would then, in effect, become a Relief Com- 
 mission for the world as a whole, similar to the Com- 
 mission which looked after the needs of Belgium, under 
 American guidance, during the earlier period of the war. 
 
 This suggestion has already found a place in the 
 
294 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Labour Party draft peace terms submitted to the Inter- 
 Ally Socialist Conference.^ I will not therefore waste 
 words on advocating it. On abstract grounds it is 
 sure to commend itself to many. It seemed better 
 to emphasise the nature of the alternative policy with 
 which Europe would be faced if it were not adopted ; to 
 draw attention to the effects of an orgy of competitive 
 bargaining by Governments, some of them, including 
 the smaller neutrals, in desperate case, upon the prospects 
 of the incipient League of Nations. However impractic- 
 able the proposal seems, it is worth while trying to make 
 it practicable, for the sake of what it will avoid. 
 
 But the proposal is not inherently impracticable. If 
 the machinery had to be created iie novo within a few 
 weeks or months, its world-wide scope might well prove 
 beyond the powers of human organisation. But in fact 
 the machinery is already there ready to hand : it exists 
 in the shape of the blockade, and the Inter-Ally economic 
 control which has been established in connection with it. 
 The blockade, which was first established to keep goods 
 out of Central Europe, slowly developed, through the 
 pressure of events, into an organisation for allocating 
 shipping and supplies to the different countries and 
 services. The rationing of imports will not need to 
 begin after the war. The Allies and neutrals are 
 already living under a regime of rationing. All that 
 
 ' For convenience of reference the recommendation in question is sub- 
 joined : " That in view of the probable world-wide shortage, after the war, of 
 exportable foodstuffs and raw materials, and of merchant shipping, it is 
 imperative, in order to prevent the most serious hardship, and even possible 
 famine, in one country or another, that systematic arrangements should be 
 made on an international basis for the allocation and conveyance of the avail- 
 able exportable surpluses of these commodities to the different countries in 
 proportion, not to their purchasing powers but to their several pressing needs ; 
 and that, within each country, the Government must for some time maintain 
 its control of the most indispensable commodities, in order to secure their 
 appropriation,, not in a competitive market mainly to the richer classes in 
 proportion to their means, but systematically, to meet the most urgent needs 
 of the whole community on the principle of ' no cake for any one till all have 
 bread.''' 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 295 
 
 will be required will be to adjust the form and scope of 
 the organisation to meet the needs of the post-war 
 situation. It is impossible to predict what changes will 
 be needed in this direction till we know the conditions 
 at the end of the war ; nor is it profitable to speculate 
 on the treatment to be meted out, under such an arrange- 
 ment, to the Central Powers. But the embargo recently 
 proclaimed by President Wilson on American exports to 
 neutral countries and the extensive powers granted to 
 Mr. Hoover as Controller of American food supplies 
 indicate that the United States Government has a clear 
 vision of the part which the supply question must play 
 both during the closing phase of the war and in the 
 period of reconstruction. President Wilson is not only 
 the controlling mind in one of the largest producing 
 areas in the world, but he is also the leading exponent 
 of the idea of the League of Nations. It is therefore not 
 unreasonable to expect that the initiative in the matter of 
 the international control of post-war supplies will come 
 from Washington. 
 
 There is no space to carry the suggestion further. 
 One other observation may, however, be made. One of 
 the chief tasks of the Relief Commission, on which the 
 Labour Party Memorandum lays stress, would be tp 
 determine the order in which commodities should be 
 imported. It would have to decide which were the more 
 and which the less important imports. On what principle 
 would this be decided ? In ordinary times, under the 
 regime of private enterprise, it is decided by "demand." 
 If more people are prepared to pay for pianos than for 
 boots, more pianos will be imported than boots, though 
 a piano is a luxury and there may be many thousands of 
 people who badly need boots. But the Relief Com- 
 mission would make its decision not according to indi- 
 vidual demand, but according to social need — to each 
 nation "according to its needs." That is the purpose 
 or which it would be appointed. For some time after 
 
296 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the war, at any rate, necessaries will take precedence over 
 luxuries ; and it is to be hoped that even after the 
 control of imports has been relaxed, the object lesson in 
 social economics provided by the working of the Com- 
 mission's " priority scheme " may diffuse saner and 
 healthier views about spending among the consuming 
 public than prevailed before the war. "No cake until 
 all have bread " is a sound maxim of social policy against 
 which the existing economic system constantly offends. 
 The remedy lies partly with Governments, but partly 
 also, as the war has revealed to us, with the conscience 
 of the consuming public. 
 
 One more suggestion in conclusion : The organisa- 
 tion proposed above could not, from the nature of the 
 case, last very long. Under the best of conditions it 
 would not be popular, and it will need all the support of 
 educated opinion in the countries affected if it is to 
 carry through its task without discredit to the prestige 
 of international organisation. There are, however, other 
 more permanent pieces of work waiting to be done if 
 the connection between international organisation and 
 economic policy is to be maintained and the world saved 
 from relapsing either into the laissez-faire capitalism 
 advocated by Cobden or the anti-social inter-state com- 
 petition which characterised the generation preceding the 
 war. If the League of Nations comes into being it 
 would be wise to bear Mr. SchifTs criticism in mind and 
 extend its purview to the economic questions which have 
 been the cause of so much international friction. The 
 most practicable line of advance would seem to be 
 through the setting up of permanent Standing Com- 
 missions to investigate and watch particular problems 
 and make recommendations about them to the con- 
 ference of the League to form the subject of resolutions 
 which would then be carried down to the separate 
 sovereign Parliaments. There is no space to go into 
 these problems in detail ; but the mention of such 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 297 
 
 questions as Labour legislation, migration and conflicts 
 of standard of life, conservation of the world's resources, 
 the export of capital and foreign loans and concessions, 
 the control and improvement of world-communications, 
 is sufficient to show how inextricably economic problems 
 are now bound up with foreign affairs and public policy 
 all the world over, and how valuable a dispassionate and 
 authoritative statement about them might be in influenc- 
 ing opinion and moulding the policy of Governments. 
 The days when economic internationalism spelled the 
 negation of official action are gone past recall. If the 
 world wishes to organise its lire on a -peaceful basis, it 
 must habituate itself to the idea of international govern- 
 mental organisation. It must learn to think of itself as 
 a single society and to disentangle those of its social 
 problems whicih are common to all its members and can 
 only be dealt with by the common action of the Govern- 
 ments concerned, from the larger body of questions, such 
 as taxation and fiscal policy, which are primarily matters 
 of local and national concern. Above all, mankind must 
 have the courage to judge both economic and national 
 issues from an ethical standpoint and to adj ust its policies 
 and institutions, whether in government or in business, 
 to that wider point of view. In this great task of 
 changing the motives which have hitherto been dominant 
 in our economic policy and relationships, and of bringing 
 them into harmony with the Golden Rule, the working- 
 class movement which, whatever its other failures, has 
 never bowed the knee to commercialism, may well find 
 one of the mainsprings of its activity in the generation 
 after the peace. If the great European working-class 
 leaders rise to the height of the opportunity they will 
 interpret the mind and conscience, not of their class only 
 but of a world which is learning through suffering the 
 true meaning of civilisation. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE ^ 
 I. The Spirit of German Policy 
 
 What sort of a peace does Germany still hope to secure ? 
 The question can be answered in a sentence : a peace 
 which will enable her to fulfil in the next war the aims 
 she has failed to fulfil in this. This can best be illustrated 
 by a brief survey of the policies and war aims pursued 
 by Germany's rulers since 1914. Those aims and policies 
 are perfectly definite and can be set forth and analysed 
 with precision. They have been too little studied in this 
 country, where there has been a disposition to regard 
 Germany as though she were simply a " mad dog " and 
 her rulers as though they were suffering from a megalo- 
 mania which obscured their powers of reasoning and 
 reflection. It is true that Germany's rulers have been 
 blind, but only to forces and considerations which they 
 regard as irrelevant or are unconstitutionally incapable of 
 understanding — to the claims of moral feeling, of inter- 
 national right, of human decency and chivalry. But 
 within the narrow and non-moral limits which they have 
 prescribed for their study their thinking has not been 
 confused or neglectful, but as clear-cut, as well-informed 
 and as conscientious as that of their masters, Bismarck 
 and Macchiavelli. The Germans of to-day pride them- 
 selves on not being romanticists like their ancestors, on 
 having abandoned " the kingdom of the clouds " which 
 Voltaire assigned to them, and having acquired in its 
 stead sobriety of thought and judgment, backed up by a 
 wealth of technical and scientific knowledge. It is in 
 
 1 From The Round Table, March, 1917. 
 298 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 299 
 
 this spirit that they approach the study of political 
 questions. 
 
 The Chancellor's speech to the Main Committee of 
 the Reichstag outlining the course of the submarine 
 controversy and proclaiming the decision to embark upon 
 unrestricted warfare was a perfect example of the German 
 scientific method in politics. So is the discussion of Ger- 
 man foreign policy in Prince Billow's book. Both treat 
 politics as though it were a vast game of chess. Force 
 is marshalled against force ; estimates are made of the 
 various chances and probabilities involved ; and the issue 
 is decided purely on considerations of power. This is 
 what is called Realpolitik or Machtpolitik. It is a pheno- 
 menon that is strange and confusing to the British public, 
 unaccustomed as it is to this cold, clear, intellectual 
 analysis of facts and forces with every element of feeling 
 and moral value left out. But once it is understood that 
 this is the method which is being followed, it is not difficult 
 to detect the different steps by which it proceeds : for 
 the very fact that it is so strictly logical and methodical 
 betrays it. Once grasp the essentials of the problem as 
 the German statesman sees them, and it is compara- 
 tively simple to follow out the argument to its con- 
 clusion, especially as German writers and speakers in 
 their naive boastfulness and over-confidence are constantly 
 giving us the opportunity of verifying our hypotheses 
 as to the drift of their ideas. The German method, in 
 fact, by leaving out all the great essential human interests 
 which lend nobility to the study and art of government, 
 has reduced problems of State policy to a naked and 
 transparent simplicity. Just as Macchiavelli's " Prince " 
 is an easier text-book to follow and to understand to the 
 depths than Plato's " Republic " or the New Testament, so 
 the policies of Bismarck and Bethmann-Hollweg are more 
 easily defined and analysed than those of Lincoln and 
 Mazzini or of President Wilson and Viscount Grey. 
 
 Let us try, then, to see the history of the war through 
 
300 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 German eyes. It will be necessary to make large use of 
 German sources and to accustom the reader to the language 
 of militarism : for without extensive quotation, not from 
 extremists but from moderate and representative spokes- 
 men, it is impossible to give British readers an adequate 
 sense of the abyss which still separates the thought and 
 feeling of the general public in the two countries. Only 
 one thing can bridge that abyss — the re-discovery of 
 moral values by the great mass of the German people, so 
 that they may once more enter into intelligible inter- 
 course with the civilised world. How is that to be brought 
 about ? There are not many present-day Germans 
 endowed at once with sufficient insight to see their own 
 countrymen as others see them and with courage enough 
 to proclaim what they see. One such man, Eduard 
 Bernstein, the well-known member of the Socialist minority 
 in the Reichstag, has lately answered that very question 
 in the pages of an American review, atnd his answer is 
 the same as that of our own Prime IVIinister. 
 
 " The war (he says) is in a high degree the trial of German 
 militarism. Shall it be maintained with its present features or 
 not ? For the parties of the middle-class the question is almost 
 settled already. Unless the war ends for Germany in a downright 
 defeat they will maintain it by hook or by crook." ' 
 
 This estimate is borne out by Professor Hans Delbriick, 
 Treitschke's successor in the Chair of History in Berlin 
 University, who, writing early in 19 14, says, in words that 
 cannot be too often quoted : " Any one who has any 
 familiarity at all with our officers and generals knows that 
 it would take another Sedan, inflicted on us instead of by 
 us, beforje they would acquiesce in the control of the Army 
 by the German Parliament." * 
 
 Thus for the sake of the Germans themselves, whom 
 it has terrorised, no less than for that of the world, 
 
 ' Article in the Neiv Republic, September 23, 1916. 
 8 "Regierung und Volkewille," 1914, p. 136, 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 301 
 
 Prussian militarism, with its strutting arrogance, its cold 
 brutality, its immense and not undeserved prestige for 
 evil, must be " wholly and finally destroyed " as a political 
 and social force in the life of the German people. Then 
 and then only can we hope to see " in Germany as well 
 as in Europe one great emancipated land from the Urals 
 to the Atlantic shores." If there are any other means 
 under heaven to the same end, save victory in the field 
 over the military rulers of Prussia, those means have 
 still to be revealed to us. 
 
 II. GERMA^Y's War Aims 
 
 What has been the general aim of the Kaiser's policy 
 since he expelled Bismarck from the seat of power in 
 1889 and seized the reins himself? It can be summed 
 up in a few words. Bismarck was unprincipled, but he 
 was prudent. He left Germany the most important 
 single Power on the Continent of Europe. She had won 
 three wars : she had attached to herself in a network of 
 alliances, open and secret, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia 
 and Roumania. Her one inveterate enemy, France, she 
 had driven into isolation. With Britain, who did not 
 cross her path and had many points of friction with France, 
 she was on terms of friendship, almost of alliance.' She 
 was, in his own words, a " satiated Power." ^ Under the 
 Kaiser she became a hungry Power. His object was to 
 make her a "world-Power" — to transform her from the 
 dominant State in Europe into the dominant State 
 throughout the globe. This sounds like a dream or a 
 
 ' On January j6, 1889, shortly before his retirement, Bismarck said in the 
 Reichstag : " I regard England as our old traditional ally, with whom we have 
 no conflicts of interest. When I say ' ally ' I do not use the word in its diplo- 
 matic sense ; we have no treaty with England j but I wish to preserve the close 
 relationship with England which we have had now for over 1 50 years, even in 
 colonial questions. And if I was satisfied that we were in danger of losing it, 
 I should be careful to try and prevent that happening." 
 
 2 Speech on February 6, 1888. 
 
302 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 vague aspiration. But its practical implications were 
 worked out by his advisers with German care and thorough- 
 ness, in full appreciation of the almost inevitable con- 
 tingency of war. It is true that there was before the war 
 a school of " moderate " opinion in Germany, dominant 
 among the Social Democrats (whose political power by no 
 means corresponded with their numerical strength) and 
 represented even in high governing circles, which did not 
 desire a war with Britain, and, indeed, hoped to avoid the 
 arbitrament of war altogether. But no one who reads 
 Prince Billow's book or the present Imperial Chancellor's 
 review of his policy in his speeches can doubt that both 
 these " moderate " men looked forward to a time when 
 Germany, with or without war, would have elbowed 
 her way to the front. Since the outbreak of war the 
 party of relative moderation has ceased to exist, the 
 majority of the Socialists have accepted the official pro- 
 gramme, and the Imperialists reign supreme. Leaving 
 out of account the Socialist minority, which, so far as 
 numbers go, is insignificant in its public representation, 
 controversy has raged, not between "moderates" and 
 extremists, but between diiFerent schools of Imperialism. 
 This was inevitable as soon as the military machine 
 assumed uncontrolled command, and will continue until 
 it has been discredited by defeat. 
 
 German imperialists have had two separate and distinct 
 aims in view — one in the West, the other in the East. 
 No doubt their distinctness is more apparent now, both 
 to us and the Germans, than it was before the war, for it 
 has been brought out into sharp relief by the unexpected 
 course of the campaign. But, looked at closely, the two 
 aims always were distinct both in the policy which they 
 involved and in the appeal they made to different sections 
 of the German population. They are distinct, but they 
 are not mutually incompatible. Rather they are com- 
 plementary. Yet the attainment of either without the 
 other would involve a great advance on the Bismarckian 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 303 
 
 position and the achievement of a very substantial 
 measure of " world-dominion." 
 
 Let us examine each of them in turn. 
 
 Germany's Western aims, as German imperialists 
 conceived them before the war, can be summed up as 
 follows : To decoy or to intimidate Great Britain or (if 
 needs must) to defeat her ; to crush France once and 
 for all ; to overawe Holland, Belgium, and Portugal ; 
 to extend her power, in one form or another, over 
 Rotterdam, Antwerp, Calais, and the mineral deposits of 
 French Lorraine ; to break up the extra-European 
 dominions of her victims, including, in the end, the 
 British Commonwealth, and to build up on their ruins a 
 greater Germany beyond the seas. 
 
