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AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF PEACE 
 AND 
 
 THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION 
 
BOOKS BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN 
 
 THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS 
 THE THEORY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE 
 THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP 
 
 IMPERIAL GERMANY 
 
 AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 
 
 THE NATURE OF PEACE 
 
 AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION 
 
 THE HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA 
 
AN INQUIRY INTO 
 
 l\ 
 
 THE NATURE OF PEACE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION 
 
 BY 
 
 THORSTEIN VEBLEN 
 
 fndt 
 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 1919 
 
 All rishts reserved 
 
/72 . i 
 )/3‘=)S T- 
 
 Copyright, 1917, 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 Published April, 1917 : 
 Reprinted August, 1917. 
 
 New edition published by 
 B. W. HUEBSCH, 
 
 January, 1919. 
 
 
1 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It is now some 122 years since Kant wrote the essay, 
 Zum ewigen Frieden. Many things have happened since 
 then, although the Peace to which he looked forward 
 with a doubtful hope has not been among them. But 
 many things have happened which the great critical phil- 
 osopher, and no less critical spectator of human events, 
 would have seen with interest. To Kant the quest of an 
 enduring peace presented itself as an intrinsic human 
 duty, rather than as a promising enterprise. Yet through 
 all his analysis of its premises and of the terms on which 
 it may be realised there runs a tenacious persuasion that, 
 in the end, the regime of peace at large will be installed. 
 Not as a deliberate achievement of human wisdom, so 
 much as a work of Nature the Designer of things — Na- 
 tura daedala rerum. 
 
 To any attentive reader of Kant’s memorable essay it 
 will be apparent that the title of the following inquiry — 
 On the nature of peace and the terms of its perpetua- 
 tion — is a descriptive translation of the caption under 
 which he wrote. That such should be the case will not, 
 it is hoped, be accounted either an unseemly presumption 
 or an undue inclination to work under a borrowed light. 
 The aim and compass of any disinterested inquiry in 
 these premises is still the same as it was in Kant’s time ; 
 such, indeed, as he in great part made it, — ^viz., a sys- 
 tematic knowledge of things as they are. Nor is the 
 light of Kant’s leading to be dispensed with as touches 
 
 vii 
 
VI 11 
 
 Preface 
 
 the ways and means of systematic knowledge, wherever 
 the human realities are in question. 
 
 Meantime, many things have also changed since the 
 date of Kant’s essay. Among other changes are those 
 that affect the direction of inquiry and the terms of sys- 
 tematic formulation. Natura daedala rerum is no longer 
 allowed to go on her own recognizances, without divulg- 
 ing the ways and means of her workmanship. And it is 
 such a line of extension that is here attempted, into a 
 field of inquiry which in Kant’s time still lay over the 
 horizon of the future. 
 
 The quest of perpetual peace at large is no less a para- 
 mount and intrinsic human duty today than it was, nor 
 is it at all certain that its final accomplishment is nearer. 
 But the question of its pursuit and of the conditions to 
 be met in seeking this goal lies in a different shape today ; 
 and it is this question that concerns the inquiry which is 
 here undertaken, — What are the terms on which peace 
 at large may hopefully be installed and maintained? 
 What, if anything, is there in the present situation that 
 visibly makes for a realisation of these necessary terms 
 within the calculable future? And what are the conse- 
 quences presumably due to follow in the nearer future 
 from the installation of such a peace at large? And the 
 answer to these questions is here sought not in terms of 
 what ought dutifully to be done toward the desired con- 
 summation, but rather in terms of those known factors 
 of human behaviour that can be shown by analysis of ex- 
 perience to control the conduct of nations in conjunctures 
 of this kind. 
 
 February 1917 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introductory: On the State and Its Relation 
 TO War and Peace 
 
 The inquiry is not concerned with the intrinsic merits 
 ef peace or war, 2 ; — But with the nature, causes and 
 consequences of the preconceptions favoring peace or 
 war, 3; — A breach of the peace is an act of the govern- 
 ment, or State, 3 : — Patriotism is indispensable to fur- 
 therance of warlike enterprise, 4; — All the peoples of 
 Christendom are sufficiently patriotic, 6; — Peace es- 
 tablished by the State, an armstice — the State is an 
 instrumentality for making peace, not for perpetuating 
 it, 7; — The governmental establishments and their 
 powers in all the Christian nations are derived from 
 the feudal establishments of the Middle Ages, 9 ; — Still 
 retain the right of coercively controlling the actions of 
 their citizens, ii; — Contrast of Icelandic Commonwealth, 
 12; — The statecraft of the past half century has been 
 one of competitive preparedness, 14; — Prussianised Ger- 
 many has forced the pace in this competitive prepared- 
 ness, 20 ; — An avowedly predatory enterprise no longer 
 meets with approval, 21; — When a warlike enterprise 
 has been entered upon, it will have the support of popu- 
 lar sentiment even if it is an aggressive war, 22; — The 
 moral indignation of both parties to the quarrel is to 
 be taken for granted, 23 ; — The spiritual forces of any 
 Christian nation may be mobilised for war by either of 
 two pleas: (i) The preservation or furtherance of the 
 community’s material interests, real or fancied, and (2) 
 vindication of the National Honour; as perhaps also per- 
 petuation of the national “Culture,” 23. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 On The Nature and Uses Of Patriotism 
 
 The nature of Patriotism, 31 ; — Is a spirit of Emu- 
 lation, 33; — Must seem moral, if only to a biased popu- 
 ix 
 
X 
 
 Contents 
 
 lace, 33 ; — The cemmon man is lufEciently patriotic 
 but is hampered with a sense of right and honest dealing, 
 
 38 ; — Patriotism is at cross purposes with modern life, 
 
 38; — Is an hereditary trait? 41; — Variety of racial 
 stocks in Europe, 43 ; — Patriotism a ubiquitous trait, 43 ; 
 
 — Patriotism disserviceable, yet men hold to it, 46 ; — 
 Cultural evolution of Europeans, 48; — Growth of a 
 sense of group soliditary, 49 ; — Material interests of 
 group falling into abeyance as class divisions have grown 
 up, until prestige remains virtually the sole community 
 interest, 51 ; — Based upon warlike prowess, physical 
 magnitude and pecuniary traffic of country, 54; — Inter- 
 ests of the master class are at cross purposes with the 
 fortunes of the common man, 57; — Value of superiors 
 is a “prestige value,” ^7 ; — The material benefits which 
 this ruling class contribute are: defense against aggres- 
 sion, and promotion of the community’s material gain, 
 
 60; — The common defense is a remedy for evils due 
 to the patriotic spirit, 61; — The common defense the 
 usual blind behind which events are put in train for 
 eventual hostilities, 62 ; — All the nations of warring 
 Europe convinced that they are fighting a defensive 
 war, 62; — Which usually takes the form of a defense 
 of the National Honour, 63; — Material welfare is of 
 interest to the Dynastic statesman only as it conduces 
 to political success, 64; — The policy of national eco- 
 nomic self-sufficiency, 67 ; — The chief material use of 
 patriotism is its use to a limited number of persons in 
 their quest of private gain, 67; — And has the effect of 
 dividing the nations on lines of rivalry, 76. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 On The Conditions of a Lasting Peace 77 
 
 The patriotic spirit of modern peoples is the abiding 
 source of contention among nations, 77; — Hence any 
 calculus of the Chances of Peace will be a reckoning 
 of forces which may be counted on to keep a patriotic 
 nation in an unstable equilibrium of peace, 78 ; — The 
 question of peace and war at large is a question of peace 
 and war among the Powers, which are of two contrasted 
 kinds : those which may safely be counted on spontane- 
 ously to take the offensive and those which wdll fight 
 on provocation, 79; — War not a question of equity 
 but of opportunity, 81 ; — The Imperial designs of Ger- 
 many and Japan as the prospective cause of war, 82; 
 
 — Peace can be maintained in two ways : submission to 
 their dominion, or elimination of these two Powers; 
 
 No middle course open, 84; — Frame of mind of states; 
 
Contents 
 
 XI 
 
 saen and popular sentiment in a Dynastic State, 84 ; — 
 Information, persuasion and reflection will not subdue 
 national animosities and jealousies; Peoples of Europe 
 are racially homogeneous along lines of climatic lati- 
 tude, 88; — But loyalty is a matter of habituation, 89; — 
 Derivation and current state of German nationalism 94; 
 
 — Contrasted with the animus of the citizens of a com- 
 
 S monwealth, 103 ; — A neutral peace-compact may be prac- 
 ticable in the absence of Germany and Japan, but it has 
 no chance in their presence, 106; — The national life of 
 Germany : the Intellectuals, 108 ; — Summary of chapter, 
 
 I id 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Peace Without Honour . . . , 118 
 
 Submission to the Imperial Power one of the conditions 
 precedent to a peaceful settlement, 1 18 ; — Character 
 of the projected tutelage, 118; — Life under the Pax 
 Germanica contrasted with the Ottoman and Russian 
 rule, 124 ; — China and biological and cultural success, 
 
 130- — Difficulty of non-resistant subjection is of a psy- 
 chological order, 131 ; — Patriotism of the bellicose kind 
 is of the nature of habit, 134; — And men may divest 
 themselves of it, 140 ; — A decay of the bellicose nation- 
 al spirit must be of the negative order, the disuse of the 
 discipline out of which it has arisen, 142 ; — Submission 
 to Imperial authorities necessitates abeyance of national 
 pride among the other peoples, 144; — Pecuniary merits 
 of the projected Imperial dominion, 145; — Pecuniary 
 class distinctions in the commonwealths and the pe- 
 cuniary burden on the common man, 150; — Material 
 conditions of life for the common man under the modern 
 rule of big business, 156; — The competitive regime, 
 “what the traffic will bear,” and the life and labor of the 
 common man, 158; — Industrial sabotage by business- 
 men, 165 ; — Contrasted with the Imperial usufruct and 
 its material advantages to the common man, 174. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Peace and Neutrality . . , . 178 
 
 Personal liberty, not creature comforts, the ulterior 
 springs of action of the common man of the democratic 
 nations, 178; — No change of spiritual state to be looked 
 for in the life-time of the oncoming generation, 185; 
 
 — The Dynastic spirit among the peoples of the Empire 
 
Contents 
 
 xii 
 
 will, under the discipline of modern economic conditions, 
 fall into decay, 187; — Contrast of class divisions in 
 Germany and England, 192; — National establishments 
 are dependent for their continuance upon preparation 
 for hostilities, 196; — The time required for the people 
 of the Djmastic States to unlearn their preconceptions 
 will be longer than the interval required for a new on- 
 set,i97; — There can be no neutral course between peace 
 by unconditional surrender and submission or peace by 
 the elimination of Imperial Germany and Japan, 202 ; — 
 Peace by submission not practicable for the modern 
 nations, 203; — Neutralisation of citizenship, 205; — 
 Spontaneous move in that direction not to be looked for, 
 213; — Its chances of success, 219; — The course of 
 events in America, 221. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Elimination of the Unfit ... 
 
 A league of neutrals, its outline, 233; — Need of security 
 from aggression of Imperial Germany, 234; — Inclusion 
 of the Imperial States in the league, 237; — Necessity of 
 elimination of Imperial military clique, 239; — Necessity 
 of intermeddling in internal affairs of Germany even 
 if not acceptable to the German people, 240; — Proba- 
 bility of pacific nations taking measures to insure peace, 
 244-298; — The British gentleman and his control of 
 the English government, 244; — The shifting of control 
 out of the hands of the gentleman into those of the 
 underbred common man, 251; — The war situation and 
 its probable effect on popular habits of thought in Eng- 
 land, 252 ; — The course of such events and their bear- 
 ing on the chances of a workable pacific league, 255 ; 
 — Conditions precedent to a successful pacific league 
 of neutrals, 258; — Colonial possessions, 259; — Neu- 
 tralisation of trade relations, 263; — Futility of economic 
 boycott, 266 ; — The terms of settlement, 269 ; — The ef- 
 fect of the war and the chances of the British people 
 being able to meet the exigencies of peace, 273 ; — Sum- 
 mary of the terms of settlement, 280; — Constitutional 
 monarchies and the British gentlemanly government, 
 281 ; — The American national establishment, a gov- 
 ernment by businessmen, and its economic policy, 292; 
 — America and the league, 294. 
 
 233 
 
Contents 
 
 Kiii 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Peace and the Price System . . . 299 
 
 The different conceptions of peace, 299 ; — Psychological 
 effects of the war, 303 ; — The handicraft system and 
 the machine industry, and their psychological effect ©n po- 
 litical preconceptions, 206 ; — The machine technology 
 and the decay of patriotic loyalty, 310; — Summary, 
 
 313; — Ownership and the right of contract, 315; — 
 Standardised under handicraft system, 319; — Owner- 
 ship and the machine industry, 320 ; — Business control 
 and sabotage, 322 ; — Governments of pacific nations 
 controlled by privileged classes, 326 ; — Effect of peace 
 on the economic situation, 328 ; — Economic aspects of 
 a regime of peace, especially as related to the develop- 
 ment of classes, 330; — The analog of the Victorian 
 Peace, 344 ; — The case of the American Farmer, 3/^8 ; — 
 
 The leisure class, 350; — The rising standard of living, 
 
 354; — Culture, 3S5; — The eventual cleavage of classes, 
 those who own ana those who do not, 360 ; — Condition- 
 ed by peace at large, 366; — Necessary conditions of a 
 lasting peace, 367, 
 

 
AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF PEACE 
 AND 
 
 THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION 
 
ON THE NATURE OF PEACE AND THE 
 TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Introductory: On the State and its Relation tc 
 War and Peace 
 
 To many thoughtful men ripe in worldly wisdom it is 
 known of a verity that war belongs indefeasibly in the 
 Order of Nature. Contention, with manslaughter, is in- 
 dispensable in human intercourse, at the same time that 
 it conduces to the increase and diffusion of the manly 
 virtues. So likewise, the unspoiled youth of the race, in 
 the period of adolescence and aspiring manhood, also com- 
 monly share this gift of insight and back it with a gen- 
 erous commendation of all the martial qualities ; and 
 women of nubile age and no undue maturity gladly meet 
 them half way. 
 
 On the other hand, the mothers of the people are com- 
 monly unable to see the use of it all. It seems a waste 
 of dear-bought human life, with a large sum of nothing 
 to show for it. So also many men of an elderly turn, 
 prematurely or otherwise, are ready to lend their coun- 
 tenance to the like disparaging appraisal ; it may be that 
 the spirit of prowess in them runs at too low a tension, or 
 they may have outlived the more vivid appreciation of 
 the spiritual values involved. There are many, also, with 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 a turn for exhortation, who find employment for their 
 best faculties in attesting the well-known atrocities and 
 futility of war. 
 
 Indeed, not infrequently such advocates of peace will 
 devote their otherwise idle powers to this work of ex- 
 hortation without stipend or subsidy. And they uniformly 
 make good their contention that the currently accepted 
 conception of the nature of war — General Sherman’s for- 
 mula — is substantially correct. All the while it is to be 
 admitted that all this axiomatic exhortation has no visible 
 effect on the course of events or on the popular temper 
 touching warlike enterprise. Indeed, no equal volume of 
 speech can be more incontrovertible or less convincing 
 than the utterances of the peace advocates, whether sub- 
 sidised or not. “War is Bloodier than Peace.” This 
 would doubtless be conceded without argument, but also 
 without prejudice. Hitherto the pacifists’ quest of a 
 basis for enduring peace, it must be admitted, has brought 
 home nothing tangible — with the qualification, of course, 
 that the subsidised pacifists have come in for the subsidy. 
 So that, after searching the recesses of their imagination, 
 able-bodied pacifists whose loquacity has never been at 
 fault hitherto have been brought to ask: “What Shall 
 We Say?” 
 
 Under these circumstances it will not be out of place 
 to inquire into the nature of this peace about which swings 
 this wide orbit of opinion and argument. At the most, 
 such an inquiry can be no more gratuitous and no more 
 nugatory than the controversies that provoke it. The 
 intrinsic merits of peace at large, as against those of war- 
 like enterprise, it should be said, do not here come in 
 question. That question lies in the domain of precon- 
 
Introductory 
 
 
 ceived opinion, so that for the purposes of this inquiry it 
 will have no significance except as a matter to be in- 
 quired into ; the main point of the inquiry being the na- 
 ture, causes and consequences of such a preconception 
 favoring peace, and the circumstances that make for a 
 contrary preconception in favor of war. 
 
 By and large, any breach of the peace in modern times 
 is an official act and can be taken only on initiative of the 
 governmental establishment, the State. The national au- 
 thorities may, of course, be driven to take such a step by 
 pressure of warlike popular sentiment. Such, e. g., is 
 presumed to have been the case in the United States’ 
 attack on Spain during the McKinley administration ; 
 but the more that comes to light of the intimate history 
 of that episode, the more evident does it become that the 
 popular war sentiment to which the administration yielded 
 had been somewhat sedulously “mobilised” with a view 
 to such yielding and such a breach. So also in the case 
 of the Boer war, the move was made under sanction of 
 a popular war spirit, which, again, did not come to a head 
 without shrewd surveillance and direction. And so again 
 in the current European war, in the case, e. g., of Ger- 
 many, where the initiative was taken, the State plainly 
 had the full support of popular sentiment, and may even 
 be said to have precipitated the war in response to this 
 urgent popular aspiration; and here again it is a matter 
 of notoriety that the popular sentiment had long been 
 sedulously nursed and “mobilised” to that effect, so that 
 the populace was assiduously kept in spiritual readiness 
 for such an event. The like is less evident as regards the 
 United Kingdom, and perhaps also as regards the other 
 Allies. 
 
4 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 And such appears to have been the common run of the 
 facts as regards all the greater wars of the last one hun- 
 dred years, — what may be called the “public’’ wars of this 
 modern era, as contrasted with the “private” or adminis- 
 trative wars which have been carried on in a corner by 
 one and another of the Great Powers against hapless bar- 
 barians, from time to time, in the course of administra- 
 tive routine. 
 
 It is also evident from the run of the facts as exempli- 
 fied in these modern wars that while any breach of the 
 peace takes place only on the initiative and at the discre- 
 tion of the government, or State, ^ it is always requisite 
 in furtherance of such warlike enterprise to cherish and 
 eventually to mobilise popular sentiment in support of 
 any warlike move. Due fomentation of a warlike animus 
 is indispensable to the procuring and maintenance of a 
 suitable equipment with which eventually to break the 
 peace, as well as to ensure a diligent prosecution of such 
 enterprise when once it has been undertaken. Such a 
 spirit of militant patriotism as may serviceably be mobil- 
 ised in support of warlike enterprise has accordingly been 
 a condition precedent to any people’s entry into the mod- 
 ern Concert of Nations. This Concert of Nations is a 
 Concert of Powers, and it is only as a Power that any 
 nation plays its part in the concert, all the while that “pow- 
 er” here means eventual warlike force. 
 
 Such a people as the Chinese, e. g., not perv'adcd with 
 an adequate patriotic spirit, comes into the Concert of 
 Nations not as a Power but as a bone of contention. Not 
 that the Chinese fall short in any of the qualities that con- 
 
 modern nation constitutes a State only in respect of or with 
 ulterior bearing on the question of international peace or war. 
 
Introductory 
 
 5 
 
 duce to efficiency and welfare in time of peace, but they 
 appear, in effect, to lack that certain “solidarity of prow- 
 ess” by virtue of which they should choose to be (collec- 
 tively) formidable rather than (individually) fortunate 
 and upright ; and the modern civilised nations arc not in a 
 position, nor in a frame of mind, to tolerate a neighbor 
 whose only claim on their consideration falls under the 
 category of peace on earth and good-will among men. 
 China appears hitherto not to have been a serviceable 
 people for warlike ends, except in so far as the resources 
 of that country have been taken over and converted to 
 warlike uses by some alien power working to its own 
 ends. Such have been the several alien dynasties that 
 have seized upon that country from time to time and 
 have achieved dominion by usufruct of its unwarlike 
 forces. Such has been the nature of the Manchu empire 
 of the recent past, and such is the evident purpose of the 
 prospective Japanese usufruct of the same country and 
 its populace. Meantime the Chinese people appear to 
 be incorrigibly peaceable, being scarcely willing to fight 
 in any concerted fashion even when driven into a corner 
 by unprovoked aggression, as in the present juncture. 
 Such a people is very exceptional. Among civilised na- 
 tions there are, broadly speaking, none of that temper, 
 with the sole exception of the Chinese, — if the Chinese 
 are properly to be spoken of as a nation, 
 r” Modem warfare makes such large and direct use of 
 the industrial arts, and depends for its successful prose- 
 cution so largely on a voluminous and unremitting supply 
 of civilian services and wrought goods, that any inoffen- 
 “^ve and industrious people, such as the Chinese, could 
 doubtless now be turned to good account by any war- 
 like power that might have the disposal of their working 
 
6 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 forces. To make their industrial efficiency count in this 
 ^ way toward warlike enterprise and imperial dominion, the 
 usufruct of any such inoffensive and unpatriotic populace 
 , would have to fall into the hands of an alien govern- 
 mental establishment. And no alien government resting 
 on the support of a home population trained in the habits 
 of democrafy or given over to ideals of common honesty 
 in national concerns could hopefully undertake the en- 
 terprise. This work of empire-building out of unwarlike 
 materials could apparently be carried out only by some 
 alien power hampered by no reserve of scruple, and 
 backed by a servile populace of its own, inbued with an 
 impeccable loyalty to its masters and with a suitably belli- 
 cose temper, as, e. g.. Imperial Japan or Imperial Ger- 
 many. 
 
 However, for the commonplace national enterprise the 
 common run will do very well. Any populace imbued 
 with a reasonable measure of p atrioti sm will serve as 
 ways and means to warlike enterprise under competent 
 management, even if it is not habitually prone to a belli- 
 cose temper. Rightly managed, ordinary patriotic sen- 
 timent may readily be mobilised for warlike adventure 
 by any reasonably adroit and single-minded body of states- 
 men, — of which there is abundant illustration. All the 
 peoples of Christendom are possessed of a sufficiently alert 
 sense of nationality, and by tradition and current usage 
 all the national governments of Christendom are warlike 
 establishments, at least in the defensive sense; and the 
 distinction between the defensive and the offensive in 
 international intrigue is a technical matter that offers no 
 great difficulty. None of the^ nations is of such an 
 i ncorrigibly -p eae eable t emper that they can be counted on 
 to keep the peace consistently in the ordinary course of 
 events. 
 
Introductory 
 
 I 
 
 Pe ace establi shed by the State, or resting in the discre- 
 tion of the State, is necessarily of the nature of an armis- 
 tice, in effect terminable at will and on short notice. It is 
 maintained only on conditions, stipulated by express con- 
 vention or established by custom, and there is always the 
 reservation, tacit or explicit, that recourse will be had to 
 arms in case the “national interests” or the punctilios of 
 international etiquette are traversed by the act or defec- 
 tion of any rival government or its subjects. The more 
 nationally-minded the government or its subject populace, 
 the readier the response to the call of any such oppor- 
 tunity for an unfolding of prowess. The most peaceable 
 governmental policy of which Christendom has experience 
 is a policy of “watchful waiting,” with a jealous eye to 
 the emergence of any occasion for national resentment; 
 and the most irretrievably shameful dereliction of duty 
 on the part of any civilised government would be its 
 eventual insensibility to the appeal of a “just war.” Un- \ 
 der any governmental auspices, as the modem world 
 knows governments, the keeping of the peace comes at 
 its best under the precept, “Speak softly and carry a big 
 stick.” But the case for peace is more precarious than 
 the wording of the aphorism v/ould indicate, in as much 
 as in practical fact the “big stick” is an obstacle to soft 
 speech. Evidently, in the light of recent history, if the 
 peace is to be kept it will have to come about irrespec- 
 tive of governmental management, — in spite of the State 
 rather than by its good offices. At the best, the State, or ) 
 the government, is an instrumentality for making peace, \ 
 not for perpetuating it. 
 
 Anyone who is interested in the nature and derivation 
 of governmental institutions and establishments in Eu- 
 
8 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 rope, In any but the formal respect, should be able to sat- 
 isfy his curiosity by looking over the shoulders of the 
 professed students of Political Science. Quite properly 
 and profitably that branch of scholarship is occupied with 
 the authentic pedigree of these institutions, and with the 
 documentary instruments in the case; since Political Sci- 
 ence is, after all, a branch of theoretical jurisprudence and 
 is concerned about a formally competent analysis of the 
 recorded legal powers. The material circumstances from 
 which these institutions once took their beginning, and 
 the exigencies which have governed the rate and direc- 
 tion of their later growth and mutation, as well as the 
 de facto bearing of the institutional scheme on the ma- 
 terial welfare or the cultural fortunes of the given com- 
 munity, — while all these matters of fact may be germane 
 to the speculations of Political Theory, they are not in- 
 trinsic to its premises, to the logical sequence of its in- 
 quiry, or to its theoretical findings. The like is also true, 
 of course, as regards that system of habits of thought, 
 that current frame of mind, in which any given institu- 
 tional scheme necessarily is grounded, and without the 
 continued support of which any given scheme of govern- 
 mental institutions or policy would become nugatory and 
 so would pass into the province of legal fiction. All these 
 are not idle matters in the purview of the student of 
 Political Science, but they remain after all substantially 
 extraneous to the structure of political theory' ; and in 
 so far as matters of this class are to be brought into the 
 case at all, the specialists in the field can not fairly be 
 expected to contribute anything beyond an occasional 
 obiter dictum. There can be no discourteous presump- 
 tion, therefore, in accepting the general theorems of cur- 
 rent political theory without prejudice, and looking past 
 
Introductory 
 
 9 
 
 the received theoretical formulations for a view of the 
 substantial grounds on which the governmental establish- 
 ments have grown into shape, and the circumstances, 
 material and spiritual, that surround their continued work- 
 ing and effect. 
 
 By lineal descent the governmental establishments and 
 the powers with which they are vested, in all the Chris- 
 tian nations, are derived from the feudal establishments 
 of the Middle Ages; which, in turn, are of a predatory 
 origin and of an irresponsible character.^ In nearly all 
 instances, but more particularly among the nations that 
 are accounted characteristically modern, the existing es- 
 tablishments have been greatly altered from the mediaeval 
 pattern, by concessive adaptation to later exigencies or by 
 a more or less revolutionary innovation. The degree of 
 their modernity is (conventionally) measured, roughly, 
 by the degree in which they have departed from the me- 
 diaeval pattern. Wherever the unavoidable concessions 
 have been shrewdly made with a view to conserving 
 the autonomy and irresponsibility of the governmental 
 establishment, or the “State,” and where the state of 
 national sentiment has been led to favor this work of 
 conservation, as, e. g., in the case of Austria, Spain or 
 Prussia, there the modern outcome has been what may 
 be called a Dynastic State. Where, on the other hand, 
 the run of national sentiment has departed notably from 
 the ancient holding-ground of loyal abnegation, and has 
 enforced a measure of revolutionary innovation, as in the 
 case of France or of the English-speaking peoples, there 
 the modern outcome has been an (ostensibly) democratic 
 
 iThe partial and dubious exception of the Scandinavian coun- 
 tries or of Switzerland need raise no question on this head. 
 
10 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 commonwealth of ungraded citizens. But the contrast 
 so indicated is a contrast of divergent variants rather than 
 of opposites. These two type-forms may be taken as the 
 extreme and inclusive limits of variation among the gov- 
 ernmental establishments with which the modern world 
 ,s furnished.^ 
 
 The effectual difference between these two theoretically 
 contrasted types of governmental establishments is doubt- 
 less grave enough, and for many purposes it is consequen- 
 tial, but it is after all not of such a nature as need greatly 
 detain the argument at this point. The two differ less, 
 in effect, in that range of their functioning which comes 
 in question here than in their bearing on the community’s 
 fortunes apart from questions of war and peace. In all 
 cases there stand over in this bearing certain primary 
 characteristics of the ancient regime, which all these 
 modern establishments have in common, though not all 
 in an equal degree of preservation and effectiveness. 
 They are, e. g., all vested with certain attributes of “sov- 
 ereignty.” In all cases the citizen still proves on closer 
 attention to be in some measure a “subject” of the State, 
 in that he is invariably conceived to owe a “duty” to the 
 constituted authorities in one respect and another. All 
 civilised governments take cognizance of Treason, Sedi- 
 tion, and the like; and all good citizens are not only 
 content but profoundly insistent on the clear duty of the 
 citizen on this head. The bias of loyalty is not a matter 
 on which argument is tolerated. By virtue of this bias 
 of loyalty, or “civic duty” — which still has much of the 
 color of feudal allegiance — the governmental establish- 
 
 ^Cf., e. g., Eduard Meyer, England: its political organisation 
 and development, ch. ii. 
 
Introductory 
 
 11 
 
 merit is within its rights in coercively controlling and 
 directing the actions of the citizen, or subject, in those 
 respects that so lie within his duty; as also in authorita- 
 tively turning his abilities to account for the purposes 
 that so lie within the governmental discretion, as, e. g., 
 the Common Defense. 
 
 These rights and powers still remain to the govern- 
 mental establishment even at the widest democratic de- 
 parture from that ancient pattern of masterful tutelage 
 and usufruct that marked the old-fashioned patrimonial 
 State, — and that still marks the better preserved ones 
 among its modern derivitives. And so intrinsic to these 
 governmental establishments are these discretionary pow- 
 ers, and by so unfailing a popular bias are they still 
 accounted a matter of course and of axiomatic necessity, 
 that they have invariably been retained also among the 
 attributes of those democratic governments that trace 
 their origin to a revolutionary break with the old order. 
 
 To many, all this will seem a pedantic taking note of 
 commonplaces, — as if it were worth while remarking 
 that the existing governments are vested with the indis- 
 pensable attributes of government. Yet history records 
 an instance at variance with this axiomatic rule, a rule 
 which is held to be an unavoidable deliverance of com- 
 mon sense. And it is by no means an altogether unique 
 instance. It may serve to show that these characteristic 
 and unimpeachable powers that invest all current govern- 
 mental establishments are, after all, to be rated as the 
 marks of a particular species of governments, and not 
 characteristics of the genus of governmental establish- 
 ments at large. These powers answer to an acquired bias, 
 not to an underlying trait of human nature; a matter of 
 habit, not of heredity. 
 
12 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Such an historical instance is the so-called Republic, or 
 Commonwealth, of Iceland — tenth to thirteenth centu- 
 ries. Its case is looked on by students of history as a 
 spectacular anomaly, because it admitted none of these 
 primary powers of government in its constituted authori- 
 ties. And yet, for contrast with these matter-of-course 
 preconceptions of these students of history, it is well to 
 note that in the deliberations of those ancients who in- 
 stalled the Republic for the management of their joint 
 concerns, any inclusion of such powers in its competency 
 appears never to have been contemplated, not even to the 
 extent of its being rejected. This singularity — as it would 
 be rated by modern statesmen and students — was in no 
 degree a new departure in state-making on the part of 
 the founders of the Republic. They had no knowledge 
 of such powers, duties and accountabilities, except as 
 unwholesome features of a novel and alien scheme of 
 irresponsible oppression that was sought to be imposed on 
 them by Harald Fairhair, and which they incontinently 
 made it their chief and immediate business to evade. 
 They also set up no joint or collective establishment with 
 powers for the Common Defense, nor does it appear that 
 such a notion had occurred to them. 
 
 In the history of its installation there is no hint that 
 the men who set up this Icelandic Commonwealth had 
 any sense of the need, or even of the feasibility, of such 
 a coercive government as would be involved in concerted 
 preparation for the common defense. Subjection to per- 
 sonal rule, or to official rule in any degree of attenuation, 
 was not comprised in their traditional experience of citi- 
 zenship ; and it was necessarily out of the elements com- 
 prised in this traditional experience that the new struc- 
 ture would have to be built up. The new commonwealth 
 
Introductory 
 
 13 
 
 was necessarily erected on the premises afforded by the 
 received scheme of use and wont; and this received 
 scheme had come down out of pre-feudal conditions, 
 without having passed under the discipline of that regime 
 of coercion which the feudal system had imposed on the 
 rest of Europe, and so had established as an “immemo- 
 rial usage” and a “second nature” among the popula- 
 tions of Christendom. The resulting character of the 
 Icelandic Commonwealth is sufficiently striking when con- 
 trasted with the case of the English commonwealth of 
 the seventeenth century, or the later French and Amer- 
 ican republics. These, all and several, came out of a 
 protracted experience in feudalistic state-making and 
 State policy; and the common defense — frequently on 
 the offensive — with its necessary coercive machinery and 
 its submissive loyalty, consequently would take the cen- 
 tral place in the resulting civic structure. 
 
 To close the tale of the Icelandic commonwealth it may 
 be added that their republic of insubordinate citizens pres- 
 ently fell into default, systematic misuse, under the dis- 
 orders brought on by an accumulation of wealth, and 
 that it died of legal fiction and constitutional formalities 
 after some experience at the hands of able and ambitious 
 statesmen in contact with an alien government drawn on 
 the coercive plan. The clay vessel failed to make good 
 among the iron pots, and so proved its unfitness to sur- 
 vive in the world of Christian nations, — very much as 
 the Chinese are today at the mercy of the defensive ra- 
 pacity of the Powers. 
 
 And the mercy that we gave them 
 Was to sink them in the sea, 
 
 Down on the coast of High Barbaric. 
 
14 
 
 On the Nature of Peace ’ 
 
 No doubt, it will be accepted as an axiomatic certainty 
 that the establishment of a commonwealth after the fash- 
 ion of the Icelandic Republic, without coercive authority 
 or provision for the common defense, and without a sense 
 of subordination or collective responsibility among its 
 citizens, would be out of all question under existing cir- 
 cumstances of politics and international trade. Nor 
 would such a commonwealth be workable on the scale 
 and at the pace imposed by modern industrial and com- 
 mercial conditions, even apart from international jealousy 
 and ambitions, provided the sacred rights of ownership 
 were to be maintained in something like their current 
 shape. And yet something of a drift of popular senti- 
 ment, and indeed something of deliberate endeavour, set- 
 ting in the direction of such a harmless and helpless 
 national organisation is always visible in Western Europe, 
 throughout modern times ; particularly trough the eigh- 
 teenth and the early half of the nineteenth centuries; 
 and more particularly among the English-speaking peo- 
 ples and, with a difference, among the French. The 
 Dutch and the Scandinavian countries answer more doubt- 
 fully to the same characterisation. 
 
 The movement in question is known to history as the 
 Liberal, Rationalistic, Humanitarian, w Individualistic 
 departure. Its ideal, when formulated, is spc^cn of as 
 the System of Natural Rights; and its goal in the way 
 of a national establishment has been well characterised 
 by its critics as the Police State, or the Night-Watchman 
 State. The gains made in this direction, or perhaps bet- 
 ter the inroads of this animus in national ideals, are 
 plainly to be set down as a shift in the direction of peace 
 and amity; but it is also plain that the shift of ground 
 so initiated by this strain of sentiment has never reached 
 
Introductory 
 
 15 
 
 a conclusion and never has taken effect in anything like 
 an effectual working arrangement. Its practical con- 
 sequences have been of the nature of abatement and de- 
 fection in the pursuit of national ambitions and dynastic 
 enterprise, rather than a creative work of installing any 
 institutional furniture suitable to its own ends. It has 
 in effect gone no farther than what would be called an 
 incipient correction of abuses. The highest rise, as well 
 as the decline, of this movement lie within the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In point of time, the decay of this amiable conceit of 
 laissez-faire in national policy coincides with the period 
 of great advance in the technology of transport and com- 
 munication in the nineteenth century. Perhaps, on a larger 
 outlook, it should rather be said that the run of national 
 ambitions and animosities had, in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, suffered a degree of decay through 
 the diffusion of this sentimental predilection for Natural 
 Liberty, and that this decline of the manlier aspirations 
 was then arrested and corrected by help of these improve- 
 ments in the technological situation; which enabled * 
 closer and more coercive control to be exercised over 
 larger areas, and at the same time enabled a more mas- 
 sive aggregate of warlike force to strike more effectively 
 at a greater distance. This whole episode of the rise and 
 decline of laissez-faire in modem history is perhaps best;, 
 to be concei ved as a transient w eakenin g of nationalism , 
 by neglect rather than anything like the growth of a 
 new and more humane ideal of national intercourse. Such 
 would be the appraisal to be had at the hands of those 
 who speak for a strenuous national life and for the ar- 
 bitram«it of sportsmanlike contention in human affairs. 
 And the latterday growth of more militant aspirations. 
 
16 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 together with the more settled and sedulous attention to 
 a development of control and of formidable armaments, 
 such as followed on through the latter half of the nine- 
 teenth century, would then be rated as a resumption of 
 those older aims and ideals that had been falling some- 
 what into abeyance in the slack-water days of Liberalism. 
 
 There is much to be said for this latter view ; and, 
 indeed, much has been said for it, particularly by the 
 spokesmen of imperialist politics. This bias of Natural 
 Liberty has been associated in history with the English- 
 speaking peoples, more intimately and more extensively 
 than with any other. Not that this amiable conceit is in 
 any peculiar degree a race characteristic of this group 
 of peoples ; nor even that the history of its rise and de- 
 cline runs wholly within the linguistic frontiers indicated 
 by this characterisation. The French and the Dutch have 
 borne their share, and at an earlier day Italian sentiment 
 and speculation lent its impulsion to the same genial drift 
 of faith and aspiration. But, by historical accident, its 
 center of gravity and of diffusion has lain with the Eng- 
 lish-speaking communities during the period when this 
 bias made history and left its impress on the institu- 
 tional scheme of the Western civilisation. By grace of 
 what may, for the present purpose, be called historical 
 accident, it happens that the interv^al of history during 
 which the bias of Natural Liberty made visible headway 
 was also a period during which these English-speaking 
 peoples, among whom its effects are chiefly visible, were 
 relatively secure from international disturbance, by force 
 of inaccessibility. Little strain was put upon their sense 
 of national solidarity or national prowess ; so little, in- 
 deed, that there was some danger of their patriotic ani- 
 mosity falling into decay by disuse; and then they were 
 
Introductory 
 
 17 
 
 also busy with other things. Peaceable intercourse, it is 
 true, was relatively easy, active and far-reaching — eigh- 
 teenth and nineteenth centuries — as compared with what 
 had been the case before that time; but warlike inter- 
 course on such a scale as would constitute a substantial 
 menace to any large nation was nearly out of the ques- 
 tion, so far as regards the English-speaking peoples. The 
 available means of aggression, as touches the case of 
 these particular communities, were visibly and consciously 
 inadequate as compared with the means of defense. The 
 means of internal or intra-national control or coercion 
 were also less well provided by the state of the arts cur- 
 rent at that time than the means of peaceable intercourse. 
 These means of transport and communication were, at 
 that stage of their development, less well suited for the 
 purposes of far-reaching warlike strategy and the exercise 
 of surveillance and coercion over large spaces than for 
 the purposes of peaceable traffic. 
 
 But the continued improvement in the means of com- 
 munication during the nineteenth century presently up- 
 set that situation, and so presently began to neutralise 
 the geographical quarantine which had hedged about these 
 communities that were inclined to let well enough alone. 
 The increasing speed and accuracy of movement in ship- 
 ping, due to the successful introduction of steam, as well 
 as the concomitant increasing size of the units of equip- 
 ment, all runs to this effect and presently sets at naught 
 the peace barriers of sea and weather. So also the de- 
 velopment of railways and their increasing availability for 
 strategic uses, together with the far-reaching coordination 
 of movement made possible by their means and by the 
 telegraph; all of which is further facilitated by the in- 
 creasing mass and density of population. Improvements 
 2 
 
18 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 in the technology of arms and armament worked to the 
 like effect, of setting the peace of any community on an 
 increasingly precarious footing, through the advantage 
 which this new technology gave to a ready equipment and 
 ^a rapid mobilisation. The new state of the industrial 
 arts serviceable for warlike enterprise put an increasingly 
 heavy premium on readiness for offense or defense, but 
 more particularly it all worked increasingly to the ad- 
 vantage of the offensive. It put the Fabian strategy out 
 of date, and led to the doctrine of a defensive offense. 
 
 Gradually it came true, with the continued advance in 
 those industrial arts that lend themselves to strategic 
 uses, and it came also to be realised, that no corner of 
 the earth was any longer secure by mere favor of dis- 
 tance and natural difficulty, from eventual aggression at 
 the hands of any provident and adventurous assailant, — 
 even by help of a modicum of defensive precaution. The 
 fear of aggression then came definitively to take the place 
 of international good-will and became the chief motive 
 in public policy, so fast and so far as the state of the 
 industrial arts continued to incline the balance of advan- 
 tage to the side of the aggressor. All of which served 
 gjeatly to strengthen the hands of those statesmen who, 
 by interest or temperament, were inclined to imperialistic 
 enterprise. Since that period all armament has conven- 
 tionally been accounted defensive, and all statesmen have 
 professed that the common defense is their chief con- 
 cern. Professedly all armament has been designed to 
 keep the peace; so much of a shadow of the peaceable 
 bias there still stands over. 
 
 Throughout this latest phase of modem civilisation the 
 avowed fear of aggression has served as apology, pos- 
 sibly as provocation in fact, to national armaments ; and 
 
Introductory 
 
 19 
 
 throughout the same period any analysis of the situation 
 will finally run the chain of fear back to Prussia as the, 
 putative or actual, center of disturbance and apprehension. 
 No doubt, Prussian armament has taken the lead and 
 forced the pace among the nations of Christendom; but 
 the Prussian policy, too, has been diligently covered with 
 the same decorous plea of needful provision for the com- 
 mon defense and an unremitting solicitude for interna- 
 tional peace, — to which has been added the canny after- 
 thought of the “defensive offense.” 
 
 It is characteristic of this era of armed peace that in 
 all these extensive preparations for breaking the peace 
 any formal avowal of other than a defensive purpose 
 has at all times been avoided as an insufferable breach of 
 diplomatic decorum. It is likewise characteristic of the 
 same era that armaments have unremittingly been in- 
 creased, beyond anything previously known ; and that all 
 men have known all the while that the inevitable out- 
 come of this avowedly defensive armament must eventu- 
 ally be war on an unprecedented scale and of unexampled 
 ferocity. It would be neither charitable nor otherwise 
 to the point to call attention to the reflection which this 
 state of the case throws on the collective sagacity or the 
 good faith of the statesmen who have had the management 
 of affairs. It is not practicable to imagine how such an 
 outcome as the present could have been brought about 
 by any degree of stupidity or incapacity alone, nor is it 
 easier to find evidence that the utmost sagacity of the 
 statecraft engaged has had the slightest mitigating effect 
 on the evil consummation to which the whole case has 
 been brought. It has long been a commonplace among 
 observers of public events that these professedly defen- 
 sive warlike preparations have in effect been preparations 
 
20 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 for breaking the peace ; against wbich, at least ostensibly, 
 a remedy had been sought in the preparation of still 
 heavier armaments, with full realisation that more arma- 
 ment would unfailingly entail a more unsparing and more 
 ^disastrous war, — which sums up the statecraft of the 
 past half century. 
 
 Prussia, and afterwards Prussianised Germany, has 
 come in for the distinction of taking the lead and forcing 
 the pace in this competitive preparation — or “prepared- 
 ness” — for war in time of peace. That such has been 
 the case appears in good part to be something of a for- 
 tuitous circumstance. The season of enterprising force 
 and fraud to which that country owes its induction into 
 the concert of nations is an episode of recent history ; 
 so recent, indeed, that the German nation has not yet had 
 time to live it down and let it be forgotten ; and the 
 Imperial State is consequently burdened with an irri- 
 tably uneasy sense of odium and an established reputation 
 for unduly bad faith. From which it has followed, 
 among other things, that the statesmen of the Empire 
 have lived in the expectation of having their unforgotten 
 derelictions brought home, and so have, on the one hand, 
 found themselves unable to credit any pacific intentions 
 professed by the neighboring Powers, while on the other 
 hand they have been unable to gain credence for their 
 own voluble professions of peace and amity. So it has 
 come about that, by a fortuitous conjuncture of scarcely 
 relevant circumstances, Prussia and the Empire have 
 been thrown into the lead in the race of “preparedness” 
 and have been led assiduously to hasten a breach which 
 they could ill aflford. It is, to say the least, extremely 
 doubtful if the event would have been substantially dif- 
 ferent in the absence of that special provocation to com- 
 
Introductory 
 
 21 
 
 petitive preparedness that has been injected into the sit- 
 uation by this German attitude ; but the rate of approach 
 to a warlike climax has doubtless been hastened by the 
 anticipatory policy of preparedness which the Prussian 
 dynasty has seen itself constrained to pursue. Eventu- 
 ally, the peculiar circumstances of its case — embarrass- 
 ment at home and distaste and discredit abroad — have 
 induced the Imperial State to take the line of a defensive 
 offense, to take war by the forelock and retaliate on pre- 
 sumptive enemies for prospective grievances. But in any 
 case, the progressive improvement in transport and com- 
 munication, as well as in the special technology of war- 
 fare, backed by greatly enhanced facilities for indoctrinat- 
 ing the populace with militant nationalism, — these ways 
 and means, working under the hand of patriotic states- 
 men must in course of the past century have brought the 
 peace of Europe to so precarious a footing as would have 
 provoked a material increase in the equipment for na- 
 tional defense; which would unavoidably have led to 
 competitive armament and an enhanced international dis- 
 trust and animosity, eventually culminating in hostilities. 
 
 It may well be that the plea of defensive preparation 
 advanced by the statesmen, Prussian and others, in apol- 
 ogy for competitive armaments is a diplomatic subter- 
 fuge, — there are indications that such has commonly 
 been the case ; but even if it commonly is visibly disin- 
 genuous, the need of making such a plea to cover more 
 sinister designs is itself an evidence that an avowedly 
 predatory enterprise no longer meets with the requisite 
 popular approval. Even if an exception to this rule be 
 admitted in the recent attitude of the German people, 
 it is to be recalled that the exception was allowed to stand 
 
22 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 only transiently, and that presently the avowal of a pred- 
 atory design in this case was urgently disclaimed in the 
 face of adversity. Even those who speak most fluently 
 for the necessity of war, and for its merits as a needed 
 discipline in the manly virtues, are constrained by the 
 prevailing sentiment to deprecate its necessity. 
 
 Yet it is equally evident that when once a warlike 
 enterprise has been entered upon so far as to commit the 
 nation to hostilities, it will have the cordial support of 
 popular sentiment even if it is patently an aggressive war. 
 Indeed, it is quite a safe generalisation that when hostil- 
 ities have once been got fairly under way by the inter- 
 ested statesmen, the pa triotic s entiment of the nation 
 may confidently be c ounted on to b ack the enterprise 
 irrespective of the merits of the quarrel. But even if the 
 national sentiment is in this way to be counted in as an 
 incidental matter of course, it is also to be kept in mind 
 in this connection that any quarrel so entered upon by any 
 nation will forthwith come to have the moral approval 
 of the community. Dissenters will of course be found, 
 sporadically, who do not readily fall in with the pre- 
 vailing animus; but as a general proposition it will still 
 hold true that any such quarrel forthwith becomes a just 
 quarrel in the eyes of those who have so been com- 
 mitted to it 
 
 A corollary following from this general theorem may 
 be worth noting in the same connection. Any politician 
 who succeeds in embroiling his country in a war, how- 
 ever nefarious, becomes a popular hero and is reputed a 
 wise and righteous statesman, at least for the time being. 
 Illustrative instances need perhaps not, and indeed can 
 not gracefully, be named; most popular heroes and re- 
 puted statesmen belong in this class. 
 
'Introductory 
 
 23 
 
 Another corollary, which bears more immediately on 
 the question in hand, follows also from the same general 
 proposition: Since the ethical values involved in any 
 given international contest are substantially of the nature 
 of after-thought or accessory, they may safely be left on 
 one side in any endeavour to understand or account for 
 any given outbreak of hostilities. The moral indignation 
 of both parties to the quarrel is to be taken for granted, 
 as being the statesman’s chief and necessary ways and 
 means of bringing any warlike enterprise to a head and 
 floating it to a creditable finish. It is a precipitate of 
 the partisan animosity that inspires both parties and holds 
 them to their duty of self-sacrifice and devastation, and 
 at its best it will chiefly serve as a cloak of self-righteous- 
 ness to extenuate any exceptionally profligate excursions 
 in the conduct of hostilities. 
 
 Any warlike enterprise that is hopefully to be entered 
 on must have the moral sanction of the community, or 
 of an effective majority in the community. It conse- 
 quently becomes the first concern of the warlike states- 
 man to put this moral force in train for the adventure 
 on which he is bent. And there are two main lines of 
 motivation by which the spiritual forces of any Christian 
 nation may so be mobilised for warlike adventure: (1) 
 The preservation or furtherance of the community’s ma- 
 terial interests, real or fancied, and (2) vindication of 
 the national honour. To these should perhaps be added 
 as a third, the advancement and perpetuation of the na- 
 tion’s “Culture that is to say, of its habitual scheme of 
 use and wont. It is a nice question whether, in practical 
 effect, the aspiration to perpetuate the national Culture is 
 consistently to be distinguished from the vindication of 
 the national honour. There is perhaps the distinction to 
 
24 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 be made that “the perpetuation of the national Culture” 
 lends a readier countenance to gratuitous aggression and 
 affords a broader cover for incidental atrocities, since the 
 enemies of the national Culture will necessarily be con- 
 ceived as an inferior and obstructive people, falling be- 
 neath the rules of commonplace decorum. 
 
 Those material interests for which modem nations 
 are in the habit of taking to arms are commonly of a 
 fanciful character, in that they commonly have none but 
 an imaginary net value to the community at large. Such 
 are, e. g., the national trade or the increase of the na- 
 tional territory. These and the like may serve the war- 
 like or d}-Tiastic ambitions of the nation’s masters; they 
 may also further the interests of office-holders, and more 
 particularly of certain business houses or businessmen 
 who stand to gain some small advantage by help of the 
 powers in control ; but it ah signifies nothing more to 
 the common man than an increased bill of governmental 
 expense and a probable increase in the cost of living. 
 
 That a nation’s trade should be carried in vessels owned 
 by its citizens or registered in its ports will doubtless 
 have some sentimental value to the common mn of its 
 citizens, as is shown by the fact that disingenuous poli- 
 ■>ticians always find it worth their while to appeal to this 
 chauvinistic predilection. But it patently is all a com- 
 pletely idle question, in point of material advantage, to 
 anyone but the owners of the vessels ; and to these own- 
 ers it is also of no material consequence under what flag 
 their investments sail, except so far as the government 
 in question may afford them some preferential oppor- 
 tunity for gain, — -always at the cost of their fellow citi- 
 zens. The like is equally true as regards the domicile 
 and the national allegiance of the businessmen who buy 
 
Introductory 
 
 25 
 
 and sell the country’s imports and exports. The common 
 man plainly has no slightest material interest in the na- 
 tionality or the place of residence of those who conduct 
 this traffic ; though all the facts go to say that in some 
 puzzle-headed way the common man commonly persuades 
 himself that it does make some occult sort of difference 
 to him ; so that h.e is commonly willing to pay something 
 substantial toward subsidising businessmen of his own 
 nationality, in the way of a protective tariff and the like. 
 
 The only material advantage to be derived from such 
 a preferential trade policy arises in the case of interna- 
 tional hostilities, in which case the home-owned vessels 
 and merchants may on occasion count toward military 
 readiness ; although even in that connection their value 
 is contingent and doubtful. But in this way they may 
 contribute in their degree to a readiness to break off 
 peaceable relations with other countries. It is only for 
 warlike purposes, that is to say for the dynastic ambi- 
 tions of warlike statesmen, that these preferential con- 
 trivances in economic policy have any substantial value; 
 and even in that connection their expediency is always 
 doubtful. They are a source of national jealousy, and 
 they may on occasion become a help to military strategy 
 when this national jealousy eventuates in hostilities. 
 
 The run of the facts touching this matter of national 
 trade policy is something as follows : At the instance of 
 businessmen who stand to gain by it, and with the cordial 
 support of popular sentiment, the constituted authorities 
 sedulously further the increase of shipping and com- 
 merce under protection of the national power. At the 
 same time they spend substance and diplomatic energy 
 in an endeavor to extend the international market fa- 
 cilities open to the country’s businessmen, with a view 
 
26 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 always to a preferential advantage in favor of these 
 businessmen, also with the sentimental support of the 
 common man and at his cost. To safeguard these com- 
 mercial interests, as well as property-holdings of the 
 nation’s citizens in foreign parts, the nation maintains 
 naval, military, consular and diplomatic establishments, 
 at the common expense. The total gains derivable from 
 these commercial and investment interests abroad, under 
 favorable circumstances, will never by any chance equal 
 the cost of the governmental apparatus installed to fur- 
 ther and safeguard them. These gains, such as they are, 
 go to the investors and businessmen engaged in these 
 enterprises; while the costs incident to the adventure 
 are borne almost wholly by the common man, who gets 
 no gain from it all. Commonly, as in the case of a pro- 
 tective tariff or a preferential navigation law, the cost to 
 the common man is altogether out of proportion to the 
 gain which accrues to the businessmen for whose benefit 
 he carries the burden. The only other class, besides the 
 preferentially favored businessmen, who derive any ma- 
 terial benefit from this arrangement is that of the office- 
 holders who take care of this governmental traffic and 
 draw something in the way of salaries and perquisites; 
 and whose cost is defrayed by the common man, who 
 remains an outsider in all but the payment of the bills. 
 The common man is proud and glad to bear this burden 
 for the benefit of his wealthier neighbors, and he does 
 so with the singular conviction that in some occult man- 
 ner he profits by it. All this is incredible, but it is every- 
 day fact. 
 
 In case it should happen that these business interests 
 of the nation’s businessmen interested in trade or invest- 
 ments abroad are jeopardised by a disturbance of any 
 
Introductory 
 
 27 
 
 kind in these foreign parts in which these business inter- 
 ests lie, then it immediately becomes the urgent concern 
 of the national authorities to use all means at hand for 
 maintaining the gainful traffic of these businessmen un- 
 diminished, and the common man pays the cost. Should 
 such an untoward situation go to such sinister lengths as 
 to involve actual loss to these business interests or other- 
 wise give rise to' a tangible grievance, it becomes an af- 
 fair of the national honour ; whereupon no sense of pro- 
 portion as between the material gains at stake and the 
 cost of remedy or retaliation need longer be observed, 
 since the national honour is beyond price. The motiva- 
 tion in the case shifts from the ground of material inter- 
 est to the spiritual ground of the moral sentiments. 
 
 In this connection “honour” is of course to be taken 
 in the euphemistic sense which the term has under the 
 code duello governing “affairs of honour.” It carries no 
 connotation of honesty, veracity, equity, liberality, or un- 
 selfishness. This national honour is of the nature of an 
 intangible or immaterial asset, of course; it is a matter 
 of prestige, a sportsmanlike conception; but that fact 
 must not be taken to mean that it is of any the less sub- 
 stantial effect for purposes of a casus belli than the ma- 
 terial assets of the community. Quite the contrary: 
 “Who steals my purse, steals trash,” etc. In point of fact, 
 it will commonly happen that any material grievance must 
 first be converted into terms of this spiritual capital, be- 
 fore it is effectually turned to account as a stimulus to 
 warlike enterprise. 
 
 Even among a people with so single an eye to the main 
 chance as the American community it will be found true, 
 on experiment or on review of the historical evidence, 
 that an offense against the national honour commands a 
 
28 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 profounder and more unreser^^ed resentment than any 
 infraction of the rights of person or property simply. 
 This has latterly been well shown in connection with the 
 manoeuvres of the several European belligerents, de- 
 signed to bend American neutrality to the service of one 
 iside or the other. Both parties have aimed to intimidate 
 and cajole; but while the one party has taken recourse 
 to effrontery and has made much and ostentatious use 
 of threats and acts of violence against person and prop- 
 erty, the other has constantly observed a deferential atti- 
 tude toward American national self-esteem, even while 
 engaged on a persistent infraction of American com- 
 mercial rights. The first named line of diplomacy has 
 convicted itself of miscarriage and has lost the strategic 
 advantage, as against the none too adroit finesse of the 
 other side. The statesmen of this European war power 
 were so ill advised as to enter on a course of tentatively 
 cumulative intimidation, by threats and experimentally 
 graduated crimes against the property and persons of 
 American citizens, with a view to coerce American cu- 
 pidity and yet to avoid carrying these manoeuvres of ter- 
 rorism far enough to arouse an unmanageable sense of 
 outrage. The experiment has served to show that the 
 breaking point in popular indignation will be reached be- 
 fore the terrorism has gone far enough to raise a serious 
 
 question of pecuniary caution. 
 
 This national honour, which so is rated a necessar}^ of 
 life, is an immaterial substance in a peculiarly high- 
 wrought degree, being not only not physically tangible 
 but also not even capable of adequate statement in pe- 
 cuniary terms, — as would be the case with ordinary imma- 
 terial assets. It is true, where the point of grievance out 
 of which a question of the national honour arises is a pe- 
 
Introductory 
 
 29 
 
 cuniary discrepancy, the national honour can not be satis- 
 fied without a pecuniary accounting; but it needs no 
 argument to convince all right-minded persons that even 
 at such a juncture the nationalhonourthat has been com- 
 promised is indefinitely and indefinably more than what 
 can be made to appear on an accountant’s page. It is a 
 highly valued asset, or at least a valued possession, but 
 it is of a metaphysical, not of a physical nature, and 
 it is not known to serve any material or otherwise useful 
 end apart from affording a practicable grievance conse- 
 quent upon its infraction. 
 
 This national honour is subject to injury in divers ways, 
 and so may yield a fruitful grievance even apart from of- 
 fences against the person or property of the nation’s busi- 
 nessmen; as, e. g., through neglect or disregard of the 
 conventional punctilios governing diplomatic intercourse, 
 or by disrespect or contumelious speech touching the Flag, 
 or the persons of national officials, particularly of such 
 officials as have only a decorative use, or the costumes 
 worn by such officials, or, again, by failure to observe 
 the ritual prescribed for parading the national honour on 
 stated occasions. When duly violated the national honour 
 may duly be made whole again by similarly immaterial 
 instrumentalities ; as, e. g., by recital of an appropriate 
 formula of words, by formal consumption of a stated 
 quantity of ammunition in the way of a salute, by ‘‘dip- 
 ping” an ensign, and the like, — procedure which can, of 
 course, have none but a magical efficacy. The national 
 honour, in short, moves in the realm of magic, and touch- 
 es the frontiers of religion. 
 
 Throughout this range of duties incumbent on the na- 
 tional defense, it will be noted, the offenses or discrepan- 
 cies to be guarded against or corrected by recourse to 
 
30 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 arms have much of a ceremonial character. Whatever 
 may be the material accidents that surround any given 
 concrete grievance that comes up for appraisal and re- 
 dress, in bringing the case into the arena for trial by com- 
 bat it is the spiritual value of the offense that is played 
 up and made the decisive ground of action, particularly 
 in so far as appeal is made to the sensibilities of the com- 
 mon man, who will have to bear the cost of the adven- 
 ture. And in such a case it will commonly happen that 
 the common man is unable, without advice, to see that 
 any given hostile act embodies a sacrilegious infraction of 
 the national honour. He will at any such conjuncture 
 scarcely rise to the pitch of moral indignation necessary 
 to float a warlike reprisal, until the expert keepers of the 
 Code come in to expound and certify the nature of the 
 transgression. But when once the lesion to the national 
 honour has been ascertained, appraised and duly exhibitca 
 by those persons whose place in the national economy it 
 is to look after all that sort of thing, the common man 
 will be found nowise behindhand about resenting the evil 
 usage of which he so, by force of interpretation, has been 
 a victim. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 
 
 Patriotism may be defined as a sense of partisan soli- 
 darity in respect of prestige. What the expert psycholo- 
 gists, and perhaps the experts in Political Science, might 
 find it necessary to say in the course of an exhaustive 
 analysis and definition of this human faculty would pre- 
 sumably be something more precise and more extensive. 
 There is no inclination here to forestall definition, but 
 only to identify and describe the concept that loosely un- 
 derlies the colloquial use of this term, so far as seems 
 necessary to an inquiry into the part played by the patri- 
 otic animus in the life of modem peoples, particularly 
 as it bears on questions of war and peace. 
 
 On any attempt to divest this concept of all extrane- 
 ous or adventitious elements it will be found that such 
 a sense of an undivided joint interest in a collective body 
 of prestige will always remain as an irreducible minimum. 
 This is the substantial core about which many and divers 
 subsidiary interests cluster, but without which these other 
 clustering interests and aspirations will not, jointly or 
 severally, make up a working palladium of the patri- 
 otic spirit. 
 
 It is true, seen in some other light or rated in some 
 other bearing or connection, one and another of these 
 other interests, ideals, aspirations, beatitudes, may well 
 be adjudged nobler, wiser, possibly more urgent than the 
 
 31 
 
32 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 national prestige ; but in the forum of patriotism all these 
 other necessaries of human life — the glory of God and 
 the good of man — rise by comparison only to the rank 
 of subsidiaries, auxiliaries, amenities. He is an indiffer- 
 ent patriot who will let “life, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness” cloud the issue and get in the way of the 
 main business in hand. 
 
 There once were, we are told, many hardy and enter- 
 prising spirits banded together along the Spanish Main 
 for such like ends, just as there are in our day an even 
 greater number of no less single-minded spirits bent on 
 their own “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” ac- 
 cording to their light, in the money-markets of the mod- 
 ern world ; but for all their admirable qualities and 
 splendid achievements, their passionate quest of these 
 amenities has not entitled these Gentlemen Adventurers 
 to claim rank as patriots. The poet says : 
 
 “Strike for your altars and your fires! 
 
 Strike for the green graves of your sires ! 
 
 God and your native land 1” 
 
 But, again, a temperate scrutiny of the list of desiderata 
 so enumerated in the poet’s flight, will quickly bring out 
 the fact that any or all of them might drop out of the 
 situation without prejudice to the plain call of patriotic 
 duty. In the last resort, when the patriotic spirit falls 
 back on its naked self alone, it is not reflection on the 
 merits of these good and beautiful things in Nature that 
 gives him his cue and enforces the ultimate sacrifice. 
 Indeed it is something infinitely more futile and infinitely 
 more urgent, — provided only that the man is imbued with 
 the due modicum of patriotic devotion ; as, indeed, men 
 commonly are. It is not faith, hope or charity that abide 
 as the irreducible minimum of virtue in the patriot’s 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 33 
 
 scheme of things; particularly not that charity that has 
 once been highly spoken of as being the greatest of these. 
 It may be that, viewed in the light of reason, as Doctor 
 Katzenberger would say, patriotic devotion is the most 
 futile thing in the world; but, for good or ill, the light 
 of reason has nothing to do with the case, — no more 
 than “The flowers that bloom in the spring.” 
 
 The patriotic spirit is a spirit of emulation, evidently, 
 at the same time that it is emulation shot through with a 
 sense of solidarity. It belongs under the general cap- 
 tion of sportsmanship, rather than of workmanship. 
 Now, any enterprise in sportsmanship is bent on an in- 
 vidious success, which must involve as its major purpose 
 the defeat and humiliation of some competitor, whatever 
 else may be comprised in its aim. Its aim is a differential 
 gain, as against a rival ; and the emulative spirit that 
 comes under the head of patriotism commonly, if not 
 invariably, seeks this differential advantage by injury of 
 the rival rather than by an increase of home-bred well- 
 being. 
 
 Indeed, well-being is altogether out of the perspective, 
 except as underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. 
 It is, at least, a safe generalisation that the patriotic sen- 
 timent never has been known to rise to the consummate 
 pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on some 
 work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a con- 
 tentious complexion, and finds its full expression in no 
 other outlet than warlike enterprise ; its highest and final 
 appeal is for the death, damage, discomfort and destruc- 
 tion of the party of the second part. 
 
 It is not that the spirit of patriotism will tolerate no 
 other sentiments bearing on matters of public interest, 
 but only that it will tolerate none that traverse the call 
 3 
 
34 
 
 On the Nature of Peace, 
 
 of the national prestige. Like other men, the patriot may 
 be moved by many and divers other considerations, be- 
 sides that of the national prestige; and these other con- 
 siderations may be of the most genial and reasonable 
 kind, or they may also be as foolish and mischievous as 
 any comprised in the range of human infirmities. He 
 may be a humanitarian given over to the kindliest solici- 
 tude for the common good, or a religious devotee hedged 
 about in all his motions by the ever present fear of God, 
 or taken up with artistic, scholarly or scientific pursuits ; 
 or, again, he may be a spendthrift devotee of profane dis- 
 sipation, whether in the slums or on the higher levels of 
 gentility, or he may be engaged on a rapacious quest 
 of gain, as a businessman within the law or as a criminal 
 without its benefit, or he may spend his best endeavors 
 in advancing the interests of his class at the cost of the 
 nation at large. All that is understood as a matter of 
 course and is beside the point. In so far as he is a com- 
 plete patriot these other interests will fall away from 
 him when the one clear call of patriotic duty comes to 
 enlist him in the cause of the national prestige. There 
 is, indeed, nothing to hinder a bad citizen being a good 
 patriot; nor does it follow that a good citizen — in other 
 respects — may not be a very indifferent patriot. 
 
 Many and various other preferences and considera- 
 tions may coincide with the promptings of the patriotic 
 spirit, and so may come in to coalesce with and fortify 
 its driving force; and it is usual for patriotic men to 
 seek support for their patriotic impulses in some rea- 
 soned purpose of this extraneous kind that is believed to 
 be served by following the call of the national prestige, — 
 it may be a presumptive increase and diffusion of culture 
 at large, or the spread and enhancement of a presump- 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 35 
 
 tively estimable religious faith, or a prospective libera- 
 tion of mankind from servitude to obnoxious masters and 
 outworn institutions ; or, again, it may be the increase 
 of peace and material well-being among men, within the 
 national frontiers or impartially throughout the civilised 
 world. There are, substantially, none of the desirable 
 things in this world that are not so counted on by some 
 considerable body of patriots to be accomplished by the 
 success of their own particular patriotic aspirations. 
 What they will not come to an understanding about is 
 the particular national ascendency with which the attain- 
 ment of these admirable ends is conceived to be bound up. 
 
 The ideals, needs and aims that so are brought into 
 the patriotic argument to lend a color of rationality to 
 the patriotic aspiration in any given case will of course 
 be such ideals, needs and aims as are currently accepted 
 and felt to be authentic and self-legitimating among the 
 people in whose eyes the given patriotic enterprise is to 
 find favor. So one finds that, e. g., among the follow- 
 ers of Islam, devout and resolute, the patriotic statesman 
 (that is to say the politician who designs to make use of 
 the popular patriotic fervor) will in the last resort ap- 
 peal to the claims and injunctions of the faith. In a 
 similar way the Prussian statesman bent on dynastic en- 
 terprise will conjure in the name of the dynasty and of 
 culture and efficiency; or, if worse comes to worst, an 
 outbreak will be decently covered with a plea of mortal 
 peril and self-defense. Among English-speaking peoples 
 much is to be gained by showing that the path of patri- 
 otic glory is at the same time the way of equal-handed 
 justice under the rule of free institutions ; at the same 
 time, in a fully commercialised community, such as the 
 English-speaking commonly are, material benefits in the 
 
36 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 way of trade will go far to sketch in s background of 
 decency for any enterprise that looks to the enhance- 
 ment of the national prestige. 
 
 But any promise of gain, whether in the nation’s ma- 
 terial or immaterial assets, will not of itself carry full 
 conviction to the commonplace modern citizen ; or even 
 to such modern citizens as are best endowed with a na- 
 tional spirit. By and large, and overlooking that appre- 
 ciable contingent of morally defective citizens that is to 
 be counted on in any hybrid population, it will hold true 
 that no contemplated enterprise or line of policy will fully 
 commend itself to the popular sense of merit and expe- 
 diency until it is given a moral turn, so as to bring it to 
 square with the dictates of right and honest dealing. 
 On no terms short of this will it effectually coalesce with 
 the patriotic aspiration. To give the fullest practical 
 effect to the patriotic fervor that animates any modern 
 nation, and so turn it to use in the most effective way, 
 it is necessary to show that the demands of equity are 
 involved in the case. Any cursory survey of modern 
 historical events bearing on this point, among the civilised 
 peoples, will bring out the fact that no concerted and sus- 
 tained movement of the national spirit can be had without 
 enlisting the community’s moral convictions. The com- 
 mon man must be persuaded that right is on his side. 
 “Thrice is he armed who knows his quarrel just.’’ The 
 grounds of this conviction may often be tawdry enough, 
 but the conviction is a necessary factor in the case. 
 
 The requisite moral sanction may be had on various 
 grounds, and, on the whole, it is not an extremely difficult 
 matter to arrange. In the simplest and not infrequent 
 case it may turn on a question of equity in respect of trade 
 or investment as between the citizens or subjects of tlie 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 37 
 
 several rival nations ; the Chinese “Open Door” aflfords 
 as sordid an example as may be desired. Or it may be 
 only an envious demand for a share in the world’s ma- 
 terial resources — “A Place in the Sun,” as a picturesque 
 phrase describes it; or “The Freedom of the Seas,” as 
 another equally vague and equally invidious demand for 
 international equity phrases it. These demands are put 
 forward with a color of demanding something in the 
 way of equitable opportunity for the commonplace peace- 
 able citizen ; but quite plainly they have none but a fan- 
 ciful bearing on the fortunes of the common man in 
 time of peace, and they have a meaning to the nation only 
 as a fighting unit ; apart from their prestige value, these 
 things are worth fighting for only as prospective means of 
 fighting. The like appeal to the moral sensibilities may, 
 again, be made in the way of a call to self-defense, under 
 the rule of Live and let live; or it may also rest on the 
 more tenuous obligation to safeguard the national integ- 
 rity of a weaker neighbor, under a broader interpreta- 
 tion of the same equitable rule of Live and let live. But 
 in one way or another it is necessary to set up the con- 
 viction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have 
 the sanction of moral necessity. 
 
 It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic 
 enterprise so entered upon with the support of popular 
 sentiment need be right and equitable as seen in dis- 
 passionate perspective from the outside, but only that it 
 should be capable of being made to seem right and eq- 
 uitable to the biased populace whose moral convictions 
 are requisite to its prosecution ; which is quite another 
 matter. Nor is it that any such patriotic enterprise is, 
 in fact, entered on simply or mainly on these moral 
 grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only 
 
38 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that some such colorable ground of justification or exten- 
 uation is necessary to be alleged, and to be credited by 
 popular belief. 
 
 It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patri- 
 otic, but only that he is a patriot hampered with a plod- 
 ding and uneasy sense of right and honest dealing, and 
 that one must make up one’s account with this moral bias 
 in looking to any sustained and concerted action that 
 draws on the sentiment of the common man for its car- 
 rying on. But the moral sense in the case may be some- 
 what easily satisfied with a modicum of equity, in case 
 the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or in 
 case it is re-enforced with a sufficient appeal to self- 
 interest. In those cases where the national fervor rises 
 to an excited pitch, even very attenuated considerations 
 of right and justice, such as would under ordinary con- 
 ditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating circum- 
 stances, may come to serve as moral authentication for 
 any extravagant course of action to which the craving 
 for national prestige may incite. The higher the pitch 
 of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous and more thread- 
 bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative 
 excitation some very remarkable results have latterly 
 been attained along this line. 
 
 Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of 
 aliency and animosity between contrasted groups of per- 
 sons ; it lives on invidious comparison, and works out 
 in mutual hindrance and jealousy between nations. It 
 commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and 
 obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material 
 and cultural well-being of both nationalities; and not 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 39 
 
 infrequently, indeed normally, it eventuates in competi- 
 tive damage to both. 
 
 All this holds true in the world of modern civilisation, 
 at the same time that the modern civilised scheme of life 
 is, notoriously, of a cosmopolitan character, both in its 
 cultural requirements and in its economic structure. 
 Modern culture is drawn on too large a scale, is of too 
 complex and multiform a character, requires the coopera- 
 tion of too many and various lines of inquiry, experience 
 and insight, to admit of its being confined within na- 
 tional frontiers, except at the cost of insufferable crip- 
 pling and retardation. The science and scholarship that 
 is the peculiar pride of civilised Christendom is not only 
 international, but rather it is homogeneously cosmopoli- 
 tan ; so that in this bearing there are, in effect, no national 
 frontiers ; with the exception, of course, that in a season 
 of patriotic intoxication, such as the current war has 
 induced, even the scholars and scientists will be tempo- 
 rarily overset by their patriotic fervour. Indeed, with 
 the best efforts of obscurantism and national jealousy to 
 the contrary, it remains patently true that modern culture 
 is the culture of Christendom at large, not the culture 
 of one and another nation in severalty within the confines 
 of Christendom. It is only as and in so far as they 
 partake in and contribute to the general run of Western 
 civilisation at large that the people of any one of these 
 nations of Christendom can claim standing as a cultured 
 nation; and even any distinctive variation from this 
 general run of civilised life, such as may give a “local 
 colour” of ideals, tastes and conventions, will, in point 
 of cultural value, have to be rated as an idle detail, a 
 species of lost motion, that serves no better purpose than 
 a transient estrangement. 
 
40 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 So also, the modern state of the industrial arts is of a 
 like cosmopolitan character, in point of scale, specialisa- 
 tion, and the necessary use of diversified resources, of 
 climate and raw materials. None of the countries of 
 Europe, e. g., is competent to carry on its industry by 
 modern technological methods without constantly draw- 
 ing on resources outside of its national boundaries. Iso- 
 lation in this industrial respect, exclusion from the world 
 market, would mean intolerable loss of efficiency, more 
 pronounced the more fully the given country has taken 
 over this modern state of the industrial arts. Exclusion 
 from the general body of outlying resources would seri- 
 ously cripple any one or all of them, and effectually de- 
 prive them of the usufruct of this technology; and par- 
 tial exclusion, by prohibitive or protective tariffs and the 
 like, unavoidably results in a partial lowering of the ef- 
 ficiency of each, and therefore a reduction of the current 
 well-being among them all together. 
 
 Into this cultural and technological system of the mod- 
 ern world the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes 
 and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the 
 outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at 
 every point where it touches the fortunes of modem man- 
 kind. Yet it is forever present in the counsels of the 
 statesmen and in the affections of the common man, and 
 it never ceases to command the regard of all men as the 
 prime artribute of manhood and the final test of the 
 desirable citizen. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say 
 that no other consideration is allowed in abatement of the 
 claims of patriotic loyalty, and that such loyalty will be 
 allowed to cover any multitude of sins. When the an- 
 cient philosopher described IMan as a “political animal,” 
 this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 41 
 
 ancient maxim is as good as new. The patriotic spirit 
 is at cross purposes with modern life, but in any test 
 case it is found that the claims of life yield before those 
 of patriotism ; and any voice that dissents from this 
 , order of things is as a voice crying in the wilderness. 
 
 To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular 
 discrepancies of human life this state of the case will be 
 fruitful of much profound speculation. The patriotic 
 animus appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, 
 an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time 
 immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of 
 racial types. It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or 
 enduring suppression, and apparently not appreciably 
 to be mitigated by reflection, education, experience or 
 selective breeding. 
 
 Throughout the historical period, and presumably 
 through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, 
 patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out 
 of each successive generation of men the most patriotic 
 among them ; with the net result that the level of pa- 
 triotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever 
 was. At the same time, with the advance of population, 
 of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism has grown 
 increasingly disserviceable ; and it is to all appearance 
 as ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as 
 high esteem. 
 
 The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among 
 the modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universal- 
 ly placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue 
 that it is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature 
 of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a pro- 
 duct of habituation. It is, in substance, not something 
 
42 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that can be learned and unlearned. From one generation 
 to another, the allegiance may shift from one nationality 
 to another, but the fact of unreflecting allegiance at large 
 remains. And it all argues also that no sensible change 
 has taken effect in the hereditary endowment of the race, 
 at least in this respect, during the period known by rec- 
 ord or by secure inference, — say, since the early Neolithic 
 in Europe ; and this in spite of the fact that there has all 
 this while been opportunity for radical changes in the 
 European population by cross-breeding, infiltration and 
 displacement of the several racial stocks that go to make 
 up this population. Hence, on slight reflection the infer- 
 ence has suggested itself and has gained acceptance that 
 this trait of human nature must presumably have been 
 serviceable to the peoples of the earlier time, on those 
 levels of savagery or of the lower barbarism on which 
 the ancestral stocks of the European population first made 
 good their survival and proved their fitness to people that 
 quarter of the earth. Such, indeed, is the common view ; 
 so common as to pass for matter-of-course, and therefore 
 habitually to escape scrutiny. 
 
 Still it need not follow, as more patient reflection will 
 show. All the European peoples show much the same 
 animus in this respect; whatever their past history may 
 have been, and whatever the difference in past experience 
 that might be conceived to have shaped their tempera- 
 ment. Any difference in the pitch of patriotic conceit 
 and animosity, between the several nationalities or the 
 several localities, is by no means wide, even in cases 
 where the racial composition of the population is held to 
 be very different, as, e. g., between the peoples on the 
 Baltic seaboard and those on the Mediterranean. In point 
 of fact, in this matter of patriotic animus there appears 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 43 
 
 to be a wider divergence, temperamentally, between in- 
 dividuals within any one of these communities than be- 
 tween the common run in any one community and the 
 corresponding common run in any other. But even such 
 divergence of individual temper in respect of patriotism 
 as is to be met with, first and last, is after all surprisingly 
 small in view of the scope for individual variation which 
 this European population would seem to offer. 
 
 These peoples of Europe, all and several, are hybrids 
 compounded out of the same run of racial elements, but 
 mixed in varying proportions. On any parallel of lati- 
 tude — taken in the climatic rather than in the geometric 
 sense — the racial composition of the west-European pop- 
 ulation will be much the same, virtually identical in ef- 
 fect, although always of a hybrid complexion; whereas 
 on any parallel of longitude — also in the climatic sense — 
 the racial composition will vary progressively, but always 
 within the limits of the same general scheme of hybridisa- 
 tion, — the variation being a variation in the proportion in 
 which the several racial elements are present in any given 
 case. But in no case does a notable difference in racial 
 composition coincide with a linguistic or national frontier. 
 But in point of patriotic animus these European peoples 
 are one as good as another, whether the comparison be 
 traced on parallels of latitude or of longitude. And the 
 inhabitants of each national territory, or of each detail 
 locality, appear also to run surprisingly uniform in re- 
 spect of their patriotic spirit. 
 
 Heredity in any such community of hybrids will, su- 
 perficially, appear to run somewhat haphazard. There 
 will, of course, be no traceable difference between social 
 or economic classes, in point of heredity, — as is visibly 
 
44 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the case in Christendom. But variation — of an appar- 
 ently haphazard description — will be large and ubiquitous 
 among the individuals of such a populace. Indeed, it is 
 a matter of course and of easy verification that individual 
 variation within such a hybrid stock will greatly exceed 
 the extreme differences that may subsist between the sev- 
 eral racial types that have gone to produce the hybrid 
 stock. Such is the case of the European peoples. The 
 inhabitants vary greatly among themselves, both in phys- 
 ical and in mental traits, as would be expected; and the 
 variation between individuals in point of patriotic ani- 
 mus should accordingly also be expected to be extremely 
 wide, — should, in effect, greatly exceed the difference, if 
 any, in this respect between the several racial elements 
 engaged in the European population. Some appreciable 
 difference in this respect there appears to be, between 
 individuals; but individual divergence from the normal 
 or average appears always to be of a sporadic sort, — it 
 does not run on class lines, whether of occupation, status 
 or property, nor does it run at all consistently from 
 parent to child. When all is told the argument returns to 
 the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic 
 animus are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not 
 touch the general proposition that, one with another, the 
 inhabitants of Europe and the European Colonies are 
 sufficiently patriotic, and that the average endowment in 
 this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all 
 differences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in 
 fact, be extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a 
 sensible difference in the ordinary pitch of patriotic sen- 
 timent as between any two widely diverse samples of these 
 hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the diversity 
 in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced. 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 45 
 
 In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that 
 in this respect the several racial stocks that have gone to 
 produce the existing populations of Christendom have 
 all been endowed about as richly one as another. Patri- 
 otism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the 
 races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should 
 follow, that since there is, and has from the beginning 
 been, no differential advantage favoring one racial stock 
 or one fashion of hybrid as against another, in this mat- 
 ter of patriotic animus, there should also be no ground 
 of selective survival or selective elimination on this ac- 
 count as between these several races and peoples. So 
 that the undisturbed and undiminished prevalence of this 
 trait among the European population, early or late, argues 
 nothing as to its net serviceability or disserviceability 
 under any of the varying conditions of culture and tech- 
 nology to v>?hich these Europeans have been subjected, 
 first and last ; except that it has, in any case, not proved 
 so disserviceable under the conditions prevailing hitherto 
 as to result in the extinction of these Europeans, one 
 with another.^ 
 
 The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above 
 as if it were an hereditary trait, something after the 
 fashion of a Mendelian unit character. Doubtless this 
 is not a competent account of the matter ; but the present 
 argument scarcely needs a closer analysis. Still, in a 
 measure to quiet title and avoid annoyance, it may be 
 noted that this patriotic animus is of the nature of a 
 “frame of mind” rather than a Mendelian unit character ; 
 
 ipor a more extended discussion of this matter, cf. Imperial 
 Germany and the Industrial Revolution, ch. i. and Supplementary- 
 Notes i. and ii. 
 
46 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that it so involves a concatenation of several impulsive 
 propensities (presumably hereditary) ; and that both the 
 concatenation and the special mode and amplitude of the 
 response are a product of habituation, very largely of the 
 nature of conventionalised use and wont. What is said 
 above, therefore, goes little farther than saying that the 
 underlying aptitudes requisite to this patriotic frame of 
 mind are heritable, and that use and wont as bearing on 
 this point run with sufficient uniformity to bring a pass- 
 ably uniform result. It may be added that in this con- 
 catenation spoken of there seems to be comprised, ordi- 
 narily, that sentimental attachment to habitat and custom 
 that is called love of home, or in its accentuated expres- 
 sion, home-sickness ; so also an invidious self-compla- 
 cency, coupled with a gregarious bent which gives the 
 invidious comparison a group content ; and further, com- 
 monly if not invariably, a bent of abnegation, self-abase- 
 ment, subservience, or whatever it may best be called, that 
 inclines the bearer unreasoningly and unquestioningly to 
 accept and serve a prescriptive ideal given by custom or 
 by customary authority. 
 
 The conclusion would therefore provisionally run to 
 the effect that under modem conditions the patriotic ani- 
 mus is wholly a disserviceable trait in the spiritual en- 
 dowment of these peoples, — in so far as bears on the 
 material conditions of life unequivocally, and as regards 
 the cultural interests more at large presumptively ; where- 
 as there is no assured ground for a discriminating opin- 
 ion as touches its possible utility or disutility at any re- 
 mote period in the past. There is, of course, always room 
 for the conservative estimate that, as the possession of 
 this spiritual trait has not hitherto resulted in the extinc- 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 47 
 
 tion of the race, so it may also in the calculable future 
 continue to bring no more grievous results than a degree 
 of mischief, without even stopping or greatly retarding 
 the increase of population. 
 
 All this, of course, is intended to apply only so far as 
 it goes. It must not be taken as intending to say any 
 least word in derogation of those high qualities that in- 
 spire the patriotic citizen. In its economic, biological and 
 cultural incidence patriotism appears to be an untoward 
 trait of human nature ; which has, of course, nothing to 
 say as to its moral excellence, its aesthetic value, or its in- 
 dispensability to a worthy life. No doubt, it is in all these 
 respects deserving of all the esteem and encomiums that 
 fall to its share. Indeed, its well-known moral and aes- 
 thetic value, as well as the reprobation that is visited on 
 any shortcomings in this respect, signify, for the purposes 
 of the present argument, nothing more than that the pa- 
 triotic animus meets the unqualified approval of men be- 
 cause they are, all and several, infected with it. It is evi- 
 dence of the ubiquitous, intimate and ineradicable pres- 
 ence of this quality in human nature ; all the more since it 
 continues untiringly to be held in the highest esteem in 
 spite of the fact that a modicum of reflection should make 
 its disserviceability plain to the meanest understanding. 
 No higher praise of moral excellence, and no profounder 
 test of loyalty, can be asked than this current unreserved 
 commendation of a virtue that makes invariably for dam- 
 age and discomfort. The virtuous impulse must be deep- 
 seated and indefeasible that drives men incontinently to do 
 good that evil may come of it. “Jliough He slay me, yet 
 will I trust in Him,” 
 
48 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 In the light — and it is a dim and wavering light — of the 
 archaeological evidence, helped out by circumstantial evi- 
 dence from such parallel or analogous instances as are 
 afforded by existing communities on a comparable level 
 of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on 
 a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early 
 Europeans, of early neolithic times and laterd And so 
 one may form some conception of the part played by this 
 patriotic animus among those beginnings, when, if not 
 the race, at least its institutions were young; and when 
 the native temperament of these peoples was tried out and 
 found fit to survive through the age-long and slow-moving 
 eras of stone and bronze. In this connection, it appears 
 safe to assume that since early neolithic times no sensible 
 change has taken effect in the racial complexion of the 
 European peoples ; and therefore no sensible change in 
 their spiritual and mental make-up. So that in respect of 
 the spiritual elements that go to make up this patriotic 
 animus the Europeans of today will be substantially iden- 
 tical with the Europeans of that early time. The like is 
 true as regards those other traits of temperament that 
 come in question here, as being included among the stable 
 characteristics that still condition the life of these peoples 
 under the altered circumstances of the modern age. 
 
 The difference between prehistoric Europe and the 
 present state of these peoples resolves itself on analysis 
 into a difference in the state of the industrial arts, to- 
 gether with such institutional changes as have come on 
 in the course of working out this advance in the indus- 
 trial arts. The habits and the exigencies of life among 
 these peoples have greatly changed; whereas in temper- 
 
 ^Cf. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, as above. 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 
 
 49 
 
 ament and capacities the peoples that now live by and 
 under the rule of this altered state of the industrial arts 
 are the same as they were. It is to be noted, therefore, 
 that the fact of their having successfully come through- 
 the long ages of prehistory by the use of this mental and 
 spiritual endowment can not be taken to argue that these 
 peoples are thereby fit to meet the exigencies of this 
 later and gravely altered age; nor will it do to assume 
 that because these peoples have themselves worked out 
 this modern culture and its technology, therefore it must 
 all be suitable for their use and conducive to their bio- 
 logical success. The single object lesson of the modern 
 urban community, with its endless requirements in the 
 way of sanitation, police, compulsory education, chari- 
 ties, — all this and many other discrepancies in modern 
 life should enjoin caution on anyone who is inclined off- 
 hand to hold that because modern men have created these 
 conditions, therefore these must be the most suitable con- 
 ditions of life for modern mankind. 
 
 In the beginning, that is to say in the European begin- 
 ning, men lived in small and close groups. Control was 
 close within the group, and the necessity of subordinating 
 individual gains and preferences to the common good 
 was enjoined on the group by the exigencies of the case, 
 on pain of common extinction. The situation and usages 
 of existing Eskimo villages may serve to illustrate and 
 enforce the argument on this head. The solidarity of 
 sentiment necessary to support the requisite solidarity of 
 action in the case would be a prime condition of survival 
 in any racial stock exposed to the conditions which sur- 
 rounded these early Europeans. This needful sense of 
 solidarity would touch not simply or most imperatively 
 the joint prestige of the group, but rather the joint ma- 
 4 
 
50 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 terlal interests; and would enforce a spirit of mutual 
 support and dependence. Which would be rather helped 
 than hindered by a jealous attitude of joint prestige; so 
 long as no divergent interests of members within the 
 group were in a position to turn this state of the common 
 sentiment to their own particular advantage. 
 
 This state of the case will have lasted for a relatively 
 long time ; long enough to have tested the fitness of these 
 peoples for that manner of life, — longer, no doubt, than 
 the interval that has elapsed since history began. Special 
 interests — e. g., personal and family interests — will have 
 been present and active in these days of the beginning; 
 but so long as the group at large was small enough to 
 admit of a close neighborly contact throughout its extent 
 and throughout the workday routine of life, at the same 
 time that it was too small and feeble to allow any appre- 
 ciable dissipation of its joint energies in such pursuit of 
 selfish gains as would run counter to the paramount busi- 
 ness of the common livelihood, so long the sense of a 
 common livelihood and a joint fortune would continue 
 to hold any particularist ambitions effectually in check. 
 Had it fallen out otherwise, the story of the group in 
 question would have been ended, and another and more 
 suitably endowed type of men would have taken the place 
 vacated by its extinction. 
 
 With a sensible advance in the industrial arts the scale 
 of operations would grow larger, and the group more 
 numerous and extensive. The margin between produc- 
 tion and subsistence would also widen and admit addi- 
 tional scope for individual ambitions and personal gains. 
 And as this process of growth and increasing productive 
 efficiency went on, the control exercised by neighborly 
 surveillance, through the sentiment of the common good 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 51 
 
 as against the self-seeking pursuits of individuals and 
 sub-groups, would gradually slacken ; until by progres- 
 sive disuse it would fall into a degree of abeyance ; to 
 be called into exercise and incite to concerted action only 
 in the face of unusual exigencies touching the common 
 fortunes of the group at large, or on persuasion that the 
 collective interest of the group at large was placed in 
 jeopardy in the molestation of one and another of its 
 members from without. The group’s prestige at least 
 would be felt to suffer in the defeat or discourtesy suf- 
 fered by any of its members at the hands of any alien ; 
 and, under compulsion of the ancient sense of group soli- 
 darity, whatever material hardship or material gain might 
 so fall to individual members in their dealings with the 
 alien would pass easy scrutiny as material detriment or 
 gain inuring to the group at large, — in the apprehension 
 of men whose sense of community interest is inflamed 
 with a jealous disposition to safeguard their joint prestige. 
 
 With continued advance in the industrial arts the cir- 
 cumstances conditioning life will undergo a progressive 
 change of such a character that the joint interest of the 
 group at large, in the material respect, will progressively 
 be less closely bound up with the material fortunes of any 
 particular member or members ; until in the course of 
 time and change there will, in effect, in ordinary times be 
 no general and inclusive community of material interest 
 binding the members together in a common fortune and 
 working for a common livelihood. As the rights of own- 
 ership begin to take effect, so that the ownership of prop- 
 erty and the pursuit of a livelihood under the rules of 
 ownership come to govern men’s economic relations, these 
 material concerns will cease to be a matter of undivided 
 joint interest, and will fall into the shape of interest in 
 
On the Nature of Peace 
 
 52 , 
 
 severalty. So soon and so far as this institution of own- 
 ership or property takes effect, men’s material interests 
 cease to run on lines of group solidarity. Solely, or al- 
 most solely, in the exceptional case of defense against 
 a predatory incursion from outside, do the members of 
 the group have a common interest of a material kind. 
 Progressively as the state of the arts advances, the in- 
 dustrial organisation advances to a larger scale and a 
 more extensive specialisation, with increasing divergence 
 among individual interests and individual fortunes ; and 
 intercourse over larger distances grows easier and makes 
 a larger grouping practicable ; which enables a larger, 
 prompter and more effective mobilisation of forces with 
 which to defend or assert any joint claims. But by the 
 same move it also follows, or at least it appears uni- 
 formly to have followed in the European case, that the 
 accumulation of property and the rights of ownership 
 have progressively come into the first place among the 
 material interests of these peoples ; while anything like 
 a community of usufruct has imperceptibly fallen into the 
 background, and has presently gone virtually into abey- 
 ance, except as an eventual recourse in extremis for the 
 common defense. Property rights have displaced com- 
 munity of usufruct ; and invidious distinctions as between 
 persons, sub-groups, and classes have displaced commu- 
 nity of prestige in the workday routine of these peoples ; 
 and the distinctions between contrasted persons or classes 
 have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly 
 or indirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pe- 
 cuniary standing rather than on personal affiliation with 
 the group at large. 
 
 So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentia- 
 tion of a new character sets in and presently grows pro- 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 
 
 53 
 
 gressively more pronounced and more effectual, giving 
 rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardless of those 
 frontiers that divide one community from another for 
 purposes of patriotic emtdation. So far as it comes 
 chiefly and typically in question here, this regrouping 
 takes place on two distinct but somewhat related princi- 
 ples of contrast; that of wealth and poverty, and that 
 of master and servant, or authority and obedience. The 
 material interests of the population in this way come to 
 be divided between the group of those who own and those 
 who command, on the one hand, and of those who work 
 and who obey, on the other hand. 
 
 Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons 
 have any direct material interest in the maintenance of the 
 patriotic community; or at any rate no such interest as 
 should reasonably induce them to spend their own time 
 and substance in support of the political (patriotic) or- 
 ganisation within which they live. It is only in so far 
 as one or another of these interests looks for a more than 
 proportionate share in any prospective gain from the 
 joint enterprise, that the group or class in question can 
 reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the joint 
 venture. And it is only when and in so far as their par- 
 ticular material or self-regarding interest is reenforced 
 by patriotic conceit, that they can be counted on to spend 
 themselves in furtherance of the patriotic enterprise, with- 
 out the assurance of a more than proportionate share in 
 any gains that may be held in prospect from any such 
 joint enterprise; and it is only in its patriotic bearing 
 that the political community continues to be a joint ven- 
 ture. That is to say, in more generalised terms, through 
 the development of the rights of property, and of such 
 like prescriptive claims of privilege and prerogative, it 
 
54 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 has come about that other community interests have fallen 
 away, until the collective prestige remains as virtually 
 the sole community interest which can hold the sentiment 
 of the group in a bond of solidarity. 
 
 To one or another of these several interested groups 
 or classes within the community the political organisation 
 may work a benefit; but only to one or another, not to 
 each and several, jointly or collectively. Since by no 
 chance will the benefit derived from such joint enterprise 
 on the part of the community at large equal the joint cost ; 
 in as much as all joint enterprise of the kind that looks to 
 material advantage works by one or another method of 
 inhibition and takes effect, if at all, by lowering the ag- 
 gregate efficiency of the several countries concerned, with 
 a view to the differential gain of one at the cost of another. 
 So. e. g., a protective tariff is plainly a conspiracy in re- 
 straint of trade, with a view to benefit the conspirators by 
 hindering their competitors. The aggregate cost to the 
 community at large of such an enterprise in retardation is 
 always more than the gains it brings to those who may 
 benefit by it. 
 
 In so speaking of the uses to which the common man’s 
 patriotic devotion may be turned, there is no intention 
 to underrate its intrinsic value as a genial and generous 
 trait of human nature. Doubtless it is best and chiefly to 
 be appreciated as a spiritual quality that beautifies and en- 
 nobles its bearer, and that endows him with the full 
 stature of manhood, quite irrespective of ulterior con- 
 siderations. So it is to be conceded without argument 
 that this patriotic animus is a highly meritorious frame 
 of mind, and that it has an aesthetic value scarcely to be 
 overstated in the farthest stretch of poetic license. But 
 the question of its serviceability to the modern commu- 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 55 
 
 nity, in any other than this decorative respect, and par- 
 ticularly its serviceability to the current needs of the com- 
 mon man in such a modern community, is not touched 
 by such an admission ; nor does this recognition of its 
 generous spiritual nature afford any help toward answer- 
 ing a further question as to how and with what effect this 
 animus may be turned to account by anyone who is in 
 position to make use of the forces which it sets free. 
 
 Among Christian nations there still is, on the whole, a 
 decided predilection for that ancient and authentic line of 
 national repute that springs from warlike prowess. This 
 repute for warlike prowess is what first comes to mind 
 among civilised peoples when speaking of national great- 
 ness. And among those who have best preserved this 
 warlike ideal of worth, the patriotic ambition is likely to 
 converge on the prestige of their sovereign ; so that it 
 takes the concrete form of personal loyalty to a master, 
 and so combines or coalesces with a servile habit of mind. 
 
 But peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, 
 it is said; and peaceable folk of a patriotic temper have 
 learned to make the best of their meager case and have 
 found self-complacency in these victories of the peace- 
 able order. So it may broadly be affirmed that all nations 
 look with complacency on their own peculiar Culture — 
 the organised complex of habits of thought and of con- 
 duct by which their own routine of life is regulated — as 
 being in some way worthier than the corresponding hab- 
 its of their neighbors. The case of the German Culture 
 has latterly come under a strong light in this way. But 
 while it may be that no other nation has been so naive 
 as to make a concerted profession of faith to the effect 
 that their own particular way of life is altogether com- 
 mendable and is the only fashion of civilisation that is 
 
56 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 fit to survive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to 
 assert that in their own secret mind these others, too, are 
 blest with much the same consciousness of unique worth. 
 Conscious virtue of this kind is a good and sufficient 
 ground for patriotic inflation, so far as it goes. It com- 
 monly does not go beyond a defensive attitude, however. 
 Now and again, as in the latterday German animation on 
 this head, these phenomena of national use and wont may 
 come to command such a degree of popular admiration as 
 will incite to an aggressive or proselyting campaign. 
 
 In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous 
 kind. The common man who so lends himself to the 
 aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its 
 prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the 
 increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his 
 language, his countrymen’s art or science, his dietary, or 
 his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These 
 spiritual assets of self-complacency are, indeed, to be 
 rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without after- 
 thought. These aspirations and enthusiasms would per- 
 haps be rated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bound- 
 ed by the main chance; but they make up that substance 
 of things hoped for that inflates those headlong patriotic 
 animosities that stir universal admiration. 
 
 So also, men find an invidious distinction in such mat- 
 ters of physical magnitude as their country’s area, the 
 number of its population, the size of its cities, the ex- 
 tent of its natural resources, its aggregate wealth and its 
 wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreign 
 trade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phe- 
 nomena of physical magnitude and pecuniary traffic are 
 no better and no worse than such immaterial assets as 
 the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections of tlie 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotmn 
 
 57 
 
 language. They are matters in which the common man 
 is concerned only by the accident of domicile, and his only 
 connection with these things is an imaginary joint interest 
 in their impressiveness. To these things he has contrib- 
 uted substantially nothing, and from them he derives no 
 other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He 
 takes pride in these things in an invidious way, and there 
 is no good reason why he should not ; just as there is also 
 no good reason why he should, apart from the fact that 
 the common man is so constituted that he, mysteriously, 
 takes pride in these things that concern him not. 
 
 Of the several groups or classes of persons within the 
 political frontiers, whose particular interests run system- 
 atically at cross purposes with those of the community 
 at large under modern conditions, the class of masters, 
 rulers, authorities, — or whatever term may seem most 
 suitable to designate that category of persons whose char- 
 acteristic occupation is to give orders and command def- 
 erence, — of the several orders and conditions of men 
 these are, in point of substantial motive and interest, most 
 patently at variance with all the rest, or with the fortunes 
 of the common man. The class will include civil and 
 military authorities and whatever nobility there is of a 
 prescriptive and privileged kind. The substantial inter- 
 est of these classes in the common welfare is of the same 
 kind as the interest which a parasite has in the well-being 
 of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt, 
 but there is in this relation nothing like a community of 
 interest. Any gain on the part of the community at large 
 will materially serve the needs of this group of per- 
 sonages, only in so far as it may afford them a larger 
 volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday col- 
 
58 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 loquial phrase been called “graft.” These personages 
 are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or 
 with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all 
 honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pat- 
 tern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and 
 the “Fountain of Honor” is found among them. The 
 point of the argument is only that their material or other 
 self-regarding interests are of such a nature as to be fur- 
 thered by the material wealth of the community, and 
 more particularly by the increasing volume of the body 
 politic ; but only with the proviso that this material 
 wealth and this increment of power must accrue without 
 anything like a corresponding cost to this class. At the 
 same time, since this class of the superiors is in some 
 degree a specialised organ of prestige, so that their value, 
 and therefore their tenure, both in the eyes of the commu- 
 nity and in their own eyes, is in the main a “prestige 
 value” and a tenure by prestige ; and since the prestige 
 that invests their persons is a shadow cast by the putative 
 worth of the community at large, it follows that their 
 particular interest in the joint prestige is peculiarly alert 
 and insistent. But it follows also that these personages 
 cannot of their own substance or of their own motion 
 contribute to this collective prestige in the same propor- 
 tion in which it is necessary for them to draw on it in 
 support of their own prestige value. It would, in other 
 words, be a patent absurdity to call on any of the cur- 
 rent ruling classes, dynasties, nobility, military and diplo- 
 matic corps, in any of the nations of Europe, e. g., to pre- 
 serve their current dignity and command the deference 
 that is currently accorded them, by recourse to their own 
 powers and expenditure of their own substance, without 
 the usufruct of the commonalty whose organ of dignity 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 59 
 
 they are. The current prestige value which they enjoy is 
 beyond their unaided powers to create or maintain, with- 
 out the usufruct of the community. Such an enterprise 
 does not lie within the premises of the case. 
 
 In this bearing, therefore, the first concern with which 
 these personages are necessarily occupied is the procure- 
 ment and retention of a suitable usufruct in the material 
 resources and good-will of a sufficiently large and indus- 
 trious population. The requisite good-will in these prem- 
 ises is called loyalty, and its retention by the line of per- 
 sonages that so trade on prestige rests on a superinduced 
 association of ideas, whereby the national honour comes to 
 be confounded in popular apprehension with the prestige 
 of these personages who have the keeping of it. But the 
 potentates and the establishments, civil and military, on 
 whom this prestige value rests will unavoidably come into 
 invidious comparison with others of their kind; and, as 
 invariably happens in matters of invidious comparison, 
 the emulative needs of all the competitors for prestige are 
 “indefinitely extensible,” as the phrase of the economists 
 has it. Each and several of them incontinently needs a 
 further increment of prestige, and therefore also a fur- 
 ther increment of the material assets in men and re- 
 sources that are needful as ways and means to assert and 
 augment the national honor. 
 
 It is true, the notion that their prestige value is in any 
 degree conditioned by the material circumstances and the 
 popular imagination of the underlying nation is distaste- 
 ful to many of these vicars of the national honour. They 
 will incline rather to the persuasion that this prestige 
 value is a distinctive attribute, of a unique order, in- 
 trinsic to their own persons. But, plainly, any such de- 
 tached line of magnates, notables, kings and mandarins. 
 
60 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 resting their notability on nothing more substantial than 
 a slightly sub-normal intelligence and a moderately scrof- 
 ulous habit of body could not long continue to command 
 that eager deference that is accounted their due. Such 
 a picture of majesty would be sadly out of drawing. 
 There is little conviction and no great dignity to be drawn 
 from the unaided pronouncement; 
 
 “We’re here because, 
 
 “We’re here because, 
 
 “We’re here because 
 “We’re here,” 
 
 even when the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical bene- 
 fit of a “Tenure by the Grace of God.” The personages 
 that carry this dignity require the backing of a deter- 
 mined and patriotic populace in support of their prestige 
 value, and they commonly have no great difficulty in pro- 
 curing it. And their prestige value is, in effect, propor- 
 tioned to the volume of material resources and patriotic 
 credulity that can be drawn on for its assertion. It is 
 true, their draught on the requisite sentimental and pe- 
 cuniary support is fortified with large claims of service- 
 ability to the common good, and these claims are some- 
 what easily, indeed eagerly, conceded and acted upon; 
 although the alleged benefit to the common good will 
 scarcely be visible except in the light of glory shed by the 
 blazing torch of patriotism. 
 
 In so far as it is of a material nature the benefit which 
 the constituted authorities so engage to contribute to the 
 common good, or in other words to confer on the com- 
 mon man, falls under two heads ; defense against aggres- 
 sion from without; and promotion of the community’s 
 material gain. It is to be presumed that the constituted 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 61 
 
 authorities commonly believe more or less implicitly in 
 their own professions in so professing to serve the needs 
 of the common man in these respects. The common de- 
 fense is a sufficiently grave matter, and doubtless it claims 
 the best affections and endeavour of the citizen ; but it is 
 not a matter that should claim much attention at this 
 point in the argument, as bearing on the service rendered 
 the common man by the constituted authorities, taken one 
 with another. Any given governmental establishment 
 at home is useful in this respect only as against another 
 governmental establishment elsewhere. So that on the 
 slightest examination it resolves itself into a matter of 
 competitive patriotic enterprise, as between the patriotic 
 aspirations of different nationalities led by different gov- 
 ernmental establishments; and the service so rendered 
 by the constituted authorities in the aggregate takes on 
 the character of a remedy for evils of their own creation. 
 It is invariably a defense against the concerted aggres- 
 sions of other patriots. Taken in the large, the com- 
 mon defense of any given nation becomes a detail of the 
 competitive struggle between rival nationalities animated 
 with a common spirit of patriotic enterprise and led by 
 authorities constituted for this competitive purpose. 
 
 Except on a broad basis of patriotic devotion, and ex- 
 cept under the direction of an ambitious governmental 
 establishment, no serious international aggression is to 
 be had. The common defense, therefore, is to be taken 
 as a remedy for evils arising out of the working of the 
 patriotic spirit that animates mankind, as brought to bear 
 under' a discretionary authority ; and in any balance to be 
 struck between the utility and disutility of this patriotic 
 spirit and of its service in the hands of the constituted 
 authorities, it will have to be cancelled out as being at 
 
62 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the best a mitigation of some of the disorders brought on 
 by the presence of national governments resting on patri- 
 otic loyalty at large. 
 
 But this common defense is by no means a vacant ru- 
 bric in any attempted account of modem national enter- 
 prise. It is the commonplace and conclusive plea of the 
 dynastic statesmen and the aspiring -warlords, and it is 
 the usual blind behind which events are put in train for 
 eventual hostilities. Preparation for the common de- 
 fense also appears unfailingly to eventuate in hostilities. 
 With more or less hona tides the statesmen and warriors 
 plead the cause of the common defense, and with patri- 
 otic alacrity the common man lends himself to the enter- 
 prise aimed at under that cover. In proportion as the 
 resulting equipment for defense grows great and becomes 
 formidable, the range of items which a patriotically biased 
 nation are ready to include among the claims to be de- 
 fended grows incontinently larger, until by the overlap- 
 ping of defensive claims between rival nationalities the 
 distinction between defense and aggression disappears, 
 except in the biased fancy of the rival patriots. 
 
 Of course, no reflections are called for here on the 
 current American campaign of “Preparedness.” Except 
 for the degree of hysteria it appears to differ in no sub- 
 stantial respect from the analogous course of auto-intox- 
 ication among the nationalities of Europe, which came 
 to a head in the current European situation. It should 
 conclusively serve the turn for any self-possessed ob- 
 server to call to mind that all the civilised nations of 
 warring Europe are, each and several, convinced that 
 they are fighting a defensive war. 
 
 The aspiration of all right-minded citizens is presumed 
 to be “Peace with Honour.” So that first, as well as last, 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 63 
 
 among those national interests that are to be defended, 
 and in the service of "which the substance and affections 
 of the common man are enlisted under the aegis of the 
 national prowess, comes the national prestige, as a matter 
 of course. And the constituted authorities are doubt- 
 less sincere and single-minded in their endeavors to ad- 
 vance and defend the national honour, particularly those 
 constituted authorities that hold their place of authority 
 on grounds of fealty ; since the national prestige in such 
 a case coalesces with the prestige of the nation’s ruler in 
 much the same degree in which the national sovereignty 
 devolves upon the person of its ruler. In so defending 
 or advancing the national prestige, such a dynastic or 
 autocratic overlord, together with the other privileged 
 elements assisting and dependent on him, is occupied 
 with his own interest ; his own tenure is a tenure by pres- 
 tige, and the security of his tenure lies in the continued 
 maintenance of that popular fancy that invests his person 
 with this national prestige and so constitutes him and 
 his retinue of notables and personages its keeper. 
 
 But it is uniformly insisted by the statesmen — poten- 
 tates, notables, kings and mandarins — that this aegis of 
 the national prowess in their hands covers also many 
 interests of a more substantial and more tangible kind. 
 These other, more tangible interests of the community 
 have also a value of a direct and personal sort to the 
 dynasty and its hierarchy of privileged subalterns, in 
 that it is only by use of the material forces of the nation 
 that the dynastic prestige can be advanced and maintained. 
 The interest of such constituted authorities in the material 
 welfare of the nation is consequently grave and insistent; 
 but it is evidently an interest of a special kind and is sub- 
 ject to strict and peculiar limitations. The common good, 
 
64 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 in the material respect, interests the dynastic statesman 
 only as a means to dynastic ends ; that is to say, only in so 
 far as it can be turned to account in the achievement of 
 dynastic aims. These aims are ‘‘The Kingdom, the Power 
 and the Glory,” as the sacred formula phrases the same 
 conception in another bearing. 
 
 That is to say, the material welfare of the nation is 
 a means to the unfolding of the dynastic power ; provided 
 always that this material welfare is not allowed to run in- 
 to such ramifications as will make the commonwealth an 
 unwieldy instrument in the hands of the dynastic states- 
 men. National welfare is to the purpose only in so far 
 as it conduces to political success, which is always a ques- 
 tion of warlike success in the last resort. The limitation 
 which this consideration imposes on the government’s 
 economic policy are such as will make the nation a self- 
 sufficient or self-balanced economic commonwealth. It 
 must be a self-balanced commonwealth at least in such 
 measure as will make it self-sustaining in case of need, 
 in all those matters that bear directly on warlike efficiency. 
 
 Of course, no community can become fully self-sustain- 
 ing under modern conditions, by use of the modem state 
 of the industrial arts, except by recourse to such drastic 
 measures of repression as would reduce its total efficiency 
 in an altogether intolerable degree. This will hold true 
 even of those nations who, like Russia or the United 
 States, are possessed of extremely extensive territories 
 and extremely large and varied resources; but it applies 
 with greatly accentuated force to smaller and more scan- 
 tily furnished territorial units. Peoples living under mod- 
 ern conditions and by use of the modem state of the in- 
 dustrial arts necessarily draw on all quarters of the habit- 
 able globe for materials and products which they can pro- 
 
65 
 
 On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 
 
 cure to the best advantage from outside their own special 
 field so long as they are allowed access to these outlying 
 sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation on this 
 freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much 
 harder, and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the com- 
 munity by that much. National self-sufficiency is to be 
 achieved only by a degree of economic isolation; and 
 such a policy of economic isolation involves a degree of 
 impoverishment and lowered efficiency, but it will also 
 leave the nation readier for warlike enterprise on such 
 a scale as its reduced efficiency will compass. 
 
 So that the best that can be accomplished along this 
 line by the dynastic statesmen is a shrewd compromise, 
 embodying such a degree of isolation and inhibition as 
 will leave the country passably self-sufficient in case of 
 need, without lowering the national efficiency to such a 
 point as to cripple its productive forces beyond what will 
 be offset by the greater warlike readiness that is so at- 
 tained. The point to which such a policy of isolation and 
 sufficiency will necessarily be directed is that measure of 
 inhibition that will yield the most facile and effective ways 
 and means of warlike enterprise, the largest product of 
 warlike effectiveness to be had on multiplying the nation’s 
 net efficiency into its readiness to take the field. 
 
 Into any consideration of this tactical problem a cer- 
 tain subsidiary factor enters, in that the patriotic temper 
 of the nation is always more or less affected by such an 
 economic policy. The greater the degree of effectual 
 isolation and discrimination embodied in the national 
 policy, the greater will commonly be its effect on popu- 
 lar sentiment in the way of national animosity and spirit- 
 ual self-sufficiency; which may be an asset of great value 
 for the purposes of warlike enterprise. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Plainly, any dynastic statesman who should undertake 
 to further the common welfare regardless of its service- 
 ability for warlike enterprise would be defeating his own 
 purpose. He would, in effect, go near to living up to 
 his habitual professions touching inteniational peace, in- 
 stead of professing to live up to them, as the exigencies 
 of his national enterprise now conventionally require him 
 to do. In effect, he would be functus officio. 
 
 There are two great administrative instruments avail- 
 able for this work of repression and national self-suffi- 
 ciency at the hands of the imperialistic statesman ; the pro- 
 tective tariff, and commercial subvention. The two are 
 not consistently to be distinguished from one another at 
 all points, and each runs out into a multifarious convolu- 
 tion of variegated details ; but the principles involved are, 
 after all, fairly neat and consistent. The former is of the 
 nature of a conspiracy in restraint of trade by repression ; 
 the latter, a consipiracy to the like effect by subsidised 
 monopoly; both alike act to check the pursuit of industry 
 in given lines by artificially increasing the cost of pro- 
 duction for given individuals or classes of producers, and 
 both alike impose a more than proportionate cost on the 
 community within which they take effect. Incidentally, 
 both of these methods of inhibition bring a degree, though 
 a less degree, of hardship, to the rest of the industrial 
 world. 
 
 All this is matter of course to all economic students, and 
 it should, reasonably, be plain to all intelligent persons ; 
 but its voluble denial by interested parties, as well as 
 the easy credulity with which patriotic citizens allow 
 themselves to accept the sophistries offered in defense of 
 these measures of inhibition, has made it seem worth 
 while here to recall these commonplaces of economic 
 science. 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 67 
 
 The ground of this easy credulity is not so much in- 
 firmity of intellect as it is an exuberance of sentiment, 
 although it may reasonably be believed that its more pro- 
 nounced manifestations — as, e. g., the high protective 
 tariff — can be had only by force of a formidable coopera- 
 tion of the two. The patriotic animus is an invidious sen- 
 timent of joint prestige; and it needs no argument or 
 documentation to bear out the affirmation that its bias will 
 lend a color of merit and expediency to any proposed 
 measure that can, however speciously, promise an in- 
 crease of national power or prestige. So that when the 
 statesmen propose a policy of inhibition and mitigated 
 isolation on the professed ground that such a policy will 
 strengthen the nation economically by making it econo- 
 mically self-supporting, as well as ready for any warlike 
 adventure, the patriotic citizen views the proposed meas- 
 ures through the rosy haze of national aspirations and 
 lets the will to believe persuade him that whatever con- 
 duces to a formidable national battle-front will also con- 
 tribute to the common good. At the same time all these 
 national conspiracies in restraint of trade are claimed, 
 with more or less reason, to inflict more or less harm on 
 rival nationalities with whom economic relations are 
 curtailed; and patriotism being an invidious sentiment, 
 the patriotic citizen finds comfort in the promise of mis- 
 chief to these others, and is all the more prone to find 
 all kinds of merit in proposals that look to such an invid- 
 ious outcome. In any community imbued with an alert 
 patriotic spirit, the fact that any given circumstance, oc- 
 curence or transaction can be turned to account as a 
 means of invidious distinction or invidious discrimination 
 against humanity beyond the national pale, will always 
 go far to procure acceptance of it as being also an article 
 
68 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of substantial profit to the community at large, even 
 though the slightest unbiased scrutiny would find it of no 
 ascertainable use in any other bearing than that of invid- 
 ious mischief. And whatever will bear interpretation as 
 an increment of the nation’s power or prowess, in com- 
 parison with rival nationalities, will always be securely 
 counted as an item of joint credit, and will be made to 
 serve the collective conceit as an invidious distinction; 
 and patriotic credulity will find it meritorious also in other 
 respects 
 
 So, e. g., it is past conception that such a patent im- 
 becility as a protective tariff should enlist the support of 
 any ordinarily intelligent community except by the help 
 of some such chauvinistic sophistry. So also, the various 
 royal establishments of Europe, e. g., afford an extreme 
 but therefore all the more convincing illustration of the 
 same logical fallacy. These establishments and person- 
 ages are great and authentic repositories of national pres- 
 tige, and they are therefore unreflectingly presumed by 
 their several aggregations of subjects to be of some sub- 
 stantial use also in some other bearing ; but it would be a 
 highly diverting exhibition of credulity for any outsider to 
 fall into that amazing misconception. But the like is mani- 
 festly true of commercial turnover and export trade 
 among modern peoples; although on this head the in- 
 fatuation is so ingrained and dogmatic that even a rank 
 outsider is expected to accept the fallacy without reflec- 
 tion, on pain of being rated as unsafe or unsound. Such 
 matters again, as the dimensions of the national territory, 
 or the number of the population and the magnitude of the 
 national resources, are still and have perhaps always been 
 material for patriotic exultation, and are fatuously believ- 
 ed to have some great significance for the material for- 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 69 
 
 tunes of the common man ; although it should be plain on 
 slight reflection that under modern conditions of owner- 
 ship, these things, one and all, are of no consequence to 
 the common man except as articles of prestige to stimulate 
 his civic pride. The only conjuncture under which these 
 and the like national holdings can come to have a mean- 
 ing as joint or collective assets would arise in case of a 
 warlike adventure carried to such extremities as would 
 summarily cancel vested rights of ownership and turn 
 them to warlike uses. While the rights of ownership hold, 
 the common man, who does not own these things, draws 
 no profit from their inclusion in the national domain ; 
 indeed, he is at some cost to guarantee their safe tenure 
 by their rightful owners. 
 
 In so pursuing their quest of the Kingdom, the Power 
 and the Glory, by use of the national resources and by 
 sanction of the national spirit, the constituted authorities 
 also assume the guardianship of sundry material interests 
 that are presumed to touch the common good ; such as 
 security of person and property in dealings with aliens, 
 whether at home or abroad ; security of investment and 
 trade, and vindication of their citizens before the law in 
 foreign parts ; and, chiefly and ubiquitously, furtherance 
 and extension of the national trade into foreign parts, 
 particularly of the export trade, on terms advantageous to 
 the traders of the nation. 
 
 The last named of these advantages is the one on which 
 stress is apt to fall in the argument of all those who 
 advocate an unfolding of national power, as being a mat- 
 ter of vital material benefit to the common man. The 
 other items indicated above, it is plain on the least re- 
 flection, are matters of slight if any material consequence 
 to him. The common man — that is ninety-nine and a 
 
70 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 fraction in one hundred of the nation’s common men — 
 has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist, 
 trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion 
 for security of person or property under circumstances 
 that raise any remotest question of the national prowess 
 or the national prestige; nor does he seek or aspire to 
 trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or other- 
 wise, or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, 
 or to exploit concessions or take orders, for acceptance 
 or delivery ; nor, indeed, does he at all commonly come 
 into even that degree of contact with abroad that is im- 
 plied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtually the 
 sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world 
 beyond the frontier is when, and if, he goes away from 
 home as an emigrant, and so ceases to enjoy the tutelage 
 of the nation’s constituted authorities. But the common 
 man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, who touches 
 foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers 
 only at the second or third remove, if at all, in the oc- 
 casional purchase of foreign products, or in the sale of 
 goods that may find their way abroad after he has lost 
 sight of them. The exception to this general rule would 
 be found in the case of those under-sized nations that 
 are too small to contain the traffic in which their common- 
 place population are engaged, and that have neither 
 national prowess nor national prestige to fall back on 
 in a conceivable case of need, — and whose citizens, in- 
 dividually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their 
 workday foreign relations, without a background of 
 prowess and prestige, as the citizens of the great powers 
 who are most abundantly provided in these respects. 
 
 With wholly negligible exceptions, these matters touch 
 the needs or the sensibilities of the common man only 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 71 
 
 through the channel of the national honour, which rnay be 
 injured in the hardships suffered by his compatriots in 
 foreign parts, or which may, again, be repaired or en- 
 hanced by the meritorious achievements of the same 
 compatriots; of whose existence he will commonly have 
 no other or more substantial evidence, and in whose traffic 
 he has no share other than this vicarious suffering of 
 vague and remote indignity or vainglory by force of the 
 wholly fortuitous circumstance that they are (inscrutably) 
 his compatriots. These immaterial goods of vicarious 
 prestige are, of course, not to be undervalued, nor is the 
 fact to be overlooked or minimised that they enter into 
 the sum total of the common citizen’s “psychic income,” 
 for whatever they may foot up to ; but evidently their 
 consideration takes us back to the immaterial category 
 of prestige value, from which the argument just now was 
 hopefully departing with a view to consideration of the 
 common man’s material interest in that national enter- 
 prise about which patriotic aspirations turn. 
 
 These things, then, are matters in which the common 
 man has an interest only as they have a prestige value. 
 But there need be no question as to their touching his sen- 
 sibilities and stirring him to action, and even to acts of 
 bravery and self-sacrifice. Indignity or ill treatment of 
 his compatriots in foreign parts, even when well deserved, 
 as is not infrequently the case, are resented with a 
 vehemence that is greatly to the common man’s credit, 
 and greatly also to the gain of those patriotic statesmen 
 who find in such grievances their safest and most reliable 
 raw materials for the production of international difficul- 
 ty. That he will so respond to the stimulus of these, 
 materially speaking irrelevant, vicissitudes of good or 
 ill that touch the fortunes of his compatriots, as known to 
 
72 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 him by hearsay, bears witness, of course, to the high qual- 
 ity of his manhood ; but it falls very far short of arguing 
 that these promptings of his patriotic spirit have any value 
 as traits that count toward his livelihood or his economic 
 serviceability in the community in which he lives. It 
 is all to his credit, and it goes to constitute him a desir- 
 able citizen, in the sense that he is properly amenable to 
 the incitements of patriotic emulation; but it is none 
 the less to be admitted, however reluctantly, that this 
 trait of impulsively vicarious indignation or vainglory is 
 neither materially profitable to himself nor an asset of the 
 slightest economic value to the community in which he 
 lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. So also is it true that 
 the common man derives no material advantage from the 
 national success along this line, though he commonly be- 
 lieves that it all somehow inures to his benefit. It would 
 seem that an ingrown bias of community interest, blurred 
 and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends 
 his faith uncritically to match his inclination. His per- 
 suasion is a work of preconception rather than of percep- 
 tion. 
 
 But the most substantial and most unqualified material 
 benefit currently believed to be derivable from a large 
 unfolding of national prowess and a wide extension of 
 the national domain is an increased volume of the nation’s 
 foreign trade, particularly of the export trade. “Trade 
 follows the Flag.” And this larger trade and enhanced 
 profit is presumed to inure to the joint benefit of the 
 citizens. Such is the profession of faith of the sagacious 
 statesmen and such is also the unreflecting belief of the 
 common man. 
 
 It may be left an open question if an unfolding of nat- 
 ional prowess and prestige increases the nation’s trade, 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 73 
 
 whether in imports or in exports. There is no available 
 evidence that it has any effect of the kind. What is not 
 an open question is the patent fact that such an extension 
 of trade confers no benefit on the common man, who is not 
 engaged in the import or export business. More particu- 
 larly does it yield him no advantage at all commensurate 
 with the cost involved in any endeavour so to increase the 
 volume of trade by increasing the nation’s power and 
 extending its dominion. The profits of trade go not to 
 the common man at large but to the traders whose capital 
 is invested; and it is a completely idle matter to the 
 common citizen whether the traders who profit by the 
 nation’s trade are his compatriots or not.^ 
 
 The pacifist argument on the economic futility of 
 national ambitions will commonly rest its case at this 
 point; having shown as unreservedly as need be that 
 national ambition and all its works belong of right under 
 that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and 
 Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is 
 not to be put out of the way with an argument showing 
 that it has its disutilities. So with the patriotic animus; 
 it is a factor to be counted with, rather than to be ex- 
 orcised. 
 
 As has been remarked above, in the course of time 
 and change the advance of the industrial arts and of the 
 institutions of ownership have taken such a turn that 
 the working system of industry and business no longer 
 runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes ac- 
 count of national frontiers, — except in so far as the 
 
 ^All this, which should be plairf without demonstration, has 
 been repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace ad- 
 vocates, typically by Mr. AngelL 
 
74 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, 
 impose these frontiers on the workings of trade and in- 
 dustry. The effect of such regulation for political ends 
 is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the 
 efficient working of the industrial system under modern 
 conditions ; and it is therefore deterimental to the material 
 interests of the common citizen. But the case is not the 
 same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is 
 a competitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the 
 traders engaged in any given line of business to extend 
 their own markets and to exclude competing traders. 
 Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly is 
 necessarily the aim of every trader. And the national 
 organisation is of service to its traders in so far as it 
 shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of 
 traders of other nationalities, or in so far as it furthers 
 their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as 
 against their competitors, whether at home or abroad. 
 The gain that so comes to the nation’s traders from any 
 preferential advantage afforded them by national regula- 
 tions, or from any discrimination against traders of for- 
 eign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It 
 is of no benefit to any of their compatriots ; since there 
 is no community of usufruct that touches these gains of 
 the traders. So far as concerns his material advantage, 
 it is an idle matter to the common citizen whether he 
 deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens ; 
 both alike will aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will 
 charge him “what the traffic will bear.” Nor does it 
 matter to him whether the gains of this trade go to aliens 
 or to his compatriots ; in either case equally they im- 
 mediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally re- 
 moved from any touch of joint interest on his part. Being 
 
On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism 75 
 
 private property, under modern law and custom he has 
 no use of them, whether a national frontier does or does 
 not intervene between his domicile and that of their 
 owner. 
 
 These are facts that every man of sound mind knows 
 and acts on without doubt or hesitation in his own work- 
 day affairs. He would scarcely even find amusement in so 
 futile a proposal as that his neighbor should share his 
 business profits with him for no better reason than that 
 he is a compatriot. But when the matter is presented as 
 a proposition in national policy and embroidered with an 
 invocation of his patriotic loyalty the common citizen will 
 commonly be found credulous enough to accept the 
 sophistry without abatement. His archaic sense of group 
 solidarity will still lead him at his own cost to favor his 
 trading compatriots by the imposition of onerous trade 
 regulations for their private advantage, and to interpose 
 obstacles in the way of alien traders. All this ingenious 
 policy of self-defeat is greatly helped out by the patriotic 
 conceit of the citizens ; who persuade themselves to see in 
 it an accession to the power and prestige of their own 
 nation and a disadvantage to rival nationalities. It is, 
 indeed, more than doubtful if such a policy of self-defeat 
 as is embodied in current international trade discrimina- 
 tions could be insinuated into the legislation of any civil- 
 ized nation if the popular intelligence were not so clouded 
 with patriotic animosity as to let a prospective detriment 
 to their foreign neighbors count as a gain to themselves. 
 
 So that the chief material use of the patriotic bent in 
 modern populations, therefore, appears to be its use to a 
 limited class of persons engaged in foreign trade, or in 
 business that comes in competition with foreign industry. 
 It serves their private gain by lending effectual counte- 
 
76 
 
 Of the Nature of Peace. 
 
 nance to such restraint of international trade as would not 
 be tolerated within the national domain. In so doing it 
 has also the secondary and more sinister effect of dividing 
 the nations on lines of rivalry and setting up irreconcil- 
 able claims and ambitions, of no material value but of 
 far-reaching effect in the way of provocation to further 
 international estrangement and eventual breach of the 
 peace. 
 
 How all this falls in with the schemes of militant states- 
 men, and further reacts on the freedom and personal 
 fortunes of the common man, is an extensive and intricate 
 topic, though not an obscure one ; and it has already been 
 spoken of above, perhaps as fully as need be. 
 
Chapter III 
 
 On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 
 
 The considerations set out in earlier chapters have 
 made it appear that the patriotic spirit of modern peoples 
 is the abiding source of contention among nations. Ex- 
 cept for their patriotism a breach of the peace among mod- 
 ern peoples could not well be had. So much will doubtless 
 be assented to as a matter of course. It is also a common- 
 place of current aphoristic wisdom that both parties to a 
 warlike adventure in modern times stand to lose, materi- 
 ally; whatever nominal — that is to say political— gains 
 may be made by one or the other. It has also appeared 
 from these considerations recited in earlier passages 
 that this patriotic spirit prevails throughout, among all 
 civilised peoples, and that it pervades one nation about 
 as ubiquitously as another. Nor is there much evidence 
 of a weakening of this sinister proclivity with the pas- 
 sage of time or the continued advance in the arts of life. 
 The only civilized nations that can be counted on as 
 habitually peaceable are those who are so feeble or are 
 so placed as to be cut off from hope of gain through con- 
 tention. Vainglorious arrogance may run at a higher ten- 
 sion among the more backward and boorish nations ; but 
 it is not evident that the advance guard among the civil- 
 ised peoples are imbued with a less complete national self- 
 complacency. If the peace is to be kept, therefore, it will 
 have to be kept by^ and between peoples made up, in effect. 
 
78 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of complete patriots ; which comes near being a contradic- 
 tion in terms. Patriotism is useful for breaking the peace, 
 not for keeping it. It makes for national pretensions and 
 international jealously and distrust, with warlike enter- 
 prise always in perspective; as a way to national gain 
 or a recourse in case of need. And there is commonly 
 no settled demarkation between these two contrasted 
 needs that urge a patriotic people forever to keep one eye 
 on the chance of a recourse to arms. 
 
 Therefore any calculus of the Chances of Peace ap- 
 pears to become a reckoning of the forces which may be 
 counted on to keep a patriotic nation in an unstable equi- 
 librium of peace for the time being. As has just been 
 remarked above, among civilised peoples only those na- 
 tions can be counted on consistently to keep the peace who 
 are so feeble or otherwise so placed as to be cut off from 
 hope of national gain. And these can apparently be 
 so counted on only as regards aggression, not as regards 
 the national defense, and only in so far as they are not 
 drawn into warlike enterprise, collectively, by their more 
 competent neighbors. Even the feeblest and most futile 
 of them feels in honour bound to take up arms in defense 
 of such national pretensions as they still may harbour; and 
 all of them harbour such pretensions. In certain ex- 
 treme cases, which it might seem invidious to specify 
 more explicitly, it is not easy to discover any specific 
 reasons for the maintenance of a national establish- 
 ment, apart from the vindication of certain national pre- 
 tensions which would quietly lapse in the absence of a 
 national establishment on whom their vindication is in- 
 cumbent. 
 
 Of the rest, the greater nations that are spoken of as 
 Powers no such general statement will hold. These are 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 79 
 
 the peoples who stand, in matters of national concern, 
 on their own initiative; and the question of peace and 
 war at large is in effect, a question of peace and war 
 among these Powers. They are not so numerous that they 
 can be sifted into distinct classes, and yet they differ 
 among themselves in such a way that they may, for the 
 purpose in hand, fairly be ranged under two distinguish- 
 able if not contrasted heads : those which may safely be 
 counted on spontaneously to take the offensive, and those 
 which will fight on provocation. Typically of the former 
 description are Germany and Japan. Of the latter are the 
 French and British, and less confidently the American re- 
 public. In any summary statement of this kind Russia will 
 have to be left on one side as a doubtful case, for reasons 
 to which the argument may return at a later point; the 
 prospective course of things in Russia is scarcely to be ap- 
 praised on the ground of its past. Spain and Italy, being 
 dubious Powers at the best, need not detain the argument ; 
 they are, in the nature of things, subsidiaries who wait on 
 the main chance. And Austria, with whatever the name 
 may cover, is for the immediate purpose to be counted 
 under the head of Germany. 
 
 There is no invidious comparison intended in so set- 
 ting off these two classes of nations in contrast to one 
 another. It is not a contrast of merit and demerit or of 
 prestige. Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan are, in- 
 the nature of things as things go, bent in effect on a 
 disturbance of the peace, — with a view to advance the 
 cause of their own dominion. On a large view of the 
 case, such as many German statesmen were in the habit 
 of professing in the years preceding the great war, it 
 may perhaps appear reasonable to say — as they were in the 
 habit of saying — that these Imperial Powers are as well 
 
80 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 within the lines of fair and honest dealing in their cam- 
 paign of aggression as the other Powers are in taking a 
 defensive attitude against their aggression. Some sort 
 of international equity has been pleaded in justification 
 of their demand for an increased share of dominion. At 
 least it has appeared that these Imperial statesmen have 
 so persuaded themselves after very mature deliberation; 
 and they have showed great concern to persuade others of 
 the equity of their Imperial claim to something more than 
 the law would allow. These sagacious, not to say astute, 
 persons have not only reached a conviction to this ef- 
 fect, but they have become possessed of this conviction in 
 such plenary fashion that, in the German case, they have 
 come to admit exceptions or abatement of the claim only 
 when and in so far as the campaign of equitable aggres- 
 sion on which they had entered has been proved imprac- 
 ticable by the fortunes of war. 
 
 With some gift for casuistry one may, at least con- 
 ceivably, hold that the felt need of Imperial self-aggran- 
 disement may become so urgent as to justify, or at least 
 to condone, forcible dispossession of weaker nationalities. 
 This might, indeed it has, become a sufficiently perplex- 
 ing question of casuistry, both as touches the punctilios 
 of national honour and as regards an equitable division 
 between rival Powers in respect of the material means of 
 mastery. So in private life it may become a moot ques- 
 tion — in point of equity — whether the craving of a klep- 
 tomaniac may not on occasion rise to such an intolerable 
 pitch of avidity as to justify him in seizing whatever 
 valuables he can safely lay hands on, to ease the discom- 
 fort of ungratified desire. In private life any such en- 
 deavour to better oneself at one’s neighbors’ cost is not 
 commonly reprobated if it takes effect on a decently large 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 81 
 
 scale and shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or 
 with the connivance of its officers. Governing inter- 
 national endeavours of this class there is no law so in- 
 flexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fit 
 particular circumstances. And in the absence of law the 
 felt need of a formal justification will necessarily appeal 
 to the unformulated equities of the case, with some such 
 outcome as alluded to above. All that, of course, is 
 for the diplomatists to take care of. 
 
 But any speculation on the equities involved in the 
 projected course of empire to which these two enter- 
 prising nations are committing themselves must run within 
 the lines of diplomatic parable, and will have none but a 
 speculative interest. It is not a matter of equity. Ac- 
 cepting the situation as it stands, it is evident that any 
 peace can only have a qualified meaning, in the sense of 
 armistice, so long as there is opportunity for national 
 enterprise of the character on which these two enterpris- 
 ing national establishments are bent, and so long as these 
 and the like national establishments remain. So, taking 
 the peaceable professions of their spokesmen at a dis- 
 count of one hundred percent, as one necessarily must, 
 and looking to the circumstantial evidence of the case, 
 it is abundantly plain that at least these two imperial 
 Powers may be counted on consistently to manoeuvre for 
 warlike advantage so long as any peace compact holds, and 
 to break the peace so soon as the strategy of Imperial en- 
 terprise appears to require it. 
 
 There has been much courteous make-believe of ami- 
 able and upright solicitude on this head the past few 
 years, both in diplomatic intercourse and among men out 
 of doors ; and since make-believe is a matter of course 
 in diplomatic intercourse it is right and seemly, of course, 
 6 
 
82 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that no overt recognition of unavowed facts should be al- 
 lowed to traverse this run of make-believe within the 
 precincts of diplomatic intercourse. But in any ingenu- 
 ous inquiry into the nature of peace and the conditions 
 ,of its maintenance there can be no harm in conveniently 
 leaving the diplomatic make-believe on one side and look- 
 ing to the circumstances that condition the case, rather 
 than to the formal professions designed to mask the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Chief among the relevant circumstances in the current 
 situation are the imperial designs of Germany and Japan. 
 These two national establishments are very much alike. 
 So much so that for the present purpose a single line of 
 analysis will passably cover both cases. The same line 
 of analysis will also apply, with slight adaptation, to 
 more than one of the other Powers, or near-Powers, of the 
 modern world; but in so far as such is held to be the 
 case, that is not a consideration that weakens the argument 
 as applied to these two, which are to be taken as the con- 
 summate type-form of a species of national establish- 
 ments. They are, between them, the best instance there 
 is of what may be called a Dynastic State. 
 
 Except as a possible corrective of internal disorders 
 and discontent, neither of the two States “desires” w'ar; 
 but both are bent on dominion, and as the dominion aimed 
 at is not to be had except by fighting for it, both in effect 
 are incorrigibly bent on warlike enterprise. And in 
 neither case will considerations of equity, humanity, de- 
 cency, veracity, or the common good be allowed to trouble 
 the quest of dominion. As lies in the nature of the 
 dynastic State, imperial dominion, in the ambitions of 
 both, is beyond price; so that no cost is too high so long 
 
On the Crnditions of a Lasting Peace 83 
 
 as ultimate success attends the imperial enterprise. So 
 much is commonplace knowledge among all men who are 
 at all conversant with the facts. 
 
 To anyone who harbors a lively sentimental prejudice 
 for or against either or both of the two nations so spoken 
 of, or for or against the manner of imperial enterprise to 
 which both are committed, it may seem that what has 
 just been said of them and their relation to the world’s 
 peace runs on something of a bias and conveys something 
 of dispraise and reprobation. Such is not the intention, 
 however, though the appearance is scarcely to be avoided. 
 It is necessary for the purposes of the argument unam- 
 biguously to recognise the nature of these facts with which 
 the inquiry is concerned ; and any plain characterisation 
 of the facts will unavoidably carry a fringe of sugges- 
 tions of this character, because current speech is adapted 
 for their reprobation. The point aimed at is not this 
 inflection of approval or disapproval. The facts are to 
 be taken impersonally for what they are worth in their 
 causal bearing on the chance of peace or war ; not at their 
 sentimental value as traits of conduct to be appraised in 
 point of their goodness or expediency. 
 
 So seen without prejudice, then, if that may be, this 
 Imperial enterprise of these two Powers is to be rated as 
 the chief circumstance bearing on the chances of peace and 
 conditioning the terms on which any peace plan must be 
 drawn. Evidently, in the presence of these two Imperial 
 Powers any peace compact will be in a precarious case; 
 equally so whether either or both of them are parties 
 to such compact or not. No engagement binds a dynastic 
 statesman in case it turns out not to further the dynastic 
 enterprise. The question then recurs : How may peace 
 be maintained within the horizon of German or Japanese 
 
-84 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ambitions? There are two obvious alternatives, neither 
 of which promises an easy way out of the quandary in 
 which the world’s peace is placed by their presence : Sub- 
 mission to their dominion, or Elimination of these two 
 Powers. Either alternative would offer a sufficiently de- 
 terrent outlook, and yet any project for devising some 
 middle course of conciliation and amicable settlement, 
 which shall be practicable and yet serve the turn, scarcely 
 has anything better to promise. The several nations now 
 engaged on a war with the greater of these Imperial 
 Powers hold to a design of elimination, as being the only 
 measure that merits hopeful consideration. The Imperial 
 Power in distress bespeaks peace and goodwill. 
 
 Those advocates, whatever their nationality, who speak 
 for negotiation with a view to a peace compact which is 
 to embrace these States intact, are aiming, in effect, to 
 put things in train for ultimate submission to the mastery 
 of these Imperial Powers. In these premises an ami- 
 cable settlement and a compact of perpetual peace will 
 necessarily be equivalent to arranging a period of re- 
 cuperation and recruiting for a new onset of dynastic 
 enterprise. For, in the nature of the case, no compact 
 binds the dynastic statesman, and no consideration other 
 than the pursuit of Imperial dominion commands his at- 
 tention. 
 
 There is, of course, no intention to decry this single- 
 mindedness that is habitually put in evidence by the 
 dynastic statesmen. Nor should it be taken as evidence 
 of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the result of a 
 peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such states- 
 men, and in its degree also habitual to their compatriots, 
 and is indispensably involved in the Imperial frame of 
 mind. The consummation of Imperial mastery being tlie 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 85 
 
 highest and ubiquitously ulterior end of all endeavour, its 
 pursuit not only relieves its votaries from the observance 
 of any minor obligations that run counter to its needs, 
 but it also imposes a moral obligation to make the most of 
 any opportunity for profitable deceit and chicanery that 
 may offer. In short, the dynastic statesman is under the 
 governance of a higher morality, binding him to the 
 service of his nation’s ambition — or in point of fact, to 
 the personal service of his dynastic master — to which it is 
 his dutiful privilege loyally to devote all his powers of 
 force and fraud. 
 
 Democratically-minded persons, who are not moved by 
 the call of loyalty to a gratuitous personal master, may 
 have some difficulty in appreciating the force and the 
 moral austerity of this spirit of devotion to an ideal of 
 dynastic aggrandisement, and in seeing how its paramount 
 exigence will set aside all meticulous scruples of personal 
 rectitude and veracity, as being a shabby with-holding of 
 service due. 
 
 To such of these doubters as still have retained some 
 remnants of their religious faith this attitude of loyalty 
 may perhaps be made intelligible by calling to mind the 
 analogous self-surrender of the religious devotee. And 
 in this connection it may also be to the purpose to recall 
 that in point of its genesis and derivation that unreserved 
 self-abasement and surrender to the divine ends and 
 guidance, which is the chief grace and glory of the 
 true believer, is held by secular students of these matters 
 to be only a sublimated analogue or counterfeit of this 
 other dutiful abasement that constitutes loyalty to a tem- 
 poral master. The deity is currently spoken of as The 
 Heavenly King, under whose dominion no sinner has 
 a right that He is bound to respect; very much after the 
 
86 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 fashion in which no subject of a dynastic state has a 
 right which the State is bound to respect. Indeed, all 
 these dynastic establishments that so seek the Kingdom, 
 the Power and the Glory are surrounded with a penumbra 
 of divinity, and it is commonly a bootless question where 
 the dynastic powers end and the claims of divinity begin. 
 There is something of a coalescence.^ 
 
 The Kaiser holds dominion by divine grace and is ac- 
 countable to none but God, if to Him. The whole case 
 is in a still better state of repair as touches the Japanese 
 establishment, where the Emperor is a lineal descendant of 
 the supreme deity, Amaterazu (o mi Kami), and where, 
 by consequence, there is no line of cleavage between a 
 divine and a secular mastery. Pursuant to this more 
 unqualified authenticity of autocratic rule, there is also 
 to be found in this case a correspondingly unqualified 
 devotion in the subjects and an unqualified subservience 
 to dynastic ends on the part of the officers of the crown. 
 The coalescence of dynastic rule with the divine order is 
 less complete in the German case, but all observers bear 
 witness that it all goes far enough also in the German 
 case. This state of things is recalled here as a means 
 of making plain that the statesmen of these Imperial 
 
 i“To us the state is the most indispensable as well as the high- 
 est requisite to our earthly existence All individualistic 
 
 endeavor .... must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty 
 
 claim The state eventually is of infinitely more 
 
 value than the sum of all the individuals within its jurisdiction.” 
 “This conception of the state, which is as much a part of our 
 life as is the blood in our veins, is nowhere to be found in the 
 English Constitution, and is quite foreign to English thought, 
 and to that of America as well.” — Eduard Clever, England, its 
 Political Organisation and Development and the War against 
 Germany, translated by H. S. White. Boston 1916. pp. 30-31. 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 87 
 
 Powers must in the nature of the case, and without blame, 
 be drawn out from under the customary restraint of those 
 principles of vulgar morality that are embodied in the 
 decalogue. It is not that the subject, or — what comes to 
 the same thing — the servant of such a dynastic State 
 may not be upright, veracious and humane in private life, 
 but only that he must not be addicted to that sort of thing 
 in such manner or degree as might hinder his usefulness 
 for dynastic purposes. These matters of selfishly in- 
 dividual integrity and humanity have no weight as against 
 the exigencies of the dynastic enterprise. 
 
