Essays in War-Time: Further Studies in the Task of Social Hygiene

The fact is, as we so often forget, and sometimes do not even know, morality is fundamentally custom, the mores, as it has been called, of a people. It is a body of conduct which is in constant motion, with an exalted advance-guard, which few can keep up with, and a debased rearguard, once called the black-guard, a name that has since acquired an appropriate significance. But in the substantial and central sense morality means the conduct of the main body of the community. Thus understood, it is clear that in our time war still comes into contact with morality. The pioneers may be ahead; the main body is in the thick of it.

That there really is a morality of war, and that the majority of civilised people have more or less in common a certain conventional code concerning the things which may or may not be done in war, has been very clearly seen during the present conflict. This moral code is often said to be based on international regulations and understandings. It certainly on the whole coincides with them. But it is the popular moral code which is fundamental, and international law is merely an attempt to enforce that morality.

The use of expanding bullets and poison gases, the poisoning of wells, the abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag, the destruction of churches and works of art, the infliction of cruel penalties on civilians who have not taken up arms—all such methods of warfare as these shock popular morality. They are on each side usually attributed to the enemy, they are seldom avowed, and only adopted in imitation of the enemy, with hesitation and some offence to the popular conscience, as we see in the case of poison gas, which was only used by the English after long delay, while the French still hesitated. The general feeling about such methods, even when involving scientific skill, is that they are "barbarous."

As a matter of fact, this charge of "barbarism" against those methods of warfare which shock our moral sense must not be taken too literally. The methods of real barbarians in war are not especially "barbarous." They have sometimes committed acts of cruelty which are revolting to us to-day, but for the most part the excesses of barbarous warfare have been looting and burning, together with more or less raping of women, and these excesses have been so frequent within the last century, and still to-day, that they may as well be called "civilised" as "barbarous." The sack of Rome by the Goths at the beginning of the fifth century made an immense impression on the ancient world, as an unparalleled outrage. St. Augustine in his City of God, written shortly afterwards, eloquently described the horrors of that time. Yet to-day, in the new light of our own knowledge of what war may involve, the ways of the ancient Goths seem very innocent. We are expressly told that they spared the sacred Christian places, and the chief offences brought against them seem to be looting and burning; yet the treasure they left untouched was vast and incalculable and we should be thankful indeed if any belligerent in the war of to-day inflicted as little injury on a conquered city as the Goths on Rome. The vague rhetoric which this invasion inspired scarcely seems to be supported by definitely recorded facts, and there can be very little doubt that the devastation wrought in many old wars exists chiefly in the writings of rhetorical chroniclers whose imaginations were excited, as we may so often see among the journalists of to-day, by the rumour of atrocities which have never been committed. This is not to say that no devastation and cruelty have been perpetrated in ancient wars. It seems to be generally agreed that in the famous Thirty Years' War, which the Germans fought against each other, atrocities were the order of the day. We are constantly being told, in respect of some episode or other of the war of to-day, that "nothing like it has been seen since the Thirty Years' War." But the writers who make this statement, with an off-hand air of familiar scholarship, never by any chance bring forward the evidence for this greater atrociousness of the Thirty Years' War,15 and one is inclined to suspect that this oft-repeated allusion to the Thirty Years' War as the acme of military atrocity is merely a rhetorical flourish.

In any case we know that, not so many years after the Thirty Years' War, Frederick the Great, who combined supreme military gifts with freedom from scruple in policy, and was at the same time a great representative German, declared that the ordinary citizen ought never to be aware that his country is at war.16 Nothing could show more clearly the military ideal, however imperfectly it may sometimes have been attained, of the old European world. Atrocities, whether regarded as permissible or as inevitable, certainly occurred. But for the most part wars were the concern of the privileged upper class; they were rendered necessary by the dynastic quarrels of monarchs and were carried out by a professional class with aristocratic traditions and a more or less scrupulous regard to ancient military etiquette. There are many stories of the sufferings of the soldiery in old times, in the midst of abundance, on account of military respect for civilian property. Von der Goltz remarks that "there was a time when the troops camped in the cornfields and yet starved," and states that in 1806 the Prussian main army camped close to huge piles of wood and yet had no fires to warm themselves or cook their food.17

The legend, if legend it is, of the French officer who politely requested the English officer opposite him to "fire first" shows how something of the ancient spirit of chivalry was still regarded as the accompaniment of warfare. It was an occupation which only incidentally concerned the ordinary citizen. The English, especially, protected by the sea and always living in open undefended cities, have usually been able to preserve this indifference to the continental wars in which their kings have constantly been engaged, and, as we see, even in the most unprotected European countries, and the most profoundly warlike, the Great Frederick set forth precisely the same ideal of war.

