THL FREE MAN AND TBE SOLDIER
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THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER.
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THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
ESSAYS ON THE RECONCILIATION OF LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE
BY
RALPH BARTON PERRY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
T5«
Copyright, 1916, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published August, 1916
AUG3019to
©CI,A437454
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO
S. B. P.
PREFACE
The sort of truth that is in most danger of getting itself ignored is the whole truth. It is usually too monotonously obvious to attract attention, too insipid to lend a relish to con- versation, and too dull to point a paragraph. Half-truths hold the stage, and divide the al- legiance of mankind among them. Thus, instead of agreeing that we are somewhere in the middle of progress, with something done and something yet to do, opinion is divided between the old and the young, between those who believe that the world is rapidly approaching its end and those who believe that it has just begun. Optimist and pessimist, anarchist and reactionary, atheist and bigot, feminist and misogynist, these are some of the character-parts which the human mind admires and loves to assume. The present crisis in human affairs has given a fearful urgency to two great human problems. First, how shall one be secure and yet peaceful? Second, how shall we act in concert and yet remain free in-
viii PREFACE
dividuals? In each case the solution of the problem requires the reconciliation of two in- dispensable values. And yet men divide them- selves into parties and become blind to one of these values through excess of zeal for the other. Thus militarists for security's sake abandon the ideal of peace, and pacifists for the sake of peace shut their eyes to violence and danger. Or in- dividualists in the name pf freedom protest against organization and authority; while na- tionalists from love of country forget that no cotmtry is worthy of being loved that is not the home of independent and happy individuals. Thus the solid truth escapes notice, from too much looking at one or another of its flat sur- faces. Even if the truth be hard to win, it is worth something to see it on both sides and to comprehend its dimensions. Whatever be sound policy in the present crisis it must provide a way by which liberty and peace shall be con- sistent with solidarity and strength; by which a man may take his place as a soldier in the ranks, and yet remain free.
Essays I, II, IV, and V have appeared in part in The New Republic ; VI and XI in The Atlantic Monthly; VII in The International Journal of
PREFACE ix
Ethics ; VIII in The New York Times ; X in The Forum ; and XII in Harper^ s Weekly. My thanks are due to the editors of these periodicals for per- mission to reprint.
Ralph Barton Perry.
Cambridge, Mass.^ June 15, 1916.
CONTENTS
PAGB
Preface vii
I. The Free Man and the Soldier . . 3
II. The Vigil of Arms 15
III. The Tolerant Nation 44
rv. Impressions of a Plattsburg Recruit . 73
V. The Fact of War and the Hope of Peace S$
VI. What Is Worth Fighting For? ... 95
VII. Non-Resistance and the Present War 123
VIII. Who is Responsible? 138
IX. The University and the Individual . . 152
X. Education for Freedom 176
XI. The Useless Virtues . . . . . .195
XII. The Condescending Man and the Ob- structive Woman 214
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
WHEN General Miles on a recent occasion expressed himself as opposed to universal military service, he was quoted as saying that the American people would never allow them- selves to be "Prussianized." It is customary to say that if a people is to be trained to arms they must become spiritually or fundamentally "regi- mented." This dictum has usually passed un- challenged. It is regarded as a sort of axiom, which even the extremest advocates of prepared- ness are rarely bold enough to deny. And yet curiously enough, even the superficial facts are against it. Thus, whatever we mean by that individualism which we prize, we do not look to China for examples of it. China, whether justly or unjustly, signifies to Occidental minds that very uniformity and stagnation which points the moral, and yet China is notable among the na- tions for its lack of military discipline. France, on the other hand, was for centuries the most
3
4 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
soldierly nation of Europe, and has in recent years made the most exacting military demands upon her citizens. Yet France remains pre- eminently liberal and cosmopolitan. France is a perpetual source of novelty, of modernisms and futurisms, of those departures from tradition and type, those excesses and daring conceits which scandahze and inspire, and which spring from a free mind roaming at large in its world.
What shall we say of ourselves ? We have been let alone for haK a century. No drill-master has taught us to keep aHgnments and intervals or to step a regulation thirty inches. No bugle- call has intruded upon our private affairs and summoned us to march the same road. We have not been swept by collective passion or articu- lated in any smooth-working mechanism. But what have we been doing? Have we become in- dividuals ? Are we eminent among the nations as a race of ample personalities? Are our laboring men notable for self-respect and self-sufficiency? Does our leisured class breed creative genius, or our poHtical life leadership and constructive statesmanship ? What, then, is this individualism which we are so afraid to lose?
Let us be willing to say of ourselves what we would not unnaturally resent if it were uttered
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 5
by an alien critic. We are a bit sodden, a bit too fond of what money will buy. We are not guilt- less of hiring an army in order to enjoy our Cartha- ginian ease. We enjoy irresponsibility as the child enjoys it. Some few, having a day full of "engagements" and pastimes, would like to be left uninterrupted. The great majority are sol- aced by the hope of rising in life to the same privilege or are embittered by their exclusion from it. The absence of discipline has not, then, perfected us as individuals, though it may have tolerated our selfishness and spread wide the envious hope of making a fortune. Indeed, the absence of a more conscious and rational col- lectivism has rendered us peculiarly defenseless against factional solidarities, against vogues and fads, against contagious sentimentaHties and un- scrupulous demagoguery. We are notoriously afraid of the mass opinion that we help to create. We have the greatest respect for the normal, and are quick to catch and echo the popular note. There are so many ears to the ground that there is often nothing to hear except the confused noise created by so much listening.
When we turn to our pohtical liberties, on the other hand, we can speak with greater confidence. ' Liberty of the press, trial by jury, freedom of.
6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
speech, popular government, self-respecting civic autonomy, these are solid goods. These we justly believe to be spiritual achievements, by which we would like history to know us. But these are collective achievements, founded in organization and secured by organization. We do not owe them to our laxity and incohesiveness, but to constitutions and to laws. They exist not by virtue of private self-assertion, but by virtue of a disciplined regard for the rights of others. We owe them to that tradition and experience which impels us with loyal accord to support a system that defines our mutual relations and estabhshes our collective life.
If we cannot point to ourselves as bright ex- amples of the blessings of undiscipHned freedom, there remains, perhaps, the example of England, or the contrast of England and Germany. The war has already proved the necessity, for specif- ically military purposes, of national organiza- tion and universal service. If the Allies win the war it will be because having tardily acquired these virtues they enjoy certain residual advan- tages as well. But while this is granted, it will be said that England has owed her superior in- dividualism to her lack of just such military organization and discipline, and that Germany
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 7
has sacrificed individualism in order to possess them. Now I am one of those who beheve that England does possess an individualism which Germany lacks, and that this individualism is a mark of superiority. Even this is not unqualifiedly true in view of the degree of snobbery and class antagonism which mars the democracy of Eng- land. But the fact remains that England is pre- eminently the home of men who know their rights and who sturdily insist upon them. Through combining independence with steadiness and practical sagacity, England has forged our con- stitutional liberties, has disseminated the spirit of tolerance and self-criticism, and has insisted upon owning and using her institutions instead of being enslaved or absorbed by them. In Ger- many, on the other hand, there is a certain political flabbiness, which tolerates authority too easily. Even art, science, and religion, which ought to emancipate the individual, have become a means of confirming and sanctifying his submission.
If this be the case, it is nevertheless important to avoid confusing causes and effects, or assum- ing without reason that things which happen to- gether are therefore causally and inseparably re- lated. The Englishman's opposition to universal military service is undoubtedly associated in his
8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
own mind with the individualism he admires and claims as his own. But the opposition is not, I think, so much a logical defense of his individuaUsm as a temperamental expression of it, a sort of psychological by-product. He would prefer to serve his country in war just as he would prefer to do anything else, as a matter of "sport," or from the motive of noblesse oblige, or out of fondness for tradition. He doesn't like anything that looks too orderly and prescribed, too freshly and deliberately made. He is fond of his crotchets, and regards reason as a sort of parvenu. TroUope wrote of one of his more doubtful characters: "He isn't of our sort. He's too clever, too cosmopolitan — a sort of man whitewashed of all prejudices, who wouldn't mind whether he ate horseflesh or beef if horse- flesh were as good as beef, and never had an as- sociation in his life." Universal military train- ing is too rational, too schematic, too exclusively mindful of the bare utilities and essentials. The Englishman shrinks from it as he shrinks from an adequate national system of education, or from the metric system, or from phonetic spelling. If it could only become a tradition like royalty and the top-hat, or an adventure like governing India and playing football, or a matter of instinct
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 9
like the morning tub, he would cling to it until it had long since become obsolete. For the mili- tary virtues in themselves are unobjectionable. It is not the substance of the thing, but rather the deHberate act of adoption that is repugnant to English individualism. It is impossible to believe that once in vogue such a system would in the least abridge an Englishman's essential liberties or seriously alter the peculiar tone of his national life.
That it is the methodical rather than the com^ pulsory element in a universal system of training and service which has stood in the way of its acceptance in England, appears in the readiness with which the pressure of pubhc opinion is used as a means of coercion. The voluntary theory impHes that men shall volunteer. It does not mean that men shall freely choose to serve or not to serve, according to taste or aptitude, but that they shall choose service according as na- tional exigencies shall dictate. In practise this leads inevitably to the ugliest sort of coercion. Many men who nominally volunteer are as a matter of fact shamed into it. They are shamed into it at first by example. If that does not suffice they are called hard names, such as "slackers.'' Unorganized pressure gives place in time to or-
lo THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
ganized pressure. Among those who are thus systematically persecuted are many who not un- naturally resent an interference with what they have been taught to beHeve is their just liberty of action. The remnant thus harried and cornered is eventually coerced by conscription; which when thus arrived at, as a measure of last resort, is unblushing tyranny. The whole process, in short, is one of first conferring rights and then outraging them by sheer force. Where, on the other hand, the state is legally entitled to the military service of its citizens, as it is entitled to some fraction of their property, military service is taken for granted. It is acknowledged as an obligation, and is sustained by the law-abiding habits of the community. It is accepted in the spirit of fair play, r part of that general order of Hfe which a free i an accepts as a contracting beneficiary.
Universal mJH service is otherwise opposed in England for eco ic reasons of a very different sort. The laborir^^ i not unjustly feels that he is a creditor ana noi debtor in his relations to the state. To him c ulsory service savors of tyranny because it is ^sed upon him by an
authority that has neglec him. The tradition of laissez-faire, which has ught him that he
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER ii
must look out for himself, has ^ot taught him to be grateful. In so far as the state absolves itself of responsibility it can impose no obligations. The moral of this difficulty is not that universal military service should therefore be rejected, but that the state should inspire and deserve the loyalty of its citizens through a just regard for their needs. Indeed, we are brought back to a much more fundamental and far-reaching ques- tion than any which concerns merely military exigencies alone. Laissez-faire fosters a com- placent selfishness among the successful, an ag- gressive selfishness among the hopeful, an envious selfishness among those who are unsuccessful, and a bitter selfishness among those who are hopeless. If this be individualism, the less of it the better. Neither its spirit nor its fruits are to be numbered among the blessings of English civilization. And in so far as it operates as a cause of opposition to universal military service, it argues for rather than against such a system.
If England affords no evidence that the absence of universal military service is the cause of an individualism that is worthy and admirable, it will yet be argued that Germany illustrates the blighting effects of its adoption. That the mili- tary system of Germany forms part of a dynastic,
12 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
bureaucratic and cultural system which as a whole is prejudicial to the best individualism does not, I think, require proof. One does not look to Germany for a tolerant cosmopolitanism, or for a jealous insistence upon the great civil liberties. But this is not a direct and necessary consequence of its mihtary mechanism. It is due to the pur- pose which directs that mechanism: to the spirit which dominates it, and the use which is made of it. The deeper causes are to be found in the Prussian traditions of conquest and dynastic right, in the Germanic philosophy of the state as absorbing and superseding its citizens, and per- haps in a racial propensity to domineer. These ideas find in the military system a harsh and ef- fective mode of expression. But the army is the instrument and not the cause. A fraternal and chivalrous people like the French have created a fraternal and chivalrous army. An unaggressive and home-loving people like the Swiss have created a defensive army. A democratic and radical people like the Australians have adapted a national military system to their ideals of pop- ular government and the dignity of labor.
Military preparedness in itself means nothing more than foresight and organization applied to the contingency of war. The alternative is blind-
THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER 13
ness and confusion. War is an actuality and a genuine peril. It is, furthermore, a peril which threatens the collective Hfe; there is no interest, however exalted, that is immune. Preparedness is therefore every man's concern. A national system of training and service is simply the re- sponsible, concerted, and effective way of meeting this peril. But the spirit which animates a mih- tary organization, on the other hand, will reflect the interests which men desire to safeguard. If we in America desire to be and remain free, if there is a peculiar tone of personal independence and equality that is the breath of Hfe to us, then that is the end to which our military organization will be consecrated, and that is the spirit which we shall carry with us into it. If we are to be free, we must be safely and effectively free. There must be a place secured for freedom, and to secure that freedom, free men may be soldiers.
A deliberate and rational concert of action does not hamper individuahty. If there is any one in- controvertible principle that governs life, it is this: that freedom does not come of letting things take their course. Free individuals are not spon- taneously generated by the bare removal of re- strictions; they are the products of discipHne and order. A freedom that knows no bounds is
14 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
the conceit of impatient and careless minds. A military system that is imposed from without, or hastily improvised in a moment of panic, may in- deed be tyrannical. But a system freely adopted, in order to do loyally and skilfully that which must be done, is primarily a matter of morale and character. Over and above that it will vary with the genius and aims of the people who create it and enter into it.
Since war is an actuality and a genuine peril, let us soberly undertake the burden it imposes. Let us cultivate the soldierly quahties, and let us equip ourselves with the tools which are effective in modem warfare. Let us acquire the capacity for organized action, and be ready for the occasion which a rational man will both fear and deprecate. But let us be such soldiers as we would be men. If we are lovers of liberty and devotees of peace, lot us inscribe these ideals on our banners.
II
THE VIGIL OF ARMS
IT was thought appropriate that a man should pass the eve of his knighthood "bestowing himself in orisons and prayers." A knight should be a good knight, "a noble and gentle knight" — one dedicated to service and jealous of honor. Power is admirable only when restrained. Phys- ical strength in a man is justified only by the weakness which it succors, by the incorporeal things to which it gives a body. Unless their use is redeemed by necessity or by some humane cause, arms are merely cruel and mischievous. The sentiments and symbols associated with war are ways of recognizing its inherent hatefulness. They are the means of concealing the ugly truth that arms are devised to kill with. If the use of arms can be judged even tolerable it must be be- cause of the soldier's code and the soldier's cause. Hence a nation about to arm itself should confess its sins and renew allegiance to its ideals. The knight took vows to protect the holy sepul- chre, "to maintain and defend all ladies, gentle-
15
i6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
women, orphans, widows, women distressed and abandoned,*' or to perfect himself in purity, fidehty and honesty. It will not do to substitute for a code so exacting as that of chivalry, or a cause so clear as that of the crusades, a mere in- determinate vow of patriotism. Loyalty to one's country, unless one understands its policy and helps to mould it, is simply a shirking of the prior obligation to think for oneself.
Mihtary service is at once a necessity, a good and a danger. But it is primarily a necessity. By this I mean that it is justified only as a means to an imperative end. It is not to be undertaken for itself, nor is it Hghtly to be adopted as a means. Nothing short of national safety or some higher design of international justice and order, can make it reasonable to cultivate the art of destruction. But since military service is so justified, as a painful necessity like surgery, cap- ital punishment or self-sacrifice, it is reasonable that it should be done well, and soberly under- taken as a function of the state. In a democracy this means that it should be acknowledged and assumed as an obligation by all citizens. For democracy implies that there shall be neither privilege nor immunity. "All the inhabitants of the state are its defenders by birth," said Scharn-
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 17
horst. If this could be said of Prussia, it can be said with greater reason of a country Hke our own which proclaims the principle of civic equal- ity.
The scale and the method of modern warfare make universal training not only an appropriate means, but an indispensable means. An untrained nation depending on a small professional army or on a horde of "embattled farmers" and other in- dignant citizens, presents the same pitiful spec- tacle as that afforded by the dervishes who fought Kitchener with spears at Omdurman. An armed man attacked with the naked fist, shot and shell opposed by bows and arrows, men trained to use the most improved implements of war re- sisted by equally brave men who have hith- erto handled nothing but a hammer, spade, trowel, tennis-racket, billiard-cue or umbrella — this is not magnificent, or even absurd; it is heart-breaking. Those who make it possible by their stubborn complacency or irrelevant idealism, are in effect as culpable as those who, because they preferred the individual to the group, and counted the souFs culture more important than mere bodily safety, might consent that undrilled children should crowd an inflammable school- house.
i8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
The opposition to universal training, like the opposition to more limited forms of preparedness, is due more to ignorance than to principle. Thus our recently appointed Secretary of War confesses that he has changed his ideas as to the sufficiency of our military resources. He is reported to have said that "it is simply a matter of getting in- formation."^ He has discovered that a shght additional compHcation on the Mexican border would make it necessary to call upon 'Hhe entire standing army of the United States." "One cannot," he adds sagely, " consider such facts as that from an inside angle without reahzing that our army would be totally inadequate to handle a real war difficulty ! " The naivete of this con- fession is astounding. One would have supposed that by putting two and two together, and re- peating the operation a few times, Mr. Baker might have reached the same conclusion without being admitted to the "inside." What must be the feeling of those who have mastered the technic of military art, those army chiefs who, as Secretary Baker has also discovered, are not spoiling for war but are simply trained and thoughtful men who feel responsible for a cer-
* From an interview by Fred C. Kelly, published in Harper's Weekly for April 22, 19 16.
