American World Policies. Walter E. Weyl
are equally far from any true approach to the problem. We are being deluged to-day with books and newspaper articles describing war as a reversion of mankind to a lower type, a betrayal of reason, a futile, revolting struggle, creating no rights, settling no problems and serving no useful purpose except, in Lord Salisbury's phrase, "to teach people geography." Let us be rational and adult, cry these authors, adjuring an insane world to return to its sanity.
No wonder that there is prejudice against this particular variety of abstract pacifism. It is a negative doctrine, anæmic and thin-haired, with a touch of gentle intolerance and a patient disregard of facts. It does not recognise the real motives to war, upon which alone a theory of peace may be based. It defeats itself because ultra-rationalistic. For if war, though irrational, has always been, would it not follow that man himself is irrational, that the fighting instinct is deeper than reason, and that to-morrow, as to-day, men will fight for the joy of killing? If this were true, pacifism might as well resign. In truth, this interpretation of war as a mere expression of man's fighting instincts is no more adequate than is the personal devil theory. War has outgrown the fighting instinct. It has become deliberate, businesslike, scientific. It demands sacrifices from those to whom fighting is an abomination. How many red-blooded warriors could the German Emperor or the French President have enrolled, had there been no appeal to national interest, duty, justice, indignation? War is won to-day by peace-loving men, who abhor the arms in their hands.
The closer we study its motives, incentives and origins, the more deeply do we find the elements of this problem imbedded in the very foundations of national or group life. War depends upon growth in population, emigration, the use of natural resources, agricultural progress, trade development, distribution of wealth, taxation. It is never unrelated to the economic web in which the people live their lives; it is seldom unaffected by the necessity of expanding and the opposition of neighbours, the desire for bread and the longing for luxuries. War and peace are functions of the national life, steps in national progress or retrogression. Peace and war are two paths leading often in the same general direction, and whether we may take one path or must take the other is often determined for us long before we reach this parting of the ways.
At first glance this economic or business side of war is obscured. We find tribes and nations fighting for women and heads and scalps, to please the gods, to destroy sorcerers, to slay heretics, to show prowess, and for other reasons which seem equally remote from an economic motive. A nation will go to war "to save its face," or to annihilate the "hereditary enemy," as well as to improve its position in the world. Yet these diverse human motives are related to, though not fully absorbed in, the omnipresent economic motive. The "hereditary enemy" usually is no other than the tribe or nation that blocks our way; the "gods" enjoin war against neighbours who occupy the lands we need or can furnish us tribute; the women, whom we capture, are tame and pleasant beasts of burden, who help to swell our numbers. As for pride and tribal vanity, which so often precipitate war, these are a powerful social bond, which by holding the tribe together permits it to conquer the things it needs. A war for prestige is often a war for economic gain once removed. There remains a residue of martial emotion, not so closely united with the desire for economic gain, but all these derivative motives do not prevent the economic factor from remaining preponderant. Remove the economic factors leading to war, give men more than enough, and the chief incentive to war disappears.
The modern historical trend has been towards a fuller recognition of the influence of this potent, though often disguised, motive to war. Historians are recognising that the mainspring of social action is not an emperor's dream or soldier's ambition, but the demand of vast populations for food, clothing and shelter, then for better food, clothing and shelter, and finally for the rights, privileges and institutions which will make such economic progress assured. Ancient war, which seemed so empty and causeless, is now revealed as a half-conscious effort of human societies to adjust themselves to changing economic conditions. It is a struggle for bread. Indeed, so complete has been this change in our theories that we often exaggerate this economic influence, and speak as though no emotion save hunger impelled humanity. But such exclusion of other motives is not necessary to an economic interpretation. We can emphasise the influence of economic desires, which modern Americans and Germans share with ancient Greeks and Babylonians, while still admitting the influence of other factors. Race, creed, language, geographical position, increase national friendship or animosity. While these factors influence wars, however, they are less universal, if not less potent than is the economic motive.
The significance of this economic motive to war can hardly be overstated. If wars are in the main due to fundamental, economic conflicts, then we cannot end or limit war unless we discover some alternate way to compose such economic differences. We cannot hope that the human race will stop wanting things. Men have never lived like the lilies of the field, nor wished to live so. According to our every-day morality, wanting and getting are ethical and wise, and not-wanting is unethical and decivilising. Our whole intricate, complex civilisation depends upon the physical well-being and the economic ambition of our populations, and morally, as well as physically, a beggared nation tends to decline. We may trace this degeneration of impoverished groups in some of our mountainous districts, where communities, shut off from the main productive energies of the nation, brutalise and decay. All the conditions of our life impel nations, like individuals, to advance economically, to fructify labour, to gain. If, however, the nation in its struggle for new wealth clashes with other nations, intent also upon gain, if these mobilised, economic ambitions necessarily lead to destructive wars, then we must cease declaiming against war's immorality, and seek instead to discover whether economic readjustments cannot circumscribe or even prevent wars.
To a modern business man or to a city workman this theory of the economic cause of wars is not unsatisfactory. He may quite properly introduce more idealistic elements, a desire for independence, a love of conquest, the influence of personal prejudices, dynastic affiliations, racial antagonism and religious hatreds, but in the end he will apply to this business of war the same canons of judgment that he applies to his own business. "Whom does it pay? What is 'in it' for the nations or for classes or individuals within the nations?" And if you tell him that in the present war Servian hatred was intensified because Austria discriminated against Servian pigs, or that Germany was embittered because of Russian tariffs and French colonial policies, if you speak to him in these economic terms, you are immediately intelligible. Economic motive is one of the obvious facts of life.
It is the transcendentalists who interpret war in more idealistic terms. In every country, but especially in Germany, there is a whole school of historical and pseudo-historical romanticists, who defend war by elevating it high above the reach of reason. You cannot shake the convictions of such writers by an account of war atrocities, of slaughter, pillage, rape, mutilations and the spitting of infants upon lances, just as you cannot deter murderers by the sight of public executions. All these horrors are but a part of war's terrible fascination. "In war," writes the late Professor J. A. Cramb, one of the most eloquent of these war mystics, "man values the power which it affords to life of rising above life, the power which the spirit of man possesses to pursue the ideal." There is, and can be, in his view, no reason for war; war transcends reason. In spite of its unreason, war, which has always governed the world, always ruled the lives of men, always uplifted the strong and deposed the weak, will remain beautifully terrible, immortally young. As in ancient days, in India, Babylon, Persia, China, Hellas and Rome, so to-day, men will choose "to die greatly and with a glory that will surpass the glories of the past." Men are always greater than the earthly considerations that seem to guide their lives. As patriotism ruled the hosts of Rome and Carthage, as the ideal of empire drove forth the valorous Englishmen who conquered India, so to-day, to-morrow and until the end of time high and noble ideas, far above the comprehension of mere rationalists, will impel men to war, "to die greatly."
It may seem importunate to reason with men upon a subject which they include among the mysteries, beyond reason. Yet if we analyse the instances, which Professor Cramb and others cite of wars waged for great ideal purposes, we stumble incontinently upon stark economic motives. Carthage and Rome did not fight for glory but for food. The prize was the fertile wheat fields of Sicily. There was nothing transcendental in the wars between Athens and Sparta, but a naked conflict for commerce and exploitative dominion. As for the British conquest of India, the "ideal of empire" was perfectly