 These considerations may not satisfy all doubters as 
 to the moral sufficiency of these motives that so suffice 
 to decide the dynastic statesmen on their enterprise of 
 aggression by force and fraud ; but it should be evident 
 that so long as these statesmen continue in the frame of 
 mind spoken of, and so long as popular sentiment in 
 these countries continues, as hitherto, to lend them ef- 
 fectual support in the pursuit of such Imperial enterprise, 
 so long it must also remain true that no enduring peace 
 can be maintained within the sweep of their Imperial am- 
 bition. Any peace compact would necessarily be, in 
 effect, an armistice terminable at will and serving as a 
 season of preparation to meet a deferred opportunity. 
 For the peaceable nations it would, in effect, be a respite 
 and a season of preparation for eventual submission to the 
 Imperial rule. 
 
 By advocates of such a negotiated compact of perpetual 
 peace it has been argued that the populace underlying 
 these Imperial Powers will readily be brought to realise 
 the futility and inexpediency of such dynastic enterprise, 
 if only the relevant facts are brought to their knowledge, 
 and that so these Powers will be constrained to keep the 
 
88 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 peace by default of popular support for their warlike 
 projects. What is required, it is believed by these san- 
 guine persons, is that information be competently con- 
 veyed to the common people of these warlike nations, 
 showing them that they have nothing to apprehend in the 
 way of aggression or oppressive measures from the side 
 of their more peaceable neighbours ; whereupon their war- 
 like animus will give place to a reasonable and enlight- 
 ened frame of mind. This argument runs tacitly or ex- 
 plicitly, on the premise that these peoples who have so 
 enthusiastically lent themselves to the current warlike 
 enterprise are fundamentally of the same racial complex- 
 ion and endowed with the same human nature as their 
 peaceable neighbours, who would be only too glad to keep 
 the peace on any terms of tolerable security from ag- 
 gression. If only a fair opportunity is offered for the 
 interested peoples to come to an understanding, it is held, 
 a good understanding will readily be reached ; at least 
 so far as to result in a reasonable willingness to submit 
 questions in dispute to an intelligent canvass and an equit- 
 able arbitration. 
 
 Projects for a negotiated peace compact, to include the 
 dynastic States, can hold any prospect of a happy issue 
 ’only if this line of argument, or its equivalent, is pertinent 
 and conclusive ; and the argument is to the point only in 
 so far as its premises are sound and will carry as far as 
 the desired conclusion. Therefore a more detailed at- 
 tention to the premises on which it runs will be in place, 
 before any project of the kind is allowed to pass inspect- 
 tion. 
 
 As to homogeneity of race and endowment among the 
 several nations in question, the ethnologists, who are com- 
 petent to speak of that matter, are ready to assert that this 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 89 
 
 homogeneity goes much farther among the nations of 
 Europe than any considerable number of peace advocates 
 would be ready to claim. In point of race, and broadly 
 speaking, there is substantially no difference between 
 these warring nations, along any east-and-west line ; while 
 the progressive difference in racial complexion that is 
 always met with along any north-and-south line, nowhere 
 coincides with a national or linguistic frontier. In no 
 case does a political division between these nations mark 
 or depend on a difference of race or of hereditary endow- 
 ment. And, to give full measure, it may be added that also 
 in no case does a division of classes within any one of 
 these nations, into noble and base, patrician and plebeian, 
 lay and learned, innocent and vicious, mark or rest on 
 any slightest traceable degree of difference in race or in 
 heritable endowment. On the point of racial homogeneity 
 there is no fault to find with the position taken. 
 
 If the second postulate in this groundwork of premises 
 on which the advocates of negotiable peace base their 
 hopes were as well taken there need be no serious mis- 
 giving as to the practicability of such a plan. The plan 
 counts on information, persuasion and reflection to subdue 
 national animosities and jealousies, at least in such meas- 
 ure as would make them amenable to reason. The question 
 of immediate interest on this head, therefore, would be 
 as to how far this populace may be accessible to the con- 
 templated line of persuasion. At present they are, noto- 
 riously, in a state of obsequious loyalty to the dynasty, 
 single-minded devotion to the fortunes of the Fatherland, 
 and uncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this 
 frame of mind there is nothing that is new, except the 
 degree of excitement. The animus, it will be recalled, was 
 all there and on the alert when the call came, so that the 
 
90 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on 
 the first touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people 
 at large was evidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so 
 that an unexampled enthusiasm of patriotic self-sacrifice 
 followed immediately on the first incitement to man- 
 slaughter, very much as if the nation had been held under 
 an hypnotic spell. One need only recall the volume of 
 overbearing magniloquence that broke out all over the 
 place in that beginning, when The Day was believed to be 
 dawning. 
 
 Such a popular frame of mind is not a transient epi- 
 sode, to be created at short notice and put aside for a 
 parcel of salutary advice. The nation that will make such 
 a massive concerted move with the alacrity shown in this 
 instance must be living in a state of alert readiness for 
 just such an onset. Yet this is not to be set down as 
 anything in the way of a racial trait specifically dis- 
 tinguishing the German people from those other adjacent 
 nationalities that are incapable of a similarly swift and 
 massive response to the appeal of patriotism. These 
 adjacent nationalities are racially indentical with the Ger- 
 man people, but they do not show the same warlike aban- 
 don in nearly the same degree. 
 
 But for all that, it is a national trait, not to be acquired 
 or put away by taking thought. It is just here that the line 
 of definition runs : it is a national trait, not a racial one. 
 It is not Nature, but it is Second Nature. But a national 
 trait, while it is not heritable in the simple sense of that 
 term, has the same semblance, or the same degree, of 
 hereditary persistence that belongs to the national in- 
 stitutions, usages, conventionalities, beliefs, which dis- 
 tinguish the given nation from its neighbors. In this in- 
 stance it may be said more specifically that this eager 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 91 
 
 loyalty is a heritage of the German people at large in 
 the same sense and with the same degree of permanence 
 as the institution of an autocratic royalty has among them, 
 or a privileged nobility. Indeed, it is the institutional 
 counterfoil of these establishments. It is of an institution- 
 al character, just as the corresponding sense of national 
 solidarity and patriotic devotion is among the neighbor- 
 ing peoples with whom the German nation comes in com- 
 parison. And an institution is an historical growth, with 
 just so much of a character of permanence and con- 
 tinuity of transmission as is given it by the circumstances 
 out of which it has grown. Any institution is a product 
 of habit, or perhaps more accurately it is a body of habits 
 of thought bearing on a given line of conduct, which 
 prevails with such generality and uniformity throughout 
 the group as to have become a matter of common sense. 
 
 Such an article of institutional furniture is an outcome 
 of usage, not of reflection or deliberate choice ; and it has 
 consequently a character of self-legitimation, so that it 
 stands in the accredited scheme of things as intrinsically 
 right and good, and not merely as a shrewdly chosen ex- 
 pedient ad interim. It affords a norm of life, inosculating 
 with a multiplicity of other norms, with which it goes to 
 make up a balanced scheme of ends, ways and means gov- 
 erning human conduct ; and no one such institutional item, 
 therefore, is materially to be disturbed, discarded or a- 
 bated except at the cost of serious derangement to the 
 balanced scheme of things in which it belongs as an in- 
 tegral constitutent. Nor can such a detail norm of con- 
 duct and habitual propensity come into bearing and hold 
 its place, except by force of habituation which is at the 
 same time consonant with the common run of habituation 
 to which the given community is subject. It follows 
 
92 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that the more rigorous, comprehensive, unremitting and 
 long-continued the habituation to which a given institu- 
 tional principle owes its vogue, the more intimately and 
 definitively will it be embedded in the common sense of 
 the community, the less chance is there of its intrinsic 
 necessity being effectually questioned or doubted, and the 
 less chance is there of correcting it or abating its force 
 in case circumstances should so change as to make its 
 continued rule visibly inexpedient. Its abatement will be 
 a work not of deliberation and design, but of defection 
 through disuse. 
 
 Not that reflection and sane counsel will count for 
 nothing in these premises, but only that these exertions of 
 intelligence will count for relatively very little by com- 
 parison with the run of habituation as enforced by the cir- 
 cumstances conditioning any given case; and further, 
 that wise counsel and good resolutions can take effect in 
 the way of amending any untoward institutional bent only 
 by way of suitable habituation, and only at such a rate 
 of change as the circumstances governing habituation will 
 allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shift the settled 
 lines of any community’s scheme of common sense. Now, 
 national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning 
 loyalty to the sovereigpi and the dynasty, is a matter of 
 course and of commonsense necessity with the German 
 people. It is not necessary to call to mind that the Japan- 
 ese nation, which has here been coupled with the German, 
 are in the same case, only more so. 
 
 Doubtless it would be exceeding the premises to claim 
 that it should necessarily take the German people as long- 
 continued and as harsh a schooling to unlearn their excess 
 of chauvinism, their servile stooping to gratuitous author- 
 ity, and their eager subservience to the dynastic ambitions 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 93 
 
 of their masters, as that which has in the course of history 
 induced these habits in them. But it would seem reason- 
 able to expect that there should have to be some measure 
 of proportion between what it has cost them in time and 
 experience to achieve their current frame of mind in 
 this bearing and what it would cost to divest themselves 
 of it. It is a question of how long a time and how ex- 
 acting a discipline would be required so far to displace the 
 current scheme of commonsense values and convictions in 
 force in the Fatherland as to neutralise their current 
 high-wrought principles of servility, loyalty and national 
 animosity ; and on the solution of this difficulty appear to 
 depend the chances of success for any proposed peace 
 compact to which the German nation shall be made a 
 party, on terms of what is called an “honorable peace.” 
 
 The national, or rather the dynastic and warlike, animus 
 of this people is of the essence of their social and political 
 institutions. Without such a groundwork of popular 
 sentiment neither the national establishment, nor the 
 social order on which it rests and through which it works, 
 could endure. And with this underlying national senti- 
 ment intact nothing but a dynastic establishment of a 
 somewhat ruthless order, and no enduring system of law 
 and order not based on universal submission to personal 
 rule, could be installed. Both the popular animus and the 
 correlative coercive scheme of law and order are of 
 historical growth. Both have been learned, acquired, and 
 are in no cogent sense original with the German people. 
 But both alike and conjointly have come out of a very 
 protracted, exacting and consistent discipline of mas- 
 tery and subjection, running virtually unbroken over the 
 centuries that have passed since the region that is now the 
 Fatherland first passed under the predaceous rule of its 
 
94 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Teutonic invaders, — for no part of the “Fatherland” is 
 held on other tenure than that of forcible seizure in 
 ancient times by bands of invaders, with the negligible 
 exception of Holstein and a slight extent of territory ad- 
 joining that province to the south and south-west. Since 
 the time when such peoples as were overtaken in this re- 
 gion by the Germanic barbarian invasions, and were re- 
 duced to subjection and presently merged with their alien 
 masters, the same general fashion of law and order that 
 presently grew out of that barbarian conquest has contin- 
 ued to govern the life of those peoples, with relatively 
 slight and intermittent relaxation of its rigors. Contrasted 
 with its beginnings, in the shameful atrocities of the Dark 
 Ages and the prehistoric phases of this German occupa- 
 tion, the later stages of this system of coercive law and 
 order in the Fatherland will appear humane, not to say 
 genial; but as compared with the degree of mitigation 
 which the like order of things presently underwent else- 
 where in western Europe, it has throughout the historical 
 period preserved a remarkable degree of that character of 
 arrogance and servility which it owes to its barbarian and 
 predatory beginnings. 
 
 The initial stages of this Germanic occupation of the 
 Fatherland are sufficiently obscure under the cloud of 
 unrecorded antiquity that covers them ; and then, an 
 abundance of obscurantism has also been added by the 
 vapours of misguided vanity that have surrounded so 
 nearly all historical inquiry on the part of patriotic Ger- 
 man scholars. Yet there are certain outstanding features 
 in the case, in history and prehistory, that are too large 
 or too notorious to be set aside or to be covered over, and 
 these may suffice to show the run of circumstances which 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 95 
 
 have surrounded the German peoples and shaped their 
 civil and political institutions, and whose discipline has 
 guided German habits of thought and preserved the Ger- 
 man spirit of loyalty in the shape in which it underlies 
 the dynastic State of the present day. 
 
 Among the most engaging of those fables that make 
 the conventional background of German history is the 
 academic legend of a free agricultural village com.munity 
 made up of ungraded and masterless men. It is not nec- 
 essary here to claim that such a village community never 
 played a part in the remoter prehistoric experiences out 
 of which the German people, or their ruling classes, came 
 into the territory of the Fatherland; such a claim might 
 divert the argument. But it is sufficiently patent to stu- 
 dents of those matters today that no such community of 
 free and ungraded men had any part in the Germanic 
 beginnings; that is to say, in the early experiences of 
 the Fatherland under German rule. The meager and 
 ambiguous remarks of Tacitus on the state of domestic 
 and civil economy among the inhabitants of Germany 
 need no longer detain anyone, in the presence of the 
 available archaeological and historical evidence. The cir- 
 cumstantial evidence of the prehistoric antiquities which 
 touch this matter, as well as the slight allusions of his- 
 torical records in antiquity, indicate unambiguously 
 enough that when the Germanic immigrants moved into 
 the territories of the Fatherland they moved in as in- 
 vaders, or rather as marauders, and made themselves mas- 
 ters of the people already living on the land. And his- 
 tory quite as unambiguously declares that when the 
 Fatherland first comes under its light it presents a dark 
 and bloody ground of tumultuous contention and intrigue ; 
 where princes and princelings, captains of war and of 
 
96 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 rapine as well as the captains of superstition, spend the 
 substance of an ignominiously sordid and servile populace 
 in an endless round of mutual raiding, treachery, assas- 
 sinations and supersession. 
 
 Taken at their face value, the recorded stories of that 
 early time would leave one to infer that the common peo- 
 ple, whose industry supported this superstructure of sor- 
 did mastery, could have survived only by oversight. But 
 touched as it is with poetic license and devoted to the 
 admirable life of the master class — admirable in their 
 own eyes and in those of their chroniclers, as undoubt- 
 edly also in the eyes of the subject populace — the history 
 of that time doubtless plays up the notable exploits and 
 fortunes of its conspicuous personages, somewhat to the 
 neglect of the obscure vicissitudes of life and fortune 
 among that human raw material by use of which the 
 admirable feats of the master class were achieved, and 
 about the use of which the dreary traffic of gjeed and 
 crime went on among the masters. 
 
 Of the later history, what covers, say, the last one 
 thousand years, there is no need to speak at length. With 
 transient, episodic, interniptions it is for the Fatherland 
 a continuation out of these beginnings, leading out into 
 a more settled system of subjection and mastery and a 
 progressively increased scale of princely enterprise, rest- 
 ing on an increasingly useful and increasingly loyal pop- 
 ulace. In aU this later history the posture of things in 
 the Fatherland is by no means unique, nor is it even strik- 
 ingly peculiar, by contrast with the rest of western Eu- 
 rope, except in degree. It is of the same general kind 
 as the rest of what has gone to make the historical ad- 
 vance of medieval and modern times ; but it differs from 
 the generality in a more sluggish movement and a more 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 97 
 
 tenacious adherence to what would be rated as the un- 
 toward features of mediaevalism. The approach to a 
 modern scheme of institutions and modern conceptions of 
 life and of human values has been slow, and hitherto 
 incomplete, as compared with those communities that 
 have, for good or ill, gone farthest along the ways of 
 modernity. Habituation to personal subjection and sub- 
 servience under the rigorous and protracted discipline of 
 standardised service and fealty has continued later, and 
 with later and slighter mitigation, in the Fatherland; so 
 as better to have conserved the spiritual attitude of the 
 feudal order. Law and order in the Fatherland has in a 
 higher degree continued to mean unquestioning obedience 
 to a personal master and unquestioning subservience to 
 the personal ambitions of the master. And since freedom, 
 in the sense of discretionary initiative on the part of the 
 common man, does not fit into the framework of such a 
 system of dependence on personal authority and surveil- 
 lance, any degree of such free initiative will be “licence” 
 in the eyes of men bred into the framework of this system ; 
 whereas “liberty,” as distinct from “licence,” is not a mat- 
 ter of initiative and self-direction, but of latitude in the 
 service of a master. Hence no degree of curtailment in 
 this delegated “liberty” will be resented or repudiated by 
 popular indignation, so long as the master to whom serv- 
 ice is due can give assurance that it is expedient for his 
 purposes. 
 
 The age-long course of experience and institutional dis- 
 cipline out of which the current German situation has 
 come may be drawn schematically to the following effect : 
 In the beginning a turmoil of conquest, rapine, servitude, 
 and contention between rival bands of marauders and 
 their captains, gradually, indeed imperceptibly, fell into 
 7 
 
98 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 lines of settled and conventionalised exploitation ; with 
 repeated interruptions due to new incursions and new 
 combinations of rapacious chieftains. Out of it all in the 
 course of time came a feudal regime, under which per- 
 sonal allegiance and service to petty chiefs was the sole 
 and universal accredited bond of solidarity. As the out- 
 come of further unremitting intrigue and contention 
 among feudal chiefs, of high and low degree, the popu- 
 lace fell into larger parcels, under the hands of feudal 
 lords of larger dominion, and the bias of allegiance and 
 service came to hold with some degree of permanence and 
 uniformity, or at least of consistency, over a considerable 
 reach of country, including its inhabitants. With the 
 rise of States came allegiance to a dynasty, as distin- 
 guished from the narrower and more ephemeral allegiance 
 to the semi-detached person of a victorious prince ; and 
 the relative permanence of territorial frontiers under this 
 rule gave room for an effectual recrudescence of the an- 
 cient propensity to a sentimental group solidarity ; in 
 which the accredited territorial limits of the dynastic do- 
 minion served to outline the group that so was felt to 
 belong together under a joint dispensation and with some- 
 thing of a joint interest in matters of fame and fortune. 
 As the same notion is more commonly and more sugges- 
 tively expressed, a sense of nationality arose within the 
 sweep of the dynastic rule. This sense of community 
 interest that is called nationality so came in to reenforce 
 the sense of allegiance to the dynastic establishment and 
 so has coalesced with it to produce that high-wrought loy- 
 alty to the State, that draws equally on the sentiment of 
 community interest in the nation and on the prescriptive 
 docility to the dynastic head. The sense of national soli- 
 darity and of feudal loyalty and service have coalesced, 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 99 
 
 to bring this people to that climax of patriotic devotion 
 beyond which there lies no greater height along this way. 
 But this is also as far as the German people have gone ; 
 and it is scarcely to be claimed that the Japanese have 
 yet reached this stage; they would rather appear to be, 
 essentially, subjects of the emperor, and only inchoately 
 a Japanese nation. Of the German people it seems safe 
 to say that they have achieved such a coalescence of un- 
 impaired feudal fealty to a personal master and a full- 
 blown sense of national solidarity, without any perceptible 
 slackening in either strand of the double tie which so 
 binds them in the service of the dynastic State. 
 
 Germany, in other words, is somewhat in arrears, as 
 compared with those Europeans that have gone farthest 
 along this course of institutional growth, or perhaps rather 
 institutional permutation. It is not that this retardation 
 of the German people in this matter of national spirit is 
 to be counted as an infirmity, assuredly not as a handicap 
 in the pursuit of that national prestige on which all pa- 
 triotic endeavour finally converges. For this purpose the 
 failure to distinguish between the ambitions of the dy- 
 nastic statesmen and the interests of the commonwealth 
 is really a prodigious advantage, which their rivals, of 
 more mature growth politically, have lost by atrophy of 
 this same dynastic axiom of subservience. These others, 
 of whom the French and the English-speaking peoples 
 make up the greater part and may be taken as the typical 
 instance, have had a different history, in part. The disci- 
 pline of experience has left a somewhat different residue 
 of habits of thought embedded in their institutional equip- 
 ment and effective as axiomatic premises in their further 
 apprehension of what is worth while, and why. 
 
100 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 It is not that the diflerence between these two con- 
 trasted strains of the Western civilisation is either pro- 
 found or very pronounced; it is perhaps rather to be 
 stated as a difference of degree than of kind ; a retarda- 
 tion of spiritual growth, in respect of the prevalent and 
 controlling habits of thought on certain heads, in the one 
 case as against the other. Therefore any attempt to 
 speak with sufficient definition, so as to bring out this na- 
 tional difference of animus in any convincing way, will 
 unavoidably have an appearance of over-statement, if not 
 also of bias. And in any case, of course, it is not to be 
 expected that the national difference here spoken for can 
 be brought home to the apprehension of any unspoiled 
 son of the Fatherland, since it does not lie within that 
 perspective. 
 
 It is not of the nature of a divergence, but rather a 
 differential in point of cultural maturity, due to a differ- 
 ential in the rate of progression through that sequence 
 of institutional phases through which the civilised peoples 
 of Europe, jointly and severally, have been led by force 
 of circumstance. In this movement out of the Dark Ages 
 and onward, circumstances have fallen out differently for 
 those Europeans that chanced to live within the confines 
 of the Eatherland, different with such effect as to have 
 in the present placed these others at a farther remove 
 from the point of departure, leaving them furnished with 
 less of that archaic frame of mind that is here in question. 
 Possessed of less, but by no means shorn of all — perhaps 
 not of the major part — of that barbaric heritage. 
 
 Circumstances have so fallen out that these — typically 
 the Erench and the English-speaking peoples — have left 
 behind and partly forgotten that institutional phase in 
 which the people of Imperial Germany now live and move 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 101 
 
 and have their being. The French partly because they — ■ 
 that is the common people of the French lands — entered 
 the procession with a very substantial lead, having never 
 been put back to a point abreast of their neighbors across 
 the Rhine, in that phase of European civilisation from 
 which the peoples of the Fatherland tardily emerged into 
 the feudal age. So, any student who shall set out to 
 account for the visible lead which the French people still 
 so obstinately maintain in the advance of European cul- 
 ture, will have to make up his account with this notable 
 fact among the premises of his inquiry, that they have 
 had a shorter course to cover and have therefore, in the 
 sporting phrase, had the inside track. They measure 
 from a higher datum line. Among the advantages which 
 so have come, in a sense unearned, to the Erench people, 
 is their uninterrupted retention, out of Roman — and per- 
 haps pre-Roman — times, of the conception of a common- 
 wealth, a community of men with joint and mutual inter- 
 ests apart from any superimposed dependence on a joint 
 feudal superior. The French people therefore became a 
 nation, with unobtrusive facility, so soon as circumstances 
 permitted, and they are today the oldest “nation” in Eu- 
 rope. They therefore were prepared from long before- 
 hand, with an adequate principle (habit of thought) of 
 national cohesion and patriotic sentiment, to make the 
 shift from a dynastic State to a national commonwealth 
 whenever the occasion for such a move should arise; 
 that is to say, whenever the dynastic State, by a suitable 
 conjunction of infirmity and irksomeness, should pass the 
 margin of tolerance in this people’s outraged sense of na- 
 tional shame. The case of the German people in their 
 latterday attitude toward dynastic vagaries may afford a 
 term of comparison. These appear yet incapable of dis- 
 
102 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tinguishing between national shame and dynastic ambi- 
 tion. 
 
 By a different course and on lines more nearly parallel 
 with the life-history of the German peoples, the English- 
 speaking peoples have reached what is for the present 
 purpose much the same ground as the French, in that 
 they too have made the shift from the dynastic State to 
 the national commonwealth. The British started late, 
 but the discipline of servitude and unmitigated personal 
 rule in their case was relatively brief and relatively in- 
 effectual; that is to say, as compared with what their 
 German cousins had to endure and to learn in the like 
 connection. So that the British never learned the lesson 
 of dynastic loyalty fully by heart; at least not the popu- 
 lace; whatever may be true for the privileged classes, 
 the gentlemen, whose interests were on the side of privi- 
 lege and irresponsible mastery. Here as in the French 
 case it was the habits of thought of the common man, 
 not of the class of gentlemen, that made the obsolescence 
 of the dynastic State a foregone conclusion and an easy 
 matter — as one speaks of easy achievement in respect of 
 matters of that magnitude. It is now some two and a 
 half centuries since this shift in the national point of view 
 ^overtook the English-speaking community. Perhaps it 
 would be unfair to say that that period, or that period plus 
 what further time may yet have to be added, marks the 
 interval by which German habits of thought in these prem- 
 ises are in arrears, but it is not easy to find secure ground 
 for a different and more moderate appraisal. 
 
 The future, of course, is not to be measured in terms 
 of the past, and the tempo of the present and of the cal- 
 culable future is in many bearings very different from 
 that which has ruled even in the recent historical past. 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 103 
 
 But then, on the other hand, habituation always requires 
 time; more particularly such habituation as is to take 
 effect throughout a populous nation and is counted on to 
 work a displacement of a comprehensive institutional sys- 
 tem and of a people’s outlook on life. 
 
 Germany is still a dynastic State. That is to say, its 
 national establishment is, in effect, a self-appointed and 
 irrespwDnsible autocracy which holds the nation in usufruct, 
 working through an appropriate bureaucratic organisa- 
 tion, and the people is imbued with that spirit of abne- 
 gation and devotion that is involved in their enthusias- 
 tically supporting a government of that character. Now, 
 it is in the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, 
 that being the whole of its nature. And a dynastic estab- 
 lishment which enjoys the unqualified usufruct of such 
 resources as are placed at its disposal by the feudalistic 
 loyalty of the German people runs no chance of keeping 
 the peace, except on terms of the unconditional surrender 
 of all those whom it may concern. No solemn engage- 
 ment and no pious resolution has any weight in the bal- 
 ance against a cultural fatality of this magnitude. 
 
 This account of the derivation and current state of 
 German nationalism will of course appear biased to any- 
 one who has been in the habit of rating German Culture 
 high in all its bearings, and to whom at the same time 
 the ideals of peace and liberty appeal. Indeed, such a 
 critic, gifted with the due modicum of asperity, might 
 well be provoked to call it all a more or less ingenious 
 diatribe of partisan malice. But it can be so construed 
 only by those who see the question at issue as a point of 
 invidious distinction between this German animus on the 
 one hand and the corresponding frame of mind of the 
 
104 
 
 On the Nature of Peace^ 
 
 neighboring peoples on the other hand. There may also 
 appear to the captious to be some air of deprecation about 
 the characterisation here offered of the past history of 
 political traffic within the confines of the Fatherland. 
 All of which, of course, touches neither the veracity of 
 the characterisation nor the purpose with which so un- 
 grateful a line of analysis and exposition has been en- 
 tered upon. It is to be regretted if facts that may flutter 
 the emotions of one and another among the sensitive and 
 unreflecting can not be drawn into such an inquiry with- 
 out having their cogency discounted beforehand on ac- 
 count of the sentimental value imputed to them. Of 
 course no offense is intended and no invidious compari- 
 son is aimed at. 
 
 Even if the point of it all were an invidious comparison 
 it would immediately have to be admitted that the net 
 showing in favor of these others, e. the French or the 
 English-speaking peoples, is by no means so unreservedly 
 to their credit as such a summary statement of the Ger- 
 man case might seem to imply. As bearing on the chances 
 of a peace contingent upon the temper of the contracting 
 nationalities, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that 
 such a peace compact would hold indefinitely even if it 
 depended solely on the pacific animus of these others that 
 have left the dynastic State behind. These others, in fact, 
 are also not yet out of the woods. They may not have 
 the same gift of gratuitous and irresponsible truculence 
 as their German cousins, in the same alarming degree ; 
 but as was said in an earlier passage, they too are ready 
 to fight on provocation. They are patriotic to a degree ; 
 indeed to such a degree that rnything which visibly 
 touches the national prestige will readily afford a casus 
 belli. But it remains true that the popular temper among 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 105 
 
 them is of the defensive order; perhaps of an unnecessa- 
 rily enthusiastic defensive order, but after all in such a 
 frame of mind as leaves them willing to let well enough 
 alone, to live and let live. 
 
 And herein appears to lie the decisive difference be- 
 tween those peoples whose patriotic affections center 
 about the fortunes of an impersonal commonwealth and 
 those in whom is superadded a fervent aspiration for 
 dynastic ascendency. The latter may be counted on to 
 break the peace when a promising opportunity offers. 
 
 The contrast may be illustrated, though not so sharply 
 as might be desirable, in the different temper shown by 
 the British people in the Boer war on the one hand, as 
 compared with the popularity of the French-Prussian war 
 among the German people on the other hand. Both were 
 aggressive wars, and both were substantially unprovoked. 
 Diplomatically speaking, of course, sufficient provocation 
 was found in either case, as how should it not? But in 
 point of substantial provocation and of material induce- 
 ment, both were about equally gratuitous. In either case 
 the war could readily have been avoided without material 
 detriment to the community and without perceptible lesion 
 to the national honour. Both were “engineered” on 
 grounds shamelessly manufactured ad hoc by interested 
 parties ; in the one case by a coterie of dynastic statesmen, 
 in the other by a junta of commercial adventurers and 
 imperialistic politicians. In neither case had the people 
 any interest of gain or loss in the quarrel, except as it 
 became a question of national prestige. But both the Ger- 
 man and the British community bore the burden and 
 fought the campaign to a successful issue for those inter- 
 ested parties who had precipitated the quarrel. The Brit- 
 ish people at large, it is true, bore the burden; which 
 
106 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 comes near being all that can be said in the way of pop- 
 ular approval of this war, which political statemen have 
 since then rated as one of the most profitable enterprises 
 in which the forces of the realm have been engaged. On 
 the subject of this successful war the common man is still 
 inclined to cover his uneasy sense of decency with a 
 recital of extenuating circumstances. What parallels all 
 this in the German case is an outbreak of patriotic aban- 
 don and an admirable spirit of unselfish sacrifice in fur- 
 therance of the dynastic prestige, an intoxication of patri- 
 otic blare culminating in the triumphant coronation at 
 Versailles. Nor has the sober afterthought of the past 
 forty-six years cast a perceptible shadow of doubt across 
 the glorious memory of that patriotic debauch. 
 
 Such is the difference of animus between a body of 
 patriotic citizens in a modern commonwealth on the one 
 hand and the loyal subjects of a dynastic State on the 
 other hand. There need be no reflections on the intrinsic 
 merits of either. Seen in dispassionate perspective from 
 outside the turmoil, there is not much to choose, in point 
 of sane and self-respecting manhood, between the slug- 
 gish and shamefaced abettor of a sordid national crime, 
 and a ranting patriot who glories in serving as cat’s-paw 
 to a syndicate of unscrupulous politicians bent on domin- 
 ion for dominion’s sake. But the question here is not as 
 to the relative merits or the relative manhood contents 
 of the two contrasted types of patriot. Doubtless both 
 and either have manhood enough and to spare ; at least, 
 so they say. But the point in question is the simpler and 
 nowise invidious one, as to the availability of both or 
 either for the perpetuation of the world’s peace under a 
 compact of vigilant neutrality. Plainly the German frame 
 of mind admits of no neutrality; the quest of dominion 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 107 
 
 is not compatible with neutrality, and the substantial core 
 of German national life is still the quest of dominion 
 under dynastic tutelage. How it stands with the spirit 
 that has repeatedly come in sight in the international rela- 
 tions of the British community is a question harder to 
 answer. 
 
 It may be practicable to establish a peace of neutrals 
 on the basis of such national spirit as prevails among 
 these others — the French and English-speaking peoples, 
 together with the minor nationalities that cluster about 
 the North Sea — ^because their habitual attitude is that of 
 neutrality, on the whole and with allowance for a belli- 
 cose minority in all these countries. By and large, these 
 peoples have come to the tolerant attitude that finds ex- 
 pression in the maxim. Live and let live. But they are all 
 and several sufficiently patriotic. It may, indeed, prove 
 that they are more than sufficiently patriotic for the pur- 
 poses of a neutral peace. They stand for peace, but it 
 is “peace with honour which means, in more explicit 
 terms, peace with undiminished national prestige. Now, 
 national prestige is a very particular commodity, as has 
 been set out in earlier passages of this inquiry; and a 
 peace which is to be kept only on terms of a jealous 
 maintenance of the national honour is likely to be in a 
 somewhat precarious case. If, and when, the national 
 honour is felt to require an enhanced national ascendancy, 
 the case for a neutral peace immediately becomes critical. 
 And the greater the number and diversity of pretensions 
 and interests that are conceived to be bound up with the 
 national honour, the more unstable will the resulting situa- 
 tion necessarily be. 
 
 The upshot of all this recital of considerations appears 
 to be that a neutral peace compact may, or it may not, 
 
108 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 be practicable in the absence of such dynastic States as 
 Germany and Japan; whereas it has no chance in the 
 presence of these enterprising national establishments. 
 
 No one will be readier or more voluble in exclaiming 
 against the falsity of such a discrimination as is here at- 
 tempted, between the democratic and the dynastic nations 
 of the modern world, than the spokesmen of these dy- 
 nastic Powers. No one is more outspoken in profes- 
 sions of universal peace and catholic amity than these 
 same spokesmen of the dynastic Powers ; and nowhere 
 is there more urgent need of such professions. Official 
 and “inspired” professions are, of course, to be over- 
 looked ; at least, so charity would dictate. But there 
 have, in the historic present, been many professions of 
 this character made also by credible spokesmen of the 
 German, and perhaps of the Japanese, people, and in all 
 sincerity. By way of parenthesis it should be said that 
 this is not intended to apply to expressions of conviction 
 and intention that have come out of Germany these two 
 years past (December 1916). Without questioning the 
 credibility of these witnesses that have borne witness to 
 the pacific and genial quality of national sentiment in the 
 German people, it will yet be in place to recall the run of 
 facts in the national life of Germany in this historical 
 present and the position of these spokesmen in the Ger- 
 man community. 
 
 The German nation is of a peculiar composition in re- 
 spect of its social structure. So far as bears on the ques- 
 tion in hand, it is made up of three distinctive constituent 
 factors, or perhaps rather categories or conditions of men. 
 The populace is of course the main category, and in the 
 last resort always the main and decisive factor. Next in 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 
 
 109 
 
 point of consequence as well as of numbers and initiative 
 is the personnel of the control, — the ruling class, the ad- 
 ministration, the official community, the hierarchy of civil 
 and political servants, or whatever designation may best 
 suit; the category comprises that pyramidal superstruc- 
 ture of privilege and control whereof the sovereign is the 
 apex, and in whom, under any dynastic rule, is in effect 
 vested the usufruct of the populace. These two classes 
 or conditions of men, the one of which orders and the 
 other obeys, make up the working structure of the nation, 
 and they also between them embody the national life and 
 carry forward the national work and aim. Intermediate 
 between them, or rather beside them and overlapping 
 the commissure, is a third category whose life articulates 
 loosely with both the others at the same time that it still 
 runs along in a semi-detached way. This slighter but more 
 visible, and particularly more audible, category is made 
 up of the “Intellectuals,” as a late, and perhaps vulgar, 
 designation would name them. 
 
 These are they who chiefly communicate with the world 
 outside, and at the same time they do what is academi- 
 cally called thinking. They are in intellectual contact and 
 communication with the world at large, in a contact of 
 give and take, and they think and talk in and about those 
 concepts that go in under the caption of the humanities 
 in the world at large. The category is large enough to 
 constitute an intellectual community, indeed a community 
 of somewhat formidable magnitude, taken in absolute 
 terms, although in percentages of the population at large 
 their numbers will foot up to only an inconsiderable figure. 
 Their contact with the superior class spoken of above is 
 fairly close, being a contact, in the main, of service on 
 the one side and of control on the other. With the popu- 
 
110 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 lace their contact and communion is relatively slight, the 
 give and take in the case being neither intimate nor far- 
 reaching. More particularly is there a well-kept limit of 
 moderation on any work of indoctrination or intellectual 
 guidance which this class may carry down among the 
 people at large, dictated and enforced by dynastic expe- 
 diency. This category, of the Intellectuals, is sufficiently 
 large to live its own life within itself, without drawing 
 on the spiritual life of the community at large, and of 
 sufficiently substantial quality to carry its own peculiar 
 scheme of intellectual conventions and verities. Of the 
 great and highly meritorious place and work of these In- 
 tellectuals in the scheme of German culture it is needless 
 to speak. What is to the point is that they are the ac- 
 credited spokesmen of the German nation in all its com- 
 monplace communication with the rest of civilised Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 The Intellectuals have spoken with conviction and sin- 
 cerity of the spiritual state of the German people, but in 
 so doing, and in so far as bears on the character of Ger- 
 man nationalism, they have been in closer contact, intel- 
 lectually and sympathetically, with the intellectual and 
 spiritual life of civilised Europe at large than with the 
 movements of the spirit among the German populace. 
 And their canvassing of the concepts which so have come 
 under their attention from over the national frontiers has 
 been carried forward — so far, again, as bears on the ques- 
 tions that are here in point — with the German-dynastic 
 principles, logic and mechanism of execution under their 
 immediate observation and supplying the concrete mate- 
 rials for inquiry. Indeed, it holds true, by and large, that 
 nothing else than this German-dynastic complement of 
 ways and means has, or can effectually, come under their 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 111 
 
 observation in such a degree of intimacy as to give body 
 and definition to the somewhat abstract theorems on cul- 
 tural aims and national preconceptions that have come 
 to them from outside. In short, they have borrowed these 
 theoretical formulations from abroad, without the con- 
 crete apparatus of ways and means in which these theo- 
 rems are embodied in their foreign habitat, and have so 
 found themselves construing these theoretical borrowings 
 in the only concrete terms of which they have had first- 
 hand and convincing knowledge. Such an outcome would 
 be fairly unavoidable, inasmuch as these Intellectuals, 
 however much they are, in the spirit, citizens of the cos- 
 mopolitan republic of knowledge and intelligence, they 
 are after all, in propria persona, immediately and unre- 
 mittingly subjects of the German-dynastic State; so that 
 all their detail thinking on the aims, ways and means of 
 life, in all its civil and political bearings, is unavoidably 
 shaped by the unremitting discipline of their workday 
 experience under this dynastic scheme. The outcome has 
 been that while they have taken up, as they have under- 
 stood them, the concepts that rule the civic life of these 
 other, maturer nations, they have apprehended and de- 
 veloped these theorems of civic life in the terms and by 
 the logic enforced in that system of control and surveil- 
 lance known to them by workday experience, — the only 
 empirical terms at hand. 
 
 The apex of growth and the center of diffusion as re- 
 gards the modem culture in respect of the ideals and 
 logic of civic life — other phases of this culture than this 
 its civil aspect do not concern the point here in question 
 — this apex of growth and center of diffusion lie outside 
 the Fatherland, in an environment alien to the German 
 institutional scheme. Yet so intrinsic to the cultural drift 
 
112 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of modern mankind are these aims and this logic, that in 
 taking over and further enriching the intellectual heritage 
 of this modern world the Intellectuals of the Fatherland 
 have unavoidably also taken over those conceptions of 
 civil initiative and masterless self-direction that rule the 
 logic of life in a commonwealth of ungraded men. They 
 have taken these over and assimilated them as best their 
 experience would permit. But workday experience and 
 its exigencies are stubborn things ; and in this process of 
 assimilation of these alien conceptions of right and honest 
 living, it is the borrowed theorems concerning civic rights 
 and duties that have undergone adaptation and revision, 
 not the concrete system of ways and means in which these 
 principles, so accepted, are to be put in practice. Neces- 
 sarily so, since in the German scheme of law and order 
 the major premise is the dynastic State, whereas the 
 major premise of the modern civilised scheme of civic life 
 is the absence of such an organ. So, the development and 
 elaboration of these modern principles of civic liberty — 
 and this elaboration has taken on formidable dimensions 
 — under the hand of the German Intellectuals has uni- 
 formly run out into Pickwickian convolutions, greatly 
 suggestive of a lost soul seeking a place to rest. With 
 unquestionably serious purpose and untiring endeavour, 
 they have sought to embody these modern civilised pre- 
 conceptions in terms afforded by, or in terms compatible 
 with, the institutions of the Fatherland; and they have 
 been much concerned and magniloquently elated about 
 the German spirit of freedom that so was to be brought to 
 final and consummate realisation in the hfe of a free 
 people. But at no point and in no case have either the 
 proposals or their carrying out taken shape as a concrete 
 application of tlie familiar principle of popular self-direc- 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 113 
 
 tion. It has always come to something in the way of a 
 concessive or expedient mitigation of the antagonistic 
 principle of personal authority. Where the forms of self- 
 government or of individual self-direction have conces- 
 sively been installed, under the Imperial rule, they have 
 turned out to be an imitative structure with some shrewd 
 provision for their coercion or inhibition at the discretion 
 of an irresponsible authority. 
 
 Neither the sound intelligence nor the good faith of 
 these Intellectuals of the Fatherland is to be impugned. 
 That the — necessarily vague and circumlocutory — exposi- 
 tions of civic institutions and popular liberty which they 
 have so often and so largely promulgated should have 
 been used as a serviceable blind of dynastic statecraft is 
 not to be set down to their discredit. Circumstances over 
 which they could have no control, since they were circum- 
 stances that shaped their own habits of thought, have 
 placed it beyond their competence to apprehend or to for- 
 mulate these alien principles (habits of thought) con- 
 cretely in those alien institutional details and by the alien 
 logic with which they could have no working acquaintance. 
 
 To one and another this conception of cultural soli- 
 darity within the nation, and consequent cultural aliency 
 between nations, due to the different habits of life and of 
 thought enforced by the two diverse institutional systems, 
 may be so far unfamiliar as to carry no conviction. It 
 may accordingly not seem out of place to recall that the 
 institutional system of any given community, particularly 
 for any community living under a home-bred and time- 
 tried system of its own, will necessarily be a balanced 
 system of interdependent and mutually concordant parts 
 working together in one comprehensive plan of law and 
 order. Through such an institutional system, as, e. g., 
 8 
 
114 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the German Imperial organisation, there will run a degree 
 of logical consistency, consonant with itself throughout, 
 and exerting a consistent discipline throughout the com- 
 munity; whereby there is enforced a consistent drift or 
 bent in the prevalent habits of life, and a correlative bent 
 in the resulting habits of thought prevalent in the com- 
 munity. It is, in fact, this possession of a common scheme 
 of use and wont, and a consequent common outlook and 
 manner of thinking, that constitutes the most intrinsic 
 bond of solidarity in any nationality, and that finally marks 
 it off from any other. 
 
 It is equally a matter of course that any other given 
 community, living under the rule of a substantially dif- 
 ferent, or divergent, system of institutions, will be ex- 
 posed to a course of workday discipline running to a dif- 
 ferent, perhaps divergent, effect ; and that this other com- 
 munity will accordingly come in for a characteristically 
 different discipline and fall under the rule of a different 
 commonsense outlook. Where an institutional difference 
 of this kind is somewhat large and consistent, so as to 
 amount in effect to a discrepancy, as may fairly be said 
 of the difference between Imperial Germany and its like 
 on the one hand, and the English-speaking nations on the 
 other hand, there the difference in everyday conceptions 
 may readily make the two peoples mutually unintelligible 
 to one another, on those points of institutional principle 
 that are involved in the discrepancy. This is the state 
 of the case as between the German people, including the 
 Intellectuals, and the peoples against whom their precon- 
 ceptions of national destiny have arrayed them. And the 
 many vivid expressions of consternation, abhorrence and 
 incredulity that have come out of this community of In- 
 tellectuals in the course of the past two years of trial 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 115 
 
 and error, bear sufificient testimony to the rigorous con- 
 straint which these German preconceptions and their logic 
 exercise over the Intellectuals, no less than over the 
 populace. 
 
 Conversely, of course, it is nearly as impracticable for 
 those who have grown up under the discipline of demo- 
 cratic institutions to comprehend the habitual outlook of 
 the commonplace German patriot on national interests 
 and aims ; not quite, perhaps, because the discipline of 
 use and wont and indoctrination is neither so rigorous nor 
 so consistent in their case. But there is, after all, preva- 
 lent among them a sufficiently evident logical inability to 
 understand and appreciate the paramount need of na- 
 tional, that is to say dynastic, ascendancy that actuates all 
 German patriots; just as these same patriots are simi- 
 larly unable to consider national interests in any other 
 light than that of dynastic ascendancy. 
 
 Going simply on the face value of the available evi- 
 dence, any outsider might easily fall into the error of be- 
 lieving that when the great adventure of the war opened 
 up before them, as well as when presently the shock of 
 baffled endeavour brought home its exasperating futility, 
 the Intellectuals of the Fatherland distinguished them- 
 selves above all other classes and conditions of men in the 
 exuberance of their patriotic abandon. Such a view would 
 doubtless be almost wholly erroneous. It is not that the 
 Intellectuals reached a substantially superior pitch of 
 exaltation, but only that, being trained in the use of lan- 
 guage, they were able to express their emotions with great 
 facility. There seems no reason to believe that the popu- 
 lace fell short of the same measure in respect of their 
 prevalent frame of mind. 
 
116 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 To return to the workings of the Imperial dynastic 
 State and the forces engaged. It plainly appears that the 
 Intellectuals are to be counted as supernumeraries, except 
 so far as they serve as an instrument of publicity and in- 
 doctrination in the hands of the discretionary authorities. 
 The working factors in the case are the dynastic organi- 
 sation of control, direction and emolument, and the pop- 
 ulace at large by use of whose substance the traffic in 
 dynastic ascendancy and emolument is carried on. These 
 two are in fairly good accord, on the ancient basis of 
 feudal loyalty. Hitherto there is no evident ground for 
 believing that this archaic tie that binds the populace to 
 the dynastic ambitions has at all perceptibly weakened. 
 And the possibility of dynastic Germany living at peace 
 with the world under any compact, therefore translates 
 itself into the possibility of the German people’s unlearn- 
 ing its habitual deference and loyalty to the dynasty. 
 
 As its acquirement has been a work of protracted 
 habituation, so can its obsolescence also come about only 
 through more or less protracted habituation under a sys- 
 tem of use and wont of a different or divergent order. 
 The elements of such a systematic discipline running to 
 an effect at cross purposes with this patriotic animus are 
 not absent from the current situation in the Fatherland; 
 the discipline of the modern industrial system, for in- 
 stance, runs to such a divergent effect; but this, and 
 other conceivable forces which may reenforce it, will 
 after all take time, if they are to work a decisive change 
 in the current frame of mind of the patriotic German 
 community. During the interval required for such a 
 change in the national temper, the peace of the world 
 would be conditioned on the inability of the dynastic 
 State to break it. So that the chances of success for any 
 
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace 117 
 
 neutral peace league will vary inversely as the available 
 force of Imperial Germany, and it could be accounted 
 secure only in the virtual elimination of the Imperial 
 State as a national Power. 
 
 If the gradual obsolescence of the spirit of militant 
 loyalty in the German people, through disuse under a 
 regime of peace, industry, self-government and free trade, 
 is to be the agency by force of which dynastic imperialism 
 is to cease, the chance of a neutral peace will depend 
 on the thoroughness with which such a regime of self- 
 direction can be installed in this case, and on the space 
 of time required for such obsolescence through disuse. 
 Obviously, the installation of a workable regime of self- 
 government on peaceable lines would in any case be a 
 matter of great difficulty among a people whose past ex- 
 perience has so singularly incapacitated them for self- 
 government; and obviously, too, the interval of time 
 required to reach secure ground along this line of ap- 
 proach would be very considerable. Also, in view of 
 these conditions, obviously, this scheme for maintaining 
 the peace of nations by a compact of neutrals based on 
 a compromise with an aspiring dynastic State resolves 
 itself into the second of the two alternatives spoken of at 
 the outset, viz., a neutral peace based on the elimination 
 of Germany as a war power, together with the elim- 
 ination of any materials suitable for the formation of a 
 formidable coalition. And then, with Im.perial Germany 
 supposedly eliminated or pacified, there would still remain 
 the Japanese establishment, to which all the arguments 
 pertinent in the case of Germany will apply without 
 abatement; except that, at least hitherto, the dynastic 
 statesmen of Japan have not had the disposal of so mas- 
 sive a body of resources, in population, industry, or raw 
 materials. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Peace Without Honour 
 
 The argument therefore turns back to a choice between 
 the two alternatives alluded to : peace in submission to 
 the rule of the German dynastic establishment (and to 
 Japan), or peace through elimination of these enterpris- 
 ing Powers. The former alternative, no doubt, is suf- 
 ficiently unattractive, but it is not therefore to be put 
 aside without a hearing. As goes without saying, it is 
 repugnant to the patriotic sentiments of those peoples 
 whom the Imperial German establishment have elected for 
 submission. But if this unreflecting patriotic revulsion 
 can once be made amenable to reason, there is always 
 something to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable 
 submission, or at least in extenuation of it; and if it is 
 kept in mind that the ulterior necessity of such submission 
 must always remain in perspective as a condition prece- 
 dent to a peaceful settlement, so long as one or both of 
 these enterprising Powers remains intact, it will be seen 
 that a sane appraisal of the merits of such a regime of 
 peace is by no means uncalled for. For neither of these 
 two Powers is there a conclusive issue of endeavour short 
 of paramount dominion. 
 
 There should also be some gain of insight and sobriety 
 in recalling that the Intellectuals of the Fatherland, who 
 have doubtless pondered this matter longer and more 
 
 118 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 119 
 
 dispassionately than all other men, have spoken very 
 highly of the merits of such a plan of universal submis- 
 sion to the rule of this German dynastic establishment. 
 They had, no doubt, been considering the question both 
 long and earnestly, as to what would, in the light of rea- 
 son, eventually be to the best interest of those peoples 
 whose manifest destiny was eventual tutelage under the 
 Imperial crown ; and there need also be no doubt that 
 in that time (two years past) they therefore spoke ad- 
 visedly and out of the fulness of the heart on this head. 
 The pronouncements that came out of the community 
 of Intellectuals in that season of unembarrassed elation 
 and artless avowal are doubtless to be taken as an out- 
 come of much thoughtful canvassing of what had best 
 be done, not as an enforced compromise with untoward 
 necessities but as the salutary course freely to be pur- 
 sued with an eye single to the best good of all concerned. 
 
 It is true, the captious have been led to speak slight- 
 ingly of the many utterances of this tenour coming out of 
 the community of Intellectuals, as, e. g., the lay sermons 
 of Professor Ostwald dating back to that season; but 
 no unprejudiced reader can well escape the persuasion 
 that these, as well as the very considerable volume of 
 similar pronouncements by many other men of eminent 
 scholarship and notable for benevolent sentiments, are 
 faithfully to be accepted as the expressions of a pro- 
 found conviction and a consciously generous spirit. In 
 so speaking of the advantages to be derived by any sub- 
 ject people from submission to the German Imperial rule, 
 these Intellectuals are not to be construed as formulating 
 the drift of vulgar patriotic sentiment among their com- 
 patriots at large, but rather as giving out the deliverances 
 of their own more sensitive spirit and maturer delibera- 
 
120 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tion, as men who are in a position to see human affairs 
 and interests in a larger perspective. Such, no doubt, 
 would be their own sense of the matter. 
 
 Reflection on the analogous case of the tutelage exer- 
 cised by the American government over the subject Phil- 
 ippinos may contribute to a just and temperate view of 
 what is intended in the regime of tutelage and submission 
 so spoken for by the German Intellectuals, — and, it may 
 be added, found good by the Imperial statesmen. There 
 would, of course, be the difference, as against the case 
 of the Philippinos, that whereas the American government 
 is after all answerable, in the last resort and in a some- 
 what random fashion, to a popular opinion that runs on 
 democratic preconceptions, the German Imperial estab- 
 lishment on the other hand is answerable to no one, ex- 
 cept it be to God, who is conceived to stand in somewhat 
 the relation of a silent partner, or a minority stock- 
 holder in this dynastic enterprise. 
 
 Yet it should not be overlooked that any presumptive 
 hard usage which the vassal peoples might look for at 
 the hands of the German dynasty would necessarily be 
 tempered with considerations of expediency as dictated 
 by the exigencies of usufruct. The Imperial establish- 
 ment has shown itself to be wise, indeed more wise than 
 amiable, but wise at least in its intentions, in the use 
 which it has made of subject peoples hitherto. It is true, 
 a somewhat accentuated eagerness on the part of the 
 Imperial establishment to get the maximum service in a 
 minimum of time and at a minimum cost from these sub- 
 ject populations, — as, e. g., in Silesia and Poland, in 
 Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine, or in its African 
 and Oceanic possessions, — has at times led to practices 
 altogether dubious on humanitarian grounds, at the same 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 121 
 
 time that in point of thrifty management they have gone 
 beyond “what the traffic will bear.” Yet it is not to be 
 overlooked — and in this connection it is a point of some 
 weight — that, so far as the predatory traditions of its 
 statecraft will permit, the Imperial establishment has in 
 all these matters been guided by a singularly unreserved 
 attention to its own material advantage. Where its man- 
 agement in these premises has yielded a less profitable usu- 
 fruct than the circumstances would reasonably admit, the 
 failure has been due to an excess of cupidity rather than 
 the reverse. 
 
 The circumstantial evidence converges to the effect 
 that the Imperial establishment may confidently be count- 
 ed on to manage the affairs of its subject peoples with an 
 eye single to its own material gain, and it may with equal 
 confidence be counted on that in the long run no unad- 
 vised excesses will be practised. Of course, an excessive 
 adventure in atrocity and predation, due to such human 
 infirmity in its agents or in its directorate as has been 
 shown in various recent episodes, is to be looked for now 
 and again; but these phenomena would come in by way 
 of fluctuating variations from the authentic routine, rather 
 than as systematic features of it. 
 
 That superfluity of naughtiness that has given char- 
 acter to the current German Imperial policy in Belgium, 
 e. g., or that similarly has characterised the dealings of 
 Imperial Japan in Korea during the late “benevolent as- 
 similation” of that people into Japanese-Imperial usu- 
 fruct, is not fairly to be taken to indicate what such an 
 Imperial establishment may be expected to do with a sub- 
 ject people on a footing of settled and long-term exploi- 
 tation. At the outset, in both instances, the policy of 
 frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view to 
 
122 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 economy of effort in reducing the subject people to an 
 abject state of intimidation, according to the art of war 
 as set forth in the manuals ; whereas latterly the some- 
 what profligate excesses of the government of occupa- 
 tion — decently covered with diplomatic parables on benev- 
 olence and legality — have been dictated by military con- 
 venience, particularly by the need of forced labor and 
 the desirability of a reduced population in the acquired 
 territory. So also the “personally conducted” dealings 
 with the Armenians by use of the Turks should probably 
 also best be explained as an endeavour to reduce the 
 numbers of an undesirable population beforehand, with- 
 out incurring unnecessary blame. All these things are, 
 at the most, misleading indications of what the Imperial 
 policy would be like under settled conditions and in the 
 absence of insubordination. 
 
 By way of contrast, such as may serve to bring the 
 specific traits of this prospective Imperial tutelage of 
 nations into a better light, the Ottoman usufruct of the 
 peoples of the Turkish dominions offers an instructive 
 instance. The Ottoman tutelage is today spoken of by 
 its apologists in terms substantially identical with the 
 sketches of the future presented by hopeful German pa- 
 triots in the early months of the current war. But as is 
 so frequently the case in such circumstances, these ex- 
 pressions of the officers have to be understood in a diplo- 
 matic sense; not as touching the facts in any other 
 than a formal way. It is sufficiently evident that the 
 Ottoman management of its usufruct has throughout 
 been ill-advised enough persisently to charge more than 
 the traffic would bear, probably due in great part to lack 
 of control over its agents or ramifications, by the central 
 office. The Ottoman establishment has not observed, or 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 123 
 
 enforced, the plain rules of economy in its utilisation of 
 the subject peoples, and finds itself today bankrupt in 
 consequence. What may afford more of a parallel to the 
 prospective German tutelage of the nations is the proce- 
 dure of the Japanese establishment in Korea, Manchuria, 
 or China; which is also duly covered with an ostensibly 
 decent screen of diplomatic parables, but the nature and 
 purpose of which is overt enough in all respects but the 
 the nomenclature. It is not unlikely that even this 
 Japanese usufruct and tutelage runs on somewhat less 
 humane and complaisant lines than a well-advised econ- 
 omy of resources would dictate for the prospective Ger- 
 man usufruct of the Western nations. 
 
 There is the essential difference between the two 
 cases that while Japan is over-populated, so that it 
 becomes the part of a wise government to find additional 
 lands for occupancy, and that so it is constrained by its 
 imperial ambitions to displace much of the population in 
 its subject territories, the Fatherland on the other hand 
 is under-populated — notoriously, though not according 
 to the letter of the diplomatic parables on this head — and 
 for the calculable future must continue to be under-popu- 
 lated ; provided that the state of the industrial arts con- 
 tinues subject to change in the same general direction as 
 hitherto, and provided that no radical change affects the 
 German birth-rate. So, since the Imperial government 
 has no need of new lands for occupancy by its home 
 population, it will presumably be under no inducement to 
 take measures looking to the partial depopulation of its 
 subject territories. 
 
 The case of Belgium and the measures looking to a 
 reduction of its population may raise a doubt, but prob- 
 ably not a well taken doubt. It is rather that since it has 
 
124 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 become evident that the territory can not be held, it is 
 thought desirable to enrich the Fatherland with whatever 
 property can be removed, and to consume the accumulated 
 man-power of the Belgian people in the service of the 
 war. It would appear that it is a war-measure, de- 
 signed to make use of the enemy’s resources for his 
 defeat. Indeed, under conditions of settled occupation or 
 subjection, any degree of such depopulation would en- 
 tail an economic loss, and any well-considered adminis- 
 trative policy would therefore look to the maintenance of 
 the inhabitants of the acquired territories in undiminished 
 numbers and unimpaired serviceability. 
 
 The resulting scheme of Imperial usufruct should ac- 
 cordingly be of a considerate, not to say in effect humane, 
 character, — always provided that the requisite degree 
 of submission and subservience (“law and order”) can be 
 enforced by a system of coercion so humane as not to re- 
 duce the number of the inhabitants or materially to lower 
 their physical powers. Such would, by reasonable ex- 
 pectation, be the character of this projected Imperial 
 tutelage and usufruct of the nations of Christendom. 
 In its working-out this German project should accord- 
 ingly differ very appreciably from the policy which its 
 imperial ambitions have constrained the Japanese estab- 
 lishment to pursue in its dealings with the life and for- 
 tunes of its recently, and currently, acquired subject 
 peoples. 
 
 The better to appreciate in some concrete fashion what 
 should, by reasonable expectation, be the terms on which 
 life might so be carried on suh pace gennanica, attention 
 may be invited to certain typical instances of such peace 
 by abnegation among contemporary peoples. Perhaps at 
 the top of the list stands India, with its many and varied 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 125 
 
 native peoples, subject to British tutelage, but, the British 
 apologists say, not subject to British usufruct. The 
 margin of tolerance in this instance is fairly wide, but 
 its limits are sharply drawn. India is wanted and held, 
 not for tribute or revenue to be paid into the Imperial 
 treasury, nor even for exclusive trade privileges or pref- 
 erences, but mainly as a preserve to provide official occu- 
 pation and emoluments for British gentlemen not other- 
 wise occupied or provided for ; and secondarily as a means 
 of safeguarding lucrative British investments, that is 
 to say, investments by British capitalists of high and low 
 degree. The current British professions on the subject 
 of this occupation of India, and at times the shamefaced 
 apology for it, is that the people of India suffer no hard- 
 ship by this means ; the resulting governmental establish- 
 ment being no more onerous and no more expensive to 
 them than any equally, or even any less, competent gov- 
 ernment of their own would necessarily be. The fact, 
 however, remains, that India affords a much needed and 
 very considerable net revenue to the class of British 
 gentlemen, in the shape of official salaries and pensions, 
 which the British gentry at large can on no account 
 forego. Narrowed to these proportions it is readily con- 
 ceivable that the British usufruct of India should rest 
 with no extraordinary weight on the Indian people at 
 large, however burdensome it may at times become to 
 those classes who aspire to take over the usufruct in case 
 the British establishment can be dislodged. This case 
 evidently differs very appreciably from the projected 
 German usufruct of neighboring countries in Europe. 
 
 A case that may be more nearly in point would be that 
 of any one of the countries subject to the Turkish rule in 
 recent times; although these instances scarcely show just 
 
126 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 what to expect under the projected German regime. 
 The Turkish rule has been notably inefficient, considered 
 as a working system of dynastic usufruct; whereas it is 
 confidently expected that the corresponding German sys- 
 tem would show quite an exceptional degree of efficiency 
 for the purpose. This Turkish inefficiency has had a 
 two-fold effect, which should not appear in the German 
 case. Through administrative abuses intended to serv'e the 
 personal advantage of the irresponsible officials, the under- 
 lying peoples have suffered a progressive exhaustion 
 and dilapidation ; whereby the central authority, the dynas- 
 tic establishment, has also grown progressively, cumu- 
 latively weaker and therefore less able to control its 
 agents ; and, in the second place, on the same grounds, in 
 the pursuit of personal gain, and prompted by personal 
 animosities, these irresponsible agents have persistently 
 carried their measures of extortion beyond reasonable 
 bounds, — that is to say beyond the bounds which a well 
 considered plan of permanent usufruct would counte- 
 nance. All this would be otherwise and more sensibly ar- 
 ranged under German Imperial auspices. 
 
 One of the nations that have fallen under Turkish rule 
 — and Turkish peace — affords a valuable illustration of 
 a secondary point that is to be considered in connection 
 with any plan of peace by submission. The Armenian 
 people have in later time come partly under Russian do- 
 minion, and so have been exposed to the Russian system 
 of bureaucratic exploitation ; and the difference between 
 Russian and Turkish Armenia is instructive. According 
 to all credible — that is unofficial — accounts, conditions are 
 perceptibly more tolerable in Russian Armenia. Well 
 informed persons relate that the cause for this more 
 lenient, or less extreme, administration of affairs under 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 127 
 
 Russian officials is a selective death rate among them, 
 such that a local official who persistently exceeds a cer- 
 tain ill-defined limit of tolerance is removed by what 
 would under other circumstances be called an untimely 
 death. No adequate remedy has been found, within the 
 large limits which Russian bureaucratic administration 
 habitually allows itself in questions of coercion. The 
 Turk, on the other hand, less deterred by considerations 
 of long-term expediency, and, it may be, less easily in- 
 fluenced by outside opinion on any point of humanity, 
 has found a remedy in the systematic extirpation of any 
 village in which an illicit death occurs. One will incline 
 to presume that on this head the German Imperial pro- 
 cedure would be more after the Russian than after the 
 Turkish pattern; although latterday circumstantial evi- 
 dence will throw some sinister doubt on the reasonable- 
 ness of such an expectation. 
 
 It is plain, however, that the Turkish remedy for this 
 form of insubordination is a wasteful means of keeping 
 the peace. Plainly, to the home office, the High Com- 
 mand, the extinction of a village with its population is a 
 more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of 
 one of its administrative agents ; particularly when it is 
 called to mind that such a decease will presumably follow 
 only on such profligate excesses of naughtiness as are 
 bound to be inexcusably unprofitable to the central author- 
 ity. It may be left an open question how far a corrective 
 of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, 
 in case of need, under the projected German Imperial 
 usufruct. 
 
 It may, I apprehend, be said without offense that there 
 is no depth of depravity below the ordinary reach of the 
 Russian bureaucracy; but this organisation finds itself 
 
128 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 constrained, after all, to use circumspection and set some 
 limits on individual excursions beyond the bounds of de- 
 cency and humanity, so soon as these excesses touch the 
 common or joint interest of the organisation. Any excess 
 of atrocity, beyond a certain margin of tolerance, on the 
 part of any one of its members is likely to work pecuniary 
 mischief to the rest ; and then, the bureaucratic conduct of 
 affairs is also, after all, in an uncertain degree subject to 
 some surveillance by popular sentiment at home or abroad. 
 The like appears not to hold true of the Turkish official 
 organisation. The difference may be due to a less prov- 
 ident spirit among the latter, as already indicated. But 
 a different tradition, perhaps an outgrowth of this lack of 
 providence and of the consequent growth of a policy of 
 “frightfulness,” may also come in for a share in the out- 
 come ; and there is also a characteristic difference in point 
 of religious convictions, which may go some way in the 
 same direction. The followers of Islam appear on the 
 whole to take the tenets of their faith at their face value 
 — servile, intolerant and fanatic — whereas the Russian 
 official class may perhaps without undue reproach be con- 
 sidered to have on the whole outlived the superstitious 
 conceits to which they yield an expedient pro forma ob- 
 servance. So that when worse comes to w'orst, and the 
 Turk finds himself at length with his back against the 
 last consolations of the faith that makes all things straight, 
 he has the assured knowledge that he is in the right as 
 against the unbelievers ; whereas the Russian bureaucrat 
 in a like case only knows that he is in the wrong. The 
 last extremity is a less conclusive argument to the man 
 in whose apprehension it is not the last extremity. Again, 
 there is some shadow of doubt falls on the question as 
 to which of these is more nearly in the German Imperial 
 spirit. 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 129 
 
 On the whole, the case of China is more to the point. 
 By and large, the people of China, more particularly the 
 people of the coastal-plains region, have for long habit- 
 ually lived under a regime of peace by non-resistance. 
 The peace has been broken transiently from time to 
 time, and local disturbances have not been infrequent ; 
 but, taken by and large, the situation has habitually been 
 of the peaceful order, on a ground of non-resisting sub- 
 mission. But this submission has not commonly been of 
 a whole-hearted kind, and it has also commonly been as- 
 sociated with a degree of persistent sabotage ; which has 
 clogged and retarded the administration of governmental 
 law and order, and has also been conducive to a large 
 measure of irresponsible official corruption. The habitual 
 scheme of things Chinese in this bearing may fairly be 
 described as a peace of non-resistance tempered with 
 sabotage and assassination. Such was the late Manchu 
 regime, and there is no reason in China for expecting a 
 substantially different outcome from the Japanese in- 
 vasion that is now under way. The nature of this Japan- 
 ese incursion should be sufficiently plain. It is an enter- 
 prise in statecraft after the order of Macchiavelli, Met- 
 ternich, and Bismarck. Of course, the conciliatory fables 
 given out by the diplomatic service, and by the other 
 apologists, are to be taken at the normal discount of 
 one-hundred percent. The relatively large current out- 
 put of such fables may afford a hint as to the magnitude 
 of the designs which the fables are intended to cover. 
 
 The Chinese people have had a more extended experi- 
 ence in peace of this order than all others, and their case 
 should accordingly be instructive beyond all others. Not 
 that a European peace by non-resistance need be ex- 
 pected to run very closely on the Chinese lines, but there 
 9 
 
130 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 should be a reasonable expectation that the large course 
 of things would be somewhat on the same order in both 
 cases. Neither the European traditions and habitual tem- 
 perament nor the modern state of the industrial arts will 
 permit one to look for anything like a close parallel in 
 detail ; but it remains true, when all is said, that the 
 Chinese experience of peace under submission to alien 
 masters affords the most instructive illustration of such 
 a regime, as touches its practicability, its methods, its 
 cultural value, and its effect on the fortunes of the sub- 
 ject peoples and of their masters. 
 
 Now, it may be said by way of preliminary generalisa- 
 tion that the life-history of the Chinese people and their 
 culture is altogether the most imposing achievement 
 which the records of mankind have to show ; whereas the 
 history of their successive alien establishments of mastery 
 and usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibily 
 shameful episodes, — always beginning in unbounded 
 power and vainglory, running by way of misrule, waste 
 and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in abject corrup- 
 tion and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation, 
 industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chi- 
 nese, and always have their alien masters contributed 
 nothing to the outcome but misrule, waste, corruption and 
 decay. And yet in the long run, with all this handicap and 
 misrule, the Chinese people have held their place and made 
 headway in those things to which men look with af- 
 fection and esteem when they come to take stock of what 
 things are worth while. It would be a hopeless task to 
 count up how many dynasties of masterful barbarians, 
 here and there, have meanwhile come up and played their 
 ephemeral role of vainglorious nuisance and gone under 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 131 
 
 in shame and confusion, and dismissed with the invariable 
 verdict of “Good Riddance !” 
 
 It may at first sight seem a singular conjuncture of cir- 
 cumstances, but it is doubtless a consequence of the same 
 conjuncture, that the Chinese people have also kept their 
 hold through all history on the Chinese lands. They 
 have lived and multiplied and continued to occupy the land, 
 while their successive alien masters have come and gone. 
 So that today, as the outcome of conquest, and of what 
 would be rated as defeat, the people continue to be 
 Chinese, with an unbroken pedigree as well as an unbroken 
 line of home-bred culture running through all the ages of 
 history. In the biological respect the Chinese plan of non- 
 resistance has proved eminently successful. 
 
 And, by the way, much the same, though not in the same 
 degree, is true for the Armenian people ; who have con- 
 tinued to hold their hill country through good days and 
 evil, apparently without serious or enduring reduction of 
 their numbers and without visible lapse into barbarism, 
 while the successive disconnected dynasties of their con- 
 quering rulers have come and gone, leaving nothing but 
 an ill name. “This fable teaches” that a diligent atten- 
 tion to the growing of crops and children is the sure and 
 appointed way to the maintenance of a people and its cul- 
 ture even under the most adverse conditions, and that 
 eventual death and shameful destruction inexorably wait 
 on any “ruling race.” Hitherto the rule has not failed. 
 The rule, indeed, is grounded in the heritable traits of 
 human nature, from which there is no escape. 
 
 For its long-term biological success, as well as for the 
 continued integrity of a people’s culture, a peace of non- 
 resistance, under good or evil auspices, is more to be de- 
 sired than imperial dominion. But these things are not 
 
132 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 all that modern peoples live for, perhaps it is safe to say 
 that in no case are these chief among the things for 
 which civilised Europeans are willing to live. They 
 urgently need also freedom to live their own life in their 
 own way, or rather to live within the bonds of convention 
 which they have come in for by use and wont, or at 
 least they believe that such freedom is essential to any 
 life that shall be quite worth while. So also they have 
 a felt need of security from arbitrary interference in their 
 pursuit of a livelihood and in the free control of their own 
 pecuniary concerns. And they want a discretionary 
 voice in the management of their joint interests, whether 
 as a nation or in a minor civil group. In short, they want 
 personal, pecuniary and political liberty, free from all 
 direction or inhibition from without. They are also 
 much concerned to maintain favorable economic condi- 
 tions for themselves and their children. And last, but 
 chiefly rather than least, they commonly are hide-bound 
 patriots inspired with an intractable felt need of national 
 prestige. 
 