 There is no space here to go into these various points 
 in detail. So far as the proposed European annexations 
 are concerned, it is only necessary to refer to the speech 
 by the second personage in the Empire, the King of 
 Bavaria, on Germany's need to control the mouth of the 
 Rhine ; to the Imperial Chancellor's remarks bearing on 
 the same subject during the negotiations ; to the economic 
 aspects of the General Staffs carefully designed plan of 
 campaign in France and Belgium ; and to the manifesto 
 of the Six Economic Associations,' representing every 
 class in the Empire, peasants included, with the exception 
 of the town workmen. It is in its extra-European aspects 
 that the programme chiefly concerns us. 
 
 There it found itself faced at the outset with one 
 insuperable obstacle — the British Navy. "With regard 
 to extra-European politics," says Prince Bulow,in his frank 
 and revealing book, " England is the only country with 
 which Germany has outstanding issues to settle." The 
 same theme runs through speech after speech by the 
 Kaiser and his representatives in their campaign for the 
 growth of the German Navy, from the Kruger telegram 
 onwards. Germany, already predominant in Europe as 
 
 ' Reprinted in " The Issue," by J. W. Headlam, Appendix I. 
 
304 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the first military Power, was to become an extra-European 
 or a " World-Power," with a " place in the sun " beyond 
 the ocean, enjoying " the freedom of the seas " which has 
 been defined on different occasions as " the Empire of 
 the Atlantic," the command of the Suez Canal, or a balance 
 of naval power with Great Britain, but which, closely 
 examined, really means, or meant, a substitution of 
 German for British supremacy. It was in this spirit that 
 Seeley's " Expansion of England" was studied and (thanks 
 to its misleading Prussian title) misinterpreted in German 
 schools. It was in this spirit that Germany looked 
 forward to the inevitable Day. 
 
 What sort of a Colonial Empire did Germany hope 
 to attain after winning the freedom of the seas ? The 
 ordinary middle-class and working-class voter who sup- 
 ported the Government on the Colonial issue in the 
 Herrero election of 1907 (when the Socialist representa- 
 tion was cut down from 81 to 43) had probably only 
 a very hazy answer to this question. He would most 
 likely have said that he wanted something big and rich 
 and full of good fighting material : generally speaking, in 
 fact, an Empire after what was considered the English 
 style. But the statesmen and the professors had their 
 projects worked out in detail. It is worth while quoting 
 one statement of Germany's colonial demands, not only 
 because it conforms so closely to the childish popular 
 canons, but because it is from the pen of a man who has 
 more than once endangered his academic position by the 
 moderation of his views. 
 
 " The first and most important of all the national demands 
 [says Professor Delbrtick^] which we shall have to make when 
 the time comes for the signing of peace must be a demand for 
 a very large Colonial Empire, a German India. The Empire 
 must be so big that it is capable of conducting its own defence in 
 case of war. A very large territory cannot be completely occupied 
 by any enemy. A very large territory will maintain its own army 
 ' "Bismarck's Erbe," 1915, p. 202. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 305 
 
 and provide numerous reservists and second-line troops. If its 
 main centres are connected by rail its different districts will be in 
 a position to support one another in case of need. A very large 
 territory can have its own munition and arms factories. A very 
 large territory will also have harbours and coaling stations," 
 
 And he adds in a footnote, " in order to prevent mis- 
 understandings," and to explain what he means by " very 
 large," that 
 
 " the Belgian and French Congo by themselves cannot suffice for 
 the German India which we must try to secure and have a right 
 to demand after our victories. This equatorial territory may 
 provide us with unsuspected treasures in the future, but so far as 
 the next generation is concerned its extraordinarily thin population 
 will prevent it from being profitable to us : indeed, it would cost 
 money. Only when the rich districts lying around it, which are 
 now in English hands, are added on shall we have in sufficient 
 measure the practical pre-requisities for a German India." 
 
 These are not the daydreams of peace. These words 
 were written in April, 19 15, after the big check in the 
 West and before the Eastern drive. The views expressed 
 in them are even now not abandoned. Writing in the 
 February issue of a Berlin monthly review,^ an ex-governor 
 of East Africa crosses the " t's " and dots the " i's " of 
 Delbriick's statement. 
 
 " If Belgium," he says, " as we hope and as the Belgians 
 hope, is to be divided after the war between Germany and 
 France, vast portions of the Belgian and French Congo will 
 have to be included in Germany's colonial Empire, which we 
 would then complete by the acquisition of British East Africa 
 and Uganda, in exchange for Kiau Chau, New Guinea, and 
 Australasian islands. Such an Empire could easily be defended 
 from the sea, and it would have to be considered whether we 
 could not exchange Togoland, which is isolated, for Northern 
 Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Germany would then have a Colonial 
 Empire worthy of her enterprising spirit, and it would yield us 
 all the raw material we need." 
 
 ' Baron Albrecht von Rechenberg, in Nord und Sud, siiminaiised in the 
 Westminster Gaxette, January 27, 1917. 
 
 X 
 
3o6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Similarly, the Frankfurter Zeitung^ a conspicuously moderate 
 paper, was still two months ago demanding "a compact 
 Colonial Empire in place of our present haphazard 
 acquisitions." ^ 
 
 Nor is this attitude confined to the official and 
 bourgeois classes. The Socialist majority, though shy 
 about annexations in Western Europe, have from the 
 beginning associated themselves with " imperialist " pro- 
 jects overseas. In an article dated January 17, 19 17, one 
 of their members, writing on terms of peace, demands 
 for Germany " an extensive Colonial territory which will 
 enable her to import from within her own sphere of 
 government the tropical products which cannot be grown 
 on her own soil." "^ 
 
 It remains to be seen whether these expectations will 
 be realised. They can now only be fulfilled on one 
 hypothesis — the checkmating of British sea power. This 
 is the logic of the introduction of what the Germans call 
 their "sharpest weapon," unrestricted submarine warfare. 
 For it is certain that the great German Colonial Empire 
 is not attainable by military victories in the present war. 
 German public opinion in general is, it appears, still far 
 from recognising this. But the German Government 
 knows better. It knows that whether or not it recovers 
 its lost colonies, it has, if things remain as they are, no 
 hope of establishing the great self-sufficient German 
 Empire of its dreams, for such an Empire, even if it 
 could be won through exchanges of territory in a negotiated 
 peace, would be useless for its purpose as a fighting 
 organism without " the freedom of the seas " ; and the 
 British Navy still stands undefeated in the way. More- 
 over, if the territorial arrangements at the peace are settled, 
 as we may hope, on the principle of government by 
 
 ' Frankfurter Zeitun^, in an article criticising the immoderate demands 
 of the German Colonial League. Quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 
 January lo, 1917. 
 
 2 Article by August Miiller in the leading Socialist monthly, Soxialistische 
 Monatshefte, January 17, 1917. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 307 
 
 consent of the governed, It is not likely that Germany 
 will recover even the "haphazard acquisitions" she has 
 lost, still less that peoples living in the tropical zone 
 will be handed about " as if they were property " to meet 
 the needs of a self-sufficient^German Empire. That being 
 so, short of a naval victory or a successful submarine 
 blockade, Germany is thrown back upon thinking out an 
 alternative overseas policy until she is ready to resume 
 the struggle against British sea-power, armed by the 
 experience of the present war and under more favourable 
 conditions. We shall see what that policy is. 
 
 It is worth while dwelling for a moment on the reason 
 for the failure of Germany's original Western design, for 
 it throws an interesting light on her future plans. She 
 failed because when " the Day " came, after all her talk it 
 caught her napping. In July, 19 14, Germany did not 
 intend to raise the Western issue in its full scope. Her 
 Western plans, carefully cherished as they were, and 
 loudly proclaimed as they had to be in order to secure 
 popular support for the Navy, were to be reserved for 
 a future war, which was to be the sequel of 1914,35 1870 
 succeeded 1 866. It was not anticipated that the violation 
 of Belgian neutrality would bring Great Britain into 
 the war. This was unmistakably confessed by the 
 demeanour of the Kaiser and the Imperial Chancellor on 
 August 4 and 5, 19 14. Still less was it anticipated that 
 the victorious resistance of France would give Britain 
 time to bring her full naval and military power into play. 
 This has become abundantly clear in the course of the 
 controversy in Germany about the effects of the British 
 blockade. We know now from the statements of 
 responsible persons ' that the German War Staff had not 
 reckoned out the economic implications of a long-drawn 
 war with Great Britain, and that, if we had disregarded 
 
 1 £.g.. Dr. Walter Rathenau, the originator of the Raw Materials Depart- 
 ment of the German War Office, in a lecture delivered in December, 1915, 
 and since published. 
 
3o8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 international law and neutral opinion, as the Germans, 
 judging us, as always, by themselves, naturally expected 
 us to do,^ and instituted the blockade from the first in its 
 present rigour, Germany would before now have been 
 completely denuded of essential raw materials. 
 
 It is for this reason that one of the subjects most 
 discussed in the German Press since the blockade became 
 acute is the best method of economic mobilisation for the 
 next war — that " Second Punic War " against Great 
 Britain which, if Prussian militarism retains its hold over 
 the peoples of Central Europe, will follow inevitably from 
 the present conflict. That this design is cherished — and 
 not unnaturally cherished — in responsible quarters could 
 easily be proved at length. It is best illustrated by the 
 practical arrangements for the storage of raw material 
 and the conscription of industrial workers in the next 
 war suggested by Dr. Rathenau in the lecture already 
 referred to as a result of his administrative experience 
 at the German War Office and by the following extract 
 from the official Government paper, the Norddeutshe 
 Allgemeine Zeitung for October 15, 1916 : 
 
 " The Reichstag Committee for Trade and Industry discussed 
 on Saturday, as already briefly reported, the questions connected 
 with the Economic Transition from War to Peace. The pro- 
 ceedings were confidential. ... A representative of the Centre 
 (the Roman Catholic party) summarised the main problems to be 
 dealt with as follows: (i) The transition from war to peace; 
 (2) The organisation of economic life on a peace basis ; (3) The 
 setting up and carrying through of a plan for placing economic life on a 
 •war-basis. The two latter subjects (adds the journal), are of course 
 matters for the future." 
 
 The bearing of plans of this kind on Germany's 
 
 1 A composite book under the title " German Food Supply and the English 
 Starvation Plan," was published in Germany early in 1915. Its preface bears 
 the date December iz, 19 14. The entry of foodstuffs into Germany was, 
 pf course, not stopped until early in 1915, after the German Government had 
 assumed control of the whole food supply and proclaimed its intention of 
 starving out Great Britain by submarine blockade. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 309 
 
 present policy may be left aside for the moment. They 
 provide, however, an interesting testimony both to Ger- 
 many's relative unpreparedness for the full tide of the 
 Western war and to her anxiety to face the logic of the 
 situation which will arise when, as Germany's rulers still 
 hope, the dominant military Power of the world, having 
 emerged from the war with its prestige enormously 
 enhanced and its military strength substantially increased 
 by its Eastern conquests, stands face to face in the East 
 as in the West, in the Persian Gulf as in the North Sea, 
 with the dominant sea Power. 
 
 III. The Eastern Plan 
 
 For though Germany has failed or partially failed up to 
 the present in the West she has succeeded in the East ; 
 and it must never be forgotten that it was with Eastern 
 not with Western plans immediately in view that she 
 sped the Serbian ultimatum on its way and backed it up 
 by declaring war on Russia. 
 
 In this Eastern adventure Germany's aims can be 
 simply stated. They are as usual twofold — partly 
 military and partly economic. Her military object was, 
 and is, to secure a military preponderance in the Old 
 World by establishing the supremacy of her arms over 
 Central and Eastern Europe and Nearer Asia. Her 
 economic object is clearly stated in the following sentences 
 from the opening essay in an authoritative work recently 
 issued on "The Economic Rapprochement between 
 Germany and her Allies." ^ 
 
 " The establishment of a sphere of economic influence from the 
 North Sea to the Persian Gulf has been for nearly two decades 
 
 ' " Die wirtschaftliche Annaherung zwischen dem deutschen Reiche und 
 seinen Verbiindeten," issued at the request of the Verein fiir Sozial-politik, 
 edited by Professor Herkner, of Berlin, 2 vols., 1916. The quotation is taken 
 from the opening essay, by Dr. Spiethoff, Professor of Political Economy at the 
 German University at Prague, vol. i. p. 24. 
 
310 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the silent unspoken aim of German foreign policy. Our diplo- 
 macy in recent years, which has seemed to the great mass of all ^ 
 Germans vacillating and little conscious of its aim, only becomes 
 intelligible when regarded as part of a consistent Eastern design. 
 It is to the credit of Rohrbach to have shown in his writings how 
 the single incidents fit into the general scheme of our policy. It 
 is indeed in this region, and in this region alone, that Germany 
 can break out of her isolation in the centre of Europe into the 
 fresh air beyond and win a compact sphere of economic activity 
 which will remain open to her independently of the favour and 
 the jealousy of the Great Powers, Apart from the defence of 
 hearth and home, no other success could compensate Germany for 
 the enormous sacrifices of the war if she did not secure a really 
 free hand, politically speaking, to pursue this economic goal. It 
 is true that critical observers who have gone carefully into the 
 details of the plan profess themselves sceptical of great economic 
 results and emphasise the fact that the improvement of our 
 relations with these regions cannot compensate us for the loss of 
 our vitally important connections with the Great Powers and 
 other States. They may very well be right. Nevertheless it 
 remains true that a secure future for Germany is to be reached 
 along this road and no other, and that Germany would be missing 
 the greatest opportunity ever offered or likely to be offered her in 
 the history of her foreign relations if she were not now to go 
 forward with vigour and decision to its realisation." 
 
 Here it is clearly shown that the Eastern aims in 
 themselves will not at present meet Germany's economic 
 needs. If she is no longer to be "dependent on the 
 favour and the jealousy of the World-Powers" she 
 requires a Colonial Empire in the tropics as well. Never- 
 theless, the Eastern prize was well worth following up, 
 and with good fortune it might even yield " Western " 
 results. After Great Britain and Turkey had entered the 
 lists and the Moslem Holy War had been proclaimed, 
 sanguine spirits dreamed dreams of an African Empire 
 to be won and kept without command of the sea, and 
 influential scholars and writers spoke openly of the con- 
 quest of Egypt and the Soudan, and a Berlin-Cairo- 
 Central African railway. Here, again, expectation has 
 
 » I.e., including the Germans of Austria, of whom the writer is one. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 311 
 
 so far outrun performance. Nevertheless, Germany's 
 main object has been achieved with amazing success. 
 She has overrun Poland, Courland, Lithuania, Serbia, and 
 Montenegro, most of Roumania and part of Volhynia, 
 and she has won more signal conquests still over her 
 own allies and the adjoining neutrals. Austria, Hungary, 
 Bulgaria, and Turkey are no longer free agents. They 
 could not if they would cut themselves loose from the 
 German control, which first pushed them into the war 
 and then saved them from disaster ; and the longer the 
 war continues the tighter must that control become. 
 Turkey, in particular, has become in fact, if not in name, 
 a German annexe. Meanwhile, the smaller European 
 neutrals have been impressed and intimidated by the 
 display of German efficiency and "frightfulness." Thus 
 Germany, cut off from the sea and from the New World, 
 robbed of the overseas Empire of her dreams, has estab- 
 lished a new Empire in its stead in the very heart of the 
 Old World. Stretching from Strassburg to Riga, from 
 Schleswig to the Persian Gulf and to Arabia, it has been 
 driven like a wedge through the continent, pushing 
 Russia away from the warm sea into the northern ice 
 and gloom, and leaving the Western Powers isolated in 
 the peninsula of Europe, cut off from land communica- 
 tion with Russia, India, and the rest of Asia. 
 
 IV. The New German Empire 
 
 What is the character of this new Empire ? What does 
 it portend ? And, in particular, what is its bearing on 
 the future of the British Commonwealth, and of the 
 causes for which it is trustee ? 
 