The fact seems to be that while war is nowadays less chronic than of old, less prolonged, and less easily provoked, it is a serious fallacy to suppose that it is also less barbarous. We imagine that it must be so simply because we believe, on more or less plausible grounds, that our life generally is growing less barbarous and more civilised. But war, by its very nature, always means a relapse from civilisation into barbarism, if not savagery.18 We may sympathise with the endeavour of the European soldiers of old to civilise warfare, and we may admire the remarkable extent to which they succeeded in doing so. But we cannot help feeling that their romantic and chivalrous notions of warfare were absurdly incongruous.

The world in general might have been content with that incongruity. But Germany, or more precisely Prussia, with its ancient genius for warfare, has in the present war taken the decisive step in initiating the abolition of that incongruity by placing warfare definitely on the basis of scientific barbarism. To do this is, in a sense, we must remember, not a step backwards, but a step forward. It involved the recognition of the fact that War is not a game to be played for its own sake, by a professional caste, in accordance with fixed rules which it would be dishonourable to break, but a method, carried out by the whole organised manhood of the nation, of effectively attaining an end desired by the State, in accordance with the famous statement of Clausewitz that war is State policy continued by a different method. If by the chivalrous method of old, which was indeed in large part still their own method in the previous Franco-German war, the Germans had resisted the temptation to violate the neutrality of Luxemburg and Belgium in order to rush behind the French defences, and had battered instead at the Gap of Belfort, they would have won the sympathy of the world, but they certainly would not have won the possession of the greater part of Belgium and a third part of France. It has not alone been military instinct which has impelled Germany on the new course thus inaugurated. We see here the final outcome of a reaction against ancient Teutonic sentimentality which the insight of Goldwin Smith clearly discerned forty years ago.19 Humane sentiments and civilised traditions, under the moulding hand of Prussian leaders of Kultur, have been slowly but firmly subordinated to a political realism which, in the military sphere, means a masterly efficiency in the aim of crushing the foe by overwhelming force combined with panic-striking "frightfulness." In this conception, that only is moral which served these ends. The horror which this "frightfulness" may be expected to arouse, even among neutral nations, is from the German point of view a tribute of homage.

The military reputation of Germany is so great in the world, and likely to remain so, whatever the issue of the present war, that we are here faced by a grave critical issue which concerns the future of the whole world. The conduct of wars has been transformed before our eyes. In any future war the example of Germany will be held to consecrate the new methods, and the belligerents who are not inclined to accept the supreme authority of Germany may yet be forced in their own interests to act in accordance with it. The mitigating influence of religion over warfare has long ceased to be exercised, for the international Catholic Church no longer possesses the power to exert such influence, while the national Protestant churches are just as bellicose as their flacks. Now we see the influence of morality over warfare similarly tending to disappear. Henceforth, it seems, we have to reckon with a conception of war which accounts it a function of the supreme State, standing above morality and therefore able to wage war independently of morality. Necessity—the necessity of scientific effectiveness—becomes the sole criterion of right and wrong.

When we look back from the standpoint of knowledge which we have reached in the present war to the notions which prevailed in the past, they seem to us hollow and even childish. Seventy years ago, Buckle, in his History of Civilisation, stated complacently that only ignorant and unintellectual nations any longer cherished ideals of war. His statement was part of the truth. It is true, for instance, that France is now the most anti-military of nations, though once the most military of all. But, we see, it is only part of the truth. The very fact, which Buckle himself pointed out, that efficiency has in modern times taken the place of morality in the conduct of affairs, offers a new foundation for war when war is urged on scientific principle for the purpose of rendering effective the claims of State policy. To-day we see that it is not sufficient for a nation to cultivate knowledge and become intellectual, in the expectation that war will automatically go out of fashion. It is quite possible to become very scientific, most relentlessly intellectual, and on that foundation to build up ideals of warfare much more barbarous than those of Assyria.

The conclusion seems to be that we are to-day entering on an era in which war will not only flourish as vigorously as in the past, although not in so chronic a form, but with an altogether new ferocity and ruthlessness, with a vastly increased power of destruction, and on a scale of extent and intensity involving an injury to civilisation and humanity which no wars of the past ever perpetrated. Moreover, this state of things imposes on the nations which have hitherto, by their temper, their position, or their small size, regarded themselves as nationally neutral, a new burden of armament in order to ensure that neutrality. It has been proclaimed on both sides that this war is a war to destroy militarism. But the disappearance of a militarism that is only destroyed by a greater militarism offers no guarantee at all for any triumph of Civilisation or Humanity.

What then are we to do? It seems clear that we have to recognise that our intellectual leaders of old who declared that to ensure the disappearance of war we have but to sit still and fold our hands while we watch the beneficent growth of science and intellect were grievously mistaken. War is still one of the active factors of modern life, though by no means the only factor which it is in our power to grasp and direct. By our energetic effort the world can be moulded. It is the concern of all of us, and especially of those nations which are strong enough and enlightened enough to take a leading part in human affairs, to work towards the initiation and the organisation of this immense effort. In so far as the Great War of to-day acts as a spur to such effort it will not have been an unmixed calamity.