 It is an assemblage of peoples in such a frame of mind 
 to whom the pacifists are proposing, in effect, a plan for 
 eventual submission to an alien dynasty, under the form 
 of a neutral peace compact to include the warlike Powers. 
 There is little likelihood of such a scheme being found 
 acceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does 
 in the countries concerned. And yet, if the brittle temper 
 in which any such proposal is rejected by popular opinion 
 in these countries today could be made to yield sufficient- 
 ly to reflection and deliberate appraisal, it is by no means 
 a foregone conclusion that its acceptance would not be the 
 best way out of a critical situation. The cost of disabling 
 and eliminating the warlike Power whose dominion is 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 133 
 
 feared, or even of staving off the day of surrender, is 
 evidently serious enough. The merits of the alternative 
 should be open to argument, and should, indeed, be allow- 
 ed due consideration. And any endeavour to present them 
 without heat should presumably find a hearing. It ap- 
 pears to have been much of the fault of the pacifists who 
 speak for the Peace League that they have failed or re- 
 fused to recognise these ulterior consequences of the plan 
 which they advocate; so that they appear either not to 
 know what they are talking about, or to avoid talking 
 about what they know. 
 
 It will be evident from beforehand that the grave dif- 
 ficulty to be met in any advocacy of peace on terms of 
 non-resistant subjection to an alien dynastic rule — “peace 
 at any price” — is a difficulty of the psychological order. 
 Whatever may be conceived to hold true for the Chinese 
 people, such submission is repugnant to the sentiments of 
 the Western peoples. Which in turn evidently is due to 
 the prevalence of certain habitual preconceptions among 
 modern civilised men, — certain acquired traits of temper 
 and bias, of the nature of fixed ideas. That something in 
 the way of a reasonably contented and useful life is pos- 
 sible under such a regime as is held in prospect, and even 
 some tolerable degree of well-being, is made evident in the 
 Chinese case. But the Chinese tolerance of such a regime 
 goes to argue that they are charged with fewer preconcep- 
 tions at variance with the exigencies of life under these 
 conditions. So, it is commonly accepted, and presumably 
 to be accepted, that the Chinese people at large have little 
 if any effectual sense of nationality; their patriotism ap- 
 pears to be nearly a negligible quantity. This would 
 appear to an outsider to have been their besetting weak- 
 ness, to which their successful subjection by various and 
 
134 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 sundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also 
 to have been the infirmity by grace of which this people 
 have been obliged to learn the ways of submission, and 
 so have had the fortune to outlive their alien masters, all 
 _and sundry, and to occupy the land and save the uncon- 
 '■aminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation. 
 
 Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of 
 patriotism that is held of so great account among Western 
 nations has already been set out in an earlier passage. 
 One or two points in the case, that bear on the argument 
 here, may profitably be recalled. The patriotic spirit, or 
 the tie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit, 
 whatever proclivity to the formation of such a habit 
 may be native to mankind. More particularly is it a mat- 
 ter of habit — it might even be called a matter of for- 
 tuitous habit — what particular national establishment a 
 given human subject will become attached to on reaching 
 what is called “years of discretion” and so becoming a 
 patriotic citizen. 
 
 The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it 
 may at least serve to suggest what may be the share play- 
 ed by habituation in the matter of national attachment. 
 The young clam, after having passed the free-swimming 
 phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment 
 to the person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bot- 
 tom and attaches himself loosely in the place and station 
 in life to which he has been led; and he loyally sticks to 
 his particular patch of oose and sand through good for- 
 tune and evil. It is, under Providence, something of a 
 fortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a 
 resting place for the sole of his foot, but it is also, 
 after all, “his own. his native land” etc. It lies in the 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 135 
 
 nature of a clam to attach himself after this fashion, 
 loosely, to the bottom where he finds a living, and he 
 would not be a “good clam and true” if he failed to do 
 so; but the particular spot for which he forms this at- 
 tachment is not of the essence of the case. At least, so 
 they say. 
 
 It may be, as good men appear to believe or know, that 
 all men of sound, or at least those of average, mind will 
 necessarily be of a patriotic temper and be attached by 
 ties of loyalty to some particular national establishment, 
 ordinarily the particular establishment which is formally 
 identified with the land in which they live ; although it 
 is always possible that a given individual may be an 
 alien in the land, and so may owe allegiance to and be 
 ruled by a patriotic attachment to another national estab- 
 lishment, to which the conventionalities governing his 
 special case have assigned him as his own proper nation. 
 The analogy of the clam evidently does not cover the 
 case. The patriotic citizen is attached to his own pro- 
 per nationality not altogether by the accident of domicile, 
 but rather by the conventions, legal or customary, which 
 assign him to this or that national establishment according 
 to certain principles of use and wont. 
 
 Mere legal citizenship or allegiance does not decide the 
 matter either ; at least not by any means unavoidably ; as 
 appears in the case of the Chinese subject under Manchu 
 or Japanese rule; and as appears perhaps more per- 
 spicuously in the case of the “hyphenate” American citi- 
 zen, whose formal allegiance is to the nation in whose 
 land he prefers to live, all the while that his patriotic af- 
 fection centers on his spiritual Fatherland in whose for- 
 tunes he has none but a non-resident interest. Indeed, 
 the particular national tie that will bind the affections — 
 
136 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that is to say the ef?ectual patriotic attachment — of any 
 given individual may turn out on closer scrutiny to be 
 neither that of domicile or of formal legal allegiance, nor 
 that of putative origin or pedigree, but only a reflex of 
 certain national animosities ; which may also turn out on 
 examination to rest on putative grounds — as illustrated 
 by a subsidiary class of hyphenate American citizens 
 whose affections have come to be bound up in the national 
 fortunes of one foreign Power for the simple, but suffici- 
 ent, reason that, on conventional grounds, they bear malice 
 against another equally foreign Power. 
 
 Evidently there is much sophistication, not to say con- 
 ventionalised affectation, in all this national attachment 
 and allegiance. It will perhaps not do to say that it is al- 
 together a matter of sophistication. Yet it may not exceed 
 the premises to say that the particular choice, the concrete 
 incidence, of this national attachment is in any given case 
 a matter of sophistication, largely tempered with fortuity. 
 One is born into a given nationality — or, in case of dynas- 
 tic allegiance, into service and devotion to a (fortuitously) 
 given sovereign— or at least so it is commonly believed. 
 Still one can without blame, and without excessive shame, 
 shift one’s allegiance on occasion. What is not counte- 
 nanced among civilised men is to shift out of allegiance to 
 any given nationality or dynasty without shifting into 
 the like complication of gainless obligations somewhere 
 else. Such a shifting of national or dynastic base is not 
 quite reputable, though it is also not precisely disrepu- 
 table. The difficulty in the case appears to be a moral dif- 
 ficulty, not a mental or a pecuniary one, and assuredly 
 not a physical difficulty, since the relation in question is 
 not a physical relation. It would appear to be of the 
 moral order of things, in that sense of the term in which 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 137 
 
 conventional proprieties are spoken of as moral. That 
 is to say, it is a question of conforming to current expecta- 
 tions under a code of conventional proprieties. Like much 
 of the conventional code of behavior this patriotic attach- 
 ment has the benefit of standardised decorum, and its out- 
 ward manifestations are enjoined by law. All of which 
 goes to show how very seriously the whole matter is re- 
 garded. 
 
 And yet it is also a matter of common notoriety that 
 large aggregates of men, not to speak of sporadic in- 
 dividuals, will on occasion shift their allegiance with the 
 most felicitous effect and with no sensible loss of self- 
 respect or of their good name. Such a shift is to be seen 
 in multiple in the German nation within the past half- 
 century, when, for instance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, 
 and even the Holsteiners in very appreciable numbers, 
 not to mention the subjects of minuscular principalities 
 whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, all be- 
 came good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the 
 Imperial dynasty, — good and loyal without reservation, as 
 has abundantly appeared. So likewise within a similar 
 period the inhabitants of the Southern States repudiated 
 their allegiance to the Union, putting in its place an 
 equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, 
 when the new national establishment slipped out from 
 under their feet they returned as whole-heartedly as need 
 be to their earlier allegiance. In each of these moves, taken 
 with deliberation, it is not to be doubted that this body 
 of citizens have been moved by an unimpeachable spirit of 
 patriotic honour. No one who is in any degree conversant 
 with the facts is likely to question the declaration that it 
 would be a perversion, not to say an inversion, of fact to 
 rate their patriotic devotion to the Union today lower 
 
138 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 than that of any other section of the country or any other 
 class or condition of men. 
 
 But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found 
 along the same general line of evidence touching this 
 sublimated sentiment of group solidarity that is called 
 nationalism. The nation, of course, is large ; the larger 
 the better, it is believed. It is so large, indeed, that con- 
 sidered as a group or community of men living together 
 it has no sensible degree of homogeneity in any of their 
 material circumstances or interests ; nor is anything more 
 than an inconsiderable fraction of the aggregate popula- 
 tion, territory, industry, or daily life known to any one 
 of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly 
 dubious hearsay. The one secure point on which there is 
 a (constructive) uniformity is the matter of national al- 
 legiance; which grows stronger and more confident with 
 every increase in aggregate mass and volume. It is also 
 not doubtful, e. g., that if the people of the British 
 Dominions in North America should choose to throw in 
 their national lot with the Union, all sections and classes, 
 except those whose pecuniary interest in a protective tariff 
 might be conceived to suffer, would presently welcome 
 them ; nor is it doubtful that American nationality would 
 cover the new and larger aggregate as readily as the old. 
 Much the same will hold true with respect to the other 
 countries colonised under British auspices. And there is 
 no conclusive reason for drawing the limit of admissible 
 national extension at that point. 
 
 So much, however, is fairly within the possibilities of 
 the calculable future; its realisation would turn in great 
 measure on the discontinuance of certain outworn or dis- 
 serviceable institutional arrangements ; as, e. g., the rem- 
 nants of a decayed monarchy, and the legally protected 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 139 
 
 vested interests of certain business enterprises and of cer- 
 tain office-holding classes. What more and farther might 
 practicably be undertaken in this way, in the absence of 
 marplot office-holders, office-seekers, sovereigns, priests 
 and monopolistic business concerns sheltered under na- 
 tional animosities and restraints of trade, would be some- 
 thing not easy to assign a limit to. All the minor neutrals, 
 that cluster about the North Sea, could unquestionably 
 be drawn into such a composite nationality, in the absence, 
 or with due disregard, of those classes, families and in- 
 dividuals whose pecuniary or invidious gain is dependent 
 on or furthered by the existing division of these peoples. 
 
 The projected defensive league of neutrals is, in effect, 
 an inchoate coalescence of the kind. Its purpose is the 
 safeguarding of the common peace and freedom, which is 
 also the avowed purpose and justification of all those 
 modem nations that have outlived the regime of dynas- 
 tic ambition and so of enterprise in dominion for domin- 
 ion’s sake, and have passed into the neutral phase of na- 
 tionality; or it should perhaps rather be said that such 
 is the end of endeavour and the warrant of existence and 
 power for these modern national establishments in so far 
 as they have outlived and repudiated such ambitions of 
 a dynastic or a quasi-dynastic order, and so have taken 
 their place as intrinsically neutral commonwealths. 
 
 It is only in the common defense (or in the defense of 
 the like conditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) 
 that the citizens of such a commonwealth can without 
 shame entertain or put in evidence a spirit of patriotic 
 solidarity ; and it is only by specious and sophistical ap- 
 peal to the national honour — a conceit surviving out of 
 the dynastic past — that the populace of such a common- 
 wealth can be stirred to anything beyond a defense of 
 
140 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 their own proper liberties or the liberties of like-minded 
 men elsewhere, in so far as they are not still imbued with 
 something of the dynastic animus and the chauvinistic 
 animosities which they have formally repudiated in re- 
 pudiating the feudalistic principles of the dynastic State. 
 
 The “nation,” without the bond of dynastic loyalty, is 
 after all a make-shift idea, an episodic half-way station 
 in the sequence, and loyalty, in any proper sense, to the 
 nation as such is so much of a make-believe, that in the 
 absence of a common defense to be safeguarded any such 
 patriotic conceit must lose popular assurance and, with 
 the passing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance 
 as an archaic affectation. The pressure of danger from 
 without is necessary to keep the national spirit alert and 
 stubborn, in case the pressure from within, that comes 
 of dynastic usufruct working for dominion, has been with- 
 drawn. With further extension of the national bounda- 
 ries, such that the danger of gratuitous infraction from 
 without grows constantly less menacing, while the tradi- 
 tional regime of international animosities falls more and 
 more remotely into the background, the spirit of nation- 
 alism is fairly on the way to obsolescence through dis- 
 use. In other words, the nation, as a commonwealth, 
 being a partisan organisation for a defensive purpose, be- 
 comes functa officio in respect of its nationalism and its 
 patriotic ties in somewhat the same measure as the na- 
 tional coalition grows to such a size that partisanship is 
 displaced by a cosmopolitan security. 
 
 Doubtless the falling into abeyance through disuse of 
 so pleasing a virtue as patriotic devotion will seem an 
 impossibly distasteful consummation; and about tastes 
 there is no disputing, but tastes are mainly creations of 
 habit. Except for tlie disquieting name of the thing, there 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 141 
 
 is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order 
 of human intercourse unobtrusively displacing national 
 allegiance ; except for vested interests in national offices 
 and international discriminations, and except for those 
 peoples among whom national life still is sufficiently 
 bound up with dynastic ambition. 
 
 In an earlier passage the patriotic spirit has been de- 
 fined as a sense of partisan solidarity in point of pres- 
 tige, and sufficient argument has been spent in confirming 
 the definition and showing its implications. With the 
 passing of all occasion for a partisan spirit as touches the 
 common good, through coalescence of the parts between 
 which partisan discrepancies have hitherto been kept up, 
 there would also have passed all legitimate occasion for 
 or provocation to an intoxication of invidious prestige 
 on national lines, — and there is no prestige that is not of 
 an invidious nature, that being, indeed, the whole of its 
 nature. He would have to be a person of praeternatural 
 patriotic sensibilities who could fall into an emotional 
 state by reason of the national prestige of such a coali- 
 tion commonwealth as would be made up, e. g., of the 
 French and English-speaking peoples, together with those 
 other neutrally and peaceably inclined European com- 
 munities that are of a sufficiently mature order to have 
 abjured dynastic ambitions of dominion, and perhaps 
 including the Chinese people as well. Such a coalition 
 may now fairly be said to be within speaking distance, 
 and with its consummation, even in the inchoate shape of 
 a defensive league of neutrals, the eventual abeyance of 
 that national allegiance and national honour that bulks so 
 large in the repertory of current eloquence would also 
 come in prospect. 
 
142 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 All this is by no means saying that love of country, and 
 of use and wont as it runs in one’s home area and among 
 one’s own people, would suffer decay, or even abatement. 
 The provocation to nostalgia would presumably be as good 
 as ever. It is even conceivable that under such a (contem- 
 plated) regime of unconditional security, attachment to 
 one’s own habitat and social circumstances might grow to 
 something more than is commonly seen in the precarious 
 situation in which the chances of a quiet life are placed 
 today. But nostalgia is not a bellicose distemper, nor 
 does it make for gratuitous disturbance of peaceable alien 
 peoples ; neither is it the spirit in which men lend them- 
 selves to warlike enterprise looking to profitless dominion 
 abroad. Men make patriotic sacrifices of life and sub- 
 stance in spite of home-sickness rather than by virtue of it. 
 
 The aim of this long digression has been to show that 
 patriotism, of that bellicose kind that seeks satisfaction in 
 inflicting damage and discomfort on the people of other 
 nations, is not of the essence of human life ; that it is of 
 the nature of habit, induced by circumstances in the past 
 and handed on by tradition and institutional arrangements 
 into the present ; and that men can, without mutilation, 
 'divest themselves of it, or perhaps rather be divested of 
 it by force of circumstances which will set the current 
 of habituation the contrary way. 
 
 The change of habituation necessary to bring about such 
 a decay of the bellicose national spirit would appear to 
 be of a negative order, at least in the main. It would 
 be an habitvation to unconditional peace and security; in 
 other words, to the absence of provocation, rather than 
 a coercive training away from the bellicose temper. This 
 bellicose temper, as it affects men collectively, appears to 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 143 
 
 be an acquired trait ; and it should logically disappear in 
 time in the absence of those conditions by impact of which 
 it has been acquired. Such obsolescence of patriotism, 
 however, would not therefore come about abruptly or 
 swiftly, since the patriotic spirit has by past use and 
 wont, and by past indoctrination, been so thoroughly 
 worked into the texture of the institutional fabric and into 
 the commonsense taste and morality, that its effectual 
 obsolescence will involve a somewhat comprehensive dis- 
 placement and mutation throughout the range of insti- 
 tutions and popular conceits that have been handed down. 
 And institutional changes take time, being creations of 
 habit. Yet, again, there is the qualification to this last, 
 that since the change in question appears to be a matter, 
 not of acquiring a habit and confirming it in the shape 
 of an article of general use and wont, but of forgetting 
 what once was learned, the time and experience to be 
 allowed for its decay need logically not equal that required 
 for its acquirement, either in point of duration or in point 
 of the strictness of discipline necessary to inculcate it. 
 
 While the spirit of nationalism is such an acquired 
 trait, and while it should therefore follow that the chief 
 agency in divesting men of it must be disuse of the dis- 
 cipline out of which it has arisen, yet a positive, and even 
 something of a drastic discipline to the contrary effect 
 need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about its 
 obsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to 
 argue something of the sort. Not that the Chinese are 
 simply and neutrally unpatriotic; they appear also to be 
 well charged with disloyalty to their alien rulers. But 
 along with a sense of being on the defensive in their 
 common concerns, there is also the fact that they appear 
 not to be appreciably patriotic in the proper sense ; they 
 
144 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 are not greatly moved by a spirit of nationality. And 
 this failure of the national spirit among them can scarcely 
 be set down to a neutral disuse of that discipline which 
 has on the other hand induced a militant nationalism in 
 the peoples of Christendom; it should seem more prob- 
 able. at least, that this relative absence of a national am- 
 bition is traceable in good part to its having been posi- 
 tively bred out of them by the stern repression of all such 
 aspirations under the autocratic rule of their alien masters. 
 
 Peace on terms of submission and non-resistance to 
 the ordinary exactions and rulings of those Imperial au- 
 thorities to whom such submission may become neces- 
 sary, then, will be contingent on the virtual abeyance of 
 the spirit of national pride in the peoples who so are to 
 come under Imperial rule. A sufficient, by no means nec- 
 essarily a total, elimination or decadence of this proclivity 
 will be the condition precedent of any practicable scheme 
 for a general peace on this footing. How large an allow- 
 ance of such animus these prospectively subject peoples 
 might still carry, without thereby assuring the defeat of 
 any such plan, would in great measure depend on the 
 degree of clemency or rigor with which the superior au- 
 thority might enforce its rule. It is not that a peace 
 plan of this nature need precisely be considered to fall 
 outside the limits of possibility, on account of this neces- 
 sary condition, but it is at the best a manifestly doubtful 
 matter. Advocates of a negotiated peace should not fail 
 to keep in mind and make public that the plan which they 
 advocate carries with it, as a sequel or secondary phase, 
 such an unconditional surrender and a consequent regime 
 of non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt 
 whether the peoples of these Western nations are at pres- 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 145 
 
 ent in a sufnciently tolerant frame of mind, or can in the 
 calculable future come in for such a tolerantly neutral 
 attitude in point of national pride, as to submit in any 
 passable fashion to any alien Imperial rule. 
 
 If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent 
 spirit of national pride — sufficiently stubborn still, how- 
 ever inane a conceit it may seem on sober reflection — if 
 this animus of factional insubordination could be over- 
 come or in some passable measure be conciliated or abated, 
 there is much to be said in favor of such a plan of peace- 
 able submission to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, 
 and therefore also for that plan of negotiated peace by 
 means of which events would be put in train for its real- 
 isation. 
 
 Any passably dispassionate consideration of the pro- 
 jected regime will come unavoidably to the conclusion that 
 the prospectively subject peoples should have no legiti- 
 mate apprehension of loss or disadvantage in the material 
 respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflecting person to 
 jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power 
 must bring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and 
 similar impositions. But reflection will immediately show 
 that no appreciable increase, over the economic burdens 
 already carried by the populace under their several na- 
 tional establishments, could come of such a move. 
 
 As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind 
 that the contemplated imperial dominion is designed to 
 be very wide-reaching and with very ample powers. Its 
 nearest historical analogue, of course, is the Roman impe- 
 rial dominion — in the days of the Antonines — and that 
 the nearest analogue to the projected German peace is 
 the Roman peace, in the days of its best security. There 
 is every warrant for the presumption that the contem- 
 
 lO 
 
146 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 plated Imperial dominion is to be substantially all-inclu- 
 sive. Indeed there is no stopping place for the projected 
 enterprise short of an all-inclusive dominion. And there 
 will consequently be no really menacing outside power to 
 be provided against. Consequently there will be but little 
 provision necessary for the common defense, as com- 
 pared, e. g., with the aggregate of such provision found 
 necessary for self-defense on the part of the existing na- 
 tions acting in severalty and each jealously guarding its 
 own national integrity. Indeed, compared with the bur- 
 den of competitive armament to which the peoples of 
 Europe have been accustomed, the need of any armed 
 force under the new regime should be an inconsiderable 
 matter, even when there is added to the necessary modi- 
 cum of defensive preparation the more imperative and 
 weightier provision of force with which to keep the 
 peace at home. 
 
 Into the composition of this necessary modicum of 
 armed force slight if any contingents of men would be 
 drawn from the subject peoples, for the reason that no 
 great numbers would be needed; as also because no 
 devoted loyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked 
 for among them, even if no positive insecurity were felt 
 to be involved in their employment. On this head the 
 projected scheme unambiguously commends itself as a 
 measure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary bur- 
 dens demanded and as regards the personal annoyance 
 of military service. 
 
 As a further count, it is to be presumed that the bur- 
 den of the Imperial government and its bureaucratic ad- 
 ministration — what would be called the cost of main- 
 tenance and repairs of the dynastic establishment and its 
 apparatus of control — would be borne by the subject peo- 
 ples. Here again one is warranted in looking for a sub- 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 147 
 
 stantial economy to be efifected by such a centralised 
 authority, and a consequent lighter aggregate burden on 
 the subjects. Doubtless, the “overhead charges” would 
 not be reduced to their practicable minimum. Such a 
 governmental establishment, with its bureaucratic person- 
 nel, its “civil list” and its privileged classes, would not be 
 conducted on anything like a parsimonious footing. There 
 is no reason to apprehend any touch of modesty in the 
 exactions of such a dynastic establishment for itself or 
 in behalf of its underlying hierarchy of gentlefolk. 
 
 There is also to be counted in, in the concrete instance 
 on which the argument here turns, a more or less con- 
 siderable burden of contributions toward the maintenance 
 and augmentation of that culture that has been the topic 
 of so many encomiums. At this point it should be recalled 
 that it is the pattern of Periclean Athens that is continu- 
 ally in mind in these encomiums. Which brings up, in 
 this immediate connection, the dealings of Periclean 
 Athens with the funds of the League, and the source as 
 well as the destination of these surplus funds. Out of 
 it all came the works on the Acropolis, together with 
 much else of intellectual and artistic life that converged 
 upon and radiated from this Athenian center of culture. 
 The vista of Denkmdler that so opens to the vision of a 
 courageous fancy is in itself such a substance of things 
 hoped for as should stir the heart of all humane persons.^ 
 The cost of this subvention of Culture would doubtless 
 be appreciable, but those grave men who have spent most 
 thought on this prospective cultural gain to be had from 
 the projected Imperial rule appear to entertain no doubt 
 as to its being worth all that it would cost. 
 
 Wenk ’malt 
 
148 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Any one who is inclined to rate the prospective pecu- 
 niary costs and losses high would doubtless be able to find 
 various and sundry items of minor importance to add to 
 this short list of general categories on the side of cost; 
 but such additional items, not fairly to be included under 
 these general captions, would after all be of minor im- 
 portance, in the aggregate or in detail, and would not 
 appreciably affect the grand balance of pecuniary profit 
 and loss to be taken account of in any appraisal of the 
 projected Imperial regime. There should evidently be 
 little ground to apprehend that its installation would en- 
 tail a net loss or a net increase of pecuniary burdens. 
 There is, of course, the ill-defined and scarcely definable 
 item of expenditure under the general head of Gentility, 
 Dignity, Distinction, Magnificence, or whatever term may 
 seem suitable to designate that consumption of goods and 
 services that goes to maintain the high repute of the Court 
 and to keep the underlying gentlefolk in countenance. In 
 its pecuniary incidence this line of (necessary) expen- 
 diture belongs under the rubric of Conspicuous Waste ; 
 and one will always have to face the disquieting flexibility 
 of this item of expenditure. The consumptive demand of 
 this kind is in an eminent degree “indefinitely extensible,’’ 
 as the phrasing of the economists would have it, and as 
 various historical instances of courtly splendor and fash- 
 ionable magnificence will abundantly substantiate. There 
 is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional 
 “standard of living’’ to the limit set by the available 
 means ; and yet these conventional necessities will ordi- 
 narily not, in the aggregate, take up all the available 
 means ; although now and again, as under the Ancien 
 Regime, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the standard of 
 splendid living may also exceed the current means in 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 149 
 
 hand and lead to impoverishment of the underlying com- 
 munity. 
 
 An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexi- 
 bility of the conventional standard of living and of pe- 
 cuniary magnificence can not be gone into here. In the 
 case under consideration it will have to be left as an inde- 
 terminate but considerable item in the burden of cost 
 which the projected Imperial rule may be counted on to 
 impose on the underlying peoples. The cost of the Im- 
 perial court, nobility, and civil service, therefore, would 
 be a matter of estimate, on which no close agreement 
 would be expected ; and yet, here as in an earlier connec- 
 tion, it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dig- 
 nity and magnificence could be put in evidence by such 
 a large-scale establishment at a lower aggregate cost than 
 the aggregate of expenditures previously incurred for the 
 like ends by various nations working in severalty and at 
 cross purposes. 
 
 Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this 
 production of dignity by means of a lavish expenditure on 
 superfluities, to believe that the same principle of economy 
 should apply here as was found applicable in the matter 
 of armament for defense. With the installation of a col- 
 lective national establishment, to include substantially all 
 the previously competing nations, the need of defensive 
 armament should in all reason decline to something very- 
 inconsiderable indeed. But it would be hasty to conclude 
 that with the coalescence of these nations under one para- 
 mount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige 
 for this resulting central establishment by the consump- 
 tion of decorative superfluities would likewise decline. 
 The need of such dignity and magnificence is only in part, 
 perhaps a minor part, of a defensive character. For the 
 
150 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 greater part, no doubt, the motive to this conspicuously 
 wasteful consumption is personal vanity, in Imperial pol- 
 icy as well as in the private life of fashion, — or perhaps 
 one should more deferentially say that it is a certain range 
 of considerations which would be identified as personal 
 vanity in case they were met with among men beneath 
 the Imperial level. And so far as the creation of this form 
 of “good-will” by this manner of advertising is traceable 
 to such, or equivalent, motives of a personal incidence, 
 the provocation to economy along this line would presum- 
 ably not be a notable factor in the case. And one returns 
 perforce to the principle already spoken of above, that the 
 consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely exten- 
 sible, with the resulting inference tliat nothing conclusive 
 is to be said as to the prospective magnitude of this item 
 in the Imperial bill of expense, or of the consequent pe- 
 cuniary burdens which it would impose on the underlying 
 peoples. 
 
 So far the'argument has run on the pecuniary incidence 
 of this projected Imperial dominion as it falls on the 
 underlying community as a whole, with no attempt to dis- 
 criminate between the divergent interests of the different 
 classes and conditions of men that go to make up any 
 modern community. The question in hand is a question 
 of pecuniary burdens, and therefore of the pecuniary in- 
 terests of these several distinguishable classes or condi- 
 tions of men. In all these modern nations that now stand 
 in the article of decision between peace by submission 
 or a doubtful and melancholy alternative, — in all of them 
 men are by statute and custom inviolably equal before 
 the law, of course ; they are ungraded and masterless men 
 before the law. But these same peoples are also alike 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 151 
 
 in the respect that pecuniary duties and obligations among 
 them are similarly sacred and inviolable under the dis- 
 passionate findings of the law. This pecuniary equality 
 is, in effect, an impersonal equality between pecuniary 
 magnitudes ; from which it follows that these citizens of 
 the advanced nations are not ungraded men in the pe- 
 cuniary respect ; nor are they masterless, in so far as a 
 greater pecuniary force will always, under this impersonal 
 equality of the law, stand in a relation of mastery toward 
 a lesser one. 
 
 Class distinctions, except pecuniary distinctions, have 
 fallen away. But all these modern nations are made up 
 of pecuniary classes, differing from one another by minute 
 gradations in the marginal cases, but falling, after all, 
 and in the large, into two broadly and securely distin- 
 guishable pecuniary categories : those who have more and 
 those who have less. Statisticians have been at pains to 
 ascertain that a relatively very small numerical minority 
 of the citizens in these modern nations own all but a rel- 
 atively very small proportion of the aggregate wealth in 
 the country. So that it appears quite safe to say that in 
 such a country as America, e. g., something less than ten 
 percent of the inhabitants own something more than ninety 
 percent of the country’s wealth. It would scarcely be a 
 wild overstraining of its practical meaning to say that 
 this population is made up of two classes : those who own 
 the country’s wealth, and those who do not. In strict ac- 
 curacy, as before the law, this characterisation will not 
 hold ; whereas in practical effect, it is a sufficiently close 
 approximation. This latter class, who have substantially 
 no other than a fancied pecuniary interest in the nation’s 
 material fortunes, are the category often spoken of as 
 The Common Man. It is not necessary, nor is it desired. 
 
152 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 to find a corresponding designation for the other cate- 
 gory, those who own. 
 
 The articulate recognition of this division into con- 
 trasted pecuniary classes or conditions, with correspond- 
 ingly (at least potentially) divergent pecuniary interests, 
 need imply no degree of approval or disapproval of the 
 arrangement which is so recognised. The recognition of 
 it is necessary to a perspicuous control of the argument, 
 as bears on the possible systematic and inherent discrep- 
 ancy among these men in respect of their material inter- 
 ests under the projected Imperial rule. Substantially, it 
 is a distinction between those who have and those who 
 have not, and in a question of prospective pecuniary loss 
 the man who has nothing to lose is differently placed from 
 the one who has. It would perhaps seem flippant, and 
 possibly lacking in the courtesy due one’s prospective lord 
 paramount, to say with the poet, Cantabit vacuus coram 
 latrone viator. 
 
 But the whole case is not so simple. It is only so long 
 as the projected pecuniary inroad is conceived as a simple 
 sequestration of wealth in hand, that such a characterisa- 
 tion can be made to serv^e. The Imperial aim is not a 
 passing act of pillage, but a perpetual usufruct; and the 
 whole question takes on a different and more complex 
 shape when it so touches the enduring conditions of life 
 and livelihood. The citizen who has nothing, or who has 
 no capitalisable source of unearned income, yet has a 
 pecuniary interest in a livelihood to be gained from day 
 to day, and he is yet vulnerable in the pecuniary respect 
 in that his livelihood may with the utmost facility be laid 
 under contribution by various and sundry well-tried con- 
 trivances. Indeed, the common man who depends for his 
 livelihood on his daily earnings is in a more immediately 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 153 
 
 precarious position than those who have something appre- 
 ciable laid up against a rainy day, in the shape of a cap- 
 italised source of income. Only that it is still doubtful 
 if his position is precarious in such a fashion as to lay 
 him open to a notable increase of hardship, or to loss 
 of the amenities of life, in the same relative degree as his 
 well-to-do neighbour. 
 
 In point of fact it may well be doubted if this common 
 man has anything to apprehend in the way of added hard- 
 ship or loss of creature comforts under the contemplated 
 regime of Imperial tutelage.. He would presum.ably find 
 himself in a precarious case under the arbitrary and irre- 
 sponsible authority of an alien master working through an 
 alien master class. The doubt which presents itself is as 
 to whether this common man would be more precariously 
 placed, or would come in for a larger and surer sum of 
 hard usage and scant living, under this projected order 
 of things, than what he already is exposed to in his pe- 
 cuniary relations with his well-to-do compatriots under 
 the current system of law and order. 
 
 Under this current regime of law and order, according 
 to the equitable principles of Natural Rights, the man 
 without means has no pecuniary rights which his well- 
 to-do pecuniary master is bound to respect. This may 
 have been an unintended, as it doubtless was an unfore- 
 seen, outcome of the move out of feudalism and prescrip- 
 tive rights and immunities, into the system of individual 
 liberty and manhood franchise; but as commonly hap- 
 pens in case of any substantial change in the scheme of 
 institutional arrangements, unforeseen consequences come 
 in along with those that have been intended. In that 
 period of history when Western Europe was gathering 
 that experience out of which the current habitual scheme 
 
154 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of law and order has come, the right of property and free 
 contract was a complement and safeguard to that indi- 
 vidual initiative and masterless equality of men for which 
 the spokesmen of the new era contended. That it is no 
 longer so at every turn, or even in the main, in later time, 
 is in great part due to changes of the pecuniary order, 
 that have come on since then, and that seem not to have 
 cast their shadow before. 
 
 In all good faith, and with none but inconsequential 
 reservations, the material fortunes of modern civilised 
 men — together with much else — have so been placed on a 
 pecuniary footing, with little to safeguard them at any 
 point except the inalienable right of pecuniary self-direc- 
 tion and initiative, in an environment where virtually all 
 the indispensable means of pecuniary self-direction and 
 initiative are in the hands of that contracted category of 
 owners spoken of above. A numerical minority — under 
 ten percent of the population — constitutes a conclusive 
 pecuniary majority — over ninety percent of the means — 
 under a system of law and order that turns on the in- 
 alienable right of owners to dispose of the means in hand 
 as may suit their convenience and profit, — always barring 
 recourse to illegal force or fraud. There is, however, a 
 very appreciable margin of legal recourse to force and 
 of legally protected fraud available in case of need. Of 
 course the expedients here referred to as legally available 
 force and fraud in the defense of pecuniary rights and 
 the pursuit of pecuniary gain are not force and fraud de 
 jure but only de facto. They are further, and well known, 
 illustrations of how the ulterior consequences of given 
 institutional arrangements and given conventionalised 
 principles (habits of thought) of conduct may in time 
 come to run at cross purposes with the initial pui-pose 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 155 
 
 that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to th 
 confirmation and standardisation of these habitual norms 
 of conduct. For the time being, however, they are “fund- 
 amentally and eternally right and good.” 
 
 Being a pecuniary majority — what may be called a 
 majority of the corporate stock — of the nation, it is also 
 fundamentally and eternally right and good that the pe- 
 cuniary interests of the owners of the material means of 
 life should rule unabated in all those matters of public 
 policy that touch on the material fortunes of the com- 
 munity at large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter 
 of discontent, this arrangement has also the cordial ap- 
 proval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic 
 nations. One need only recall the paramount importance 
 which is popularly attached to the maintenance and ex- 
 tension of the nation’s trade — for the use of the investors 
 — or the perpetuation of a protective tariff — for the use 
 of the protected business concerns — or, again, the scrupu- 
 lous regard with which such a body of public servants as 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission will safeguard the 
 legitimate claim of the railway companies to a “reason- 
 able” rate of earnings on the capitalised value of the 
 presumed earning-capacity of their property. 
 
 Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with 
 which it is here necessary to speak of these delicate mat- 
 ters, it may be in place to disclaim all intention to criticise 
 the established arrangements on their merits as details of 
 public policy. All that comes in question here, touching 
 these and the like features of the established law and 
 order, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes 
 of the common man under the current regime, as con- 
 trasted with what he would reasonably have to look for 
 
156 
 
 On the Mature of Peace 
 
 under the projected regime of Imperial tutelage that 
 would come in, consequent upon this national surrender 
 to Imperial dominion. 
 
 In these democratic countries public policy is guided 
 primarily by considerations of business expediency, and 
 the administration, as well as the legislative power, is in 
 the hands of businessmen, chosen avowedly on the ground 
 of their businesslike principles and ability. There is no 
 power in such a community that can over-rule the exigen- 
 cies of business, nor would popular sentiment countenance 
 any exercise of power that should traverse these exigen- 
 cies, or that would act to restrain trade or discourage the 
 pursuit of gain. An apparent exception to the rule occurs 
 in wartime, when military exigencies may over-rule the 
 current demands of business traffic; but the exception is 
 in great part only apparent, in that the warlike operations 
 are undertaken in whole or in part with a view to the 
 protection or extension of business traffic. 
 
 National surveillance and regulation of business traffic 
 in these countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as 
 the modern democratic order of things has taken effect, 
 has uniformly been of the nature of interference with 
 trade and investment in behalf of the nation’s mercantile 
 community at large, as seen in port and shipping regula- 
 tions and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular 
 favored groups or classes of business concerns, as in pro- 
 tective tariffs and subsidies. In all this national manage- 
 ment of pecuniary affairs, under modern democratic prin- 
 ciples, the common man comes into the case only as raw 
 material of business traffic, — as consumer or as laborer. 
 He is one of the industrial agencies by use of which the 
 businessman who employs him supplies himself with 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 157 
 
 goods for the market, or he is one of the units of con- 
 sumptive demand that make up this market in which the 
 business man sells his goods, and so “realises” on his in- 
 vestment. He is, of course, free, under modern principles 
 of the democratic order, to deal or not to deal with this 
 business community, whether as laborer or as consumer, 
 or as small-scale producer engaged in purveying materials 
 or services on terms defined by the community of business 
 interests engaged on so large a scale as to count in their 
 determination. That is to say, he is free de jure to take 
 or leave the terms offered. De facto he is only free to 
 take them — with inconsequential exceptions — the alterna- 
 tive being obsolescence by disuse, not to choose a harsher 
 name for a distasteful eventuality. 
 
 The general ground on which the business system, as 
 it works under the over-ruling exigencies of the so-called 
 “big business,” so defines the terms of life for the com- 
 mon man, who works and buys, is the ground afforded 
 by the principle of “charging what the traffic will bear;” 
 that is to say, fixing the terms of hiring, buying and selling 
 at such a figure as will yield the largest net return to the 
 business concerns in whom, collectively or in severalty, 
 the discretion vests. Discretion in these premises does not 
 vest in any business concern that does not articulate with 
 the system of “big business,” or that does not dispose of 
 resources sufficient to make it a formidable member of 
 the system. Whether these concerns act in severalty or 
 by collusion and conspiracy, in so defining the pecuniary 
 terms of life for the community at large, is substantially 
 an idle question, so far as bears on the material interest 
 of the common man. The base-line is still what the traffic 
 will bear, and it is still adhered to, so nearly as the human 
 infirmity of the discretionary captains of industry will 
 
158 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 admit, whether the due approximation to this base-line 
 is reached by a process of competitive bidding or by col- 
 lusive advisement. 
 
 The generalisation so offered, touching the material 
 conditions of life for the common man under the modem 
 mle of big business, may seem unwarrantably broad. 
 It may be worth while to take note of more than one point 
 in qualification of it, chiefly to avoid the appearance of 
 having overlooked any of the material circumstances of 
 the case. The “system’’ of large business, working its 
 material consequences through the system of large-scale 
 industry, but more particularly by way of the large-scale 
 and wide-reaching business of trade in the proper sense, 
 draws into the net of its control all parts of the com- 
 munity and all its inhabitants, in some degree of depend- 
 ence. But there is always, hitherto, an appreciable frac- 
 tion of the inhabitants — as, e. g., outlying agricultural 
 sections that are in a “backward” state — who are by no 
 means closely bound in the orderly system of business, 
 or closely dependent on the markets. They may be said 
 to enjoy a degree of independence, by virtue of their 
 foregoing as much as may be of the advantages offered by 
 modem industrial specialisation. So also there are the 
 minor and interstitial trades that are still carried on by 
 handicraft methods ; these, too, are still somewhat loosely 
 held in the fabric of the business system. There is one 
 thing and another in this way to be taken account of in 
 any exhaustive survey, but the accounting for them will 
 after all amount to nothing better than a gleaning of 
 remnants and partial exceptions, such as will in no ma- 
 terial degree derange the general proposition in hand. 
 
 Again, there mns through the length and breadth of 
 this business community a certain measure of incom- 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 159 
 
 petence or inefficiency of managfement, as seen from the 
 point of view of the conceivable perfect working of the 
 system as a whole. It may be due to a slack attention 
 here and there ; or to the exigencies of business strategy 
 which may constrain given business concerns to an occa- 
 sional attitude of “watchful waiting” in the hope of catch- 
 ing a rival off his guard; or to a lack of perfect mutual 
 understanding among the discretionary businessmen, due 
 sometimes to an over-careful guarding of trade secrets 
 or advance information ; or, as also happens, and quite 
 excusably, to a lack of perfect mutual confidence among 
 these businessmen, as to one another’s entire good faith 
 or good-will. The system is after all a competitive one, 
 in the sense that each of the discretionary directors of 
 business is working for his own pecuniary gain, whether 
 in cooperation with his fellows or not. “An honest man 
 will bear watching.” As in other collusive organisations 
 for gain, confederates are apt to fall out when it comes to 
 a division of what is in hand. In one way and another 
 the system is beset with inherent infirmities, which hinder 
 its perfect work; and in so far it will fall short of the 
 full realisation of that rule of business that inculcates 
 charging what the traffic will bear, and also in so far 
 the pressure which the modem system of business man- 
 agement brings to bear on the common man will also fall 
 short of the last straw — perhaps even of the next-to-the- 
 last. Again it turns out to be a question not of the fail- 
 ure of the general proposition as formulated, but rather 
 as to the closeness of approximation to its theoretically 
 perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that 
 vigilant and impartial surveillance of this system of busi- 
 ness enterprise by an external authority interested only 
 in aggregate results, rather than in the differential gains 
 
160 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of the interested individuals, might hopefully be counted 
 on to correct some of these short-comings which the sys- 
 tem shows when running loose under the guidance of its 
 own multifarious incentives. 
 
 On the opposite side of the account, it is also worth 
 noting that, while modern business management may now 
 and again fall short of what the traffic will bear, it hap- 
 pens more commonly that its exactions will exceed that 
 limit. This will particularly be true in businessmen’s 
 dealings with hired labour, as also and perhaps with equal- 
 ly far-reaching consequences in an excessive recourse to 
 sophistications and adulterants and an excessively par- 
 simonious provision for the safety, health or comfort of 
 their customers — as, e. g., in passenger traffic by rail, 
 water or tramway. The discrepancy to which attention is 
 invited here is due to a discrepancy between business ex- 
 pediency, that is expediency for the purpose of gain by 
 a given businessman, on the one hand, and serviceability 
 to the common good, on the other hand. The business 
 concern’s interest in the traffic in which it engages is a 
 short-term interest, or an interest in the short-term re- 
 turns, as contrasted with the long-term or enduring inter- 
 est which the community at large has in the public serv- 
 ice over which any such given business concern disposes. 
 The business incentive is that afforded by the prospective 
 net pecuniary gain from the traffic, substantially an inter- 
 est in profitable sales ; while the community at large, or 
 the common man that goes to make up such a commu- 
 nity, has a material interest in this traffic only as regards 
 the services rendered and the enduring effects that follow 
 from it. 
 
 The businessman has not, or at least is commonly not 
 influenced by, any interest in the ulterior consequences 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 161 
 
 of the transactions in which he is immediately engaged. 
 This appears to hold true in an accentuated degree in the 
 domain of that large-scale business that draws its gains 
 from the large-scale modern industry and is managed 
 on the modern footing of corporation finance. This mod- 
 ern fashion of business organisation and management ap- 
 parently has led to a substantial shortening of the term 
 over which any given investor maintains an effective in- 
 terest in any given corporate enterprise, in which his 
 investments may be placed for the time being. With the 
 current practice of organising industrial and mercantile 
 enterprises on a basis of vendible securities, and with the 
 nearly complete exemption from personal responsibility 
 and enduring personal attachment to any one corporate en- 
 terprise which this financial expedient has brought, it has 
 come about that in the common run of cases the investor, 
 as well as the directorate, in any given enterprise, has an 
 interest only for the time being. The average term over 
 which it is (pecuniarily) incumbent on the modern busi- 
 nessman to take account of the working of any given 
 enterprise has shortened so far that the old-fashioned 
 accountability, that once was depended on to dictate a 
 sane and considerate management with a view to perma- 
 nent good-will, has in great measure become inoperative. 
 
 By and large, it seems unavoidable that the pecuniary 
 interests of the businessmen on the one hand and the 
 material interests of the community on the other hand 
 are diverging in a more and more pronounced degree, due 
 to institutional circumstances over which no prompt con- 
 trol can be had without immediate violation of that 
 scheme of personal rights in which the constitution of 
 modern democratic society is grounded. The quandary 
 in which these communities find themselves, as an out- 
 
 II 
 
162 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 come of their entrance upon “the simple and obvious 
 system of Natural Liberty,” is shown in a large and 
 instructive way by what is called “labor trouble,” and 
 in a more recondite but no less convincing fashion by the 
 fortunes of the individual workman under the modern 
 system. 
 
 The cost of production of a modern workman has con- 
 stantly increased, with the advance of the industrial arts. 
 The period of preparation, of education and training, 
 necessary to turn out competent workmen, has been in- 
 creasing; and the period of full workmanlike efficiency 
 has been shortening, in those industries that employ the 
 delicate and exacting processes of the modern technol- 
 ogy. The shortening of this working-life of the workman 
 is due both to a lengthening of the necessary period of 
 preparation, and to the demand of these processes for 
 so full a use of the workman’s forces that even the be- 
 ginning of senescence will count as a serious disability, 
 — in many occupations as a fatal disability. It is also 
 a well ascertained fact that effectual old age will be 
 brought on at an earlier period by overwork; overwork 
 shortens the working life-time of the workman. Thor- 
 ough speeding-up (“Scientific Management”?) will un- 
 duly shorten this working life-time, and so it may, some- 
 what readily, result in an uneconomical consumption of 
 the community’s man-power, by consuming the workmen 
 at a higher rate of speed, a higher pressure, with a more 
 rapid rate of deterioration, than would give the largest 
 net output of product per unit of man-power available, 
 or per unit of cost of production of such man-power. 
 
 On this head the guiding incentives of the businessman 
 and the material interest of the community at large — not 
 to speak of the selfish interest of the individual workman 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 163 
 
 i — are systematically at variance. The cost of production 
 of workmen does not fall on the business concern which 
 employs them, at least not in such definite fashion as to 
 make it appear that the given business concern or busi- 
 nessman has a material interest in the economical con- 
 sumption of the man-power embodied in this given body 
 of employees. Some slight and exceptional qualification 
 of this statement is to be noted, in those cases where the 
 processes in use are such as to require special training, 
 not to be had except by a working habituation to these 
 processes in the particular industrial plant in question. 
 So far as such special training, to be had only as em- 
 ployees of the given concern, is a necessary part of the 
 workman’s equipment for this particular work, so far 
 the given employer bears a share and an interest in the 
 cost of production of the workmen employed ; and so 
 far, therefore, the employer has also a pecuniary interest 
 in the economical use of his employees; which usually 
 shows itself in the way of some special precautions being 
 taken to prevent the departure of these workmen so long 
 as there is a clear pecuniary loss involved in replacing 
 them with men who have not yet had the special training 
 required. Evidently this qualifying consideration covers 
 no great proportion of the aggregate man-power con- 
 sumed in industrial enterprises under business manage- 
 ment. And apart from the instances, essentially excep- 
 tional, where such a special consideration comes in, the 
 businessmen in charge will, quite excusably as things go, 
 endeavour to consume the man-power of which they dis- 
 pose in the persons of their employees, not at the rate 
 that would be most economical to the community at large, 
 in view of the cost of their replacement, nor at such a 
 rate as would best suit the taste or the viability of the 
 
164 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 particular workman, but at such a rate as will yield the 
 largest net pecuniary gain to the employer. 
 
 There is on record an illustrative, and indeed an illus- 
 trious, instance of such cannily gainful consumption of 
 man-power carried out systematically and with consist- 
 ently profitable effect in one of the staple industries of the 
 country. In this typical, though exceptionally thorough- 
 going and lucrative enterprise, the set rule of the man- 
 agement was, to employ none but select workmen, in 
 each respective line of work; to procure such select 
 workmen and retain them by offering wages slightly over 
 the ordinary standard ; to work them at the highest pace 
 and pressure attainable with such a picked body; and 
 to discharge them on the first appearance of aging or of 
 failing powers. In the rules of the management was also 
 included the negative proviso that the concern assumed 
 no responsibility for the subsequent fortunes of dis- 
 charged workmen, in the way of pension, insurance or 
 the like. 
 
 This enterprise was highly successful and exceedingly 
 profitable, even beyond the high average of profits among 
 enterprises in the same line of business. Out of it came 
 one of the greater and more illustrious fortunes that 
 have been accumulated during the past century; a for- 
 tune which has enabled one of the most impressive and 
 most gracious of this generation’s many impressive phi- 
 lanthropists, never weary in well-doing ; but who, through 
 this cannily gainful consumption of man-power, has been 
 placed in the singular position of being unable, in spite 
 of avowedly unremitting endeavour, to push his con- 
 tinued disbursements in the service of humanity up to 
 the figure of his current income. The case in question 
 is one of the most meritoriovis known to the records of 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 165 
 
 modern business, and while it will conveniently serve to 
 illustrate many an other, and perhaps more consequential 
 truth come to realisation in the march of Triumphant 
 Democracy, it will also serve to show the gainfulness of 
 an unreservedly canny consumption of man-power with 
 an eye single to one’s own net gain in terms of money. 
 
 Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the 
 modern economic system where a sufficiently ruthless 
 outside authority, not actuated by a primary regard for 
 the pecuniary interests of the employers, might conceiv- 
 ably with good effect enforce a more economical con- 
 sumption of the country’s man-power. It is not a mat- 
 ter on which one prefers to dwell, but it can do no harm 
 to take note of the fact for once in a way, that these 
 several national establishments of the democratic order, 
 as they are now organised and administered, do some- 
 what uniformly and pervasively operate with an effectual 
 view to the advantage of a class, so far as may plaus- 
 ibly be done. They are controlled by and administered 
 in behalf of those elements of the population that, for the 
 purpose in hand, make up a single loose-knit class, — the 
 class that lives by income rather than by work. It may 
 be called the class of the business interests, or of cap- 
 ital, or of gentlemen. It all comes to much the same, for 
 the purpose in hand. 
 
 The point in speaking of this contingent whose place 
 in the economy of human affairs it is to consume, or to 
 own, or to pursue a margin of profit, is simply that of 
 contrasting this composite human contingent with the 
 common man; whose numbers account for some nine- 
 tenths or more of the community, while his class accounts 
 for something less than one-tenth of the invested wealth. 
 
166 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 and appreciably less than that proportion of the discre- 
 tionary national establishment, — the government, national 
 or local, courts, attorneys, civil service, diplomatic and 
 consular, military and naval. The arrangement may be 
 called a gentlemen’s government, if one would rather 
 have it that way ; but a gentleman is necessarily one who 
 lives on free income from invested wealth — without such 
 a source of free, that is to say unearned, income he be- 
 comes a decayed gentleman. Again, pushing the phras- 
 ing back a step farther toward the ground facts, there 
 are those who would spealc of the current establishments 
 as “capitalistic;” but this term is out of line in that it 
 fails to touch the human element in the case, and institu- 
 tions, such as governmental establishments and their func- 
 tioning, are after all nothing but the accustomed ways 
 and means of human behaviour; so that “capitalistic” 
 becomes a synonym for “businessmen’s” government so 
 soon as it is designated in terms of the driving incentives 
 and the personnel. It is an organisation had with a view 
 to the needs of business (i. e. pecuniary) enterprise, and 
 is made up of businessmen and gentlemen, which comes 
 to much the same, since a gentleman is only a business- 
 man in the second or some later generation. Except for 
 ''the slightly odious suggestion carried by the phrase, one 
 might aptly say that the gentleman, in this bearing, is 
 only a businessman gone to seed. 
 
 By and large, and taking the matter naively at the 
 simple face value of the material gain or loss involved, 
 it should seem something of an idle question to the com- 
 mon man whether his collective affairs are to be man- 
 aged by a home-bred line of businessmen and their suc- 
 cessive filial generations of gentlemen, with a view to 
 accelerate the veiocity and increase the volume of com- 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 167 
 
 petitive gain and competitive spending, on the one hand, 
 or by an alien line of officials, equally aloof from his 
 common interests, and managing affairs with a view to 
 the usufruct of his productive powers in furtherance of 
 the Imperial dominion. 
 
 Not that the good faith or the generous intentions of 
 these governments of gentlemen is questioned or is in 
 any degree questionable ; what is here spoken of is only 
 the practical effect of the policies which they pursue, 
 doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placed com- 
 placency. In effect, things being as they are today in 
 the civilised world’s industry and trade, it happens, as 
 in some sort an unintended but all-inclusive accident, that 
 the guidance of affairs by business principles works at 
 cross purposes with the material interests of the com- 
 mon man. 
 
 So ungraceful a view of the sacred core of this modern 
 democratic organisation will need whatever evidence can 
 be cited to keep it in countenance. Therefore indulgence 
 is desired for one further count in this distasteful recital 
 of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional scheme of civ- 
 ilised life. This count comes under the head of what 
 may be called capitalistic sabotage. “Sabotage” is em- 
 ployed to designate a wilful retardation, interruption or 
 obstruction of industry by peaceable, and ordinarily by 
 legally defensible, measures. In its present application, 
 particularly, there is no design to let the term denote or 
 insinuate a recourse to any expedients or any line of 
 conduct that is in any degree legally dubious, or that is 
 even of questionable legitimacy. 
 
 Sabotage so understood, as not comprising recourse 
 to force or fraud, is a necessary and staple expedient of 
 business management, and its employment is grounded in 
 
168 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the elementary and indefeasible rights of ownership. 
 It is simply that the businessman, like any other owner, 
 is vested with the right freely to use or not to use his 
 property for any given purpose. His decision, for rea- 
 sons of his own, not to employ the property at his dis- 
 posal in a particular way at a particular time, is well 
 and blamelessly within his legitimate discretion, under 
 the rights of property as universally accepted and de- 
 fended by modern nations. In the particular instance 
 of the American nation he is protected in this right by 
 a constitutional provision that he must not be deprived of 
 his property without due process of law. When the prop- 
 erty at his disposal is in the shape of industrial plant or 
 industrial material, means of transportation or stock of 
 goods awaiting distribution, then his decision not to em- 
 ploy this property, or to limit its use to something less 
 than full capacity, in the way for which it is adapted, be- 
 comes sabotage, nonnally and with negligible exceptions. 
 In so doing he hinders, retards or obstructs the working 
 of the country’s industrial forces by so much. It is a 
 matter of course and of absolute necessity to the con- 
 duct of business, that any discretionar}" businessman must 
 be free to deal or not to deal in any given case ; to limit 
 or to withhold the equipment under his control, without 
 reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, 
 in fact, has no other means by which to work out its 
 aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces 
 itself in the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage. 
 Under modern conditions of large business, particularly, 
 the relation of the discretionary businessman to industry 
 is that of authoritative permission and of authoritative 
 limitation or stoppage, and on his shrewd use of this 
 authority depends the gainfulness of his enterprise. 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 169 
 
 If this authority were exercised with an eye single to 
 the largest and most serviceable output of goods and 
 services, or to the most economical use of the country’s 
 material resources and man-power, regardless of pecun- 
 iary consequences, the course of management so carried 
 out would be not sabotage but industrial strategy. But 
 business is carried on for pecuniary gain, not with an 
 unreserved view to the largest and most serviceable out- 
 put or to the economical use of resources. The volume 
 and serviceability of the output must wait unreservedly 
 on the very particular pecuniary question of what quan- 
 tity and what degree of serviceability will yield the largest 
 net return in terms of price. Uneconomical use of equip- 
 ment, labor and resources is necessarily an everyday mat- 
 ter under these circumstances, as in the duplication of 
 plant and processes between rival concerns, and in the 
 wasteful use of all resources that do not involve ex- 
 penditure on the part of the given concern. 
 
 It has been the traditional dogma among economists 
 and publicists in these modern communities that free com- 
 petition between the businessmen in charge will inde- 
 feasibly act to bring the productiveness of industry to 
 the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most 
 unreserved and vigilant endeavour to serve the com- 
 munity’s material needs at all points. The reasons for 
 the failure of this genial expectation, particularly under 
 latterday business management, might be shown in some 
 detail, if that were needed to enforce the argument as it 
 runs in the present connection. But a summary indica- 
 tion of the commoner varieties and effects of sabotage 
 as it is systematically applied in the businesslike con- 
 duct of industry will serve the purpose as well and with 
 less waste of words and patience. 
 
170 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 It is usual to notice, and not unusual to deplore the 
 duplication of plant and appliances in many lines of in- 
 dustry, due to competitive management, as in factories 
 engaged in the same class of manufacture, in parallel 
 or otherwise competing railways and boat lines, in retail 
 merchandising, and in some degree also in the wholesale 
 trade. The result, of course, is sabotage; in the sense 
 that this volume of appliances, materials and workmen 
 are not employed to the best advantage for the com- 
 munity. One effect of the arrangement is an increased 
 necessary cost of the goods and services supplied by 
 these means. The reason for it is competition for gain 
 to be got from the traffic. That all this is an untoward 
 state of things is recognised on all hands; but no lively 
 regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is com- 
 monly recognised that under the circumstances there is 
 no help for it except at the cost of a more untoward 
 remedy. 
 
 The competitive system having been tried and found 
 good — or at least so it is assumed — it is felt that the 
 system will have to be accepted with the defects of its 
 qualities. Its characteristic qualities are held to be good, 
 acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits 
 of thought have been standardised in its terms; and it 
 would be only reluctantly and by tardy concession that 
 these modern men could bring themselves to give up that 
 scheme of “Natural Liberty” within the framework of 
 which runs this competitive system of business manage- 
 ment and its wasteful manifolding of half-idle equipment 
 and nugatory work. The common man, at the worst, 
 comforts himself and his neighbour with the sage reflec- 
 tion that “It might have been worse.” The businessmen, 
 on the other hand, have also begun to take note of this 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 171 
 
 systematic waste by duplication and consequent incom- 
 petence, and have taken counsel how to intercept the 
 waste and divert it to their own profit. The business- 
 men’s remedy is consolidation of competing concerns, and 
 monopoly control. 
 
 To the common man, with his preconceptions on the 
 head of “restraint of trade,” the proposed remedy seems 
 more vicious than the evil it is designed to cure. The 
 fault of the remedy plainly is not that the mismanage- 
 ment of affairs due to competitive business can not be 
 corrected by recourse to monopoly, but only that the 
 community, it is presumed, would still suffer all the bur- 
 dens and discomforts of the regime of competition and 
 sabotage, with, possibly, further inconveniences and im- 
 positions at the hands of the businesslike monopoly ; 
 which, men are agreed, may fairly be depended on to 
 use its advantage unsparingly under the business prin- 
 ciple of charging what the traffic will bear. 
 
 There is also this other singular phenomenon in this 
 modern industrial world, that something not very far 
 short of one-half the industrial equipment systematically 
 lies idle for something approaching one-half the time, 
 or is worked only to one-half its capacity half the time; 
 not because of competition between these several indus- 
 trial concerns, but because business conditions will not 
 allow its continued productive use; because the volume 
 of product that would be turned out if the equipment 
 were working uninterruptedly at its full capacity could 
 not be sold at remunerative prices. From time to time 
 one establishment and another will shut down during a 
 period of slack times, for the same reason. 
 
 This state of things is singular only as seen from the 
 point of view of the community’s material interest, not 
 
172 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that it is in any degree unfamiliar or that any serious 
 fault is found with the captains of industry for so shut- 
 ting off the industrial process and letting the industrial 
 equipment lie waste. As all men know, the exigencies of 
 business will not tolerate production to supply the com- 
 munity’s needs under these circumstances; although, as 
 is equally notorious, these slack times, when production 
 of goods is unadvisable on grounds of business expedi- 
 ency, are commonly times of wide-spread privation, 
 "hard times,” in the community at large, when the failure 
 of the supply is keenly felt. 
 
 It is not that the captains of industry are at fault in so 
 failing, or refusing, to supply the needs of the commu- 
 nity under these circumstances, but only that they are 
 helpless under the exigencies of business. They can not 
 supply the goods except for a price, indeed not except 
 for a remunerative price, a price which will add some- 
 thing to the capital values which they are venturing in 
 their various enterprises. So long as the exigencies of 
 price and of pecuniary gain rule the case, there is mani- 
 festly no escaping this enforced idleness of the country’s 
 productive forces. 
 
 It may not be out of place also to remark, by way of 
 parenthesis, that this highly productive state of the in- 
 dustrial arts, which is embodied in the industrial plant 
 and processes that so are systematically and advisedly 
 retarded or arrested under the rule of business, is at the 
 same time the particular pride of civilised men and the 
 most tangible achievement of the civilised world. 
 
 A conservative estimate of this one item of capitalistic 
 sabotage could scarcely appraise it at less than a twenty- 
 five percent reduction from the normally possible pro- 
 ductive capacity of the community, at an average over 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 173 
 
 any considerable period; and a somewhat thorough re- 
 view of the pertinent facts would probably persuade 
 any impartial observer that, one year with another, such 
 businesslike enforced idleness of plant and personnel 
 lowers the actual output of the country’s industry by 
 something nearer fifty percent of its ordinary capacity 
 when fully employed. To many, such an assertion may 
 seem extravagant, but with further reflection on the well- 
 known facts in the case it will seem less so in proportion 
 as the unfamiliarity of it wears off. 
 
 However, the point of attention in the case is not the 
 precise, nor the approximate, percentages of this arrest 
 and retardation, this partial neutralisation of modern im- 
 provements in the industrial arts ; it is only the notorious 
 fact that such arrest occurs, systematically and advisedly, 
 under the rule of business exigencies, and that there is 
 no corrective to be found for it that will comport with 
 those fundamental articles of the democratic faith on 
 which the businessmen necessarily proceed. Any effec- 
 tual corrective would break the framework of demo- 
 cratic law and order, since it would have to traverse the 
 inalienable right of men who are born free and equal, 
 each freely to deal or not to deal in any pecuniary con- 
 juncture that arises. 
 
 But it is at the same time plain enough that this, in 
 the larger sense untoward, discrepancy between produc- 
 tive capacity and current productive output can readily 
 be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, by any 
 sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the 
 country’s industrial forces without regard to pecuniary 
 profit and loss. Any authority competent to take over 
 the control and regulate the conduct of the community’s 
 industry with a view to maximum output as counted by 
 
174 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price-income 
 over price-cost, can readily effect an appreciable increase 
 in the effectual productive capacity; but it can be done 
 only by violating that democratic order of things within 
 which business enterprise runs. The several belligerent 
 nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, that 
 the sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside by 
 sufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing 
 that they are all aware, and have always been aware, that 
 the conduct of industry on business principles is incom- 
 petent to bring the largest practicable output of goods 
 and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, as 
 not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when 
 the nation requires the full use of its productive forces, 
 equipment and man-power, regardless of the pecuniary 
 claims of individuals. 
 
 Now, the projected Imperial dominion is a power of 
 the character required to bring a sufficient corrective to 
 bear, in case of need, on this democratic situation in which 
 the businessmen in charge necessarily manage the coun- 
 try’s industry at cross purposes with the community’s — 
 that is the common man’s — material interest. It is an ex- 
 traneous power, to whom the continued pecuniary gain 
 of these nations’ businessmen is a minor consideration, 
 a negligible consideration in case it shall appear that the 
 Imperial usufruct of the underlying nation’s productive 
 forces is in any degree impaired by the businessmen’s 
 management of it for their own net gain. It is difficult 
 to see on what grounds of self-interest such an Imperial 
 government could consent to tolerate the continued man- 
 agement of these underlying nations’ industries on busi- 
 ness principles, that is to say on the principle of the 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 175 
 
 maximum pecuniary gain to the businesslike managers; 
 and recent experience seems to teach that no excessive, 
 that is to say no inconvenient, degree of consideration 
 for vested rights, and the like, would long embarrass the 
 Imperial government in its administration of its usufruct. 
 
 It should be a reasonable expectation that, without 
 malice and with an unprejudiced view to its own usu- 
 fruct of these underlying countries, the Imperial estab- 
 lishment would take due care that no systematically, 
 and in its view gratuitously, uneconomical methods 
 should continue in the ordinary conduct of their industry. 
 Among other considerations of weight in this connection 
 is the fact that a contented, well-fed, and not wantonly 
 over-worked populace is a valuable asset in such a case. 
 Similarly, by contraries, as an asset in usufruct to such 
 an alien power, a large, wealthy, spendthrift, body of 
 gentlefolk, held in high esteem by the common people, 
 would have but a slight value, conceivably even a negative 
 value, in such a case. A wise administration would pre- 
 sumably look to their abatement, rather than otherwise. 
 At this point the material interest of the common man 
 would seem to coincide with that of the Imperial establish- 
 ment. Still, his preconceived notions of the wisdom and 
 beneficence of his gentlefolk would presumably hinder 
 his seeing the matter in that reasonable light. 
 
 Under the paramount surveillance of such an alien 
 power, guided solely by its own interest in the usufruct 
 of the country and its population, it is to be presumed that 
 class privileges and discrimination would be greatly 
 abated if not altogether discontinued. The point is in 
 some doubt, partly because this alien establishment whose 
 dominion is in question is itself grounded in class pre- 
 rogatives and discrimination, and so, not improbably. 
 
176 
 
 On the Nature of Peace^ 
 
 it would carry over into its supervision of the underlying 
 nations something of a bias in favor of class privileges. 
 And a similar order of things might also result by 
 choice of a class-system as a convenient means of control 
 and exploitation. The latter consideration is presumably 
 the more cogent, since the Imperial establishment in ques- 
 tion is already, by ancient habit, familiar with the method 
 of control by class and privilege ; and, indeed, unfamiliar 
 with any other method. Such a government, which gov- 
 erns without effectual advice or formal consent of the 
 governed, will almost necessarily rest its control of the 
 country on an interested class, of sufficient strength and 
 bound by sufficiently grave interest to abet the Imperial 
 establishment effectually in all its adventures and enter- 
 prises. 
 
 But such a privileged order, that is to be counted in to 
 share dynastic usufruct and liabilities, in good days and 
 evil, will be of a feudalistic complexion rather than some- 
 thing after the fashion of a modern business community 
 doing business by investment and pecuniary finesse. It 
 would still be a reasonable expectation that discrimina- 
 tion between pecuniary classes should fall away under this 
 projected alien tutelage; more particularly all such dis- 
 crimination as is designed to benefit any given class or 
 interest at the cost of the whole, as, e. g., protective 
 tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engross- 
 ing of particular lines of material resources, and the like. 
 
 The character of the economic policy to be pursued 
 should not be difficult of apprehension, if only these un- 
 derlying peoples are conceived as an estate in tail within 
 the dynastic line of descent. The Imperial establishment 
 which so is prospectively to take over the surveillance of 
 these modern peoples under this projected enterprise 
 
Peace Without Honour 
 
 177 
 
 in dominion, may all the more readily be conceived as 
 handling its new and larger resources somewhat unre- 
 servedly as an estate to be administered with a shrewd 
 eye to the main chance, since such has always been its 
 relation to the peoples and territories whose usufruct it 
 already enjoys. It is only that the circumstances of 
 the case will admit a freer and more sagacious application 
 of those principles of usufruct that lie at the root of the 
 ancient Culture of the Fatherland. 
 
 This excessively long, and yet incomplete, review of the 
 presumptive material advantages to accrue to the common 
 man under a regime of peace by unconditional surrender 
 to an alien dynasty, brings the argument apparently to the 
 conclusion that such an eventuality might be fortunate 
 rather than the reverse ; or at least that it has its compen- 
 sations, even if it is not something to be desired. Such 
 should particularly appear to be the presumption in case 
 one is at all inclined to make much of the cultural gains to 
 be brought in under the new regime. And more particu- 
 larity should a policy of nonresistant submission to the 
 projected new order seem expedient in view of the ex- 
 ceedingly high, not to say prohibitive, cost of resistance, 
 or even of materially retarding its fulfillment. 
 
 IS 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Peace and Neutrality 
 
 Considered simply on the face of the tangible material 
 interests involved, the choice of the common man in 
 these premises should seem very much of a foregone con- 
 clusion, if he could persuade himself to a sane and per- 
 spicuous consideration of these statistically apparent 
 merits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be pre- 
 sumed that he has nothing to lose, in a material way, and 
 there is reason to look for some slight gain in creature 
 comforts and in security of life and limb, consequent 
 upon the elimination, or at least the partial disestablish- 
 ment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion 
 of use and wont in economic concerns. 
 
 But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, 
 and particularly as touches the springs of action among 
 that common run that do not habitually formulate their 
 aspirations and convictions in extended and grammatically 
 defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose im- 
 pulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive 
 consistencies of set speech, — as touches the common run, 
 particularly, it will hold true with quite an unacknowl- 
 edged generality that the material means of life are, 
 after all, means only ; and that when the question of what 
 things are worth while is brought to the final test, it is 
 not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, 
 that are seen to serve as the decisive criterion ; but always 
 
 178 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 179 
 
 it is some ulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of 
 which these material means find their ulterior ground of 
 valuation. Neither the overt testimony nor the circum- 
 stantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal ; but seen in 
 due perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the 
 springs of concerted action as shown in any massive move- 
 ment of this common run of mankind, there is, after all, 
 little room to question that the things which commend 
 themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things of 
 the human spirit. 
 
 These ideals, aspirations, aims, ends of endeavour, are 
 by no means of a uniform or homogeneous character 
 throughout the modern communities, still less throughout 
 the civilised world, or throughout the checkered range of 
 classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency 
 and amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise 
 in any attempted insight into human behaviour, it will 
 hold true that they are of a spiritual, immaterial nature. 
 
 The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, 
 that this characterisation of the ulterior springs of action 
 as essentially not of the nature of creature comforts, need 
 be taken in no wider extension than that which so is 
 specifically given it. It will be found to apply as touches 
 the conduct of the common run ; what modification of it 
 might be required to make it at all confidently applicable 
 to the case of one and another of those classes into 
 whose scheme of life creature comforts enter with more 
 pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. But 
 
 since it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, 
 of the common run that are here in question, the case of 
 their betters in this respect may conveniently be left on 
 one side- 
 
180 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 The question in hand touches the behavior of the com- 
 mon man, taken in the aggregate, in face of the quandary 
 into which circumstances have led him ; since the question 
 of what these modern peoples will do is after all a ques- 
 tion of what the common man in the aggregate will do, 
 of his own motion or by persuasion. His betters may 
 be in a position to guide, persuade, cajole, mislead, and 
 victimise him ; for among the many singular conceits that 
 beset the common man is the persuasion that his betters 
 are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. 
 But the course that may so be chosen, with or without 
 guidance or persuasion from the superior classes, as well 
 as the persistence and energy with which this course is 
 pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of the 
 common run. 
 
 Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression 
 of these ideal aspirations that move the common run is 
 a matter of habitual preconceptions ; and habits of thought 
 vary from one people to another according to the diver- 
 sity of experience to which they have been exposed. 
 Among the Western nations the national prestige has 
 come to seem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps be- 
 yond all else that is comprised in the secular scheme of 
 things desirable to be had or to be achieved. And in the 
 apprehension of such of them as have best preserved 
 the habits of thought induced by a long experience in 
 feudal subjection, the service of the sovereign or the 
 dynasty still stands over as the substantial core of the 
 cultural scheme, upon which sentiment and endeavour 
 converge. In the past ages of the democratic peoples, as 
 well as in the present-day use and wont among subjects of 
 the dynastic States — as e. g., Japan or Germany — men are 
 known to have resolutely risked, and lost, their life for 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 181 
 
 the sake of the sovereign’s renown, or even to save the 
 sovereign’s life; whereas, of course, even the slightest 
 and most nebulous reflection would make it manifest 
 that in point of net material utility the sovereign’s de- 
 cease is an idle matter as compared with the loss of an 
 able-bodied workman. The sovereign may always be 
 replaced, with some prospect of public advantage, or 
 failing that, it should be remarked that a regency or 
 inter-regnum will commonly be a season of relatively 
 economical administration. Again, religious enthusiasm, 
 and the furtherance of religious propaganda, may come to 
 serve the same general purpose as these secular ideals, and 
 will perhaps serve it just as well. Certain “principles,” of 
 personal liberty and of opportunity for creative self- 
 direction and an intellectually worthy life, perhaps may 
 also become the idols of the people, for which they will 
 then be willing to risk their material fortune ; and where 
 this has happened, as among the democratic peoples of 
 Christendom, it is not selfishly for their own personal op- 
 portunity to live untroubled under the light of these high 
 principles that these opinionated men are ready to con- 
 tend, but rather impersonally for the human right which 
 under these principles is the due of all mankind, and 
 particularly of the incoming and of later generations. 
 
 On these and the like intangible ends the common man 
 is set with such inveterate predilection that he will, on 
 provocation, stick at nothing to put the project through. 
 For such like ends the common man will lay down his 
 life; at least, so they say. There may always be some- 
 thing of rhetorical affectation in it all ; but, after all, there 
 js sufficient evidence to hand of such substance and ten- 
 acity in the common man’s hold on these ideal aspirations, 
 on these idols of his human spirit, as to warrant the as- 
 
182 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 sertion that he is, rather commonly, prepared to go to 
 greater lengths in the furtherance of these immaterial 
 gains that are to inure to someone else than for any per- 
 sonal end of his own, in the way of creature comforts 
 or even of personal renown. 
 
 For such ends the common man, in democratic Christen- 
 dom is, on provocation, willing to die ; or again, the 
 patient and perhaps more far-seeing common man of 
 pagan China is willing to live for these idols of an 
 inveterate fancy, through endless contumely and hard 
 usage. The conventional Chinese preconceptions, in the 
 way of things that are worth while in their own right, 
 appear to differ from those current in the Occident in 
 such a way that the preconceived ideal is not to be 
 realised except by way of continued life. The common 
 man’s accountability to the cause of humanity, in China, 
 is of so intimately personal a character that he can meet 
 it only by tenaciously holding his place in the sequence of 
 generations ; whereas among the peoples of Christendom 
 there has arisen out of their contentious past a preconcep- 
 tion to the effect that this human duty to mankind is of 
 the nature of a debt, which can be cancelled by bank- 
 ruptcy proceedings, so that the man who unprofitably 
 dies fighting for the cause has thereby constructively 
 paid the reckoning in full. 
 
 Evidently, if the common man of these modern nations 
 that are prospectively to be brought under tutelage of the 
 Imperial government could be brought to the frame of 
 mind that is habitual with his Chinese counterpart, there 
 should be a fair hope that pacific counsels would prevail 
 and that Christendom would so come in for a regime of 
 peace by submission under this Imperial tutelage. But 
 there are always these preconceptions of self-will and in- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 18 J 
 
 subordination to be counted with among these nations, 
 and there is the ancient habit of a contentious national 
 solidarity in defense of the nation’s prestige, more urgent 
 among these peoples than any sentiment of solidarity with 
 mankind at large, or any ulterior gain in civilisation that 
 might come of continued discipline in the virtues of 
 patience and diligence under distasteful circumstances. 
 
 The occidental conception of manhood is in some con- 
 siderable measure drawn in negative terms. So much 
 60 that whenever a question of the manly virtues comes 
 under controversy it presently appears that at least the 
 indispensable minimum, and indeed the ordinary mar- 
 ginal modicum, of what is requisite to a worthy manner 
 of life is habitually formulated in terms of what not. 
 This appearance is doubtless misleading if taken with- 
 out the universally understood postulate on the basis of 
 which negative demands are formulated. There is a 
 good deal of what would be called historical accident in 
 all this. The indispensable demands of this modern 
 manhood take the form of refusal to obey extraneous 
 authority on compulsion; of exemption from coercive 
 direction and subservience ; of insubordination, in short. 
 But it is always understood as a matter of course that 
 this insubordination is a refusal to submit to irresponsible 
 or autocratic rule. Stated from the positive side it would 
 be freedom from restraint by or obedience to any author- 
 ity not constituted by express advice and consent of the 
 governed. And as near as it may be formulated, when 
 reduced to the irreducible minimum of concrete proviso, 
 this is the final substance of things which neither shame 
 nor honour will permit the modern civilised man to yield. 
 To no arrangement for the abrogation of this minimum 
 of free initiative and self-direction will he consent to be 
 
184 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 a party, whether it touches the conditions of life for his 
 own people who are to come after, or as touches the 
 fortunes of such aliens as are of a like mind on this 
 head and arc unable to make head against invasion of 
 these human rights from outside. 
 
 As has just been remarked, the negative form so 
 often taken by these demands is something of an historical 
 accident, due to the fact that these modern peoples came 
 into their highly esteemed system of Natural Liberty 
 out of an earlier system of positive checks on self-direc- 
 tion and initative ; a system, in effect, very much after the 
 fashion of that Imperial jurisdiction that still prevails 
 in the dynastic States — as, e. g., Germany or Japan — ■ 
 whose projected dominion is now the immediate object of 
 apprehension and repugnance. How naively the negative 
 formulation gained acceptance, and at the same time 
 how intrinsic to the new dispensation was the aspiration 
 for free initiative, appears in the confident assertion of its 
 most genial spokesman, that when these positive checks 
 are taken away, “The simple and obvious system of 
 Natural Liberty establishes itself of its own accord.” 
 
 The common man, in these modem communities, shows 
 a brittle temper when any overt move is made against 
 this heritage of civil liberty. He may not be altogether 
 well advised in respect of what liberties he will defend 
 and what he will submit to ; but the fact is to be counted 
 with in any projected peace, that there is always this 
 refractory residue of terms not open to negotiation or 
 compromise. Now it also happens, also by historical ac- 
 cident, that these residual principles of civil liberty have 
 come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception 
 of national integrity and national prestige. So that in the 
 workday apprehension of the common man, not given to 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 185 
 
 analytic excursions, any infraction of the national in- 
 tegrity or any abatement of the national prestige has 
 come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his 
 personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that 
 make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of 
 Christendom. The fact may be patent on reflection that 
 the common man’s substantial interest in the national 
 integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common 
 sense the national prestige has something less than a 
 neutral value to him; but this state of the substantially 
 j>ertinent facts is not greatly of the essence of the case, 
 since his preconceptions in these premises do not run to 
 that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast a 
 texture to suffer any serious abatement within such a 
 space of time as can come in question here and now. 
 
 The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world’s 
 peace on a plan of unconditional surrender to the pro- 
 jected Imperial dominion seems unpromisingly dubious, 
 in view of the stubborn temper shown by these modern 
 peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and 
 honest living appear to be in jeopardy; and the expedi- 
 ency of entering into any negotiated compact of diplo- 
 matic engagements and assurances designed to serve as 
 groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must 
 therefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is 
 even doubtful if any allowance of time can be counted on 
 to bring these modern peoples to a more reasonable, more 
 worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would come 
 to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would 
 divest themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps 
 fantastic prejudice against an autocratic r6gime of the 
 kind spoken for. At least for the present any such hope of 
 
186 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 a peaceable settlement seems illusive. What may be prac- 
 ticable in this way in the course of time is of course still 
 more obscure ; but argument on the premises which the 
 present affords does not point to a substantially different 
 outcome in the calculable future. 
 
 For the immediate future — say, within the life-time of 
 the oncoming generation — the spiritual state of the peo- 
 ples concerned in this international quandary is not likely 
 to undergo so radical a change as to seriously invalidate 
 an argument that proceeds on the present lie of the land 
 in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit im- 
 pinging on a given temperamental bent; and where, as in 
 these premises, the preconceptions have taken on an in- 
 stitutionalised form, have become conventionalised and 
 commonly accepted, and so have been woven into the 
 texture of popular common sense, they must needs be a 
 work of protracted and comprehensive habituation im- 
 pinging on a popular temperamental bent of so general a 
 prevalence that it may be called congenital to the com- 
 munity at large. A heritable bent pervading the group 
 within which inheritance runs, does not change, so long 
 as the racial complexion of the group remains passably 
 intact ; a conventionalised, commonly established habit of 
 mind will change only slowly, commonly not without the 
 passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of a 
 sufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of ex- 
 perience. For good or ill, the current situation is to be 
 counted on not to lose character over night or with a 
 revolution of the seasons, so far as concerns these spiritual 
 factors that make or mar the fortunes of nations. 
 
 At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the 
 nature of habit, are also bound to change character more 
 or less radically, by insensible shifting of ground, but 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 187 
 
 incontinently, — provided only that the conditions of life, 
 and therefore the discipline of experience, undergo any 
 substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to 
 the presumptive rate and character of those changes that 
 are in prospect, due to the unremitting change of cir- 
 cumstances under which these modern peoples live and to 
 the discipline of which they are unavoidably exposed. For 
 the present and for the immediate future the current 
 state of things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument ; 
 but assurance as to the sufficiency of the premises af- 
 forded by the current state of things thins out in pro- 
 portion as the perspective of the argument runs out into 
 the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is twofold, of 
 course. This progressive, cumulative habituation under 
 changing circumstances affects the case both of those 
 democratic peoples whose fortunes are in the hazard, and 
 also of those dynastic States by whom the projected enter- 
 prise in dominion is to be carried into effect. 
 
 The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose 
 names have been coupled together in what has already 
 been said is perhaps the more immediately interesting in 
 the present connection. As matters stand, and in the 
 measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of 
 these is in no degree equivocal. The two dynastic estab- 
 lishments seek dominion, and indeed they seek nothing 
 else, except incidentally to and in furtherance of the main 
 quest. As has been remarked before, it lies in the nature 
 of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole 
 of its nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a 
 dynastic State, like any other settled, institutionalised com- 
 munity of men, rests on and draws its effectual driving 
 force from the habit of mind of its underlying community, 
 
188 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the common man in the aggregate, his preconceptions and 
 ideals as to what things are worth while. Without a 
 suitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic 
 State passes out of the category of formidable Powers 
 and into that of precarious despotism. 
 
 In both of the two States here in question the dynastic 
 establishment and its bodyguard of officials and gentle- 
 folk may be counted on to persevere in the faith that now 
 animates them, until an uneasy displacement of senti- 
 ment among the underlying populace may in time induce 
 them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling 
 classes elsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and 
 may be counted on so to continue. They are also not 
 greatly exposed to the discipline of experience that 
 makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and there- 
 fore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the 
 common man that is effectually reached by any exacting 
 or wide-reaching change in the conditions of life. He is 
 relatively unsheltered from any forces that make for 
 adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of his betters ; 
 and however sluggish and reluctant may be liis response to 
 such discipline as makes for a displacement of outworn 
 preconceptions, yet it is always out of the mass of this 
 common humanity that those movements of disaffection 
 and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to any material 
 realignment of the institutional fabric or to any sub- 
 stantial shift in the line of policy to be pursued under 
 the guidance of their betters. 
 
 The common mass of humanity, it may be said in 
 parenthesis, is of course not a homogeneous body. Un- 
 common men, in point of native gifts of intelligence, 
 sensibility, or personal force, will occur as frequently, in 
 proportion to the aggregate numbers, among the common 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 189 
 
 mass as among their betters. Since in any one of these 
 nations of Christendom, with their all-inclusive hybrid- 
 isation, the range, frequency and amplitude of variations 
 in hereditary endowment is the same throughout all 
 classes. Class differentiation is a matter of habit and 
 convention; and in distinction from his betters the com- 
 mon man is common only in point of numbers and in point 
 of the more general and more exacting conditions to which 
 he is exposed. He is in a position to be more hardly rid- 
 den by the discipline of experience, and is at the same time 
 held more consistently to such a body of preconceptions, 
 and to such changes only in this body of preconceptions, as 
 fall in with the drift of things in a larger mass of human- 
 ity. But all the while it is the discipline which impinges 
 on the sensibilities of this common mass that shapes the 
 spiritual attitude and temper of the community and so 
 defines what may and what may not be undertaken by the 
 constituted leaders. So that, in a way, these dynastic 
 States are at the mercy of that popular sentiment whose 
 creatures they are, and are subject to undesired changes 
 of direction and efficiency in their endeavors, contingent 
 on changes in the popular temper; over which they have 
 only a partial, and on the whole a superficial control. 
 
 A relatively powerful control and energetic direction of 
 the popular temper is and has been exercised by these 
 dynastic establishments, with a view to its utilisation in 
 the pursuit of the dynastic enterprise ; and much has visi- 
 bly been accomplished in that way ; chiefly, perhaps, by 
 military discipline in subordination to personal authority, 
 and also by an unsparing surveillance of popular educa- 
 tion, with a view to fortify the preconceptions handed 
 down from the passing order as well as to eliminate all 
 subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the well-con- 
 
190 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German 
 Imperial system in this direction, e. g., there has been 
 evidence of an obscurely growing uneasiness, not to say 
 disaffection, among the underlying mass. So much so 
 that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached 
 the inference that one of the immediate contributory 
 causes that led to the present war was the need of a 
 heroic remedy to correct this untoward drift of sentiment. 
 
 For the German people the government of the present 
 dynastic incumbent has done all that could (humanly 
 speaking) be expected in the way of endeavoring to con- 
 serve the passing order and to hold the popular imagina- 
 tion to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And 
 yet the peoples of the Empire are already caught in the 
 net of that newer order which they are now endeavoring 
 to break by force of arms. They are inextricably impli- 
 cated in the cultural complex of Christendom; and with- 
 in this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to 
 lead the exodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come 
 quite naturally to set the pace in all the larger conform- 
 ities of civilised life. Within the confines of Christen- 
 dom today, for good or ill, whatever usage or customary 
 rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set 
 by these cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the pre- 
 scriptive commonplace level of civilisation. Failure to 
 adopt and make use of those tried institutional expedients 
 on which these peoples of the advance guard have set their 
 mark of authentication is today presumptively a mistake 
 and an advantage foregone ; and a people who are denied 
 the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic 
 life are uneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands 
 of their rulers. Besides which, the fashion in articles of 
 institutional equipage so set by the authentic pioneers of 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 191 
 
 culture has also come to be mandatory, as a punctilio of 
 the governmental proprieties ; so that no national estab- 
 lishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the 
 eyes of the civilised world can longer afford to be seen 
 without them. The forms at least must be observed. 
 Hence the “representative” and pseudo-representative in- 
 stitutions of these dynastic States. 
 
 These dynastic States among the rest have partly fol- 
 lowed the dictates of civilised fashion, partly yielded to 
 the, more or less intelligent, solicitations of their sub- 
 jects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, and have in- 
 stalled institutional apparatus of this modern pattern — 
 more in point of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet 
 in time the adoption of the forms is likely to have an 
 effect, if changing circumstances favor their taking effect. 
 Such has on the whole been the experience of those peo- 
 ples who have gone before along this trail of political 
 advance. As instance the growth of discretionary powers 
 under the hands of parliamentary representatives in those 
 cases where the movement has gone on longest and 
 farthest; and these instances should not be considered 
 idle, as intimations of what may presumptively be looked 
 for under the Imperial establishments of Germany or 
 Japan. It may be true that hitherto, along with the 
 really considerable volume of imitative gestures of dis- 
 cretionary deliberation delegated to these parliamentary 
 bodies, they have as regards all graver matters brought 
 to their notice only been charged with a (limited) power 
 to talk. It may be true that, for the present, on critical 
 or weighty measures the parliamentary discretion extends 
 no farther than respectfully to say : “Ja wohl!” But then, 
 Ja wohl is also something; and there is no telling where 
 it may all lead to in the long course of years. One has 
 
192 
 
 Qn the Nature of Peace 
 
 a vague apprehension that this "Ja wohlN may some day 
 come to be a customarily necessary form of authentication, 
 so that withholding it {Behiit’ es Gott!) may even come 
 to count as an effectual veto on measures so pointedly 
 neglected. More particularly will the formalities of rep- 
 resentation and self-government be likely to draw the 
 substance of such like ^‘free institutions” into the effect- 
 ual conduct of public affairs if it turns out that the 
 workday experiences of these people takes a turn more 
 conducive to habits of insubordination than has been the 
 case hitherto. 
 
 Indications are, again, not wanting, that even in the 
 Empire the discipline of workday experience is already 
 diverging from that line that once trained the German 
 subjects into the most loyal and unrepining subservience 
 to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under the 
 shattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clam- 
 our, the workday spirit of insubordination and critical 
 scrutiny is gone out of sight and out of hearing. 
 
 Something of this inchoate insubordination has showed 
 itself repeatedly during the present reign, sufficient to 
 provoke many shrewd protective measures on the side of 
 the dynastic establishment, both by way of political 
 strategy and by arbitrary control. Disregarding many 
 minor and inconsequential divisions of opinion and coun- 
 sel among the German people during this eventful reign, 
 the political situation has been moving on the play of 
 three, incipiently divergent, strains of interest and senti- 
 ment: (a) the dynasty (together with the Agrarians, of 
 whom in a sense the dynasty is a part) ; (b) the business- 
 men, or commercial interest (including investors) ; and 
 (c) the industrial workmen. Doubtless it would be easier 
 to overstate than to indicate with any nice precision what 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 193 
 
 has been the nature, and especially the degree, of this 
 alienation of sentiment and divergence of conscious in- 
 terest among these several elements. It is not that there 
 has at any point been a perceptible faltering in respect of 
 loyalty to the crown as such. But since the crown belongs, 
 by origin, tradition, interest and spiritual identity, in the 
 camp of the Agrarians, the situation has been such as 
 would inevitably take on a character of disaffection to- 
 ward the dynastic establishment, in the conceivable ab- 
 sence of that strong surviving sentiment of dynastic 
 loyalty that still animates all classes and conditions of 
 men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be 
 an overstatement to say that the crown has been standing 
 precariously at the apex of a political triangle, the other 
 two corners of which are occupied by these two divided 
 and potentially recalcitrant elements of the body politic, 
 held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniary in- 
 terest, and held in check by divided counsels; but some- 
 thing after that fashion is what would have resulted under 
 similar conditions of strain in any community where the 
 modem spirit of insubordination has taken effect in any 
 large measure. 
 
 Both of these elements of incipient disturbance in the 
 dynastic economy, the modern commercial and working 
 classes, are creatures of the new era ; and they are system- 
 atically out of line with the received dynastic tradition of 
 fealty, both in respect of their pecuniary interests and in 
 respect of that discipline of experience to which their 
 workday employment subjects them. They are substan- 
 tially the same two classes or groupings that came for- 
 ward in the modernisation of the British community, 
 with a gradual segregation of interest and a consequent 
 induced solidaritj^ of class sentiment and class animosi- 
 13 
 
194 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ties. But with the difference that in the British case the 
 movement of changing circumstances was slow enough to 
 allow a fair degree of habituation to the altered econ- 
 omic conditions; whereas in the German case the move 
 into modern economic conditions has been made so 
 precipitately as to have carried the mediaeval frame of 
 mind over virtually intact into this era of large business 
 and machine industry. In the Fatherland the commercial 
 and industrial classes have been called on to play their 
 part without time to learn their lines. 
 
 The case of the English-speaking peoples, who have 
 gone over this course of experience in more consecutive 
 fashion than any others, teaches that in the long run, if 
 these modern economic conditions persist, one or the other 
 or both of these creatures of the modern era must prevail, 
 and must put the dynastic establishment out of commis- 
 sion ; although the sequel has not yet been seen in this 
 British case, and there is no ground afforded for inference 
 as to which of the two will have the fortune to survive 
 and be invested with the hegemony. Meantime the op- 
 portunity of the Imperial establishment to push its enter- 
 prise in dominion lies in the interval of time so required 
 for the discipline of experience under modern conditions 
 to work out through the growth of modern habits of 
 thought into such modern (i. e. civilised) institutional 
 forms and such settled principles of personal insubordina- 
 tion as will put any effectual dynastic establishment out 
 of commission. The same interval of time, that must so 
 be allowed for the decay of the dynastic spirit among the 
 German people under the discipline of life by the methods 
 of modern trade and industry, marks the period during 
 which no peace compact will be practicable, except with 
 the elimination of the Imperial establishment as a pos- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 195 
 
 sible warlike power. All this, of course, applies to the 
 case of Japan as well, with the difference that while the 
 Japanese people are farther in arrears, they are also a 
 smaller, less formidable body, more exposed to outside 
 forces, and their mediaevalism is of a more archaic and 
 therefore more precarious type. 
 
 What length of time will be required for this decay of 
 the dynastic spirit among the people of the Empire is, of 
 course, impossible to say. The factors of the case are not 
 of a character to admit anything like calculation of the 
 rate of movement ; but in the nature of the factors involv- 
 ed it is also contained that something of a movement in 
 this direction is unavoidable, under Providence. As a 
 preliminary consideration, these peoples of the Empire 
 and its allies, as well as their enemies in the great war, will 
 necessarily come out of their warlike experience in a 
 more patriotic and more vindictive frame of mind than 
 that in which they entered on this adventure. Fighting 
 makes for malevolence. The war is itself to be counted as 
 a set-back. A very large proportion of those who have 
 lived through it will necessarily carry a warlike bent 
 through life. By that much, whatever it may count for, 
 the decay of the dynastic spirit — or the growth of toler- 
 ance and equity in national sentiment, if one chooses to put 
 it that way — will be retarded from beforehand. So also 
 the Imperial establishment, or whatever is left of it, may 
 be counted on to do everything in its power to preserve the 
 popular spirit of loyalty and national animosity, by all 
 means at its disposal ; since the Imperial establishment 
 finally rests on the effectual body of national animosity. 
 What hindrance will come in from this agency of re- 
 tardation can at least vaguely be guessed at, in the light of 
 
196 
 
 On the Nature of Peace^ 
 
 what has been accomplished in that way under the stren- 
 uously reactionary rule of the present reign. 
 
 Again, there is the chance, as there always is a chance 
 of human folly, that the neighboring peoples will under- 
 take, whether jointly or severally, to restrict or prohibit 
 trade relations between the people of the Empire and their 
 enemies in the present war; thereby fomenting inter- 
 national animosity, as well as contributing directly to the 
 economic readiness for war both on their own part and 
 on that of the Empire. This is also, and in an eminent de- 
 gree, an unknown factor in the case, on which not even 
 a reasonable guess can be made beforehand. These are, 
 all and several, reactionary agencies, factors of retarda- 
 tion, making for continuation of the current international 
 situation of animosity, distrust, chicane, trade rivalry, 
 competitive armament, and eventual warlike enterprise. 
 
 To offset these agencies of conservatism there is noth- 
 ing much that can be counted on but that slow, random, 
 and essentially insidious working of habituation that 
 tends to the obsolescence of the received preconceptions; 
 partly by supplanting them with something new, but more 
 effectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There 
 is, it will have to be admitted, little of a positive char- 
 acter that can be done toward the installation of a regime 
 of peace and good-will. The endeavours of the pacifists 
 should suffice to convince any dispassionate observer of 
 the substantial futility of creative efforts looking to such 
 an end. Much can doubtless be done in the way of pre- 
 cautionary measures, mostly of a negative character, in 
 the way especially of removing sources of infection and 
 (possibly) of so sterilising the apparatus of national life 
 that its working shall neither maintain animosities and in- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 197 
 
 terests at variance with the conditions of peace nor con- 
 tribute to their spread and growth. 
 
 There is necessarily little hope or prospect that any 
 national establishment will contribute materially or in any 
 direct way to the obsolescence of warlike sentiments and 
 ambitions ; since such establishments are designed for the 
 making of war by keeping national jealousies intact, and 
 their accepted place in affairs is that of preparation for 
 eventual hostilities, defensive or offensive. Except for the 
 contingency of eventual hostilities, no national establish- 
 ment could be kept in countenance. They would all fall 
 into the decay of desuetude, just as has happened to the 
 dynastic establishments among those peoples who have 
 (passably) lost the spirit of dynastic aggression. 
 
 The modern industrial occupations, the modern tech- 
 nology, and that modern empirical science that runs so 
 close to the frontiers of technology, all work at cross pur- 
 poses with the received preconceptions of the nationalist 
 order ; and in a more pronounced degree they are at cross 
 purposes with that dynastic order of preconceptions that 
 converges on Imperial dominion. The like is true, with 
 a difference, of the ways, means and routine of business 
 enterprise as it is conducted in the commercialised com- 
 munities of today. The working of these agencies runs 
 to this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive 
 antagonism, but almost wholly by force of systematic, 
 though unintended and incidental, neglect of those values, 
 standards, verities, and grounds of discrimination and 
 conviction that make up the working realities of the 
 national spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working 
 concepts of this new, essentially mechanistic, order of 
 human interests, do not necessarily clash with those of 
 the old order, essentially the order of personages and 
 
198 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 personalities ; the two are incommensurable, and they are 
 incompatible only in the sense and degree implied in 
 that state of the case. The profoundest and most meri- 
 torious truths of dynastic politics can on no provocation 
 and by no sleight of hand be brought within the logic of 
 that system of knowledge and appraisal of values by 
 which the mechanistic technology proceeds. Within the 
 premises of this modern mechanistic industry and science 
 all the best values and verities of the dynastic order 
 are simply “incompetent, irrelevant and impertinent.” 
 
 There is accordingly no unavoidable clash and no nec- 
 essary friction between the two schemes of knowledge or 
 the two habits of mind that characterise the two con- 
 trasted cultural eras. It is only that a given individual — 
 call him the common man — will not be occupied with both 
 of these incommensurable systems of logic and apprecia- 
 tion at the same time or bearing on the same point ; and 
 further that in proportion as his waking hours and his 
 mental energy are fully occupied within the lines of one 
 of these systems of knowledge, design and emplojunent, 
 in much the same measure he w’ill necessarily neglect the 
 other, and in time he will lose proficiency and interest in 
 its pursuits and its conclusions. The man who is so held 
 by his daily employment and his life-long attention with- 
 in the range of habits of thought that are valid in the 
 mechanistic technology, will, on an average and in the 
 long run, lose his grip on the spiritual virtues of national 
 prestige and dynastic primacy; “for they are foolishness 
 unto him ; neither can he know them, because they are 
 spiritually discerned.” 
 
 Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system 
 of knowledge and design may not also be ver}' good pa- 
 triots and devoted servants of the dynasty. The artless 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 199 
 
 and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynastic avidity 
 displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow crafts- 
 men in the neutral countries by the most eminent scien- 
 tists of the Fatherland during the early months of the 
 war should be sufficient warning that the archaic pre- 
 conceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when 
 the habits of thought of the mechanistic order come in 
 at the door. But with the passage of time, pervasively, 
 by imperceptible displacement, by the decay of habitual 
 disuse, as well as by habitual occupation v>^ith these other 
 and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, 
 dynastic loyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of 
 religion and magic pass out of the field of attention and 
 fall insensibly into the category of the lost arts. Particu- 
 larly will this be true of the common man, who lives, 
 somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the pres- 
 ent, and whose waking hours are somewhat fully occu- 
 pied with what he has to do. 
 
 With the commercial interests the Imperial establish- 
 ment can probably make such terms as to induce their 
 support of the dynastic enterprise, since they can appar- 
 ently always be made to believe that an extension of the 
 Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased 
 opportunities of trade. It is doubtless a mistake, but 
 it is commonly believed by the interested parties, which 
 is just as good for the purpose as if it were true. And 
 it should be added that in this, as in other instances of 
 the quest of larger markets, the costs are to be paid by 
 someone else than the presumed commercial beneficiaries ; 
 which brings the matter under the dearest principle known 
 to businessmen : that of getting something for nothing. 
 It will not be equally easy to keep the affections of the 
 common man loyal to the dynastic enterprise when he 
 
200 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 begins to lose his grip on the archaic faith in dynastic 
 dominion and comes to realise that he has also — indi- 
 vidually and in the mass — no material interest even in 
 the defense of the Fatherland, much less in the further 
 extension of Imperial rule. 
 
 But the time when this process of disillusionment and 
 decay of ideals shall have gone far enough among the 
 common run to afford no secure footing in popular sen- 
 timent for the contemplated Imperial enterprise, — this 
 time is doubtless far in the future, as compared with the 
 interval of preparation required for a new onset. Habitu- 
 ation takes time, particularly such habituation as can be 
 counted on to derange the habitual bent of a great pop- 
 ulation in respect of their dearest preconceptions. It will 
 take a very appreciable space of time even in the case of 
 a populace so accessible to new habits of thought as the 
 German people are by virtue of their slight percentage of 
 illiteracy, the very large proportion engaged in those 
 modern industries that constantly require some intelligent 
 insight into mechanistic facts, the density of population 
 and the adequate means of communication, and the ex- 
 tent to which the whole population is caught in the web 
 of mechanically standardised processes that condition their 
 daily life at every turn. As regards their technological 
 situation, and their exposure to the discipline of industrial 
 life, no other population of nearly the same volume is 
 placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirement 
 of the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other 
 people comparable with the population of the Fatherland 
 has so large and well-knit a body of archaic preconcep- 
 tions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course, is 
 the Japanese nation. 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 201 
 
 In all this there is, of course, no inclination to cast a 
 slur on the German people. In point of racial charac- 
 teristics there is no difference between them and their 
 neighbours. And there is no reason to question their 
 good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no 
 people is more consciously well-meaning than the children 
 of the Fatherland. It is only that, with their archaic 
 preconceptions of what is right and meritorious, their 
 best intentions spell malevolence when projected into the 
 civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of 
 theirs. Nor is it meant to be intimated that their rate 
 of approach to the accepted Occidental standard of insti- 
 tutional maturity will be unduly slow or unduly reluctant, 
 so soon as the pertinent facts of modem life begin effec- 
 tively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, 
 human nature — and human second nature — being what 
 it always has been, the rate of approach of the German 
 people to a passably neutral complexion in matters of in- 
 ternational animosity and aggression must necessarily be 
 slow enough to allow ample time for the renewed prep- 
 aration of a more unsparing and redoubtable endeavour 
 on the part of the Imperial establishment. 
 
 What makes this German Imperial establishment re- 
 doubtable, beyond comparison, is the very simple but also 
 very grave combination of circumstances whereby the 
 German people have acquired the use of the modern 
 industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the 
 same time that they have retained unabated the fanatical 
 loyalty of feudal barbarism. ^ So long, and in so far, 
 as this conjunction of forces holds there is no outlook 
 
 ^For an extended discussion of this point, see Imperial Ger- 
 many and the Industrial Revolution, especially ch. v. and vi. 
 
202 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 for peace except on the elimination of Germany as a 
 power capable of disturbing the peace. 
 
 It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the 
 German Imperial establishment as the sole potential dis- 
 turber of the peace in Europe. The reason for so singling 
 out the Empire for this invidious distinction — of merit 
 or demerit, as one may incline to take it — is that the facts 
 run that way. There is, of course, other human mate- 
 rial, and no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is 
 of much the same character, and serviceable for the same 
 purposes as the resources and man-power of the Empire. 
 But this other material can come effectually into bearing 
 as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters 
 about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his ban- 
 ners. In so speaking of the Imperial establishment as the 
 sole enemy of a European peace, therefore, these out- 
 lying others are taken for granted, very' much as one 
 takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the 
 greater saints of God. 
 
 So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by 
 unconditional surrender and submission, or peace by 
 elimination of Imperial Germany (and Japan). There 
 is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned — that 
 is to say nineteenth-century — plan of competitive defen- 
 sive armament and a balance of powers has been tried, 
 and it has not proved to be a success, even so early in 
 the twentieth century. This plan offers a substitute {Er- 
 satz) for peace; but even as such it has become imprac- 
 ticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modem, 
 state of the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Techno- 
 logical knowledge has thrown the advantage in military 
 affairs definitively to the offensive, particularly to the 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 203 
 
 offensive that is prepared beforehand with the suitable 
 appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous 
 and protracted training by which alone they can become 
 competent to make warlike use of these suitable appli- 
 ances provided by the modem technology. At the same 
 time, and by grace of the same advance in technology, 
 any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any 
 given community, in spite of distance or of other natural 
 obstacles. The era of defensive armaments and diplo- 
 matic equilibration, as a substitute for peace, has been 
 definitively closed by the modern state of the industrial 
 arts. 
 
 Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former 
 — peace by submission under an alien dynasty — is pre- 
 sumably not a practicable solution, as has appeared in the 
 course of the foregoing argument. 
 
 The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. 
 Whether they have reached even that stage of national 
 sobriety, or neutrality, that would enable them to live 
 at peace among themselves after elimination of the Im- 
 perial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would 
 be by a precarious margin that they can be counted on 
 so to keep the peace in the absence of provocation from 
 without the pale. Their predilection for peace goes to 
 no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peace 
 with Honour ; which assuredly does not cover a peace 
 of non-resistance, and which, in effect, leaves the distinc- 
 tion between an offensive and a defensive v/ar somewhat 
 at loose ends. The national prestige is still a live asset 
 in the mind of these peoples; and the limit of tolerance 
 in respect of this patriotic animosity appears to be drawn 
 appreciably closer than the formula cited above would 
 necessarily presume. They will fight on provocation. 
 
204 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 and the degree of provocation required to upset the se- 
 renity of these sportsmanlike modern peoples is a point 
 on which the shrewdest guesses may diverge. Still, opin- 
 ion runs more and more consistently to the effect that 
 if these modern — say the French and the English-speaking 
 — peoples were left to their own devices the peace might 
 fairly be counted on to be kept between them indefinitely, 
 barring unforeseen contingencies. 
 
 Experience teaches that warlike enterprise on a mod- 
 erate scale and as a side interest is by no means incom- 
 patible with such a degree of neutral animus as these peo- 
 ples have yet acquired, — e. g., the Spanish-American war, 
 which was made in America, or the Boer war, which 
 was made in England. But these wars, in spite of the 
 dimensions which they presently took on, w'ere after all 
 of the nature of episodes, — the one chiefly an extension 
 of sportsmanship, which engaged the best attention of 
 only the more sportsmanlike elements, the other chiefly 
 engineered by certain business interests w'ith a callous 
 view to getting something for nothing. Both episodes 
 came to be serious enough, both in their immediate in- 
 cidence and in their consequences; but neither com- 
 manded the deliberate and cordial support of the com- 
 munity at large. There is a meretricious air over both; 
 and there is a.pparent a popular inclination to condone 
 rather than to take pride in these faits accomplis. The 
 one excursion was a product of sportsmanlike bravado, 
 fed on boyish exuberance, fomented for mercenary ob- 
 jects by certain business interests and place-hunting pol- 
 iticians, and incited by meretricious newspapers with a 
 view to increase their circulation. The other was set 
 afoot by interested businessmen, backed by politicians, 
 seconded by newspapers, and borne by the community 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 205 
 
 at large, in great part under misapprehension and stung 
 by wounded pride. 
 
 Opinions will diverge widely as to the chances of peace 
 in a community of nations among whom episodes of this 
 character, and of such dimensions, have been somewhat 
 more than tolerated in the immediate past. But the con- 
 sensus of opinion in these same countries appears to be 
 setting with fair consistency to the persuasion that the 
 popular spirit shown in these and in analogous conjunc- 
 tures in the recent past gives warrant that peace is delib- 
 erately desired and is likely to be maintained, barring 
 unforeseen contingencies. 
 
 In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation 
 of peace, and necessary to be taken, are simple and ob- 
 vious ; and they are largely of a negative character, ex- 
 ploits of omission and neglect. Under modern conditions, 
 and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept 
 by avoiding the breal<ing of it. It does not break of it.self, 
 — in the absence of such national establishments as are 
 organised with the sole ulterior view of warlike enterprise. 
 A policy of peace is obviously a policy of avoidance, — 
 avoidance of offense and of occasion for annoyance. 
 
 What is required to insure the maintenance of peace 
 among pacific nations is the neutralisation of all those 
 human relations out of which international grievances are 
 wont to arise. And what is necessary to assure a reason- 
 able expectation of continued peace is the neutralisation 
 of so much of these relations as the patriotic self-con- 
 ceit and credulity of these peoples will permit. These 
 two formulations are by no means identical ; indeed, the 
 disparity between what could advantageously be dispensed 
 with in the way of national rights and pretensions, and 
 
206 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 what the common run of modern patriots could be in- 
 duced to relinquish, is probably much larger than any san- 
 guine person would like to believe. It should be plain on 
 slight reflection that the greater part, indeed substan- 
 tially the whole, of those material interests and demands 
 that now engage the policy of the nations, and that serve 
 on occasion to set them at variance, might be neutralised 
 or relinquished out of hand, without detriment to any 
 one of the peoples concerned. 
 
 The greater part of these material interests over which 
 the various national establishments keep watch and hold 
 pretensions are, in point of historical derivation, a legacy 
 from the princely politics of what is called the “Mer- 
 cantilist” period ; and they are uniformly of the nature of 
 gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citi- 
 zens of the given nation and outsiders. Except (doubt- 
 fully) in the English case, where mercantilist policies are 
 commonly believed to have been adopted directly for the 
 benefit of the commercial interest, measures of this na- 
 ture are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the 
 crown and its officers to strengthen the finances of the 
 prince and give him an advantage in warlike enterprise. 
 They are kept up essentially for the same eventual end 
 ,of preparation for war. So, e. g., protective tariffs, and 
 the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a 
 means of making the nation self-supporting, self-con- 
 tained, self-sufficient; with a view to readiness in the 
 event of hostilities. 
 
 A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for 
 being self-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation 
 can be industrially self-sufficient except at the cost of 
 foregoing some of the economic advantages of that spec- 
 ialisation of industry which the modern state of the in- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 2P)7 
 
 dustrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefit 
 comes to the community at large from such restraint of 
 trade with the outside world, or to any class or section 
 of the community except those commercial concerns that 
 are favored by the discrimination; and these invariably 
 gain their special advantage at the cost of their compa- 
 triots. Discrimination in trade — export, import or ship- 
 ping — has no more beneficial effect when carried out 
 publicly by the national authorities than when effected 
 surreptitiously and illegally by a private conspiracy in 
 restraint of trade within a group of interested business 
 concerns. 
 
 Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest 
 himself of an habitual delusion on this head, handed down 
 out of the past and inculcated by interested politicians, to 
 the effect that in some mysterious way he stands to gain 
 by limiting his own opportunities. But the neutralisation 
 of international trade, or the abrogation of all discrimina- 
 tion in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches the 
 perpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral 
 policy would be wider and more intricately interlocking 
 trade relations, coupled with a further specialisation and 
 mutual dependence of industry between the several coun- 
 tries concerned ; which would mean, in terms of inter- 
 national comity, a lessened readiness for warlike opera- 
 tions all around. \ 
 
 It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the 
 growth of international commercial relations under a 
 free-trade policy would greatly conduce to a spirit of 
 mutual understanding and forbearance between the na- 
 tions. There may or may not be something appreciable 
 in the contention; it has been doubted, and there is no 
 considerable evidence to be had in support of it. But 
 
208 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 what is more to the point is the tangible fact that such 
 specialisation of industry and consequent industrial inter- 
 dependence would leave all parties to this relation less 
 capable, materially and spiritually, to break off amicable 
 relations. So again, in time of peace and except with 
 a view to eventual hostilities, it would involve no loss, 
 and presumably little pecuniary gain, to any country, 
 locality, town or class, if all merchant shipping were 
 registered indiscriminately under neutral colors and sailed 
 under the neutral no-man’s flag, responsible indiscrim- 
 inately to the courts where they touched or where their 
 business was transacted. 
 
 Neither producers, shippers, merchants nor consumers 
 have any slightest interest in the national allegiance of 
 the carriers of their freight, except such as may artificially 
 be induced by discriminatory shipping regulations. In 
 all but the name — in time of peace — the world’s merchant 
 shipping already comes near being so neutralised, and the 
 slight further simplification required to leave it on a 
 neutral p)eace footing would be little else than a neglect of 
 such vexatious discrimination as is still in force. If no 
 nation could claim the allegiance, and therefore the usu- 
 fruct, of any given item of merchant shipping in case 
 of eventual hostilities, on account of the domicile of the 
 owners or the port of registry, that would create a further 
 handicap on eventual warlike enterprise and add so much 
 to the margin of tolerance. At the same time, in the event 
 of hostilities, shipping sailing under the neutral no-man’s 
 flag and subject to no national allegiance would enjoy such 
 immunities as still inure to neutral shipping. It is true, 
 neutrality has not carried many immunities lately. 
 
 Cumulatively effective usage and the exigencies of a 
 large, varied, shifting and extensive maritime trade have 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 209 
 
 in the course of time brought merchant shipping to some- 
 thing approaching a neutral footing. For most, one might 
 venture to say for virtually all, routine purposes of busi- 
 ness and legal liability the merchant shipping comes under 
 the jurisdiction of the local courts, without reservation. 
 It is true, there still are formalities and reservations which 
 enable questions arising out of incidents in the shipping 
 trade to become subject of international conference and 
 adjustment, but they are after all not such as would war- 
 rant the erection of national apparatus to take care of 
 them in case they were not already covered by usage to 
 that effect. The visible drift of usage toward neutralisa- 
 tion in merchant shipping, in maritime trade, and in inter- 
 national commercial transactions, together with the simi- 
 larly visible feasibility of a closer approach to unreserved 
 neutralisation of this whole range of traffic, suggests that 
 much the same line of considerations should apply as 
 regards the personal and pecuniary rights of citizens trav- 
 eling or residing abroad. The extreme, — or, as seen 
 from the present point of view, the ultimate — term in the 
 relinquishment of national pretensions along this line 
 would of course be the neutralisation of citizenship. 
 
 This is not so sweeping a move as a patriotically-minded 
 person might imagine on the first alarm, so far as touches 
 the practical status of the ordinary citizen in his ordinary 
 relations, and particularly among the English-speaking 
 peoples. As an illustrative instance, citizenship has sat 
 somewhat lightly on the denizens of the American re- 
 public, and with no evident damage to the community at 
 large or to the inhabitants in detail. Naturalisation has 
 been easy, and has been sought with no more eagerness, 
 on the whole, than the notably low terms of its acquire- 
 ment would ind.icate. Without loss fiv discomfort many 
 14 . 
 
210 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 law-abiding aliens have settled in this country and spent 
 the greater part of a life-time under its laws without be- 
 coming citizens, and no one the Avorse or the wiser for 
 it. Not infrequently the decisive inducement to natu- 
 ralisation on the part of immigrant aliens has been, and 
 is, the desirability of divesting themselves of their rights 
 of citizenship in the country of their origin. Not that 
 the privilege and dignity of citizenship, in this or in any 
 other country, is to be held of little account. It is rather 
 that under modern civilised conditions, and among a peo- 
 ple governed by sentiments of humanity and equity, the 
 stranger within our gates suffers no obloquy and no de- 
 spiteful usage for being a stranger. It may be admitted 
 that of late, with the fomentation of a more accentuated 
 nationalism by politicians seeking a raison d’etre, addi- 
 tional difficulties have been created in the way of natu- 
 ralisation and the like incidents. Still, when all is told 
 of the average American citizen, qua citizen, there is not 
 much to tell. The like is true throughout the English- 
 speaking peoples, with inconsequential allowance for local 
 color. A definitive neutralisation of citizenship Avithin 
 the range of these English-speaking countries would 
 scarcely ripple the surface of things as they are — in time 
 of peace. 
 
 All of which has not touched the sore and sacred spot 
 in the received scheme of citizenship and its rights and 
 liabilities. It is in the event of hostilities that the lia- 
 bilities of the citizen at home come into the foreground, 
 and it is as a source of patriotic grievance looking to 
 warlike retaliation that the rights of the citizen abroad 
 chiefly come into the case. 
 
 If, as was once, almost inaudibly, hinted by a well- 
 regarded statesman, the national establishment should 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 211 
 
 refuse to jeopardise the public peace for the safeguarding 
 of the person and property of citizens who go out in 
 partes infidelium on their own private concerns, and 
 should so leave them under the uncurbed jurisdiction of 
 the authorities in those countries into which they have 
 intruded, the result might in many cases be hardship to 
 such individuals. This would, of course, be true almost 
 exclusively of such instances only as occur in such local- 
 ities as are, temporarily or permanently, outside the pale 
 of modern law and order. And, it may be in place to 
 remark, instances of such hardship, with the accompany- 
 ing hazard of national complications, would, no doubt, 
 greatly diminish in frequency consequent upon the pro- 
 mulgation of such a disclaimer of national responsibility 
 for the continued well-being of citizens who so expatriate 
 themselves in the pursuit of their own advantage or 
 amusement. Meantime, let it not seem inconsiderate to 
 recall that to the community at large the deplorable case 
 of such expatriates under hardship involves no loss or 
 gain in the material respect; and that, except for the 
 fortuitous circumstance of his being a compatriot, the 
 given individual’s personal or pecuniary fortune in for- 
 eign parts has no special claim on his compatriots’ sym- 
 pathy or assistance; from which it follows also that with 
 the definitive neutralisation of citizenship as touches ex- 
 patriates, the sympathy which is now somewhat unin- 
 telligently confined to such cases, on what may without 
 offense be called extraneous grounds, would somewhat 
 more impartially and humanely extend to fellow-men in 
 distress, regardless of nativity or naturalisation. 
 
 What is mainly to the point here, however, is the fact 
 that if citizenship were so neutralised within the range 
 of neutral countries here contemplated, one further source 
 
212 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of provocation to international jealousy and distrust 
 would drop out of the situation. And it is not easy to 
 detect any element of material loss involved in such a 
 move. In the material respect no individual would be any 
 the worse off, with the doubtful and dubious exception of 
 the expatriate fortune-hunter, who aims to fish safely in 
 troubled waters at his compatriots’ expense. But the case 
 stands otherwise as regards the balance of immaterial 
 assets. The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment 
 would collapse, and the world of poetry and pageantry — 
 particularly that of the tawdrier and more vendible po- 
 etry and pageantry — would be poorer by so much. The 
 Man Without a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, 
 or would at any rate lose much of it. It may be, of 
 course, that in the sequel there would result no net loss 
 even in respect of these immaterial assets of sentimental 
 animation and patriotic self-complacency, but it is after 
 all fairly certain that something would be lost, and it is 
 by no means clear what if anything would come in to 
 fill its place. 
 
 An historical parallel may help to illustrate the point. 
 In the movement out of what may be called the royal age 
 of dynasties and chivalric service, those peoples who have 
 moved out of that age and out of its spiritual atmosphere 
 have lost much of the conscious magnanimity and con- 
 viction of merit that once characterised that order of 
 things, as it still continues to characterise the prevalent 
 habit of mind in the countries that still continue under 
 the archaic order of dynastic mastery and service. But 
 it is also to be noted that these peoples who so have moved 
 out of the archaic order appear to be well content with 
 this change of spiritual atmosphere, and they are even 
 fairly well persuaded, in the common run, that the move 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 213 
 
 has brought them some net gain in the way of human dig- 
 nity and neighbourly tolerance, such as to offset any loss 
 incurred on the heroic and invidious side of life. Such 
 is the tempering force of habit. Whereas, e. g., on the 
 other hand, the peoples of these surviving dynastic States, 
 to which it is necessary continually to recur, who have 
 not yet moved out of that realm of heroics, find them- 
 selves unable to see anything in such a prospective shift 
 but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit ; that modi- 
 cum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the con- 
 duct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men 
 is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the 
 moral fiber and a loss of nerve. 
 
 What is here tentatively projected under the phrase, 
 “neutralization of citizenship,” is only something a little 
 more and farther along the same general line of move- 
 ment which these more modern peoples have been fol- 
 lowing in all that sequence of institutional changes that 
 has given them their present distinctive character of com- 
 monwealths, as contrasted with the dynastic States of 
 the mediaeval order. What may be in prospect — if such 
 a further move away from the mediaeval landmarks is to 
 take effect — may best be seen in the light of the later 
 moves in the same direction hitherto, more particularly as 
 regards the moral and aesthetic merits at large of such an 
 institutional mutation. As touches this last previous shift- 
 ing of ground along this line, just spoken of, the case 
 stands in this singular but significant posture, in respect of 
 the spiritual values and valuations involved : These peo- 
 ples who have, even in a doubtful measure, made this 
 transition from the archaic institutional scheme, of fealty 
 and dynastic exploit and coercion, to the newer scheme of 
 
214 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the ungraded commonwealth, are convinced, to the point 
 of martyrdom, that anything like a return to the old 
 order is morally impossible as well as insufferably shame- 
 ful and irksome; whereas those people, of the retarded 
 division of the race, who have had no experience of this 
 new order, are equally convinced that it is all quite incom- 
 patible with a worthy life. 
 
 Evidently, there should be no disputing about tastes. 
 Evidently, too, these retarded others will not move on into 
 the later institutional phase, of the ungraded common- 
 wealth, by preconceived choice; but only, if at all, by 
 such schooling of experience as will bring them insensibly 
 to that frame of mind out of which the ideal of the un- 
 graded commonwealth emerges by easy generalisation 
 of workday practice. Meantime, having not yet expe- 
 rienced that phase of sentiment and opinion on civic rights 
 and immunities that is now occupied by their institution- 
 ally maturer neighbours, the subjects of the Imperial 
 Fatherland, e. g., in spite of the most laudable intentions 
 and the best endeavour, are, by failure of this experience, 
 unable to comprehend either the ground of opposition 
 to their well-meaning projects of dominion or the futil- 
 ity of trying to convert these their elder brothers to their 
 own prescriptive acceptation of what is worth while. In 
 time, and with experience, this retarded division of Chris- 
 tendom may come to the same perspective on matters of 
 national usage and ideals as has been enforced on the 
 more modern peoples by farther habituation. So, also, 
 in time and with experience, if the drift of circumstance 
 shall turn out to set that way, the further move away from 
 mediaeval discriminations and constraint and into the 
 unspectacular scheme of neutralisation may come to seem 
 as right, good and beautiful as the democratic common- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 215 
 
 wealth now seems to the English-speaking peoples, or as 
 the Hohenzollern Imperial State now seems to the sub- 
 jects of the Fatherland. There is, in effect, no disputing 
 about tastes. 
 
 There is little that is novel, and nothing that is to be 
 rated as constructive innovation, in this sketch of what 
 might not inaptly be called peace by neglect. The legal 
 mind, which commonly takes the initiative in counsels on 
 what to do, should scarcely be expected to look in that 
 direction for a way out, or to see its way out in that 
 direction in any case ; so that it need occasion no surprise 
 if the many current projects of pacification turn on in- 
 genious and elaborate provisions of apparatus and pro- 
 cedure, rather than on that simpler line of expedients 
 which the drift of circumstance, being not possessed of a. 
 legal mind, has employed in the sequence of institutional 
 change hitherto. The legal mind that dominates in the 
 current deliberations on peace is at home in exhaustive 
 specifications and meticulous demarkations, and it is there- 
 fore prone to seek a remedy for the burden of supernu- 
 merary devices by recourse to further excesses of regu- 
 lation. 
 
 This trait of the legal mind is not a bad fault at the 
 worst, and the quality in which this defect inheres is of 
 the greatest moment in any project of constructive engi- 
 neering on the legal and political plane. But it is less to 
 the purpose, indeed it is at cross purposes, in such a 
 conjuncture as the present ; when the nations are held 
 up in their quest of peace chiefly by an accumulation of 
 institutional apparatus that has out-stayed its usefulness. 
 It is the fortune even of good institutions to become im- 
 becile with the change of conditioning circumstances, and 
 it then becomes a question of their disestablishment, not 
 
216 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of their rehabilitation. If there is anywhere a safe nega- 
 tive conclusion, it is that an institution grown mischievous 
 by obsolescence need not be replaced by a substitute. 
 
 Instances of such mischievous institutional arrange- 
 ments, obsolete or in process of obsolescence, would be, 
 e. g., the French monarchy of the ancient regime, the 
 Spanish Inquisition, the British corn laws and the “rot- 
 ten boroughs,” the Barbary pirates, the Turkish rule in 
 Armenia, the British crown, the German Imperial D\'- 
 nasty, the European balance of powers, the Monroe Doc- 
 trine. In some sense, at least in the sense and degree im- 
 plied in their selective survival, these various articles of 
 institutional furniture, and many like them, have once 
 presumably been suitable to some end, in the days of their 
 origin and vigorous growth; and they have at least in 
 some passable fashion met some felt want; but if they 
 ever had a place and use in the human econcxny they have 
 in time grown imbecile and mischievous by force of 
 changing circumstances, and the question is not how to 
 replace them with something else to the same purpose 
 after their purpose is outworn. A man who loses a wart 
 off the end of his nose does not apply to the Ersats bureau 
 for a convenient substitute. 
 
 ' Now, a large proportion, perhaps even substantially the 
 whole, of the existing apparatus of international rights, 
 pretensions, discriminations, covenants and provisos, vis- 
 ibly fall in that class, in so far as concerns their material 
 serviceability to the nation at large, and particularly as 
 regards any other than a warlike purpose, offensive or 
 defensive. Of course, the national dignity and diplomatic 
 punctilio, and the like adjuncts and instrumentalities of 
 the national honour, all have their prestige value ; and 
 they are not likely to be given up out of hand. In point 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 217 
 
 of fact, however solicitous for a lasting peace these patri- 
 otically-minded modern peoples may be, it is doubtful if 
 they could be persuaded to give up any appreciable share 
 of these appurtenances of national jealousy even when 
 their retention implies an imminent breach of the peace. 
 Yet it is plain that the peace will be secure in direct pro- 
 portion to the measure in which national discrimination 
 and prestige are allowed to pass into nothingness and be 
 forgot. 
 
 By so much as it might amount to, such neutralisation 
 of outstanding interests between these pacific nations 
 should bring on a degree of coalescence of these nation- 
 alities. In effect, they are now held apart in many re- 
 spects by measures of precaution against their coming to 
 a common plan of use and wont. The degree of coa- 
 lescence would scarcely be extreme ; more particularly it 
 could not well become onerous, since it would rest on con- 
 venience, inclination and the neglect of artificial discrep- 
 ancies. The more intimate institutions of modern life, 
 that govern human conduct locally and in detail, need not 
 be affected, or not greatly affected, for better or worse. 
 Yet something appreciable in that way might also fairly 
 be looked for in time. 
 
 The nature, reach and prescriptive force of this pro- 
 spective coalescence through neutralisation may perhaps 
 best be appreciated in the light of what has already come 
 to pass, without design or mandatory guidance, in those 
 lines of human interest where the national frontiers in- 
 terpose no bar, or at least no decisive bar, whether by 
 force of unconcern or through impotence. Fashions of 
 dress, equipage and decorous usage, e. g., run with some 
 uniformity throughout tlrese modern nations, and indeed 
 
218 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 with some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of 
 course, nothing mandatory, in the simpler sense, about all 
 this ; nor is the degree of conformity extreme or uniform 
 throughout. But it is a ready-made generalisation that 
 only those communities are incorporated in this cosmo- 
 politan coalescence of usage that are moved by their 
 own incitement, and only so far as they have an effectually 
 felt need of conformity in these premises. It is true, a 
 dispassionate outsider, if such there be, would perhaps 
 be struck by the degree of such painstaking conformity 
 to canons of conduct which it frequently must cost serious 
 effort even to ascertain in such detail as the case calls 
 for. Doubtless, or at least presumably, conformity under 
 the jurisdiction of the fashions, and in related provinces 
 of decorum, is obligatory in a degree that need not be 
 looked for throughout the scheme of use and wont at 
 large, even under the advisedly established non-interfer- 
 ence of the authorities. Still, on a point on which the evi- 
 dence hitherto is extremely scant it is the part of discre- 
 tion to hold no settled opinion. 
 
 A more promising line of suggestion is probably that 
 afforded by the current degree of contact and consistency 
 among the modern nations in respect of science and schol- 
 arship, as also in the aesthetic or the industrial arts. Local 
 color and local pride, with one thing and another in the 
 way of special incitement or inhibition, may come in to 
 vary the run of things, or to blur or hinder a common 
 understanding and mutual furtherance and copartnery in 
 these matters of taste and intellect. Yet it is scarcely 
 misleading to speak of the peoples of Christendom as one 
 community in these respects. The sciences and the arts 
 are held as a joint stock among these peoples, in their 
 elements, and measurably also in their working-out. It is 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 219 
 
 true, these interests and achievements of the race are 
 not cultivated with the same assiduity or with identical 
 effect throughout ; but it is equally true that no effectual 
 bar could profitably be interposed, or would be tolerated 
 in the long run in this field, where men have had occa- 
 sion to learn that unlimited collusion is more to the pur- 
 pose than a clannish discrimination. 
 
 It is, no doubt, beyond reasonable hope that these dem- 
 ocratic peoples could be brought forthwith to concerted 
 action on the lines of such a plan of peace by neutralisa- 
 tion of all outstanding national pretensions. Both the 
 French and the English-speaking peoples are too eagerly 
 set on national aims and national prestige, to allow such 
 a plan to come to a hearing, even if something of the 
 kind should be spoken for by their most trusted leaders. 
 By settled habit they are thinking in terms of nationality, 
 and just now they are all under the handicap of an in- 
 flamed national pride. Advocacy of such a plan, of 
 course, does not enter seriously into the purpose of this 
 inquiry; which is concerned with the conditions under 
 which peace is sought today, with the further conditions 
 requisite to its perpetuation, and with the probable ef- 
 fects of such a peace on the fortunes of these peoples in 
 case peace is established and effectually maintained. 
 
 It is a reasonable question, and one to which a provi- 
 sional answer may be found, whether the drift of circum- 
 stances in the present and for the immediate future may 
 be counted on to set in the direction of a progressive neu- 
 tralisation of the character spoken of above, and there- 
 fore possibly toward a perpetuation of that peace that is 
 to follow the present season of war. So also is it an open 
 and interesting question whether the drift in that direc- 
 
220 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tion, if such is the set of it, can be counted on to prove 
 sufficiently swift and massive, so as not to be overtaken 
 and overborne by the push of agencies that make for dis- 
 sension and warlike enterprise. 
 
 Anything like a categorical answer to these questions 
 would have to be a work of vaticination or of effrontery, 
 — possibly as much to the point the one as the other. But 
 there are certain conditions precedent to a lasting peace 
 as the outcome of events now in train, and there are cer- 
 tain definable contingencies conditioned on such current 
 facts as the existing state of the industrial arts and the 
 state of popular sentiment, together with the conjuncture 
 of circumstances under which these factors will come into 
 action. 
 
 The state of the industrial arts, as it bears on the peace 
 and its violation, has been spoken of above. It is of such 
 a character that a judiciously prepared offensive launched 
 by any Power of the first rank at an opportune time can 
 reach and lay waste any given country of the habitable 
 globe. The conclusive evidence of this is at hand, and it 
 is the major premise underlying all current proposals and 
 projects of peace, as w'ell as the refusal of the nations 
 now on the defensive to enter into negotiations looking 
 to an “inconclusive peace.” This state of the case is not 
 commonly recognised in so many words, but it is w'ell 
 enough understood. So that all peace projects that shall 
 hope to find a hearing must make up their account with 
 it, and must show cause why they should be judged com- 
 petent to balk any attempted offensive. In an inarticulate 
 or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less with ever- 
 increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this 
 state of the case is also coming to be an article of pop- 
 ular "knowledge and belief,” wherever much or little 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 221 
 
 thought is spent on the outlook for peace. It has already 
 had a visible effect in diminishing the exclusiveness of 
 nationalities and turning the attention of the pacific peo- 
 ples to the question of feasible w^ays and means of inter- 
 national co-operation in case of need ; but it has not hith- 
 erto visibly lessened the militant spirit among these na- 
 tions, nor has it lowered the tension of their national 
 pride, at least not yet; rather the contrary, in fact. 
 
 The effect, upon the popular temper, of this inchoate 
 realisation of the fatality that so lies in the modern state 
 of the industrial arts, varies from one country to another, 
 according to the varying position in which they are placed, 
 or in which they conceive themselves to be placed. 
 Among the belligerent nations it has put the spur of fear 
 to their need of concerted action as well as to their efforts 
 to strengthen the national defense. But the state of opin- 
 ion and sentiment abroad in the nation in time of war is 
 no secure indication of what it will be after the return to 
 peace. The American people, the largest and most imme- 
 diately concerned of the neutral nations, should afford 
 more significant evidence of the changes in the popular 
 attitude likely to follow from a growing realisation of 
 this state of the case, that the advantage has passed de- 
 finitively to any well prepared and resolute offensive, and 
 that no precautions of diplomacy and no practicable meas- 
 ures of defensive armament will any longer give security, 
 — provided always that there is anywhere a national 
 Power actuated by designs of imperial dominion. 
 
 It is, of course, only little by little that the American 
 people and their spokesmen have come to realise their 
 own case under this late-modern situation, and hitherto 
 only in an imperfect degree. Their first response to the 
 stimulus has been a display of patriotic self-sufficiency 
 
222 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 and a move to put the national defense on a war-footing, 
 such as would be competent to beat off all aggression. 
 Those elements of the population who least realise the 
 gravity of the situation, and who are at the same time 
 commercially interested in measures of armament or in 
 military preferment, have not beg^n to shift forward be- 
 yond this position of magniloquence and resolution ; nor 
 is there as yet much intimation that they see beyond it, 
 although there is an ever-recurring hint that they in a 
 degree appreciate the practical difficulty of persuading a 
 pacific people to make adequate preparation beforehand, in 
 equipment and trained man-power, for such a plan of self- 
 sufficient self-defense. But increasingly among those who 
 are, by force of temperament or insight or by lack of the 
 pecuniary and the placeman’s interest, less confident of 
 an appeal to the nation’s prowess, there is coming for- 
 ward an evident persuasion that warlike preparations — 
 “preparedness” — alone and carried through by the Re- 
 public in isolation, will sea cely serve the turn. 
 
 There are at least two lines of argument, or of persua- 
 sion, running to the support of such a view ; readiness 
 for a warlike defense, by providin'^ equipment and trained 
 men, might prove a doubtfully effectual measure even 
 when carried to the limit of tolerance that will always 
 be reached presently in any democratic country; an<l 
 then, too, there is hope of avoiding the necessity of such 
 warlike preparation, at least in the same extreme degree, 
 by means of some practicable working arrangement to be 
 effected with other nations who are in the same case. 
 Hitherto the farthest reach of these pacific schemes for 
 maintaining the peace, or for the common defense, has 
 taken the shape of a projected league of neutral nations 
 to keep the peace by enforcement of specified interna- 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 223 
 
 tional police regulations or by compulsory arbitration of 
 international disputes. It is extremely doubtful how far, 
 if at all, popular sentiment of any effectual force falls in 
 with this line of precautionary measures. Yet it is evi- 
 dent that popular sentiment, and popular apprehension, 
 has been stirred profoundly by the events of the past 
 two years, and the resulting change that is already visible 
 in the prevailing sentiment as regards the national de- 
 fense would argue that more far-reaching changes in the 
 same connection are fairly to be looked for within a rea- 
 sonable allowance of time. 
 
 In this American case the balance of effectual public 
 opinion hitherto is to all appearance quite in doubt, but 
 it is also quite unsettled. The first response has been a 
 display of patriotic emotion and national self-assertion. 
 The further, later and presumably more deliberate, ex- 
 pressions of opinion carry a more obvious note of appre- 
 hension and less of stubborn or unreflecting national 
 pride. It may be too early to anticipate a material shift 
 of base, to a more neutral, or less exclusively national 
 footing in matters of the common defense. 
 
 The national administration has been moving at an ac- 
 celerated rate in the direction not of national isolation 
 and self-reliance resting on a warlike equipment formid- 
 able enough to make or break the peace at will — such 
 as the more truculent and irresponsible among the poli- 
 ticians have spoken for — ^but rather in the direction of 
 moderating or curtailing all national pretensions that are 
 not of undoubted material consequence, and of seeking a 
 common understanding and concerted action with those 
 nationalities whose effectual interests in the matters of 
 peace and war coincide with the American. The admin- 
 istration has grown visibly more pacific in the course of 
 
224 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 its exacting experience, — ^more resolutely, one might even 
 say more aggressively pacific; but the point of chief at- 
 tention in all this strategy of peace has also visibly been 
 shifting somewhat from the maintenance of a running 
 equilibrium between belligerents and a keeping of the 
 peace from day to day, to the ulterior and altogether dif- 
 ferent question of what is best to be done toward a con- 
 clusive peace at the close of hostilities, and the ways and 
 means of its subsequent perpetuation. 
 
 This latter is, in effect, an altogether different question 
 from that of preserving neutrality and amicable relations 
 in the midst of importunate belligerents, and it may even, 
 conceivably, perhaps not unlikely, come to involve a pre- 
 cautionary breach of the current peace and a taking of 
 sides in the war with an urgent view to a conclusive out- 
 come. It would be going too far to impute to the admin- 
 istration, at the present stage, such an aggressive attitude 
 in its pursuit of a lasting peace as could be called a policy 
 of defensive offense; but it will shock no one’s sensi- 
 bilities to say that such a policy, involving a taking of 
 sides and a renouncing of national isolation, is visibly less 
 remote from the counsels of the administration today than 
 it has been at any earlier period. 
 
 In this pacific attitude, increasingly urgent and increas- 
 ingly far-reaching and apprehensive, the administration 
 appears to be speaking for the common man rather than 
 for the special interests or the privileged classes. Such 
 would appear, on the face of the returns, to be the mean- 
 ing of the late election. It is all the more significant on 
 that account, since in the long run it is after all the com- 
 mon man that will have to pass on the expediency of any 
 settled line of policy and to bear the material burden 
 of carrying it into effect. 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 225 
 
 It may seem rash to presume that a popularly accred- 
 ited administration in a democratic country must approx- 
 imately reflect the effectual changes of popular sentiment 
 and desire. Especially would it seem rash to anyone 
 looking on from the point of view of an undemocratic 
 nation, and therefore prone to see the surface fluctuations 
 of excitement and shifting clamor. But those who are 
 within the democratic pale will know that any adminis- 
 tration in such a country, where official tenure and con- 
 tinued incumbency of the party rest on a popular vote, — • 
 any such administration is a political organisation and is 
 guided by political expediency, in the tawdry sense of the 
 phrase. Such a political situation has the defects of its 
 qualities, as has been well and frequently expounded by 
 its critics, but it has also the merits of its shortcomings. 
 In a democracy of this modern order any incumbent of 
 high office is necessarily something of a politician, quite 
 indispensably so ; and a politician at the same time nec- 
 essarily is something of a demagogue. He yields to the 
 popular drift, or to the set of opinion and demands among 
 the effective majority on whom he leans; and he can 
 not even appear to lead, though he may surreptitiously 
 lead opinion in adroitly seeming to reflect it and obey it. 
 Ostensible leadership, such as has been staged in this 
 country from time to time, has turned out to be ostensible 
 only. The politician must be adroit ; but if he is also to 
 be a statesman he must be something more. He is under 
 the necessity of guessing accurately what the drift of 
 events and opinion is going to be on the next reach 
 ahead ; and in taking coming events by the forelock he 
 may be able to guide and shape the drift of opinion and 
 sentiment somewhat to his own liking. But all the while 
 he must keep within the lines of the long-term set of the 
 IS 
 
226 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 current as it works out in the habits of thought of the 
 common man. 
 
 Such foresight and flexibility is necessary to continued 
 survival, but flexibility of convictions alone does not meet 
 the requirements. Indeed, it has been tried. It is only 
 the minor politicians — ^the most numerous and long- 
 lived, it is true — who can hold their place in the crevices 
 of the party organisation, and get their livelihood from the 
 business of party politics, without some power of vision 
 and some hazard of forecast. It results from this state 
 of the case that the drift of popular sentiment and the 
 popular response to the stimulus of current events is re- 
 flected more faithfully and more promptly by the short- 
 lived administrations of a democracy than by the stable 
 and formally irresponsible governmental establishments 
 of the older order. It should also be noted that these 
 democratic administrations are in a less advantageous 
 position for the purpose of guiding popular sentiment and 
 shaping it to their own end.s. 
 
 Now, it happens that at no period within the past half- 
 century has the course of events moved with such celerity 
 or with so grave a bearing on the common good and the 
 prospective contingencies of national life as during the 
 present administration. This apparent congruity of the 
 administration’s policy with the drift of popular feeling 
 and belief will incline anyone to put a high rating on the 
 administration’s course of conduct, in international rela- 
 tions as well as in national measures that have a bearing 
 on international relations, as indicating the course taken 
 by sentiment and second thought in the community at 
 large, — for, in effect, whether or not in set form, the com- 
 munity at large reflects on any matters of such gravity 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 227 
 
 and urgency as to force themselves upon the attention of 
 the common man. 
 
 Two main lines of reflection have visibly been enforced 
 on the administration by the course of events in the inter- 
 national field. There has been a growing apprehension, 
 mounting in the later months to something like the rank 
 of a settled conviction, that the Republic has been marked 
 down for reduction to a vassal state by the dynastic 
 Empire now engaged with its European adversaries. In 
 so saying that the Republic has been marked down for 
 subjection it is not intended to intimate that deliberate 
 counsel has been had by the Imperial establishment on 
 that prospective enterprise; still less that a resolution 
 to such effect, with specification of ways and means, has 
 been embodied in documentary form and deposited for 
 future reference in the Imperial archives. All that is 
 intended, and all that is necessary to imply, is that events 
 are in train to such effect that the subjugation of the 
 American republic will necessarily find its place in the 
 sequence presently, provided that the present Imperial 
 adventure is brought to a reasonably auspicious issue; 
 though it does not follow that this particular enterprise 
 need be counted on as the next large adventure in do- 
 minion to be undertaken when things again fall into prom- 
 ising shape. This latter point would, of course, depend 
 on the conjuncture of circumstances, chief of which would 
 have to be the exigencies of imperial dominion shaping 
 the policy of the Empire’s natural and necessary ally in 
 the Far East. All this has evidently been coming more 
 and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the 
 American administration. Of course, it is not spoken 
 of in set terms to this effect in official utterances, per- 
 haps not even within doors ; that sort of thing is not done. 
 
228 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 But it can do no harm to use downright expressions in a 
 scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view to 
 understanding the current drift of things in this field.. 
 