 It may be well to take the last question first, for it 
 can be simply answered. This new German Empire, if 
 it survives, would be regarded as a disaster by all its 
 neighbours, by Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, 
 Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and Russia ; but it would be 
 
312 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 most disastrous of all to Great Britain, at whom it would 
 be chiefly aimed. If Germany succeeds, at the Peace, 
 in retaining possession of her Eastern conquests, then 
 Britain will have lost the war. The point need not be 
 argued at length, for it is regarded by German writers as 
 a self-evident proposition. It will be sufficient to give 
 two representative German statements of the position of 
 Britain in the event of the permanent establishment of 
 the New Empire. In the course of the book already 
 quoted written in April, 191 J, Professor Delbrlick 
 remarks : 
 
 " Whether this war drives the English out of Egypt or not, what 
 becomes of the English supremacy in Egypt if Turkey now main- 
 tains her existence, rejuvenates and reorganises herself militarily and 
 economically, and establishes a railway system which will permit 
 her to put great armies and all that pertains to them right on to 
 the Egyptian frontier ? Hitherto England has been able, in time 
 of peace, to maintain her hold on Egypt with a garrison of 6000 
 Europeans. Whatever the conditions of peace at the end of the 
 war, this idyll of British supremacy has passed away beyond recall." ^ 
 
 The same argument is still more clearly put by Paul 
 Rohrbach, the semi-official writer who has done so much 
 to further Germany's Eastern designs. Writing in his 
 own paper, Deutshe Politik, on November 24, 19 16, he 
 remarks ; 
 
 " There was a period of war between the great miscarriage at 
 the Dardanelles and the successful Russian summer offensive, 
 when here and there, in the English Press, the phrase cropped up 
 that there were 'two victors' in the war — England and Germany. 
 Behind this lay the idea that English policy might rest content, in 
 case of need, with a ' drawn ' war. From the English point of 
 view, however, this was a piece of lazy and confused thinking. 
 They know better to-day : and they are perfectly right when they 
 
 ' Delbriiclc, " Bismarck's Erbe," Berlin, I9i5,!pp.2ii-2i2, written in April, 
 1 91 5. The point here made in print about the defences of Egypt is no new 
 one for the Professor. It was made in his university lectures at least a early 
 as 190Z. The Kaiser's visit to Palestine was in 1898. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 313 
 
 say that if the game between them and us ends in an apparent 
 ' draw ' it is we who will be the victors and they the vanquished. 
 . . > In point of fact, if the Central Powers, with Bulgaria and 
 the Turkish East, form a solid political block across the Balkans, 
 then, for obvious political and geographical reasons, it is no longer 
 possible for England in the future to conduct her world-policy on 
 its traditional lines. English foreign policy, in contrast to that of 
 all other European Powers, has hitherto rested on the fact that 
 not only England, but also every vital part of her Empire, was 
 imassailable. This was a very pronounced advantage possessed by 
 England as against all other Powers, although the English have 
 for over a century been accustomed to treat it as a self-evident 
 necessity and as a matter of course. . . . But if the English wish 
 Egypt and India to remain unassailable in the future, and if they 
 wish to secure themselves against the German submarine danger, 
 they must defeat us to such an extent so as to sever our connection 
 with the East, to render us powerless to prevent the break-up of 
 Turkey in favour of England and her Allies, and to force us to 
 submit to permanent restrictions as regards the construction and 
 use of submarines. When England has achieved all this, and not 
 one moment sooner, she has won the war. If she has not attained 
 these aims when peace is concluded, then she has, according to 
 her own confession, lost the war. Here, and nowhere else, lies 
 the root of the English fighting spirit. It took an astonishingly 
 long time before the whole of or, at least, the greater part of the 
 English people realised this situation. But now it is realised, and, 
 hence, we may be sure that England will not stop the war, how- 
 ever great her own sacrifices may be, until she admits defeat." 
 
 It is characteristic of the German writer that he 
 should attribute the obstinacy of the British fighting 
 spirit to intellectual calculation rather than to intensity 
 of moral purpose. But his reasoning is perfectly sound. 
 The establishment of the Berlin-Bagdad Empire as a 
 spearhead against Egypt and India would strike a fatal 
 blow at British security and would involve a complete 
 transformation in our military and defensive system, with 
 the consequent reactions upon domestic and social policy. 
 So far as purely British interests are concerned the case 
 is unanswerable, as the neutral world is well aware. And 
 if Britain were Germany, and British ideals were Prussian 
 
314 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 ideals, there would be no more to be said. It is natural 
 that a Great Power, especially a great Naval Power, 
 should have a traditional betit towards the policy of 
 Divide et Impera and should prefer to have small or weak 
 States as its neighbours rather than a first-class highly 
 organised military Power. That is the light in which 
 the German writer, accustomed to weighing strength and 
 weakness rather than right and wrong in the balances, 
 regards the issue. All that he sees are two great non- 
 moral World-Powers ranged against one another for 
 mastery, and all the *' right " that he expects to emerge 
 from the contest is the "right" of the stronger. But 
 there is, of course, a higher point of view than that of 
 purely British interests— the point of view set forth in 
 the Allied Notes and in President Wilson's Message, 
 We have no right to condemn the new German Empire 
 till we have examined the principle on which it is based, 
 the policy which its rulers mean to pursue, and the bear- 
 ing which its definitive establishment and consolidation in 
 the treaty of peace would have on the future history of 
 the Old Continent and of the world. 
 
 What, then, is the character of this new Empire ? 
 On what principle of government is it based } Is it 
 a benevolent autocracy based on the desire of the 
 dominant German rulers to promote the welfare of their 
 subjects ? Or is it a Commonwealth based upon the 
 exercise of political responsibility by all who are fitted to 
 bear it ? Is it based upon the rule of law, or upon the 
 assent of the governed ? Will it contribute to the comity 
 of nations and form a corner-stone in the new League of 
 Peace ? Judged by the touchstone of President Wilson's 
 Message, how does it stand the test ? Men of liberal 
 tendencies in neutral countries, ignorant of the local 
 circumstances and safe in the detachment of the New 
 World, have been tempted to welcome it as a large-scale 
 international experiment and to discern in it an element 
 of stability and order — or at least to demand for it a fair 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 315 
 
 trial. " The Allies," says a writer in an American weekly 
 paper, well known for its progressive tendencies,^ 
 
 " are resolved not to accept a Germanised Central Europe, even 
 though it rests on the acquiescence of the minor Slav peoples ; but 
 inasmuch as they may be forced to consent, it is worth while to 
 consider possible compensations. Germany would have acquired 
 more or less political control over a large region whose economic 
 resources are undeveloped and whose inhabitants possess an in- 
 efficient political and social organisation. German control would 
 not rest on military conquest. . . . The Germans could not treat 
 such peoples as they have in the past treated the Prussian Poles or 
 the Alsatians. The different groups of non-Germans in the 
 Central European system would insist on a substantial measure of 
 self-control. Some kind of federal system would have to be forged, 
 and the making of it would he a slow, delicate and dangerous 
 operation. . . . These non-German peoples will never be politi- 
 cally content unless they can be wrought into an international 
 commonwrealth, analogous to that which is needed for British 
 Imperial federation. 
 
 " In any event the Germans would cease for the time being to 
 threaten British and French sea power." 
 
 And the article closes with the suggestion that the estab- 
 lishment of the New Empire and the consequent increase 
 of Germany's prestige "might place fewer impediments 
 in the way of the ultimate creation of a system of super- 
 national law" than would a decisive victory for either 
 side. 
 
 Can speculations of this kind be brought to the test 
 of fact ? Is there any likelihood or even possibility that 
 the new German Empire can develop, through the free 
 union of its constituent peoples, into a commonwealth 
 analogous to that of Britain ? 
 
 It would be easy to suggest an answer to this question 
 from the past history of the four partners in the Alliance 
 which has crystallised into the new Empire, or from the 
 past record of the alliances and conflicts between them. 
 Prussian ruthlessness in Alsace-Lorraine, in Schleswig 
 
 ' The Ne'w Republic, December 16, 1916. See an article on the same 
 subject in the issue for January 27, 1917. 
 
3i6 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 and in Poland, the relentless persecution and matchless 
 hypocrisy of the Magyars in the government of their 
 " national " State,* the suppression of every symbol and 
 vestige of Serbian nationality in their occupied territory 
 by the Bulgars, the simple, cold-blooded Turkish ex- 
 pedient of wholesale massacre, are not promising founda- 
 tions for a stable edifice of empire. Nor does the alliance 
 between Austria- Hungary and Bulgaria, which was first 
 manifested to the world by the open breach of the Treaty 
 of Berlin, supported by Germany in " shining armour " 
 and then confirmed at the treacherous outbreak of the 
 Second Balkan War, nor the alliance between Germany 
 and Turkey, cemented by the blood of the Armenians, 
 suggest that the new dominion will stand forth as a 
 champion of international right. But these things, after 
 all, are in the past, important and suggestive as they are. 
 It will be fairer, in the space at our disposal, to test the 
 new Empire rather by the future programme set before 
 it by its promoters and sponsors. Let us judge it, not 
 by what it is, but by what those who have brought it into 
 being hope and believe it may become. 
 
 So much has been written in Germany on the subject 
 of "Berlin-Bagdad," and there is such unanimity and, 
 indeed, monotony about the views expressed, that it is 
 not difficult to summarise them. This will best be done, 
 not by isolated quotations, which could be multiplied in- 
 definitely, but by reproducing a few connected statements 
 from representative sources. These may make it clear 
 how widely the new German Empire diverges from the 
 ideals and practice of the British Commonwealth as 
 regards both its external relations and its internal policy 
 and organisation. 
 
 To take first the question of external relations. "In 
 
 1 " The whole of public opinion in Hungary holds the principle of 
 nationalities in honour," was Count Tisza's comment on President Wilson's 
 message. Far more respectable was the German comment which advised 
 President Wilson never to mention the subject of Prussian Poland again. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 317 
 
 every discussion on the peace that must follow this war," 
 says President Wilson, "it is taken for granted that 
 peace must be followed by a definite concert of the Powers. 
 The question upon which the whole future peace and 
 policy of the world depend is this : Is the present a 
 struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new 
 Balance of Power ? " How is this question answered by 
 the prophets of the new German Empire ? There is only 
 room for one statement of their creed : but it must be 
 given at some length : 
 
 " The great lesson which the German people has had to learn 
 is to think in terms of power (machtpolitisch denken) ; and the 
 present war has taught us more in this regard than all the four 
 centuries of European diplomacy and development that preceded 
 it. For all who have eyes to see and a mind alive to the world 
 around them the Great War has made clear our true situation. 
 We must insist on being a World-Power, or we cease to be a 
 Great Power at all. There is no other alternative. , . . Let no 
 one here say that small States, too, can have a national life of their 
 own. True, so long as the great States around them allow them 
 to exist. But any day may see the end of their existence, in spite 
 of all treaties to the contrary, and every day brings us fresh 
 evidence how little assured is the existence of small States. For 
 neither alliances nor treaties provide the least security for the existence 
 of the Great Powers, still less of small States. Any one who still 
 retains belief in such things is past all argument. A man who 
 has not learnt wisdom from the events of the last two years is 
 incapable of learning anything. Of course every Great Power 
 will always do its best to form alliances with other Powers, great 
 and small, in order to assure its existence against hostile coalitions. 
 But no one of them can feel any security that these alliances will 
 be observed, Germany least of all. . . . We cannot do without 
 alliances, but we can only reckon upon them as promoting our 
 own security so long as they are cemented by the greatest 
 possible sense of common interest. Alliances by themselves are 
 worthless. . . . 
 
 "Let us sum up the argument. Germany needs, quite in- 
 dependently of her Allies, to be large, strong and powerfully 
 organised ; in order to secure herself against the possibility of 
 being deserted by the small Powers and being treacherously attacked by 
 the Great. 
 
31 8 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 " What does she need as'a guarantee of this ? The answer is : 
 an extensive Empire, with highly developed agriculture and 
 industry, the best possible strategic frontiers against sudden attacks 
 and the best possible allies — alliances based not upon scraps of 
 paper {papierene Fertrage) but upon the elementary and vital needs 
 of the allies as regards both defence and economic development. 
 It is unnecessary, nay, harmful, to rely upon the affection and 
 loyalty of any ally unless the material basis of the alliance has 
 been soundly laid. If the war has done no more than awake the 
 German people out of love's young dream — that is, out of its 
 reliance on the goodwill and honest dealing of peoples and States 
 — it will have done us a great service. There are no ethical friend- 
 ihips between States in our day. There are only friendships of con- 
 venience. And friendships of convenience last just so long as the 
 convenience itself 
 
 " That is the sheet-anchor of all foreign policy. What we desire 
 for our future therefore is a strong, self-dependent Germany, strong 
 enough to secure that Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey shall find their 
 greatest safety and prosperity through the German connection — 
 and only through Germany," 
 
 There is nothing new in sentiments such as these. 
 The temper, the argument, even the very turns of phrase, 
 are as old as history. Macchiavelli, in his lore for princes, 
 preached upon the self- same text ; and two thousand 
 years before him the greatest of Greek historians noted 
 how war, " the most compelling of teachers," upset all the 
 established conventions of morality and taught men a new 
 code of mutual dealing. "What an intending ally trusts 
 to is not the goodwill of those who ask his aid, but a 
 decided superiority of power for action." "The strong 
 do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must." * 
 So ran the writ of blood and iron, in the ancient world, 
 as it runs to-day. What is new, and what must give us 
 pause, even after all we have witnessed of German 
 methods, is the source from which this monstrous 
 doctrine is proclaimed. This new prophet of ascendancy, 
 who lisps in the accents of Macchiavelli and pours scorn 
 on the ideals which, as we are told on high authority, 
 
 1 Thucydides, Book iii., ch. 82, Book v., chs. 89 and 109. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 319 
 
 " every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful 
 man must take for granted," is no politician or diplomatist, 
 no Prussian soldier, like Bernhardi, familiar from the 
 traditions of his service with the philosophyof the jungle, 
 no hired scribbler paid to dip his pen in poison, but a 
 man known through two hemispheres as a moral educator 
 of the young. Few German writers, indeed, are better 
 known and more esteemed in this country than Dr. 
 Kerschensteiner, of Munich, whose name is inseparably 
 associated with the Day Continuation School system in 
 that city and elsewhere in Germany, and it is with a sense 
 of cruel irony that his English admirers will find his 
 name associated with this solemn and deliberate denial of 
 the very possibility of international right and of a comity 
 of nations. There is no need for further witnesses as to 
 the part the new German Empire is likely to play in the 
 "creation of a system of international law." Ex hoc uno 
 disce omnes — and their name is legion.^ 
 
 Let us now turn to the internal policy and organisa- 
 tion of the new Empire. No subject has been more 
 discussed in Germany and among her Allies in recent 
 months ; but a brief summary of the general upshot of 
 the debate must suffice. Germany's objects with regard 
 
 ' " Die Zukunft Deutschlands," by Oberstudienrat Dr. Georg Kerschen- 
 steiner, Member of the Reichstag, Munich, in the " Europaische Staats und 
 Wirtschafts-zeitung," December j6, 1916. Italics as in the original. Dr. 
 Kerschensteiner is the author of " Education for Citizenship," English trans- 
 lation, Chicago 1912 and 1915, and "The Schools and the Nation," English 
 translation, 1914. As regards other literature, the German learned periodicals 
 are filled with articles and reviews of books and pamphlets on current social 
 and political questions, among which Mitteleuropa predominates. Diligent 
 search of the available literature has revealed one single pamphlet which 
 departs from the prevalent materialist philosophy and imports moral considera- 
 tions into the argument. And of this the expert reviewer sternly remarks : 
 " The author seems to be quite unaware that he is being guilty of an unpardon- 
 able confusion of thought. All ethical considerations are completely alien to 
 the State and the State must therefore resolutely keep them at arm's length," 
 adding that it is to be hoped that such "pointless ethical reasonings" will not 
 find imitators. (" Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik," July, 1 9 1 6, 
 p. 3 1 7. Review by Professor Eulenberg, of Leipzig, of " The War in the Light 
 of Social Theory," by William Jerusalem. Stuttgart, 1915.) 
 
320 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 to her new Eastern Empire are twofold : military and 
 economic. It was the Military General Staff who made 
 the present war. Circumstances, and not least the British 
 blockade, have set at their side, as no less important for 
 the carrying out of Prussian designs, an Economic General 
 Staff. Together they have worked out the possibilities 
 of the new Empire in terms of men and things — of 
 cannon-fodder and material products. 
 