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 19
tain branch of the national service — ^what must be their feeling as this new scholar publicly re- cites his alphabet with all the airs of profound insight !
A policy of adequate military preparedness is not, except for those few persons who profess non-resistance, a question of principle, but of prudence and expediency. To be converted to it, it is only necessary to learn by experience, to observe facts and make inferences, and to govern one's present actions by a sane regard for future contingencies. In other words, it is merely a question of being normally intelligent about the hazard of war. Even universal military training is, I believe, dictated by mere prudence, quite apart from the wholesomeness and fairness of having the duty of defense undertaken jointly by all whose interest is at stake.
There is gradually unfolding^ in England a most impressive, and, to all friends of England, a most distressing object-lesson in the failure of the voluntary system. This system creates the very resistance that it has to overcome. Events have proved, it seems to me quite unmistakably, that there is no real choice between compulsory service and voluntary service, but only between compul-
* Written in March, 1916.
20 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
sion in advance, as a part of the deliberate policy of the state, and compulsion in the midst of the national crisis. In the latter case it is too late to be fully effective, and is imposed unexpectedly upon those who are by elimination the most un- wiUing to serve, and who have been taught to believe that compulsory service is contrary to the political principles under which they live.
Granting universal military duty to be the ef- fectual as well as the democratic way of doing what must be done, it follows that it is reason- able to make a virtue of necessity. And here it is proper to argue the educational benefits of miHtary training. That such benefits do accrue, no one who has had the least experience will deny. Prompt obedience, the economy of time, power to work effectively with all sorts of men, the ignoring of minor vexations and discomforts, self-sufficiency as regards the elementary things of Hfe, physical health and endurance, manual expertness — these are some of the lessons that are learned in the school of war. They are not carried away in note-books but under the skin in nerve and muscle. The greatest lesson of all is the habit of thinking nationally, the feeling that one has a country, and that one owes it something. A man then makes the acquaintance
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 21
of his country as a whole, and for once, at least, looks it in the face.
Now there are doubtless other ways in which this national-mindedness may be cultivated. Pro- fessor Dewey has proposed the centralization of the educational system, and Mr. Walter Lipp- mann has proposed the government ownership of railways.^ It can be urged against any of these proposals, including that of universal military training, that it implies the existence of that very national-mindedness which it is supposed to promote. There is evidently a circle that has got to be broken somewhere. A general national pohcy, foreign and domestic, for peace and for war, in education and in economic life, will de- velop rapidly when once the federal authority is an object of loyalty and confidence; and when on its part it serves the people with greater fore- sight, with a broader grasp of the total situation, and with a more serious sense of responsibility. But this new state of things cannot be certainly achieved by any single act or propaganda. No man can tell where the existing habits are weakest and may most easily be overthrown, or what may appeal most vividly to the imagination of the people. If educational and economic reform
* The New Kepuhlic, for February 19 and April 15, 1916.
22 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
can break the circle, by all means let them go forward. Meanwhile the spectacular tragedy of war, and the sudden necessity of thinking poHt- ically upon the larger international scale, have already done much to arouse us from our sepa- ratism and complacency. There is a spreading beHef that if we are to take part in the making of history we must acquire the strength to do it. MiHtary training, or some other exercise to make oneseK fit for national service, is a natural out- growth of the desire to act in this great crisis when every good thing is in jeopardy. It may well be that this emergency will enable us to find ourselves; and that from marching together, or working together to make the nation strong, we shall get a new sense of comradeship and of partnership that shall in the end revolutionize our culture and our social order.
But it is neither the necessity of miHtary ser- vice, nor the virtue that may be made of this necessity, with which I want here more especially to deal. Military service has also its attendant dangers. I urge them not as arguments against it, but as abuses to be avoided. If there is any institution that is an unmixed blessing, I have never heard of it. It is not religion, for example, or conscience, or art, or government. Every
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 23
political or social policy has its dangers; democ- racy itself has, perhaps, the most insidious dan- gers of all. But we do not abandon such policies when we have reason to believe that they are necessary, or are the most hopeful alternatives open to us. We adopt them, and then seek so far as possible to offset the attendant dangers. This we can do all the better for being put on our guard.
So in the case of universal military service I shall summarize its dangers not in order to throw them in the balance against it, but in order to suggest positive measures by which these dangers can be avoided. If as a nation we are to take up arms, or even exercise ourselves in their use, it must be with a certain solemnity. Arms are edged tools; they are not playthings. If we are to acquire their use we must learn to use them safely, and only for a serious purpose. We must take measures to prevent their abuse, and to safeguard the superior interests which they might otherwise injure. Their use must be adjusted to those ends that justify our national existence. Military service should not only be dedicated to the highest end within the range of our present moral vision, but it should be informed with whatever human quality we think is finest, and
24 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
corrected or offset by whatever measures may effectually protect our liberties and minimize the inevitable sacrifice.
There never was a greater need than now of a comprehensive poHcy. The vivid fact of war and the new historical crisis have already upset our equilibrium — despite every attempt on our part to hold aloof. New national policies are inevit- able, and have, in fact, already been inaugurated. It is necessary, therefore, as though we were moving into a new house in a more thickly settled neighborhood, to see to it that there are rooms for all the family, places for our possessions, and shrines for our gods. In particular, how shall we be as strong as the hazard of war requires with the least prejudice to our peaceful pursuits and our constructive humane ends? It is the impor- tance, here and now, of such a stock-taking and reckoning of cost that will justify, I hope, the rehearsal of famiHar truisms.
I. The American army should both be ded- icated to the service of democracy, and also be itself an example of democracy. Democracy is on trial, as it has been many times before. Usually the jury has disagreed. The charge has always been the same, namely, that democracy implies a lack of organization which breeds lawlessness,
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 25
corruption and weakness. Just now it is a ques- tion whether a democracy can survive. Can it unite with liberty, equality and fraternity, enough strength to enable it to hold its own among gov- ernments which enjoy a greater concentration of power, and which can avail themselves of general habits of subordination and obedience? Can a house be governed by discussion without being divided against itself and suffering the proverbial penalty? The future alone holds the answer. But this much is evident — that unless a democ- racy can be strong it cannot be said to have suc- ceeded at all. Therefore, whoever devotes him- self to democracy must seek ways of making it strong. He who neglects the question of mih- tary preparedness fails not only to solve the problem of democracy but even to grasp it. A democratic government must be able to do what other governments do, namely, provide security against attack from abroad, and the necessary mechanism and organization by which the na- tion may exert its united strength when occasion requires. A democracy which relies for the execution of its policies on the indulgence or accidental interest of other nations, is a con- fessed failure. If, for example, we wish to de- fend Belgium against Germany but have to call
26 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
Upon France to do it for us; if we avow the Monroe Doctrine but trust that if it comes to blows the Enghsh fleet will help us out; then our government has failed, whatever liberty of speech and thought we may enjoy in our domestic af- fairs. To prove that a democracy can maintain itself, protect the interests under its charge, and be as good as its word, is then the service which the armed force of a democracy owes to the cause of democracy.
Like all of the agencies of the central govern- ment the military organization is in danger of spreading the error that the state is an end in itself. The symbols of war, the flag, martial music, the rhythm of parade, all of these tend to beget an idolatrous worship. Democracy is founded on the principle that the authority of government is justified only by the benefits which accrue to the governed. Democratic patriotism is not a blind and slavish loyalty, but is mixed with a strain of intelligent self-interest and providence. A democracy must not allow its head to be turned by drum-beats and gold braid. The real business of life is still to promote the happiness and well-being of individual men and women. The agencies of war as well as those of peace must be regulated and rigorously judged
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 27
with reference to this end. The mere emotional effervescence of the war spirit must not be al- lowed to create "The Great Illusion," or any other illusion by which men are prevented from recognizing where their interest lies. Though the immediate object of military loyalty must be the state, that object must not in a democ- racy be worshipped by a devotee who asks nothing in return, but rather prized by one who well understands its beneficence.
If the army and navy are not to subvert the democracy for which they act, they must be democratic in their own internal spirit and or- ganization, without loss of discipline.^ This is by no means impossible. It was achieved by the French armies of 1792; and, if we are to trust the reports, has been again achieved by the French armies of to-day. A football team is not less democratic for its team-work or for having a captain. Each individual member of the team feels that he depends on all the rest, and that it is necessary that there should be some one to lead and give commands. He who leads
^The critics of universal service are as a rule silent regarding the objections that can so easily be urged against a professional army. A hired army is neither so representative, nor so responsible, nor so voluntary in its service as a citizen army. There is a very forcible discussion of the matter in F. S, Oliver's Ordeal by Battle, part IV, chap. VII.
28 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
and he who is led both play indispensable parts and serve the same end. So in a democratic army the officer and the private are comrades because, each doing something needful, they acknowledge one another's support in the common cause. The officer is not a person who enjoys privileges so much as one whose duties are more exacting and more responsible. He is less distinguished by his trappings than by his long hours. He is more bound than the private, who looks to him rather with gratitude than with envy.
Responsible leadership and prompt concerted obedience are not undemocratic where they are pervaded by an understanding of the game, and the will to play one's part in it. They become undemocratic only when the difference between officer and private coincides with more generally recognized social cleavages. To avoid this it is necessary that officers and men should be recruited from the same social classes, so that superiority of military rank should be identified only with superiority in military skill, or with that native quality of leadership which is inde- pendent of breeding or culture. It is important that men of wealth and position should serve in the ranks, and that men who are favored only by their military experience and native fitness
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 29
should rise from the ranks to command them. To the same end it is important that humihating punishments should be avoided, and the author- ity of officers confined within clearly recognized bounds, so as to protect the self-respect of privates from the abuse or caprice of authority. In short, a democratic army must owe its discipline to morale and loyalty, rather than to harshness and to fear. It is self-evident that there is most hope of fostering this spirit in an army of citizens con- scious both of the equal dignity and of the com- mon service which that role implies.
In his famous essay, "On Liberty," which is still the best specific for paternalism. Mill says that a free people must be "accustomed to trans- act their own business." He cites the resource- fulness of the French in times of revolution as being due to their military experience and the presence everywhere among the people of men who have been non-commissioned officers, and who have therefore a capacity to lead and to organize a plan of action. He attributes to Americans a like resourcefulness "in every kind of civil business," and contrasts France and America with the bureaucracy in which "all the experience and practical abihty of the nation" has been organized "into a disciplined body for
30 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
the purpose of governing the rest." A free people must be a people in which potential leadership is everywhere widely diffused; in which all have some aptitude both to command and to obey. The personnel of the military organization should therefore be in some degree interchangeable. There is an obvious mihtary advantage in this because it creates an inexhaustible reserve of officers. But the deeper reason for it lies in its divorcing the office from the man, and substi- tuting a subordination of position for personal ar- rogance and abasement. It should serve also to keep alive within the breast of one who has be- come for the time a colorless unit in the ranks the pecuHar temperament of an individual and the high pretensions of a man. In short, a democ- racy must avoid a mihtary caste, which it can best do by making the people its own army; and it must avoid an official caste, which it can best do by flexibility of organization, frequent pro- motion from the ranks, the interpenetration of all social classes in all grades of service and the promotion of a sense of partnership and personal equality between those who command and those who obey.
2. Universal military service is consistent with democracy only in so far as it is popular.
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 31
The principal objection to the so-called voluntary system is the fact that when compulsion is at last used, as it inevitably is, it is without the support either of the habits or the judgment of the people. The constitutionality of compulsion is not disputed. Every government must at least hold it in reserve as a course of last resort. In any war with a nation of equal or superior power, it will always be probable that the voluntary system will prove inadequate. The only way of avoiding the ugly method by which after the more willing have first been drained away the more unwilling residuum is then threatened and coerced, is to adopt the policy of universal ser- vice from the outset, with open eyes, because of its utiHty and its justice. It is then possible to create habits of mind and of body that are really consistent with national needs.
The success of the poHcy in this country, as in England or any other democracy, must depend on the attitude of the working classes. There is reason to hope that organized labor may be con- verted to the principle of national service, not only from motives of patriotism, but for its educational and social advantages, and for its possible indirect bearing on economic difficulties through the creation of a better understanding
32 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
between the working man and his employer. It is also probably inevitable that universal service should lead to the state's assuming on its side a greater responsibility for the welfare of the working classes. In short, a more provident and constructive economic poUcy might well grow out of the more vigorous nationality, and the more vivid sense of co-operation and mutual dependence, that universal miHtary service would stimulate.
3. Whatever system of military service this country may adopt must be suited to our pecuhar institutions and to whatever we account indis- pensable to our national temperament. It has been argued that any military system is contrary to the genius of America. We are reminded of those who came here to escape military service, and to whom America would not be America were it not for that immunity. Now it is danger- ous to identify national life merely with immunity. Men will go anywhere to escape a disagreeable duty. That they should come to America from that motive argues no devotion to American in- stitutions and promises no willingness to assume the responsibilities of citizenship. It is a mis- fortune that America is reputed to be a land where you can make money easily and do as
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 33
you please. Those whom this repute brings to us are Hkely to feel abused when they find that here as elsewhere success requires work, law and taxes. Compulsory military service is in princi- ple contrary to no ideal save that of reaping with- out toil and sacrifice; which is a delusion on which no national life can be founded.
That which is most necessary in order to adapt mihtary training to American Hfe is that men should, as in the Swiss system, be withdrawn only for short periods from civil life. The func- tion of war must always be regarded as sub- ordinate to peaceful pursuits, in the life of the individual as well as in that of the nation. The citizen must be a non-combatant first and a soldier second. He must derive his tastes and standards from his family, economic, poHtical or recreative associations, so as to prevent the development or dominance of a distinct military type. Occasional military training, the attain- ment of skill in arms and manoeuvres, need no more suppress individuality than do athletic sports. The military uniform need no more efface personality than does the civilian uniform. As a matter of fact, uniformity in unessentials, such as clothes, step, carriage or manual dexterity, is a means by which one may escape attention and
34 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
therefore be permitted to pursue one's own way in essentials, without scrutiny and censorship. Long hair and a flowing cravat bespeak not that independence which Americans respect, but that ostentation and tenderness to social regard which Americans are inclined to find ridiculous. If there be anything in mihtary form which is contrary to our spirit it is not that unobtrusive and workmanlike uniformity which is important, but those decorations and other concessions to personal vanity which can more easily be dis- pensed with.
4. It is essential to democracy that the civil authority should be superior to the military authority, and that there should be one law and one moral code for soldiers and for shoemakers. What happened in Zabern in 1913 ought to be intolerable among Americans. The civilian con- trol of our mihtary forces is provided for in our constitutional forms and is heartily seconded by pubHc opinion. We must be content even with a loss of efficiency rather than run the risk of mihtary rule. Policy must at all times be governed by the electorate, and criticism of authority must always be tolerated so long as it is intended as an appeal to the arbitration of public opinion. Even in times of war it is essential to a democ-
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 35
racy that the great body of citizens should exer- cise their political prerogatives. It is not incon- sistent with soldierly duty that one should fight so long as a state of war exists, and yet vote for a policy that would terminate the war.
If there be any fear that an American army once organized on a formidable scale might be employed for aggressive purposes by an ambitious or unscrupulous administration, it is always pos- sible that compulsory enlistment should be con- fined to service at home, or on the borders. By such a provision a man would incur less risk of being ordered to do that which in principle he disapproves. He would not have given himself unconditionally into the keeping of another; but would have adopted the service freely from the imperative ground of national safety. It is im- possible to deny, however, that such conditional service might at times defeat the purpose of de- fense. "The only question of real importance," says Mr. F. S. OHver, "is this: At what place will the sacrifice of life be most effective for the defence of the country? If we can answer that we shall know also where it will be lightest." ^
It has been urged against compulsory service, by Mr. Norman Angell, for example, that it re-
* Ordeal by Battle, p. 403.
36 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
quires a man to fight in a war he deems un- righteous, and stops him from criticising it. That any given individual should be free at all times to do as his conscience dictates is some- what less possible in time of war than in time of peace. But the difference is only one of degree. Authority of any kind, civil or military, implies that individuals shall do under pressure what they would otherwise not do. If a man is un- fortunate enough to be a conscientious nihihst or a conscientious polygamist, he will find him- self constrained to act contrary to his own best judgment. He may have conscientious scruples against paying his taxes, or against educating his children, or against submitting to vaccination. But the state will penalize his action without respecting his conscience, and if he incites to riot on behalf of his own peculiar ideals he may have to submit to martyrdom. No way has been found nor ever will be found of avoiding this tragedy; it is simply the price which is paid for the benefits of social order. But this tragedy is minimized under Hberal political institutions by permitting individuals at stated times and in stated ways to share in the making of the laws under which they live. Under such institutions there are measures which a man may legally
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 37
take toward making the law more to his own Hking. But meanwhile he must obey it as it is — ^under protest, if he wishes.