V

IS WAR DIMINISHING?

The cheerful optimism of those pacifists who looked for the speedy extinction of war has lately aroused much scorn. There really seem to have been people who believed that new virtues of loving-kindness are springing up in the human breast to bring about the universal reign of peace spontaneously, while we all still continued to cultivate our old vices of international greed, suspicion, and jealousy. Dr. Frederick Adams Woods, in the challenging and stimulating study of the prevalence of war in Europe from 1450 to the present day which he has lately written in conjunction with Mr. Alexander Baltzly, easily throws contempt upon such pacifists. All their beautiful arguments, he tells us in effect, count for nothing. War is to-day raging more furiously than ever in the world, and it is even doubtful whether it is diminishing. That is the subject of the book Dr. Woods and Mr. Baltzly have written: Is War Diminishing?

The method adopted by these authors is to count up the years of war since 1450 for each of the eleven chief nations of Europe possessing an ancient history, and to represent the results by the aid of charts. These charts show that certainly there has been a great falling off in war during the period in question. Wars, as there presented to us, seem to have risen to a climax in the century 1550-1650 and to have been declining ever since. The authors, themselves, however, are not quite in sympathy with their own conclusion. "There is only," Dr. Woods declares, "a moderate amount of probability in favour of declining war." He insists on the fact that the period under investigation represents but a very small fraction of the life of man. He finds that if we take England several centuries further back, and compare its number of war-years during the last four centuries with those during the preceding four centuries, the first period shows 212 years of war, the second shows 207 years, a negligible difference, while for France the corresponding number of war-years are 181 and 192, an actual and rather considerable increase. There is the further consideration that if we regard not frequency but intensity of war—if we could, for instance, measure a war by its total number of casualties—we should doubtless find that wars are showing a tendency to ever-increasing gravity. On the whole, Dr. Woods is clearly rather discontented with the tendency of his own and his collaborator's work to show a diminution of war, and modestly casts doubt on all those who believe that the tendency of the world's history is in the direction of such a diminution.

An honest and careful record of facts, however, is always valuable. Dr. Woods' investigation will be found useful even by those who are by no means anxious to throw cold water over the too facile optimism of some pacifists, and this little book suggests lines of thought which may prove fruitful in various directions, not always foreseen by the authors.

Dr. Woods emphasises the long period in the history of the human race during which war has flourished. He seems to suggest that war, after all, may be an essential and beneficial element in human affairs, destined to endure to the end, just as it has been present from the beginning. But has it been present from the beginning? Even though war may have flourished for many thousands of years—and it was certainly flourishing at the dawn of history—we are still very far indeed from the dawn of human life or even of human civilisation, for the more our knowledge of the past grows the more remote that dawn is seen to be. It is not only seen to be very remote, it is seen to be very important. Darwin said that it was during the first three years of life that a man learnt most. That saying is equally true of humanity as a whole, though here one must translate years into hundreds of thousands of years. But neither infant man nor infant mankind could establish themselves firmly on the path that leads so far if they had at the very outset, in accordance with Dr. Woods' formula for more recent ages, "fought about half the time." An activity of this kind which may be harmless, or even in some degree beneficial at a later stage, would be fatally disastrous at an early stage. War, as Mankind understands war, seems to have no place among animals living in Nature. It seems equally to have had no place, so far as investigation has yet been able to reveal, in the life of early man. Men were far too busy in the great fight against Nature to fight against each other, far too absorbed in the task of inventing methods of self-preservation to have much energy left for inventing methods of self-destruction. It was once supposed that the Homeric stories of war presented a picture of life near the beginning of the world. The Homeric picture in fact corresponds to a stage in human barbarism, certainly in its European manifestation, a stage also passed through in Northern Europe, where, nearly fifteen hundred years ago, the Greek traveller, Posidonius, found the Celtic chieftains in Britain living much like the people in Homer. But we now know that Homer, so far from bringing before us a primitive age, really represents the end of a long stage of human development, marked by a slow and steady growth in civilisation and a vast accumulation of luxury. War is a luxury, in other words a manifestation of superfluous energy, not possible in those early stages when all the energies of men are taken up in the primary business of preserving and maintaining life. So it was that war had a beginning in human history. Is it unreasonable to suppose that it will also have an end?