 The military question is always regarded as a mere 
 matter of arithmetic. Having waged one war with per- 
 haps a majority of unwilling soldiers in their ranks — Poles, 
 Alsatians, Schleswickers, Czechs, Italians, Roumanians, 
 and Jugoslavs among the regiments of the Central Powers, 
 not to speak of the composite Turkish army — the 
 General Staff is justified in laying its plans on the hypo- 
 thesis that the same thing can be done again on a larger 
 scale. Moreover, the effect of a uniform system of 
 military training upon the populations concerned must 
 not be overlooked. The unity of modern Germany, as 
 Germans are never tired of telling us, is largely the result 
 of compulsory military service. As Germany was unified 
 in the generation after 1871, so M itteleuropa, they hope, 
 in spite of its composite and refractory material, will be 
 welded into a military, if not an intellectual, unity in the 
 generation after 19 14. The process has already been 
 carried far in the present war. The German military 
 system is dominant throughout the armies of the allies 
 and Germans are almost everywhere in command, in fact 
 if not in name. The very protestations of military in- 
 dependence issued at intervals by the various allied 
 Governments testify to the helplessness of their position. 
 This unified military control is convenient in many ways 
 to the German Government. It enables it to dispose of 
 doubtful units by sending them to fronts where they will 
 be out of harm's way, and to employ them to keep the 
 civil population in order by the use of foreign troops. 
 Turks, we learn, have already been employed to quell 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 321 
 
 a civil disturbance at Munich,^ This is indeed a new 
 use for " colonial " troops, but under the militarist regime 
 it is too convenient not to be resorted to. 
 
 There is another element in the German military 
 system which must be remembered. Its foundations are 
 laid, as every one knows, in the national school. It is 
 inevitable, therefore, that Germany should seek to control 
 the educational system of her allies — more especially of 
 Turkey and Bulgaria, who are more amenable to such 
 treatment. The influence of German universities and 
 university professors in this direction of recent years has 
 been very great, not only in Europe but in America, and 
 it will, of course, be extended wherever possible after 
 the war. Already a university has been established in 
 Constantinople, and although it has made itself ridiculous 
 by proposing the Kaiser for the Nobel Peace Prize it is 
 likely to be more successful in its main object — the 
 spread of German ideas in Turkey. This policy is 
 already put forward under the specious plea of promoting 
 Turkish independence. Every one who knows Turkey 
 is familiar with the work of the mission schools, a very 
 large number of them American, which have carried on 
 their civilising labours without attempting' to use their 
 influence for political purposes. These " alien schools," 
 we are now told,' 
 
 " must be turned into true Turkish institutions. This will be a 
 favourable moment ... to see that German methods are appre- 
 ciated. . . . The foundations of our power will be stronger and 
 broader if — in harmony with Turkish wishes — we secure our 
 influence, not by the establishment of new schools of our own, 
 but by gradually introducing the German language as the most 
 important second language in the Turkish schools, and thus by the 
 
 1 Statement from a. well-informed — seemingly ofScial — source in the daily 
 papers on February 5. 
 
 2 " The Economic Rapprochement between Germany and Her Allies," 
 vol. ii., p. 450, article on German-Turkish Economic relations. It is the 
 standard book on the subject, and in its general cautious treatment marks a 
 reaction against Naumann's " Mitteleuropa." 
 
 Y 
 
322 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 active and increasing collaboration of German teachers implanting 
 a deep respect for the achievements of German culture." 
 
 But the ecorxomic side of Germany's programme is no 
 less important than the military, and it is round this that 
 controversy chiefly centres. It is best set forth in a series 
 of quotations. 
 
 The following extract is taken from the chapter on 
 Turkey in the large, composite and obviously semi-ofiicial 
 book on " Germany and the World War " to which most 
 of the best-known "political" professors have contributed.* 
 
 " The great problem of German-Turkish relations is commonly 
 summed up in the watchword ' Berlin-Bagdad.' Enemy states- 
 men have discerned in this the idea of a German political domina- 
 tion. They have spoken of Turkey as a German province, or at 
 least contemplated a German 'Protectorate' over the Turks. 
 And yet the problem is not one of politics at all, but of economics. 
 . . . Berlin and Bagdad are linked together as the termini of a 
 mighty railroad that is now nearly completed — a line that will 
 link up lands of widely different economic conditions and render 
 possible an exchange between them which will make them in- 
 dependent of hostile competition, hostile attacks and, above all, the 
 command of the sea. What we have to deal with, then, is a great 
 closed economic territory as the basis of political friendship. All the 
 States astride the line — the German industrial States in the North, 
 the great Turkish agrarian State in the South-East, the Balkan 
 States in the centre — will remain free to carry on their own 
 national affairs, but they all have the same interest in exchanging 
 their goods along this artery of communication;" Granted that in 
 peace time heavy goods will be mainly transported by sea to save 
 expense, yet the existing crisis has shown us the immeasurable 
 value of a secure line of communication by land, a line which is 
 comparable with the great overland railways of the United States." 
 
 There speaks the voice of the bourgeoisie and the 
 official classes. Let us add some representative testi- 
 monies from the working class. In the article already 
 
 1 "Deutschland und der Weltkrieg," Berlin, 1916, p. 305, chapter by Pro- 
 fessor Dr. Carl H. Becker of Bonn. The preface to the second edition states 
 that "the book has been received at home and abroad as an unprejudiced 
 scientific treatment of the events brought about by the war." ^ Italics, as in all 
 subsequent quotations, are reproduced from the original. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 323 
 
 quoted from the leading Socialist monthly paper the 
 writer remarks — 
 
 " The peace which seems possible to us to-day will leave Ger- 
 many and her allies in the eyes of Europe as a group of Powers 
 whose sphere of economic control extends from the marshes of 
 the Elbe to the waters of the Persian Gulf. Thus Germany, in 
 close union with her allies, will have won by her arms the kernel 
 of a great sphere of economic control worthy to be set as a closed 
 economic system {geschlossenes TVirtschafisgebiet) by the side of those 
 of the other world-Empires." 
 
 In 19 1 5, before the entry of Bulgaria, a number of 
 leading German trade unionists representing the chief 
 industries of the country published a book entitled 
 "Working Class Interests and the Issue of the War." 
 It was a naked appeal to sectional self-interest, in harmony 
 with the dominant philosophy of the country. Trade by 
 trade the German workman is told that defeat means 
 ruin and victory more work and higher wages. But 
 whenever the question of peace terms crops up the 
 familiar exposition of Eastern policy reappears : 
 
 " A German commercial policy which met the needs of the 
 Balkan States and, above all, of Turkey would bring with it 
 invaluable consequences. It would bind those peoples more 
 closely to Germany, because it would offer them mutual advan- 
 tages and the possibility of cultural progress. It would suit the 
 interests of the German consumer, because it would assure him of 
 the import of foodstuffs independently of the sea and of England. 
 ... It would also be of advantage to our industries. The pro- 
 curing of industrial raw materials is extremely important for the 
 trade unionist as for the manufacturer. Already to-day we are 
 importing uiool from those regions. With the improvement of 
 methods of communication cotton-production would assume a 
 greater importance for Turkey, to the great advantage of the 
 Central Powers. There is no reason to rely for ever on the 
 American supply or to be dependent on the development of Africa. 
 Both these sources can be cut off from the sea. The straight road 
 to Asia is, however, open if only these peoples can be interested in 
 the prosperity of Germany" ^ 
 
 1 " Arbeiterinteressen und Kriegsergebniss : " a Trade Union war book, 
 
324 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 The same point of view is dominant in the most 
 interesting Socialist document which has as yet come to 
 hand on the subject, the published report of the pro- 
 ceedings at a meeting between the official representatives 
 of the German and Austrian Socialist and Trade Union 
 movements, held at Berlin early in 1916. From the 
 purely intellectual point of view the discussion was on an 
 extraordinarily high level, and the various conflicting 
 factors and interests in the complicated economic situation 
 were analysed with a wealth of practical and theoretical 
 knowledge seldom found at political gatherings in this 
 country. But the whole discussion is dominated by the 
 materialist philosophy of Marx, which has proved so 
 sinister a bond of union between Prussian militarism and 
 German and Austrian socialism. The moral standpoint 
 is simply non-existent. "Central Europe" is judged, 
 not from the point of view of justice or moral values, 
 but by whether it is the predestined next step in the 
 economic evolution of the world ; and from this stand- 
 point there has been no difficulty in bringing round the 
 great majority of Socialists to the policy of co-operating 
 with the Governments and the bourgeois parties in pro- 
 moting the closer economic union of Germany, Austria- 
 Hungary, and the Near East. The general attitude of 
 those present on the question of the rights of small 
 nations may be judged by the following extract from the 
 report of the remarks of the one courageous minority 
 speaker (Ernest Meyer), who ventured to touch on the 
 subject of the wishes of the non-German nationalities 
 concerned : ' 
 
 " From the Socialist point of view, we ought not only to ask 
 
 edited by William Jansson (editor of the official organ of the German Trade 
 Union movement), p. 159, from the closing essay of the editor. 
 
 1 Verbatim report of proceedings on January g, 1916, issued by the 
 Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party, Berlin, Vormuarts Publish- 
 ing Office, 1 916, p. 49. The words translated " Parish Pump politics " above 
 are " Montenegrische Kirchturmspolitik " — i.e. " Montenegrin church steeple 
 politics." 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 325 
 
 what are the interests of the German working-class ; we ought 
 also to take into account the interests of the workers in the Balkan 
 countries. . . . Very likely our comrades in the Balkans have 
 other wishes in preference to the rapprochement with the Central 
 Powers. . . . We cannot demand that without further ado the 
 wishes of the German workers should ride roughshod over theirs. 
 (Interruption : ' Absurd ! ') Regard for the working-class interests 
 of other countries has not hitherto been regarded by us as absurd. 
 (Interruption : ' Parish Pump politics ! ') " 
 
 Let us complete the picture by an extract from the 
 most widely read, as it is also by far the best written, 
 of all the books that have appeared in Germany on this 
 subject — a very oasis in a desert of sand — Naumann's 
 " Central Europe," Attention has already been drawn, 
 in a previous article, to the significance of Naumann's 
 book in connection with German domestic policy ; his 
 exposition of the underlying meaning and philosophy of 
 Germany's Eastern policy is equally striking : 
 
 " We have reached the heart of the constitutional problem of 
 Central Europe.'- It consists in the marking off of National 
 Government from Economic Government and Military Government. 
 The distinction is fundamental. We started, it will be re- 
 membered, with the idea of large-scale economic areas (Weltwirt- 
 ichaftsgebiete). The large-scale economic area of Central Europe 
 must be larger than the existing States of Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary. We have refrained, for obvious reasons, from mention- 
 ing the names of neighbouring States to be brought in, merely 
 stating in general terms that further accessions are necessary. 
 But into what sort of a union shall they be brought in ? The 
 answer is : a military union and an economic union. Anything 
 over and above this would be superfluous and positively harmful. 
 In all other matters there must be no derogation of political 
 independence. It is therefore vital to delimit the military and 
 economic functions as so to work them into a new central govern- 
 ment. Let us take first the latter side of this new union, or, if 
 the expression be preferred, the new Economic State. . . . This 
 Economic State will have its own customs frontiers just as the 
 
 ' Central Europe is habitually now used by German writers to include the 
 Turkish Empire, though Naumann is more directly concerned with Austria- 
 Hungary. 
 
326 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 military State will have its trench defences. Within these 
 frontiers it will promote a wide and active interchange of com- 
 modities. For this a central Economic Government will be 
 required, which will be directly responsible for part of the economic 
 arrangements concerned and will advise the national Governments 
 as to the remainder. Customs, the control of syndicates or trusts, 
 organisations for promoting exports, patents, trade marks, etc., will 
 be under central control. Commercial law, traffic policy, social 
 policy and similar matters will only be indirectly within its 
 purview. But the super-national Economic State, once established, 
 will steadily increase its powers and will gradually evolve an 
 administrative and representative system of its own." ^ 
 
 Here, then, we have the programme. The new 
 German Empire, we now see, is not, and is not intended 
 to be, a political unit in the ordinary sense of the term. 
 It is ostensibly an alliance — an association of militarised 
 partners, each pursuing objects of their own, but bent on 
 preserving a closed system against the jealousy of the 
 outer world, and submitting to the general direction of 
 the most powerful member of the group. The guiding 
 motive is self-interest, and the terms of alliance are a 
 business contract.^ The four Powers are in league for 
 what they can get out of it : and Germany, who holds 
 the others to her by a characteristic blending of cajolery 
 and terrorism, maintains the alliance, with the definite 
 material object of eventually rendering herself independent 
 of British sea-power as regards the import of foodstuffs 
 
 1 " Mitteleuropa," by Friedrich Naumann. Berlin, igij : p. 24.9. The 
 passage quoted will be found on p. 272 of the English tianslation (P. S. King 
 & Co., 191 6). 
 
 2 This is brought out most clearly of all in the manifesto, unique in its 
 combination of peasant cunning and ndi'vete, which was issued by the Bulgarian 
 Government previous to its entry into the war. It is reprinted in Herkner, 
 vol. ii. It is perhaps the first time in history that a call to arms has been 
 backed up by statistics. The following extract is typical of the whole : 
 " Germany and Austria-Hungary are cut off from American and Russian 
 imports of corn. If, therefore, we can get our corn to their markets we can 
 sell it free of duty and at the price of 60 to 80 francs per 100 kilogrammes. 
 Bulgaria would be guilty of the greatest of crimes if she did not make 
 arrangements (;>. by attacking Serbia) to enable our corn to be sold at these 
 high prices" (p. 470). 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 327 
 
 and essential raw materials, such as cotton and wool. 
 She conceives the world as divided up among a few great 
 World Powers with mutually exclusive economic spheres, 
 and she is determined to carve out her own area of 
 exploitation. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to point out to British 
 readers how this conception conflicts at every point with 
 the principles and practice of our own " free, tolerant 
 and unaggressive " Commonwealth, which has kept clear 
 the seas for the trade of the whole world and maintained 
 throughout its dependencies the principle of the open 
 door for all comers. That a system which is based 
 merely on self-interest and repudiates the very suspicion 
 of any deeper unity is built upon unsure foundations is 
 a proposition which need not be argued in the pages of 
 The Round Table. Yet it is interesting to recall that this 
 strange, new ambitious German scheme is in its general 
 conception not a novelty but an anachronism. There 
 was a time in British history when we, too, pursued the 
 phantom of the " self-sufficient Empire " and regarded 
 every neighbouring State as an intending highwayman. 
 " Berlin-Bagdad," for all its parade of modern science, is 
 littie more than an adaptation to modern conditions of 
 the ideas and policy of the "Old Colonial System," which 
 led to such friction between the Colonies and the Mother 
 Country and ultimately to the disruption of the Common- 
 wealth."^ 
 
 ' "Anxiety to make England independent of continental Europe in 
 respect of shipping and of certain raw materials . . . was the motive which 
 prompted English statesmen to favour projects of American colonisation. . . . 
 
 " The policy of British statesmen towards the colonies was moulded by 
 the conceptions of their commercial systems. They left the colonists to 
 concentrate their attention on the local affairs of their several communities, 
 in the belief that Britain could bind them to herself by undertaking to defend 
 them against foreign aggression, and by offering a preference to their raw 
 products, in return for which she was to confine the market for those products 
 to herself. . , , 
 
 " The inherent defect of the system lay in the fact that it was one which 
 could not exist without control, and that control lay in the hands of only one 
 of the parties to the bargain. Each side was so situated as to think mainly or 
 
328 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 That friction is inevitable, and is already plentifully 
 in evidence. Germany's allies do not relish the prospect 
 of being treated as the colonial plantations of a modern 
 industrial State. The Turkish Government, for instance, 
 has recently announced a complete revision of the Turkish 
 tariff, and German authorities are already complaining of 
 the " industrial fanaticism " by which it is inspired. The 
 Hungarians, whose country is described by Naumann in 
 glowing periods as the " granary " of Germany, protest 
 that their manufacturers only need an influx of German 
 capital to develop on prosperous lines. Austrian industrial 
 interests have been so much alarmed at the prospect of 
 Austria becoming the dumping ground of German goods ^ 
 that the idea of a Customs Union has already been 
 abandoned for the milder formula of an " economic 
 rapprochement." The disputes which always break out 
 in a partnership where self-interest is the only tie are 
 already in full swing. 
 