In principle precisely the same situation exists in war-time. If the nation is in fact at war, then the executive and military authorities must prose- cute that war as effectively as they can under such laws or rules as may exist for their guidance. A citizen who does not approve of the war must bide his time. He has had his opportunity to influence national poHcy, and he will have it again. Meanwhile, he must bear his share of the burden which the national exigency imposes. Whether he be a volunteer or a conscript will not much matter. He cannot expect to reserve liberty of action in the presence of the enemy. If his conscience is offended, so much the worse for his conscience. What he needs is a new con- science which will teach him to keep the faith with his fellows until such time as their common understanding and their controlling policy shall have been modified. The man who refuses to obey the law or play the game because he has been outvoted is more likely to be afflicted with peevishness or egotism than exalted by heroism.
Under a system of national service, further- more, the army and the electorate are one and
38 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
the same. In proportion as the government is popular, the army will itself have authorized the pohcy under which it acts. Unpopular wars are much less possible imder such a system than under that system in which war is voted by one man and fought by another. When war means to each voter his own personal obKgation to abandon peaceful pursuits, submit to hardship and risk his life, he will interest himself in for- eign poUcy, and will not lightly lend his support to an aggressive or to a quixotic enterprise.
5. Since miHtary service itself emphasizes the central authority, increases soHdarity and pro- motes loyalty to whatever is traditional or es- tabhshed, it is important that it should be offset by agencies tending to independence, individuality and criticism. The greatest of these agencies is education. Over and above the education for HveKhood and the education for service, it is indispensable that there should be the education that emancipates. There could be no greater disaster in a free country than that a national educational system should be contrived merely to mobiHze the intellectual and moral resources of the community for the purposes of the state. Co-operation, patriotism and all the civic virtues must indeed be imparted, but without killing
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 39
that revolutionist and non-conformist that lives within every free man's breast. Nationalistic education must never displace that "universal" or "personal" education which Goethe said only noblemen enjoyed in his day, but which in a democracy must be open to all eager minds.
6. If war is not to be the result of caprice or accident, if it is not to be forced upon one un- expectedly by the aggression of another nation, it must be subordinated to some general inter- national policy. As has been rightly insisted, military preparations can be rational only when they are supplemented by some statesmanlike and far-reaching plan of action. The present war is rapidly destroying our traditional domestic- ity. The American poHcy has in the past been a home policy, such as the securing of indepen- dence, the winning of the West and the preserva- tion of the Union. The Monroe Doctrine, if it is to survive, must be put upon a new interna- tional basis. That we must henceforth live among nations was a heresy yesterday, but to-day it is only a truism. It is as true of a nation desiring to be let alone, as of one cherishing dreams of con- quest. For the future a nation can as little af- ford to be without an alliance as a man can afford to be without a country. That isolation
40 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
which was once our strength is now our weak- ness.
7. A liberty-loving country like our own should bring its rustic virtues into the international society. It is possible to be cosmopolitan with- out being cynical. There is no reason why we should not be diplomatic without being arrogant. There is a courtesy which reconciles pride with generosity, and enables self-respecting individuals to pay honor without inquiring too particularly whether it is due. Similarly there is a mode of national conduct which permits of national con- victions and national purpose without loss of humor and tolerance. Let us, therefore, cultivate this spirit of reciprocating and chivalrous na- tionality.
8. The political principle by which inter- national relations may be rescued from lawless- ness, but without offending against the just pride of individual nations, is federalism. Fortunately it is more than a principle; it is already an achieve- ment. The integrity of the British Empire under the strain of war is the most hopeful pohtical sign of the time. It is the most triumphant realization which history affords of that "co-existence of sev- eral nations under the same State" which Lord Acton a half-century ago said was "one of the
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 41
chief instruments of civilization/' ^ and indicative of greater advancement than the mere unity of a single state. The loyalty of the self-governing British dependencies, each with its strong local pride and ambition, with its individual differences of social organization, temperament, language and race — their instant recognition of a common crisis and a common cause, affords better ground than any event of history for the hope that all nations may some day be federated. World- wide federation means one state for international purposes, together with autonomy for national purposes. It means the rallying of all nations to the defense of the international authority and policy, while that poHcy, in turn, promotes the diversity of national cultures, and enables each nation to prosper in its own way. As Mr. H. N. Brailsford has well insisted, no international league can flourish simply "by force and threats.''^ It must promise advantages. Nations must be persuaded that they can gain their own ends best in the settled neighborhood of nations, rather than on its lawless outskirts.
The problem that arises from the contrast be- tween more advanced and more backward peoples
* History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 290. 2 The War of Steel and Gold, p. 330.
42 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
has its only chance of solution through the same principle. Somewhere there must be a frontier where strangers meet; where they must learn to be friends if not enemies, and to trade if not to plunder. The world cannot exist half savage and half civilized. There is a genuine difference be- tween a savage and a foreigner, between a Hotten- tot and a Chinaman. The one is to be educated or protected as a child; the other to be regarded, if not with understanding, then at least with re- spect, as another way of being a man. The obligation of civilization to savagery is that of helping it to its feet, without directing where it shall walk. We shall have done our work well in the Philippines if we have taught those who live there how to be different from ourselves, and how to do it well. If we were to force our culture upon them, and convert them, for ex- ample, to the literary school of Bret Harte, Mary E. Wilkins and James Whitcomb Riley, we should commit an impertinence, and impoverish the world. But if we can show them how to keep the peace among themselves and with others, how to find their own resources and develop their own capacities, and then leave them to perfect themselves in their own way, we shall have helped a brother and created a new nation.
THE VIGIL OF ARMS 43
9. He who takes up arms must enter the service of peace. This is not a mere paradox, or the echo of a prevailing sentiment, but honest downright morals. Universalism must take pre- cedence of nationahsm on the same ground that entitles nationahsm to take precedence of individu- alism. Nationalism is a higher principle of action than individuahsm, by all the other individuals of whom it takes account. A nation is not a mystical entity, other than you and me, but it is more than you or me inasmuch as it is both of us and still more besides. Similarly, humanity is more than nationahty, not because it is different, but be- cause it is bigger and more permanent. No man, least of all a soldier, can ignore any of the effects of his conduct. He must promise himself that his conduct shall in the final reckoning be helpful rather than hurtful. He must have imagination and intelligence enough to judge his action by its effects across the boundaries of his nation and of his time. If he be thus enlightened he will then justify himself only when his action, though in its first incidence it be destructive, is in its full effect a saving and multiplication of life.
Ill
THE TOLERANT NATION
WORDS sometimes owe their usefulness to their ambiguity. Thus, one's doubt or utter blankness of mind when compelled to pass judgment on a work of art is decently concealed by such words as ^^interesting" or "suggestive." The commonest word in the technical philosoph- ical vocabulary of any age is usually a label by which some part of the primeval chaos is neatly covered so that attention may be concentrated on the rest. Just now it is the word "experience." In contemporary poHtical thought a similar service is rendered by the term "nationality." It is a commonplace of recent history that the nineteenth century was pecuKarly a century in which men fought and argued in terms of the principle of nationahty. The present war is supposed to be due to the assertion of national- ity, and justified by the defense of it. But just what nationality is, is far from clear. Indeed, most discussions of the matter are chiefly con- cerned to show that it is not any of those things which it is usually supposed to be.
44
THE TOLERANT NATION 45
Thus, a nationality is not the same thing as a state. This is clear, whatever one's view as to their relative priority. If we are to believe Lord Acton, "a state may in course of time produce a nationality; but that a nationality should constitute a state is contrary to the nature of modern civihzation." ^ According to this view nationality may arise from "the memory of a former independence,'' and its principal cause be tyranny and oppression from abroad. But even so, the nationahty once acquired is a different thing from mere political independence. It is a new fellow-feeling begotten by political adversity. It does not consist in the mere fact of a common government but in the new sense of common loyalty and common proprietorship. Similarly, when it is argued that nationaHties should be granted political autonomy, it is assumed that they may exist in its absence. Thus the Austro- Hungarian Empire is commonly described as a single state composed of many nationalities. Or when it is proposed that a world-state should be formed out of existing nationalities, it is taken for granted that these nationaKties as such would in some sense maintain their identity.
The fact is that with the growth of liberal polit-
* History of Freedom and other Essays, p. 292.
46 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
ical thought it has become less and less possible to regard the state as an ultimate by which nation- ahty or anything else can in the last analysis be explained. Once the state is divorced in principle from the de facto government, or from hereditary legitimacy, or from the sanction of the church, it must be supposed in some sense to express the collective needs and aspirations of a social group. And in so far as the citizens of any state so regard their government, as theirs to adopt, or to make and mould, it is evident that the state becomes, if it was not originally, an instrument and visible sign of something like nationality. This, of course, does not explain what national- ity is; but only discourages the hope of identify- ing it simply with the state, and points to the necessity of looking to the deeper facts of social solidarity.
There are certain solidifying agencies that are evidently not so much criteria of nationahty as conditions necessary or favorable to its existence. Thus it is evident that a nationahty is not an eth- nological unit. Neither purity of race nor even a common racial blend defines such a nationality as our own; although it is evident that racial homogeneity conduces to national life and is in some measure invariably present. It is doubtless
THE TOLERANT NATION 47
the most powerful single cause of group unity. Similarly, men who, as Nietzsche says, "speak one language and read the same newspapers" are in so far quahfied for common nationahty, since they are capable of intercourse and share a com- mon literature. But since languages are so easily learned and so easily forgotten, and since the same language can be spoken by peoples otherwise remote and diverse, this evidently affords neither a funda- mental nor a sufficient principle of nationality.
Propinquity is evidently a necessary condition of the neighborly relations and co-operative ac- tion implied by nationahty; but the boundaries of nationaHties only occasionally follow physio- graphic frontiers. A common cHmate or other aspect of nature will give to a local group a sense of identity not unHke that which the in- dividual derives from the "feeP' of his own body; but most national territories embrace too much variety to find in this a general bond. A common past and common traditions evidently solidify a group just as his peculiar memories give to each individual a sense of his personal uniqueness. But there are new nations as well as old; and in any case it is not the mere fact of historical continuity but its cultural effect which • is significant for nationality.
48 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
In short, race, language, physiography and history do not constitute nationahty, but con- duce to it in so far as they give rise to the sense of a common Hfe. It is evident, then, that na- tional individuality like personal individuality is a psychological fact which has many varying and supplementary causes. A man will possess na- tionahty in so far as he identifies himself with a group by act of will and a less conscious but not less significant community of sentiment or idea. Although the difference is not a sharp one, and although the two factors act and react upon one another, it will be useful to distinguish between the bond of utility and the bond of culture. I shall therefore consider nationality under each of these aspects and endeavor to bring to light in each case the causes by which nationahty tends to tyranny and intolerance, or the means by which this evil consequence may be prevented.
The bond of utihty means simply that every individual finds it expedient to go into partner- ship with his fellows. He must attach himself to some organized society in which his interests are adjusted to those of other men according to certain rules which are defined and enforced by a common authority. Nationahty in this sense is the same as pohty, but only provided polity
THE TOLERANT NATION 49
is regarded as a voluntary association for mutual benefit, and not as an alien coercive force. The state is an expression of nationality only in so far as it is adopted and acknowledged as their own by a group of participating beneficiaries. There is, of course, a wide difference of opinion as to the scope of this pohtical partnership, rang- ing from laissez-faire to state socialism. But there are two benefits which are the least that is expected of the state: the benefit of internal peace, and the benefit of security against external aggression. A state is a social group living under one system of law, and making common cause together against dangers from abroad. A state has one police, and one military force, ruled by one ultimate authority. This account of the state ignores such ambiguous situations as have been created in the past by the temporal claims of the church, and such as are created now by federal systems and by alliances. These doubtful cases prove that it is impossible to distinguish the identity of the state in any absolute and un- qualified manner; but they do not affect the particular considerations to which I wish now to turn.
The internal or domestic policy of a state de- fines the limits within which individuals may do
so THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
as they please without getting in one another's way. Its object is to secure to each individual as large a sphere of liberty as possible; in short, to guarantee private privilege. Variety, original- ity, happiness and growth are the signs of its success. These things must, however, be at- tained by organization and discipline. And therein lies the difficulty and paradox of domestic poHcy. Repression and orderly routine are in- dispensable; but if carried too far they defeat their purpose. There is such a thing as a sort of national asceticism in which repression is deemed an end in itself, instead of an instrument of hberty. Organization is an art and requires experts; but these readily become a bureaucracy and eventually a ruling class which asserts its own interests in place of those it was designed to serve. "Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the state," to quote Lord Acton once more, "be it the advantage of a class, the safety or the power of the coimtry, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the state becomes for the time inevitably absolute." ^ In other words, whatever the function which the state exercises, it requires submission. But this
1 op. ciL, p. 288.
THE TOLERANT NATION 51
submission may become a habit through con- fusion of mind or through helplessness, so that the instrument becomes a burden and a tyranny. Hence the just suspicion of authority which is characteristic of the peoples of western Europe and America. Hence "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Here is the danger which justifies the distrust of representatives and ex- perts among the more advanced democracies — the rude insistence that public officials shall be servants, and that if experts be necessary, then all must be educated to some competence in public affairs.
But this same characteristic difficulty is ag- gravated by the interplay of domestic and for- eign policy. A common danger from abroad out- ranks in urgency any question of domestic rights, as in the case of the individual the question of life or death instantly eclipses questions of com- parative happiness. Thus the threat of war invariably leads to a conservative reaction. It has led, in France before the war, and in all coun- tries since its outbreak, to the postponement or slighting of such questions as the relations of church and state, or the extension of the suffrage, or the improvement of the conditions of labor.
It is, moreover, unhappily the fact that the pol-
52 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
icy which best serves individual interests at home, and the policy which makes a nation most power- ful abroad, do not coincide. A Hberal domestic policy impKes protest and insubordination; it en- courages claims and counter-claims in behalf of private interests, and leads to changes of the ex- isting equilibrium. Power abroad, "on the other hand, impHes concentration of purpose, a forget- fulness of grievances, and a willingness to bear in- justice in the presence of the great emergency. Thus the solution of the great problem of personal happiness and development is retarded or put aside, and society returns for a time to the rudi- mentary question of bare preservation.
I do not for a moment mean to belittle this question of preservation. It does and must take precedence of other questions. Aggression from abroad creates a genuine emergency. In order that nations shall be anything at all, they must first exist. Even such apprehension as has led Enghshmen of to-day seriously to ad- vocate a dictatorship is not wholly groundless. The tragic fact is that no people can give itself up whole-heartedly to the improvement of the lot of individuals, or to any of the higher spiritual purposes of civihzation, until all peoples are en- gaged in the same task. A single aggressive
THE TOLERANT NATION 53
power let loose in the world can compel all na- tions to be on their guard, and so to devote to the end of barely living, energies that would otherwise be devoted to the task of living better. Nations like individuals require a guarantee of security before they can afford to be happy. The problem of civilization is therefore a common and a mutual task in which all nations must move abreast. The national virtues that are required in an age of international lawlessness contradict those more hberal virtues to which civilization aspires. But the latter imply the advent of a new era in which international author- ity shall have delimited a sphere within which each nation may live out its life in safety and freedom.
So much, then, for that ilHberality in national life which is due to fear, that invoking of the principle of force which is necessary in order to meet force on equal terms. But this necessity is due to aggression which must somewhere arise from within. Such aggression may be and com- monly has been due to motives of utiHty — to the desire for land, natural resources, or other eco- nomic advantages. Without belitthng the ac- tual effect of these motives, I wish, nevertheless, to ignore them in the present discussion in order
54 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
to emphasize another motive which is more novel and more distinctive of the present crisis. I re- fer to the motive of national culture. This is the present warrant of aggression when aggression takes high ground. Its danger lies in its self- righteousness. We know what to make of honest, straightforward aggrandizement, and we know what to call it. But the nation which goes forth to conquer not only in shining armor, but with shining faces all aglow with the sense of a holy mission, is not only a menace to life and prop- erty, but to reason and conscience as well. One stands aghast with one hand on one's pocket and the other on one's troubled brow.
Culture as a bond of nationality, is a very different matter from the culture that liberalizes and emancipates. It is a culture, a peculiar system or code of beliefs, sentiments and cus- toms, by which a people feel themselves to be in some measure distinguished and set apart. Maz- zini said that those who aspire to nationality "demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea.^' ^ A national culture is an idea or system of ideas, as to how to live and as to what is worth living for, common to the
1 Quoted by J. Dover Wilson, in The War and Democracy, p. i6.
THE TOLERANT NATION 55
members of a group and peculiar to the group as a whole. Such a special culture arises from a thousand causes, many of them obscure, but it does arise and get itself recognized.
This is not that quaint affair of "sweetness and light," or knowledge of "the best that has been thought and said in the world,'' of which we have more often heard. It is not that cos- mopolitan value which is associated with art, science, philosophy and history. National cul- ture is in a certain respect the precise opposite of liberal culture. Thus science is a part of Hberal culture in so far as it deals with nature, employs a dispassionate method and arrives at generally vaHd laws; but science is a part of German cul- ture in so far as it is performed by German scientists and applied to German economic life. Art is a part of liberal culture in so far as it implies generally valid standards of taste and makes one family of Phidias, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe; but it is a part of German culture only in so far as it creates a Denkmal of Bis- marck, or in that Goethe happened to be born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, or in that Shakespeare's dramas are appreciated in BerHn. In liberal cul- ture philosophy began with Plato because he was "the spectator of all time and eternity," in na-
56 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
tional culture it began with Kant because he lived in East Prussia. History in so far as it is an affair of culture, enables one to inherit the whole empire of the past. As a part of German cul- ture it enables one to trace one^s descent from a select family of barbarians who dwelt in the Pomeranian bog.