 Beyond this is the similar apprehension, similarly 
 though more slowly and reluctantly rising to the level of 
 settled conviction, that the American commonwealth is not 
 fit to take care of its own case single-handed. This ap- 
 prehension is enforced more and more unmistakably with 
 every month that passes on the theatre of war. And it 
 is reenforced by the constantly more obvious reflection 
 that the case of the American commonwealth in this mat- 
 ter is the same as that of the democratic countries of 
 Europe, and of the other European colonies. It is not, 
 or at least one may believe it is not yet, that in the patri- 
 otic apprehension of the common man, or of the admin- 
 istration which speaks for him, the resources of the coun- 
 try would be inadequate to meet any contingencies of the 
 kind that might arise, whether in respect of industrial 
 capacity or in point of man-power, if these resources w'ere 
 turned to this object with the same singleness of purpose 
 and the same drastic procedure that marks the course of 
 a national establishment guided by no considerations short 
 of imperial dominion. The doubt presents itself rather 
 as an apprehension that the cost would be extravagantly 
 high, in all respects in which cost can be counted ; which 
 is presently seconded, on very slight reflection and review 
 of experience, by recognition of the fact that a democracy 
 is, in point of fact, not to be persuaded to stand under 
 arms interminably in mere readiness for a contingency, 
 however distasteful the contingency may be. 
 
 In point of fact, a democratic commonwealth is moved 
 by other interests in the main, and the common defense 
 is a secondary consideration, not a primary interest, — 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 229 
 
 unless in the exceptional case of a commonwealth so placed 
 under the immediate threat of invasion as to have the 
 common defense forced into the place of paramount con- 
 sequence in its workday habits of thought. The Amer- 
 ican republic is not so placed. Anyone may satisfy him- 
 self by reasonable second thought that the people of this 
 nation are not to be counted on to do their utmost in 
 time of peace to prepare for war. They may be per- 
 suaded to do much more than has been their habit, and 
 adventurous politicians may commit them to much more 
 than the people at large would wish to undertake, but 
 when all is done that can be counted on for a permanency, 
 up to the limit of popular tolerance, it would be a bold 
 guess that should place the result at more than one-half 
 of what the country is capable of. Particularly wmdd 
 the people’s patience balk at the extensive military train- 
 ing requisite to put the country in an adequate position 
 of defense against a sudden and well-prepared offensive. 
 It is otherwise with a dynastic State, to the directorate of 
 which all other interests are necessarily secondary, sub- 
 sidiary, and mainly to be considered only in so far as 
 they are contributory to the nation’s readiness for warlike 
 enterprise. 
 
 America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazard- 
 ous position, between the two seas beyond which to either 
 side lie the two Imperial Powers whose place in the mod- 
 ern economy of nations it is to disturb the peace in an 
 insatiable quest of dominion. This position is no longer 
 defensible in isolation, under the later state of the indus- 
 trial arts, and the policy of isolation that has guided the 
 national policy hitherto is therefore falling out of date. 
 The question is as to the manner of its renunciation, 
 rather than the fact of it. It may end in a defensive co- 
 
230 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 partnership with other nations who are placed on the 
 defensive by the same threatening situation, or it may end 
 in a bootless struggle for independence, but the choice 
 scarcely extends beyond this alternative. It will be said, 
 of course, that America is competent to take care of 
 itself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past. 
 But that view, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men 
 and by politicians looking for party advantage, overlooks 
 the fact that the modern technology has definitively 
 thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that interven- 
 ing seas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle. 
 On this latter head, what was reasonably true fifteen 
 years ago is doubtful today, and it is in all reasonable 
 expectation invalid for the situation fifteen years hence. 
 
 The other peoples that are of a neutral temper may 
 need the help of America sorely enough in their endeav- 
 ours to keep the peace, but America’s need of cooperation 
 is sorer still, for the Republic is coming into a more pre- 
 carious place than any of the others. America is also, 
 at least potentially, the most democratic of the greater 
 Powers, and is handicapped with all the disabilities of a 
 democratic commonwealth in the face of war. America 
 j is also for the present, and perhaps for the calculable fu- 
 ture, the m.ost powerful of these greater Powers, in point 
 of conceivably available resources, though not in actually 
 available fighting-power; and the entrance of America 
 unreservedly into a neutral league would consequently be 
 decisive both of the purposes of the league and of its 
 efficiency for the purpose ; particularly if the neutralisa- 
 tion of interests among the members of the league were 
 carried so far as to make withdrawal and independent 
 action disadvantageous. 
 
Peace and Neutrality 
 
 231 
 
 On the establishment of such a neutral league, with 
 such neutralisation of national interests as would assure 
 concerted action in time of stress, the need of armament 
 on the part of the American republic would disappear, 
 at least to the extent that no increase of armed force 
 would be advisable. The strength of the Republic lies in 
 its large and varied resources and the unequalled indus- 
 trial capacity of its population, — a capacity which is today 
 seriously hampered by untoward business interests and 
 business methods sheltered under national discrimination, 
 but which would come more nearly to its own so soon 
 as these national discriminations were corrected or abro- 
 gated in the neutralisation of national pretensions. The 
 neutrally-minded countries of Europe have been con- 
 strained to learn the art of modern war, as also to equip 
 themselves with the necessary appliances, sufficient to 
 meet all requirements for keeping the peace through such 
 a period as can or need be taken into account, — provided 
 the peace that is to come on the conclusion of the pres- 
 ent war shall be placed on so “conclusive” a footing as 
 will make it anything substantially more than a season of 
 recuperation for that warlike Power about whose enter- 
 prise in dominion the whole question turns. Provided 
 that suitably “substantial guarantees” of a reasonable 
 quiescence on the part of this Imperial Power are had, 
 there need be no increase of the American armament. 
 Any increased armament would in that case amount to 
 nothing better than an idle duplication of plant and per- 
 sonnel already on hand and sufficient to meet the require- 
 ments. 
 
 To meet the contingencies had in view in its formation, 
 such a league would have to be neutralised to the point 
 that all pertinent national pretensions would fall into vir- 
 
232 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tual abe)faiKe, so that all the necessary resources at the 
 disposal of the federated nations would automatically 
 come under the control of the league’s appointed au- 
 thorities without loss of time, whenever the need might 
 arise. That is to say, national interests and pretensions 
 would have to give way to a collective control sufficient 
 to insure prompt and concerted action. In the face of 
 such a neutral leagpie Imperial Japan alone would be un- 
 able to make a really serious diversion or to entertain much 
 hope of following up its quest of dominion. The Japanese 
 Imperial establishment might even be persuaded peaceably 
 to let its unoffending neighbours live their own life ac- 
 cording to their own light. It is, indeed, possibly the ap- 
 prehension of some such contingency that has hurried the 
 rapacity of the Island Empire into the headlong indecen- 
 cies of the past year or two. 
 
CHAPTER VT 
 
 Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 It may seem early (January 1917) to offer a surmise 
 as to what must be the manner of league into which the 
 pacific nations are to enter and by which the peace will 
 be kept, in case such a move is to be made. But the cir- 
 cumstances that are to urge such a line of action, and 
 that will condition its carrying out in case it is entered on, 
 have already come into bearing and should, on the whole, 
 no longer be especially obscure to anyone who will let 
 the facts of the case rather than his own predilections 
 decide what he will believe. By and large, the pressure 
 of these conditioning circumstances may be seen, and the 
 line of least resistance under this pressure may be cal- 
 culated, with due allowance of a margin of error owing 
 to unknown contingencies of time and minor variables. 
 
 Time is of the essence of the case. So that what would 
 have been dismissed as idle vapour two years ago has al- 
 ready become subject of grave deliberation today, and 
 may rise to paramount urgency that far hence. Time 
 is needed to appreciate and get used to any innovation of 
 appreciable gravity, particularly where the innovation de- 
 pends in any degree on a change in public sentiment, as 
 in this instance. The present outlook would seem to be 
 that no excess of time is allowed in these premises ; but 
 it should also be noted that events are moving with unex- 
 ampled celerity, and are impinging on the popular ap- 
 
 233 
 
234 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 prehension with unexampled force, — unexampled on such 
 a scale. It is hoped that a recital of these circumstances 
 that provoke to action along this line will not seem un- 
 warrantably tedious, and that a tentative definition of 
 the line of least resistance under pressure of these cir- 
 cumstances may not seem unwarrantably presumptuous. 
 
 The major premise in the case is the felt need of secu- 
 rity from aggression at the hands of Imperial Germany 
 and its auxiliary Powers ; seconded by an increasingly 
 uneasy apprehension as to the prospective line of con- 
 duct on the part of Imperial Japan, bent on a similar 
 quest of dominion. There is also the less articulate ap- 
 prehension of what, if anything, may be expected from 
 Imperial Russia ; an obscure and scarcely definable fac- 
 tor, which comes into the calculation chiefly by way of re- 
 enforcing the urgency of the situation created by the dy- 
 nastic ambitions of these other two Imperial States. Fur- 
 ther, the pacific nations, the leading ones among them 
 being the French and English-speaking peoples, are com- 
 ing to recognise that no one among them can provide for 
 its own security single-handed, even at the cost of their 
 utmost endeavour in the way pf what is latterly called 
 “preparedness and they are at the same time unwilling 
 to devote their force unreservedly to warlike preparation, 
 having nothing to gain. The solution proposed is a league 
 of the pacific nations, commonly spoken of at the present 
 stage as a league to enforce peace, or less ambitiously 
 as a league to enforce arbitration. The question being 
 left somewhat at loose ends, whether the projected league 
 is to include the two or three Imperial Powers whose 
 pacific intentions are, euphemistically, open to doubt. 
 
 Such is the outline of the project and its premises. An 
 attempt to fill in this outline will, perhaps, conduce to 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 235 
 
 an appreciation of what is sought and of what the condi- 
 tioning circumstances will enforce in the course of its 
 realisation. As touches the fear of aggression, it has 
 already been indicated, perhaps with unnecessary iteration, 
 that these two Imperial Powers are unable to relinquish 
 the quest of dominion through warlike enterprise, because 
 as dynastic States they have no other ulterior aim; as 
 has abundantly appeared in the great volume of expository 
 statements that have come out of the Fatherland the past 
 few years, official, semi-official, inspired, and spontane- 
 ous. “Assurance of the nation’s future” is not trans- 
 latable into any other terms. The Imperial dynasty has 
 no other ground to stand on, and can not give up the en- 
 terprise so long as it can muster force for any formidable 
 diversion, to get anything in the way of dominion by seiz- 
 ure, threat or chicane. 
 
 This is coming to be informally and loosely, but none 
 the less definitively, realised by the pacific nations ; and 
 the realisation of it is gaining in clearness and assurance 
 as time passes. And it is backed by the conviction that, 
 in the nature of things, no engagement on the part of 
 such a dynastic State has any slightest binding force, be- 
 yond the material constraint that would enforce it from 
 the outside. So the demand has been diplomatically 
 phrased as a demand for “substantial guarantees.” Any 
 gain in resources on the part of these Powers is to be 
 counted as a gain in the ways and means of disturbing 
 the peace, without reservation. 
 
 The pacific nations include among them two large items, 
 both of which are indispensable to the success of the proj- 
 ect, the United States and the United Kingdom. The 
 former brings in its train, virtually without exception or 
 question, the other American republics, none of which 
 
236 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 can practicably go in or stay out except in company and 
 collusion with the United States. The United Kingdom 
 after the same fashion, and with scarcely less assurance, 
 may be counted on to carry the British colonies. Evi- 
 dently, without both of these groups the project would 
 not even make a beginning. Beyond this is to be counted 
 in as elements of strength, though scarcely indispensable, 
 France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian 
 countries. The other west-European nations would in all 
 probability be found in the league, although so far as 
 regards its work and its fortunes their adhesion would 
 scarcely be a matter of decisive consequence; they may 
 therefore be left somewhat on one side in any considera- 
 tion of the circumstances that would shape the league, 
 its aims and its limitations. The Balkan states, in the 
 wider acceptance, they that frequent the Sign of the 
 Double Cross, are similarly negligible in respect of the 
 organisation of such a league or its resources and the 
 mutual concessions necessaiy to be made between its 
 chief members. Russia is so doubtful a factor, particu- 
 larly as regards its place and value in industry, culture and 
 politics, in the near future, as to admit nothing much 
 more than a doubt on what its relation to the situation 
 will be. The evil intentions of the Imperial-bureaucratic 
 establishment are probably no more to be questioned than 
 the good intentions of the underlying peoples of Russia. 
 China will have to be taken in, if for no other reason than 
 the use to which the magnificent resources of that country 
 would be turned by its Imperial neighbour in the absence 
 of insurmountable interference from outside. But China 
 will come in on any terms that include neutrality and 
 security. ~ 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 237 
 
 The question then arises as to the Imperial Powers 
 whose dynastic enterprise is primarily to be hedged against 
 by such a league. Reflection will show that if the league 
 is to eflFect any appreciable part of its purpose, these 
 Powers will also be included in the league, or at least in 
 its jurisdiction. A pacific league not including these 
 Powers, or not extending its jurisdiction and surveillance 
 to them and their conduct, would come to the same thing 
 as a coalition of nations in two hostile groups, the one 
 standing on the defensive against the warlike machina- 
 tions of the other, and both groups bidding for the favor 
 of those minor Powers whose traditions and current as- 
 pirations run to national (dynastic) aggrandizement by 
 way of political intrigue. It would come to a more artic- 
 ulate and accentuated form of that balance of power that 
 has latterly gone bankrupt in Europe, with the most cor- 
 rupt and unreliable petty monarchies of eastern Europe 
 vested with a casting vote; and it would also involve 
 a system of competitive armaments of the same general 
 character as what has also shown itself bankrupt. It 
 would, in other words, mean a virtual return to the status 
 quo ante, but with an overt recognition of its provisional 
 character, and with the lines of division more sharply 
 drawn. That is to say, it would amount to reinstating the 
 situation which the projected league is intended to avert. 
 It is evidently contained in the premises that the projected 
 league must be all-inclusive, at least as regards its juris- 
 diction and surveillance. The argument will return to 
 this point presently. 
 
 The purpose of the projected league is peace and secu- 
 rity, commonly spoken of under patriotic preconceptions 
 as “national” peace and security. This will have to mean 
 a competent enforcement of peace, on such a footing of 
 
238 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 overmastering force at the disposal of the associated pa- 
 cific nations as to make security a matter of ordinary 
 routine. It is true, the more genial spokesmen of the 
 project are given to the view that what is to come of it 
 all is a comity of neutral nations, amicably adjusting 
 their own relations among themselves in a spirit of peace 
 and good-will. But this view is over-sanguine, in that it 
 overlooks the point that into this prospective comity of 
 nations Imperial Germany (and Imperial Japan) fit like 
 a drunken savage with a machine gun. It also overlooks 
 the patent fatality that these two are bound to come into 
 a coalition at the next turn, with whatever outside and 
 subsidiary resources they can draw on ; provided only that 
 a reasonable opening for further enterprise presents itself. 
 The league, in other terms, must be in a position to 
 enforce peace by overmastering force, and to anticipate 
 any move at cross purposes with the security of the pa- 
 cific nations. 
 
 This end can be reached by either one of two ways. 
 If the dynastic States are left to their own devices, it will 
 be incumbent on the associated nations to put in the 
 field a standing force sufficient to prevent a recourse to 
 arms; which means competitive armament and universal 
 military rule. Or the dynastic States may be taken into 
 partnership and placed under such surveillance and con- 
 straint as to practically disarm them ; which would ad- 
 mit virtual disarmament of the federated nations. The 
 former arrangement has nothing in its favour, except 
 the possibility that no better or less irksome arrangement 
 can be had under existing circumstances ; that is to say 
 that the pacific nations may not be able to bring these 
 dynastic states to terms of disarmament under surveil- 
 lance. They assuredly can not except by force; and 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 239 
 
 this is the precise point on which the continued hostili- 
 ties in Europe turn today. In diplomatic parable the 
 German Imperial spokesmen say that they can accept (or 
 as they prefer to phrase it, grant) no terms that do not 
 fully safeguard the Future of the Fatherland; and in 
 similarly diplomatic parable the spokesmen of the En- 
 tente insist that Prussian militarism must be permanently 
 put out of commission; but it all means the same thing, 
 viz. that the Imperial establishment is to be (or is not to 
 be) disabled beyond the possibility of its entering on a 
 similar warlike enterprise again, when it has had time for 
 recuperation. The dynastic statesmen, and the lay sub- 
 jects of the Imperial establishment, are strenuously set 
 on securing a fair opportunity for recuperation and a 
 wiser endeavour to achieve that dominion which the pres- 
 ent adventure promises to defeat; while the Entente 
 want no recurrence, and are persuaded that a recurrence 
 can be avoided only on the footing of a present collapse 
 of the Imperial power and a scrupulously enforced pros- 
 tration of it henceforth. 
 
 Without the definitive collapse of the Imperial power 
 no pacific league of nations can come to anything much 
 more than armistice. On the basis of such a collapse the 
 league may as well administer its affairs economically by 
 way of an all-around reduction of armaments, as by the 
 costlier and more irksome way of “preparedness.” But 
 a sensible reduction of armaments on the part of the neu- 
 tral nations implies disarmament of the dynastic States. 
 Which would involve a neutral surveillance of the affairs 
 of these dynastic States in such detail and with such ex- 
 ercise of authority as would reduce their governments 
 to the effective status of local administrative officials. 
 Out of which, in turn, would arise complications that 
 
240 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 would lead to necessary readjustments all along the line. 
 It would involve the virtual, if not also the formal, aboli- 
 tion of the monarchy, since the monarchy has no other 
 use than that of international war and intrigue; or at 
 least it would involve the virtual abrogation of its pow- 
 ers, reducing it to the same status of faineantise as now 
 characterises the British crown. Evidently this means a 
 serious intermeddling in the domestic concerns and ar-^ 
 rangements of the Fatherland, such as is not admissible 
 under the democratic principle that any people must be 
 left free to follow their own inclinations and devices in 
 their own concerns; at the same time that this degree 
 of interference is imperative if the peace is to be kept on 
 any other footing than that of eternal vigilance and su- 
 perior armed force, with a people whose own inclinations 
 and devices are of the kind now gp-own familiar in the 
 German case, — all of which also applies, with accentua- 
 tion, in the case of Imperial Japan. 
 
 Some such policy of neutral surveillance in the affairs 
 of these peoples whose pacific temper is under suspicion, 
 is necessarily involved in a plan to enforce peace by 
 concert of the pacific nations, and it will necessarily carry 
 implications and farther issues, touching not only these 
 supposedly recalcitrant peoples, but also as regards the 
 pacific nations themselves. Assuming always that the 
 prime purpose and consistent aim of the projected league 
 is the peace and security of those pacific nations on whose 
 initiative it is to be achieved, then it should be reasonable 
 to assume that the course of procedure in its organisation, 
 administration and further adaptations and adjustments 
 must follow the logic of necessities leading to that end. 
 He who wills the end must make up his account with the 
 
 means. 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 241 
 
 The end in this case is peace an-d security ; which means, 
 for practical purposes, peace and good-will. Ill-will is 
 not a secure foundation of peace. Even the military 
 strategists of the Imperial establishment recommend a 
 programme of “frightfulness” only as a convenient mili- 
 tary expedient, essentially a provisional basis of tranquil- 
 ity. In the long run and as a permanent peace measure 
 it is doubtless not to the point. Security is finally to be 
 had among or between modern peoples only on the ground 
 of a common understanding and an impartially common 
 basis of equity, or something approaching that basis as 
 nearly as circumstances will permit. Which means that 
 in so far as the projected peace-compact is to take effect 
 in any enduring way, and leave the federated nations some 
 degree of freedom from persistent apprehension and ani- 
 mosity, as well as from habitual insecurity of life and 
 limb, the league must not only be all-inclusive, but it must 
 be inclusively uniform in all its requirements and regu- 
 lations. 
 
 The peoples of the quondam Imperial nations must 
 come into the league on a footing of formal equality with 
 the rest. This they can not do without the virtual abdi- 
 cation of their dynastic governmental establishments and 
 a consequent shift to a democratic form of organisation, 
 and a formal abrogation of class privileges and prerog- 
 atives. 
 
 However, a virtual abdication or cancelment of the dy- 
 nastic rule, such as to bring it formally into the same 
 class with the British crown, would scarcely meet the re- 
 quirements in the case of the German Imperial establish- 
 ment ; still more patently not in the case of Imperial 
 Japan. If, following the outlines of the decayed British 
 crown, one or the other of these Imperial establishments 
 
 i6 
 
242 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 were by formal enactment reduced to a state of nominal 
 desuetude, the effect would be very appreciably different 
 from what happens in the British community, where the 
 crown has lost its powers by failure of the requisite sub- 
 ordination on the part of the people, and not by a formal 
 abdication of rights. In the German case, and even more 
 in the Japanese case, the strength of the Imperial estab- 
 lishment lies in the unimpaired loyalty of the populace; 
 which would remain nearly intact at the outset, and would 
 thin out only by insensible degrees in the sequel ; so that 
 if only the Imperial establishment were left formally 
 standing it would command the fealty of the common 
 run in spite of any formal abrogation of its powers, and 
 the course of things would, in effect, run as before the 
 break. In effect, to bring about a shift to a democratic 
 basis the dynastic slate would have to be wiped very 
 clean indeed. And this shift would be indispensable to 
 the successful conduct of such a pacific league of nations, 
 since any other than an effectually democratic national 
 establishment is to be counted on unfailingly to intrigue 
 for dynastic aggrandizement, through good report and 
 evil. 
 
 In a case like that of Imperial Germany, with its fed- 
 erated States and subsidiaries, where royalty and nobility 
 still are potent preconceptions investing the popular imag- 
 ination, and where loyal abnegation in the presence of 
 authority still is the chief and staple virtue of the common 
 man, — in all such cases virtual abdication of the dynastic 
 initiative under constitutional forms can be had only by 
 a formal and scrupulously complete abrogation of all 
 those legal and customary arrangements on which this 
 irresponsible exercise of authority has rested and through 
 which it has taken effect. Neutralisation in these in- 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 243 
 
 stances will mean reduction to an unqualified democratic 
 footing ; which will, at least at the outset, not be accepta- 
 ble to the common people, and will be wholly intolerable 
 to the ruling classes. Such a regime, therefore, while it 
 is indispensable as a working basis for a neutral league 
 of peace, would from the outset have to be enforced 
 against the most desperate resistance of the ruling classes, 
 headed by the dynastic statesmen and war-lords, and 
 backed by the stubborn loyalty of the subject populace. 
 It would have to mean the end of things for the ruling 
 classes and the most distasteful submission to an alien 
 scheme of use and wont for the populace. And yet it is 
 also an indispensable element in any scheme of pacifica- 
 tion that aims at permanent peace and security. In time, 
 it may well be believed, the people of the Fatherland 
 might learn to do well enough without the gratuitous 
 domination of their ruling classes, but at the outset it 
 would be a heartfelt privation. 
 
 It follows that a league to enforce peace would have to 
 begin its regime with enforcing peace on terms of the 
 unconditional surrender of the formidable warlike na- 
 tions ; which could be accomplished only by the absolute 
 and irretrievable defeat of these Powers as they now 
 stand. The question will, no doubt, present itself. Is the 
 end worth the cost? That question can, of course, not 
 be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as it resolves 
 itself into a question of taste and prepossession. An an- 
 swer to it would also not be greatly to the purpose here, 
 since it would have no particular bearing on the course 
 of action likely to be pursued by these pacific nations in 
 their quest of a settled peace. It is more to the point to 
 ask what is likely to be the practical decision of these 
 
244 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 peoples on that head when the question finally presents 
 itself in a concrete form. 
 
 Again it is necessary to call to mind that any momen- 
 tous innovation which rests on popular sentiment will 
 take time ; that consequently anything like a plebiscite on 
 the question today would scarcely give a safe index of 
 what the decision is likely to be when presently put to the 
 test; and that as things go just now, swiftly and urgent, 
 any time-allowance counts at something more than its 
 ordinary workday coefficient. What can apparently be 
 said with some degree of confidence is that just now, 
 during these two years past, sentiment has been moving 
 in the direction indicated, and that any growing inclina- 
 tion of the kind is being strongly re-enforced by a grow- 
 ing realisation that nothing but heroic remedies will avail 
 at this juncture. If it comes to be currently recognised 
 that a settled peace can be had only at the cost of eradi- 
 cating privilege and royalty from the warlike nations, it 
 would seem reasonable to expect, from their present state 
 of mind, that the pacific nations will scarcely hesitate 
 to apply that remedy, — provided always that the fortunes 
 of war fall out as that measure would require, and pro- 
 vided also that the conflict lasts long enough and severe 
 enough to let them make up their mind to anything so 
 drastic. 
 
 There is a certain side issue bearing on this question of 
 the ulterior probabilities of popular sentiment and na- 
 tional policy as to what is to be done with the warlike 
 nations in the event that the allied nations who fight for 
 neutrality have the disposal of such matters. This side 
 issue may seem remote, and it may not unlikely be over- 
 looked among the mass of graver and more tangible con 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 245 
 
 siderations. It was remarked above that the United 
 Kingdom is one of the two chief pillars of the projected 
 house of peace ; and it may be added without serious fear 
 of contradiction or annoyance that the United Kingdom is 
 also the one among these pacific nations that comes near- 
 est being capable, in the event of such an emergency, 
 to take care of its own case single-handed. For better 
 or worse, British adhesion to the project is indispensable, 
 and the British are in a position virtually to name their 
 own terms of adhesion. The British commonwealth — ■ 
 a very inclusive phrase in this connection — must form the 
 core of the pacific league, if any, and British sentiment 
 will have a very great place in the terms of its formation 
 and in the terms which it will be inclined to offer the 
 Imperial coalition at the settlement. 
 
 Now, it happens that the British community entered 
 on this war as a democratic monarchy ruled and officered 
 by a body of gentlemen — doubtless the most correct and 
 admirable muster of gentlemen, of anything approaching 
 its volume, that the modern world can show. But the 
 war has turned out not to be a gentlemen’s war. It has 
 on the contrary been a war of technological exploits, re- 
 enforced with all the beastly devices of the heathen. It 
 is a war in which all the specific traits of the well-bred 
 and gently-minded man are a handicap ; in which veracity, 
 gallantry, humanity, liberality are conducive to nothing 
 but defeat and humiliation. The death-rate among the 
 British gentlemen-officers in the early months, and for 
 many months, ran extravagantly high, for the most part 
 because they were gallant gentlemen as well as officers 
 imbued with the good, old class spirit of noblesse oblige, 
 that has made half the tradition and more than half the 
 working theory of the British officer in the field, — good. 
 
246 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 but old, hopelessly out of date. That generation of offi- 
 cers died, for the most part; being unfit to survive or 
 to serve the purpose under these modern conditions of 
 w’arfare, to which their enemy on the other hand had 
 adapted themselves with easy facility from beforehand. 
 The gentlemanly qualifications, and the material apparatus 
 of gentility, and, it will perhaps have to be admitted, the 
 gentlemen, have fallen into the background, or perhaps 
 rather have measurably fallen into abeyance, among the 
 officers of the line. There may be more doubt as to the 
 state of things in respect of the gentility of the staff, but 
 the best that can confidently be said is that it is a point 
 in doubt. 
 
 It is hoped that one may say without offense that in the 
 course of time the personnel has apparently worked down 
 to the level of vulgarity defined by the ways and means 
 of this modern warfare; which means the level on which 
 runs a familiar acquaintance with large and complex 
 mechanical apparatus, railway and highway transport and 
 power, reenforced concrete, excavations and mud, more 
 particularly mud, concealment and ambush, and unlimited 
 deceit and ferocity. It is not precisely that persons of 
 pedigree and gentle breeding have ceased to enter or seek 
 entrance to employment as officers, still less that measures 
 have been taken to restrain their doing so or to eliminate 
 from the service those who have come into it — though 
 there may present itself a doubt on this point as touches 
 the more responsible discretionary positions — but only 
 that the stock of suitable gentlemen, uncommonly large 
 as it is, has been overdrawn ; that those who have lat- 
 terly gone into service, or stayed in, have perforce divested 
 themselves of their gentility in some appreciable measure, 
 particularly as regards class distinction, and have fallen 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 247 
 
 on their feet in the more commonplace role of common 
 men. 
 
 Serviceability in this modern warfare is conditioned on 
 much the same traits of temperament and training that 
 make for usefulness in the modern industrial processes, 
 where large-scale coordinations of movement and an 
 effective familiarity with precise and far-reaching me- 
 chanical processes is an indispensable requirement, — in- 
 dispensable in the same measure as the efficient conduct 
 of this modern machine industry is indispensable. But 
 the British gentleman, in so far as he runs true to type, 
 is of no use to modern industry; quite the contrary, in 
 fact. Still, the British gentleman is, in point of heredity, 
 the same thing over again as the British common man ; 
 so that, barring the misdirected training that makes him a 
 gentleman, and which can largely be undone under urgent 
 need and pressure, he can be made serviceable for such 
 uses as the modern warfare requires. Meantime the 
 very large demand for officers, and the insatiable demand 
 for capable officers, has brought the experienced and ca- 
 pable common man into the case and is in a fair way to 
 discredit gentility as a necessary qualification of field 
 officers. 
 
 But the same process of discredit and elimination is 
 also extending to the responsible officials who have the 
 administration of things in hand. Indeed, the course of 
 vulgarisation among the responsible officials has now been 
 under way for some appreciable time and with very per- 
 ceptible effect, and the rate of displacement appears to 
 be gathering velocity with every month that passes. Here, 
 as in the field operations, it also appears that gentlemanly 
 methods, standards, preconceptions, and knowledge of 
 men and things, is no longer to the purpose. Here, too. 
 
248 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 it is increasingly evident that this is not a gentlemen’s 
 war. And the traditional qualifications that have sufficed 
 in the past, at least to the extent of enabling the British 
 management to “muddle through,” as they are proudly 
 in the habit of saying, — these qualifications are of slight 
 account in this technological conjuncture of the nation’s 
 fortunes. It would perhaps be an under-statement to 
 say that these gentlemanly qualifications are no longer 
 of any account, for the purpose immediately in hand, and 
 it would doubtless not do to say that they are wholly and 
 unreservedly disserviceable as things run today ; but 
 captious critics might find at least a precarious footing of 
 argument on such a proposition. 
 
 Through the course of the nineteenth century the 
 British government had progressively been taking on the 
 complexion of a “gentlemen’s agreement;” a government 
 by gentlemen, for gentlemen, and of gentlemen, too, be- 
 yond what could well be alleged in any other known in- 
 stance, though never wholly so. No government could be 
 a government of gentlemen exclusively, since there is no 
 pecuniary profit in gentlemen as such, and therefore no 
 object in governing them; more particularly could there 
 never be any incentive in it for gentlemen, whose liveli- 
 hood is, in the nature of the case, drawn from some one 
 else. A gentlemen’s government can escape death by 
 inanition only in so far as it serves the material interest 
 of its class, as contrasted with the underlying population 
 from which the class draws its livelihood. This British 
 arrangement of a government by prudent and humane gen- 
 tlemen with a view to the conservation of that state of 
 things that best conduced to the material well-being of 
 their own class, has on the whole had the loyal support 
 of the underlying populace, with an occasional floundering 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 249 
 
 protest. But the protest has never taken the shape of 
 an expressed distrust of gentlemen, considered as the 
 staple ways and means of government ; nor has the direc- 
 tion of affairs ever descended into the hands of any other 
 or lower class or condition of men. 
 
 On the whole, this British arrangement for the control 
 of national affairs by a body of interested gentlemen- 
 investors has been, and perhaps still is, just as well at 
 home in the affectionate preconceptions of the nineteenth- 
 century British as the corresponding German usufruct 
 by self-appointed swaggering aristocrats has been among 
 the underlying German population, or as the American 
 arrangement of national control by business men for busi- 
 ness ends. The British and the American arrangements 
 run very much to the same substantial effect, of course, 
 inasmuch as the British gentlemen represent, as a class, 
 the filial generations of a business community, and their 
 aims and standards of conduct continue to be such as are 
 enforced by the pecuniary interests on which their gen- 
 tility is conditioned. They continue to draw the ways 
 and means of a worthy life from businesslike arrange- 
 ments of a “vested” character, made and provided with 
 a view to their nourishment and repose. Their resulting 
 usufruct of the community’s productive efforts rests on a 
 vested interest of a pecuniary sort, sanctioned by the 
 sacred rights of property; very much as the analogous 
 German dynastic and aristocratic usufruct rests on per- 
 sonal prerogative, sanctioned by the sacred rights of au- 
 thentic prescription, without afterthought. The two, it 
 will be noted are very much alike, in effect, “under the 
 skin.” The great distinguishing mark being that the Ger- 
 man usufructuary gentlemen are, in theory at least, gen- 
 tlemen-adventurers of prowess and proud words, whose 
 
250 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 place in the world’s economy it is to glorify God and 
 disturb the peace; whereas their British analogues are 
 gentlemen-investors, of blameless propriety, whose place 
 it is more simply to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 
 
 All this arrangement of a usufruct with a view to the 
 reputable consumption of the community’s superfluous 
 production has had the cordial support of British senti- 
 ment, perhaps fully as cordial as the German popular 
 subservience in the corresponding German scheme; both 
 being well embedded in the preconceptions of the common 
 man. But the war has put it all to a rude test, and has 
 called on the British gentlemen’s executive committee to 
 take over duties for which it was not designed. The exi- 
 gencies of this war of technological exploits have been 
 almost wholly, and very insistently, of a character not 
 contemplated in the constitution of such an executive 
 committee of gentlemen-investors designed to safeguard 
 class interests and promote their pecuniary class ad- 
 vantage by a blamelessly inconspicuous and indirect man- 
 agement of national affairs. The methods are of the class 
 known colloquially among the vulgar-spoken American 
 politicians as “pussyfooting” and “log-rolling” ; but al- 
 ways with such circumstance of magnitude, authenticity 
 and well-bred deference to precedent, as to give the re- 
 sulting routine of subreption, trover and conversion, an 
 air not only of benevolent consideration but of austere 
 morality. 
 
 But the most austere courtesy and the most authentical- 
 ly dispassionate division of benefits will not meet the 
 underbred exigencies of a war conducted on the mechan- 
 istic lines of the modern state of the industrial arts. So 
 the blameless, and for the purpose imbecile, executive 
 committee of gentlemen-investors has been insensibly los- 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 251 
 
 mg the confidence and the countenance of the common 
 man ; who, when all is said, will always have to do what 
 is to be done. The order of gentlemanly parleying and 
 brokery has, therefore, with many apprehensions of cal- 
 amity, been reluctantly and tardily giving ground before 
 something that is of a visibly underbred order. Increas- 
 ingly underbred, and thereby insensibly approaching the 
 character of this war situation, but accepted with visible 
 reluctance and apprehension both by the ruling class and 
 by the underlying population. The urgent necessity of 
 going to such a basis, and of working out the matter in 
 hand by an unblushing recourse to that matter-of-fact 
 logic of mechanical efficiency, which alone can touch the 
 difficulties of the case, but which has no respect of persons, 
 — this necessity has been present from the outset and has 
 been vaguely apprehended for long past, but it is only 
 tardily and after the chastening of heavy penalties on this 
 gentlemanly imbecility that a substantial move in that 
 direction has been made. It has required much British 
 resolution to overcome the night-fear of going out into 
 the unhallowed ground of matter-of-fact, where the far- 
 thest earlier excursions of the governmental agencies had 
 taken them no farther than such financial transactions as 
 are incident to the accomplishment of anything whatever 
 in a commercial nation. And then, too, there is a pe- 
 cuniary interest in being interested in financial transac- 
 tions. 
 
 This shifting of discretionary control out of the hands 
 of the gentlemen into those of the underbred common 
 run, who know how to do what is necessary to be 
 done in the face of underbred exigencies, may conceivably 
 go far when it has once been started, and it may go for- 
 ward at an accelerated rate if the pressure of necessity 
 lasts long enough. If time be given for habituation to 
 
252 
 
 On the Nature of Pecu:e 
 
 this manner of directorate in national affairs, so that the 
 common man comes to realise how it is feasible to get 
 along without gentlemen-investors holding the discretion, 
 the outcome may conceivably be very grave. It is a point 
 in doubt, but it is conceivable that in such a case the 
 gentlemanly executive committee administering affairs in 
 the light of the gentlemanly pecuniary interest, will not 
 be fully reinstated in the discretionary control of the 
 United Kingdom for an appreciable number of years after 
 the return of peace. Possibly, even, the regime may be 
 permanently deranged, and there is even a shadowy doubt 
 possible to be entertained as to whether the vested pecuni- 
 ary rights, on which the class of gentlemen rests, may not 
 suffer some derangement, in case the control should pass 
 into the hands of the underbred and unpropertied for so 
 long a season as to let the common man get used to think- 
 ing that the vested interests and the sacred rights of gen- 
 tility are so much ado about nothing. 
 
 Such an outcome would be extreme, but as a remote 
 contingency it is to be taken into account. The privileged 
 classes of the United Kingdom should by this time be able 
 to see the danger there may be for them and their vested 
 interests, pecuniary and moral, in an excessive prolonga- 
 tion of the war; in such postponement of peace as would 
 afford time for a popular realisation of their incompetence 
 and disserviceability as touches the nation’s material well- 
 being under modern conditions. To let the nation’s war 
 experience work to such an outcome, the season of war 
 would have to be prolonged beyond what either the hopes 
 or the fears of the community have yet contemplated; 
 but the point is after all worth noting, as being within 
 the premises of the case, that there is herein a remote con- 
 tingency of losing, at least for a time, that unformulated 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 253 
 
 clause in the British constitution which has hitherto re- 
 stricted the holding of responsible office to men of pedi- 
 gree and of gentle breeding, or at least of very grave 
 pecuniary weight; so grave as to make the incumbents 
 virtual gentlemen, with a virtual pedigree, and with a 
 virtual gentleman’s accentuated sense of class interest. 
 Should such an eventuality overtake British popular senti- 
 ment and belief there is also the remote contingency that 
 the rights of ownership and investment would lose a de- 
 gree of sanctity. 
 
 It seems necessary to note a further, and in a sense 
 more improbable, line of disintegration among modern 
 fixed ideas. Among the best entrenched illusions of mod- 
 em economic preconceptions, and in economic as well as 
 legal theory, has been the indispensability of funds, and 
 the hard and fast limitation of industrial operations by the 
 supply or with-holding of funds. The war experience has 
 hitherto gone tentatively to show that funds and financial 
 transactions, of credit, bargain, sale and solvency, may be 
 dispensed with under pressure of necessity ; and apparent- 
 ly without seriously hindering that run of mechanical 
 fact, on which interest in the present case necessarily cen- 
 ters, and which must be counted on to give the outcome. 
 Latterly the case is clearing up a little further, on 
 further experience and under further pressure of techno- 
 logical exigencies, to the effect that financial arrangements 
 are indispensable in this connection only because and in 
 so far as it has been arranged to consider them indis- 
 pensable ; as in international trade. They are an indis- 
 pensable means of intermediation only in so far as pe- 
 cuniary interests are to be furthered or safeguarded in 
 the intermediation. When, as has happened with the bel- 
 ligerents in the present instance, the national establishment 
 
254 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 becomes substantially insolvent, it is beginning to appear 
 that its affairs can be taken care of with less difficulty and 
 with better effect without the use of financial expedients. 
 Of course, it takes time to get used to doing things by the 
 more direct method and without the accustomed circum- 
 locution of accountancy, or the accustomed allowance for 
 profits to go to interested parties who, under the financial 
 regime, hold a power of discretionary permission in all 
 matters that touch the use of the industrial arts. Under 
 these urgent material exigencies, investment comes to have 
 much of the appearance of a gratuitous drag and drain 
 on the processes of industry. 
 
 Here, again, is a sinister contingency; sinister, that is, 
 for those vested rights of ownership by force of which the 
 owners of “capital” are enabled to permit or withhold the 
 use of the industrial arts by the community at large, on 
 pain of privation in case the accustomed toll to the owners 
 of capital is not paid. It is, of course, not intended to find 
 fault with this arrangement; which has the sanction of 
 “time immemorial” and of a settled persuasion that it lies 
 at the root of all civilised life and intercourse. It is 
 only that in case of extreme need this presumed indis- 
 pensable expedient of industrial control has broken down, 
 and that experience is proving it to be, in these premises, 
 an item of borrowed trouble. Should experience continue 
 to run on the same lines for an appreciable period and at 
 a high tension, it is at least conceivable that the vested 
 right of owners to employ unlimited sabotage in the quest 
 of profits might fall so far into disrepute as to leave them 
 under a qualified doubt on the return of “normal” con- 
 ditions. The common man, in other words, who gathers 
 nothing but privation and anxiety from the owners’ dis- 
 cretionary sabotage, may conceivably stand to lose his 
 
Eliminafipn of the Unfit 
 
 255 
 
 preconception that the vested rights of ownership are the 
 cornerstone of his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. 
 
 The considerations recited in this lengthy excursion on 
 the war situation and its probable effects on popular hab- 
 its of thought in the United Kingdom go to say that when 
 peace comes to be negotiated, with the United Kingdom 
 as the chief constituent and weightiest spokesman of the 
 allied nations and of the league of pacific neutrals, the rep- 
 resentatives of British aims and opinions are likely to 
 speak in a different, chastened, and disillusioned fashion, 
 as contrasted with what the British attitude was at the 
 beginning of hostilities. The gentlemanly British animus 
 of arrogant self-sufficiency will have been somewhat 
 sobered, perhaps somewhat subdued. Concession to the 
 claims and pretensions of the other pacific nations is likely 
 to go farther than might once have been expected, par- 
 ticularly in the way of concession to any demand for 
 greater international comity and less international discrim- 
 ination ; essentially concession looking to a reduction of 
 national pretensions and an incipient neutralisation of na- 
 tional interests. Coupled with this will presumably be 
 a less conciliator}' attitude toward the members of the 
 dynastic coalition against whom the war has been fought, 
 owing to a more mature realisation of the impossibility of 
 a lasting peace negotiated with a Power whose substantial 
 core is a warlike and irresponsible dynastic establishment. 
 The peace negotiations are likely to run on a lower level 
 of diplomatic deference to constituted authorities, and 
 with more of a view to the interests and sentiments of the 
 underlying population, than was evident in the futile nego- 
 tiations had at the outbreak of hostilities. The gentle art 
 of diplomacy, that engages the talents of exalted person- 
 
256 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ages and well-bred statesmen, has been somewhat dis- 
 credited ; and if it turns out that the vulgarisation of the 
 directorate in the United Kingdom and its associated allies 
 and neutrals will have time to go on to something like 
 dominance and authenticity, then the deference which the 
 spokesmen of these nations are likely to show for the pre- 
 scriptive rights of dynasty, nobility, bureaucracy, or even 
 of pecuniary aristocracy, in the countries that make up 
 the party of the second part, may be expected to have 
 shrunk appreciably, conceivably even to such precarious 
 dimensions as to involve the virtual neglect or possible 
 downright abrogation of them, in sum and substance. 
 
 Indeed, the chances of a successful pacific league of 
 neutrals to come out of the current situation appear to 
 be largely bound up with the degree of vulgarisation due 
 to overtalce the several directorates of the belligerent 
 nations as well as the popular habits of thought in these 
 and in the neutral countries, during the further course of 
 the war. It is too broad a generalisation, perhaps, to say 
 that the longer the war lasts the better are the chances of 
 such a neutral temper in the interested nations as will 
 make a pacific league practicable, but the contrar}’ would 
 appear a much less defensible proposition. It is, of course, 
 the common man that has the least interest in warlike en- 
 terprise, if any, and it is at the same time the common man 
 that bears the burden of such enterprise and has also the 
 most immediate interest in keeping the peace. If, slowly 
 and pervasively, in the course of hard experience, he 
 learns to distrust the conduct of affairs by his betters, and 
 learns at the same move to trust to his own class to do 
 what is necessary and to leave undone what is not, his 
 deference to his betters is likely to suffer a decline, such 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 257 
 
 as should show itself in a somewhat unguarded recourse 
 to democratic ways and means. 
 
 In short, there is in this progressive vulgarisation of 
 effectual use and wont and of sentiment, in the United 
 Kingdom and elsewhere, some slight ground for the hope, 
 or the apprehension, that no peace will be made with the 
 dynastic Powers of the second part until they cease to 
 be dynastic Powers and take on the semblance of demo- 
 cratic commonwealths, with dynasties, royalties and privi- 
 leged classes thrown in the discard. 
 
 This would probably mean some prolongation of hos- 
 tilities, until the dynasties and privileged classes had com- 
 pletely exhausted their available resources ; and, by the 
 same token, until the privileged classes in the more modem 
 nations among the belligerents had also been displaced 
 from direction and discretion by those underbred classes 
 on whom it is incumbent to do what is to be done; or 
 until a juncture were reached that comes passably near 
 to such a situation. On the contingency of such a course 
 of events and some such outcome appears also to hang 
 the chance of a workable pacific league. Without further 
 experience of the futility of upperclass and pecuniary con- 
 trol, to discredit precedent and constituted authority, it 
 is scarcely conceivable, e. g., that the victorious allies 
 would go the length of coercively discarding the German 
 Imperial dynasty and the kept classes that with it con- 
 stitute the Imperial State, and of replacing it with a 
 democratic organisation of the people in the shape of a 
 modern commonwealth; and without a change of that 
 nature, affecting that nation and such of its allies as would 
 remain on the map, no league of pacific neutrals would 
 be able to manage its affairs, even for a time, except on 
 a war-footing that would involve a competitive armament 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 against future dynastic enterprises from the same quarter. 
 Which comes to saying that a lasting peace is possible on 
 no other terms than the disestablishment of the Imperial 
 dynasty and the abrogation of all feudalistic remnants of 
 privilege in the Fatherland and its allies, together with the 
 reduction of those countries to the status of common- 
 wealths made up of ungraded men. 
 
 It is easy to speculate on what the conditions precedent 
 to such a pacific league of neutrals must of necessity be ; 
 but it is not therefore less difficult to make a shrewd guess 
 as to the chances of these conditions being met. Of these 
 conditions precedent, the chief and foremost, without 
 which any other favorable circumstances are compara- 
 tively idle, is a considerable degree of neutralisation, ex- 
 tending to virtually all national interests and pretensions, 
 but more particularly to all material and commercial in- 
 terests of the federated peoples ; and, indispensably and 
 especially, such neutralisation would have to extend to the 
 nations from whom aggression is now apprehended, as, 
 e. g., the German people. But such neutralisation could 
 not conceivably reach the Fatherland unless that nation 
 were made over in the image of democracy, since the 
 Imperial State is, by force of the terms, a warlike and un- 
 neutral power. This would seem to be the ostensibly con- 
 cealed meaning of the allied governments in proclaiming 
 that their aim is to break German militarism without doing 
 harm to the German people. 
 
 As touches the neutralisation of the democratically re- 
 habilitated Fatherland, or in default of that, as touches 
 the peace terms to be offered the Imperial government, the 
 prime article among the stipulations would seem to be 
 abolition of all trade discrimination against Germany or 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 259 
 
 by Germany against any other nationality. Such stipula- 
 tion would, of course, cover all manner of trade discrim- 
 ination, — e. g., import, export and excise tariff, harbor and 
 registry dues, subsidy, patent right, copyright, trade mark, 
 tax exemption whether partial or exclusive, investment 
 preferences at home and abroad, — in short it would 
 have to establish a thorough-going neutralisation of trade 
 relations in the widest acceptation of the term, and to ap- 
 ply in perpetuity. The like applies, of course, to all that 
 fringe of subsidiary and outlying peoples on whom Im- 
 perial Germany relies for much of its resources in any 
 warlike enterprise. Such a move also disposes of the 
 colonial question in a parenthesis, so far as regards any 
 special bond of affiliation between the Empire, or the 
 Fatherland, and any colonial possessions that are now 
 thought desirable to be claimed. Under neutralisation, 
 colonies would cease to be “colonial possessions,” being 
 necessarily included under the general abrogation of com- 
 mercial discriminations, and also necessarily exempt from 
 special taxation or specially favorable tax rates. 
 
 Colonies there still would be, though it is not easy to 
 imagine what would be the meaning of a “German Colony” 
 in such a case. Colonies would be free communities, 
 after the fashion of New Zealand or Australia, but with 
 the further sterilisation of the bond between colony and 
 mother country involved in the abolition of all appointive 
 offices and all responsibility to the crown or the im- 
 perial government. Now, there are no German colonies 
 in this simpler British sense of the term, which implies 
 nothing more than community of blood, institutions and 
 language, together with that sense of solidarity between 
 the colony and the mother country which this community 
 of pedigree and institutions will necessarily bring; but 
 
260 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 while there are today no German colonies, in the sense 
 of the term so given, there is no reason to presume that 
 no such German colonies would come into bearing under 
 the conditions of this prospective regime of neutrality in- 
 stalled by such a pacific league, when backed by the 
 league’s guarantee that no colony from the Fatherland 
 will be exposed to the eventual risk of coming under the 
 discretionary tutelage of the German Imperial establish- 
 ment and so falling into a relation of step-childhood to 
 the Imperial dynasty. 
 
 As is well known, and as has by way of superflous com- 
 monplace been set forth by a sometime Colonial Secretary 
 of the Empire, the decisive reason for there being no 
 German colonies in existence is the consistently impos- 
 sible colonial policy of the German government, looking 
 to the usufruct of the colonies by the government, and 
 the fear of further arbitrary control and nepotic dis- 
 crimination at the pleasure of the self-seeking dynastic 
 establishment. It is only under Imperial rule that no 
 German colony, in this modern sense of the term, is pos- 
 sible; and only because Imperial rule does not admit of 
 a free community being formed by colonists from the 
 Fatherland ; or of an ostensibly free community of that 
 kind ever feeling secure from unsolicited interference with 
 its affairs. 
 
 The nearest approach to a German Colony, as con- 
 trasted with a “Colonial Possession,” hitherto have been 
 the, very considerable, number of escaped German sub- 
 jects who have settled in English-speaking or Latin-speak- 
 ing countries, particularly in North and South America. 
 And considering that the chief common trait among them 
 is their successful evasion of the Imperial government’s 
 heavy hand, they show an admirable filial piety toward the 
 
Eliminafipn of the Unfit 
 
 261 
 
 Imperial establishment ; though troubled with no slightest 
 regret at having escaped from the Imperial surveillance 
 and no slightest inclination to return to the shelter of the 
 Imperial tutelage. A colloquialism — “hyphenate” — has 
 latterly grown up to meet the need of a term to designate 
 these evasive and yet patriotic colonists. It is scarcely 
 misleading to say that the German-American hyphenate, 
 e. g., in so far as he runs true to form, is still a German 
 subject with his heart, but he is an American citizen with 
 his head. All of which goes to argue that if the Father- 
 land were to fall into such a state of democratic tolerance 
 that no recidivist need carry a defensive hyphen to shield 
 him from the importunate attentions of the Imperial 
 government, German colonies would also come into bear- 
 ing; although, it is true, they would have no value to the 
 German government. 
 
 In the Imperial colonial policy colonies are conceived 
 to stand to their Imperial guardian or master in a relation 
 between that of a step-child and that of an indentured 
 servant ; to be dealt with summarily and at discretion and 
 to be made use of without scruple. The like attitude to- 
 ward colonies was once familiar matter-of-course with 
 the British and Spanish statesmen. The British found 
 the plan unprofitable, and also unworkable, and have given 
 it up. The Spanish, having no political outlook but the 
 dynastic one, could of course not see their way to re- 
 linquish the only purpose of their colonial enterprise, ex- 
 cept in relinquishing their colonial possessions. The Ger- 
 man (Imperial) colonial policy is and will be necessarily 
 after the Spanish pattern, and necessarily, too, with the 
 Spanish results. 
 
 Under the projected neutral scheme there would be no 
 colonial policy, and of course, no inducement to the ac- 
 
262 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 quisition of colonies, since there would be no profit to be 
 derived, or to be fancied, in the case. But while no 
 country, as a commonwealth, has any material interest in 
 the acquisition or maintenance of colonies, it is other- 
 wise as regards the dynastic interests of an Imperial 
 government ; and it is also otherwise, at least in the belief 
 of the interested parties, as regards special businessmen 
 or business concerns who are in a position to gain some- 
 thing by help of national discrimination in their favor. 
 As regards the pecuniary interests of favored business- 
 men or business concerns, and of investors favored by 
 national discrimination in colonial relations, the case falls 
 under the general caption of trade discrimination, and 
 does not differ at all materially from such expedients as 
 a protective tariff, a ship subsidy, or a bounty on exports. 
 But as regards the warlike, that is to say dynastic, interest 
 of an Imperial government the case stands somewhat dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 Colonial Possessions in such a case yield no material 
 benefit to the country at large, but their possession is 
 a serviceable plea for warlike preparations with which to 
 retain possession of the colonies in the face of eventual- 
 ities, and it is also a serviceable means of stirring the 
 national pride and keeping alive a suitable spirit of patri- 
 otic animosity. The material service actually to be de- 
 rived from such possessions in the event of war is a point 
 in doubt, with the probabilities apparently running against 
 their being of any eventual net use. But there need be 
 no question that such possessions, under the hand of any 
 national establishment infected with imperial ambitions, 
 are a fruitful source of diplomatic complications, excuses 
 for armament, international grievances, and eventual ag- 
 gression. A pacific league of neutrals can evidently not 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 263 
 
 tolerate the retention of colonial possessions by any dynas- 
 tic State that may be drawn into the league or under its 
 jurisdiction, as, e. g., the German Empire in case it 
 should be left on an Imperial footing. Whereas, in case 
 the German peoples are thrown back on a democratic 
 status, as neutralised commonwealths without a crown or 
 a military establishment, the question of their colonial pos- 
 sessions evidently falls vacant. 
 
 As to the neutralisation of trade relations apart from 
 the question of colonies, and as bears on the case of 
 Germany under the projected jurisdiction of a pacific 
 league of neutrals, the considerations to be taken account 
 of are of much the same nature. As it would have to take 
 effect, e. g., in the abolition of commercial and industrial 
 discriminations between Germany and the pacific nations, 
 such neutralisation would doubtless confer a lasting ma- 
 terial benefit on the German people at large; and it is 
 not easy to detect any loss or detriment to be derived 
 from such a move so long as peace prevails. Protective, 
 that is to say discriminating, export, import, or excise 
 duties, harbor and registry dues, subsidies, tax exemptions 
 and trade preferences, and all the like devices of interfer- 
 ence with trade and industry, are unavoidably a hin- 
 drance to the material interests of any people on whom 
 they are imposed or who impose these disabilities on them- 
 selves. So that exemption from these things by a com- 
 prehensive neutralisation of trade relations would im- 
 mediately benefit all the nations concerned, in respect of 
 their material well-being in times of peace. There is no 
 exception and no abatement to be taken account of under 
 this general statement, as is well known to all men who are 
 conversant with these matters. 
 
264 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 But it is otherwise as regards the dynastic interest in 
 the case, and as regards any national interest in warlike 
 enterprise. It is doubtless true that all restraint of trade 
 between nations, and between classes or localities within 
 the national frontiers, unavoidably acts to weaken and im- 
 poverish the people on whose economic activities this re- 
 straint is laid ; and to the extent to which this effect is 
 had it will also be true that the country which so is 
 hindered in its work will have a less aggregate of re- 
 sources to place at the disposal of its enterprising states- 
 men for imperialist ends. But these restraints may yet be 
 useful for dynastic, that is to say warlike, ends by mak- 
 ing the country more nearly a “self-contained economic 
 whole.” A country becomes a “self-contained economic 
 whole” by mutilation, in cutting itself off from the in- 
 dustrial system in which industrially it belongs, but in 
 which it is unwilling nationally to hold its place. National 
 frontiers are industrial barriers. But as a result of such 
 mutilation of its industrial life such a country is better 
 able — it has been believed — to bear the shock of severing 
 its international trade relations entirely, as is likely to 
 happen in case of war. 
 
 In a large country, such as America or Russia, which 
 comprises within its national boundaries very extensive 
 and very varied resources and a widely distributed and 
 diversified population, the mischief suffered from re- 
 straints of trade that hinder industrial relations with the 
 world at large will of course be proportionately lessened. 
 Such a country comes nearer being a miniature industrial 
 world ; although none of the civilised nations, large or 
 small, can carry on its ordinary industrial activities and its 
 ordinary manner of life without drawing on foreign parts 
 to some appreciable extent. But a country of small terri- 
 
Elimimtipn of the Unfit 
 
 265 
 
 torial extent and of somewhat narrowly restricted natural 
 resources, as, e. g., Germany or France, can even by the 
 most drastic measures of restaint and mutilation achieve 
 only a very mediocre degree of industrial isolation and 
 “self-sufficiency,” — as has, e. g., appeared in the present 
 war. But in all cases, though in varying measure, the 
 mitigated isolation so enforced by these restraints on trade 
 will in their degree impair the country’s industrial efficien- 
 cy and lower the people’s material well-being; yet, if the 
 restrictions are shrewdly applied this partial isolation and 
 partial “self-sufficiency” will go some way toward prepar- 
 ing the nation for the more thorough isolation that fol- 
 lows on the outbreak of hostilities. 
 
 The present plight of the German people under war con- 
 ditions may serve to show how nearly that end may be 
 attained, and yet how inadequate even the most unreserved 
 measures of industrial isolation must be in face of the 
 fact that the modern state of the industrial arts necessarily 
 draws on the collective resources of the world at large. 
 It may well be doubted, on an impartial view, if the muti- 
 lation of the country’s industrial system by such measures 
 of isolation does not after all rather weaken the nation 
 even for warlike ends ; but then, the discretionary authori- 
 ties in the dynastic States are always, and it may be pre- 
 sumed necessarily, hampered with obsolete theories hand- 
 ed down from that cameralistic age, when the little princes 
 of the Fatherland were making dynastic history. So, e. 
 g., the current, nineteenth and twentieth century, economic 
 policy of the Prussian-Imperial statesmen is still drawn 
 on lines within which Frederick II, called the Great, would 
 have felt well at home. 
 
 Like other preparation for hostilities this reduction of 
 the country to the status of a self-contained economic or- 
 
266 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ganisation is costly, but like other preparation for hostili- 
 ties it also puts the nation in a position of greater readiness 
 to break off friendly relations with its neighbors. It is a 
 war measure, commonly spoken for by its advocates as a 
 measure of self-defense ; but whatever the merits of the 
 self-defenders’ contention, this measure is a war measure. 
 As such it can reasonably claim no hearing in the coun- 
 sels of a pacific league of neutrals, whose purpose it is to 
 make war impracticable. Particularly can there be no 
 reasonable question of admitting a policy of trade discrim- 
 ination and isolation on the part of a nation which has, for 
 purposes of warlike aggression, pursued such a policy in 
 the past, and which it is the immediate purpose of the 
 league to bind over to keep the peace. 
 
 There has been a volume of loose talk spent on the 
 justice and expediency of boycotting the trade of the 
 peoples of the Empire after the return of peace, as a pen- 
 alty and as a preventive measure designed to retard their 
 recovery of strength with which to enter on a further war- 
 like enterprise. Such a measure would necessarily be 
 somewhat futile ; since “Business is business,’’ after all, 
 and the practical limitations imposed on an unprofitable 
 boycott by the moral necessity to buy cheap and sell dear 
 that rests on all businessmen would surreptitiously 
 mitigate it to the point of negligibility. It is inconceivable 
 -or it would be inconceivable in the absence of imbecile 
 politicians and self-seeking businessmen — that measures 
 looking to the trade isolation of any one of these countries 
 could be entertained as a point of policy to be pursued 
 by a league of neutrals. And it is only in so far as patri- 
 otic jealousy and vindictive' sentiments are allowed to dis- 
 place the aspiration for peace and security, that such 
 measures can claim consideration. Considered as a pen- 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 267 
 
 alty to be imposed on the erring nations who set this war- 
 like adventure afoot, it should be sufficiently plain that 
 such a measure as a trade boycott could not touch the 
 chief offenders, or even their responsible abettors. It 
 would, rather, play into the hands of the militarist in- 
 terests by keeping alive the spirit of national jeal'^us’ ■ 
 international hatred, out of which wars arise and without 
 which warlike enterprise might hopefully be expected to 
 disappear out of the scheme of human intercourse. The 
 punishment would fall, as all economic burdens and dis- 
 abilities must always fall, on the common man, the under- 
 lying population. 
 
 The chief relation of this common run, this underlying 
 population of German subjects, to the inception and 
 pursuit of this Imperial warlike enterprise, is comprised 
 in the fact that they are an underlying population of sub- 
 jects, held in usufruct by the Imperial establishment and 
 employed at will. It is true, they have lent themselves 
 unreservedly to the uses for which the dynasty has use 
 for them, and they have entered enthusiastically into the 
 warlike adventure set afoot by the dynastic statesmen ; 
 but that they have done so is their misfortune rather than 
 their fault. By use and wont and indoctrination they have 
 for long been unremittingly, and helplessly, disciplined 
 into a spirit of dynastic loyalty, national animosity and 
 servile abnegation ; until it would be nothing better than a 
 pathetic inversion of all the equities of the case to visit 
 the transgressions of their masters upon the common run ; 
 whose fault lies, after all, in their being an underlying 
 population of subjects, who have not had a chance to 
 reach that spiritual level on which they could properly 
 be held accountable for the uses to which they are turned. 
 It is true, men are ordinarily punished for their misfor- 
 
268 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tunes ; but the warlike enterprise of the Imperial dynasty 
 has already brought what might fairly be rated as a good 
 measure of punishment on this underlying populace, 
 whose chief fault and chief misfortune lies in an habitual 
 servile abnegation of those traits of initiative and discre- 
 tion in man that constitute him an agent susceptible of re- 
 sponsibility or retribution. 
 
 It would be all the more of a pathetic mockery to visit 
 the transgressions of their masters on these victims of 
 circumstance and dynastic mendacity, since the conven- 
 tionalities of international equity will scarcely permit the 
 high responsible parties in the case to be chastised with 
 any penalty harsher than a well-mannered figure of speech. 
 To serve as a deterrent, the penalty must strike the point 
 where vests the discretion; but servile use and wont is 
 still too well intact in these premises to let any penalty 
 touch the guilty core of a profligate dynasty. Under the 
 wear and tear of continued war and its incident continued 
 vulgarisation of the directorate and responsible staff 
 among the pacific allies, the conventional respect of per- 
 sons is likely to suffer appreciable dilapidation; but there 
 need be no apprehension of such a loss of decent respect 
 for personages as would compromise the creature com- 
 forts of that high syndicate of personages on whose initia- 
 tive the Fatherland entered upon this enterprise in domin- 
 ion. 
 
 Bygone shortcomings and transgressions can have no 
 reasonable place in the arrangements by which a pacific 
 league of neutrals designs to keep the peace. Neither 
 can bygone prerogatives and precedents of magnificence 
 and of mastery, except in so far as they unavoidably must 
 come into play through the inability of men to divest them- 
 selves of their ingrained preconceptions, by virtue of which 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 269 
 
 a Hohenzollern or a Hapsburger is something more for- 
 midable and more to be considered than a recruiting ser- 
 geant or a purveyor of light literature. The league can 
 do its work of pacification only by elaborately forgetting 
 differences and discrepancies of the kind that give rise 
 to international grievances. Which is the same as saying 
 that the neutralisation of national discriminations and 
 pretensions will have to go all the way, if it is to serve. 
 But this implies, as broadly as need be, that the pacific 
 nations who make the league and provisionally administer 
 its articles of agreement and jurisdiction, can not exempt 
 themselves from any of the leveling measures of neutral- 
 isation to which the dynastic suspects among them are to 
 be subject. It would mean a relinquishment of all those 
 undemocratic institutional survivals out of which inter- 
 national grievances are wont to arise. As a certain Danish 
 adage would have it, the neutrals of the league must all 
 be shorn over the same comb. 
 
 What is to be shorn over this one comb of neutralisation 
 and democracy is all those who go into the pacific league 
 of neutrals and all who come under its jurisdiction, 
 whether of their own choice or by the necessities of the 
 case. It is of the substance of the case that those peoples 
 who have been employed in the campaigns of the German- 
 Imperial coalition are to come in on terms of impartial 
 equality with those who have held the ground against 
 them; to come under the jurisdiction, and prospectively 
 into the copartnery, of the league of neutrals — all on the 
 presumption that the Imperial coalition will be brought to 
 make peace on terms of unconditional surrender. 
 
 Let it not seem presumptuous to venture on a recital of 
 summary specifications intended to indicate the nature of 
 
270 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 those concrete measures which would logically be com- 
 prised in a scheme of pacification carried out with such 
 a view to impartial equality among the peoples who are 
 to make up the projected league. There is a significant 
 turn of expression that recurs habitually in the formula- 
 tion of terms put forth by the spokesmen of the Entente 
 belligerents, where it is insisted that hostilities are carried 
 on not against the German people or the other peoples 
 associated with them, but only against the Imperial estab- 
 lishments and their culpable aids and abettors in the enter- 
 prise. So it is further insisted that there is no intention 
 to bring pains and penalties on these peoples, who so have 
 been made use of by their masters, but only on the culp- 
 able master class whose tools these peoples have been. 
 And later, just now (January 1917), and from a respon- 
 sible and disinterested spokesman for the pacific league, 
 there comes the declaration that a lasting peace at the 
 hands of such a league can be grounded only in a present 
 “peace without victory.” 
 
 The mutual congruity of these two declarations need 
 not imply collusion, but they are none the less comple- 
 mentary propositions and they are none the less indica- 
 tive of a common trend of convictions among the men 
 who are best able to speak for those pacific nations that 
 are looked to as the mainstay of the prospective league. 
 They both converge to the point that the objective to be 
 achieved is not victory for the Entente belligerents but 
 defeat for the German-Imperial coalition ; that the peo- 
 ples underlying the defeated governments are not to be 
 dealt with as vanquished enemies but as fellows in un- 
 deserved misfortune brought on by their culpable masters ; 
 and that no advantage is designed to be taken of these 
 peoples, and no gratuitous hardship to be imposed on them. 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 271 
 
 Their masters are evidently to be put away, not as defeated 
 antagonists but as a public nuisance to be provided against 
 as may seem expedient for the peace and security of those 
 nations whom they have been molesting. 
 
 Taking this position as outlined, it should not be ex- 
 tremely difficult to forecast the general line of procedure 
 which it would logically demand, — barring irrelevant re- 
 gard for precedents and overheated resentment, and pro- 
 vided that the makers of these peace terms have a free 
 hand and go to their work with an eye single to the estab- 
 lishment of an enduring peace. The case of Germany 
 would be typical of all the rest; and the main items of 
 the bill in this case would seem logically to run somewhat 
 as follows : 
 
 (1) The definitive elimination of the Imperial establish- 
 ment, together with the monarchical establishments of the 
 several states of the Empire and the privileged classes ; 
 
 (2) Removal or destruction of all warlike equipment, 
 military and naval, defensive and offensive ; 
 
 (3) Cancelment of the public debt, of the Empire and 
 of its members — creditors of the Empire being accounted 
 accessory to the culpable enterprise of the Imperial gov- 
 ernment ; 
 
 (4) Confiscation of such industrial equipment and re-- 
 sources as have contributed to the carrying on of the war, 
 as being also accessory; 
 
 (5) Assumption by the league at large of all debts in- 
 curred, by the Entente belligerents or by neutrals, for 
 the prosecution or by reason of the war, and distribution 
 of the obligation so assumed, impartially among the mem- 
 bers of the league, including the peoples of the defeated 
 nations; 
 
272 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 (6) Indemnification for all injury done to civilians in 
 the invaded territories ; the means for such indemnifi- 
 cation to be procured by confiscation of all estates in the 
 defeated countries exceeding a certain very modest maxi- 
 mum, calculated on the average of property owned, say, 
 by the poorer three-fourths of the population, — the kept 
 classes being properly accounted accessory to the Empire’s 
 culpable enterprise. 
 
 The proposition to let the war debt be shared by all 
 members of the league on a footing of impartial equality 
 may seem novel, and perhaps extravagant. But all pro- 
 jects put forth for safeguarding the world’s peace by a 
 compact among the pacific nations run on the patent, 
 though often tacit, avowal that the Entente belligerents 
 are spending their substance and pledging their credit for 
 the common cause. Among the Americans, the chief of 
 the neutral nations, this is coming to be recognised more 
 and more overtly. So that, in this instance at least, no 
 insurmountable reluctance to take over their due share of 
 the common burden should fairly be looked for, particu- 
 larly when it appears that the projected league, if it is 
 organised on a footing of neutrality, will relieve the re- 
 public of virtually all outlay for their own defense. 
 
 Of course, there is, in all this, no temerarious intention 
 to offer advice as to what should be done by those who 
 have it to do, or even to sketch the necessary course which 
 events are bound to take. As has been remarked in an- 
 other passage, that would have to be a work of prophesy 
 or of effrontery, both of which, it is hoped, lie equally 
 beyond the horizon of this inquiry; which is occupied 
 with the question of what conditions will logically have 
 to be met in order to an enduring peace, not what will 
 be the nature and outcome of negotiations entered into 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 273 
 
 by astute delegates pursuing the special advantage, each 
 of his own nation. And yet the peremptory need of reach- 
 ing some practicable arrangement whereby the peace may 
 be kept, goes to say that even the most astute negotiations 
 will in some degree be controlled by that need, and may 
 reasonably be expected to make some approach to the 
 simple and obvious requirements of the situation. 
 
 Therefore the argument returns to the United Kingdom 
 and the probable limit of tolerance of that people, in re- 
 spect of what they are likely to insist on as a necessary 
 measure of democratisation in the nations of the second 
 part, and what measure of national abnegation they are 
 likely to accomodate themselves to. The United King- 
 dom is indispensable to the formation of a pacific league 
 of neutrals. And the British terms of adhesion, or rather 
 of initiation of such a league, therefore, will have to con- 
 stitute the core of the structure, on which details may be 
 adjusted and to which concessive adjustments will have to 
 be made by all the rest. This is not saying that the pro- 
 jected league must or will be dominated by the United 
 Kingdom or administered in the British interest. Indeed, 
 it can not well be made to serve British particular inter- 
 ests in any appreciable degree, except at the cost of defeat 
 to its main purpose ; since the purposes of an enduring 
 peace can be served only by an effectual neutralisation of 
 national claims and interests. But it would mean that the 
 neutralisation of national interests and discriminations to 
 be effected would have to be drawn on lines acceptable to 
 British taste in these matters, and would have to go ap- 
 proximately so far as would be dictated by the British 
 notions of what is expedient, and not much farther. The 
 pacific league of neutrals would have much of a British 
 
 i8 
 
274 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 air, but “British” in this connection is to be taken as 
 connoting the English-speaking countries rather than as 
 applying to the United Kingdom alone ; since the entrance 
 of the British into the league would involve the entrance 
 of the British colonies, and, indeed, of the American re- 
 public as well. 
 
 The temper and outlook of this British community, 
 therefore, becomes a matter of paramount importance in 
 any attempted analysis of the situation resulting after the 
 war, or of any prospective course of conduct to be 
 entered on by the pacific nations. And the question 
 touches not so much the temper and preconceptions of the 
 British community as known in recent history, but rather 
 as it is likely to be modified by the war experience. So 
 that the practicability of a neutral league comes to turn, 
 in great measure, on the effect which this war experience 
 is having on the habits of thought of the British people, or 
 on that section of the British population which will make 
 up the effectual majority when the war closes. The 
 grave interest that attaches to this question must serv'e as 
 justification for pursuing it farther, even though there can 
 be no promise of a definite or confident answer to be 
 found beforehand. 
 
