The Fruits of Victory. Norman Angell
social psychology; they were not regarded as matters for the practical statesman. “What would you have us do about them, anyway?”
It has happened to the present writer, in addressing American students, to lay stress upon the rôle of certain dominant ideas in determining policy (upon the idea, say, of the State as a person, upon the conception of States as necessarily rival entities), and afterwards to get questions in this wise: “Your lecture seems to imply an internationalist policy. What is your plan? What ought we to do? Should we make a naval alliance, with Great Britain, or form a new League of Nations, or denounce Article X, or … ?” I have replied: “The first thing to do is to change your ideas and moral values; or to get to know them better. That is the most practical and immediate platform, because all others depend on it. We all profess great love of peace and justice. What will you pay for it, in terms of national sovereignty? What degree of sovereignty will you surrender as your contribution to a new order? If your real feeling is for domination, then the only effect of writing constitutions of the League of Nations will be to render international organisation more remote than ever, by showing how utterly incompatible it is with prevailing moral values.”
But such a reply is usually regarded as hopelessly “unpractical.” There is no indication of something to be “done”—a platform to be defended or a law to be passed. To change fundamental opinions and redirect desires is not apparently to “do” anything at all. Yet until that invisible thing is done our Covenants and Leagues will be as futile as have been the numberless similar plans of the past, “concerning which,” as one seventeenth century critic wrote, “I know no single imperfection save this: That by no possibility would any Prince or people be brought to abide by them.” It was, I believe, regarded as a triumph of practical organisation to have obtained nation-wide support for the ‘League to Enforce Peace’ proposal, “without raising controversial matters at all”—leaving untouched, that is, the underlying ideas of patriotism, of national right and international obligation, the prevailing moral and political values, in fact. The subsequent history of America’s relation to the world’s effort to create a League of Nations is sufficient commentary as to whether it is “practical” to devise plans and constitutions without reference to a prevailing attitude of mind.
America has before her certain definite problems of foreign policy—Japanese immigration into the United States and the Philippines; concessions granted to foreigners in Mexico; the question of disorder in that country; the relations with Hayti (which will bear on the question of America’s subject nationality, the negro); the exemption of American ships from tolls in the Panama Canal; the exclusion of foreign shipping from “coastwise” trade with the Philippines. It would be possible to draw up plans of settlement with regard to each item which would be equitable. But the development of foreign policy (which, more than any other department of politics, will fix the quality of American society in the future) will not depend upon the more or less equitable settlement of those specific questions. The specific differences between England and Germany before the War were less serious than those between England and America—and were nearly all settled when war broke out. Whether an issue like Japanese immigration or the Panama tolls leads to war will not depend upon its intrinsic importance, or whether Britain or Japan or America make acceptable proposals on the subject. Mr. ex-Secretary Daniels has just told us that the assertion of the right to establish a cable station on the Island of Yap is good ground for risking war. The specific issues about which nations fight are so little the real cause of the fight that they are generally completely forgotten when it comes to making the peace. The future of submarine warfare was not mentioned at Versailles. Given a certain state of mind, a difference about cables on the Island of Yap is quite sufficient to make war inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour, concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.
It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power, the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign. And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities in the American Colonies; because the “person,” Britain, has become a hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.
War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and America is “unthinkable.” If any war, as we have known it these last ten years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among people of good will there is a tendency to say: “Don’t let’s talk about it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let us exchange visits.” In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war, did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of ill will talked—talked of the wrong things—and sowed their deadly poison.
These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured Germany’s future economic security would have meant putting her access to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of “marching and drilling” would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.
Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this: whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants, Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.
As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are offered.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
THE central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so evidently at work—especially in the international field—is the deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power. This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of ‘mystic’ patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends indispensable to civilisation.
The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will ‘discipline’ instinct,