It is evident that the culture-motive in national- ity may readily become a source of iUiberality. But since some measure of common sentiment and opinion is both inevitable and desirable, it is im- portant to discover precisely wherein this danger Hes. Its source will be not in the fact of national culture, but in the attitude which accompanies it. It is not in being German, for example, that the danger Hes, but in being too self-conscious about it, or in taking it too seriously.
There is a good deal of nonsense abroad in the world, aided and abetted by a certain type of philosophy, as to the value of self-consciousness. It is very easy to confuse originaHty and dis- tinction with the use of the looking-glass or the first personal pronoun. As a matter of fact the man who possesses individual distinction is far more likely to be absorbed in an object or cause than in himself. If he departs from usage it is because he is really careless of appearances, not
THE TOLERANT NATION 57
because he is studiously careless. In the latter case one is aping the appearance of carelessness* and so conforming to a type. He is endeavoring to be what is expected of him, not what he is prompted to be by his own peculiar genius.
The same thing is true of national distinction. In so far as it is indigenous and original, it is unconscious and not self-conscious. It comes of exercising one's judgment honestly and indepen- dently. The way to be American, for example, is not to play a character-part representing the con- ventional "American traits," but to seek the best, or do one's duty as one sees it, leaving the Amer- icanism to take care of itself. If one is born in America, if one lives in the American milieu, sub- ject to the characteristic influences of that en- vironment and tradition, the Americanism will take care of itself. National movements in art, science or philosophy are not the result of men's trying to be French or English; but they result when Frenchmen or Englishmen try to make something that is beautiful or say something that is true. No important cultural movement in the world's history has resulted from the de- liberate cultivation of one's own peculiarities. On the contrary they have usually been inspired, as in the case of the ItaHan Renaissance, by a
58 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
somewhat extravagant regard for the peculiari- ties of others. That which distinguishes the mo- tive of great art and science is its universaHty, its objectivity, its preference of standards to personaHties or local pride. The personal or national quahty, like the quahty which dis- tinguishes an epoch or a race, is determined by the angle and point of origin from which the universal is approached, and it depends for its fullest expression, not on self-consciousness, but on absorption and sincerity.
But self-consciousness is worse than a weak- ness by which the purpose of national culture defeats itself. Not only does it divert the at- tention from the greatest and best things, and check their Hberalizing and quickening power, but it begets a state of self-righteous irrespon- sibility that is a positive danger to the rest of mankind. National self-consciousness, like in- dividual self-consciousness, emphasizes the form rather than the substance of Hfe. It breeds irresponsibihty because it encourages men to believe that the agent's end of the act is more important than the patient's. If the agent feels or conducts himself in a certain prescribed manner, then it matters Httle what the consequences of the act may happen to be. The good marksman
THE TOLERANT NATION 59
is the one whose form is good, not the one who hits the target. Morahties of this sort are common enough. There is the conscience school which teaches that the criterion of right action is the inward oracle rather than the outward effect. This school has been too conventional, too wedded to the conservative moral tradition to be as dangerous as some others. Even so, its bhnd conservatism and its bigotry are well- known. The full danger of this way of thinking is realized when it is united with the radical temper. Any act has virtue, says Nietzsche, which issues from the sense of power. If you can feel masterful while you do it, it doesn't so much matter what you do; you may even perform deeds of benevolence.
But the great morality which has emanated from Germany is that of "self-realization." The important thing according to this view is that your deeper self should act, and not some mo- mentary impulse. When you deliberately choose an act, or put your whole self into it — ^when it is really you that do it, with a full sense of the gravity of this self-committal, then the act is a right act, whatever comes of it. Of course, it will be a part of your deliberation to take the conse- quences into account. But that will be inciden-
6o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
tal to the coaxing out of the deeper self, and will never prove the act right or wrong. Now, it is clear that this doctrine is readily applied to the case of nationality. The precept, "Be yourself,'' may, when one identifies oneself with the nation, be amended to read "Be German," or "act so as to feel German when you do it." The act will then be right, because it was rightly conceived at the source.
There is a danger for the agent himself in such a sanction of conduct. It gives rise to the mistaken behef that one can sow without reaping, and so encourages a fatuous disregard of the laws of life. It is like the medicine by which some persons hope to offset the effects of gluttony, or the piety which is warranted to save one's soul without requiring that one shall mend one's ways. But the greatest danger of formalism is that which threatens not the agent but the unhappy mortal on whom he chooses to realize himself. A man with a conscience, or a sense of mastery, or a self, or some other inner authority by which he justifies himself, is a menace to any neighborhood. He is like a man playing with dangerous weapons, who doesn't look where he is shooting. For every act is a dangerous weapon. Discharged in the midst of a thickly settled community it is
THE TOLERANT NATION 6i
sure to hit and injure somebody, unless its direc- tion and effects are carefully regulated. It wouldn't do in any community to allow men to discharge loaded firearms simply in order to express themselves. Or if it were permitted, the most dangerous man would be he who felt he had the most to express.
So society finds it necessary to suppress any man who is too exclusively concerned with being himself, and has to be especially firm with those who take themselves seriously. When spiritual exaltation reaches a certain height it becomes necessary to use handcuffs and a strait-jacket. If a Nietzschean superman should break into any settled community he would of course have to be jailed at once. National self-consciousness has to be met in the same way by the neigh- borhood of nations. The justification of action by its expressiveness of national peculiarities, a policy dictated simply by the principle of being one's national self, whether German or anything else, is socially intolerable. It has to be reg- ulated, or even suppressed, in the interest of public safety.
A national culture may, then, be intolerant by virtue simply of a heightened self-consciousness — an excessive self-preoccupation. This motive is
62 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
not primarily aggressive. The effect upon others is not so much calculated as disregarded. But it is easy to pass over into a sense of self-importance or into the conviction of a holy mission. Self- importance may simply argue youth. There is something of this doubtless in present German nationalism. It is a new nationaHsm, and is so important to those who have recently achieved it after a long struggle, that it is easily assumed to have cosmic importance. Such youthful seK- importance is naturally associated with self- consciousness; as in the case of the young man with his first pair of long trousers, for whom all windows are mirrors. But this German self- importance is a deeper and more formidable thing, which can be traced back even to the age before the Napoleonic wars. From Kant's day to the present, Germans have been exhorted to believe themselves pecuHarly indispensable to civiHzation. This was at first doubtless a counsel of despair. When Fichte said to the German nation, "If you sink, humanity sinks with you," he sought to restore the self-respect and determina- tion of a people prostrate before the conqueror. But in the long run the German nation has be- lieved what it was told, and has no intention of allowing humanity to sink. On the contrary.
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Germany proposes to make the elevating of humanity its particular business and whether humanity Hkes it or not. There is a dreadful seriousness about it, a resoluteness of purpose which may well cause the unregenerate to tremble. To understand the precise nature of this cul- tural mission it is helpful to consult the familiar analogy of religion. It was only after painful struggles that the mind of western Europe was emancipated from the conviction that it is of the essence of religion to be intolerant. This was because the mind of western Europe had become thoroughly habituated to the Jewish and Chris- tian idea that the God of a particular historical tradition was Almighty God. According to the pagan idea the god of any special cult must necessarily be a particular god — that is, only one of many gods. The only common God is the divine principle at large, which cannot be monopo- lized, but only worshipped by each people accord- ing to their lights and under such forms and mani- festations as their special interests and locality shall dictate. A reHgious cult of this sort protects its own gods from sacrilege, while also admitting the sacredness of other gods. But Judaism and Christianity have said: ^^Our God, the God of our fathers, the God we worship and proclaim, is
64 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
the God." It is sacrilege to the Christian God to admit the sacredness of any other god, and the benefits of rehgion are in this view denied to all save those who associate themselves with the chosen cult. It therefore becomes the mission of this cult to save men in the name of "true religion" from the religions they freely choose. Hence the long tragedy of intolerance and persecu- tion, with its diabolical paradoxes — the use of force to impose belief, the violent assault upon piety from the motive of piety, the grim resolve of one man to do good to his neighbor even though his neighbor should die of it, and die cursing his self-appointed benefactor.
Now if for religion we substitute civilization, and if for a special cult like Christianity we sub- stitute a national culture, we discover the parallel which I wish to emphasize. CiviKzation like re- ligion has its special dispensations, and there are two views that one may take of that dispensa- tion imder which one Hves. One may do homage to it, and at the same time respect the diverse prejudices of others; or one may beUeve that one's own dispensation is the exclusive channel through which the blessings of civilization are to be distributed to all mankind. In this case alien prejudices become a sin by which men destroy
THE TOLERANT NATION 65
their chance of progress, and from which they must be saved for their own good. Thus Ger- many presents the remarkable spectacle of a modern nation which regards itself as the chosen people of civilization; chosen to save the world, not in the world^s way, but in its own, the Ger- man way. This is neither localism nor univer- sahsm, but both; the clothing of this particular thing that flourishes here and now, with the awful authority and majesty of the absolute. It has precisely the same effect upon the uninitiated as though a familiar companion were suddenly to say: "Oh, by the way, you know / am GodJ'^ Such a remark at once renders social relations im- possible. If one believes, then one may bow down and worship. Otherwise, one must either fly for one's life or employ forcible restraint.
A cultural mission, like an intolerant religion, justifies itself by a philosophy of history. In- deed, most philosophies of history consist in giving absolute metaphysical significance to the historical moment of the author, or in picturing history so that it converges upon the author. In this the German philosophies of history have imitated the Christian models of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas. Thus for Hegel art culminates in Romanticism, religion in Lutheranism, and
66 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
politics in the Prussian monarchy. The modern world is "the German world," simply. But this is only a retrospective view of the matter, and is comparatively harmless. The more sinister mo- tive finds expression in Kant's view of patriotism as the will that the end of humanity "shall be first realized in the particular nation to which we ourselves belong, and that this achievement thence spread over the entire race." ^ The ex- traordinary thing is this proprietary interest in civilization. It is as though one claimed a sort of concession in perpetuity to bottle the essence of civilization and sell it imder a trade name.
Bernhardi would not be significant if he were original. In claiming "all the intellectual and moral progress of mankind" to rest on the achieve- ments of Luther and Kant, he is simply quoting tradition. The same is true of the striking pas- sage that follows, and which Professor Dewey cites with effect in his admirable book, Ger- man Philosophy and Politics,'^ The tone of this passage is in harmony with that of the founders of spiritual Germany. "To no nation except the German," says Bernhardi, "has it been given to
* Quoted by J. Dewey, in his German Philosophy and Politics, p. 99.
THE TOLERANT NATION 67
enjoy in its inner self 'that which is given to mankind as a whole.' ... It is this quality which especially fits us for leadership in the in- tellectual domain and imposes upon us the ob- ligation to maintain that position." As we out- siders, the prospective beneficiaries, listen to these words we know how the oysters in Alice in Wonderland felt toward the weeping carpenter; or how the keeper feels toward the embraces of a friendly elephant; or we remember how we ourselves once felt toward the stern parent who told us that it hurt him worse than it hurt us.
The spectacle of coercive benevolence visited by one adult of the species upon another, may afford laughter to the gods; but that is because they happily dwell in a safe place where no one seeks to do them good. For the hapless object of benevolent intent it is a grim business. And since it is natural to benevolence to expand and to be untiring, it is inevitable that a general uneasi- ness should pervade the whole family of nations so long as any one of them is thus inspired and ded- icated. It is not only a dangerous thing, it is an inherently tragic thing like a great mind gone wrong. Cultural intolerance, the sense of a national mission, is a morbid excess of virtue.
68 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
It is divided from the best and greatest things by a few degrees of more and less. It implies resolute purpose, self-respect, subordination to a cause. Its contempt for others, its consciousness, is like the hardness of a man who cannot be indulgent to others because he expects so much himself.
La Mettrie said that an invisible fibre would suffice to make an idiot of an Erasmus. It may take a cerebral lesion to cause mental paranoia, but moral paranoia may be caused by something even less evident and ponderable. A little dif- ference of attitude, scarcely to be remarked at all save in its effects, makes the difference be- tween seriousness and censoriousness, between idealism and fanaticism, between loyalty and bigotry, between zeal and aggression. The cru- cial attitude which thus preserves moral sanity is a recognition of one's own fallibility, a sense of humor regarding oneself. It is humor that sweetens nationality, as it sweetens individual- ity and keeps it from spoiling. There are not many things that a man may not say if he will occasionally betray by a smile, or by the look in his eye, that he knows how it sounds from your point of view. It is scarcely possible for national pride and self-love to be too great, pro- vided it be accompanied by the saving grace of
THE TOLERANT NATION 69
self-criticism, and by a general sense of a some- thing so much bigger than oneself as to make comparisons ridiculous. Nations, hke individuals, need perpetually to recover their sense of propor- tion by reminding themselves of their liability to error, or of their need of all possible light from all possible sources on those questions which are so great as to be almost hopeless.
Tolerance springs from a recognition of one's own limitations, from the feeling that there is too much to the truth, or to civilization, for any one group of men to fathom or compass. Such is the spirit of Mill's plea for individualism: "That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles apphcable to men's modes of ac- tion, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of char- acter, short of injury to others; and that the
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worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them."^
The just relation between independent nations is precisely that which underlies the higher forms of intercourse between independent individuals. Friendship, rivalry, commerce, war, discussion, partnership, may aU be ennobled by this relation. It consists in mutual respect. It is much more than an affair of manners. It means that each acknowledges in the other that power of judgment and self-determination, in which his own man- hood consists. As each judges for himself and devotes himself with resolution to what he deems good, so he recognizes the same finaHty and self- sufficiency in others. He respects in others what he respects in himself, and since he receives re- spect from the object to which he gives it, he can be respectful without ceasing to be self-respecting.
In essentials the same relation must underlie the intercourse of nations. Each believes in it- self, and judges by its own standards. But this very loyalty and resoluteness will create an admiration for the same quahty in other nations. It is as though one nation were to say to an- other : ^ ' Your ways are outlandish, and your judg- ments wrong, but I doubt not mine seem equally
^ On Liberty, chap. III.
THE TOLERANT NATION 71
so to you. Which of us has the better of the argument, God only knows. We beheve that we have, but we enjoy no pecuHar immunity from error. Perhaps we can persuade you that you are wrong. Perhaps it will turn out that we are both half right and half wrong. Meanwhile there is room for us both if we are willing to make it."
Such a national spirit conduces, like MilFs individualism, to a rich variety of type, and to the mutual aid of many minds, each trying its own experiments and attacking in its own way the common problems of civilization. It is an indispensable condition of any peace save the peace in which arrogance dominates slavishness. If nations, like individuals, are to be allowed any pride or behef in themselves, or the courage of their convictions, then if there is not to be perpet- ual war, there must be a general spirit of tolerance — a willingness to respect what one cannot agree with or even understand.
But tolerance is not to be prized merely as a means of diversity or of safety; for it directly elevates the tone of national life. A man is seen at his best when associating with those he regards as his equals. Sycophancy and superiority, ser- vility and mastery, conduce equally to the warp- ing of character. The man who can enjoy inter-
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course only with his superiors or inferiors, who must play the toady or the bully, and does not know how to look any man horizontally in the eye, is morally defective. So the finest quaHty of national life is reserved for those nations which can be faithful to themselves without loss of sanity. Such nations will not be restrained by force from oppressing their neighbors. They will rejoice in the existence of their neighbors, and will doubly rejoice in finding their neighbors worthy of their mettle. They will feel in the in- tercourse of proud and differing nations the same zest that is felt by a man among men.
When peaceful rivalry or friendly co-operation takes the place of war, this attitude will be no less needed. For that same mutual respect which may ennoble even war, is all that will save peace from a spirit of easy acquiescence, or from a mean con- tentiousness. Peace itself has to be redeemed, and that which alone will save it will be an eager championship of differing national ideals, a gen- erous rivalry in well-doing, the athlete's love of a strong opponent, and the positive relish for di- verse equality.
IV
IMPRESSIONS OF A PLATTSBURG RECRUIT
IT is a mistake to suppose that a soldier's im- pedimenta are merely accessory. From the time when you first gratefully borrow them from the ordnance and quartermaster's tents to the time when you still more thankfully deliver them up, you revolve about them. In place of the ordinary organic sensations, they supply while you possess them the nucleus of the consciousness of self. Though much is made of the ceremony, there is really no credit in returning these objects to the United States Government. The real merit is in borrowing them at all. This is per- haps the bravest act a soldier is called upon to perform. There are, let it be understood, some twenty-five separate articles in this borrowed equipment, including half a shelter-tent, one rifle, one canteen, one poncho, five pegs, etc., and to these one is ordered to add articles of toilet and personal apparel, bringing the total
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74 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
number to over thirty. These, when once you have put them together, you acquire as a part of yourself, like a permanent hump. They might be folded, hooked, and strapped together in a thou- sand ways; they must be folded, hooked, and strapped together in one way, and in only one way. And then they must be taken apart again, and combined anew for each day's journey; which is one of the most successful of the several standard devices for protecting the soldier from the corrupting influence of leisure.