 But we need not conclude too hastily that these con- 
 flicts of interest will undermine the foundations of the 
 new project of Empire. That can be done, and must be 
 done, by the Allies alone. For there are two great out- 
 standing differences between the old Colonial system of 
 Britain and the new Colonial system of Germany, which 
 ensure to the latter, if secure from without, at least a 
 temporary stability. In the first place, Germany has and 
 will retain the undisputed military control over her allies, 
 so that of the two alternatives, tyranny or disruption, the 
 former is the more likely. Secondly, each of her allies 
 
 exclusively of its own interests, which was but a part of the whole. There was 
 no common control in which all shared, such as might compel them to think 
 of the interests of all — of the interests, that is to say, of the Commonwealth as 
 a whole.'' 
 
 " The Commonwealth of Nations," edited by L. Curtis, pp. 245, 307, 309. 
 
 1 Not all Austrian manufacturers share this view. At a conference of the 
 Lower Austrian Union of Trades, on May 14, 19 15, a glove manufacturer 
 remarked in all innocence : " In trades like ours taste is the most important 
 factor involved, and we shall all readily admit that we have nothing to fear 
 from German competition in this respect." Herkner, vol. ii. p. 161. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 329 
 
 is itself a tyrant, practising ascendancy over lesser peoples, 
 so that a sense of common interest and common guilt is 
 always at hand, in case of need, to hold the system 
 together. Berlin-Bagdad represents the ascendancy of 
 Germans, Magyars, Bulgarians and Turks over Alsatians, , 
 Poles, Danes, Czechs, Jugoslavs, Roumanians, Italians, - 
 Slovaks, Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, and other races. In 
 the last analysis, as they know already to their cost, the 
 lesser partners have little voice in the higher direction of 
 the system, just as the German people themselves have 
 little voice in the decisions of their own Government. 
 But they realise that the alternative before them is not the 
 transference of their allegiance to another camp, but in 
 the case of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, at any rate, a 
 drastic alteration both in the boundaries and in the 
 character of their Governments. So they acquiesce per- 
 force in the control of Berlin, a control over the lives of 
 some 150 million people — one-tenth of the population 
 of the world — exercised, directly or indirectly, by the 
 same methods — the combination of prestige and terrorism 
 — by which the old Empires of the East retained their 
 temporary dominion over some of the same unhappy 
 lands ; at the best, organisation, discipline, efficiency, 
 science, material well-being ; at the worst, forced labour, 
 deportation, slavery, massacre. 
 
 Such an Empire is not a commonwealth or community 
 of citizens. It is not even an autocracy of the familiar 
 type. It is something different and more sinister : a 
 military and economic unit, a barracks and a plantation, 
 an area in which the normal concerns and functions of 
 government and social life are subordinated to the demands 
 and requirements of an economic and military General 
 Staff. In peace its inhabitants are no more than a 
 "labour-force"; in war they are simply " man-power." 
 If it survives the present war and is allowed to be con- 
 solidated in the future peace, it will rivet tyranny for yet 
 another generation upon the peoples of Central Europe 
 
330 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 and Nearer Asia, and make ready, slowly perhaps but 
 inevitably, as its resources develop and a new crop of 
 soldiers grows to manhood, for yet another trial of 
 strength between militarism and the forces of liberty and 
 justice. 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT » 
 
 In the climax of the conflict in which the world is in- 
 volved men's minds have become susceptible as never 
 before to the power of ideas. The guns are still speaking 
 as in 1 9 14, and they will go on speaking, ever more 
 forcibly, till victory is achieved ; since, in the great argu- 
 ment which Prussia provoked, no other form of decision 
 avails. But side by side with the guns, and mixing its 
 music with theirs, goes a running undercurrent of dis- 
 cussion, of questioning, of philosophising. Men who 
 never reasoned before are turning their minds to consider 
 the cause for which their continued endurance is de- 
 manded. Women too, newly enfranchised or hoping for 
 enfranchisement, newly bereaved or in daily anxiety of 
 bereavement, are joining in the silent debate. As the 
 whole framework of society has been violently wrenched 
 and reshaped to meet the necessities of a war which affects 
 every department of social existence, so men's minds too, 
 under the stress of change, are being torn from the 
 moorings of custom and carried forward to unknown 
 destinations. New ideas are blowing round us in the 
 storm-laden sky. Old ideas, forgotten since 1848 and 
 earlier, are astir in their company. Europe is in a ferment, 
 and in the universal uncertainty, in the increasing misery 
 and suiFering, no man can predict what forces, what 
 leaders, what forms of society and government will 
 emerge for her peoples. 
 
 At such a time it is necessary, not only to meet force 
 with force on the battlefield, but to meet argument with 
 
 > From The Round Table, March, 191 8. 
 331 
 
332 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 argument. It was for that reason, no doubt, that the 
 Prime Minister, on behalf of the British Commonwealth, 
 and President Wilson, on behalf of the United States, 
 recently restated the war-aims of their peoples. But a 
 restatement of war-aims does not meet the whole need of 
 which men are conscious. It does not cut down to the 
 roots of the debate. What questioning and critical spirits, 
 in Britain and elsewhere, are demanding is something 
 deeper and more searching than a statement of just terms 
 of peace between the contending Governments. They 
 are asking for the title-deeds of the Governments them- 
 selves. They are raising the fundamental questions of 
 political and social philosophy. They desire to know by 
 what right, kings, ministers, and generals command and 
 soldiers and subjects obey, why the few are rich and the 
 many poor, why some peoples bear rule and others are 
 dependent, why, in the distribution of wealth and power 
 both amongst individuals and nations, so much leaps to 
 the eye which seems unequal, arbitrary, and to be justified 
 only by the logic of force. 
 
 The following article embodies an attempt not to 
 answer but to provide guidance towards the answer of 
 such and similar questionings. To restate the outline of 
 a political faith, and to contrast it with contending creeds, 
 must necessarily involve an element of platitude. Yet 
 nothing is more common, in times of crisis, than to find 
 that, while the world's opinion is being swayed hither 
 and thither by winds of strange doctrine, familiar and 
 fundamental truths are overlooked. 
 
 Three doctrines of society and government are fighting 
 for mastery in the world of to-day. Two of them are 
 contending for victory on the battlefield. All three are 
 contending for victory over men's minds. The first is 
 the principle of Prussianism ; the second is the principle 
 of Revolution ; the third is the principle of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 In the battle which has been joined between these 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 333 
 
 three antagonists compromise will be difficult, if not 
 impossible : for the adherents of each are struggling for a 
 victory complete, universal, and decisive. Each aspires 
 to win success not in one country but in all — to achieve 
 the recognition of its unquestioned predominance through- 
 out the civilised world : for the adherents of each, and 
 indeed the hopes of mankind, are bent upon the attain- 
 ment of a settlement founded, not on the shifting sands 
 of compromise, but on the general acceptance, as the basis 
 of the new world order, of certain agreed principles 
 regarding the organisation of society, the nature of govern- 
 ment, and the conduct of international relations. It is 
 this world-wide character of the debate and the urgency 
 of the issues that hang upon it which justify the attempt 
 to isolate the doctrines involved from the entangle- 
 ments of surrounding circumstance and to examine them 
 in the clear light of historical experience and ethical 
 principle. 
 
 I 
 
 Prussianism, as we see it embodied in Central Europe 
 to-day, is not a new phenomenon in history. In its 
 cruder aspects it is as x)ld as Egypt and Assyria. But it 
 has never before been worked out with so much skill, 
 persistence, and courage, or attracted to its banner such a 
 host of able, heroic, and disinterested servants. If we 
 are to understand its full purport or the true force of its 
 appeal, we must make an effort to see it through the eyes 
 of those from whom, as the history of the last three and 
 a half years proves, it has the power to call forth such an 
 abundant reserve of sacrifice and endurance. We must 
 learn to view it, not as a mere policy of military conquest 
 and economic aggrandisement, inspired and directed by a 
 caste of professional soldiers and their hereditary chief, 
 but as a logical and consistent body of political, philo- 
 sophical and religious doctrine. 
 
334 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 Prussianism is a doctrine of authority. It is founded 
 on a sense of the weakness and helplessness of man in his 
 natural state. Man is not born free. He is born a slave 
 — a slave to impulse and caprice, to bodily need, to the 
 bufFetings of an imperious environment. Isolated, igno- 
 rant, undisciplined, man, the latest-born heir of creation, 
 is no radiant young prince, as some idealists see him, 
 ready and fitted to enter into the rich inheritance of the 
 ages, but a reed shivering in the wind of inward and 
 outward circumstances. 
 
 Thus far Prussianism moves in agreement with all 
 those, whether in ancient Greece or modern Britain and 
 America, who have preached the need for a rule, a standard, 
 a guiding authority, as the base of the whole social 
 scheme. Where Prussianism diverges from the doctrine 
 of the framers of the American Constitution and from 
 the principles expressed in the institutions of the British 
 Commonwealth is in the task which it sets before that 
 authority to perform and in the nature and credentials of 
 the authority itself. 
 
 What is that task ? What, in the Prussian view, is 
 the object of political and social organisation ? Is it to 
 secure that this shivering reed, this weak and trembling 
 being called man, this plaything of nature, shall attain, 
 through wise guidance, to the self-control without which 
 freedom is a snare, and then through freedom to the 
 powers and responsibilities which make up the full 
 stature of manhood ? That is not the Prussian answer. 
 Prussianism has at once too little faith in the potentialities 
 of human nature and too keen a sense of the practical 
 urgencies of present-day life. " Freedom," it answers, 
 "may indeed be the hall-mark of complete being. It 
 may indeed be desirable, in the abstract, for the children 
 of men in all their relationships. As to that we will not 
 be dogmatic. If the conditions of social existence were 
 other than what they are, the experiment of training the 
 race to the exercise of uncontrolled freedom might well 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 335 
 
 be tried. But within the limits of human life as it is, and 
 of the possibilities open to rulers and lawgivers, we dare 
 not contemplate the opening of the dykes which hold in the 
 dark waters of popular will and passion. The true objects 
 of government and social organisation are to be sought 
 in another sphere. We do not aim at training the natural 
 man to be free. We aim at training him for the use of 
 an authority higher and wiser than himself. We aim at 
 creating material and spiritual conditions which shall turn 
 his ignorance into knowledge, his weakness into service- 
 able strength, and his want of discipline into firm and 
 confident obedience. We aim at making out of lonely 
 and capricious units, each with its own private fancies 
 and inclinations, with its infinitely various dispositions 
 and capacities, of which in its own narrow field it is 
 powerless to make good use, an army, steady, self-con- 
 trolled, homogeneous, invincible, a fit instrument to 
 achieve the highest purposes of the Creator. Thus we 
 give to each man, not what the West calls freedom — for 
 such freedom, as all history proves, only breeds weakness 
 and anarchy — but something which we think worthier of 
 that great word, the freedom that the angels know, the 
 freedom which consists, not in individual initiative or 
 decision or assent, not in the achievement of self-chosen 
 purposes, but in the perfect service of a righteous and 
 revered authority." 
 
 What is that authority ? It is the authority of a 
 Christian King, of a ruler who holds his power by Divine 
 Right. 
 
 The Divine Right of Kings is a phrase that has so 
 long been unfamiliar to English lips that it is hard for us 
 to realise that the belief is still in full vigour.^ We who 
 
 I Prussian Conservatives hold that his divine election empowers the Kin^ 
 to intercede between God and his people. On the occasion of William II. 's 
 birthday on January 27 last, the Kreun Zettung, alluding to his prayers for his 
 people, said : " Among the heathen and Jews the office of Priest was often 
 associated with their King. Happy the Christian nation whose King volun- 
 tarily assumes the priestly office for his people." 
 
336 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 know Prussianism by its fruits in Belgium and elsewhere 
 are accustomed to think of it as essentially irreligious. 
 That sucli is too often its effect upon its agents the war 
 has unhappily afforded testimony enough. But this is 
 neither the whole truth nor indeed that part of it which 
 it most behoves us to understand. It is a law of the 
 world that no strong organisation, be it a nation or a 
 band of robbers, can be purely evil ; for evil through its 
 own nature spreads weakness, suspicion, and disunion. 
 Were Prussianism purely evil it would have collapsed 
 long ago. It could not have drawn on the reserves of 
 strength which have enabled it to maintain an heroic 
 unequal contest against hunger, hardship, and superior 
 numbers. Prussianism stands for more than the use of 
 howitzers and cannon fodder. It is a creed held, with 
 intense conviction, by men who have had the courage to 
 apply it, logically and consistently, to every relationship 
 of life. Its prophets and leaders, of whom Bismarck is 
 the shining exemplar, have not only been unfeignedly 
 devout in their personal lives, but have seen no dis- 
 harmony, but rather a close association between their 
 religious beliefs and their political and social philosophy. 
 
 " No State," said Bismarck, " has a secure existence unless it 
 has a religious foundation. For me the words, ' By the Grace of 
 God,' which Christian rulers add to their name, is no empty 
 phrase ; I see in them a confession that the princes desire to wield 
 the sceptre which God has given them according to the will of 
 God on earth. If we withdraw this foundation we retain in a 
 State nothing but an accidental aggregate of rights, a kind of 
 bulwark against the war of all against all." 
 
 And again, speaking in 1 848, when the dykes had for 
 the moment broken down and Europe seemed about to 
 be inundated with the waves of popular passion, he 
 reminded his hearers, in words which have become historic 
 as the lodestar of two generations of policy, that the 
 Prussian cause rested " on authority created by God, an 
 authority by the Grace of God," and had been "developed 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 337 
 
 in organic connection with the existing and constitutional 
 legal status." 
 
 These famous words not only reveal the nature of the 
 Prussian authority — the King by the grace of God — but 
 tell us something as to how that authority is in practice 
 exercised and made effective. The King of Prussia is 
 no arbitrary Oriental Sultan, no Temporal Pope, whose 
 personal power is unlimited and personal opinion infalli- 
 ble : he acts, in accordance at once with the dictates of 
 conscience and the " existing and constitutional legal 
 status." 
 
 What is that status ? It is a constitution granted by 
 the King, and subject to revocation by him at pleasure, 
 by which he limits his power and accords certain rights 
 and responsibilities to chosen classes and individuals 
 among his subjects. 
 
 This is not the place in which to describe the consti- 
 tutional development of Prussia or to sketch the intricacies 
 of the present system of legislation and administration. 
 But their effect has been, in brief, to surround the 
 monarch with a body of able, fearless and unbending 
 retainers from among the landed gentry or y««^^r (squires) 
 of the old Prussian provinces — a class at once fanatically 
 loyal to their " all-highest War-lord " and fanatically 
 jealous for their own military traditions and constitutional 
 privileges. It is upon the basis of their allegiance that 
 the structure of the Prussian power has been raised. Had 
 not the Great Elector, according to the true Prussian 
 doctrine, crushed, tamed and subjected them, converting 
 their wilful and fissiparous feudalism into the willing 
 instrument of his royal purpose, the Prussian nobility 
 would have languished in petty power and disunion like 
 their compeers in Hanover, Mecklenburg, and South 
 Germany, the victims of their own useless and impotent 
 freedom. "The intimate union of Crown and people," 
 wrote the King of Prussia a few weeks since, in reply to 
 the birthday greetings of the Prussian Upper House, 
 
338 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 " which I received as a sacred heritage from my fathers, 
 dates from the hard times by which Prussia was trained 
 for its world-historical mission." 
 
 For the last two centuries the Prussian King and his 
 people — a military bodyguard of country squires — have 
 pursued this mission together, and the relationship, at 
 first military and personal, has been crystallised into legal 
 and constitutional forms. Together they have added 
 province upon province to the original Prussian domain 
 — Silesia, Posen, Westphalia, the Lower Rhine, Schleswig- 
 Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel have been directly 
 incorporated. Alsace-Lorraine, conquered mainly by 
 Prussian arms, was added to the German Empire when, 
 in 1 87 1, it was inaugurated under Prussian auspices. 
 And now they have gone forward once more. Belgium, 
 Poland, Courland, and Lithuania lie within that unre- 
 laxing grasp. Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey are 
 dependent, as South Germany has been dependent since 
 1871. 
 