 Certain general assertions may be made with some con- 
 fidence. The experiences of the war, particularly among 
 the immediate participants and among their immediate 
 domestic connections — a large and increasing proportion 
 of the people at large — are plainly impressing on them the 
 uselessness and hardship of such a war. There can be no 
 question but they are reaching a conviction that a war of 
 this modern kind and scale is a thing to be avoided if 
 possible. They are, no doubt, willing to go to ver}’ con- 
 siderable lengths to make a repetition of it impossible, and 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 275 
 
 they may reasonably be expected to go farther along that 
 line before peace returns. But the lengths to which they 
 are ready to go may be in the way of concessions, or in 
 the way of contest and compulsion. There need be no 
 doubt but a profound and vindictive resentment runs 
 through the British community, and there is no reason to 
 apprehend that this will be dissipated in the course of 
 further hostilities ; although it should fairly be expected 
 to lose something of its earlier exuberant malevolence and 
 indiscrimination, more particularly if hostilities continue 
 for some time. It is not too much to expect, that this 
 popular temper of resentment will demand something very 
 tangible in the way of summary vengeance on those who 
 have brought the hardships of war upon the nation. 
 
 The manner of retribution which would meet the pop- 
 ular demand for “justice” to be done on the enemy is 
 likely to be affected by the fortunes of war, as also the in- 
 cidence of it. Should the governmental establishment and 
 the discretion still vest in the gentlemanly classes at the 
 close of hostilities, the retribution is likely to take the 
 accustomed gentlemanly shape of pecuniary burdens imr- 
 posed on the people of the defeated country, together with 
 diplomatically specified surrender of territorial and colon- 
 ial possessions, and the like ; such as to leave the de facto 
 enemy courteously on one side, and to yield something in 
 the way of pecuniary benefit to the gentlemen-investors in 
 charge, and something more in the way of new emolu- 
 ments of office to the office-holding class included in the 
 same order of gentlemen. The retribution in the case 
 would manifestly fall on the underlying population in the 
 defeated country, without seriously touching the responsi- 
 ble parties, and would leave the defeated nation with a 
 new grievance to nourish its patriotic animosity and with 
 
276 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 a new incentive to a policy of watchful waiting for a 
 chance of retaliation. 
 
 But it is to be noted that under the stress of the war 
 there is going forward in the British community a pro- 
 ,gressive displacement of gentlemanly standards and official 
 procedure by standards and procedure of a visibly under- 
 bred character, a weakening of the hold of the gentleman- 
 ly classes on the control of affairs and a weakening of 
 the hold which the sacred rights of property, investment 
 and privilege have long had over the imagination of the 
 British people. Should hostilities continue, and should 
 the exigencies of the war situation continue to keep the 
 futility of these sacred rights, as well as the fatuity of their 
 possessors, in the public eye, after the same fashion as 
 hitherto, it would not be altogether unreasonable to ex- 
 pect that the discretion would pass into the hands of the 
 underbred, or into the hands of men immediately and ur- 
 gently accountable to the underbred. In such a case, and 
 with a constantly growing popular realisation tha.t the 
 directorate and responsible enemy in the war is the Im- 
 perial dynasty and its pedigreed aids and abettors, it is 
 conceivable that the popular resentment would converge so 
 effectually on these responsible instigators and directors 
 of misfortune as to bring the incidence of the required 
 retribution effectually to bear on them. The outcome 
 might, not inconceivably, be the virtual erasure of the 
 Imperial dynasty, together with the pedigreed-class rule 
 on which it rests and the apparatus of irresponsible coer- 
 cion through which it works, in the Fatherland and in its 
 subsidiaries and dependencies. 
 
 With a sufficiently urgent realisation of their need of 
 peace and security, and with a realisation also that the 
 way to avoid war is to avoid the ways and means of in- 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 277 
 
 ternational jealousy and of the national discriminations 
 out of which international jealousy grows, it is conceiv- 
 able that a government which should reflect the British 
 temper and the British hopes might go so far in insisting 
 on a neutralisation of the peoples of the Fatherland as 
 would leave them without the dynastic apparatus with 
 which warlike enterprise is set afoot, and so leave them 
 also perforce in a pacific frame of mind. In time, in the 
 absence of their dearly beloved leavings of feudalism, an 
 enforced reliance on their own discretion and initiative, 
 and an enforced respite from the rant and prance of war- 
 like swagger, would reasonably be expected to grow into a 
 popular habit. The German people are by no means less 
 capable of tolerance and neighbourly decorum than their 
 British or Scandinavian neighbours of the same blood, — 
 if they can only be left to their own devices, untroubled 
 by the maggoty conceit of national domination. 
 
 There is no intention herewith to express an expectation 
 that this out-and-out neutralisation of the Fatherland’s 
 international relations and of its dynastic government will 
 come to pass on the return of peace, or that the German 
 people will, as a precaution against recurrent Imperial 
 rabies, be organised on a democratic pattern by constraint 
 of the pacific nations of the league. The point is only that 
 this measure of neutralisation appears to be the necessary 
 condition, in the absence of which no such neutral league^ 
 can succeed, and that so long as the war goes on there is 
 something of a chance that the British community may 
 in time reach a frame of mind combining such settled de- 
 termination to safeguard the peace at all costs, with such a 
 degree of disregard for outworn conventions, that their 
 spokesmen in the negotiations may push the neutralisa- 
 tion of these peoples to that length. 
 
278 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 The achievement of such an outcome would evidently 
 take time as well as harsh experience, more time and 
 harsher experience, perhaps, than one likes to contem- 
 plate. 
 
 Most men, therefore, would scarcely rate the chance of 
 such an outcome at all high. And yet it is to be called to 
 mind that the war has lasted long and the effect of its 
 demands and its experience has already gone far, and 
 that the longer it lasts the greater are the chances of its 
 prolongation and of its continued hardships, at least to 
 the extent that with every month of war that passes the 
 prospect of the allied nations making peace on any terms 
 short of unconditional surrender grows less. And un- 
 conditional surrender is the first step in the direction of 
 an unconditional dispossession of the Imperial establish- 
 ment and its war prophets, — depending primarily on the 
 State of mind of the British people at the time. And 
 however unlikely, it is also always possible, as some con- 
 tend, that in the course of further war experience the 
 common man in the Fatherland may come to reflect on the 
 use and value of the Imperial establishment, with the re- 
 sult of discarding and disowning it and all its works. 
 Such an expectation would doubtless underrate the force 
 of ancient habit, and would also involve a misapprehension 
 of the psychological incidence of a warlike experience. 
 The German people have substantially none of those pre- 
 conceptions of independence and self-direction to go on, 
 in the absence of which an effectual revulsion against 
 dynastic rule can not come to pass. 
 
 Embedded in the common sense of the British popula- 
 tion at large is a certain large and somewhat sullen sense 
 of fair dealing. In this they are not greatly different from 
 their neighbours, if at all, except that the body of common 
 
Eliminafipn of the Unfit 
 
 279 
 
 sense in which this British sense of fair dealing lies em- 
 bedded is a maturer fashion of common sense than that 
 which serves to guide the workday life of many of their 
 neighbours. And the maturity in question appears to be 
 chiefly a matter of their having unlearned, divested them- 
 selves of, or been by force of disuse divested of, an ex- 
 ceptionally large proportion of that burden of untoward 
 conceits which western Europe, and more particularly 
 middle Europe, at large has carried over from the Middle 
 Ages. They have had time and occasion to forget more 
 of what the exigencies of modern life make it expedient 
 to have forgotten. And yet they are reputed slow, con- 
 servative. But they have been well placed for losing 
 much of what would be well lost. 
 
 Among other things, their preconception of national 
 animosity is not secure, in the absence of provocation. 
 They are now again in a position to learn to do without 
 some of the useless legacy out of the past, — ^useless, 
 that is, for life as it runs today, however it may be rated 
 in the setting in which it was all placed in that past out 
 of which it has come. And the question is whether now, 
 under the pressure of exigencies that make for a dis- 
 establishment of much cumbersome inherited apparatus 
 for doing what need not be done, they will be ruled by 
 their sense of expediency and of fair dealing to the ex- 
 tent of cancelling out of their own scheme of life so 
 much of this legacy of conventional preconceptions as has 
 now come visibly to hinder their own material well-being, 
 and at the same time to defeat that peace and security for 
 which they have shown themselves willing to fight. It is, 
 of course, a simpler matter to fight than it is to put away 
 a preconceived, even if it is a bootless, 'superstition; as, 
 e. g., the prestige of hereditary wealth, hereditary gentil- 
 
280 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 ity, national vainglory, and perhaps especially national 
 hatred. But if the school is hard enough and the dis- 
 cipline protracted enough there is no reason in the nature 
 of things why the common run of the British people should 
 not unlearn these futilities that once were the substance 
 of things under an older and outworn order. They have 
 already shown their capacity for divesting themselves of 
 outworn institutional bonds, in discarding the main sub- 
 stance of dynastic rule ; and when they now come to face 
 the exigencies of this new situation it should cause no 
 great surprise if they are able to see their way to do what 
 further is necessary to meet these exigencies. 
 
 At the hands of this British commonwealth the new 
 situation requires the putting away of the German Imper- 
 ial establishment and the military caste ; the reduction of 
 the German peoples to a footing of unreserved democracy 
 with sufficient guarantees against national trade discrimi- 
 nations; surrender of all British tutelage over outlying 
 possessions, except what may go to guarantee their local 
 autonomy; cancelment of all extra-territorial pretensions 
 of the several nations entering into the league; neutral- 
 isation of the several national establishments, to comprise 
 ’virtual disarmament, as well as cancelment of all restric- 
 tions on trade and of all national defense of extra-terri- 
 torial pecuniary claims and interests on the part of in- 
 dividual citizens. The naval control of the seas will best 
 be left in British hands. No people has a graver or more 
 immediate interest in the freedom an-d security of the 
 sea-borne trade ; and the United Kingdom has shown 
 that it is to be trusted in that matter. And then it may 
 well be that neither the national pride nor the apprehen- 
 sions of the British people would allow them to surren- 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 281 
 
 der it; whereas, if the league is to be formed it will have 
 to be on terms to which the British people are willing to 
 adhere. A certain provision of armed force will also be 
 needed to keep the governments of unneutral nations in 
 check, — and for the purpose in hand all effectively mon- 
 archical countries are to be counted as congenitally un- 
 neutral, whatever their formal professions and whether 
 they are members of the league or not. Here again it 
 will probably appear that the people of the United King- 
 dom, and of the English-speaking countries at large, will 
 not consent to this armed force and its discretionary use 
 passing out of British hands, or rather out of French- 
 British hands ; and here again the practical decision will 
 have to wait on the choice of the British people, all the 
 more because the British community has no longer an 
 interest, real or fancied, in the coercive use of this force 
 for their own particular ends. No other power is to be 
 trusted, except France, and France is less well placed 
 for the purpose and would assuredly also not covet so 
 invidious an honour and so thankless an office. 
 
 The theory, i. e. the logical necessities, of such a pa- 
 cific league of neutral nations is simple enough, in its 
 elements. War is to be avoided by a policy of avoidance. 
 Which signifies that the means and the motives to war- 
 like enterprise and warlike provocation are to be 
 put away, so far as may be. If what may be, in this 
 respect, does not come up to the requirements of the 
 case, the experiment, of course, will fail. The prelim- 
 inary requirement, — elimination of the one formidable 
 dynastic State in Europe, — has been spoken of. Its coun- 
 terpart in the Far East will cease to be formidable on 
 the decease of its natural ally in Central Europe, in so 
 
282 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 far as touches the case of such a projected league. The 
 ever increasingly dubious empire of the Czar would ap- 
 pear to fall in the same category. So that the pacific 
 league’s fortunes would seem to turn on what may be 
 called its domestic or internal arrangements. 
 
 Now, the means of warlike enterprise, as well as of 
 unadvised embroilment, is always in the last analysis the 
 patriotic spirit of the nation. Given this patriotic spirit 
 in sufficient measure, both the material equipment and the 
 provocation to hostilities will easily be found. It should 
 accordingly appear to be the first care of such a pacific 
 league to reduce the sources of patriotic incitement to the 
 practicable minimum. This can be done, in such measure 
 as it can be done at all, by neutralisation of national pre- 
 tensions. The finished outcome in this respect, such as 
 would assure perpetual peace among the peoples con- 
 cerned, would of course be an unconditional neutralisation 
 of citizenship, as has already been indicated before. The 
 question which, in effect, the spokesmen for a pacific 
 league have to face is as to how nearly that outcome can 
 be brought to pass. The rest of what they may under- 
 take, or may come to by way of compromise and stipula- 
 tion, is relatively immaterial and of relatively transient 
 consequence. 
 
 A neutralisation of citizenship has of course been afloat 
 in a somewhat loose way in the projects of socialistic and 
 other “undesirable” agitators, but nothing much has come 
 of it. Nor have specific projects for its realisation been 
 set afoot. That anything conclusive along that line could 
 now be reached would seem extremely doubtful, in view 
 of the ardent patriotic temper of all these peoples, height- 
 ened just now by the experience of war. Still, an unde- 
 signed and unguided drift in that direction has been visible 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 283 
 
 in all those nations that are accounted the vanguard among 
 modern civilised peoples, ever since the dynastic rule 
 among them began to be displaced by a growth of “free” 
 institutions, that is to say institutions resting on an ac 
 cepted ground of insubordination and free initiative. 
 
 The patriotism of these peoples, or their national spirit, 
 is after all and at the best an attenuated and imperson- 
 alised remnant of dynastic loyalty, and it amounts after 
 all, in effect, to nothing much else than a residual cur- 
 tailment or partial atrophy of that democratic habit of 
 mind that embodies itself in the formula: Live and let 
 live. It is, no doubt, both an ancient and a very meri- 
 torious habit. It is easily acquired and hard to put away. 
 The patriotic spirit and the national life (prestige) on 
 which it centers are the subject of untiring eulogy; but 
 hitherto its encomiasts have shown no cause and put for- 
 ward no claim to believe that it all is of any slightest use 
 for any purpose that does not take it and its paramount 
 merit for granted. It is doubtless a very meritorious 
 habit; at least so they all say. But under the circum- 
 stances of modern civilised life it is fruitful of no other 
 net material result than damage and discomfort. Still it 
 is virtually ubiquitous among civilised men, and in an 
 admirable state of repair; and for the calculable future 
 it is doubtless to be counted in as an enduring obstacle 
 to a conclusive peace, a constant source of anxiety and 
 unremitting care. 
 
 The motives that work out through this national spirit, 
 by use of this patriotic ardor, fall under two heads : dy- 
 nastic ambition, and business enterprise. The two cate- 
 gories have the common trait that neither the one nor 
 the other comprises anything that is of the slightest ma- 
 terial benefit to the community at large; but both have 
 
284 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 at the same time a high prestige value in the conventional 
 esteem of modern men. The relation of dynastic ambition 
 to warlike enterprise, and the uses of that usufruct of 
 the nation’s resources and man-power which the nation’s 
 patriotism places at the disposal of the dynastic estab- 
 lishment, have already been spoken of at length above, 
 perhaps at excessive length, in the recurrent discussion of 
 the dynastic State and its quest of dominion for domin- 
 ion’s sake. What measures are necessary to be taken as 
 regards the formidable dynastic States that threaten the 
 peace, have also been outlined, perhaps with excessive 
 freedom. 
 
 But it remains to call attention to that mitigated form 
 of dynastic rule called a constitutional monarchy. In- 
 stances of such a constitutional monarchy, designed to 
 conserve the well-beloved abuses of dynastic rule unde:’ 
 a cover of democratic formalities, or to bring in effectual 
 democratic insubordination under cover of the ancient 
 dignities of an outworn monarchical system, — the char- 
 acterisation may run either way according to the fancy 
 of the speaker, and to much the same practical effect in 
 either case, — instances illustrative of this compromise 
 monarchy at work today are to be had, as felicitously as 
 anywhere, in the Balkan states ; perhaps the case of 
 Greece will be especially instructive. At the other, and 
 far, end of the line will be found such other typical in- 
 stances as the British, the Dutch, or, in pathetic and droll 
 miniature, the Norwegian. 
 
 There is, of course, a wide interval between the gro- 
 tesque effrontery that wears the Hellenic crown and the 
 undeviatingly decorous self-effacement of the Dutch sov- 
 ereign ; and yet there is something of a common com- 
 plexion runs through the whole range of establishments, 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 285 
 
 all the way from the quasi-dynastic to the pseudo-dynastic. 
 For reasons unavoidable and persistent, though not in- 
 scribed in the constituent law, the governmental establish- 
 ment associated with such a royal concern will be made 
 up of persons drawn from the kept classes, the nobility 
 or lesser gentlefolk, and will be imbued with the spirit 
 of these “better” classes rather than that of the common 
 run. 
 
 With what may be uncanny shrewdness, or perhaps 
 mere tropismatic response to the unreasoned stimulus 
 of a “consciousness of kind,” the British government — 
 habitually a syndicate of gentlefolk — has uniformly in- 
 sisted on the installation of a constitutional monarchy at 
 the formation of every new national organisation in which 
 that government has had a discretionary voice. And the 
 many and various constitutional governments so estab- 
 lished, commonly under British auspices in some degree, 
 have invariably run true to form, in some appreciable 
 degree. They may be quasi-dynastic or pseudo-dynastic, 
 but at this nearest approach to democracy they always, 
 and unavoidably, include at least a circumlocution office 
 of gentlefolk, in the way of a ministry and court estab- 
 lishment, whose place in the economy of the nation’s 
 affairs it is to adapt the run of these affairs to the needs 
 of the kept classes. 
 
 There need be no imputation of sinister designs to these 
 gentlefolk, who so are elected by force of circumstances 
 to guard and guide the nation’s interests. As things go, 
 it will doubtless commonly be found that they are as well- 
 intentioned as need be. But a well-meaning gentleman 
 of good antecedents means well in a gentlemanly way 
 and in the light of good antecedents. Which comes un- 
 avoidably to an effectual bias in favor of those interests 
 
286 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 which honorable gentlemen of good antecedents have at 
 heart. And among these interests are the interests of 
 the kept classes, as contrasted with that common run of 
 the population from which their keep is drawn. 
 
 Under the auspices, even if they are only the histrionic 
 and decorative auspices, of so decorous an article of in- 
 stitutional furniture as royalty, it follows of logical neces- 
 sity that the personnel of the effectual government must 
 also be drawn from the better classes, whose place and 
 station and high repute will make their association with 
 the First Gentleman of the Realm not too insufferably 
 incongruous. And then, the popular habit of looking up 
 to this First Gentleman with that deference that royalty 
 commands, also conduces materially to the attendant 
 habitual attitude of deference to gentility more at large. 
 
 Even in so democratic a country, and with so exani- 
 mate a crown as is to be found in the United Kingdom, 
 the royal establishment visibly, and doubtless very' mate- 
 rially, conduces to the continued tenure of the effectual 
 government by representatives of the kept classes ; and 
 it therefore counts with large effect toward the retardation 
 of the country’s further move in the direction of demo- 
 cratic insubordination and direct participation in the di- 
 rection of affairs by the underbred, who finally pay the 
 cost. And on the other hand, even so moderately' royal 
 an establishment as the Norwegian has apparently a sen- 
 sible effect in the way of gathering the reins somewhat 
 into the hands of the better classes, under circumstances 
 of such meagerness as might be expected to preclude 
 anything like a “better” class, in the conventional accepta- 
 tion of that term. It would appear that even the extreme 
 of pseudo-dynastic royalty, sterilised to the last degree, 
 is something of an effectual hindrance to democratic rule, 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 287 
 
 and in so far also a hindrance to the further continued 
 neutralisation of nationalist pretensions, as also an ef- 
 fectual furtherance of upper-class rule for upper-class 
 ends. 
 
 Now, a government by well-meaning gentlemen-invest- 
 ors will, at the nearest, come no nearer representing the 
 material needs and interests of the common run than a 
 parable comes to representing the concrete facts which 
 it hopes to illuminate. And as bears immediately on 
 the point in hand, these gentlemanly administrators of the 
 nation’s atfairs who so cluster about the throne, vacant 
 though it may be of all but the bodily presence of ma- 
 jesty, are after all gentlemen, with a gentlemanly sense 
 of punctilio touching the large proprieties and courtesies 
 of political life. The national honor is a matter of punc- 
 tilio, always; and out of the formal exigencies of the 
 national honor arise grievances to be redressed ; and it is 
 grievances of this character that commonly afford the 
 formal ground of a breach of the peace. An appeal on 
 patriotic grounds of wounded national pride, to the com- 
 mon run who have no trained sense of punctilio, by the 
 gentlemanly responsible class who have such a sense, 
 backed by assurances that the national prestige or the 
 national interests are at stake, will commonly bring a 
 suitable response. It is scarcely necessary that the com- 
 mon run should know just what the stir is about, so long 
 as they are informed by their trusted betters that there 
 is a grievance to redress. In effect, it results that the 
 democratic nation’s affairs are administered by a syndi- 
 cate composed of the least democratic class in the popu- 
 lation. 
 
 Excepting what is to be excepted, it will commonly 
 hold true today that these gentlemanly governments are 
 
288 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 conducted in a commendably clean and upright fashion, 
 with a conscious rectitude and a benevolent intention. 
 But they are after all, in effect, class governments, and 
 they unavoidably carry the bias of their class. The gentle- 
 manly officials and law-givers come, in the main, from the 
 kept classes, whose living comes to them in the way of 
 income from investments, at home or in foreign parts, or 
 from an equivalent source of accumulated wealth or offi- 
 cial emolument. The bias resulting from this state of the 
 case need not be of an intolerant character in order to 
 bring its modicum of mischief into the national policy, 
 as regards amicable relations with other nationalities. A 
 slight bias running on a ground of conscious right and 
 unbroken usage may go far. So, e. g., anyone of these 
 gentlemanly governments is within its legitimate rights, 
 or rather within its imperative duty, in defending the for- 
 eign investments of its citizens and enforcing due payment 
 of its citizens’ claims to income or principal of such prop- 
 erty as they may hold in foreign parts ; and it is within 
 its ordinary lines of duty in making use of the nation’s 
 resources — that is to say of the common man and his 
 means of livelihood — in enforcing such claims held by 
 the investing classes. The community at large has no 
 interest in the enforcement of such claims ; it is evidently 
 a class interest, and as evidently protected by a code of 
 rights, duties and procedure that has grown out of a class 
 bias, at the cost of the community at large. 
 
 This bias favoring the interests of invested wealth may 
 also, and indeed it commonly does, take the aggressive 
 form of aggressively forwarding enterprise in invest- 
 ment abroad, particularly in commercially backward coun- 
 tries abroad, by extension of the national jurisdiction 
 and the active countenancing of concessions in foreign 
 
Eliminafion of the Unfit 
 
 289 
 
 parts, by subventions, or by creation of offices to bring 
 suitable emoluments to the younger sons of deserving 
 families. The protective tariffs to which recourse is 
 sometimes had, are of the same general nature and pur- 
 pose. Of course, it is in this latter, aggressive or excur- 
 sive, issue of the well-to-do bias in favor of investment 
 and invested wealth that its most pernicious effect on 
 international relations is traceable. 
 
 Free income, that is to say income not dependent on 
 personal merit or exertion of any kind, is the breath of 
 life to the kept classes; and as a corollary of the “First 
 Law of Nature,” therefore, the invested wealth which 
 gives a legally equitable claim to such income has in their 
 eyes all the sanctity that can be given by Natural Right. 
 Investment — often spoken of euphemistically as “savings” 
 ■ — is consequently a meritorious act, conceived to be very 
 serviceable to the community at large, and properly to be 
 furthered by all available means. Invested wealth is so 
 much added to the aggregate means at the community’s 
 disposal, it is believed. Of course, in point of fact, in- 
 come from investment in the hands of these gentlefolk 
 is a means of tracelessly consuming that much of the 
 community’s yearly product ; but to the kept classes, who 
 see the matter from the point of view of the recipient, 
 the matter does not present itself in that light. To them 
 it is the breath of life. Like other honorable men they 
 are faithful to their bread ; and by authentic tradition the 
 common man, in whose disciplined preconceptions the kept 
 classes are his indispensable betters, is also imbued with 
 the uncritical faith that the invested wealth which enables 
 these betters tracelessly to consume a due share of the 
 yearly product is an addition to the aggregate means 
 in hand. 
 
 IQ 
 
290 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 The advancement of commercial and other business 
 enterprise beyond the national frontiers is consequently 
 one of the duties not to be neglected, and with which no 
 trifling can be tolerated. It is so bound up with national 
 ideals, under any gentlemanly government, that any in- 
 vasion or evasion of the rights of investors in foreign 
 parts, or of other business involved in dealings with for- 
 eign parts, immediately involves not only the material 
 interest of the nation but the national honour as well. 
 Hence international jealousies and eventual embroilment. 
 
 The constitutional monarchy that commonly covers a 
 modern democratic community is accordingly a menace 
 to the common peace, and any pacific league of neutrals 
 will be laying up trouble and prospective defeat for itself 
 in allowing such an institution to stand over in any in- 
 stance. Acting with a free hand, if such a thing were 
 possible, the projected league should logically eliminate 
 all monarchical establishments, constitutional or other- 
 wise, from among its federated nations. It is doubtless 
 not within reason to look for such a move in the nego- 
 tiations that are to initiate the projected league of neu- 
 trals ; but the point is called to mind here chiefly as indi- 
 cating one of the difficult passages which are to be faced 
 in any attempted formation of such a league, as well as 
 one of the abiding sources of international irritation with 
 which the league’s jurisdiction will be burdened so long 
 as a decisive measure of the kind is not taken. 
 
 The logic of the whole matter is simple enough, and 
 the necessary measures to be taken to remedy it are no 
 less simple — barring sentimental objections which will 
 probably prove insuperable. A monarchy, even a suffi- 
 ciently inane monarchy, carries the burden of a gentle- 
 manly governmental establishment — a government by and 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 291 
 
 for the kept classes ; such a government will unavoidably 
 direct the affairs of state with a view to income on in- 
 vested wealth, and will see the material interests of the 
 country only in so far as they present themselves under 
 the form of investment and business enterprise designed 
 to eventuate in investment; these are the only forms of 
 material interest that give rise to international jealousies, 
 discriminations and misunderstanding, at the same time 
 that they are interests of individuals only and have no 
 material use or value to the community at large. Given 
 a monarchical establishment and the concomitant gentle- 
 manly governmental corps, there is no avoiding this sin- 
 ister prime mover of international rivalry, so long as the 
 rights of invested wealth continue in popular apprehen- 
 sion to be held inviolable. 
 
 Quite obviously there is a certain tu quoque ready to 
 the hand of these “gentlemen of the old school” who see 
 in the constitutional monarchy a God-given shelter from 
 the unreserved vulgarisation of life at the hands of the 
 unblest and unbalanced underbred and underfed. The 
 formally democratic nations, that have not retained even 
 a pseudo-dynastic royalty, are not much more fortunately 
 placed in respect of national discrimination in trade and 
 investment. The American republic will obviously come 
 into the comparison as the type-form of economic policy 
 in a democratic commonwealth. There is little to choose 
 between the economic policy pursued by such republics 
 as France or America on the one side and their nearest 
 counterparts among the constitutional monarchies on the 
 other. It is even to be admitted out of hand that the 
 comparison does no credit to democratic institutions as 
 seen at work in these republics. They are, in fact, some- 
 what the crudest and most singularly foolish in their 
 
292 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 economic policy of any peoples in Christendom. And in 
 view of the amazing facility with which these democratic 
 commonwealths are always ready to delude themselves 
 in everything that touches their national trade policies, it 
 is obvious that any league of neutrals whose fortunes are 
 in any degree contingent on their reasonable compliance 
 with a call to neutralise their trade regulations for the 
 sake of peace, will have need of all the persuasive power 
 it can bring to bear. 
 
 However, the powers of darkness have one less line of 
 defense to shelter them and their work of malversation 
 in these commonwealths than in the constitutional mon- 
 archies. The American national establishment, e. g., 
 which may be taken as a fairly characteristic type-form 
 in this bearing, is a government of businessmen for 
 business ends ; and there is no tabu of axiomatic gen- 
 tility or of certified pedigree to hedge about this working 
 syndicate of business interests. So that it is all nearer 
 by one remove to the disintegrating touch of the common 
 man and his commonplace circumstances. The business- 
 like r6gime of these democratic politicians is as unde- 
 viating in its advocacy and aid of enterprise in pursuit 
 of private gain under shelter of national discrimination as 
 the circumstances will permit; and the circumstances 
 will permit them to do much and far; for the limits 
 of popular gullibility in all things that touch the admirable 
 feats of business enterprise are very wide in these coun- 
 tries. There is a sentimental popular belief running to 
 the curious effect that because the citizens of such a com- 
 monwealth are ungraded equals before the law, therefore 
 somehow they can all and several become wealthy by 
 trading at the expense of their neighbours. 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 293 
 
 Yet, the fact remains that there is only the one Kne of 
 defense in these countries where the business interests 
 have not the countenance of a time-honored order of gen- 
 tlefolk, with the sanction of royalty in the background. 
 And this fact is further enhanced by one of its immediate 
 consequences. Proceeding upon the abounding faith 
 which these peoples have in business enterprise as a uni- 
 versal solvent, the unreserved venality and greed of their 
 businessmen — unhampered by the gentleman’s noblesse 
 oblige — have pushed the conversion of public law to pri- 
 vate gain farther and more openly here than elsewhere. 
 The outcome has been divers measures in restraint of 
 trade or in furtherance of profitable abuses, of such a 
 crass and flagrant character that if once the popular ap- 
 prehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the 
 actualities of this businesslike policy the whole structure 
 should reasonably be expected to crumble. If the present 
 conjuncture of circumstances should, e. g., present to 
 the American populace a choice between exclusion from 
 the neutral league, and a consequent probable and dubious 
 war of self-defense, on the one hand ; as against entrance 
 into the league, and security at the cost of relinquishing 
 their national tariff in restraint of trade, on the other 
 hand, it is always possible that the people might be brought 
 to look their protective tariff in the face and recognise it 
 for a commonplace conspiracy in restraint of trade, and 
 so decide to shuffle it out of the way as a good riddance. 
 And the rest of the Republic’s businesslike policy of 
 special favors would in such a case stand a chance of 
 going in the discard along with the protective tariff, since 
 the rest is of substantially the same disingenuous char- 
 acter. 
 
294 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Not that anyone need entertain a confident expectation 
 of such an exploit of common sense on the part of the 
 American voters. There is little encouragement for such 
 a hope in their past career of gullibility on this head. 
 But this is again a point of difficulty to be faced in 
 negotiations looking to such a pacific league of neutrals. 
 Without a somewhat comprehensive neutralisation of na- 
 tional trade regulations, the outlook for lasting peace 
 would be reduced by that much ; there would be so much 
 material for international jealousy and misunderstanding 
 left standing over and requiring continued readjustment 
 and compromise, always with the contingency of a breach 
 that much nearer. The infatuation of the Americans with 
 their protective tariff and other businesslike discrimina- 
 tions is a sufficiently serious matter in this connection, 
 and it is always possible that their inability to give up 
 this superstition might lead to their not adhering to this 
 projected neutral league. Yet it is at least to be said 
 that the longer the time that passes before active meas- 
 ures are taken toward the organisation of such a league 
 — that is to say, in effect, the longer the great war lasts — 
 the more amenable is the temper of the Americans likely 
 to be, and the more reluctantly would they see themselves 
 excluded. Should the war be protracted to some such 
 length as appears to be promised by latterday pronun- 
 ciamentos from the belligerents, or to something passably 
 approaching such a duration ; and should the Imperial 
 designs and anomalous diplomacy of Japan continue to 
 force themselves on the popular attention at the present 
 rate ; at the same time that the operations in Europe con- 
 tinue to demonstrate the excessive cost of defense against 
 a well devised and resolute offensive; then it should rea- 
 sonably be expected that the Americans might come to 
 
Elimination of the Unfit 
 
 295 
 
 such a realisation of their own case as to let no minor 
 considerations of trade discrimination stand in the way 
 of their making common cause with the other pacific 
 nations. 
 
 It appears already to be realised in the most responsible 
 quarter that America needs the succor of the other pacific 
 nations, with a need that is not to be put away or put off ; 
 as it is also coming to be realised that the Imperial Powers 
 are disturbers of the peace, by force of their Imperial 
 character. Of course, the politicians who seek their own 
 advantage in the nation’s embarrassment are commonly 
 unable to see the matter in that light. But it is also ap- 
 parent that the popular sentiment is affected with the same 
 apprehension, more and more as time passes and the aims 
 and methods of the Imperial Powers become more patent. 
 
 Hitherto the spokesmen of a pacific federation of na- 
 tions have spoken for a league of such an (indeterminate) 
 constitution as to leave all the federated nations undis- 
 turbed in all their conduct of their own affairs, domestic 
 or international ; probably for want of second thought as 
 to the complications of copartnership between them in so 
 grave and unwonted an enterprise. They have also spoken 
 of America’s share in the project as being that of an in- 
 terested outsider, whose interest in any precautionary 
 measures of this kind is in part a regard for his own 
 tranquility as a disinterested neighbour, but in greater 
 part a humane solicitude for the well-being of civilised 
 mankind at large. In this view, somewhat self-complacent 
 it is to be admitted, America is conceived to come into 
 the case as initiator and guide, about whom the pacific 
 nations are to cluster as some sort of queen-bee. 
 
 Now, there is not a little verisimilitude in this concep- 
 tion of America as a sort of central office and a tower 
 
296 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of strength in the projected federation of neutral nations, 
 however pharisaical an appearance it may all have in 
 the self-complacent utterances of patriotic Americans. 
 The American republic is, after all, the greatest of the 
 pacific nations of Christendom, in resources, population 
 and industrial capacity ; and it is also not to be denied 
 that the temper of this large population is, on the whole, 
 as pacific as that of any considerable pveople — outside of 
 China. The adherence of the American republic would, in 
 effect, double the mass and powers of the projected 
 league, and would so place it beyond all hazard of defeat 
 from without, or even of serious outside opposition to its 
 aims. 
 
 Yet it will not hold true that America is either disin- 
 terested or indispensable. The unenviable position of the 
 indispensable belongs to the United Kingdom, and car- 
 ries with it the customary suspicion of interested motives 
 that attaches to the stronger party in a bargain. To 
 America, on the other hand, the league is indispensable, 
 as a refuge from otherwise inevitable dangers ahead; and 
 it is only a question of a moderate allowance of time for 
 the American voters to realise that without an adequate 
 copartnership with the other pacific nations the outlook 
 of the Republic is altogether precarious. Single-handed, 
 America can not defend itself, except at a prohibitive 
 cost ; whereas in copartnership with these others the 
 national defense becomes a virtually negligible matter. 
 It is for America a choice between a policy of extravagant 
 armament and aggressive diplomacy, with a doubtful 
 issue, on the one side, and such abatement of national pre- 
 tensions as would obviate bootless contention, on the 
 other side. 
 
Eliminafipn of the Unfit 
 
 297 
 
 Yet, it must be admitted, the patriotic temper of the 
 American people is of such a susceptible kind as to leave 
 the issue in doubt. Not that the Americans will not en- 
 deavor to initiate some form of compact for the keeping 
 of the peace, when hostilities are concluded ; barring un- 
 foreseen contingencies, it is virtually a foregone conclu- 
 sion that the attempt will be made, and that the Americans 
 will take an active part in its promotion. But the doubt 
 is as to their taking such a course as will lead to a com- 
 pact of the kind needed to safeguard the peace of the 
 country. The business interests have much to say in the 
 counsels of the Americans, and these business interests 
 look to short-term gains — American business interests 
 particularly — ^to be derived from the country’s necessities. 
 It is likely to appear that the business interests, through 
 representatives in Congress and elsewhere, will dis- 
 approve of any peace compact that does not involve an 
 increase of the national armament and a prospective de- 
 mand for munitions and an increased expenditure of the 
 national funds. 
 
 With or without the adherence of America, the pacific 
 nations of Europe will doubtless endeavour to form a 
 leagpie or alliance designed to keep the peace. If America 
 does not come into the arrangement it may well come to 
 nothing much more than a further continued defensive 
 alliance of the belligerent nations now opposed to the Ger- 
 man coalition. In any case it is still a point in doubt 
 whether the league so projected is to be merely a compact 
 of defensive armament against a common enemy — in 
 which case it will necessarily be transient, perhaps ephem- 
 eral — or a more inclusive coalition of a closer character 
 designed to avoid any breach of the peace, by disarmament 
 and by disallowance and disclaimer of such national pre- 
 
298 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tensions and punctilio as the patriotic sentiment of the 
 contracting parties will consent to dispense with. The 
 nature of the resulting peace, therefore, as well as its 
 chances of duration, will in great measure be conditioned 
 on the fashion of peace-compact on which it is to rest; 
 which will be conditioned in good part on the degree in 
 which the warlike coalition under German Imperial con- 
 trol is effectually to be eliminated from the situation as a 
 prospective disturber of the peace; which, in turn, is a 
 question somewhat closely bound up with the further 
 duration of the war, as has already been indicated in an 
 earlier passage. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Peace and the Price System 
 
 Evidently the conception of peace on which its various 
 spokesmen are proceeding is by no means the same for all 
 of them. In the current German conception, e. g., as seen 
 in the utterances of its many and urgent spokesmen, peace 
 appears to be of the general nature of a truce between na- 
 tions, whose God-given destiny it is, in time, to adjust a 
 claim to precedence by wager of battle. They will some- 
 times speak of it, euphemistically, with a view to concili- 
 ation, as “assurance of the national future,” in which the 
 national future is taken to mean an opportunity for the 
 extension of the national dominion at the expense of some 
 other national establishment. In the same connection one 
 may recall the many eloquent passages on the State and its 
 paramount place and value in the human economy. The 
 State is useful for disturbing the peace. This German 
 notion may confidently be set down as the lowest of the 
 current conceptions of peace ; or perhaps rather as the 
 notion of peace reduced to the lowest terms at which it 
 continues to be recognisable as such. Next beyond in that 
 direction lies the notion of armistice; which differs from 
 this conception of peace chiefly in connoting specifically 
 a definite and relatively short interval between warlike 
 operations. 
 
 The conception of peace as being a period of prepara- 
 tion for war has many adherents outside the Fatherland, 
 --- 299 
 
300 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of course. Indeed, it has probably a wider vogue and a 
 readier acceptance among men who interest themselves in 
 questions of peace and war than any other. It goes hand 
 in hand with that militant nationalism that is taken for 
 granted, conventionally, as the common ground of those 
 international relations that play a part in diplomatic inter- 
 course. It is the diplomatist’s metier to talk war in para- 
 bles of peace. This conception of peace as a precarious 
 interval of preparation has come down to the present out 
 of the feudal age and is, of course, best at home where the 
 feudal range of preconceptions has suffered least dilapida- 
 tion; and it carries the feudalistic presumption that all 
 national establishments are competitors for dominion, aft- 
 er the scheme of Macchiavelli. The peace which is had on 
 this footing, within the realm, is a peace of subjection, 
 more or less pronounced according as the given national 
 establishment is more or less on the militant order ; a war- 
 like organisation being necessarily of a servile character, 
 in the same measure in which it is warlike. 
 
 In much the same measure and with much the same 
 limitations as the modern democratic nations have de- 
 parted from the feudal system of civil relations and from 
 the peculiar range of conceptions which characterise that 
 system, they have also come in for a new or revised con- 
 ception of peace. Instead of its being valued chiefly as a 
 space of time in which to prepare for war, offensive or de- 
 fensive, among these democratic and provisionally pacific 
 nations it has come to stand in the common estimation 
 as the normal and stable manner of life, good and com- 
 mendable in its own right. These modern, pacific, com- 
 monwealths stand on the defensive, habitually. They are 
 still pugnaciously national, but they have unlearned so 
 much of the feudal preconceptions as to leave them in 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 301 
 
 a defensive attitude, under the watch-word; Peace with 
 honour. Their quasi-feudalistic national prestige is not to 
 be trifled with, though it has lost so much of its fascina- 
 tion as ordinarily not to serve the purposes of an ag- 
 gressive enterprise, at least not without some shrewd 
 sophistication at the hands of militant politicians and their 
 diplomatic agents. Of course, an exuberant patriotism 
 may now and again take on the ancient barbarian vehe- 
 mence and lead such a provisionally pacific nation into an 
 aggressive raid against a helpless neighbour ; but it re- 
 mains characteristically true, after all, that these peoples 
 look on the country’s peace as the normal and ordinary 
 course of things, which each nation is to take care of for 
 itself and by its own force. 
 
 The ideal of the nineteenth-century statesmen was to 
 keep the peace by a balance of power ; an unstable equi- 
 librium of rivalries, in which it was recognised that eternal 
 vigilance was the price of peace by equilibration. Since 
 then, by force of the object-lesson of the twentieth-century 
 wars, it has become evident that eternal vigilance will no 
 longer keep the peace by equilibration, and the balance of 
 power has become obsolete. At the same time things have 
 so turned that an effective majority of the civilised nations 
 now see their advantage in peace, without further op- 
 portunity to seek further dominion. These nations have 
 also been falling into the shape of commonwealths, and 
 so have lost something of their national spirit. 
 
 With much reluctant hesitation and many misgivings, 
 the statesmen of these pacific nations are accordingly 
 busying themselves with schemes for keeping the peace on 
 the unfamiliar footing of a stable equilibrium ; the method 
 preferred on the whole being an equilibration of make- 
 believe, in imitation of the obsolete balance of power. 
 
302 On th e "Nature of Peace 
 
 There is a meticulous regard for national jealousies and 
 discriminations, which it is thought necessary to keep in- 
 tact. Of course, on any one of these slightly diversified 
 plans of keeping the peace on a stable footing of copart- 
 nery among the pacific nations, national jealousies and 
 national integrity no longer have any substantial mean- 
 ing. But statesmen think and plan in terms of precedent ; 
 which comes to thinking and planning in terms of make- 
 believe, when altered circumstances have made the pre- 
 cedents obsolete. So one comes to the singular proposal 
 of the statesmen, that the peace is to be kept in concert 
 among these pacific nations by a provision of force with 
 which to break it at will. The peace that is to be kept on 
 this footing of national discriminations and national arm- 
 aments will necessarily be of a precarious kind ; being, in 
 effect, a statesmanlike imitation of the peace as it was once 
 kept even more precariously by the pacific nations in 
 severalty. 
 
 Hitherto the movement toward peace has not gone be- 
 yond this conception of it, as a collusive safeguarding of 
 national discrepancies by force of arms. Such a peace is 
 necessarily precarious, partly because armed force is use- 
 ful for breaking the peace, partly because the national dis- 
 crepancies, by which these current peace-makers set such 
 store, are a constant source of embroilment. What the 
 peace-makers might logically be expected to concern them- 
 selves about would be the elimination of these discrep- 
 ancies that make for embroilment. But what they actu- 
 ally seem concerned about is their preservation. A peace 
 by collusive neglect of those remnants of feudalistic make- 
 believe that still serve to divide the pacific nations has 
 hitherto not seriously come under advisement. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 303 
 
 Evidently, hitherto, and for the calculable future, peace 
 is a relative matter, a matter of more or less, whichever 
 of the several working conceptions spoken of above may 
 rule the case. Evidently, too, a peace designed to strength- 
 en the national establishment against eventual war, will 
 count to a different effect from a collusive peace of a 
 defensive kind among the pacific peoples, designed by its 
 projectors to conserve those national discrepancies on 
 which patriotic statesmen like to dwell. Different from 
 both would be the value of a peace by neglect of such use- 
 less national discriminations as now make for embroilment. 
 A protracted season of peace should logically have a some- 
 what different cultural value according to the character of 
 the public policy to be pursued under its cover. So that a 
 safe and sane conservation of the received law and order 
 should presumably best be effected under cover of a 
 collusive peace of the defensive kind, which is designed 
 to retain those national discrepancies intact that count for 
 so much in the national life of today, both as a focus of 
 patriotic sentiment and as an outlet for national expendi- 
 tures. This plan would involve the least derangement of 
 the received order among the democratic peoples, although 
 the plan might itself undergo some change in the course 
 of time. 
 
 Among the singularities of the latterday situation, in 
 this connection, and brought out by the experiences of the 
 great war, is a close resemblance between latterday war- 
 like operations and the ordinary processes of industry. 
 Modern warfare and modern industry alike are carried on 
 by technological processes subject to surveillance and 
 direction by mechanical engineers, or perhaps rather ex- 
 perts in engineering science of the mechanistic kind. 
 
304 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 War is not now a matter of the stout heart and strong 
 arm. Not that these attributes do not have their place 
 and value in modern warfare ; but they are no longer the 
 chief or decisive factors in the case. The exploits that 
 count in this warfare are technological exploits ; exploits 
 of technological science, industrial appliances, and techno- 
 logical training. As has been remarked before, it is no 
 longer a gentlemen’s war, and the gentleman, as such, is 
 no better than a marplot in the game as it is played. 
 
 Certain consequences follow from this state of the case. 
 Technology and industrial experience, in large volume 
 and at a high proficiency, are indispensable to the conduct 
 of war on the modern plan, as well as a large, efficient 
 and up-to-date industrial community and industrial plant 
 to supply the necessary material of this warfare. At the 
 same time the discipline of the campaign, as it impinges 
 on the rank and file as well as on the very numerous body 
 of officers and technicians, is not at cross purposes with 
 the ordinary industrial employments of peace, or not in 
 the same degree as has been the case in the past, even in 
 the recent past. The experience of the campaign does 
 not greatly unfit the men who survive for industrial uses ; 
 nor does it come in as a sheer interruption of their in- 
 dustrial training, or break the continuity of that range 
 of habits of thought which modern industry of the techno- 
 logical order induces ; not in the same degree as was the 
 case under the conditions of war as carried on in the 
 nineteenth century. The cultural, and particularly the 
 technological, incidence of this modern warfare should 
 evidently be appreciably different from what has been ex- 
 perienced in the past, and from what this past experience 
 has induced students of these matters to look for among 
 the psychological effects of warlike experience. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 305 
 
 It remains true that the discipline of the campaign, how- 
 ever impersonal it may tend to become, still inculcates per- 
 sonal subordination and unquestioning obedience; and 
 yet the modern tactics and methods of fighting bear som.e- 
 what more on the individual’s initiative, discretion, sagac- 
 ity and self-possession than once would have been true. 
 Doubtless the men who come out of this great war, the 
 common men, will bring home an accentuated and 
 acrimonious patriotism, a venomous hatred of the enemies 
 whom they have missed killing; but it may reasonably be 
 doubted if they come away with a correspondingly height- 
 ened admiration and affection for their betters who have 
 failed to make good as foremen in charge of this team- 
 work in killing. The years of the war have been trying 
 to the reputation of officials and officers, who have had to 
 meet uncharted exigencies with not much better chance of 
 guessing the way through than their subalterns have had. 
 
 By and large, it is perhaps not lo be doubted that the 
 populace now under arms will return from the experience 
 of the war with some net gain in loyalty to the nation’s 
 honour and in allegiance to their masters ; particularly the 
 German subjects, — the like is scarcely true for the Brit- 
 ish ; but a doubt will present itself as to the magnitude of 
 this net gain in subordination, or this net loss in self- 
 possession. A doubt may be permitted as to whether the 
 common man in the countries of the Imperial coalition, e. 
 g., will, as the net outcome of this war experience, be in a 
 perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as touches his 
 obligations toward his betters and subservience to the ir- 
 responsible authority exercised by the various govern- 
 mental agencies, than he was at the outbreak of the war. 
 At that time, there is reason to believe, there was an 
 ominous, though scarcely threatening, murmur of dis- 
 20 
 
306 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 content beginning to be heard among the working classes 
 of the industrial towns. It is fair to presume, however, 
 that the servile discipline of the service and the vindictive 
 patriotism bred of the fight should combine to render the 
 populace of the Fatherland more amenable to the ir- 
 responsible rule of the Imperial dynasty and its sub- 
 altern royal establishments, in spite of any slight effect 
 of a contrary character exercised by the training in tech- 
 nological methods and in self-reliance, with which this 
 discipline of the service has been accompanied. As to 
 the case of the British population, under arms or under 
 compulsion of necessity at home, something has already 
 been said in an earlier passage ; and much will apparently 
 depend, in their case, on the further duration of the war. 
 The case of the other nationalities involved, both neutrals 
 and belligerents, is even more obscure in this bearing, 
 but it is also of less immediate consequence for the present 
 argument. 
 
 The essentially feudal virtues of loyalty and bellicose 
 patriotism would appear to have gained their great as- 
 cendency over all men’s spirit within the Western civili- 
 sation by force of the peculiarly consistent character of 
 the discipline of life under feudal conditions, whether in 
 war or peace ; and to the same uniformity of these forces 
 that shaped the workday habits of thought among the 
 feudal nations is apparently due that profound institu- 
 tionalisation of the preconceptions of patriotism and loyal- 
 ty, by force of which these preconceptions still hold the 
 modern peoples in an unbreakable web of prejudice, after 
 the conditions favoring their acquirement have in great 
 part ceased to operate. These preconceptions of national 
 solidarity and international enmity have come down from 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 307 
 
 the past as an integral part of the unwritten constitution 
 underlying all these modern nations, even those which 
 have departed most widely from the manner of life to 
 which the peoples owe these ancient preconceptions. 
 Hitherto, or rather until recent times, the workday ex- 
 perience of these peoples has not seriously worked at 
 cross purposes with the patriotic spirit and its bias of na- 
 tional animosity; and what discrepancy there has effec- 
 tively been between the discipline of workday life and the 
 received institutional preconceptions on this head, has 
 hitherto been overborne by the unremitting inculcation of 
 these virtues by interested politicians, priests and pub- 
 licists, who speak habitually for the received order of 
 things. 
 
 That order of things which is known on its political and 
 civil side as the feudal system, together with that era of 
 the dynastic States which succeeds the feudal age techni- 
 cally so called, was, on its industrial or technological side, 
 a system of trained man-power organised on a plan of 
 subordination of man to man. On the whole, the scheme 
 and logic of that life, whether in its political (warlike) or 
 its industrial doings, whether in war or peace, runs on 
 terms of personal capacity, proficiency and relations. The 
 organisation of the forces engaged and the constraining 
 rules according to which this organisation worked, were 
 of the nature of personal relations, and the impersonal 
 factors in the case were taken for granted. Politics and 
 war were a field for personal valor, force and cunning, in 
 practical effect a field for personal force and fraud. In- 
 dustry was a field in which the routine of life, and its 
 outcome, turned on “the skill, dexterity and judgment of 
 the individual workman,” in the words of Adam Smith. 
 
308 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 The feudal age passed, being done to death by handi- 
 craft industry, commercial traffic, gunpowder, and the 
 state-making politicians. But the political States of the 
 statemakers, the dynastic States as they may well be called, 
 continued the conduct of political life on the i>ersonal 
 plane of rivalry and jealousy between dynasties and be- 
 tween their States ; and in spite of gunpowder and the 
 new military engineering, warfare continued also to be, 
 in the main and characteristically, a field in which man- 
 power and personal qualities decided the outcome, by vir- 
 tue of personal “skill, dexterity and judgment.” Mean- 
 time industry and its technology by insensible degrees 
 underwent a change in the direction of impersonalisation, 
 particularly in those countries in which statemaking and 
 its warlike enterprise had ceased, or were ceasing, to be 
 the chief interests and the controlling preconception of 
 the people. 
 
 The logic of the new, mechanical industry which has 
 supplanted handicraft in these countries, is a mechanistic 
 logic, which proceeds in terms of matter-of-fact strains, 
 masses, velocities, and the like, instead of the “skill, dex- 
 terity and judgment” of personal agents. The new in- 
 dustry does not dispense with the personal agencies, nor 
 can it even be said to minimise the need of skill, dexterity 
 and judgment in the personal agents employed, but it does 
 take them and their attributes for granted as in some sort 
 a foregone premise to its main argument. The logic of the 
 handicraft system took the impersonal agencies for grant- 
 ed ; the machine industry takes the skill, dexterity and 
 judgment of the workmen for granted. The processes of 
 thought, and therefore the consistent habitual discipline, of 
 the former ran in terms of the personal agents engaged, 
 and of the personal relations of discretion, control and 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 309 
 
 subordination necessary to the work; whereas the me- 
 chanistic logic of the modern technology, more and more 
 consistently, runs in terms of the impersonal forces en- 
 gaged, and inculcates an habitual predilection for matter- 
 of-fact statement, and an habitual preconception that the 
 findings of material science alone are conclusive. 
 
 In those nations that have made up the advance guard 
 of Western civilisation in its movement out of feudalism, 
 the disintegrating effect of this matter-of-fact animus in- 
 culcated by the later state of the industrial arts has ap- 
 parently acted effectively, in some degree, to discredit 
 those preconceptions of personal discrimination on which 
 dynastic rule is founded. But in no case has the disci- 
 pline of this mechanistic technology yet wrought its per- 
 fect work or come to a definitive conclusion. Mean- 
 time war and politics have on the whole continued on 
 the ancient plane ; it may perhaps be fair to say that politics 
 has so continued because warlike enterprise has continued 
 still to be a matter of such personal forces as skill, dex- 
 terity and judgment, valor and cunning, personal force 
 and fraud. Latterly, gradually, but increasingly, the 
 technology of war, too, has been shifting to the mechan- 
 istic plane; until in the latest phases of it, somewhere 
 about the turn of the century, it is evident that the logic 
 of warfare too has come to be the same mechanistic logic 
 that makes the modern state of the industrial arts. 
 
 What, if anything, is due by consequence to overtake 
 the political strategy and the political preconceptions of the 
 new century, is a question that will obtrude itself, though 
 with scant hope of finding a ready answer. It may even 
 seem a rash, as well as an ungraceful, undertaking to in- 
 quire into the possible manner and degree of prospective 
 decay to which the received political ideals and virtues 
 
310 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 would appear to be exposed by consequence of this de- 
 rangement of the ancient discipline to which men have 
 been subjected. So much, however, would seem evident, 
 that the received virtues and ideals of patriotic animosity 
 and national jealousy can best be guarded against untimely 
 decay by resolutely holding to the formal observance of 
 all outworn punctilios of national integrity and dis- 
 crimination, in spite of their increasing disserviceability, 
 —as would be done, e. g., or at least sought to be done, in 
 the installation of a league of neutral nations to keep the 
 peace and at the same time to safeguard those “national 
 interests” whose only use is to divide these nations and 
 keep them in a state of mutual envy and distrust. 
 
 Those peoples who are subject to the constraining gov- 
 ernance of this modern state of the industrial arts, as 
 all modern peoples are in much the same measure in which 
 they are “modern,” are, therefore, exposed to a workday 
 discipline running at cross purposes with the received law 
 and order as it takes effect in national affairs ; and to this 
 is to be added that, with warlike enterprise also shifted 
 to this same mechanistic-technological ground, war can no 
 longer be counted on so confidently as before to correct all 
 the consequent drift away from the ancient landmarks 
 of dynastic, pseudo-dynastic, and national enterprise in 
 dominion. 
 
 As has been noted above, modern warfare not only 
 makes use of, and indeed depends on, the modern indus- 
 trial technology at every turn of the operations in the 
 field, but it draws on the ordinary industrial resources of 
 the countries at war in a degree and with an urgency 
 never equalled. No nation can hope to make a stand in 
 modern warfare, much less to make headway in warlike 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 311 
 
 enterprise, without the most thoroughgoing exploitation 
 of the modern industrial arts. Which signifies for the 
 purpose in hand that any Power that harbors an imperial 
 ambition must take measures to let its underlying popula- 
 tion acquire the ways and means of the modern machine 
 industry, without reservation ; which in turn signifies that 
 popular education must be taken care of to such an extent 
 as may be serviceable in this manner of industry and in 
 the manner of life which this industrial system necessarily 
 imposes ; which signifies, of course, that only the thor- 
 oughly trained and thoroughly educated nations have a 
 chance of holding their place as formidable Powers in 
 this latterday phase of civilisation. What is needed is the 
 training and education that go to make proficiency in the 
 modern fashion of technology and in those material 
 sciences that conduce to technological proficiency of this 
 modern order. It is a matter of course that in these 
 premises any appreciable illiteracy is an intolerable handi- 
 cap. So is also any training which discourages habitual 
 self-reliance and initiative, or which acts as a check on 
 skepticism ; for the skeptical frame of mind is a neces- 
 sary part of the intellectual equipment that makes for ad- 
 vance, invention and understanding in the field of tech- 
 nological proficienc;^. 
 
 But these requirements, imperatively necessary as a con- 
 dition of warlike success, are at cross purposes with that 
 unquestioning respect of persons and that spirit of abnega- 
 tion that alone can hold a people to the political institutions 
 of the old order and make them a willing instrument in the 
 hands of the dynastic statesmen. The dynastic State is 
 apparently caught in a dilemma. The necessary prepara- 
 tion for warlike enterprise on the modern plan can ap- 
 parently be counted on, in the long run, to disintegrate the 
 
312 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 foundations of the dynastic State. But it is only in the 
 long run that this effect can be counted on; and it is 
 perhaps not securely to be counted on even in a moder- 
 ately long run of things as they have run hitherto, if due 
 precautions are taken by the interested statesmen, — as 
 would seem to be indicated by the successful conservation 
 of archaic traits in the German peoples during the past 
 half century under the archaising rule of the Hohenzol- 
 lern. It is a matter of habituation, which takes time, and 
 which can at the same time be neutralised in some degree 
 by indoctrination. 
 
 Still, when all is told, it will probably have to be 
 conceded that, e. g., such a nation as Russia will fall 
 under this rule of inherent disability imposed by the 
 necessary use of the modern industrial arts. Without a 
 fairly full and free command of these modem industrial 
 methods on the part of the Russian people, together with 
 the virtual disappearance of illiteracy, and with the facile 
 and far-reaching system of communication which it all 
 involves, the Russian Imperial establishment would not 
 be a formidable power or a serious menace to the pacific 
 nations ; and it is not easy to imagine how the Imperial 
 establishment could retain its hold and its character under 
 the conditions indicated. 
 
 The case of Japan, taken by itself, rests on somewhat 
 similar lines as these others. In time, and in this case 
 the time-allowance should presumably not be anything 
 very large, the Japanese people are likely to get an ade- 
 quate command of the modern technology; which would, 
 here as elsewhere, involve the virtual disappearance of the 
 present high illiteracy, and the loss, in some passable 
 measure, of the current superstitiously crass nationalism 
 of that people. There are indications that something of 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 313 
 
 that kind, and of quite disquieting dimensions, is already 
 under way; though with no indication that cuiy conse- 
 quent disintegrating habits of thought have yet invaded 
 the sacred close of Japanese patriotic devotion. 
 
 Again, it is a question of time and habituation. With 
 time and habituation the emperor may insensibly cease to 
 be of divine pedigree, and the syndicate of statesmen who 
 are doing business under his signature may consequently 
 find their measures of Imperial expansion questioned by 
 the people who pay the bills. But so long as the Imperial 
 syndicate enjoy their present immunity from outside ob- 
 struction, and can accordingly carry on an uninterrupted 
 campaign of cumulative predation in Korea, China and 
 Manchuria, the patriotic infatuation is less likely to fall 
 off, and by so much the decay of Japanese loyalty will be 
 retarded. Yet, even if allowed anything that may seem at 
 all probable in the way of a free hand for aggression 
 against their hapless neighbours, the skepticism and insub- 
 ordination to personal rule that seems inseparable in the 
 long run from addiction to the modern industrial arts 
 should be expected presently to overtake the Japanese 
 spirit of loyal servitude. And the opportunity of Imperial 
 Japan lies in the interval. So also does the menace of Im- 
 perial Japan as a presumptive disturber of the peace at 
 large. 
 
 At the cost of some unavoidable tedium, the argument 
 as regards these and similar instances may be summarised. 
 It appears, in the (possibly doubtful) light of the history 
 of democratic institutions and of modern technology hith- 
 erto, as also from the logical character of this technology 
 and its underlying material sciences, that consistent ad- 
 diction to the peculiar habits of thought involved in its 
 
314 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 carrying on will presently induce a decay of those pre- 
 conceptions in which dynastic government and national 
 ambitions have their ground. Continued addiction to this 
 modern scheme of industrial life should in time eventuate 
 in a decay of militant nationalism, with a consequent lapse 
 of warlike enterprise. At the same time, popular pro- 
 ficiency in the modern industrial arts, with all that that 
 implies in the way of intelligence and information, is indis- 
 pensable as a means to any successful warlike enterprise 
 on the modern plan. The menace of warlike aggression 
 from such dynastic States, e. g., as Imperial Germany and 
 Imperial Japan is due to their having acquired a competent 
 use of this modern technology, while they have not yet 
 had time to lose that spirit of dynastic loyalty which they 
 have carried over from an archaic order of things, out of 
 which they have emerged at a very appreciably later period 
 (last half of the nineteenth century) than those democrat- 
 ic peoples whose peace they now menace. As has been 
 said, they have taken over this modem state of the indus- 
 trial arts without having yet come in for the defects of 
 its qualities. This modern technolog}', with its underly- 
 ing material sciences, is a novel factor in the history 
 of human culture, in that addiction to its use conduces to 
 the decay of militant patriotism, at the same time that its 
 employment so greatly enhances the warlike efficiency of 
 even a pacific people, at need, that they can not be serious- 
 ly molested by any other peoples, however valorous and 
 numerous, who have not a competent use of this technol- 
 ogy. A peace at large among the civilised nations, by 
 loss of the militant temper through addiction to this man- 
 ner of arts of peace, therefore, carries no risk of interrup- 
 tion by an inroad of warlike barbarians, — always pro- 
 vided that those existing archaic peoples who might pass 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 31S 
 
 muster as barbarians are brought into line with the pacific 
 nations on a footing of peace and equality. The disparity 
 in point of outlook as between the resulting peace at large 
 by neglect of bootless animosities, on the one hand, and 
 those historic instances of a peaceable civilisation that 
 have been overwhelmed by warlike barbarian invasions, on 
 the other hand, should be evident. 
 
 It is always possible, indeed it would scarcely be surpris- 
 ing to find, that the projected league of neutrals or of 
 nations bent on peace can not be brought to realisation at 
 this juncture; perhaps not for a long time yet. But it 
 should at the same time seem reasonable to expect that the 
 drift toward a peaceable settlement of national discrep- 
 ancies such as has been visible in history for some 
 appreciable time past will, in the absence of unforeseen 
 hindrances, work out to some such effect in the course of 
 further exi>erience under modern conditions. And 
 whether the projected peace compact at its inception takes 
 one form or another, provided it succeeds in its main pur- 
 pose, the long-term drift of things under its rule should 
 logically set toward some ulterior settlement of the gen- 
 eral character of what has here been spoken of as a 
 peace by neglect or by neutralisation of discrepancies. 
 
 It should do so, in the absence of unforeseen contin- 
 gencies ; more particularly if there were no effectual factor 
 of dissension included in the fabric of institutions within 
 the nation. But there should also, e. g., be no difficulty 
 in assenting to the forecast that when and if national peace 
 and security are achieved and settled beyond recall, the 
 discrepancy in fact between those who own the country’s 
 wealth and those who do not is presently due to come to 
 an issue. Any attempt to forecast the form which this 
 
316 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 issue is to take, or the manner, incidents, adjuncts an-d 
 sequelae of its determination, would be a bolder and a 
 more ambiguous, undertaking. Hitherto attempts to bring 
 this question to an issue have run aground on the real or 
 fancied jeopardy to paramount national interests. How, 
 if at all, this issue might affect national interests and in- 
 ternational relations, would obviously depend in the first 
 instance on the state of the given national establishment 
 and the character of the international engagements entered 
 into in the formation of this projected pacific league. It 
 is always conceivable that the transactions involving so 
 ubiquitous an issue might come to take on an international 
 character and that they might touch the actual or fanci- 
 ful interests of these diverse nations with such divergent 
 effect as to bring on a rupture of the common understand- 
 ing between them and of the peace-compact in which the 
 common understanding is embodied. 
 
 In the beginning, that is to say in the beginnings out of 
 which this modern era of the Western civilisation has 
 arisen, with its scheme of law and custom, there grew 
 into the scheme of law and custom, by settled usage, a 
 right of ownership and of contract in disposal of owner- 
 ship, — which may or may not have been a salutary institu- 
 tional arrangement on the whole, under the circumstances 
 of the early days. With the later growth of handicraft 
 and the petty trade in Western Europe this right of own- 
 ership and contract came to be insisted on, standardised 
 under legal specifications, and secured against molestation 
 by the governmental interests ; more particularly and 
 scrupulously among those peoples that have taken the 
 lead in working out that system of free or popular insti- 
 tutions that marks the modern civilised nations. So it 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 317 
 
 has come to be embodied in the common law of the modern 
 world as an inviolable natural right. It has all the pre- 
 scriptive force of legally authenticated immemorial cus- 
 tom. 
 
 Under the system of handicraft and petty trade this 
 right of property and free contract served the interest 
 of the common man, at least in much of its incidence, and 
 acted in its degree to shelter industrious and economical 
 persons from hardship and indignity at the hands of their 
 betters. There seems reason to believe, as is commonly 
 believed, that so long as that relatively direct and simple 
 scheme of industry and trade lasted, the right of owner- 
 ship and contract was a salutary custom, in its bearing on 
 the fortunes of the common man. It appears also, on the 
 whole, to have been favorable to the fuller development of 
 the handicraft technology, as well as to its eventual out- 
 growth into the new line of technological expedients and 
 contrivancies that presently gave rise to the machine in- 
 dustry and the large-scale business enterprise. 
 
 The standard theories of economic science have as- 
 sumed the rights of property and contract as axiomatic 
 premises and ultimate terms of analysis ; and their theories 
 are commonly drawn in such a form as would fit the cir- 
 cumstances of the handicraft industry and the petty trade, 
 and such as can be extended to any other economic situa- 
 tion by shrewd interpretation. These theories, as they 
 run from Adam Smith down through the nineteenth cen- 
 tury and later, appear tenable, on the whole, when taken 
 to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time, in 
 virtually all that they have to say on questions of wages, 
 capital, savings, and the economy and efficiency of man- 
 agement and production by the methods of private enter- 
 prise resting on these rights of ownership and contract and 
 
318 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 governed by the pursuit of private gain. It is when these 
 standard theories are sought to be applied to the later 
 situation, which has outgrown the conditions of handi- 
 craft, that they appear nugatory or meretricious. The 
 “competitive system” which these standard theories as- 
 sume as a necessary condition of their own validity, and 
 about which they are designed to form a defensive hedge, 
 would, under those earlier conditions of small-scale enter- 
 prise and personal contact, appear to have been both a 
 passably valid assumption as a premise and a passably 
 expedient scheme of economic relations and traffic. At 
 that period of its life-history it can not be said consis- 
 tently to have worked hardship to the common man ; rather 
 the reverse. And the common man in that time appears 
 to have had no misgivings about the excellence of the 
 scheme or of that article of Natural Rights that under- 
 lies it. 
 
 This complexion of things, as touches the effectual 
 bearing of the institution of property and the ancient 
 customary rights of ownership, has changed substantially 
 since the time of Adam Smith. The “competitive sys.- 
 tem,” which he looked to as the economic working-out of 
 that “simple and obvious system of natural liberty” that 
 always engaged his best affections, has in great measure 
 ceased to operate as a routine of natural libertv', in fact; 
 particularly in so far as touches the fortunes of the com- 
 mon man, the impecunious mass of the people. De jure, 
 of course, the competitive system and its inviolable rights 
 of ownership are a citadel of Natural Liberty; but de 
 facto the common man is now, and has for some time been, 
 feeling the pinch of it. It is law, and doubtless it is good 
 law, grounded in immemorial usage and authenticated with 
 statute and precedent. But circumstances have so chang- 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 319 
 
 ed that this good old plan has in a degree become archaic, 
 perhaps unprofitable, or even mischievous, on the whole, 
 and especially as touches the conditions of life for the 
 common man. At least, so the common man in these mod- 
 ern democratic and commercial countries is beginning to 
 apprehend the matter. 
 
 Some slight and summary characterisation of these 
 changing circumstances that have affected the incidence 
 of the rights of property during modern times may, there- 
 fore, not be out of place ; with a view to seeing how far 
 and why these rights may be due to come under ad- 
 visement and possible revision, in case a state of settled 
 peace should leave men’s attention free to turn to these 
 internal, as contrasted with national interests. 
 
 Under that order of handicraft and petty trade that 
 led to the standardisation of these rights of ownership 
 in the accentuated form which belongs to them in modern 
 law and custom, the common man had a practicable chance 
 of free initiative and self-direction in his choice and pur- 
 suit of an occupation and a livelihood, in so far as rights 
 of ownership bore on his case. At that period the work- 
 man was the main factor in industry and, in the main 
 and characteristically, the question of his employment 
 was a question of what he would do. The material 
 equipment of industry — the “plant,” as it has come to be 
 called — was subject of ownership, then as now ; but it was 
 then a secondary factor and, notoriously, subsidiary to the 
 immaterial equipment of skill, dexterity and judgment em- 
 bodied in the person of the craftsman. The body of in- 
 formation, or general knowledge, requisite to a work- 
 manlike proficiency as handicraftsman was sufficiently 
 slight and simple to fall within the ordinary reach of the 
 working class, without special schooling ; and the material 
 
320 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 equipment necessary to the work, in the way of tools and 
 appliances, was also slight enough, ordinarily, to bring it 
 within the reach of the common man. The stress fell on 
 the acquirement of that special personal skill, dexterity 
 and judgment that would constitute the workman a 
 master of his craft. Given a reasonable measure of per- 
 tinacity, the common man would be able to compass the 
 material equipment needful to the pursuit of his craft, and 
 so could make his way to a livelihood ; and the inviolable 
 right of ownership would then serve to secure him the 
 product of his own industry, in provision for his own 
 old-age and for a fair start in behalf of his children. At 
 least in the popular conception, and presumably in some 
 degree also in fact, the right of property so served as a 
 guarantee of personal liberty and a basis of equality. 
 And so its apologists still look on the institution. 
 
 In a very appreciable degree this complexion of things 
 and of popular conceptions has changed since then ; al- 
 though, as would be expected, the change in popular con- 
 ceptions has not kept pace with the changing circum- 
 stances. In all the characteristic and controlling lines of 
 industry the modern machine technology calls for a 
 very considerable material equipment; so large an equip- 
 ^ment, indeed, that this plant, as it is called, always rep- 
 resents a formidable amount of invested wealth ; and also 
 so large that it will, typically, employ a considerable num- 
 ber of workmen per unit of plant. On the transition to 
 the machine technology the plant became the unit of opera- 
 tion, instead of the workman, as had previously been the 
 case; and with the further development of this modern 
 technology, during the past hundred and fifty years or so, 
 the unit of operation and control has increasingly come to 
 be not the individual or isolated plant but rather an artic- 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 321 
 
 ulated group of such plants working together as a balanced 
 system and keeping pace in common, under a collective 
 business management ; and coincidently the individual 
 workman has been falling into the position of an auxil- 
 iary factor, nearly into that of an article of supply, to 
 be charged up as an item of operating expenses. Under 
 this later and current system, discretion and initiative* 
 vest not in the workman but in the owners of the plant, 
 if anywhere. So that at this point the right of owner- 
 ship has ceased to be, in fact, a guarantee of personal 
 liberty to the common man, and has come to be, or is 
 coming to be, a guarantee of dependence. All of which 
 engenders a feeling of unrest and insecurity, such as to 
 instill a doubt in the mind of the common man as to the 
 continued expediency of this arrangement and of the 
 prescriptive rights of property on which the arrangement 
 rests. 
 