When you advance upon an imaginary enemy, your corporal, whom you have learned to watch as a dog his master, shouts "Follow me!" You are wearing your hump, with its various outlying parts, such as the rifle in your hand and the can- teen on your hip. By bending your body until your back is parallel with the ground, you are able to simulate running. The gait as well as the contour resembles the camePs; but alas! you enjoy no such natural adaptation for pack-bear- ing, nor for the rude contacts with earth that await you. For after loping forward some twenty- five yards, you are ordered to "lie down.''
This is not to be construed as an invitation to enjoy a well-earned rest. On the contrary, your torture is about to begin. In civihan Hfe it is
IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 75
customary when lying down to select some spot or object which yields sHghtly to the pressure of the body, or corresponds somewhat to its out- lines. But in skirmish formation you lie down in your place; if you are a rear-rank man, then half a pace to the right of your file-leader. The chances are one hundred to otie that the spot fits you very badly. Nevertheless, down you go. You then hoist up on your left elbow, and address your rifle in the direction of the enemy. Your whole consciousness is now concentrated in the elbow. This member, which was never intended as an extremity, rests in all likeHhood upon a rough-edged piece of granite separated from your bone by one thickness of flannel shirt. The rifle presses mercilessly upon it. Your pack, thrown forward in your fall, rests upon the back of your neck, adds itself to the weight upon your elbow, and renders it almost impossible — ^judged by civilian standards, altogether impossible — to look along the sights of your rifle. The pain in the elbow is soon followed by a sharp cramp in the wrist. When these parts have become sufiiciently numb for you to attend to minor discomforts, you begin to realize that you are lying on your bolo knife, and that your canteen is sticking into your right hip.
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At this moment the platoon leader orders you to "fire faster," and with a desperate contortion you reach around to the small of your back and grope for a slip of cartridges with which to reload your rifle. Then "Cease firing!'' "Prepare to rush!" and again "Follow me!" — this time not only to a prone position, but from a prone posi- tion. You are carefully enjoined that you must get up running and lie down running, lest you shall at any time present a fixed target to the enemy. You dig a hold with your foot, summon your last reserves of strength, totter forward with all your goods hanging, dangHng, dragging about you, and soon resume business with that elbow exactly where you left off. This is called "advancing by rushes," and it is customary to do it for distances of a thousand yards or more in instalments of fifty yards or less. It is capped by a bayonet charge in which after drawing the reluctant bayonet with the right hand from just behind the left ear, and fumbling hastily about for the proper grooves and sockets, you expend your last ounce of strength in a desperate sprint up-hill.
Now in this description I have made no refer- ence to the enemy. In fact there is no reference to the enemy, at least no personal reference. There is a vague sense of the enemy's direction,
IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 77
described as "twelve o'clock" if it be immediately ahead, or "one o'clock" if it be a little to the right, etc. But you entertain no murderous thoughts except for the person, luckily unknown, who invented your pack; and you are not appre- hensive or sorry for the enemy, for you are too profoundly, too whole-heartedly sorry for your- self.
In all this there is a most extraordinary altera- tion of one's scale of values. I think I can under- stand something of the mind of the soldier in the trenches who welcomes the order to stand erect, preferring the chance of death to another moment of agonizing cramp. At such times re- mote memories and prospects, the normal hopes and fears of life, are expelled by importunate sensations. One is either too acutely wretched, or too gloriously happy, for either anxiety or regret. The range of consciousness is narrowed to aches and pains, or to such soul-satisfying joys as full respiration and restored circulation.
There are compensations in hardship, wholly unsuspected by those who have not lived through them. To stretch one's limbs without a pack, to sit by the roadside against a bank, to drink luke- warm water out of an aluminum can, to eat beans out of a tub, to bathe by hundreds in one shallow
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brook, to mitigate the natural roughness of one's stubble bed with a bit of straw — ^it requires some cultivation to raise these experiences to the pitch of ecstasy. But it is worth while. When, in decorous society, one is informed that "Dinner is served," it is in apologetic and doubtful tones, as though the announcement were intrusive or unwelcome. But with what glad emotion does one spring forward, unashamed, with mess-kit extended for instant use, when one hears the hearty roar of the Falstaffian undershirted cook: "E Company ! Come and git it V^
There is a popular belief that it is a fine thing to be an officer, or even a "non-com.'' And it is doubtless important that this behef should be professed in training camps. But volumes might be written confidentially on the luxury of being a private. When, in one of the occasional lulls between the stated exercises of the day, some sergeant shouts down the company street, "Squad leaders come and get ammunition," or "Non- commissioned officers report at the first ser- geant's tent," then if you are a private there steals over you the delicious realization that it does not mean you. It is like sick-call when one is well. I despair of making an uninitiated person realize the full signfficance of an order that does
IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 79
not mean you. Your poor corporal scurries out of the tent, you hastily take possession of the much-coveted ramrod which he has been forced to leave behind, and then and there, thanks to your corporaFs harder lot, you enjoy a genuine sense of leisure. Not that you do nothing — only exhaustion justifies that. But you clean your gun with a cosey feeling that you have got at least that day's work well in hand.
Let me hasten to add that cleaning your gun does not mean the same thing as making your gun clean. It means an infinite series of motions approaching cleanness as a limit which they never reach. Each rag seems to come through the muzzle blacker than the last. The captain calls special attention to screw-heads and other minute cavities, and you poke individual grains of sand about in them with the point of a pin; but you never get them all. The simple child- like faith with which this task of Sisyphus is performed is touching. It becomes in time a sort of harmless mania, a chronic activity which one automatically resumes whenever not diverted by more urgent business.
Corporals and sergeants enjoy no immunity from rifle-cleaning, pack-carrying, or any of the thousand duties that keep a private on a panting dog-trot from reveille to taps, and since they are
8o THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
burdened with other duties as well, their lot is hard. The worst of it is that they have to think and make decisions. At least they have to try, which is just as bad. But the last thing that is wanted of a private is that he should have ideas of his own. Even when in doubt as to his orders, a private who is fully alive to his prerogatives will ask his corporal, and wait patiently and rest- fully for him to find out. The great thing is that a private can, by an adroit passivity, both earn praise for his soldierly obedience and at the same time ease his mind. With his body he has to be everlastingly at it, and there is no escaping that pack. But the non-commissioned officer is a pack-animal who is required also to think — an unparalleled cruelty; while the commissioned officer, if he has less on his back, has so much the more on his mind. Oh, the luxury of the vacant mind! Oh, the restfulness of the obedient and incurious will! Oh, the deep peace of hooking the canteen under the fifth right-hand pocket of the belt, without having to decide between the fourth or the fifth, or inquire why it should be either !
Soldierly experiences are common experiences, and are hallowed by that fact. You are asked to
IMPRESSIONS OF A RECRUIT 8i
do no more than hundreds of others, as good or better than yourself, do with you. If you rmse your greasy mess-kit in a tub of greasier water, you are one of many gathered Hke thirsty birds about a roadside puddle. If you fill your lungs and the pores of your sweaty skin with dust, fellows in adversity are all about you, looking grimier than you feel; and your very complaints uttered in chorus partake of the quality of defiant song. To walk is one thing, to march, albeit with sore feet and aching back, is another and more triumphant. It is "Hail ! Hail ! the gang's all here," or "Glorious ! Glorious ! one keg of beer for the four of us" — it matters not what the words signify, provided they have a rhythmic swing and impart a choral sense of collective unity. Special privilege and personal fastidious- ness, all that marks one individual off from the rest in taste or in good fortune, seeks to hide it- self. Instead there is the common uniform, pre- scribed to the last string and button, the common nakedness of the daily swim, the common routine, the common hardships, and in and through it all the common loyalty and purpose.
To many this is the first dawning consciousness of the fellowship of country. Patriotism is not praised or taught, it is taken for granted. But
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though inarticulate, it is unmistakably the master motive. There is a fine restraint in military cere- mony that enables even the purest product of New England self-repression to feel — ^without awkwardness or self-consciousness. Every late afternoon at the last note of retreat, the flag is lowered, and the band plays "The Star-Spangled Banner." Men in ranks are ordered to atten- tion. Men and officers out of ranks stand at attention where they are, facing the flag, and saluting as the music ceases. Thus to stand at attention toward sundown, listening to solemn music sounding faintly in the distance, to see and to feel that every fellow soldier is standing also rigid and intent — to experience this reverent and collective silence which forbears to say what cannot be said, is at once to understand and to dedicate that day's work.
V
THE FACT OF WAR AND THE HOPE OF PEACE
RADICAL pacifism and radical militarism both rest upon a one-sided view of the great human problem of international polity. In coming to see the error of both of these forms of propaganda, we shall, I believe, approximate to something like a balanced and adequate view. Radical pacifism may be said to contain two ideas, non-resistance and neutralism. Non-re- sistance is commonly confused with unselfishness. As a matter of fact, however, under present con- ditions it would mean saving one's own skin and one's own feelings while others' suffered. No one will dispute the right of an individual to sub- mit passively to abuse, provided he receives the abuse upon his own person. There may even be a certain dignity in such non-resistance. An in- dividual may be "too proud to fight" — ^f or him- self. The real test of the principle comes when
you apply it to the defense of those you love.
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No man should announce himself an advocate of non-resistance who is not prepared to acquiesce in the violation of his wife or daughter. No woman can be at heart non-resistant unless she means that she is willing to surrender her child to torture. No American can renounce the ap- peal to arms unless he can think with equanimity of the extinction of his race or the crushing of those institutions which now stir his civic pride and loyalty. For these are the evils which an attacking enemy may seek to perpetrate, and which defensive warfare aims to forestall. The enemy's will in the matter cannot be controlled. It takes two to make peace, but either party may at his own discretion threaten the other with the blackest evil which his imagination can invent. He may force upon whomever he elects to be his enemy the dilemma of armed resistance or of submission to any outrage that his victim may deem most unendurable. To be non-re- sistant must mean, then, that one regards nothing as unendurable — even the destruction of what one loves or admires or has sworn to serve and protect. There is a theory that non-resistance will soften arrogance and disarm brutality. This theory is based upon the extension to group actions and emotions, of influences that may occasionally be
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exerted by one personality upon another. Collec- tive non-resistance evokes only contempt. The effect of non-resistance when practised by a whole race or nation is unmistakably apparent in the history of the Jews and of China. A caste or conquering race that is accustomed to the meek- ness of inferiors grows hard and arrogant. Unless in the last analysis men or nations are ready to fight for their honor and their treasures, material and spiritual, they raise up enemies whom they invite to despoil them. Those are respected who possess reserves of rugged determination, who wear a quiet and unconscious air of willingness to defend with their lives whatever they hold to be priceless — their goods, their country, their friends, their loved ones, their lives, or their principles.
The other idea which distinguishes radical pacifism is neutralism. This means refusing to take sides, reserving judgment in the presence of the great struggle. It manifests itself in the pres- ent crisis in the attitude of those who declare that all parties are equally to blame or equally innocent. It is an easy-going policy, for it saves the pain of decision and permits the mind to muddle along in a state of flabby vacillation and procrastination. The present crisis is like every
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great political and social crisis in that it is the resultant of many forces, which it takes hard thinking and clear seeing to disentangle. If one is to stand aside because a problem is complicated one may as well go into a hermit's ceU aCnd be done with it. To be effective in this world is to hazard a judgment and to co^nmit oneself to it.
The worst of it is that neutrality may so easily become a habit and render one permanently hesitant and weak. It begets indifference, when it does not spring from it. If one cares much for one's flag one will find it flying somewhere and follow it. Furthermore, those who proclaim neutralism as a part of the creed of pacifism for- get that the possibihty of permanent peace de- pends upon the cultivation of sentiment and opinion. It is absolutely impossible that there should be a pubHc opinion strong enough to secure peace, which shall not be terrible to those who disturb the peace. One cannot hate lawless- ness and brutahty without hating those who perpetrate or instigate them. To be tolerant of manifest and present evil is to emasculate one's moral consciousness. In that future time when state war is as exceptional as private war is to- day, it will be necessary that a lawless state shall be visited with the same resentment and swift
WAR AND PEACE ^^
condemnation that is now visited upon the law- less individual. When, therefore, one seeks in the name of peace to suppress the strong senti- ment that is widely felt against that nation which surpasses all others in violence and cruelty, one is counteracting the very force by which one's cause may hope some day to triumph.
Non-resistance and neutrahsm are the false friends of peace. They bring disrepute upon it. There can be no propaganda that is effective and morally sound which requires one to yield weakly to hostile attack, or to emasculate one's judgment. If there be any excuse for these excesses in the name of peace, it is the like tendency to exag- geration which marks the exponents of war.
False or radical mihtarism is also characterized by two ideas. The first of these is the belief in the necessity or institutional character of war. Plato, as a matter of course, divided his Republic into warriors, merchants, and guardians. He regarded war as a natural function of the political organism, and the warrior as the embodiment of spiritedness and courage. But we are now coming to the view that war is a disease to which the race is peculiarly liable in its infancy, and from which it may hope to secure immunity in its maturity. War is now known to be natural not in any final or ideal
8>S THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
sense, but in the sense of being crude and primi- tive. It is one of the things that civihzation seeks not to perfect, but to outgrow and put aside alto- gether.
Viewed in this light, the soldier is the symbol not of human attainment, but of affliction and painful necessity. He is as much out of place in the perfected society as the rat-catcher or the poHceman. The cost of war has grown unbear- able, and is now reckoned more accurately. Its effects have grown more fatal in proportion as social organization has grown more elaborate and more delicately adjusted. Its essential clumsiness and wastefulness, its swift and prodigious de- structiveness, are intolerable in an age devoted to constructive and progressive civilization. Meanwhile its methods have so altered that it has almost wholly ceased to be an art or a ro- mantic adventure which may appeal to the amateur or which a man may follow as a polite vocation. It is even ceasing to possess a code of honor. It is ugly, sordid and prosaic, offensive to taste and repugnant to humanity.
We have also come to understand that the pro- pensity to war is not incurable. It is not neces- sitated by any law of human nature. Even were self-interest the law of human nature, that law
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would dictate peace and not war. For security is more profitable than lawless aggression, and prop- erty is worth more than plunder. But self-interest is not the law of human nature. There are instincts of neighborliness which increase in their range as news and travel increase the circle of one's neighborhood. There are some instincts, it is true, which lend themselves to warlike uses; and owing to an accidental emphasis in psycholog- ical theory, we have recently heard much of them. But though there be an instinct of pugnacity, there is no instinct of war. War is only one of divers ways in which the instinct of pugnacity may find expression. One may be equally pugna- cious in the interest of saving souls or eradicating disease. One may even be pugnacious in the cause of peace. For just because pugnacity is an instinct, it is modifiable and plastic. Not only is it balanced by other and contrary instincts, but it does not issue in conduct until it has as- sumed the form of habit, purpose or conscious will. Man has instincts, but he is not possessed by them. He is called an intelligent or rational being because he can check, regulate and guide his instincts by the Hght of knowledge and direct them to the good ends that his judgment may adopt.
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A fatalistic acquiescence in war, the acceptance of it as permanent and inevitable, is the first sign of the radical miHtarist. The second is suspicion or misanthropy. Within certain limits it is an almost imfailing rule of human conduct that we shall receive from men what we manifestly ex- pect of them. He who goes about with scorn or truculence or cold suspicion written on his face will find it reflected in every face he sees. He who does not expect to be spoken to will find himself cut by his acquaintances; the man of cold reserve will find himself Hving in a com- munity of snobs. On the other hand, a child wins kind words and kind looks because he so unhesitatingly and confidently assumes that he is going to get them. The misanthrope thinks that he finds confirmation of his opinion from the facts, whereas in reahty he causes the facts him- self.
A like phenomenon appears in the relations of nations. Suspicion begets suspicion; suspicion mounts to hatred, which begets hatred; while all the time a different original attitude might have stimulated a latent kindliness or called at- tention to common interests and so have led to a habit of friendship. Mischievous gossip may do much to create artificial enmities between one
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man and another. Between nations this danger is magnified by the difficulty of obtaining news, and by the possibiHty that the very instrumental- ities of news may be used to provoke and foster enmity. There is therefore need of a good will that shall not only be cordial and resolute, but that shall accord the benefit of the doubt. There was never greater need of such an attitude than at the present time, nor a better appKcation than our relations with Japan. A sneering contempt for the motives of others, a quickness to believe malicious or chance rumors when they agree with the creed of selfishness, and to charge every profession of disinterestedness with insincerity — nothing could be better calculated than this to suppress whatever impulses to generosity, candor and cordiaHty our human nature prompts. Such an attitude is neither enlightened nor humane. It is a persistent belief only in the worse possi- bilities, and so is unscientific; it acts as a re- straint upon the better possibilities, and so is mischievous.