There is another way, besides that of counting the world's war-years, to determine the probability of the diminution and eventual disappearance of war. We may consider the causes of war, and the extent to which these causes are, or are not, ceasing to operate. Dr. Woods passingly realises the importance of this test and even enumerates what he considers to be the causes of war, without, however, following up his clue. As he reckons them, they are four in number: racial, economic, religious, and personal. There is frequently a considerable amount of doubt concerning the cause of a particular war, and no doubt the causes are usually mixed and slowly accumulative, just as in disease a number of factors may have gradually combined to bring on the sudden overthrow of health. There can be no doubt that the four causes enumerated have been very influential in producing war. There can, however, be equally little doubt that nearly all of them are diminishing in their war-producing power. Religion, which after the Reformation seemed to foment so many wars, is now practically almost extinct as a cause of war in Europe. Economic causes which were once regarded as good and sound motives for war have been discredited, though they cannot be said to be abolished; in the Middle Ages fighting was undoubtedly a most profitable business, not only by the booty which might thus be obtained, but by the high ransoms which even down to the seventeenth century might be legitimately demanded for prisoners. So that war with France was regarded as an English gentleman's best method of growing rich. Later it was believed that a country could capture the "wealth" of another country by destroying that country's commerce, and in the eighteenth century that doctrine was openly asserted even by responsible statesmen; later, the growth of political economy made clear that every nation flourishes by the prosperity of other nations, and that by impoverishing the nation with which it traded a nation impoverishes itself, for a tradesman cannot grow rich by killing his customers. So it came about that, as Mill put it, the commercial spirit, which during one period of European history was the principal cause of war, became one of its strongest obstacles, though, since Mill wrote, the old fallacy that it is a legitimate and advantageous method to fight for markets, has frequently reappeared.20 Again, the personal causes of war, although in a large measure incalculable, have much smaller scope under modern conditions than formerly. Under ancient conditions, with power centred in despotic monarchs or autocratic ministers, the personal causes of war counted for much. In more recent times it has been said, truly or falsely, that the Crimean War was due to the wounded feelings of a diplomatist. Under modern conditions, however, the checks on individual initiative are so many that personal causes must play an ever-diminishing part in war.

The same can scarcely be said as regards Dr. Woods' remaining cause of war. If by racialism we are to understand nationalism, this has of late been a serious and ever-growing provocative of war. Internationalism of feeling is much less marked now than it was four centuries ago. Nationalities have developed a new self-consciousness, a new impulse to regain their old territories or to acquire new territories. Not only Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, and British Imperialism, like all other imperialisms, but even the national ambitions of some smaller Powers have acquired a new and dangerous energy. They are not the less dangerous when, as is indeed most frequently the case, they merely represent the ambition, not of the people as a whole, but merely of a military or bureaucratic clique, of a small chauvinistic group, yet noisy and energetic enough to win over unscrupulous politicians. A German soldier, a young journalist of ability, recently wrote home from the trenches: "I have often dreamed of a new Europe in which all the nations would be fraternally united and live together as one people; it was an end which democratic feeling seemed to be slowly preparing. Now this terrible war has been unchained, fomented by a few men who are sending their subjects, their slaves rather, to the battlefield, to slay each other like wild beasts. I should like to go towards these men they call our enemies and say, 'Brothers, let us fight together. The enemy is behind us.' Yes, since I have been wearing this uniform I feel no hatred for those who are in front, but my hatred has grown for those in power who are behind." That is a sentiment which must grow mightily with the growth of democracy, and as it grows the danger of nationalism as a cause of war must necessarily decrease.

There is, however, one group of causes of war, of the first importance, which Dr. Woods has surprisingly omitted, and that is the group of political causes. It is by overlooking the political aspects of war that Dr. Woods' discussion is most defective. Supposed political necessity has been in modern times perhaps the very chief cause of war. That is to say that wars are largely waged for what has been supposed to be the protection, or the furtherance, of the civilised organisation which orders the temporal benefits of a nation. This is admirably illustrated by all three of the great European wars in which England has taken part during the past four centuries: the war against Spain, the war against France, and the present war against Germany. The fundamental motive of England's participation in all these wars has been what was conceived to be the need of England's safety, it was essentially political. A small island Power, dependent on its fleet, and yet very closely adjoining the continental mainland, is vitally concerned in the naval developments of possibly hostile Powers and in the military movements which affect the opposite coast. Spain, France, and Germany all successively threatened England by a formidable fleet, and they all sought to gain possession of the coast opposite England. To England, therefore, it seemed a measure of political self-defence to strike a blow as each fresh menace arose. In every case Belgium has been the battlefield on land. The neutrality of Belgium is felt to be politically vital to England. Therefore, the invasion of Belgium by a Great Power is to England an immediate signal of war. It is not only England's wars that have been mainly political; the same is true of Germany's wars ever since Prussia has had the leadership of Germany. The political condition of a country without natural frontiers and surrounded by powerful neighbours is a perpetual source of wars which, in Germany's case, have been, by deliberate policy, offensively defensive.