 But the distinguishing feature of Prussianism is not 
 its successful career of military conquest. Military con- 
 quest, after all, is a matter of technical training, equip- 
 ment and skill, of local superiority, sometimes of accident. 
 The world has seen many examples of resounding military 
 success, of seemingly invincible armies. Alexander and 
 Napoleon both grew from smaller beginnings and stretched 
 their arm farther over the known world than Prussia. 
 What distinguishes the career of Prussia from that of 
 Alexander and Napoleon is its capacity for absorbing its 
 victims and converting them, within a generation, into 
 agents for the further extension of its power. No mili- 
 tary State in history has shown this capacity in so high a 
 degree since the days of Rome. The Prussians are the 
 Romans of the modern world. They are moving to 
 world-mastery from similar small beginnings, by similar 
 gradual stages, by a similar combination of force and 
 civilising achievement, of legions and lawgiving, of skilful 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 339 
 
 education and ruthless suppression. To give to the 
 modern world, so restless and divided, so anxious for 
 unhindered security, a Roman peace, guaranteed by the 
 iron majesty of Roman laws and Roman arms, is the 
 dream of Prussian idealism. 
 
 How has this great work of subjection and absorption 
 been accomplished ? By the power of fear and by the 
 power of knowledge. 
 
 It has lately been remarked by an acute psychologist ^ 
 that social philosophers are apt to judge of mankind 
 according to the nature of the system which they desire 
 to provide for it and to see little in human nature save 
 what accords with their initial design. Thus Hobbes, 
 for instance, played on the single motive of fear, Burke 
 relied on the force of use and wont, and Bentham read 
 self-interest into every act of man. Prussianism, like 
 Hobbes, sees chiefly in man a being responsive to fear. 
 
 To the true-born Prussian, living as he does in a 
 perpetual minority, like the Spartan among his Helots, 
 reliance on terrorism and the cultivation of a sense of 
 arrogant contempt towards other peoples and classes has 
 become a fixed habit. " Voxpopuli" said a Junker deputy, 
 in a recent outburst, " Vox populi, vox cattle." 
 
 "The population here," wrote Bismarck from Frankfurt in 
 1848, in the days when that city was almost as great a hotbed of 
 revolutionary feeling as Petrograd is to-day, " would be a political 
 volcano if revolutions were made with the mouth ; so long as it 
 requires blood and strength they will obey any one who has the 
 courage to command and, if necessary, to draw the sword ; they 
 would be dangerous only under cowardly Governments." 
 
 According to the spirit of these words Bismarck acted 
 towards South Germany all his life, and so his successors 
 have dealt with their present allies, " Frightfulness " is 
 the spearhead of the Prussian attack. They have studied 
 the motions of fear in all their manifestations, from the 
 first faint symptoms of weakening, the first flickering of 
 
 ' Graham Wallas, " The Great Society," p. 147. 
 
340 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 the eyelid, to the wild-eyed panic which sweeps away 
 regiments and populations in ignominous rout. 
 
 Fear is the cement of the Prussian dominion. Her 
 young people know it in the classroom, when the shadow 
 of the State examination, on which their whole social 
 status depends, darkens their adolescent years. Their 
 soldiers know it in the barracks and on the drill ground. 
 The civilian knows it in his contact with the soldier and 
 the public official ; the South German in his contact with 
 the Prussian, the ally in his contact with the German. 
 The natives of the German colonies know it well. So 
 do the inhabitants of the occupied territories, and the 
 neutral Governments and peoples, and voyagers by sea, 
 and dwellers in cities within reach of Prussia's strong 
 arm. It is her recurring tactic in military and naval 
 operations, in diplomacy, in internal policy, even in busi- 
 ness, where she has taught her agents to conceal temporary 
 weakness and embarrassment by spreading legends of 
 inexhaustible reserves of money-power and invincible 
 skill in salesmanship and manufacture. Prestige, disci- 
 pline, demoralisation — prestige for herself, discipline for 
 her servants, demoralisation for the rest. These in the 
 Prussian conception are the harvest of fear. 
 
 But with the inculcation of fear has gone the inculca- 
 tion of knowledge. " Culture " and terrorism have 
 ranged the world together. First of all European States 
 Prussia realised that knowledge is power : that to exercise 
 dominion in the modern world a Government must not 
 only train its whole manhood to arms, but set its 
 whole people to school and mould their minds to its 
 bent. " Culture " existed before Prussia made the con- 
 ception her own ; it meant, and still means, familiarity 
 with the best products of human thought and feeling, 
 refinement of taste, a wide outlook, an acquaintance with 
 men and things. But culture in the Prussian sense is 
 something less pleasing in its appeal and less universal in 
 its range. Prussian culture is a State product : it is 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 341 
 
 knowledge, State-organised and State-edited, employed to 
 found or perpetuate a State tradition or to forward a 
 State purpose. It is the armoury whence Prussia draws 
 the weapons of knowledge or opinion with which to 
 promote her designs. 
 
 Upon knowledge, thus cultivated and canalised, the 
 strength of Prussia has depended and still depends to-day 
 — upon the faithful and tireless docility of her servants 
 and victims. It was not simply the skill of her diplomats 
 and generals which enabled her to reap the fruits of her 
 victory over the other German States in 1866, but the 
 science, the swift efficiency, the monumental solidity of 
 the system thereby revealed. She drew South Germany 
 to her in that seven weeks' campaign and in the years 
 that followed by the magic of intellectual achievement. 
 She awed its statesmen ; her glamour dazzled the middle 
 class ; she hypnotised the rising generation at school and 
 in the army ; she whetted the ambition and stimulated 
 the desires of her merchants and manufacturers. So 
 again it was not simply the physical courage of her soldiers, 
 but the trained intelligence of Moltke and Roon, ferti- 
 lised by the teachings of Clausewitz and a great school of 
 thinkers upon the art of war, which won the victories of 
 1870. Nor is it any pre-eminence in natural capacity, 
 any striking gifts of taste or insight or sensibility, which 
 have given German scholarship its worldwide reputation. 
 It is its patient, plodding, conscientious, systematic use of 
 specialised knowledge, the well-devised alliance of Prussian 
 organisation with the old South German spirit of research. 
 By knowledge she won her position in the arts of pro- 
 duction and in the markets of the world. And by 
 knowledge her power has been maintained during three 
 years of unexampled warfare and blockade — by the intelli- 
 gent and well-directed industry of her workmen, by the 
 technical skill of her chemists and engineers, her manu- 
 facturers and financiers, by the organising ability and 
 deeply pondered experience of her General Staff, by the 
 
342 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 concentrated and disciplined labours of countless servants 
 of the Prussian power who forni the rank and file of her 
 fighting forces at the front and in the rear. 
 
 Thus Prussia, having linked knowledge to power, 
 and founded both in a disciplined loyalty to an authority 
 which has been tested in action and so far not been found 
 wanting, supported by allies, her equals in name but 
 already half absorbed into her system, bestrides Europe 
 and the Near East and looks forward, tired but confident, 
 straitened and suffering, but to all outward seeming 
 victorious, towards a peace which wiU give her breathing 
 space to plan the next step in her " world-historical 
 mission," 
 
 II 
 
 In December, 191 7, the German army lay far out in 
 Russian territory. During over three years of campaign- 
 ing it had won a series of resounding victories — Tannen- 
 berg, Gorlice, Warsaw, Tarnopol, Riga. It had overrun 
 vast provinces, centres of industry and wealth, protected 
 by important fortresses. It had broken up the whole 
 defensive system of European Russia, inflicting immense 
 losses on her armies. The German navy had just success- 
 fully attacked and occupied the key of the Eastern Baltic. 
 Before the German generals the way to Petrograd lay 
 open. Russia was powerless to resist. Her army was 
 demoralised and in process of disorderly disbandment. 
 Her railways, the arterial system on which her vast bulk 
 depends for the elements of warmth and subsistence, for 
 the possibility of life itself, were almost as disorganised 
 as her army. The workmen in her towns were crying 
 out for bread and peace. Her peasants were too busy 
 pegging out claims of fresh land, and too distrustful of 
 the paper roubles with which the enemy had helped to 
 flood the country, either to attend to the work of pro- 
 duction or to make available what produce they had. 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 343 
 
 Famine and civil war, disease and licence stalked through 
 the land with giant strides. In March there had been 
 one Russia from Poland to the Pacific ; now, whether 
 there were six or sixty no man could tell. Republics 
 sprang up in a night. Cities and districts proclaimed 
 their independence. The realm of the Romanoffs, of 
 Catherine, of Peter the Great, was no more. Russia had 
 reeled back into the dark ages. She lay prostrate, sick 
 of a malady that had long been in her blood, which 
 deprived her even of the power to minister to her own 
 relief 
 
 A turn of the wheel had put the reins of such organised 
 power as still existed in her capital into the hands df a 
 knot of resolute men, exiles lately returned to their native 
 land. The populace asked for peace. They had joined 
 in the demand themselves, and now they responded. 
 They informed the enemy of their willingness, first to 
 conclude an armistice and then to treat for peace. The 
 armistice was concluded, and then, on a given day, the 
 delegates of the Soldiers' and Workmen's Council, the 
 temporary masters of Petrograd, were conveyed on a 
 German train, despatched to fetch them, to the head- 
 quarters of the German Eastern Army at Brest- Litovsk. 
 
 The fate of Russia was entrusted, in these negotiations, 
 to a strangely assorted company. A peasant and a work- 
 man, a private soldier and a sailor came to take part in 
 the discussions, shepherded by three or four revolutionary 
 politicians. Staflf oflficers accompanied them as technical 
 experts, to advise their plebeian masters. One of these, 
 General Skalon, overcome by the occasion of his mission, 
 put an end to his life during the course of the discussions. 
 Thus, in every circumstance of tragedy and discourage- 
 ment, the representatives of the Russian Revolution 
 entered the hall of session to open negotiations with the 
 delegates of victorious Prussian power. 
 
 Then followed the strangest debate, surely, of which 
 history bears record. It was not a debate, indeed, but a 
 
344 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 dialogue — a philosophical dialogue held, not, as of old, 
 in porch or cloister, but in the open forum, with all 
 mankind for audience. While the Prussian generals sat 
 by waiting for the negotiations between victor and van- 
 quished to pursue its orthodox traditional course, they 
 saw their civilian colleague, who with an imprudent show 
 of generosity had wandered beyond his beat, drawn into 
 paths of metaphysical argument by men who, brooding 
 in long years of exile, had trodden these tracks till they 
 had become more familiar than solid earth. Thus the 
 spokesmen of the Revolution, with desolation behind 
 them, but an audacity outsoaring Prussia's to sustain their 
 spirit, were able, from this singular point of vantage, to 
 make a listening world familiar with their whole thought 
 and purpose. 
 
 Bolshevism, as the leaders of the Soviet preach and 
 practise it, is not a new doctrine. In its emotional appeal 
 it is as old as slavery, in its speculations and projects as 
 old as industrialism. Nor is it the first time that it has 
 seized power and essayed the task of government. Paris 
 has seen and remembers not all but something of what 
 Petrograd now endures. The preachings of Lenin and 
 Trotsky are but a crude and contorted version of ideas 
 which have been discussed, in part adopted and in part 
 discarded, by students and statesmen in happier countries 
 than Russia during the last three generations. Closely 
 examined, what they have to set before us is not a system 
 of life and government, well compacted, logical and 
 consistent, as the metallic and uncompromising ring of 
 their language might seem to imply, but a patchwork 
 composition in which victims of all the oppressions of 
 which the modern world is full can find food for their 
 own particular dream of liberation or revenge, for their 
 elemental anger, their unthinking and childlike fanaticism. 
 Democracy and militarism, socialism and syndicalism, 
 pacifism and the class- war, nationalism and internationalism 
 — these are disconnected and discordant ideals, yet all are 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 345 
 
 equally proclaimed or implied in the Bolshevik pro- 
 gramme. Government by the whole people, owning and 
 controlling the machinery of production ; government by 
 a section of the people organised in councils composed of 
 privileged groups of workers : peace with the foreign 
 enemy, since the power of propaganda is greater than 
 power of the sword ; war against the domestic exploiter, 
 since only through civil war can the working class come 
 into its own : " self-determination," the right of secession 
 and independent sovereignty for every national group, 
 whatever the character of its policy and allegiance ; the 
 knitting together of the peoples into a single society 
 controlled by an international council. Here is no single 
 ordered doctrine, like Prussianism, no clean-cut pro- 
 gramme for the future of humanity, but a shrill reiterated 
 clamour of irrational contradiction. 
 
 Yet Bolshevism, riddled though it is with incon- 
 sistency, has a unity of its own, and the inner force that 
 comes from unity ; and with that force it may yet make 
 much history in Europe. Its unity is not intellectual — 
 it is emotional. Its devotees do not think alike — 'they 
 feel alike. It is the emotion expressed in the simple 
 battle-cry which to-day, as when Marx penned it seventy 
 years ago, can set the waves of passion surging, at 
 moments of crisis and suffering, in any crowded con- 
 course of wage-earners : 
 
 Workers of the worlds unite ; you have a world to win 
 and nothing to lose but your chains. 
 
 It is the emotion which springs from a consciousness 
 of wrongs daily and hourly endured, of a human birth- 
 right withheld, of gifts wasted and perverted in soulless 
 drudgery, of the existence of a great world of power and 
 beauty and happiness beyond the utmost reach of the 
 individual, but just not beyond his ken. It is the 
 revolution of the soul of man against the outcome of a 
 century of industrialism. 
 
 No man can understand the appeal of the revolutionary 
 
346 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 movement till he has experienced or realised in imagina- 
 tion the degradation which the modern industrial system, 
 with its false standard of values, its concentration on 
 wealth and material production, its naive detachment 
 from ethical principle or civic obligation, has brought 
 upon the masses who have served as the cannon fodder 
 for its operations. " The worker in our modern world," 
 says a writer whose lot is to live in the one country in 
 Europe which is at once unspoiled by industrialism and 
 relatively immune from the privations and compulsions 
 of war, 
 
 " The worker in our modern world is the subject of innumerable 
 unapplied doctrines. The lordliest things are predicated for him, 
 which do not affect in the least the relationship with him of those 
 who employ his labour. The ancient wisdom, as it is recounted 
 to him on God's day, assures him of his immortality : that the 
 divine signature is over all his being, that in some way he is 
 co-related with the Eternal, that he is fashioned in a likeness to 
 It. . . . So proud a tale is told of him, and when he wakens on 
 the morrow after the day of God, he finds that none will pay him 
 reverence. He, the destined comrade of Seraphim and Cherubim, 
 is herded with other children of the King in fetid slum and murky 
 alleys, where the devil hath his many mansions, where light and 
 air, the great purifiers, are already dimmed and corrupted before 
 they do him service. ... So great a disparity exists between 
 spiritual theory and the realities of the social order that it might 
 almost be said that spiritual theory has no effect at all on our 
 civilisation, and its inhuman contours seem softened at no point 
 where we could say ' Here the Spirit has mastery. Here God 
 possesses the world.' 
 