 There is also an insidious suggestion, carrying a sinister 
 note of discredit, that comes in from ethnological science 
 at this point ; which is adapted still further to derange the 
 common man’s faith in this received institution of owner- 
 ship and its control of the material equipment of industry. 
 To students interested in human culture it is a matter of 
 course that this material equipment is a means of utilis- 
 ing the state of the industrial arts; that it is useful in 
 industry and profitable to its owners only because and 
 in so far as it is a creation of the current technological 
 knowledge and enables its owner to appropriate the 
 usufruct of the current industrial arts. It is likewise a 
 matter of course that this technological knowledge, that 
 so enables the material equipment to serve the purposes 
 of production and of private gain, is a free gift of the 
 community at large to the owners of industrial plant; 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 and, under latterday conditions, to them exclusively. 
 The state of the industrial arts is a joint heritage of the 
 community at large, but where, as in the modern coun- 
 tries, the work to be done by this technology requires 
 a large material equipment, the usufruct of this joint herit- 
 age passes, in effect, into the hands of the owners of 
 this large material equipment. 
 
 These owners have, ordinarily, contributed nothing to 
 the technology, the state of the industrial arts, from which 
 their control of the material equipment of industry enables 
 them to derive a gain. Indeed, no class or condition of 
 men in the modern community — with the possible excep- 
 tion of politicians and the clergy — can conceivably con- 
 tribute less to the community’s store of technological 
 knowledge than the large owners of invested wealth. By 
 one of those singular inversions due to production being 
 managed for private gain, it happens that these investors 
 are not only not given to the increase and diffusion of 
 technological knowledge, but they have a well-advised 
 interest in retarding or defeating improvements in the 
 industrial arts in detail. Improvements, innovations that 
 heighten productive efficiency in the general line of pro- 
 duction in which a given investment is placed, are com- 
 monly to be counted on to bring “obsolescence by super- 
 session’’ to the plant already engaged in that line; and 
 therefore to bring a decline in its income-yielding capacity, 
 and so in its capital or investment value. 
 
 Invested capital yields income because it enjoys the 
 usufruct of the community’s technological knowledge; it 
 has an effectual monopoly of this usufruct because this 
 machine technology requires large material appliances with 
 which to do its work ; the interest of the owners of estab- 
 lished industrial plant will not tolerate innovations de- 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 323 
 
 signed to supersede these appliances. The bearing of 
 ownership on industry and on the fortunes of the com- 
 mon man is accordingly, in the main, the bearing which 
 it has by virtue of its monopoly control of the industrial 
 arts, and its consequent control of the conditions of em- 
 ployment and of the supply of vendible products. It takes 
 effect chiefly by inhibition and privation ; stoppage of pro- 
 duction in case it brings no suitable profit to the investor, 
 refusal of employment and of a livelihood to the workmen 
 in case their product does not command a profitable price 
 in the market. 
 
 The expediency of so having the nation’s industry man- 
 aged on a footing of private ownership in the pursuit of 
 private gain, by persons who can show no equitable per- 
 sonal claim to even the most modest livelihood, and whose 
 habitual method of controlling industry is sabotage — re- 
 fusal to let production go on except it affords them an un- 
 earned income — the expediency of all this is coming to be 
 doubted by those who have to pay the cost of it. And 
 it does not go far to lessen their doubts to find that the 
 cost which they pay is commonly turned to no more urgent 
 or useful purpose than a conspicuously wasteful con- 
 sumption of superfluities by the captains of sabotage and 
 their domestic establishments. 
 
 This may not seem a veracious and adequate account of 
 these matters ; it may, in effect, fall short of the formula- 
 tion : The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth ; nor does the question here turn on its adequacy as 
 a statement of fact. Without prejudice to the question of 
 its veracity and adequacy, it is believed to be such an ac- 
 count of these matters as will increasingly come easy and 
 seem convincing to the common man who, in an ever in- 
 creasing degree, finds himself pinched with privation and 
 
324 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 insecurity by a run of facts Which will consistently bear 
 this construction, and who perforce sees these facts from 
 the prejudiced standpoint of a loser. To such a one, there 
 is reason to believe, the view so outlined will seem all the 
 more convincing the more attentively the pertinent facts 
 and their bearing on his fortunes are considered. How 
 far the contrary prejudice of those whose interest or 
 training inclines them the other way may lead them to a 
 different contruction of these pertinent facts, does not 
 concern the present argument; which has to do with this 
 run of facts only as they bear on the prospective frame of 
 mind of that unblest mass of the population who will 
 have opportunity to present their proposals when peace at 
 large shall have put national interests out of their pre- 
 ferential place in men’s regard. 
 
 At the risk of what may seem an excessively wide 
 digression, there is something further to be said of the 
 capitalistic sabotage spoken of above. The word has 
 by usage come to have an altogether ungraceful air of dis- 
 approval. Yet it signifies nothing more vicious than a 
 deliberate obstruction or retardation of industry, usually 
 by legitimate means, for the sake of some personal or 
 partisan advantage. This morally colorless meaning is all 
 that is intended in its use here. It is extremely common in 
 all industry that is designed to supply merchantable goods 
 for the market. It is, in fact, the most ordinary and 
 ubiquitous of all expedients in business enterprise that 
 has to do with supplying the market, being always present 
 in the businessman’s necessary calculations ; being not only 
 a usual and convenient recourse but quite indispensable as 
 an habitual measure of business sagacity. So that no per- 
 sonal blame can attach to its employment by any given bus- 
 inessman or business concern. It is only when measures 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 325 
 
 of this nature are resorted to by employees, to gain some 
 end of their own, that such conduct becomes (techni- 
 cally) reprehensible. 
 
 Any businesslike management of industry is carried on 
 for gain, which is to be got only on condition of meeting 
 the terms of the market. The price system under which 
 industrial business is carried on will not tolerate pro- 
 duction in excess of the market demand, or without due 
 regard to the expenses of production as determined by 
 the market on the side of the supplies required. Hence 
 any business concern must adjust its operations, by due 
 acceleration, retardation or stoppage, to the market con- 
 ditions, with a view to what the traffic will bear ; that is to 
 say, with a view to what will yield the largest obtainable 
 net gain. So long as the price system rules, that is to 
 say so long as industry is managed on investment for a 
 profit, there is no escaping this necessity of adjusting the 
 processes of industry to the requirements of a remuner- 
 ative price; and this adjustment can be taken care of only 
 by well-advised acceleration or curtailment of the proces- 
 ses of industry; which answers to the definition of sa- 
 botage. Wise business management, and more particularly 
 what is spoken of as safe and sane business management, 
 therefore, reduces itself in the main to a sagacious use of 
 sabotage ; that is to say a sagacious limitation of pro- 
 ductive processes to something less than the productive 
 capacity of the means in hand. 
 
 To anyone who is inclined to see these matters of usage 
 in the light of their history and to appraise them as phe- 
 nomena of habituation, adaptation and supersession in the 
 sequence of cultural proliferation, there should be no dif- 
 ficulty in appreciating that this institution of ownership 
 
326 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that makes the core of the modern institutional structure 
 is a precipitate of custom, like any other item of use and 
 wont ; and that, like any other article of institutional fur- 
 niture, it is subject to the contingencies of supersession 
 and obsolescence. If prevalent habits of thought, en- 
 forced by the prevalent exigencies of life and livelihood, 
 come to change in such a way as to make life under the 
 rule imposed by this institution seem irksome, or intoler- 
 able, to the mass of the population; and if at the same 
 time things turn in such a way as to leave no other and 
 more urgent interest or exigency to take precedence of this 
 one and hinder its being pushed to an issue ; then it should 
 reasonably follow that contention is due to arise between 
 the unblest mass on whose life it is a burden and the 
 classes who live by it. But it is, of course, impossible 
 to state beforehand what will be the precise line of 
 cleavage or what form the division between the two parties 
 in interest will take. Yet it is contained in the premises 
 that, barring unforeseen contingencies of a formidable 
 magnitude, such a cleavage is due to follow as a logical 
 sequel of an enduring peace at large. And it is also well 
 within the possibilities of the case that this issue may 
 work into an interruption or disruption of the peace be- 
 tween the nations. 
 
 In this connection it may be called to mind that the 
 existing governmental establishments in these pacific 
 nations are, in all cases, in the hands of the beneficiary, or 
 kept classes, — beneficiaries in the sense in which a dis- 
 tinction to that effect comes into the premises of the 
 case at this point. The responsible officials and their chief 
 administrative officers, — so much as may at all reasonably 
 be called the “Government” or the “Administration,” — are 
 quite invariably and characteristically drawn from tliese 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 327 
 
 beneficiary classes ; nobles, gentlemen, or business men, 
 which all comes to the same thing for the purpose in hand ; 
 the point of it all being that the common man does not 
 come within these precincts and does not share in these 
 counsels that assume to guide the destiny of the nations. 
 
 Of course, sporadically and ephemerally, a man out of 
 the impecunious and undistinguished mass may now and 
 again find his way within the gates ; and more frequently 
 will a professed “Man of the People” sit in council. But 
 that the rule holds unbroken and inviolable is sufficiently 
 evident in the fact that no community will let the emolu- 
 ments of office for any of its responsible officials, even for 
 those of a very scant responsibility, fall to the level of the 
 habitual livelihood of the undistinguished populace, or in- 
 deed to fall below what is esteemed to be a seemly in- 
 come for a gentleman. Should such an impecunious one 
 be thrown up into a place of discretion in the government, 
 he will forthwith cease to be a common man and will be 
 inducted into the rank of gentleman,— so far as that feat 
 can be achieved by taking thought or by assigning him an 
 income adequate to a reputably expensive manner of 
 life. So obvious is the antagonism between a vulgar 
 station in life and a position of official trust, that many a 
 “selfmade man” has advisedly taken recourse to govern- 
 mental position, often at some appreciable cost, from no 
 apparent motive other than its known efficacy as a Levit- 
 ical corrective for a humble origin. And in point of fact, 
 neither here nor there have the underbred majority hither- 
 to learned to trust one of their own kind with governmen- 
 tal discretion ; which has never yet, in the popular convic- 
 tion, ceased to be a perquisite of the gently-bred and the 
 well-to-do. 
 
328 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 Let it be presumed that this state of things will con- 
 tinue without substantial alteration, so far as regards the 
 complexion of the governmental establishments of these 
 pacific nations, and with such allowance for overstatement 
 in the above characterisation as may seem called for. 
 These governmental establishments are, by official position 
 and by the character of their personnel, committed more or 
 less consistently to the maintenance of the existing law 
 and order. And should no substantial change overtake 
 them as an effect of the war experience, the pacific league 
 under discussion would be entered into by and between 
 governments of this complexion. Should difficulties then 
 arise between those who own and those who do not, in 
 any one of these countries, it would become a nice ques- 
 tion whether the compact to maintain the peace and nat- 
 ional integrity of the several nations comprised in the 
 league should be held to cover the case of internal dissen- 
 sions and possible disorders partaking of the character of 
 revolt against the established authorities or against the 
 established provisions of law. A strike of the scope and 
 character of the one recently threatened, and narrowly 
 averted, on the American railroads, e. g., might easily 
 give rise to disturbances sufficiently formidable to raise a 
 question of the peace league’s jurisdiction; particularly if 
 such a disturbance should arise in a less orderly and less 
 isolated country than the American republic; so as un- 
 avoidably to carry the effects of the disturbance across 
 the national frontiers along the lines of industrial and 
 commercial intercourse and correlation. It is always con- 
 ceivable that a national government standing on a some- 
 what conservative maintenance of the received law and 
 order might feel itself bound by its conception of the 
 peace to make common cause with the keepers of estab- 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 329 
 
 lished rights in neighboring states, particularly if the 
 similar interests of their own nation were thought to be 
 placed in jeopardy by the course of events. 
 
 Antecedently it seems highly probable that the received 
 rights of ownership and disposal of property, particularly 
 of investment, will come up for advisement and re- 
 vision so soon as a settled state of peace is achieved. And 
 there should seem to be little doubt but this revision would 
 go toward, or at least aim at the curtailment or abro- 
 gation of these rights ; very much after the fashion in 
 which the analogous vested rights of feudalism and the 
 dynastic monarchy have been revised and in great part 
 curtailed or abrogated in the advanced democratic coun- 
 tries. Not much can confidently be said as to the details 
 of such a prospective revision of legal rights, but the an- 
 alogy of that procedure by which these other vested rights 
 have been reduced to a manageable disability, suggests that 
 the method in the present case also would be by way of 
 curtailment, abrogation and elimination. Here again, as 
 in analogous movements of disuse and disestablishment, 
 there would doubtless be much conservative apprehension 
 as to the procuring of a competent substitute for the sup- 
 planted methods of doing what is no longer desirable to 
 be done; but here as elsewhere, in a like conjuncture, the 
 practicable way out would presumably be found to lie 
 along the line of simple disuse and disallowance of class 
 prerogative. Taken at its face value, without unavoid- 
 able prejudice out of the past, this question of a substi- 
 tute to replace the current exploitation of the industrial 
 arts for private gain by capitalistic sabotage is not alto- 
 gether above a suspicion of drollery. 
 
 Yet it is not to be overlooked that private enterprise 
 on the basis of private ownership is the familiar and ac- 
 
330 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 cepted method of conducting industrial affairs, and that 
 it has the sanction of immemorial usage, in the eyes of 
 the common man, and that it is reenforced with the ur- 
 gency of life and death in the apprehension of the kept 
 classes. It should accordingly be a possible outcome of 
 such a peace as would put away international dissension, 
 that the division of classes would come on in a new form, 
 between those who stand on their ancient rights of ex- 
 ploitation and mastery, and those who are unwilling longer 
 to submit. And it is quite within the possibilities of the 
 case that the division of opinion on these matters might 
 presently shift back to the old familiar ground of inter- 
 national hostilities ; undertaken partly to put down civil 
 disturbances in given countries, partly by the more ar- 
 chaic, or conservative, peoples to safeguard the institutions 
 of the received law and order against inroads from the 
 side of the iconoclastic ones. 
 
 In the apprehension of those who are speaking for 
 peace between the nations and planning for its realisation, 
 the outlook is that of a return to, or a continuance of, 
 the state of things before the great war came on, with 
 peace and national security added, or with the danger of 
 war eliminated. Nothing appreciable in the way of con- 
 sequent innovation, certainly nothing of a serious char- 
 acter, is contemplated as being among the necessary con- 
 sequences of such a move into peace and security. Na- 
 tional integrity and autonomy are to be preserv'ed on the 
 received lines, and international division and discrimina- 
 tion is to be managed as before, and with the accustomed 
 incidents of punctilio and pecuniary equilibration. Inter- 
 nationally speaking, there is to dawn an era of diplomacy 
 without after-thought, whatever that might conceivably 
 mean. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 331 
 
 There is much in the present situation that speaks for 
 such an arrangement, particularly as an initial phase of 
 the perpetual peace that is aimed at, whatever excursive 
 variations might befall presently, in the course of years. 
 The war experience in the belligerent countries and the 
 alarm that has disturbed the neutral nations have visibly 
 raised the pitch of patriotic solidarity in all these coun- 
 tries ; and patriotism greatly favors the conservation of 
 established use and wont; more particularly is it favor- 
 able to the established powers and policies of the national 
 government. The patriotic spirit is not a spirit of inno- 
 vation. The chances of survival, and indeed of stabilisa- 
 tion, for the accepted use and wont and for the tradi- 
 tional distinctions of class and prescriptive rights, should 
 therefore seem favorable, at any rate in the first instance. 
 
 Presuming, therefore, as the spokesmen of such a peace- 
 compact are singularly ready to presume, that the era of 
 peace and good-will which they have in view is to be of 
 a piece with the most tranquil decades of the recent past, 
 only more of the same kind, it becomes a question of im- 
 mediate interest to the common man, as well as to all 
 students of human culture, how the common man is to 
 fare under this regime of law and order, — the mass of 
 the population whose place it is to do what is to be done, 
 and thereby to carry forward the civilisation of these pa- 
 cific nations. It may not be out of place to recall, by 
 way of parenthesis, that it is here taken for granted as 
 a matter of course that all governmental establishments 
 are necessarily conservative in all their dealings with this 
 heritage of culture, except so far as they may be reac- 
 tionary. Their office is the stabilisation of archaic insti- 
 tutions, the measure of archaism varying from one to 
 another. , 
 
332 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 With due stabilisation and with a sagacious adminis- 
 tration of the established scheme of law and order, the 
 common man should find himself working under condi- 
 tions and to results of the familiar kind; but with the 
 difference that, while legal usage and legal precedent re- 
 main unchanged, the state of the industrial arts can con- 
 fidently be expected to continue its advance in the same 
 general direction as before, while the population increases 
 after the familiar fashion, and the investing business com- 
 munity pursues its accustomed quest of competitive gain 
 and competitive spending in the familiar spirit and with 
 cumulatively augmented means. Stabilisation of the re- 
 ceived law and order will not touch these matters ; and 
 for the present it is assumed that these matters will not 
 derange the received law and order. The assumption may 
 seem a violent one to the students of human culture, but 
 it is a simple matter of course to the statesmen. 
 
 To this piping time of peace the nearest analogues in 
 history would seem to be the Roman peace, say, of the 
 days of the Antonines, and passably the British peace of 
 the Victorian era. Changes in the scheme of law and 
 order supervened in both of these instances, but the 
 changes were, after all, neither unconscionably large nor 
 were they of a subversive nature. The scheme of law 
 and order, indeed, appears in neither instance to have 
 changed so far as the altered circumstances would seem 
 to have called for. To the common man the Roman peace 
 appears to have been a peace by submission, not widely 
 different from what the case of China has latterly brought 
 to the appreciation of students. The Victorian peace, 
 which can be appreciated more in detail, was of a more 
 genial character, as regards the fortunes of the common 
 man. It started from a reasonably low level of hardship 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 333 
 
 and de facto iniquity, and was occupied with many prudent 
 endeavours to improve the lot of the unblest majority; 
 but it is to be admitted that these prudent endeavours 
 never caught up with the march of circumstances. Not 
 that these prudent measures of amelioration were nuga- 
 tory, but it is clear that they were not an altogether ef- 
 fectual corrective of the changes going on; they were, 
 in effect, systematically so far in arrears as always to 
 leave an uncovered margin of discontent with current 
 conditions. It is a fact of history that very appreciable 
 sections of the populace were approaching an attitude of 
 revolt against what they considered to be intolerable 
 conditions when that era closed. Much of what kept them 
 within bounds, that is to say within legal bounds, was 
 their continued loyalty to the nation ; which was greatly, 
 and for the purpose needfully, reenforced by a lively fear 
 of warlike aggression from without. Now, under the 
 projected pax orbis terrarum all fear of invasion, it is 
 hopefully believed, will be removed ; and with the dis- 
 appearance of this fear should also disappear the drag of 
 national loyalty on the counsels of the underbred. 
 
 If this British peace of the nineteenth century is to be 
 taken as a significant indication of what may be looked 
 for under a regime of peace at large, with due allowance 
 for what is obviously necessary to be allowed for, then 
 what is held in promise would appear to be an era of un- 
 exampled commercial prosperity, of investment and busi- 
 ness enterprise on a scale hitherto not experienced. These 
 developments will bring their necessary consequences af- 
 fecting the life of the community, and some of the conse- 
 quences it should be possible to foresee. The circum- 
 stances conditioning this prospective era of peace and 
 prosperity will necessarily differ from the corresponding 
 
334 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 circumstances that conditioned the Victorian peace, and 
 many of these points of difference it is also possible to 
 forecast in outline with a fair degree of confidence. It is 
 in the main these economic factors going to condition the 
 civilisation of the promised future that will have to be 
 depended on to give the cue to any student interested in 
 the prospective unfolding of events. 
 
 The scheme of law and order governing all modern 
 nations, both in the conduct of their domestic affairs and 
 in their national policies, is in its controlling elements the 
 scheme worked out through British (and French) expe- 
 rience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised and 
 further accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other 
 peoples, particularly the Dutch, have of course had their 
 part in the derivation and development of this modern 
 scheme of institutional principles, but it has after all been 
 a minor part ; so that the scheme at large would not differ 
 very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, from 
 what it is, even if the contribution of these others had net 
 been had. The backward nations, as e. g., Germany, 
 Russia, Spain, etc., have of course contributed substan- 
 tially nothing but retardation and maladjustment to this 
 modern scheme of civil life; w'hatever may be due to 
 ^students resident in those countries, in the way of schol- 
 arly formulation. This nineteenth century scheme it is 
 proposed to carry over into the new era; and the re- 
 sponsible spokesmen of the projected new order appear to 
 contemplate no provision touching this scheme of law and 
 order, beyond the keeping of it intact in aU suDstantial 
 respects. 
 
 When and in so far as the projected peace at large takes 
 effect, international interests will necessarily fall some- 
 what into the background, as being no longer a matter of 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 335 
 
 precarious equilibration, with heavy penalties in the bal- 
 ance ; and diplomacy will consequently become even more 
 of a make-believe than today — something after the fashion 
 of a game of bluff played with irredeemable “chips.” 
 Commercial, that is to say business, enterprise will conse- 
 quently come in for a more undivided attention and be car- 
 ried on under conditions of greater security and of more 
 comprehensive trade relations. The population of the 
 pacified world may be expected to go on increasing some- 
 what as in the recent past ; in which connection it is to be 
 remarked that not more than one-half, presumably some- 
 thing less than one-half, of the available agricultural re- 
 sources have been turned to account for the civilised world 
 hitherto. The state of the industrial arts, including means 
 of transport and communication, may be expected to de- 
 velop farther in the same general direction as before, as- 
 suming always that peace conditions continue to hold. 
 Popular intelligence, as it is called,— more properly pop- 
 ular education, — may be expected to suffer a further ad- 
 vance ; necessarily so, since it is a necessary condition of 
 any effectual advance in the industrial arts, — every appre- 
 ciable technological advance presumes, as a requisite to its 
 working-out in industry, an augmented state of informa- 
 tion and of logical facility in the workmen under whose 
 hands it is to take effect. 
 
 Of the prescriptive rights carried over into the new era,, 
 under the received law and order, the rights of owner- 
 ship alone may be expected to have any material signifi- 
 cance for the routine of workday life; the other personal 
 fights that once seemed urgent will for everyday pur- 
 poses have passed into a state of half-forgotten matter-of- 
 course. As now, but in an accentuated degree, the rights 
 of ownership will, in effect, coincide and coalesce with the 
 
336 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 rights of investment and business management. The mar- 
 ket — that is to say the rule of the price-system in all mat- 
 ters of production and livelihood — may be expected tc 
 gain in volume and inclusiveness ; so that virtually all 
 matters of industry and livelihood will turn on questions 
 of market price, even beyond the degree in which that 
 proposition holds today. The progressive extension and 
 consolidation of investments, corporate solidarity, and 
 business management may be expected to go forward on 
 the accustomed lines, as illustrated by the course of things 
 during the past few decades. Market conditions should 
 accordingly, in a progressively increased degree, fall under 
 the legitimate discretionary control of businessmen, or 
 syndicates of businessmen, who have the disposal of large 
 blocks of invested wealth, — “big business,” as it is called, 
 should reasonably be expected to grow bigger and to exer- 
 cise an increasingly more unhampered control of market 
 conditions, including the money market and the labor 
 market. 
 
 With such improvements in the industrial arts as may 
 fairly be expected to come forward, and with the possible 
 enhancement of industrial efficiency which should follow 
 from a larger scale of organisation, a wider reach of trans- 
 port and communication, and an increased population, — 
 with these increasing advantages on the side of productive 
 industry, the per-capita product as well as the total prod- 
 duct should be increased in a notable degree, and the 
 conditions of life should possibly become notably easier 
 and more attractive, or at least more conducive to effi- 
 ciency and personal comfort, for all concerned. Such 
 would be the first and unguarded inference to be drawn 
 from the premises of the case as they offer themselves in 
 the large ; and something of that kind is apparently what 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 337 
 
 floats before the prophetic vision of the advocates of a 
 league of nations for the maintenance of peace at large. 
 These premises, and the inferences so drawn from them., 
 may be further fortified and amplified in the same sense 
 on considering that certain very material economies also 
 become practicable, and should take effect “in the absence 
 of disturbing causes,” on the establishment of such a peace 
 at large. It will of course occur to all thoughtful persons 
 that armaments must be reduced, perhaps to a minimum, 
 and that the cost of these things, in point of expenditures 
 as well as of man-power spent in the service, would con- 
 sequently fall off in a corresponding measure. So also, 
 as slight further reflection will show, would the cost of 
 the civil service presumably fall off very appreciably ; 
 more particularly the cost of this service per unit of serv- 
 ice rendered. Some such climax of felicities might be 
 looked for by hopeful persons, in the absence of disturb- 
 ing causes. 
 
 Under the new dispensation the standard of living, that 
 is to say the standard of expenditure, would reasonably 
 be expected to advance in a very appreciable degree, at 
 least among the wealthy and well-to-do ; and by pressure 
 of imitative necessity a like effect would doubtless also 
 be had among the undistinguished mass. It is not a ques- 
 tion of the standard of living considered as a matter of 
 the subsistence minimum, or even a standard of habitually 
 prevalent creature comfort, particularly not among the 
 wealthy and well-to-do. These latter classes have long 
 since left all question of material comfort behind in their 
 accepted standards of living and in the continued advance 
 of these standards. For these classes who are often 
 spoken of euphemistically as being “in easy circum- 
 stances,” it is altogether a question of a standard of re- 
 22 
 
338 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 putable expenditure, to be observed on pain of lost self- 
 respect and of lost reputation at large. As has been re- 
 marked in an earlier passage, wants of this kind are in- 
 definitely extensible. So that some doubt may well be 
 , entertained as to whether the higher productive efficiency 
 spoken of will necessarily make the way of life easier, 
 in view of this need of a higher standard of expenditure, 
 even when due account is taken of the many economies 
 which the new dispensation is expected to make prac- 
 ticable. 
 
 One of the effects to be looked for would apparentlv 
 be an increased pressure on the part of aspiring men ro 
 get into some line of business enterprise ; since it is only 
 in business, as contrasted with the industrial occupations, 
 that anyone can hope to find the relatively large income 
 required for such an expensive manner of life as will 
 bring any degree of content to aspirants for pecuniary 
 good repute. So it should follow that the number of 
 businessmen and business concerns would increase up to 
 the limit of what the traffic could support, and that the 
 competition between these rival, and in a sense over- 
 numerous, concerns would push the costs of competition 
 to the like limit. In this respect the situation would be 
 of much the same character as what it now is, with the 
 difference that the limit of competitive expenditures 
 would be rather higher than at present, to answer to the 
 greater available m.argin of product that could be devoted 
 to this use ; and that the competing concerns would be 
 somewhat more numerous, or at least that the aggregate 
 expenditure on competitive enterprise would be some- 
 what larger; as, e. g., costs of advertising, salesmanship, 
 strategic litigation, procuration of legislative and munici- 
 pal grants and connivance, and the like. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 339 
 
 It is always conceivable, though it may scarcely seem 
 probable, that these incidents of increased pressure of 
 competition in business traffic might eventually take up 
 all the slack, and leave no net margin of product over 
 what is available under the less favorable conditions of 
 industry that prevail today; more particularly when this 
 increased competition for business gains is backed by an 
 increased pressure of competitive spending for purposes 
 of a reputable appearance. All this applies in retail trade 
 and in such lines of industry and public service as par- 
 takes of the nature of retail trade, in the respect that 
 salesmanship and the costs of salesmanship enter into 
 their case in an appreciable measure ; this is an extensive 
 field, it is true, and incontinently growing more extensive 
 with the later changes in the customary methods of mar- 
 keting products; but it is by no means anything like the 
 whole domain of industrial business, and by no means a 
 field in which business is carried on without interference 
 of a higher control from outside its own immediate lim- 
 its. 
 
 All this generously large and highly expensive and 
 profitable field of trade and of trade-like industry, in 
 which the businessmen in charge deal somewhat directly 
 with a large body of customers, is always subject to 
 limitations imposed by the condition of the market; and 
 the condition of the market is in part not under the con- 
 trol of these businessmen, but is also in part controlled 
 by large concerns in the background; which in their 
 turn are after all also not precisely free agents; in fact 
 not much more so than their cousins in the retail trade, be- 
 ing confined in all their motions by the constraint of the 
 price-system that dominates the whole and gathers them 
 all in its impersonal and inexorable net 
 
340 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 There is a colloquial saying among businessmen, that 
 they are not doing business for their health ; which being 
 interpreted means that they are doing business for a 
 price. It is out of a discrepancy in price, between pur- 
 chase and sale, or between transactions which come to 
 the same result as purchase and sale, that the gains of 
 business are drawn ; and it is in terms of price that 
 these gains are rated, amassed and funded. It is neces- 
 sary, for a business concern to achieve a favorable bal- 
 ance in terms of price; and the larger the balance in 
 terms of price the more successful the enterprise. Such 
 a balance can not be achieved except by due regard to 
 the conditions of the market, to the effect that dealings 
 must not go on beyond what will yield a favorable bal- 
 ance in terms of price between income and outgo. As has 
 already been remarked above, the prescriptive and indis- 
 pensable recourse in all this conduct of business is sabo- 
 tage, limitation of supply to bring a remunerative price 
 result. 
 
 The new dispensation offers two new factors bearing 
 on this businesslike need of a sagacious sabotage, or 
 rather it brings a change of coefficients in two factors 
 already familiar in business management : a greater need, 
 for gainful business, of resorting to such limitation of 
 traffic; and a greater facility of ways and means for 
 enforcing the needed restriction. So, it is confidently to 
 be expected that in the prospective piping time of peace 
 the advance in the industrial arts will continue at an 
 accelerated rate; which may confidently be expected to 
 affect the practicable increased production of merchant- 
 able goods ; from which it follows that it will act to de- 
 press the prices of these goods ; from which it follows 
 that if a profitable business is to be done in the conduct 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 341 
 
 of productive industry a greater degree of continence than 
 before will have to be exercised in order not to let prices 
 fall to an unprofitable figure ; that is to say, the per- 
 missible output must be held short of the productive 
 capacity of such industry by a wider margin than before. 
 On the other hand, it is well known out of the experience 
 of the past few decades that a larger coalition of in- 
 vested capital, controlling a larger proportion of the out- 
 put, can more effectually limit the supply to a salutary 
 maximum, such as will afford reasonable profits. And 
 with the new dispensation affording a freer scope for 
 business enterprise on conditions of greater security, 
 larger coalitions than before are due to come into bearing. 
 So that the means will be at hand competently to meet 
 this more urgent need of a stricter limitation of the out- 
 put, in spite of any increased productive capacity con- 
 ferred on the industrial community by any conceivable 
 advance in the industrial arts. The outcome to be looked 
 for should apparently be such an effectual recourse to 
 capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any added advan- 
 tage that might otherwise accrue to the community from 
 its continued improvements in technology. 
 
 In spite of this singularly untoward conjuncture of cir- 
 cum'stances to be looked for, there need be no serious ap- 
 prehension that capitalistic sabotage, with a view to main- 
 taining prices and the rate of profits, will go all the way, 
 to the result indicated, at least not on the grounds so 
 indicated alone. There is in the modern development of 
 technology, and confidently to be counted on, a contin- 
 ued flow of new contrivances and expedients designed 
 to supersede the old ; and these are in fact successful, 
 in greater or less measure, in finding their way into prof- 
 itable use, on such terms as to displace older appliances. 
 
342 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 underbid them in the market, and render them obsolete 
 or subject to recapitalisation on a lowered earning-ca- 
 pacity. So far as this unremitting flow of innovations has 
 its effect, that is to say so far as it can not be hindered 
 from having an eifect, it acts to lower the effectual cost 
 of products to the consumer. This effect is but a partial 
 and somewhat uncertain one, but it is always to be counted 
 in as a persistent factor, of uncertain magnitude, that 
 will alfect the results in the long run. 
 
 As has just been spoken of above, large coalitions of 
 invested wealth are more competent to maintain, or if 
 need be to advance, prices than smaller coalitions acting 
 in severalty, or even when acting in collusion. This state 
 of the case has been well illustrated by the very successful 
 conduct of such large business organisations during the 
 past few decades; successful, that is, in earning large 
 returns on the investments engaged. Under the new dis- 
 pensation, as has already been remarked, coalitions should 
 reasonably be expected to grow to a larger size and 
 achieve a greater efiflciency for the same purpose. 
 
 The large gains of the large corporate coalitions are 
 commonly ascribed by their promoters, and by sjTnpa- 
 thetic theoreticians of the ancient line, to economies of 
 production made practicable by a larger scale of produc- 
 tion ; an explanation which is disingenuous only so far as 
 it needs be. What is more visibly true on looking into 
 the workings of these coalitions in detail is that they are 
 enabled to maintain prices at a profitable, indeed at a 
 strikingly profitable, level by such a control of the output 
 as would be called sabotage if it were put in practice by 
 interested workmen with a view to maintain wages. The 
 effects of this sagacious sabotage become visible in the 
 large earnings of these investments and the large gains 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 343 
 
 which, now and again, accrue to their managers. Large 
 fortunes commonly are of this derivation. 
 
 In cases where no recapitalisation has been effected for 
 a considerable series of years the yearly earnings of such 
 businesslike coalitions have been known to approach fifty 
 percent on the capitalised value. Commonly, however, 
 when earnings rise to a striking figure, the business will 
 be recapitalised on the basis of its earning-capacity, by 
 issue of a stock dividend, by reincorporation in a new 
 combination with an increased capitalisation, and the like. 
 Such augmentation of capital not unusually has been 
 spoken of by theoretical writers and publicists as an in- 
 crease of the community’s wealth, due to savings ; an 
 analysis of any given case is likely to show that its in- 
 creased capital value represents an increasingly profitable 
 procedure for securing a high price above cost, by stop- 
 ping the available output short of the productive capacity 
 of the industries involved. Loosely speaking, and within 
 the limits of what the traffic will bear, the gains in such a 
 case are proportioned to the deficiency by which the pro- 
 duction or supply under control falls short of productive 
 capacity. So that the capitalisation in the case comes to 
 bear a rough proportion to the material loss which this 
 organisation of sabotage is enabled to inflict on the com- 
 munity at large ; and instead of its being a capitalisation 
 of serviceable means of production it may, now and 
 again, come to little else than a capitalisation of chartered 
 sabotage. 
 
 Under the new dispensation of peace and security at 
 large this manner of capitalisation and business enterprise 
 might reasonably be expected to gain something in scope 
 and security of operation. Indeed, there are few things 
 within the range of human interest on which an opinion 
 
344 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 may more confidently be formed beforehand. If the 
 rights of property, in their extent and amplitude, are 
 maintained intact as they are before the law today, the 
 hold which business enterprise on the large scale now has 
 on the affairs and fortunes of the community at large is 
 bound to grow firmer and to be used more unreservedly 
 for private advantage under the new conditions contem- 
 plated. 
 
 The logical result should be an accelerated rate of ac- 
 cumulation of the country’s wealth in the hands of .a 
 relatively very small class of wealthy owners, with a rela- 
 tively inconsiderable semi-dependent middle class of the 
 well-to-do, and with the mass of the population even more 
 nearly destitute than they are today. At the same time 
 it is scarcely to be avoided that this wholly dependent and 
 impecunious mass of the population must be given an 
 appreciably better education than they have today. The 
 argument will return to the difficulties that are liable to 
 arise out of this conjuncture of facts, in the way of dis- 
 content and possible disturbance. 
 
 Meantime, looking to the promise of the pacific future 
 in the light of the pacific past, certain further conse- 
 quences, particularly consequences of the economic order, 
 that may reasonably be expected to follow will also merit 
 attention. The experience of the Victorian peace is 
 almost as pointed in its suggestion on this head as if it had 
 been an experiment made ad hoc; but with the reserva- 
 tion that the scale of economic life, after all, was small 
 in the Victorian era, and its pace was slack, compared 
 with what the twentieth century should have to offer 
 under suitable conditions of peace and pecuniary secu- 
 rity. In the light of this most instructive modern instance. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 345 
 
 there should appear to be in prospect a growth of well- 
 bred families resting on invested wealth and so living 
 on unearned incomes ; larger incomes and consequently a 
 more imposingly well-bred body of gentlefolk, sustained 
 and vouched for by a more munificent expenditure on su- 
 perfluities, than the modern world has witnessed hith- 
 erto. Doubtless the resulting growth of gentlemen and 
 gentlewomen would be as perfect after their kind as 
 these unexampled opportunities of gentle breeding might 
 be expected to engender; so that even their British pre- 
 cursors on the trail of respectability would fall somewhat 
 into insignificance by comparison, whether in respect of 
 gentlemanly qualities or in point of cost per unit. 
 
 The moral, and even more particularly the aesthetic, 
 value of such a line of gentlefolk, and of the culture 
 which they may be expected to place on view, — this cul- 
 tural side of the case, of course, is what one would prefer 
 to dwell on, and on the spiritual gains that might be 
 expected to accrue to humanity at large from the steady 
 contemplation of this meritorious respectability so dis- 
 played at such a cost. 
 
 But the prosaic necessity of the argument turns back to 
 the economic and civil bearing of this prospective devel- 
 opment, this virtual bifurcation of the pacified nation into 
 a small number of gentlemen who own the community’s 
 wealth and consume its net product in the pursuit of 
 gentility, on the one hand, and an unblest mass of the 
 populace who do the community’s work on a meager 
 livelihood tapering down toward the subsistence mini- 
 mum, on the other hand. Evidently, this prospective pos- 
 ture of affairs may seem “fraught with danger to the com- 
 mon weal,” as a public spirited citizen might phrase it. 
 Or, as it would be expressed in less eloquent words, it 
 
346 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 appears to comprise elements that should make for a 
 change. At the same time it should be recalled, and the 
 statement will command assent on slight reflection, that 
 there is no avoiding substantially such a posture of af- 
 fairs under the promised regime of peace and security, 
 provided only that the price-system stands over intact, 
 and the current rights of property continue to be held in- 
 violate. If the known principles of competitive gain and 
 competitive spending should need enforcement to that 
 effect by an illustrative instance, the familiar history 
 of the Victorian peace is sufficient to quiet all doubts. 
 
 Of course, the resulting articulation of classes in the 
 community will not be expected to fall into such simple 
 lines of sheer contrast as this scheme would indicate. 
 The class of gentlefolk, the legally constituted wasters, as 
 they would be rated from the economic point of view, 
 can not be expected personally to take care of so large 
 a consumption of superfluities as this posture of affairs 
 requires at their hands. They would, as the Victorian 
 peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance of a trained 
 corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first 
 and most immediate of whom would be those whom the 
 genial phrasing of Adam Smith designates “menial serv- 
 ants.” Beyond these would come the purveyors of super- 
 fluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed redun- 
 dant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree, — de- 
 pendent in fact but with an illusion of semi-dependence ; 
 and farther out again the legal and other professional 
 classes of the order of stewards, whose duty it will be 
 to administer the sources of income and receive, appor- 
 tion and disburse the revenues so devoted to a traceless 
 extinguishment. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 347 
 
 There would, in other words, be something of a "sub- 
 stantial middle class,” dependent on the wealthy and on 
 their expenditure of wealth, but presumably imbued with 
 the Victorian middle-class illusion that they are of some 
 account in their own right. Under the due legal forms 
 and sanctions this, somewhat voluminous, middle-class 
 population would engage in the traffic which is their per- 
 quisite, and would continue to believe, in some passable 
 fashion, that they touch the substance of things at some- 
 thing nearer than the second remove. They would in 
 great part appear to be people of “independent means,” 
 and more particularly would they continue in the hope of 
 so appearing and of some time making good the appear- 
 ance. Hence their fancied, and therefore their senti- 
 mental, interest would fall out on the side of the estab- 
 lished law and order; and they would accordingly be an 
 element of stability in the commonwealth, and would 
 throw in their weight, and their voice, to safeguard that 
 private property and that fabric of prices and credit 
 through which the “income stream” flows to the owners 
 of preponderant invested wealth. 
 
 Judged on the state of the situation as it runs in our 
 time, and allowing for the heightened efficiency of large- 
 scale investment and consolidated management under the 
 prospective conditions of added pecuniary security, it is 
 to be expected that the middle-class population with “in- 
 dependent means” should come in for a somewhat meager 
 livelihood, provided that they work faithfully at their 
 business of managing pecuniary traffic to the advantage of 
 their pecuniary betters, — ^meager, that is to say, when al- 
 lowance is made for the conventionally large expenditure 
 on reputable appearances which is necessarily to be in- 
 cluded in their standard of living. It lies in the nature 
 
348 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of this system of large-scale investment and enterprise 
 that the (pecuniarily) minor agencies engaged on a foot- 
 ing of ostensible independence will come in for only such 
 a share in the aggregate gains of the community as it is 
 .expedient for the greater business interests to allow them 
 |as an incentive to go on with their work as purveyors of 
 traffic to these greater business interests. 
 
 The current, and still more this prospective, case of 
 the quasi-self-directing middle class may fairly be illus- 
 trated by the case of the American farmers, of the past 
 and present. The American farmer rejoices to be called 
 “The Independent Farmer.” He once was independent, 
 in a meager and toil-worn fashion, in the days before the 
 price-system had brought him and all his woiks into the 
 compass of the market; but that was some time ago. 
 He now works for the market, ordinarily at something 
 like what is called a “living wage,” provided he has “in- 
 dependent means” enough to enable him by steady appli- 
 cation to earn a living wage; and of course, the market 
 being controlled by the paramount investment interests 
 in the background, his work, in effect, inures to their bene- 
 fit ; except so much as it may seem necessary to allow him 
 as incentive to go on. Also of course, these paramount 
 investment interests are in turn controlled in all their 
 manoeuvres by the impersonal exigencies of the price-sys- 
 t..m, which permits no vagaries in violation of the rule 
 that all traffic must show a balance of profit in terms ot 
 price. 
 
 The Independent Farmer still continues to believe that 
 in some occult sense he still is independent in what he will 
 do and what not ; or perhaps rather that he can by shrewd 
 management retain or regain a tolerable measure of such 
 independence, after the fashion of what is held to hav# 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 349 
 
 been the posture of affairs in the days before the coming 
 of corporation finance; or at least he believes that he 
 ought to have, or to regain or reclaim, some appreciable 
 measure of such independence ; which ought then, by help 
 of the “independent means” which he still treasures, to 
 procure him an honest and assured livelihood in return 
 for an honest year’s work. Latterly he, that is the com- 
 mon run of the farmers, has been taking note of the fact 
 that he is, as he apprehends it, at a disadvantage in the 
 market ; and he is now taking recourse to concerted action 
 for the purpose of what might be called “rigging the mar- 
 ket” to his own advantage. In this he overlooks the im- 
 pregnable position which the party of the second part, 
 the great investment interests, occupy ; in fact, he is count- 
 ing without his host. Hitherto he has not been con- 
 vinced of his own helplessness. And with a fine fancy 
 he still imagines that his own interest is on the side of the 
 propertied and privileged classes ; so that the farmer con- 
 stituency is the chief pillar of conservative law and order, 
 particularly in all that touches the inviolable rights of 
 property and at every juncture where a division comes 
 on between those who live by investment and those who 
 live by work. In pecuniary effect, the ordinary American 
 farmer, who legally owns a moderate farm of the com- 
 mon sort, belongs among those who work for a liveli- 
 hood ; such a livelihood as the investment interests find it 
 worth while to allow him under the rule of what the traf- 
 fic will bear ; but in point of sentiment and class conscious- 
 ness he clings to a belated stand on the side of those who 
 draw a profit from his work. 
 
 So it is also with the menial servants and the middle- 
 class people of “independent means,” who are, however, 
 in a position to see more clearly their dependence on the 
 
350 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 owners of predominant wealth. And such, with a further 
 accentuation of the anomaly, may reasonably be expected 
 to be the further run of these relations under the promised 
 regime of peace and security. The class of well-kept 
 gentlefolk will scarcely be called on to stand alone, in 
 case of a division between those who live by investment 
 and those who live by work ; inasmuch as, for the cal- 
 culable future, it should seem a reasonable expectation 
 that this very considerable fringe of dependents and 
 pseudo-independents will abide by their time-tried prin- 
 ciples of right and honest living, through good days and 
 evil, and cast in their lot unreservedly with that reputable 
 body to whom the control of trade and industry by in- 
 vestment assigns the usufruct of the community’s pro- 
 ductive powers. 
 
 Something has already been said of the prospective 
 breeding of pedigreed gentlefolk under the projected 
 regime of peace. Pedigree, for the purpose in hand, is a 
 pecuniary attribute and is, of course, a product of funded 
 wealth, more or less ancient. Virtually ancient pedigree 
 can be procured by well-advised expenditure on the con- 
 spicuous amenities ; that is to say pedigree effectually 
 competent as a background of current gentility. Gentle- 
 folk of such syncopated pedigree may have to walk cir- 
 cumspectly, of course; but their being in this manner 
 put on their good behavior should tend to heighten their 
 effectual serviceability as gentlefolk, by inducing a single- 
 mindedness of gentility beyond what can fairly be ex- 
 pected of those who are already secure in their tenure. 
 
 Except conventionally, there is no hereditary differ- 
 ence between the standard gentlefolk and, say, their 
 “menial servants,” or the general population of the farms 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 351 
 
 and the industrial towns. This is a well-established com- 
 monplace among ethnological students ; which has, of 
 course, nothing to say with respect to the conventionally 
 distinct lines of descent of the “Best Families.” These 
 Best Families are nowise distinguishable from the com- 
 mon run in point of hereditary traits ; the dilference that 
 makes the gentleman and the gentlewoman being wholly 
 a matter of habituation during the individual’s lifetime. 
 It is something of a distasteful necessity to call attention 
 to this total absence of native difference between the well- 
 born and the common, but it is a necessity of the argu- 
 ment in hand, and the recalling of it may, therefore, be 
 overlooked for once in a way. There is no harm and no 
 annoyance intended. The point of it all is that, on the 
 premises which this state of the case affords, the body 
 of gentlefolk created by such an accumulation of invested 
 wealth will have no less of an effectual cultural value 
 than they would have had if their virtually ancient pedi- 
 gree had been actual. 
 
 At this point, again, the experience of the Victorian 
 peace and the functioning of its gentlefolk come in to 
 indicate what may fairly be hoped for in this way under 
 this prospective regime of peace at large. But with the 
 difference that the scale of things is to be larger, the 
 pace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this pros- 
 pective leisure class somewhat wider. The work of this 
 leisure class — and there is neither paradox nor inconsis- 
 tency in the phrase — should be patterned on the lines 
 worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but 
 with some appreciable accentuation in the direction of 
 what chiefly characterised the leisure class of that era of 
 tranquility. The characteristic feature to which at- 
 tention naturally turns at this suggestion is the tranquility 
 
352 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 that has marked that body of gentlefolk and their code 
 of clean and honest living. Another word than “tranquil- 
 ity” might be hit upon to designate this characteristic 
 animus, but any other word that should at all adequately 
 serve the turn would carry a less felicitous suggestion of 
 those upper-class virtues that have constituted the sub- 
 stantial worth of the Victorian gentleman. The conscious 
 worth of these gentlefolk has been a beautifully com- 
 plete achievement. It has been an achievement of “faith 
 without works,” of course ; but, needless to say, that is 
 as it should be, also of course. The place of gentlefolk 
 in the economy of Nature is tracelessly to consume the 
 community’s net product, and in doing so to set a standard 
 of decent expenditure for the others emulatively to work 
 up to as near as may be. It is scarcely conceivable that 
 this could have been done in a more unobtrustively ef- 
 ficient manner, or with a more austerely virtuous convic- 
 tion of well-doing, than by the gentlefolk bred of the 
 Victorian peace. So also, in turn, it is not to be believed 
 that the prospective breed of gentlefolk derivable from 
 the net product of the pacific nations under the promised 
 regime of peace at large will prove in any degree less 
 effective for the like ends. More will be required of them 
 in the way of a traceless consumption of superfluities 
 and an unexampled expensive standard of living. But 
 this situation that so faces them may be construed as 
 a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficult task. 
 
 A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value 
 of a leisure class in modern life would scarcely be in place 
 here ; and it has also been set out in some detail else- 
 where.^ For the purpose in hand it may be sufficient to 
 
 iCf. The Theory of the Leisure Class, especially ck v.— ix. 
 and xiv. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 353 
 
 recall that the canons of taste and the standards of valu- 
 ation ^vorked out and inculcated by leisure-class life have 
 in all ages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary 
 waste and personal futility. In its economic bearing, 
 and particularly in its immediate bearing on the material 
 well-being of the community at large, the leadership of 
 the leisure class can. scarcely be called by a less deroga- 
 tory epithet than “untoward.” But that is not the whole 
 of the case, and the other side should be heard. The 
 leisure-class life of tranquility, running detached as it does 
 above the turmoil out of which the material of their 
 sustenance is derived, enables a growth of all those virtues 
 that mark, or make, the gentleman ; and that affect the 
 life of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, 
 by imitation ; leading to a standardisation of the everyday 
 proprieties on a, presumably, higher level of urbanity and 
 integrity than might be expected to result in the absence 
 of this prescriptive model. 
 
 Integer vitae scelerisque purus, the gentleman of as- 
 sured station turns a placid countenance to all those petty 
 vexations of breadwinning that touch him not. Serenely 
 and with an impassive fortitude he faces those common 
 vicissitudes of life that are impotent to make or mar 
 his material fortunes and that can neither impair his crea- 
 ture comforts nor put a slur on his good repute. So that 
 without afterthought he deals fairly in all everyday con- 
 junctures of give and take; for they are at the most 
 inconsequential episodes to him, although the like might 
 spell irremediable disaster to his impecunious counterfoil 
 among the common men who have the community’s work 
 to do. In short, he is a gentleman, in the best acceptation 
 of the word, — unavoidably, by force of circumstance. As 
 such his example is of invaluable consequence to the 
 23 
 
354 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 underlying community of common folk, in that it keeps 
 before their eyes an object-lesson in habitual fortitude 
 and visible integrity such as could scarcely have been cre- 
 ated except under such shelter from those disturbances 
 that would go to mar habitual fortitude and integrity. 
 There can be little doubt but the high example of the 
 Victorian gentlefolk has had much to do with stabilising 
 the animus of the British common man on lines of in- 
 tegrity and fair play. What else and more in the way of 
 habitual preconceptions he may, by competitive imitation, 
 owe to the same high source is not immediately in ques- 
 tion here. 
 
 Recalling once more that the canon of life whereby folk 
 are gentlefolk sums itself up in the requirements of pe- 
 cuniary waste and personal futility, and that these re- 
 quirements are indefinitely extensible, at the same time 
 that the management of the community’s industry by in- 
 vestment for a profit enables the owners of invested 
 wealth to divert to their own use the community’s net 
 product, wherewith to meet these requirements, it follows 
 that the community at large which provides this output of 
 product will be allowed so much as is required by their 
 necessary standard of living, — with an unstable margin 
 of error in the adjustment. This margin of error should 
 tend continually to grow narrower as the businesslike 
 management of industry grows more efficient with ex- 
 perience; but it will also continually be disturbed in the 
 contrary sense by innovations of a technological nature 
 that require continual readjustment. This margin is 
 probably not to be got rid of, though it may be expected 
 to become less considerable under more settled condi- 
 tions. 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 355 
 
 It should also not be overlooked that the standard of 
 living here spoken of as necessarily to be allowed the 
 working population by no means coincides with the 
 “physical subsistence minimum,” from which in fact it 
 always departs by something appreciable. The necessary 
 standard of living of the working community is in fact 
 made up of two distinguishable factors : the subsistence 
 minimum, and the requirements of decorously wasteful 
 consumption — the “decencies of life.” These decencies 
 are no less requisite than the physical necessaries, in 
 point of workday urgency, and their amount is a matter of 
 use and wont. This composite standard of living is a 
 practical minimum, below which consumption will not 
 fall, except by a fluctuating margin of error; the effect 
 being the same, in point of necessary consumption, as if 
 it were all of the nature of a physical subsistence mini- 
 mum. 
 
 Loosely speaking, the arrangement should leave nothing 
 appreciable over, after the requirements of genteel waste 
 and of the workday standard of consumption have been 
 met. From which in turn it should follow that the rest 
 of what is comprised under the general caption of “cul- 
 ture” will find a place only in the interstices of leisure- 
 class expenditure and only at the hands of aberrant mem- 
 bers of the class of the gently-bred. The working popu- 
 lation should have no effectual margin of time, energy or 
 means for other pursuits than the day’s work in the service 
 of the price-system; so that aberrant individuals in this 
 class, who might by native propensity incline, e. g., to 
 pursue the sciences or the fine arts, should have (vir- 
 tually) no chance to make good. It would be a virtual 
 suppression of such native gifts among the common folk, 
 not a definitive and all-inclusive suppression. The state of 
 
356 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 the case under the Victorian peace may, again, be taken 
 in illustration of the point; although under the pre- 
 sumably more effectual control to be looked for in the 
 pacific future the margin might reasonably be expected to 
 run somewhat narrower, so that this virtual suppression of 
 cultural talent among the common men should come near- 
 er a complete suppression. 
 
 The working of that free initiative that makes the ad- 
 vance of civilisation, and also the greater part of its 
 conservation, would in effect be allowed only in the er- 
 ratic members of the kept classes ; where at the same 
 time it would have to work against the side-draught of 
 conventional usage, which discountenances any pursuit 
 that is not visibly futile according to some accepted man- 
 ner of futility. Now under the prospective perfect work- 
 ing of the price-system, bearers of the banners of civil- 
 isation could effectually be drawn only from the kept 
 classes, the gentlefolk who alone would have the disposal 
 of such free income as is required for work that has 
 no pecuniary value. And numerically the gentlefolk are 
 an inconsiderable fraction of the population. The supply 
 of competently gifted bearers of the community’s culture 
 would accordingly be limited to such as could be drawn 
 by self-selection from among this inconsiderable propor- 
 tion of the community at large. 
 
 It may be recalled that in point of heredity, and there- 
 fore in point of native fitness for the maintenance and 
 advance of civilisation, there is no difference between the 
 gentlefolk and the populace at large; or at least there is 
 no difference of such a nature as to count in abatement 
 of the proposition set down above. Some slight, but after 
 all inconsequential, difference there may be, but such 
 difference ^as there is, if any, rather counts against the 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 357 
 
 gentlefolk as keepers of the cultural advance. The gen- 
 tlefolk are derived from business ; the gentleman repre- 
 sents a filial generation of the businessman ; and if the 
 class typically is gifted with any peculiar hereditary traits, 
 therefore, they should presumably be such as typically 
 mark the successful businessman — astute, prehensile, 
 unscrupulous. For a generation or two, perhaps to the 
 scriptural third and fourth generation, it is possible that 
 a diluted rapacity and cunning may continue to mark 
 the businessman’s well-born descendants ; but these are 
 not serviceable traits for the conservation and advance- 
 ment of the community’s cultural heritage. So that no 
 consideration of special hereditary fitness in the well- 
 born need be entertained in this connection. 
 
 As to the limitation imposed by the price-system on the 
 supply of candidates suited by native gift for the human 
 work of civilisation ; it would no doubt, be putting the 
 figure extravagantly high to say that the gentlefolk, prop- 
 erly speaking, comprise as much as ten percent of the 
 total population ; perhaps something less than one-half 
 of that percentage would still seem a gross overstatement. 
 But, to cover loose ends and vagrant cases, the gentle- 
 folk may for the purpose be credited with so high a 
 percentage of the total population. If ten percent be al- 
 lowed, as an outside figure, it follows that the community’s 
 scientists, artists, scholars, and the like individuals given 
 over to the workday pursuits of the human spirit, are 
 by conventional restriction to be drawn from one-tenth 
 of the current supply of persons suited by native gift for 
 these pursuits. Or as it may also be expressed, in so 
 far as the projected scheme takes effect it should result 
 in the suppression of nine (or more) out of every ten 
 persons available for the constructive work of civilisa- 
 
358 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 tion. The cultural consequences to be looked for, there- 
 fore, should be quite markedly of the conservative order. 
 
 Of course, in actual efifect, the retardation or repres- 
 sion of civilisation by this means, as calculated on these 
 premises, should reasonably be expected to count up to 
 something appreciably more than nine-tenths of the gains 
 that might presumably be achieved in the conceivable ab- 
 sence of the price-system and the regime of investment. 
 All work of this kind has much of the character of team- 
 work; so that the efforts of isolated individuals count for 
 little, and a few working in more or less of concert and 
 understanding will count for proportionally much less 
 than many working in concert. The endeavours of the 
 individuals engaged count cumulatively, to such effect that 
 doubling their forces will more than double the aggregate 
 efficiency; and conversely, reducing the number will re- 
 duce the effectiveness of their work by something more 
 than the simple numerical proportion. Indeed, an undue 
 reduction of numbers in such a case may lead to the total 
 defeat of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of 
 a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is 
 needed a sense of community and solidarity, without 
 which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to 
 ‘ falter and dwindle out ; and there is also needed a degree 
 of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individ- 
 uals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that 
 are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as 
 merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one 
 does not count for one, and more than the critical mini- 
 mum will count for several per capita. It is a case where 
 the “minimal dose” is wholly inoperative. 
 
 There is not a little reason to believe that consequent 
 upon the installation of the projected regime of peace 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 359 
 
 at large and secure investment the critical point in the 
 repression of talent will very shortly be reached and 
 passed, so that the principle of the “minimal dose” will 
 come to apply. The point may readily be illustrated by 
 the case of many British and American towns and neigh- 
 bourhoods during the past few decades ; where the domi- 
 nant price-system and its commercial standards of truth 
 and beauty have over-ruled all inclination to cultural 
 sanity and put it definitively in abeyance. The cultural, 
 or perhaps the conventional, residue left over in these 
 cases where civilisation has gone stale through inefficien- 
 cy of the minimal dose is not properly to be found fault 
 with ; it is of a blameless character, conventionally ; nor is 
 there any intention here to cast aspersion on the desolate. 
 The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in the 
 American colleges and universities, where business prin- 
 ciples have supplanted the pursuit of learning, and where 
 the commercialisation of aims, ideals, tastes, occupations 
 and personnel is following much the same lines that have 
 led so many of the country towns effectually outside the 
 cultural pale. The American university or college is com- 
 ing to be an outlier of the price-system, in point of aims, 
 standards and personnel ; hitherto the tradition of learn- 
 ing as a trait of civilisation, as distinct from business, has 
 not been fully displaced, although it is now coming to 
 face the passage of the minimal dose. The like, in a 
 degree, is apparently true latterly for many English, 
 and still more evidently for many German schools. 
 
 In these various instances of what may be called dry- 
 rot or local blight on the civilised world’s culture the 
 decline appears to be due not to a positive infection of 
 a maligant sort, so much as to a failure of the active 
 cultural ferment, which has fallen below the critical point 
 
360 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 of efficacy; perhaps through an unintended refusal of a 
 livelihood to persons given over to cultivating the ele- 
 ments of civilisation; perhaps through the conventional 
 disallowance of the pursuit of any other ends than com- 
 petitive gain and competitive spending. Evidently it is 
 something much more comprehensive in this nature that 
 is reasonably to be looked for under the prospective 
 regime of peace, in case the price-system gains that farther 
 impetus and warrant which it should come in for if the 
 rights of ownership and investment stand over intact, 
 and so come to enjoy the benefit of a further improved 
 state of the industrial arts and a further enlarged scale 
 of operation and enhanced rate of turnover. 
 
 To turn back to the point from 'which this excursion 
 branched off. It has been presumed all the while that 
 the technological equipment, or the state of the industrial 
 arts, must continue to advance under the conditions of- 
 fered by this regime of peace at large. But the last few 
 paragraphs will doubtless suggest that such a single- 
 minded addiction to competitive gain and competitive 
 spending as the stabilised and amplified price-system 
 would enjoin, must lead to an effectual retardation, per- 
 haps to a decline, of those material sciences on which 
 modern technology draws ; and that the state of the in- 
 dustrial arts should therefore cease to advance, if only 
 the scheme of investment and businesslike sabotage can 
 be made sufficiently secure. That such may be the out- 
 come is a contingency which the argument will have to 
 meet and to allow for; but it is after all a contingency 
 that need not be expected to derange the sequence of 
 events, except in the way of retardation. Even without 
 further advance in technological expedients or in the 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 361 
 
 relevant material sciences, there will still necessarily 
 ensue an effectual advance in the industrial arts, in the 
 sense that further organisation and enlargement of the 
 material equipment and industrial processes on lines al- 
 ready securely known and not to be forgotten must 
 bring an effectually enhanced efficiency of the industrial 
 process as a whole. 
 
 In illustration, it is scarcely to be asumed even as a 
 tentative hypothesis that the system of transport and com- 
 munication will not undergo extension and improvement 
 on the lines already familiar, even in the absence of new 
 technological contrivances. At the same time a continued 
 increase of population is to be counted on ; which has, for 
 the purpose in hand, much the same effect as an advance 
 in the industrial arts. Human contact and mutual under- 
 standing will necessarily grow wider and closer, and will 
 have its effect on the habits of thought prevalent in the 
 communities that are to live under the promised regime 
 of peace. The system of transport and communication 
 having to handle a more voluminous and exacting traffic, 
 in the service of a larger and more compact population, 
 will have to be organised and administered on mechani- 
 cally drawn schedules of time, place, volume, velocity, 
 and price, of a still more exacting accuracy than hither- 
 to. The like will necessarily apply throughout the in- 
 dustrial occupations that employ extensive plant or pro- 
 cesses, or that articulate with industrial processes of that 
 nature; which will necessarily comprise a larger pro- 
 portion of the industrial process at large than hitherto. 
 
 As has already been remarked more than once in the 
 course of the argument, a population that lives and does 
 its work, and such play as is allowed it, in and by an 
 exactingly articulate mechanical system of this kind will 
 
362 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 necessarily be an “intelligent” people, in the colloquial 
 sense of the word; that is to say it will necessarily be a 
 people that uses printed matter freely and that has some 
 familiarity with the elements of those material sciences 
 that underlie this mechanically organised system of ap- 
 pliances and processes. Such a population lives by and 
 within the framework of the mechanistic logic, and is in 
 a fair way to lose faith in any proposition that can not be 
 stated convincingly in terms of this mechanistic logic. 
 Superstitions are liable to lapse by neglect or disuse in 
 such a community; that is to say propositions of a non- 
 mechanistic complexion are liable to insensible dises- 
 tablishment in such a case ; “superstition” in these prem- 
 ises coming to signify whatever is not of this mechanistic, 
 or “materialistic” character. An exception to this broad 
 characterisation of non-mechanistic propositions as “sup- 
 erstition” would be matters that are of the nature of an 
 immediate deliverance of the senses or of the aesthetic 
 sensibilities. 
 
 By a simile it might be said that what so falls under 
 the caption of “superstition” in such a case is subject to 
 decay by inanition. It should not be difficult to conceive 
 the general course of such a decay of superstitions under 
 this unremitting discipline of mechanistic habits of life. 
 The recent past offers an illustration, in the unemotional 
 progress of decay that has overtaken religious beliefs in 
 the more civilised countries, and more particularly among 
 the intellectually trained workmen of the mechanical in- 
 dustries. The elimination of such non-mechanistic prop- 
 ositions of the faith has been visibly going on, but it 
 has not worked out on any uniform plan, nor has it over- 
 taken any large or compact body of people consistently 
 or abruptly, being of the nature of obsolescence rather 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 363 
 
 than of set repudiation. But in a slack and unreflecting 
 fashion the divestment has gone on until the aggregate 
 effect is unmistakable. 
 
 A similar divestment of superstitions is reasonably to 
 be looked for also in that domain of preconceptions that 
 lies between the supernatural and the mechanistic. Chief 
 among these time-warped preconceptions — or supersti- 
 tions — that so stand over out of the alien past among 
 these democratic peoples is the institution of property. As 
 is true of preconceptions touching the supernatural veri- 
 ties, so here too the article of use and wont in question 
 will not bear formulation in mechanistic terms and is 
 not congruous with that mechanistic logic that is inconti- 
 nently bending the habits of thought of the common man 
 more and more consistently to its own bent. There is, 
 of course, the difference that while no class — apart from 
 the servants of the church — have a material interest in 
 the continued integrity of the articles of the supernatural 
 faith, there is a strong and stubborn material interest 
 bound up with the maintenance of this article of the 
 pecuniary faith; and the class in whom this material 
 interest vests are also, in effect, invested with the coer- 
 cive powers of the law. 
 
 The law, and the popular preconceptions that give the 
 law its binding force, go to uphold the established usage 
 and the established prerogatives on this head ; and the 
 disestablishment of the rights of property and investment 
 therefore is not a simple matter of obsolescence through 
 neglect. It may confidently be counted on that all the 
 apparatus of the law and all the coercive agencies of 
 law and order, will be brought in requisition to uphold 
 the ancient rights of ownership, whenever any move is 
 made toward their disallowance or restriction. But then, 
 
364 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish 
 the prerogatives of ownership is also not to take the in- 
 nocuous shape of unstudied neglect. So soon, or rather 
 so far, as the common man comes to realise that these 
 rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to 
 his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost 
 the “will to believe” in any argument that does not run 
 in terms of the mechanistic logic, it is reasonable to 
 expect that he will take a stand on this matter ; and it is 
 more than likely that the stand taken will be of an un- 
 compromising kind, — presumably something in the nature 
 of the stand once taken by recalcitrant Englishmen in pro- 
 test against the irresponsible rule of the Stuart sovereign. 
 It is also not likely that the beneficiaries under these 
 proprietary rights will yield their ground at all amicably ; 
 all the more since they are patently within their authentic 
 rights in insisting on full discretion in the disposal of their 
 own possessions ; very much as Charles I or James II 
 once were within their prescriptive right, — which had 
 little to say in the outcome. 
 
 Even apart from “time immemorial” and the patent 
 authenticity of the institution, there were and are many 
 cogent arguments to be alleged in favor of the position for 
 which the Stuart sovereigns and their spokesmen con- 
 tended. So there are and will be many, perhaps more, 
 cogent reasons to be alleged for the maintenance of 
 the established law and order in respect of the rights of 
 ownership and investment. Not least urgent, nor least 
 real, among these arguments is the puzzling question of 
 what to put in the place of these rights and of the 
 methods of control based on them, ver>' much as the 
 analogous question puzzled the public-spirited men of the 
 Stuart times. All of which goes to argue that there may 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 365 
 
 be expected to arise a conjuncture of perplexities and 
 complications, as well as a division of interests and claims. 
 To which should be added that the division is likely to 
 come to a head so soon as the balance of forces between 
 the two parties in interest becomes doubtful, so that either 
 party comes to surmise that the success of its own aims 
 may depend on its own efforts. And as happens where 
 two antagonistic parties are each convinced of the justice 
 of its cause, and in the absence of an umpire, the logical 
 recourse is the wager of battle. 
 
 Granting the premises, there should be no reasonable 
 doubt as to this eventual cleavage between those who 
 own and those who do not; and of the premises the only 
 item that is not already an accomplished fact is the in- 
 stallation of peace at large. The rest of what goes into 
 the argument is the well-known modern state of the in- 
 dustrial arts, and the equally well-known price-system ; 
 which, in combination, give its character to the modern 
 state of business enterprise. It is only an unusually 
 broad instance of an institutional arrangement which has 
 in the course of time and changing conditions come to 
 work at cross purposes with that underlying ground of 
 institutional arrangements that takes form in the com- 
 monplace aphorism. Live and let live. With change set- 
 ting in the direction familiar to all men today, it is only 
 a question of limited time when the discrepancy will 
 reach a critical pass, and the installation of peace may 
 be counted on to hasten this course of things. 
 
 That a decision will be sought by recourse to forcible 
 measures, is also scarcely open to question; since the es- 
 tablished law and order provides for a resort to coercion 
 in the enforcement of these prescriptive rights, and since 
 both parties in interest, in this as in other cases, are 
 
366 
 
 On the Nature of Peace 
 
 persuaded of the justice of their claims. A decision either 
 way is an intolerable iniquity in the eyes of the losing 
 side. History teaches that in such a quarrel the recourse 
 has always been to force. 
 
 History teaches also, but with an inflection of doubt, 
 that the outworn institution in such a conjuncture faces 
 disestablishment. At least, so men like to believe. What 
 the experience of history does not leave in doubt is the 
 grave damage, discomfort and shame incident to the 
 displacement of such an institutional discrepancy by such 
 recourse to force. What further appears to be clear in 
 the premises, at least to the point of a strong presumption, 
 is that in the present case the decision, or the choice, lies 
 between two alternatives : either the price-system and 
 its attendant business enterprise will yield and pass out; 
 or the pacific nations will conserve their pecuniary scheme 
 of law and order at the cost of returning to a war footing 
 and letting their owners preserve the rights of ownership 
 by force of arms. 
 
 The reflection obviously suggests itself that this pros- 
 pect of consequences to follow from the installation of 
 peace at large might well be taken into account beforehand 
 by those who are aiming to work out an enduring peace. 
 It has appeared in the course of the argument that the 
 preservation of the present pecuniary law and order, with 
 all its incidents of ownership and investment, is incompa- 
 tible with an unwarlike state of peace and security. 
 This current scheme of investment, business, and sabot- 
 age, should have an appreciably better chance of survival 
 in the long run if the present conditions of warlike prep- 
 aration and national insecurity were maintained, or if 
 the projected peace were left in a somewhat problemati- 
 cal state, sufficiently precarious to keep national animosi- 
 
Peace and the Price System 
 
 367 
 
 ties alert, and thereby to the neglect of domestic interests, 
 particularly of such interests as touch the popular well- 
 being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the 
 cause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially 
 advanced if precautions were taken beforehand to put 
 out of the way as much as may be of those discrepancies 
 of interest and sentiment between nations and between 
 classes which make for dissension and eventual hostili- 
 ties. 
 
 So, if the projectors of this peace at large are in any 
 degree inclined to seek concessive terms on which the 
 peace might hopefully be made enduring, it should evi- 
 dently be part of their endeavours from the outset to put 
 events in train for the present abatement and eventual 
 abrogation of the rights of ownership and of the price- 
 system in which these rights take effect. A hopeful be- 
 ginning along this line would manifestly be the neutral- 
 isation of all pecuniary rights of citizenship, as has been 
 indicated in an earlier passage. On the other hand, if 
 peace is not desired at the cost of relinquishing the scheme 
 of competitive gain and competitive spending, the pro- 
 moters of peace should logically observe due precaution 
 and move only so far in the direction of a peaceable set- 
 tlement as would result in a sufficiently unstable equili- 
 brium of mutual jealousies ; such as might expeditiously 
 be upset whenever discontent with pecuniary affairs 
 should come to threaten this established scheme of pe- 
 cuniary prerogatives.