The Fruits of Victory. Norman Angell
href="#ulink_ec9c63b0-79c2-5482-9334-70aef2107465">Table of Contents
THE moral questions raised in the preceding chapter have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of military power based on the National unit, or a group of National units, such as an Alliance. Military preponderance of the smaller Western National units over large and potentially powerful groups, like the German or the Russian, must necessitate stable and prolonged co-operation. But, as the present condition of the Alliance which fought the War shows, the rivalries inseparable from the fears and resentments of ‘instinctive’ nationalism, make that prolonged co-operation impossible. The qualities of Nationalism which stand in the way of Internationalism stand also in the way of stable alliances (which are a form of Internationalism) and make them extremely unstable foundations of power.
The difficulties encountered by the Allies in taking combined action in Russia show that to this fundamental instability due to the moral nature of Nationalism, must be added, as causes of military paralysis, the economic disruption which reduces the available material resources, and the social unrest (largely the result of the economic difficulties) which undermines the cohesion even of the national unit.
These forces render military predominance based on the temporary co-operation of units still preserving the Nationalist outlook extremely precarious and unreliable.
CHAPTER V (pp. 142–168)
PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE: THE SOCIAL OUTCOME
THE greatest and most obvious present need of Europe, for the salvation of its civilisation, is unity and co-operation. Yet the predominant forces of its politics push to conflict and disunity. If it is the calculating selfishness of ‘realist’ statesmen that thus produces impoverishment and bankruptcy, the calculation would seem to be defective. The Balkanisation of Europe obviously springs, however, from sources belonging to our patriotisms, which are mainly uncalculating and instinctive, ‘mystic’ impulses and passions. Can we safely give these instinctive pugnacities full play?
One side of patriotism—gregariousness, ‘herd instinct’—has a socially protective origin, and is probably in some form indispensable. But coupled with uncontrolled pugnacity, tribal gregariousness grows into violent partisanship as against other groups, and greatly strengthens the instinct to coercion, the desire to impose our power.
In war-time, pugnacity, partisanship, coerciveness can find full satisfaction in the fight against the enemy. But when the war is over, these instincts, which have become so highly developed, still seek satisfaction. They may find it in two ways: in conflict between Allies, or in strife between groups within the nation.
We may here find an explanation of what seems otherwise a moral enigma: that just after a war, universally lauded as a means of national unity, ‘bringing all classes together,’ the country is distraught by bitter social chaos, amounting to revolutionary menace; and that after the war which was to wipe out at last all the old differences which divided the Allies, their relations are worse than before the War (as in the case of Britain and America and Britain and France).
Why should the fashionable lady, capable of sincere self-sacrifice (scrubbing hospital floors and tending canteens) for her countrymen when they are soldiers, become completely indifferent to the same countrymen when they have returned to civil life (often dangerous and hard, as in mining and fishing)? In the latter case there is no common enmity uniting duchess and miner.
Another enigma may be solved in the same way: why military terrorism, unprovoked war, secret diplomacy, autocratic tyranny, violation of nationality, which genuinely appal us when committed by the enemy, leave us unmoved when political necessity’ provokes very similar conduct on our part; why the ideals for which we went to war become matters of indifference to us when we have achieved victory. Gregariousness, which has become intense partisanship, makes right that which our side does or desires; wrong that which the other side does.
This is fatal, not merely to justice, but to sincerity, to intellectual rectitude, to the capacity to see the truth objectively. It explains why we can, at the end of a war, excuse or espouse the very policies which the war was waged to make impossible.
CHAPTER VI (pp. 169–198)
THE ALTERNATIVE RISKS OF STATUS AND CONTRACT
INSTINCT, being co-terminous with all animal life, is a motive of conduct immeasurably older and more deeply rooted than reasoning based on experience. So long as the instinctive, ‘natural’ action succeeds, or appears to succeed in its object, we do not trouble to examine the results of instinct or to reason. Only failure causes us to do that.
We have seen that the pugnacities, gregariousness, group partisanship embodied in patriotism, give a strong emotional push to domination, the assertion of our power over others as a means of settling our relations with them. Physical coercion marks all the early methods in politics (as in autocracy and feudalism), in economics (as in slavery), and even in the relations of the sexes.
But we try other methods (and manage to restrain our impulse sufficiently) when we really discover that force won’t work. When we find we cannot coerce a man but still need his service, we offer him inducements, bargain with him, enter a contract. This is the result of realising that we really need him, and cannot compel him. That is the history of the development from status to contract.
Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not until we realise the failure of national coercive power for indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to idealise power and to put our intensest political emotions, like those of patriotism, behind it.
The alternative to preponderance is partnership of power. Both may imply the employment of force (as in policing), but the latter makes force the instrument of a conscious social purpose, offering to the rival that challenges the force (as in the case of the individual criminal within the nation) the same rights as those claimed by the users of force. Force as employed by competitive nationalism does not do this. It says ‘You or me,’ not ‘You and me.’ The method of social co-operation may fail temporarily; but it has the perpetual opportunity of success. It succeeds the moment that the two parties both accept it. But the other method is bound to fail; the two parties cannot both accept it. Both cannot be masters. Both can be partners.
The failure of preponderant power on a nationalist basis for indispensable ends would be self-evident but for the push of the instincts which warp our judgment.
Yet faith in the social method is the condition of its success. It is a choice of risks. We distrust and arm. Others, then, are entitled also to distrust; their arming is our justification for distrusting them. The policy of suspicion justifies itself. To allay suspicion we must accept the risk of trust. That, too, will justify itself.
Man’s future depends on making the better choice, for either the distrust or the faith will justify itself. His judgment will not be fit to make that choice if it is warped by the passions of pugnacity and hate that we have cultivated as part of the apparatus of war.
CHAPTER VII (pp. 199–251)
THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE SETTLEMENT
IF our instinctive pugnacities and hates are uncontrollable, and they dictate conduct, no more is to be said. We are the helpless victims of outside forces, and may as well surrender. But many who urge this most insistently in the case of our patriotic pugnacities obviously do not believe it: their demands for the suppression of ‘defeatist’ propaganda during the War, their support of war-time propaganda for