Such are the extravagances of a false pacifism and of a false militarism. In so far as they are committed to these extravagances both propa- gandas must be rejected. It is an intolerable dilemma which forces one to choose between being
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a sentimentalist and being a reactionary. The great majority of thinking men must dechne to be either. The association of both propagandas with their extravagances tends to a state of hope- lessness and inaction, and obscures the real prob- lem. It is necessary to move forward in this matter, as in all other great affairs that involve collective action, by a series of steps that shall secure new benefits without forfeiting old. What all men must desire to secure is a durable peace without loss of liberty, honor or self-respect. Any plan by which one buys off one's enemy by the surrender of independence or principle is wholly beside the point. By tame submission to allow any belligerent to have his way is to confirm him in his creed of lawless aggression. On the other hand, to fall back bhndly on the old shibboleths of nationahsm and patriotism is to acknowledge the failure of civiHzation. It follows that nations must so fight for their liberties and their principles as to bring that day nearer when it shall no longer be necessary to fight for them. There is a wide-spread impression that there is something incompatible between these two at- titudes, the acceptance of war as a deplorable present necessity, and the pursuit of peace as a glorious hope. But there is no such incom-
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patibility. On the contrary, such a mixture of expediency and idealism is one of the most fa- miliar and universal facts of life. That which dis- tinguishes constructive progress from mere pious wishing is the use of present means to bring one forward toward one's end. The present means will always be of that age which one seeks to leave behind. It is necessary to walk until one can ride, and to ride until one can fly. It is only the fanatical mind which fails to see so obvious a fact, or to govern itself by a principle so funda- mental and so indispensable to all forward action.
I submit, then, that we need a propaganda that shall take the middle ground, and recognize the real problem. In place of war parties and peace parties that exaggerate their own half- truths, and ignore all other half-truths, thus blinding our eyes and impotently consuming our passions and energies, we need the wise and balanced mind, adjusted to the needs of the hour and inspired with hope of the future.
Persons so minded will agree that there is war in fact, and that so long as there is war there is danger. Where there is danger any thoughtful mind must commend caution and foresight, so that the danger may be well and effectively met in proportion to its imminence and its magnitude.
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But it is no less imperative that the hope of peace should be kept bright and that the purpose to attain permanent peace should be undaunted. Prophecy and inspiration are as important as efficiency and trained judgment. It is no less important to contrive new social and political de- vices and to agitate for their application and trial. Projects for disarmament, for an international court, or for the publicity of diplomatic negotia- tions, should not be regarded as vain imaginings because they depart from ancient practise, but as inventions by which after trial and selection men may eventually forge the tools by which to es- tabHsh a new and better practise. In short, the upward road of progress can be ascended only by one who both keeps his footing secure, and looks ahead with ardor and imagination.
VI
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR?
NOT long ago a newspaper despatch from Leicester, England, described the untimely fate of a travelling band of pacifist preachers who styled themselves "The Fellowship of Recon- cihation." It appears that the good patriots of Leicester beat them soundly, burned their camp and equipment, and concluded the matter by singing "Tipperary" and "God Save the King" over the ashes.
The incident epitomizes the absurd but deeply tragic plight of man. His bravest and most ex- alted purposes, those of nationality and human- ity, are driving him to self-destruction. There is more of tragedy in this than a present loss of life and material goods; there is a dreadful sug- gestion of doom, as when one first detects symp- toms of an incurable disease. There is a seeming fatality in life by which right motives impel man to work evil. Intelligence, self-sacrifice, devo- tion to a cause, those quahties of mind and will
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on which we have been taught to pride ourselves, seem only to make men more terrible, or more weak, according as they turn to deeds or to meditation. To take up arms and destroy, or to sit passively by while destruction rages unre- buked — there is apparently neither virtue nor happiness in either course. If such be the pre- dicament of man, it is not surprising that many are praying that the curtUin be rung down and an end made of the whole sorry business.
In what I have here to say I address those who are still determined to think the matter through notwithstanding the fact that, as Mr. TuUiver says, "thinking is mighty puzzHng work." De- spair we may reserve as a course of last resort. Likewise the death-bed consolations of religion by which human weal and woe are left to the in- scrutable wisdom of Almighty God. When the present scene becomes too painful we may shut our eyes, or turn to some celestial vision. But I for one cannot yet absolve myself from respon- sibility. There is a task of civilization and social progress to which man has so solemnly pledged himself that he cannot abandon it with honor. And in this hour of trial that pledge requires us to form a plan of action which shall be neither an act of blind faith nor a confession of failure.
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We must endeavor both to see our way and to make our way.
How shall the constructive work of civilization be saved and promoted? It would be a much simpler matter if it were only one's "inward peace" that was at stake. Mr. Bertrand Russell tells us that "the greatest good that can be achieved in this life is to have will and desire directed to universal ends, purged of the self- assertion which belongs to instinctive will." ^ But there is one greater good, and that is the accomplishment of these imiversal ends. This is a much more baffling and hazardous undertaking. It requires a man not only to make up his mind, but to bring things to pass. It becomes neces- sary to use the harsh and dangerous instruments by which things are done in this world. Civiliza- tion is not saved by the mere purging of one's heart, but by the work of one's hands. The forces of destruction must be met, each according to its kind, by the forces of deliverance. The belief that when a man has struck an attitude, and has braved it out in the midst of a rough and vulgar world, he has somehow solved the prob- lem and done his duty, underlies much of the pacific sentiment that is now abroad. It is a
^Atlantic Monthly y August, 1915, p. 267.
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dangerous error, because it makes the difficulties of life seem so much simpler than they really are, and may teach a man to be perfectly satisfied with himself when he has really only evaded the issue.
For what does this philosophy of inward recti- tude really mean and imply? In the first place, it is self-centred and individualistic. Life becomes an affair between each man and his own soul, a sort of spiritual toilet before the mirror of self- consciousness. Social relations only furnish oc- casions for the perfecting of self, trials by which one may test the firmness of one's own mind. The state, economic life, and other forms of co- operative association, lose their intrinsic impor- tance, and tend to be replaced by a select frater- nity of kindred spirits, in which each is confirmed in his aloofness from the vain hopes and petty fears of the world of action.
The crucial test of such a principle of life is afforded by the presence of a danger which threatens others whom one may be pledged to serve, or some larger good extending beyond the limits of one's personal life. Whether to save one's own peace of mind at the expense of one's own fife or property is a question which may well be left to the individual to decide for himself-
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But as so often happens, this relatively simple question is also relatively trivial. Such a choice is rarely if ever presented. Certainly the emer- gency in which war arises is never one which a sympathetic and imaginative person can meet merely by applying the scale of his own personal preferences. It is not one's own person that is imperilled. As a matter of fact it requires the most colossal egotism to suppose that the enemy has any interest whatever in one's own person. It is the collective Hfe, the state, the national tradition and ambition, the chosen and idealized civilization, the general state of happiness and well-being in the community — ^it is these that are in danger, and it is these that one must weigh against one's private tranquillity.
If the matter be viewed in this light, it is a little absurd to step forward and gallantly offer one's life in exchange for being allowed the privilege of dying innocuously ! Such an offer will sound heroic to no one but oneself, and to oneself only in so far as one has lost both sympathy and imagination. It is doubtless vexatious that one cannot be allowed to choose for oneself alone, but such is the hard condition of life. When one chooses to take up arms or to suffer the enemy to triumph, one is disposing, not of oneself, but
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of all those lives, possessions and institutions which the enemy threatens and which it lies within one's power to defend.
But the philosophy of inward rectitude is not merely self-centred, it is also formal and prudish. It is pervaded with a spirit of correct deport- ment. Its aversion to war is largely due to a feeling that war is banal, and incompatible with the posture of personal dignity. The philosopher's cloak must be thrown aside if one is to adopt the graceless and immoderate gait of the soldier. War is intolerable, just as running is intolerable to one who has come to enjoy the full measure of self-respect only when he is permitted to move with a slow and rhythmic strut.
But this is the antithesis of the spirit of enter- prise. Genuine devotion to an end, intently work- ing for it, will render one unconscious of the inci- dental movements and postures it involves,. A formalist would not He on his back under an au- tomobile, because such an attitude would not comport with a preconceived model of himself as an upright, heavenward being of a superior order; whereas a traveller, bent on reaching his destina- tion, would not shrink even from the aboriginal slime, if only he might find a way to go forward. Similarly if it were all a matter of propriety of
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? loi
demeanor, one could refuse the ugliness of war and shut one's eyes to the sequel. But if one's heart be set on saving civilization, so laboriously achieved, so fragile and perishable, then one's personal attitude is contemptibly insignificant. All that really matters is the fidelity with which one has done one's work and kept one's trust.
Nor will it suffice to quote Plato, and take comfort in the thought that the ideals are them- selves eternal and incorruptible. For that which enemies threaten and champions defend, is not the ideal itself, but some earthly, mortal thing which is made in its image. The labor and art of life is not to create justice and happiness in the abstract, but to build just cities and promote happy lives. And these can be burned with fire and slain by the sword. If one is prepared to renounce the existent world and the achieve- ments of history, one may perhaps escape the need of war. But let no man fail to realize that he has then virtually given up the whole creation of the race, all the fruits of all the painful toil of men, even the spiritual fruits of culture and character. For these spiritual fruits are indi- vidual lives which may be as utterly destroyed as the work of man's hands.
It is futile to argue that the good life cannot
I02 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
be destroyed by an enemy. It is true that it cannot be corrupted, and made evil. But it may be killed. The good Hfe is more than mere good- ness; it is living goodness, embodied in existence and conduct. He who slays a just man or anni- hilates a free and happy society, undoes the work of moral progress as fatally, nay more fatally, than he who corrupts them with injustice and slavery. For in the latter case there at least remain the latent capacities by which civilization may be rebuilt. Those who insist on the distinc- tion between might and right and accuse the warrior of practising might in the name of right, are likely on their part to forget that the work of civihzation is to make the right also mighty, so that it may obtain among men and prevail. This end is not to be realized by any philosophy of abstinence and contemplation, but only by a use of the physical forces by which things are brought to exist and by which alone they are made se- cure against violence and decay.
Having considered the philosophy by which men avoid war, let us now consider another philosophy by which men make war, with an equally easy conscience and an equally untroubled mind. I refer to the philosophy of nationahsm:
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 103
the worship of the individual state as an end in itself, and the justification of conduct solely by the principle of patriotism. Such a creed may be idealized by a beHef that the ultimate good lies in the progressive strife of opposing national ideals; a strife which is humanly discordant and tragic, but is rounded into some sort of all-saving harmony in the eternal whole. Practically this makes no difference except to add to the motive of national interest the sense of a heaven-sent mission. The only end by which the individual is required to judge his action is that of the power and glory of his own state. To that is merely added the dogma that national conquest and ag- grandizement are good for the world even if the poor world doesn't know it. By such a dogma a people whose international policy is unscru- pulously aggressive may enjoy at the same time an ecstatic conscience and a sense of philosophical enlightenment. Hence this is the most formida- ble and terrible of all philosophies. Its devastat- ing effects are manifest in the world to-day.
There are two fatal errors in this philosophy. The first is the assumption that the state is some- thing apart from the happiness and well-being of its members. The state, contrived to serve men, becomes instead, through tradition, prestige and
I04 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
its power to perpetuate its own agencies, an ob- ject of idolatrous worship. Under its spell free men forget their rights, wise men their reason, and good men their humanity. The second error is the dogma that the narrow loyalties of nations will best serve the universal good. There is no evidence for this. It is the joint product of na- tional bigotry and of an ethics manufactured by metaphysicians. The experience of the race points unmistakably to the fatally destructive character of narrow loyalties, and teaches the need of applying to national conduct the same standards of moderation, justice and good-will that are already generally applied to the relations of man and man.
There is one further way of evading the real difficulty of our problem, but this can be dis- missed with a bare mention. I refer to the flip- pant and irresponsible scepticism which holds all human purposes to be equally vaHd because all are equally blind and dogmatic. The sceptic views with mild derision the attempts of man to justify his passions. He holds all nations to be equally at fault, equally self-deceived, and equally pitiful. The folly and discord of life do not sur- prise him, for he expects nothing better than that man should consume himself. On such a
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 105
philosophy war and peace are not to be seriously argued, but accepted as fatahties, whose irony affords a refined enjoyment to the emancipated mind.
These, then, are the philosophies of evasion and irresponsibility. Before accepting any of them it behooves one to be clearly conscious of what they imply. It is impossible here to argue these deeper questions through. It must suffice to point out that all of these philosophies are op- posed to the beliefs on which modern democratic societies are founded. Unless we are to renounce these beliefs, we must refuse in this grave crisis to listen to any counsel that is not hopeful and constructive, that does not recommend itself to reason, and that does not define a program of universal human betterment. When such a so- lution is firmly insisted on, the real difficulties of the problem appear. But though one may well be troubled to find the way, one may at least be saved from the greater evil of self-deception.
There is no fair escape from the tragic paradox that man must destroy in order to save. Never before has this paradox been so vividly realized. Man goes forth with torch and powder to restore the primitive desolation, and to add to the nat-
io6 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
ural evils — ^from which he has barely escaped — more frightful evils of his own contriving. He does this in the name of home, country, hu- manity and God. Furthermore, he finds himself so situated that neither conscience nor reason permits him any other course. His very purpose of beneficence requires him to practise vandalism, cruelty and homicide upon a vast scale and with a refinement proportional to his knowledge and inventiveness. It may well seem credulous to find in this anything more than a fatal madness by which man is hastened to his doom.
But there is just one angle from which it may be possible to discern some method in this mad- ness. We must learn to regard war, not as an isolated phenomenon, but as merely the most aggravated and the most impressive instance of the imiversal moral situation. This fundamental predicament of hfe, which gives rise to all moral perplexities, is the conflict of interests. When war is viewed in this light, we may then see in justifiable war a special application of the most general of all ethical principles, namely, the principle of discipline or provident restraint. Given the natural conflict of interests, this principle de- fines the only alternative to waste and mutual destruction. It means simply that under actual
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 107
conditions the greatest abundance of life on the whole is to be secured only by a confining, prun- ing or uprooting of those special interests which imperil the stability and harmony of the whole.
When such restraint is not self-imposed, it must be imposed externally. The first lessons in restraint are doubtless learned from rivals and enemies who are governed by selfish purposes of their own. But the moral principle proper appears only when restraint is exercised with a provident purpose, that is, for the sake of the greater good that will result; as when a man re- frains from excess for the sake of long Ufe, or re- spects his neighbor's property for the sake of a general security and prosperity. Similarly a teacher or parent may restrain a wilful child, and a ruler a lawless subject, in the interest of all, including the individual so restrained. It is customary to question such motives, but the hypocrite would have no success, nor the cynic any claim to critical penetration, were these motives not so common as to establish the rule. As a matter of fact they are as solidly psycholog- ical as any fact regarding human nature.
Restraint, however exercised, is in its first effect negative and destructive. To set limits to an appetite, to bar the way to childish caprice, to
io8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
forbid an act and call it crime, is in some degree to inflict pain and death, to destroy some living impulse. But it is none the less morally neces- sary. And it matters not whether the act of restraint be simple and unpremeditated or com- plex and calculated, involving hosts of men and all the complex mechanism of modem war. It is still possible, on the larger scale as on the smaller, that the act of restraint should be re- quired by a larger purpose which is constructive and humane.
It is sometimes argued that an act of violence or coercion can have such a moral motive only when it is performed by a "neutral authority'' who has nothing to gain or lose by the transac- tion. It is further argued that, since in the case of international disputes no such disinterested party exists, no use of violence or coercion can be justified. Persons who reason in this way must be supposed to beheve in the miraculous origin of aU kings and policemen. The forcible prevention of robbeiy must to their mind have become just, when and only when there suddenly appeared on the scene a special heaven-sent race of beings wearing blue coats and billies, and having no passions or property of their own.
As a matter of fact, however, robbers were first
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 109
put down by the robbed. Their suppression was justified not because those who suppressed them gained nothing by it (for they certainly did gain), but because that suppression was enacted in be- half of a general community good in which the interests of the robber and his kind were also counted. And whatever be the historical genesis of the state, whether paternity or plunder, this much is certain: that the functions of the state were at first, and have been in a measure ever since, exercised by men who have derived per- sonal profit therefrom. The function of the state, its purpose of collective order, power and welfare, came into existence long ages before constitutions and charters of liberty made public office a public trust. Before men could learn to be governed well, they had to learn their first lessons of social restraint from whatever rude authorities were at hand.
Whence, then, are we to expect those inter- national police to whom alone is to be intrusted the fxmction of restraining predatory nations, and races filled with the lust of conquest? Are they to descend from above, clothed in uniform and wearing the badge of their office? It takes little historical sense to realize that we must first live through an age in which the principle of
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international restraint slowly gains acceptance, and is exercised by those nations who, primarily moved by an imminent danger to themselves, act also consciously and expressly in behalf of the larger good of mankind.
Let not any man say that the nation which feels itseK to be actuated by such a double mo- tive is insincere and hypocritical. This charge, if pressed home, would discredit all moral purpose whatsoever. Not only is it humanly possible that England, while saving herself, should at the same time wage war in behalf of the larger principles of freedom and international law; but all hope of a new order of things lies in the exis- tence of just such a resolve so to protect and promote one's own interest as at the same time to conduce to a like safety and weU-being in others.