 "The imagination, following the worker in our industrial 
 system, sees him labouring without security in his work, in 
 despair, locked out, on strike, living in slums, rarely with enough 
 food for health, bringing children into the world who suffer from 
 malnutrition from their earliest years, a pauper when his days of 
 strength are passed. He dies in charitable institutions. Though 
 his labours are necessary, he is yet not integrated into the national 
 economy. He has no share of his own in the wealth of the 
 nation. He cannot claim work as a right from the holders of 
 economic power, and this absolute dependence upon the autocrats 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 347 
 
 of industry for a livelihood is the greatest evil of any, for it puts 
 a spiritual curse on him and makes him in effect a slave. 
 Instinctively he adopts a servile attitude to those who can sentence 
 him and his children to poverty and hunger without trial or 
 judgment by his peers. A hasty word, and he may be told to 
 draw his pay and begone. The spiritual wrong done him by the 
 social order is greater than the material ill, and that spiritual 
 wrong is no less a wrong because generation after generation of 
 workers have grown up and are habituated to it, and do not 
 realise the oppression ; because in childhood circumstance and the 
 black art of education alike conspire to make the worker humble 
 in heart and to take the crown and sceptre from his spirit, and his 
 elders are already tamed and obsequious." * 
 
 Who will say that this description is exaggerated, as 
 applied to the countries and classes where the ideals and 
 temper of the Revolution make their strongest appeal ? 
 And who can forbear to wonder that, confined as they are 
 within such narrow and squalid limits, the workers, as a 
 class, have preserved or developed such a boundless 
 capacity for faith and hope and generous idealism ? For 
 the victims of a system so deadening in its daily incidence 
 the very power to feel indignation is itself an achieve- 
 ment. The message of the Revolution, bearing with it 
 the glow of passion, the sense of union and organisation, 
 the vague expectation of decisive action and perpetual 
 release, comes as a tonic and lifegiving force. To the 
 historian, the economist and the party leader and organiser 
 the successive revolutionary programmes which have 
 marked its European course, from the days of St. Simon 
 through Marx and Bakunin to the latest MaximaUst 
 inspiration — socialism, anarchism, communism, syndical- 
 ism, in their changes and variations — are serious criticisms 
 and philosophies of society and government. Not so to 
 their followers. By the vast majority they are accepted, 
 not as doctrines consciously adopted, the fruit of intelli- 
 gence and reflection, but as a religion, a revelation, a 
 
 ' "The National Being," by A. E., Dublin, 1916, pp. 66^8. 
 
348 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 vision of the Kingdom. The Revolution, which substi- 
 tutes economics for theology, and gilds the repellent 
 theorems of the dismal science with an apocalyptic glow, 
 is the workman's substitute for a Christianity which has 
 seemed so powerless to supply him with sustenance either 
 for body or spirit. 
 
 The emergence of the smouldering fires of the 
 Revolution into activity in Europe is a natural result 
 of three years of conflict in which the populations of the 
 Continent have suffered as in the history of modern 
 warfare only the peoples of the Confederacy have been 
 called upon to endure. For the subjects of the Central 
 Empires, locked in the prison-house of a slave State, 
 revolution is, if they dare to take it, the shortest road to 
 safety, comfort, and freedom. But forest fires know 
 nothing of frontiers ; and to the peoples of the Alliance, 
 some of them, France, Italy, and the smaller nations, 
 bearing an almost equal or even greater strain, the 
 propaganda of the Revolution at this crisis of the war 
 against Prussianism is an unwelcome distraction and may 
 even be a disaster : for it darkens counsel and divides 
 and confuses the forces of freedom. 
 
 " Let us try never to forget," wrote a wise French Liberal ^ 
 lately, " that Socialism is for Liberalism an ever doubtful ally. It 
 has not the passion for liberty, it has not the passion for nation- 
 ality, it has no passion, no instinct, save for the struggle against 
 the bourgeois class. It has, at this moment, the instinct that 
 whoever may be the victor, this war is preparing for it a very 
 great future. It is impatient for the moment which will allow it 
 to begin to gather its harvest, to store away at last the fruit of so 
 much sufiFering. It is almost prepared to neglect, as a fact of 
 secondary importance, whether it must do its harvesting under 
 German guidance or under some other. Its thought is elsewhere. 
 It is, moreover, made up of masses who have the habit of being 
 dominated, and one domination more leaves it unamazed." 
 
 The same warning, never more necessary than to-day, 
 
 " M. Daniel Halivy in the Nenu Republic, January 5, 1918. 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 349 
 
 runs like a refrain through the writings of the most 
 prophetic of all nineteenth-century idealists. "By 
 dividing into fractions that which is in reality but one 
 thing," wrote Mazzini in 1852, "by separating the social 
 from the political question, a numerous section of French 
 Socialists has powerfully contributed to bring about the 
 present shameful position of affairs in France." And 
 speaking of the revolutionary propaganda of that day 
 and its distracting influence on idealistic endeavour, he 
 wrote : 
 
 " Man is not changed by whitewashing or gilding his habitation ; 
 a people cannot be regenerated by teaching them the worship of 
 enjoyment ; they cannot be taught a spirit of sacrifice by speaking 
 to them of material rewards. . . . The Utopist may see afar from 
 a hill the distant land which will give to society a virgin soul, a 
 purer air ; his duty is to point it out with a gesture and a word to 
 his brothers ; but he cannot take humanity in his arms and carry 
 it there in a single bound ; even if this were in his power, 
 humanity would not therefore have progressed." 
 
 And again, in words that strikingly recall recent history 
 in Russia, he says of the French movement : 
 
 " Anarchy entered its ranks. A man, gifted with a power of 
 logic, disastrous because applied to the service of a false principle, 
 and able to dominate weak minds by his incredible audacity and 
 his clear and cutting rhetoric, came to throw the light of his torch 
 upon this anarchy. . . . He refiited one system by another ; he 
 contradicted himself ten times over. He enthroned irony as 
 queen of the world, and proclaimed the Void, It is through this 
 Void that Louis Napoleon has entered." ^ 
 
 What Mazzini said of the effect of the influence of 
 Proudhon on the career of Napoleonism in France may 
 yet prove true of the influence of Trotsky on the career 
 of Prussianism in Europe. 
 
 For the revolutionary idea does more than break up 
 the unity of the forces of freedom : it tends to realign 
 
 * "Europe : Its Condition and Prospects. Collected Works VI. ," pp. 
 239, 250-1, 253. 
 
350 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 them against one another, leaving the front unguarded 
 against the common enemy. In the name of liberty and 
 under the guise of friendship, it instinctively seeks out 
 the failings to which liberalism in a crisis is ever prone, 
 its distaste for authority, its repudiation of discipline, its 
 tendency to mistake argument for action, its capacity for 
 illusion and for ignoring unpleasant realities. True, it 
 presses its attack also against the legions of Prussia and 
 her allies. But fear may well prove a firmer master than 
 idealism, and Prussianism, with its supreme and perfected 
 military administration, is better versed in the art of 
 repression than the free and responsible Governments of 
 the West. While such equivocal forces are afield let the 
 army of freedom beware ! 
 
 The votaries of revolution, overleaping the present, 
 claim the future for their own. Ignoring or discounting 
 the war, they have already annexed the coming age. 
 But the future is not with them. Masters alone in the 
 arts of enthusiasm and destruction, the world will not 
 turn to them to repair its ruin and desolation. Not 
 through such ministers of wrath will salvation come. 
 To steadier hands and wiser heads will fall the healing 
 tasks of the new order. 
 
 III 
 
 Prussianism and the Revolution are near akin. Both 
 were cradled in violence and brought up on tales of 
 conflict. Both have learned in the school of experience 
 to regard all life as a war, now open, now concealed. 
 Both aim at world-ascendancy and pursue that aim by 
 terrorism. Both are unscrupulous in negotiation, daring 
 and resolute in action, impenetrably self-centred in 
 thought and purpose. Both acknowledge no authority, 
 no principle of humanity or goodwill beyond the blind 
 and driving law of their own being. Both are members 
 of that tribe of devouring fanaticisms whose dreary and 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 351 
 
 blood-stained doings fill so large and tragic a place in the 
 recorded annals of mankind. 
 
 It was this psychological kinship, so real and 
 perceptible beneath the striking contrast of their external 
 credentials and appearance, which gave dramatic interest 
 and unity to the dialogue at Brest. Here were the two 
 great destructive agencies of our time met face to face in 
 the persons of their chosen representatives : the one 
 gross, solid, material, equipped with the full panoply of 
 martial grandeur ; the other with no visible legions to 
 support it, but strong in the consciousness of a power, 
 elusive, all-pervading, impalpable, an infection in the 
 air, a fever in the blood, a terror lurking in the dark. 
 
 The spokesmen of the Revolution, for their part, did 
 not fail to acknowledge the relationship. " When 
 General Hoffmann pointed out," said M. Trotsky, on 
 January 14, "that the Russian Government based its 
 position on power, and that it makes use of force against 
 all those whose opinions differ from its own, and that it 
 stigmatises them as counter-revolutionaries and bourgeois, 
 it should be observed that the Russian Government is 
 based upon power. Throughout the whole of history 
 no other government has been known. So long as 
 society consists of contending classes, the power of 
 Governments will be based on strength, and these Govern- 
 ments -will maintain their dominion by force. . . . What 
 the Governments of other countries object to in the 
 actions of the Russian Government is the way in which 
 it makes use of its power, and from this policy it does 
 not allow itself to be deterred." 
 
 Here is the inner link between Prussianism and the 
 Revolution. Here is the hidden root from which 
 so much bitter fruit has sprung. Here, in a few 
 sentences, is the complete philosophy of militarism. If 
 this is the whole truth about society and government, 
 then force is the only arbiter between contending parties 
 and principles, and the big battalions, as so often, will 
 
352 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 engage philosophers after the event to justify the neces- 
 sary, the inevitable, the " progressive " character of their 
 achievement. Or can we find some more universal and 
 more harmonious ideal ? Can we build the house of our 
 faith, of our political and social allegiance upon some 
 firmer and sounder foundation ? Is there some standard, 
 some guiding principle, which we can set up with assur- 
 ance against the crude and corrupting doctrine of force ? 
 
 Such a principle exists. It is working in us and 
 around us. It is transforming human life and its 
 institutions. To understand its nature, to realise the 
 gulf which divides it from the contending militarisms, to 
 grasp the true force and quality of its achievement, we 
 must stand aside for a moment from the heat and conflict 
 of the present age and survey, as from a mountain top, 
 the situation and record of man as a whole. 
 
 IV 
 
 Man is a spiritual being. Seventy years, or little 
 more, is the span of his physical life. This planet, which, 
 save when he looks upward, bounds his vision, is the 
 place where those years are spent. To enable him to 
 live the best life it can afFord him is the object of political 
 and social organisation. 
 
 For unnumbered ages man has lived on the plane;!. 
 They were ages of darkness and ignorance, and only dim 
 traces of their record survive. Men and women were 
 born, lived and died, endured cold and hunger, pain and 
 danger, hunting and being hunted, dwelling almost as 
 beasts among the beasts, knowing nothing of the planet 
 save a few miles of hill or jungle, and nothing of man's 
 being save what the passing occasion might call forth — 
 now a stab of anger or curiosity, now a call to lead or to 
 follow, some motion of fear or jealousy or revenge, a 
 gleam of wonder, a glow of passion, a glory of friendship 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 353 
 
 or motherhood. Man was the slave of nature, the play- 
 thing of circumstance. Life was compacted of custom 
 and instinct. Knowledge was not yet, and Reason, for 
 lack of material for her use, was sluggish and un- 
 developed. 
 
 Slowly man mastered the outer and the inner know- 
 ledge. He learnt to control his environment — to make 
 fire, to grow food, to sail, to spin, to weave, to use 
 metals. He learnt to control his inherited nature — to 
 subdue fear and lust, greed and ambition, jealousy and 
 revenge, to trust and to keep trust, to command with 
 justice and obey with honour, to enlarge his circle of 
 loyalty from family to kin, from kin to tribe, to spare, 
 even to conciliate his enemy, to reverence the old and 
 respect the young, to sweeten his intercourse with lasting 
 affections, to dignify it by contact with the sanctities of 
 memory and aspiration. Life was no longer a struggle 
 of all against all. It had become, on its narrow but 
 expanding stage, a sphere of common endeavour, of 
 mutual service. Thus civilisation began. Thus slowly 
 and painfully, through the labours of an uncounted 
 succession of humble men and women, was amassed the 
 nucleus of that which is now in jeopardy, the social 
 inheritance of mankind. 
 
 To preserve and increase this inheritance two things 
 were needed, knowledge and institutions — knowledge as 
 the instrument of future progress and conquests, institu- 
 tions to embody in a living tradition the conquests of the 
 present. The cultivation of knowledge and the establish- 
 ment of social institutions mark the development of 
 civilisation. 
 
 As the pressure of material need relaxed, knowledge, 
 the child of wonder and reflection, grew. Wisdom and 
 the arts were handed down and perfected from generation 
 to generation, entrusted to poet and prophet and priest, 
 to caste and guild, to schools of craftmanship and 
 medicine, law and science, to the cloister and the 
 
 2 A 
 
354 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 university, to the republics of science and letters, to the 
 company of teachers and students throughout the world. 
 With truth for task-mistress they have laboured in 
 honourable rivalry, not simply for hire or reward, but 
 for the service of mankind. Thus knowledge could 
 replace instinct, reason could dethrone passion, in the 
 ordering of human affairs. 
 
 But if instinct and passion are the blind weapons of 
 the Revolution, knowledge, as we have seen, is the chief 
 ally of Prussianism. Knowledge is not mistress in the 
 house of life. She is but a handmaid, powerful of arm 
 but unfitted for initiative. She is bound in humble 
 service to fulfil the desires and purposes of others. 
 What use men make of her depends in part upon their 
 own individual and temporary desires, but in greater 
 degree upon the character of the institutions which 
 embody, at any time, the living tradition and lasting 
 purposes of civilisation. 
 
 What are the common needs and concerns of men for 
 which institutions have been devised .'' Two stand out 
 above the rest — one economic, the other political. For 
 his physical existence man needs material goods, food, 
 clothing, shelter and domestic comfort. As a spiritual 
 being man needs justice and liberty. 
 
 The history of social and political thought and 
 endeavour is the record of man's attempt to create 
 institutions appropriate for the fulfilling of these needs, 
 to embody in a lasting and progressive tradition the 
 dream of the perfect state and the perfect economic 
 system. Far indeed has the fulfilment lagged behind 
 the quest of the ideal in either sphere. Exploitation and 
 the class-struggle, slavery and serfdom, profit-seeking 
 and inequality stain the one record ; tyranny and warfare, 
 the ambition of the strong, the submission and spoliation 
 of the weak, mar the other ; and the end is not yet. 
 But steadily through the ages, in Greece and Palestine, 
 in Rome, ancient and mediaeval, in England, France and 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 355 
 
 the New World, the purpose and ideal, first of politics, 
 and then of industry also, have become clearer to the 
 vision. 
 
 What is the nature of that ideal ? If the close-knit 
 institutions of Prussianism, as we have seen, leave men's 
 souls starved and stunted, if the Revolution dissolves all 
 institutions and plunges society back into barbarism, 
 what doctrine, what principle of organisation can assure 
 man order, harmony, and freedom, can satisfy at once 
 the needs of body and spirit ? 
 
 The inspiration of all sound and enduring political 
 and social construction is what has been called the 
 principle of the Commonwealth. The name is con- 
 venient because it serves to distinguish, as habitual usage 
 does not, institutions which promote the cause of human 
 welfare and those, such as have been described in Prussia, 
 which have a more sectional and sinister purpose. What, 
 it will be asked, is a Commonwealth ? A Commonwealth 
 is a community, designed to meet the common needs of 
 men, founded on the principle of the service of each for 
 all. Is the Commonwealth to be identified with any 
 particular type of government ? Is it necessarily a 
 democracy ? Does the service of all necessarily imply 
 the rule of all ? " Easier a great deal it is," wrote a wise 
 Elizabethan, " for men by law to be taught what they 
 ought to do than instructed to judge as they should do 
 of law : the one being a thing which belongeth generally 
 unto all, the other such as none but the wiser and more 
 judicious sort can perform."^ Yet since, despite the 
 contempt of Prussia and the cynicism of the Revolution, 
 the spirit of man was framed for wisdom and judgment, 
 for responsibility, initiative and self-control, since a man 
 without liberty is a being bereft, as the poet has said, of 
 half his manhood, the perfect Commonwealth, the ideal 
 towards which all political and social endeavour moves 
 forward, is a society of free men and women, each at 
 
 ' Hooker, " Ecclesiastical Polity," i, xvi, 2. 
 
356 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 once ruling and being ruled, each consciously giving his 
 service for the benefit of all. 
 
 The principle of the Commonwealth is the application 
 to the field of government and social policy of the law 
 of human brotherhood, of the duty of man to his neigh- 
 bour, near and far. Like the opposing principle of 
 militarism, it is as old as the need for conscious organisa- 
 tion, for the adoption of a policy in social aifairs. In the 
 earliest time, when men's duties and relationships were 
 confined within a narrow personal circle, little effort was 
 needed to enable him to discharge them. But from the 
 day when man first felt the need for public right, for an 
 impartial arbiter to stand between him and hot passion 
 and bitter need, organisation has been the prop of social 
 life and personal duty. Only through organisation, 
 through citizenship and its related obligations, can man 
 worthily play his part in a large-scale society. History 
 has known organisations of every kind, designed with 
 every sort of motive — tyranny, ambition, cruelty, greed 
 or fear. A Commonwealth is an organisation designed 
 with the ruling motive of love and brotherhood. It 
 seeks to embody, not only in phraseology and constitu- 
 tional doctrine, but in the actual conduct of public 
 affairs, so far as the frailty and imperfection of man 
 admit, the spirit and ideals of religion. Whosoever will 
 be great among you shall be your minister ; and whosoever of 
 you will be the chief est shall be the servant of all. 
 
 The doctrine of the Commonwealth, expressed in 
 these words, has been set forth and applied from age 
 after age to the current problems of humanity, from 
 Plato down to President Wilson. It embodies, succinctly 
 and unanswerably, the response of the soul of man to the 
 twin challenge of Prussianism and Revolution. Yet 
 there are criticisms which must be met. In theory, men 
 will argue, the principle of the Commonwealth holds the 
 field. Religion and philosophy, conscience and idealism, 
 proclaim it. Yet how weak is its influence, how paltry 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 357 
 
 its achievements ! Christianity has preached the doctrine 
 of mutual service through twenty centuries, yet behold 
 the shambles of to-day ! Prussianism, as we have seen, 
 pays lip service to the Christian State, and the Revolu- 
 tion, in its perorations, drops the language of conflict 
 and makes its appeal to brotherhood. Yet, for present 
 purposes, for effort in the world as it now is, both prefer 
 systems of violence. Admirable and flawless in theory, 
 is the principle of mutual service, men may ask, com- 
 patible in practice, here and now, with the nature of 
 man as we see him and know him ? Can we ask of the 
 toiling masses, encrusted with ignorance and prejudice, 
 with false traditions and blind animosities, weighed down 
 by the load of daily care and suffering, that they should 
 guide their lives by the light of so high and distant a 
 beacon ? 
 
 The answer to such doubters is to exhibit the 
 principle of the Commonwealth in living operation and 
 to recall the manifold evidence of its all-pervading 
 vitality. If the instances which follow are drawn from 
 the record of one only of its manifestations, the British, 
 it is not for want of appreciation of what France and 
 America and other members of the League of Freedom 
 have achieved in their own field. For them it would be 
 a presumption to speak. An ally may watch and wonder 
 at an ally's confidence and endurance ; but the secret 
 springs of faith, the conditions of such heroic endeavour, 
 are withdrawn from his gaze. 
 
 Consider, then, as regards the British Commonwealth, 
 the indictment of Prussianism. " You claim," it says, 
 " to be a Commonwealth, to unite beneath one law a 
 quarter of the human race, to have achieved, as it were 
 by accident, in a fit of absence of mind, as one of your 
 writers has put it, without conscious purpose or the 
 guidance of systematic knowledge, the realisation of our 
 own cherished dream — a Roman peace diffused through- 
 out five continents. Yet, whatever future the gods may 
 
358 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 reserve for Prussia, Britain and her Empire at least seem 
 stricken with mortality. You talk of the law of mutual 
 service. Is it graven, like the laws of Prussia, in the 
 hearts and minds of your citizens ! Have you laboured, 
 as we have laboured, to create a race worthy of your 
 imperial purpose ? Have you tamed the sectional 
 instincts, uprooted the selfish desires, chastened the 
 unruly wills of your scattered populations ? We look 
 out over your Empire and behold everywhere the dry 
 rot of disunion, the seeds of disloyalty and decay ; here 
 a rebellion, there a conspiracy, here an ignorant denial of 
 duty, there a direct withdrawal of aid, here a cry for 
 secession, and there, at the very heart, voices preaching 
 anarchy and sedition, rallying unchecked in their defence 
 the ignorance you have foreborne to enlighten, the 
 passions you have foreborne to subdue. With too easy 
 a rein you have ridden them, your millions at home and 
 overseas ! Wealth you have given them and comfort 
 and, by our leave, a long lease of peace. But in your 
 anarchy and scepticism, your contempt for knowledge, 
 your wilful blindness to stern realities, we see little trace 
 of your proud doctrine of mutual service, nor is the lazy 
 and good-humoured tolerance of British rule the true 
 fulfilment of the law of Christ." 
 
 Truth is contained in this indictment. Yet were it 
 the whole truth, the British Commonwealth would long 
 since, in these testing years, have succumbed in the 
 ordeal and gone the way of older dominions. If it 
 survives intact, if it has grown in confidence and vitality, 
 in the consciousness of its purpose and ideal, it is because, 
 side by side with its failures, so much more visible and 
 clamorous than the disappointments of Prussia, the spirit 
 of mutual service is alive and vigorous among its nations, 
 moving from strength to strength in the cause, not of 
 the Commonwealth alone but of humanity. The war 
 indeed, if it has revealed shortcomings, has not found 
 the British character or British institutions wanting. It 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 359 
 
 has endorsed and confirmed them. In fact, the Common- 
 wealth has proved itself capable of achieving these very 
 triumphs of unity and public service which Prussianism 
 claimed as its monopoly, only to be exploited by its own 
 tried and tested methods — triumphs moreover on Prussia's 
 own chosen field of war. Six million men and more, 
 untouched by the goad of compulsion, offered their lives 
 to the cause of human freedom. Women awoke, as 
 never before in history, to the duty of public service and 
 to the consciousness of their individual gifts and powers. 
 The nations of the Commonwealth near and far, tutored 
 and untutored,, poured out their contribution of human 
 devotion and material treasure. Among the weaker 
 races thousands unfitted for the combat went willingly 
 to labour in a strange land. Untrained in the issues of 
 international policy, unaccustomed to withstand the 
 blandishments of foreign intrigue or to tolerate the 
 suspense and privations, the curtailments of liberty, 
 the summary and indiscriminate procedures of wartime, 
 vast populations worked and waited, steadily and in 
 good heart, neither impatient nor vindictive, holding 
 fast to the ideal. Confirmed in its inner faith the 
 Commonwealth has begun to strengthen its outward 
 unity also. For the first time the common purpose of 
 its peoples, at home and overseas, has been embodied in 
 executive institutions. Men from five continents have 
 come together to frame common decisions. East and 
 West, under the stress of danger, found the unity 
 underlying age-long difference and met for deliberation 
 in equal partnership. While Prussianism holds down 
 its conquests by slavery and oppression, while the 
 Revolution has broken up a continent into its primitive 
 elements, across the mountains, in India, among popula- 
 tions twice as numerous and far more varied than the 
 peoples of Russia, the spirit of responsibility is awakening 
 and the charter of self-government has been proclaimed. 
 In Ireland, too, where old wrongs still remain to be 
 
36o NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 righted, Irishmen sitting in orderly convention are seek- 
 ing to shape the destinies of their country in a spirit 
 equally removed from ascendancy and revolution. If 
 the record of the British Commonwealth under the stress 
 of war is less resounding than the martial bulletins of 
 Prussia, less stirring and fantastic than the sweeping 
 edicts of the Revolution, if its plans and achievements 
 are dressed in the sober tints of ordinary life, it is 
 because the Commonwealth exists not to gratify a 
 conqueror's ambition or to demonstrate or refute a 
 dreamer's doctrine, but to enable its citizens to grow 
 to the full stature of their moral being. Not by the 
 triumphs of the battlefield and the forum will the 
 Commonwealth seek to be justified, but by the character 
 and the influence, the noble example and the inspiring 
 memory of its men and women. 
 
 But the Bolshevist, too, has his indictment. We 
 need not repeat it. Its substance stands on an earlier 
 page : the fetid slum and the murky alley ; the denial 
 of light and air and health ; the sunless outlook and the 
 soulless labour ; the back bowed down not by drudgery 
 only but by servile fear ; the mind shut out from the 
 contemplation of knowledge and beauty ; inequalities of 
 wealth and power and circumstance darkening every 
 aspect and relation of social existence. 
 
 The indictment cannot be denied. For a century 
 Mammon has bestridden, and still bestrides, the world. 
 His standards, conflicting at every stage with the stan- 
 dards of the Commonwealth, have been embodied in law, 
 in custom and in the social code. Yet here, too, change 
 is on the march. In these islands men are unlearning 
 the outworn shibboleth of " Business is Business " and 
 seeking new and fruitful applications of the doctrine of 
 the Commonwealth. The first and most necessary step, 
 to enlarge the range of popular responsibility and control 
 has already been taken. Amidst the unremitting stress 
 of war, the electorate has been doubled and women called 
 
THREE DOCTRINES IN CONFLICT 361 
 
 in to fill their rightful place in the common life. Educa- 
 tion, the key of the future, is at last being extended, if 
 as yet but timidly. Labour has received a charter of 
 its equality with the other agents of production and has 
 been called, through its representative organisations, into 
 partnership with management, to control the conduct of 
 their common services. The burden of the State is 
 being placed more and more upon the shoulders of those 
 who best can bear it : the yield of the taxes on incomes 
 and profits and on the inheritance of the rich amounted 
 in 1 9 16-17 to ;^400,ooo,ooo or double the entire budget 
 of 1914. 
 
 Yet these changes, startling as they would have 
 seemed four years since, and coming on the heel of 
 events which might well, as a hundred years ago, have 
 clogged the wheels of progress, are but the symbol and 
 presage of what is yet to come. For in these years of 
 strain and darkness, of common anxiety and common 
 danger, many inward barriers have been broken down 
 and men have learned to face the meaning and conse- 
 quences of their faith. If the ideal of the Commonwealth 
 is to be truly realised, if the free service of each for all 
 is to be not merely a profession but a reality in the 
 industrial field, men must turn their minds, as they are 
 already turning them, to a wide reform and reordering 
 of the conditions of life for the mass of the people. 
 Shorter hours of labour, and an annual holiday on full 
 pay for rest and travel ; protection for all who work 
 against the accident of unemployment ; more control by 
 the workman over the conditions of his occupation ; 
 buildings for him to work in designed not merely for 
 machines but for men, planned for convenience and even 
 for beauty ; a home, not a brick box, to live in ; a town, 
 not a mean monotony of streets, to stir his civic pride ; 
 better schools and a longer education for his children, so 
 that they may growj body and mind, to the full stature 
 of manhood ; the absorption by the community, rather 
 
362 NATIONALITY AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 than by the capitalist, of the surplus profits of produc- 
 tion ; justice, informed and impartial, to support and 
 enforce the claim of freedom wherever it is denied or 
 endangered ; above all, an open gateway for every one, 
 young and old, into the realm of knowledge and beauty, 
 and the recognition, not in laws only but in social 
 customs and institutions, of the spiritual basis of the 
 Commonwealth and the equality of all its citizens in the 
 eyes of society as in the eyes of God — such are the con- 
 ditions through which, for all who work, the spirit of 
 public service will replace the spirit of private gain as the 
 dominating motive of their toil. 
 
 Thus the principle of the Commonwealth, tested in 
 action and moving along its own quiet and well-tried 
 paths, is proving itself more militant than Prussianism 
 and more revolutionary than the Revolution. Once 
 more it is assailed by its enemies : once more, as in 
 bygone days, the hope of the world depends upon its 
 victory : once more it is rallying to its defence the hearts 
 and minds of aU who know what freedom means and 
 inspiring in them the fortitude and perseverance needed, 
 as aforetime, to hold and break the onset of militarism. 
 And when it has overthrown the power of Prussianism 
 and rid the world for ever from the menace of its 
 dominion, it will have nothing to fear from its other 
 enemy, the destructive forces of the Revolution. For 
 the war has renewed men's faith in it : its purpose has 
 been clarified and confirmed by the ordeal : and even in 
 the dust and heat of the conflict it is beginning to build 
 up the new order of civic freedom and international 
 justice which will govern the coming age of peace. 
 
 Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 
 Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil, 
 Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, 
 Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting. 
 
INDEX OF WRITERS QUOTED 
 OR REFERRED TO 
 
 "A. £.,"346-7 
 
 Acton, 20, 21, 47-8, 72-3, 137, 
 
 151-2 
 Addams (Jane), 38, 80-1 
 AndreiefF, 233 
 Angel), 23, 35, 280, 291 
 Aquinas, 158 
 Aristotle, 155, 193 
 Arnold (Matthew), 6, 362 
 Ashley (Sir W.), 239 
 
 B 
 Bacon, 138 
 Bakunin, 347 
 Becker, 322 
 Bennett (Arnold), 75 
 Bemhardi, 3 
 Bernstein, 300 
 Bismarck, xxi, 301, 336 
 Blatchford, 229 
 Bloomfield, 139 
 Booth (Rt. Hon. Charles), 239 
 Boudin 279-80 
 Bourne, 190-2 
 Bronte (C), 229 
 Brooke (Rupert), 97 
 Browning, 254, 255 
 Biilow, 18, 303 
 Burke, 13, 169 
 Byron, 9 
 
 C 
 
 Cambon, 2 
 
 Carlyle, 3, 177 
 
 Cobden, 291 
 
 Coleridge, 8 
 
 Coulton, 150 
 
 Cox, 253-4 
 
 Crainb, 25 
 
 Curtis, 144-5, '60, 327 
 
 D 
 
 Delbriick, 300, 304-5, 312 
 
 E 
 Ensor, 235 
 Erasmus, 109 
 Eulenberg, 319 
 
 F 
 St. Francis, 107 
 
 Gladstone, i 
 Gierke, 159 
 Ginzberg, 98 
 Goethe, 12 
 
 H 
 
 Halivy (Daniel), 347 
 Herkner, 309, 328 
 Hilton, 219 
 Hobson (J. A.), 39 
 Hooker, 156-7, 355 
 Hoxie, 232, 265 
 Humboldt, 1 1 
 
 Isaiah, 154-5 
 
 James (William), 94-5 
 Jansson, 323 
 Johnson (Dr.), 123 
 Jones (Thomas), 257 
 
 K 
 
 Kallen, 78-9 
 Kerr, 147 
 
 363 
 
364 INDEX OF WRITERS QUOTED 
 
 Kerschensteiner, 317-8 
 Kipling, 181 
 Kreuz Zeitung, 335 
 
 Lankester, 139 
 Levinstein, 186 
 
 M 
 
 Maine, 200 
 
 Mansbridge, 11 1 
 
 Marvin, 180 
 
 Marx, xix, xxi, 219, 345, 34.7 
 
 Masaryk, 94 
 
 Mazzini, xvi, i, 349 
 
 Mill, 46, 64, 174 
 
 Milton, 152 
 
 Morier, 169-70 
 
 Morris, 173, 184, 194 
 
 Muir, 93 
 
 Miiller, 306 
 
 N 
 
 Naumann, 216 ff., 325-6 
 Neijo Republic, 280, 300, 315, 347 
 Nichols (Robert), 97-8 
 Nietzsche, 3, 22, 182 
 
 O 
 
 Owen (Robert), 225, 228 
 
 Paul (St.), 153 
 
 Plato, III, 134, 15s, 183 
 
 R 
 
 Rathenau, xxiv, 307 
 Renan, 158, 196 
 
 "Rob Roy," 236-7 
 Rohrbach, 312-13 
 RoUand, 38 
 Ruskin, 184 
 
 Sadler, 7, 10, 14, 102 
 Scott (Sir Walter), 123 
 Shakespeare, 256 
 Shaw, 63 
 
 Smart, 150, 183-4, 248 
 Smith (A.L.), 138 
 Smith (Adam), 201-2 
 SpiethofF, 309-10 
 Sykes (Sir Mark), 54, 74 
 
 Taussig, 184-5 
 Taylor, 193, 253, 264 
 Thackeray, 75 
 Thring, 103 
 Thucydides, 19, 318 
 Treitschke, 3 
 Tressall, 235 
 Trotsky, 351 
 
 Unwin, 2 27 
 
 Virgil, 142 
 
 W 
 
 Wallas, 23, 57, 87, 185-7, 1*9 
 Webb, 39, 87, 129, 2i6, 286 
 Wilaraowitz, 3, 17 
 Winstanley, 229 
 Withers, 179 
 Wordsworth, 1 1 
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITSD, LONDON AND BECCLES.