We have thus, I beheve, reached an under- standing of the general principle by which war is justified. The righteous war is that waged in behalf of a higher order in which both of the war- ring parties and others of their rank may live to- gether in peace. If one man restrains another he must ask no more for himself than he concedes to his enemy. This modicum which is consistent with a like privilege in others he calls his right,
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? iii
and the law eventually defines it and invents special agents for its protection.
A righteous civil war will be one in which a fac- tion is restrained in behalf of a national good which is conceived to include both factions. Whether correct or mistaken in their judgment, such a purpose undoubtedly actuated the nobler spirits of both North and South in the American Civil War. To the South it was a war for independence, and to the North a war for the Union. That is to say, the moral motive in each consisted of a conscious provision for the equal good of the other. Each, while most immediately moved by its special interest, believed that interest to agree with the best interest of the other. Each had its plan for both, the South aiming at a rela- tion of friendship between two autonomous neigh- bors, the North aiming at the common advantages of national coherence. Forces of destruction and ungovernable passions were let loose, and the most dreadful of tragedies was enacted. But the fact remains that such higher purposes did exist, and gave to the struggle its quahty of idealism. Most living Americans, even those descended from the men of the South, now believe that the North was right in the sense of being guided by a sounder judgment.
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That so furious a conflict should have divided men of equally high purpose, that even yet doubts should exist as to the merits of the dispute, is profoundly deplorable — deplorable in the sense that aU human blindness and frailty is deplorable. But it was not to be avoided by either scepticism or inaction. It was then, as always, a question of controlling events according to one's lights, or being controlled by them. There is no guarantee against the possibiHty of error, and in judgments regarding poHtical policy the margin of error is large. Even if such a guarantee were theoreti- cally possible, events would not wait for one to find it. A man must act when emergencies arise and circumstances permit. The likelihood of error does not absolve him from the duty of making up his mind and acting accordingly. To be honestly mistaken is at least better than to be impotently non-committal. For an honest mistake is at least an experiment in poHcy and a lesson learned.
The forcible restraint of one individual by another, or of one faction by another, may thus be said to be justified when it is necessary to the establishment of a relationship which is tolerable to both. In an estabhshed civil order this rela- tionship is enforced by agencies especially pro- vided for the purpose. These agencies, with the
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 113
sentiment which enHvens them, and the custom and opinion which confirm them, signify good of a higher order than that of any individual or special interest; not because they are different in quality, but because they include all individual and special goods and make provision for them. In the state we all live and are strong, and if it fall,
" O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down."
Now let us suppose nation to be arrayed against nation. The use of force will be justified so far as it is necessary to establish a relation between nations that shall at least provide for their secu- rity. A nation which defends itself against ag- gression is both saving itself and also contending for the principle of nationality. It asks no more for itself than it concedes to its opponent — the privilege, namely, of existing and of administering its own internal affairs. Such a defensive war has then a double motive, the narrower motive of national security and the higher motive of general international security.
Even the narrower of these motives is a moral motive for the individual. The state is for most men the highest good which comes at all within
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the range of their experience. It is incomparably superior to the good with which in the daily round of work and play they are mainly preoccupied. It is often ignored, even by those persons of im- selfish purpose who oppose war because it threat- ens to interrupt the work of social betterment. Thus Mr. PhiHp Snowden, M.P., eloquently ex- horts us to "reahze that a beautiful school is a grander sight than a battleship — a, contented and prosperous peasantry than great battahons." ^ Nobody in his sober senses would deny it. But let Mr. Snowden and his friends on their part realize that his beautiful school and his prosperous peasantry exist by the grace of a state which owes its origin and its security to the vigilance and energy of men who have valued it enough to fight for it.
The security of the state means the security of all the good things that exist within the state. We in America are fond of being let alone. The thought of war annoys us because life is so full of good things that we hate to be interrupted. But liberty and opportunity are the fruits of our na- tional existence, and if we love them we would do well to cherish that national existence in which
^ From a speech delivered before the House of Commons on "Dreadnoughts and Dividends," on March i8, 19 14.
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 115
they are rooted. Fighting men as a rule under- stand this better than peacemakers. The in- dividual understands it better on the field of battle than he does in the place where he earns his living or in the place where he goes when he is tired. It has become the custom to emphasize man's savagery, and behttle or suspect his sen- timents. We need to be reminded that the av- erage soldier thinks and feels more generously than the average civilian. We have come to speak of patriotism as though it meant mere self- assertion, and have forgotten that patriots are individuals who, while collectively they may be asserting themselves against the enemy, are in- dividually denying themselves for their country. And it is of this self-denying loyalty that they are most keenly conscious. "The peace ad- vocates," wrote Mr. E. L. Godkin in the days of Gravelotte and Orleans, "are constantly talking of the guilt of killing, while the combatants only think, and will only think, of the nobleness of dying." ^
It is only in national emergencies that the great majority of men realize that they enjoy the benefits of national existence. Then only is
^From the article on "Peace" in his Reflections and Comments y p. 3-
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it realized that civic life is the fundamental con- dition of individual life, and that all forms of economic and cultural activity are vitally de- pendent on it. The generation that has been born in this country since the Civil War has never had to make sacrifices for the state, and has never been brought to such a realization. We have taken too much for granted. Like spoiled children, we have assumed that the staple good of national security was provided by the bounty of nature, and have irritably clamored for the sweetmeats of wealth and higher education. I do not mean to suggest that any people should be satisfied with the minimum, but that we should clearly understand that human goods must follow in a certain order, and that the super- structure rests upon the foundation.
But while the good of the state is greater than that of any individual or special interest, because it contains all of these and nourishes them, how shall it be measured against the good of that other state against which it is arrayed in war? How is it possible to justify patriotism when it makes war on patriotism? Is the state worth fighting for, when it means that there is another state which one is fighting against? Again we must apply our principle, that force is justifiable
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR? 117
only when used in the interest of both parties, or in behalf of some higher form of association that is inclusive of both. A just defensive war must therefore be actuated by a higher principle even than that of patriotism. While it is waged pri- marily on behalf of the great common good of national existence, there must be at the same time a due acknowledgment of the enemy's equal right. The enemy on his part is deserving of forcible restraint only in so far as through his arrogance he prevents or threatens a relationship in which there is room for him as well. War upon such an enemy, like all righteous war, is war upon lawlessness. Although its first effect is destructive, it is provident and constructive in its ulterior effect.
With this principle in mind we may now take a further step and justify offensive war, when undertaken in the interest of an international system or league of humanity. For a century or more this greater cause has stirred the imagina- tions of men, and it has gradually been adopted as a norm for the criticism of international policy. There is now no serious doubt in Hberal and earnest minds of the superiority of this cause to the nar- rower claims of nationality. How shall nations be so adjusted as to help and not hurt one another ?
ii8 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
How shall commerce and cultural intercourse be promoted, and dangerous friction and rivalry be removed? How shall the threat of war be so far reduced that nations can direct their energies and resources internally to the improvement of the lot of the unprivileged and disqualified majority? In theory the answer is as obvious as it is trite: by estabhshing among nations some greater unit of civic Hfe, some system of international law and equity, with agencies for its appKcation and en- forcement.
But how shall we go forward to this end? Not by abandoning what has already been achieved, the integrity of the nation. For what we seek is something greater than nationahty, not something less. Not by sitting idly by and allow- ing events to roU over us. Not by awaiting the sudden appearance on earth of some heaven-sent umpire who shall box our ears and set us about our business. This much seems clear: that this end, if it is to be achieved at all, must be achieved by the greatest forces that man has now at his disposal. Nations and leagues of nations must assume the functions of international control. Their very strength, so terrible in destruction, must be directed to the larger end of construc- tion. Just as the order-loving individual had first to enact the law for himself and in his own
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behalf, so the more enHghtened and more liberal nations must take upon themselves the functions of international justice. One such nation, or an alliance of such nations, will be its first rude organ. Such an organ will necessarily be governed in part by the nearer motive of party interest, but this need not prevent the genuine existence of the higher motive as well. And just as the evolution of democracy means the gradual purification of the governmental motive, the purging of it from admixture with personal, dynastic and class in- terests, so we may expect to witness on the larger scale the gradual evolution of some similarly dis- interested agency that shall represent the good of all mankind.
It is commonly and truly said that the present war is the most terrible in history. We have, I beheve, been too quick to see in this a reason for despair. Wars become terrible in proportion to the strength of the warring parties, in num- bers, organization and science. But what of this strength? Shall we count it no achievement? A war between Italy and Austria is more terrible than a war between Venice and Genoa, but only because Venice and Genoa have learned to live in peace and have achieved the strength of union and co-operation. We are witnessing to-day, not a mere war between nations, but the more awful
I20 THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
collision between alliances of nations. The horror of the catastrophe should not blind us to the fact that France and England, for example, have learned that each has more to gain from the oth- er's prosperity than from its decay, and that their differences are negligible when compared with their common interests. Together they possess strength of a higher order, terrible in war, but proportionally beneficent in peace. The evolution of human solidarity and organization has brought us to the stage of great international alliances.
It is thus in keeping with the record of human progress that the last war should be the worst — and the worst the last. For the only human force more terrible than a league of some nations is the league of all nations, the league of man. The same motive that has led to the one will lead to the other — the desire, namely, to avoid the loss and weakness of conflict, and to attain the in- comparable advantages of co-operative life. This last aUiance wiU then have no human adversary left, but may devote its supreme power to perfect- ing the lot of the individual, and scotching the devil of reaction.
The goods that are worth fighting for are first of all existent goods, embodied in the life of man.
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Such goods are created by physical forces, may be destroyed by physical forces, and may require to be defended by physical forces. They are worth fighting for when they are greater goods than those which have to be fought against. Civil law is worth fighting for, against the law- less individual. National integrity is worth fight- ing for, against disruptive factions or unscrupulous rivals. The general good of mankind is worth fighting for, against the narrower purpose of na- tional aggrandizement. These greater goods are worth fighting for; nothing is really worth fight- ing against. It therefore behooves every high- spirited individual or nation to be both strong and purposeful. Strength without high purpose is soulless and brutal; purpose without strength is unreal and impotent.
We in America cannot, it is true, afford to build armies and navies from sheer bravado. Our strength must be consecrated to the best that the most enlightened reason and the most sensitive conscience can discern. But, on the other hand, we cannot afford to cherish any ideal whatsoever unless at the same time we are willing to put forth the effort that is commensurate with its realization. The corrective of militarism is not complacency and neglect, but a humane
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purpose; and the corrective of pacifism is not a lapse into barbarism, but the acquiring of suffi- cient might and resolution to do the work which a humane purpose requires.
VII
NON-RESISTANCE AND THE PRESENT WAR
MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL, of Trinity College, Cambridge, is probably the most eminent of the small group of Englishmen who have openly advocated non-resistance as a pres- ent policy. His recent articles, published in this country, are admirable for their detachment and humanity; they might well serve as a model for the philosophical discussion of the great issues that are now hanging in the balance. And since non-resistance is not likely to find a more able protagonist than Mr. Russell, I have selected one of his articles, entitled "The Ethics of War,"^ as an instance by which to judge the merits of that principle.
Although I disagree with almost every specific opinion which this article contains, let me first express my agreement with the general and un- derlying opinion that "the way of mercy is the way of happiness for all." This opinion is abun- dantly verified by human experience, past and
^ International Journal of Ethics, January, 1915. 123
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present, and is rapidly coming to be a common premise from which all philosophically minded persons argue. War in itself is an unmitigated calamity. It is not to be praised, but denounced; it is not even to be tolerated and idealized as a natural necessity, but is rather to be hunted to its sources and eradicated like a curable dis- order. Granting this, what is the reasonable attitude toward the present war and toward its principal actors? It is here that Mr. Russell seems to me to be mistaken in his facts and in his inferences.
There is in this country and at least to some extent among the Allied Powers, a disposition to take international treaties and conventions seriously, and to condemn as "lawless" a nation that violates them. Mr. Russell regards this disposition as groundless because treaties are in {)ractise "only observed when it is convenient to do so." They lack the sanction which en- forces law, and serve only "to afford the sort of pretext which is considered respectable for en- gaging in war with another Power." Now I am willing to assume for the sake of the argument the doubtful thesis that nations do in practise imiversally disregard treaties at the dictation of selfish expediency. There remains the impor-
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tant fact, conceded by Mr. Russell, that such action is judged to be disreputable and "unscru- pulous." How is that judgment, which already impels governments to seek a "pretext," to be so strengthened as to act as a deterrent?
The analogy of law, to which the pacifist ap- peals, would suggest a resort to force. But the en- forcement of international law predicates an inter- national organization resolved to substitute arbi- tration for war. How is such an international organization to be brought about? Only, it would appear, by the cultivation of opinion and habit. In short, before the present sentiment for the observance of international law shall be convertible into a sanction, it must be strengthened and attain to something like unanimity. To this end it is important that no breach of such con- ventions as are already in existence should be condoned. It is not by a passive admission of past and present lawlessness, but by a coimsel of perfection and a stern condemnation of the common fault, that usage is to be improved. A cynical violation of treaties should to-day be denounced with a severity exceeding any judg- ment in the past, so that to-morrow this thing may become so damnable that no government shall dare to be found guilty.
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' The disputes of private citizens are not com- monly settled, as Mr. Russell asserts, "by the force of the police," but by legal process resting on habit and intelligence. The police do not so much enforce law as prevent its occasional infraction. The great majority of persons, and all persons for the greater part of their lives, are "law-abiding."^ If international law is to be similarly sanctioned, its observance must like- wise rest on habit and intelligence. Nations must become generally law-abiding, before any international police can imdertake to con- strain law-breaking nations. "If the facts were understood," says Mr. Russell, "wars amongst civilized nations would cease, owing to their inherent absurdity." How is such a general understanding to be brought about, and how is the reasonable practise to become the normal practise? Only, it seems to me, by an unflag- ging effort to promote every instrument, such as international law, treaties, courts of arbitration,
* Mr. Russell, on the other hand, evidently agrees with the view of Mr. Strachey as quoted by Mr. Graham Wallas: "Why do men have recourse to a Court of Law in private quarrels . . . ? Be- cause they are forced to do so and are allowed to use no other ar- bitrament." To this Mr. Wallas replies: "But, as a matter of historical fact, the irresistible force by which men are now com- pelled to resort to the law-courts in their private quarrels is the result of custom arising from thousands of free decisions to do so." — The Great Society, p. 169.
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that provides a substitute for the absurdity of war, and by the emphatic and unambiguous censure of every act that destroys these instru- mentalities or renders them ineffective.
To many minds it doubtless seems paradoxical to war for the sake of peace. It is precisely as paradoxical, no more and no less, as it is to labor for the sake of rest, or to make sacrifices in order that one may live more abundantly. Indeed I am inclined to go so far as to say that the one cause for which one may properly make war is the cause of peace. To be willing to fight for a thing simply means to be unwilling to give it up, however seriously it may be threatened. The one thing that is certainly worth the price of war is peace. This is simply because war means the destruction, and peace the security, of all human values.
The only justification of destruction is the hope of safety and preservation. This holds, whatever be one's values, provided only that they be human and earthly values. There is only one philosophy of non-resistance that can be justified, and that is other-worldliness. If no value attaches to the things of this world, then there is no motive for resistance; although in that case it is equally in- different whether one resists or not, since the
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enemy^s life is worth no more than one's own. The moment any human achievement of body, mind or character is taken to be good, then war for its preservation is in principle justified. Even though humility be the supreme good, then one should resist the aggression of an enemy who threatens to destroy one's life before one has cultivated that virtue, or proposes after the ex- termination of the humble to spread a propaganda of pride.
But Mr. Russell bases his claims for non-re- sistance on no such philosophy of remmciation. It is evident that he holds life, happiness, intel- lectual contemplation, self-government, and many other things to be good. He suggests nothing better worth struggling for than these characteris- tic benefits of the secular civilized life. He would propose to secure these things by peaceful means, but he must, of course, add, "if possible.'' What, then, if some enemy determines to destroy these things, and begins to destroy them? Suppose that enemy to be prompted by the motive of destruction. There are then only two alterna- tives: To yield, with the expectation that these good things will be destroyed, or to resist in the hope that they may be preserved, albeit at great cost and in diminished measure. In the former
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case one's action cannot be justified at all be- cause one can expect no good from it. One can- not even hope to avoid evil, because it may be the determination of the enemy to perpetrate that which one holds to be evil. The latter course is then the only course that will be dictated by love of good.
To try out this principle of non-resistance one must imagine the greatest conceivable good to be attacked with a deliberate intent to destroy it; or the greatest conceivable evil to be threat- ened with a deliberate and implacable intent to perpetrate it. One must suppose the suc- cess of the enemy to be probable if he is not resisted, and doubtful or capable of being retarded, if he is resisted. To test the principle rigorously one should conceive the good or evil at stake in such terms as to arouse one's deepest sentiments. It is life, or character, or social welfare, or the souFs salvation that is attacked; it is tyranny, or rape, or child-murder, or hell- fire that is threatened. What, then, shall one do? To yield, not to resist to the utmost, is to abandon the best or permit the worst. There is by definition no higher ground, either the pro- motion of good or the avoidance of evil, on which such a course may be justified. It is true that in
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any given case one's judgment may be in error. But this proves only that one should be sure that one's fears are well grounded, that it is a genuine good or evil that is at stake, and that one's enemy is really one's enemy. This argues for the need of light. But it does not in the least argue against the principle of defensive warfare. So much for the principle. Let us consider the author's applications. "The Duchy of Luxem- burg, which was not in a position to offer resis- tance, has escaped the fate of the other regions occupied by hostile troops."^ I am willing to waive the doubtful considerations of "honor" and "prestige," and stake the argument alto- gether on other considerations. First, Luxem- burg through non-resistance has decreased the respect for the independence of small nations in general, and for her own independence in partic- ular. Secondly, though she may have escaped the fate of the other regions occupied by hostile
^Op. cit., p. 139. Mr. Russell does not present evidence that this is the case. The New York Times for February 23, 1915, pub- lished the following extract from a letter written from Luxemburg: "I do not believe that the Belgians can hate the Germans as strongly as the people of this little duchy. Their coimtry is not laid low by cannon-fire, neither were they butchered by the Germans, and yet they are not better off than the inhabitants of Belgium. Every able-bodied citizen is being compelled to serve the German army in one or other form. . . . The laboring classes have lost their occupations, while the well-to-do cannot point to anything and say, 'This is mine.' "
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troops thus favy it is as well to remember that the war is not yet over. If the tide turns, the in- habitants of this duchy may yet be visited with all the horrors of war, with no friend on either side, and incapable of protecting themselves. Thirdly, if Germany wins, Luxemburg becomes, as she is virtually now, a German dependency. If Germany loses, Luxemburg has small claim for the recognition of her sovereignty even from those who are in this war the champions of the smaller states, on the principle that those de- serve political autonomy who care enough for it to defend it. Finally, Luxemburg does not in any case offer an analogy from which to argue for the non-resistance of Belgium or England, because she "was not in a position to offer re- sistance," and therefore was under no such recognized obligation to defend her neutrality as was the case of Belgium.
But Mr. Russell is evidently willing to con- template, as preferable to warlike resistance, even loss of political independence. He evidently believes that what is valuable in national life may be preserved even though one put oneself utterly at the disposal of the enemy. Here again I prefer to waive the more doubtful matters. Whether humiliating submission to alien arro-
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gance, accompanied by a vivid memory of lost freedom, would be a tolerable form of existence, I will not attempt to argue — I should fear that I might lapse into an expression of feeling. Most men would, I think, prefer to die; and they would be entitled to the choice. But Mr. Russell pro- poses somehow to combine with non-resistance '^English civilization, the English language, Eng- lish manufactures," and EngHsh constitutionalism or democracy; all this, though the Enghsh navy were sunk and London occupied by the Prussians ! Now what can Mr. Russell mean? He knows better than I that not only manufactures, but bare existence in England depends on commerce. They depend not only on the actual freedom of the sea, but on the guarantee of that freedom. He knows that if the Prussians occupied London and it suited their purpose they could undertake the suppression of the English language as they have undertaken the suppression of the Polish language. He knows that, should the German monarchy fear the effect of the example of Eng- lish democracy, it would have a strong motive for emulating the policy of the "Holy Alliance" of 1815. Having the motive, there is on the principle of non-resistance not the least reason why Germany should not accomplish these things.
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Mr. Russell thinks that England may neverthe- less be saved from oppression by "public opinion in Germany," which is somehow suddenly to be inspired with magnanimity by the spectacle of the voluntary submission of its rival. Germany's treatment of a non-resistant China would afford small encouragement for this desperate hope, even were it not a general fact that arrogance is only inflated and encouraged by submission. History aboimds in examples of this. One need only cite the habitual insolence of the European races toward non-resistant or obsequious Jews.
The last remaining vestige of hope would then be based on Mr. Russell's contention that Eng- land herself has not found it possible to refuse self-government to her colonies. But England has found it necessary or politic to concede self- government to her colonies because they were English colonies, composed of high-spirited men of English blood who could be counted upon sooner or later to assert their independence, and to make it respected if necessary by force. Eng- land has not found it necessary to grant self- government to conquered races. An England occupied by Prussians would not be a colony, but a conquered race. And by the express terms of a philosophy of non-resistance such an England
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would have lost its high spirit, and would have renounced forever any ultimate appeal to force. Like the American neutral, Mr. Russell holds "that no single one of the combatants is justified in the present war." What he means is not perfectly clear. That no nation whatsoever has clean hands and an unblemished record is doubt- less true. But at least two of the warring nations, Servia and Belgium, were wantonly attacked. It is now generally admitted that Austria's ulti- matum to Servia was intended to provoke war in order that Servia might be "chastised." Bel- gium was deliberately sacrificed to Germany's mihtary convenience. So far as these nations are concerned, there was no alternative to war save non-resistance. Both of these nations be- long to the side of the Allies. The other allied nations were at least in part moved by a desire to save these two smaller nations from subjec- tion. They may be said, therefore, to be fighting for the principle of national security, and for the principle of adjudicating international disputes by conference, agreement and treaty. They were or are now doubtless actuated by other and less commendable motives. But that does not in the least annul their justification on the first ground. For a man may rightly save a weak neighbor from assault, even though the assailant
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be one's private enemy, and even though his punishment afford one private satisfaction or advantage.
Even were one to grant that Russia and France should have permitted the subjection of Servia by Austria, and that England should have per- mitted the subjection of Belgium by Germany, there remains an independent and much less debatable question. Which of the warring parties is most deserving of censure, and whose victory is more desirable ? In other words, whom should one's moral judgment most severely condemn, and what outcome would be most conducive to the general good? This is a question which no lover of mankind, however detached and dis- passionate, can ignore. The present war is an event of prodigious human significance, and its consequences will be lasting and far-reaching. If there be any just decision or verdict in these matters, it is important to reach it, lest one lapse into helpless and confused passivity, and play no part now that the hour of trial has come. There is a wide-spread conviction among those who have observed the war at some distance from the heat of action that Germany and Aus- tria are chiefly culpable and that their defeat is desirable. It seems probable, more from what Mr. Russell has omitted to say than from what
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he has said, that he does not share that convic- tion. His independence and honesty of opinion are to be respected. But I believe his opinion to be mistaken.
Mr. Russell himself acknowledges that "democ- racy in the western nations would suffer from the victory of Germany." He protests, however, that democracy can never be "imposed" on Germany; overlooking the fact that a decline of Prussian mihtary prestige would not only remove a threat that seriously retards the natural growth of democracy in England and France, but might put new heart into the millions of German Social- Democrats who (contrary to Mr. Russell^s as- sertion) do not enjoy "the form of government which they desire."
Nothing that has developed during the last year of the war, and nothing that Mr. Russell has said, has tended to disprove the verdict that Germany and Austria are the pruicipal offenders on whom may justly be visited whatever penalty be appropriate to the crime of war. The para- moimt fact is that one of these Powers, abetted by the other, first made war. Germany, at least thus far, has practised war least humanely, has done least to mitigate its horrors, and has shown least respect for the conventions which have been
NON-RESISTANCE AND THE WAR 137
intended to regulate and limit war. The domi- nant party in Germany, the Prussian military caste, most perfectly embodies the aggrandizing and arrogant spirit of aggressive war, and con- stitutes the greatest obstacle in the way of the achievement of future and perpetual peace.
If these judgments be well founded it is essential that they should be made and that they should not readily be forgotten. They may only too easily be confused by an overscrupulous regard for the guilt of the less guilty. There is a curious inversion of emphasis in Mr. Russell's article. It is not impossible that a distrust of vulgar opinion should lead a nicely analytical and cau- tiously reflective mind to exaggerate whatever is contrary to the general prejudice. It may even lead one to dwell at length upon the im- moderate indignation of the victim, while the fury of the assailant rages unrebuked. It is doubtless the principal task of the philosopher to offset the bias of the multitude and resist the current that sweeps by him. But it sometimes happens that the common opinion is correct, and that even such blind passions as patriotism and righteous indignation will be found working for the general good.
VIII
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
AT a time like the present there is no maxim ^ in the whole store of moral truisms that is not apt. For war appears to be nothing less than a demoraHzing of man, a fit of madness in which riotously, even exultingly, he throws away all the advantage he has laboriously won against the inertia and drag of nature. As though seized with a sort of morbid exhibitionism, he denudes himself of the garment of civilization and shame- lessly exposes what he once thought bestial and degraded. Deceiving himself by narrow and per- verted loyalties, and confirmed by the unison of collective passion, he launches himseK upon a course of violence, deceit, robbery, arson, murder, profligacy, cruelty, lawlessness and impiety — so that war seems scarcely other than a name for the aggregate of all wicked things.
This is incontestable. But save as a purge for the writer himself there is Httle virtue in saying it, because it needs so Httle arguing, and because,
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as with most sermonizing, the sinners are not in church. The cure of the present war is not to be effected by gentle remonstrance. Then why all this talk ? Why does every man burn to say some- thing, if only to his neighbor over the back fence? It is because we have reflected that what has happened once may happen again, and that the horrid menace of war must be taken to heart. Mankind is liable and even predisposed to con- tract the disease and perish of it. We are rightly stirred to seek measures of prevention; not for our own selves merely, but because civilization itself is worth so little while it is threatened with sudden and ruinous depreciation. If any cause of war can be unmistakably identified and labelled "Danger!'' then something, be it ever so Httle, has been contributed to the safety of mankind. To know a cause prepares the way for its con- trol, and to control the cause is to control the effect.
But first of all it is necessary to beHeve and to believe resolutely and unyieldingly that war has causes which may be identified and controlled. To doubt this is as though medical science should disbelieve in the possibility of curing disease. Whoever says that the present war or any war is inevitable, should be rebuked as the unwitting
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accomplice of the powers of darkness. For in weakening the intent and power to control the disaster he is helping, to bring it about. He who regards any event as inevitable is himself one of its causes. This is the obvious but neglected truth that I want here to proclaim. War does not happen to mankind, but is committed hy man- kind. It is as much within his control as are any of his works, and to fall away from this beHef into a weak and hopeless acquiescence, is to lose that high purpose from which all great human achieve- ments must spring.
By a curious perversion of an obscure half- truth common sense has come to regard the psychological, or the "merely" psychological, as unreal. Christian Science relies upon this vulgar prejudice to convince people that to identify disease with error is the same as to deny it alto- gether. The worldly wise have had a good deal of fun over President Wilson's declaration that the ante-bellum business depression was largely psychological. Assuming that this was the same as to say that there wasn't any business depres- sion, the rustic or curbstone wit had only to point to some recent failure, and loutish laughter rang loud at poor Mr. Wilson's expense. So one hesitates to say that war is largely psychological,
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lest some keen observer point to the record of death and destruction, and ask triumphantly: "Are these, too, psychological ? "
And yet it is instantly evident that everything whatsoever with which man has to do is in so far a matter of human nature, that is to say, of psychology. I am assuming that we are talking not of events like the return of a comet, but of events like wars in which human agency is in- volved. Wars are due not to the operation of mechanical laws of the astronomical sort, but to the passions, purposes, decisions and volitions of men. They are due, in short, to the human mind, as this operates individually and collec- tively.
That there are enormous differences in the causal power exerted by different minds, de- pending on their place of vantage in the social system, is, of course, true. Most men merely echo the prevaiHng opinion or swell the general tide of passion. Even so, such men in the aggre- gate give to opinion its tendency to prevail, and to passion its tidal and overwhelming power. But the contribution of a single member of the mass is not comparable with that of an individual who occupies a place of prominence or authority. Such a mind operates at a source, coloring all that
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springs from it, or at a crucial point where every sKght deflection is enormously magnified in the consequence. From such minds come the models of opinion, the first breaks in the self-control that dams the flood of passion, or the decisions and acts which suddenly create new situations and upset the dehcate equilibrium of peace. The causes of any war are far too complex for exhaus- tive analysis. The historians have not yet satis- factorily explained the first war, and we shall not five to see the explanation of this last. But so much is certain, that wars are due to the forces which animate and govern the human mind.
Now to return to our truism, that to expect war is to be a contributory cause of it. To ex- pect a thing is in a way to dispose one's mind to it; and if it be the sort of thing, like war, that is a product of the mind, it will therefore be affected — ^if not directly and considerably, then at least indirectly and slightly. Only be it remembered that causes that severally are slight may cumu- latively be decisive. To expect a thing is usually to relax or abandon efforts to prevent it. The expectation of failure weakens the effort to suc- ceed, and in so far makes way for failure. Simi- larly, to expect a war incHnes one to be half-
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hearted or to lose heart altogether in one's efforts to keep the peace.
In the case of war a peculiar social phenomenon aggravates this negative effect of unbelief, and exerts a positive influence as well. To disbelieve in the friendly intentions of another, to regard him as an enemy, is to encourage in him what- ever incipient hostility his breast may harbor. The hostility thus evoked will seem to justify the very suspicion that evoked it. This suspicion, in turn, now renewed and intensified, will react again upon its object until, passion thus feeding on itself, what was at the outset only a passing attitude of faint distrust has become a violent and deep-rooted hate. Every one has witnessed this phenomenon in spitting cats and growling dogs, or in the growth of his own personal en- mities. To understand the part such causes play in war one has only to multiply these familiar effects by the factors of contagion and social in- tensification.
But expectation involves more than lapse of prevention. Ordinarily it involves something more positive still, that we call "preparation for the inevitable." And to prepare for a thing in that spirit is, of course, to faciHtate it. If you are resigned to an event, then you have created con-
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ditions favorable to its occurrence. To be ready for war means that any new event tending to war will find other necessary factors already present, so that what is in itself a cause of slight weight may be a last straw. The materials, the organi- zation, the pohcies, even the explanations and apologies are at hand. The normal inhibitions against violence are largely removed. To be ready for war is to be, as we say, "used to the idea.'* There are a thousand ways in which prep- aration for war, itself the consequence of expect- ing it, may in turn literally pave the way for it, or pass over by almost insensible gradations into the act of war itself.
The question of preparedness is thus, like most questions of policy, less simple than immediately appears. Since war may always be forced by the threat of something worse, prudence and a decent sense of responsibility compel even a peace-loving nation like the United States to be prepared for that emergency. Furthermore, there are times and circumstances like the present, in which war is a very live possibility. It may be a war of de- fense; it may be a war on war-makers in the interest of peace. It is necessary, then, to pre- pare for the contingency of war, without regard- ing it as inevitable. Lest even this readiness
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should dispose the mind to accept war as a fatahty, it is necessary at the same time to labor eagerly and hopefully for peace. There is a vast difference between being resigned to failure and being prepared for failure, and the difference is made by the determination to succeed. It is pos- sible to prepare for war without being resigned to it, provided one struggles with conviction to achieve an honorable peace.
So much for our generalizations. Let us fit the cap. Many who have recently undertaken publicly to justify Germany have betrayed on their own part, and have attributed to Germany herself, a belief that the present war was inevitable. There is one infallible sign of fatalism. Believing as they do that an event is inevitable and that individuals like themselves are both impotent to prevent it and free from responsibility for it, all fatalists attribute the event to extra-individual causes, to abstractions and fictions which they suppose to operate somehow, despite individuals.
Most of us can remember that it was not we ourselves, but "destiny" that annexed the Philip- pine Islands. We now find the minds of German apologists confused with a like superstition. Avoiding the history of the crucial decisions and actions of individuals, like Count Berchtold and
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Emperor William, they tell us that the war is due to the "racial ambition'' of the Slav, to the French sentiment of "revanche," and to British "commercial jealousy." Owing to the operation of these forces the war was "boimd to come"; these were its great "imderlying causes."
Now, is this cant or only pedantry? Is it mere talk by which to mask ambition, or is it a sincere wrong-headed abstractionism tinged with sentimentality? Perhaps it is both. When the motives of a nation are in question it is safer to adopt the more complex rather than the simpler theory. In any case the causes invoked, taken as impersonal forces, are sheer nonentities; they cannot cause war for the simple reason that ex- cept as particular motives in concrete individuals they do not cause at all.
There are Slavs, no doubt, who cherish dreams of racial unity and aggrandizement, as there are Servian and Russian politicians who contrive ways of realizing such dreams. But these are individuals governed by countless other motives as well, limited by opportunity, liable to change, and in some measure open to reason. There are vindictive Frenchmen and jealous Englishmen, no doubt; but the individual minds that harbor these passions are moved also by other impulses,
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and are capable, judging by the history of the last decade, of controlling their passions.
Granting that, it is impossible to deny that these passions might subside and disappear al- together. If a war can be postponed a day or an hour, no man can deny the possibility of prevent- ing it altogether. Woe to the man who takes the last irretrievable step that cuts off that possibility forever. For he has committed the act of war; aided and abetted by all who have confused his mind and blinded him to his crucial and decisive responsibility. To single out some one sentiment from the rest, to abstract it from the individual minds that entertain it and from the circum- stances that limit and change it, to invest it with a power to operate in vacuo and with superhuman power like an evil spirit, is both a silly supersti- tion and, in the practical aspect, a culpable abandonment of moral effort.
Apparently the "if there be war'' was to the German authorities so vivid a possibility, so overwhelming a probability, that they were un- willing to risk any military advantage whatso- ever in the interest of a thing so chimerical as peace. If Germany had been willing to lose the advantage of swifter mobilization by postponing the outbreak of war until Russia was mobilized,
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there is every reason to believe that the war would not have broken out at all. It is fairly evident that you cannot keep the peace by in- sisting upon an arrangement such that you would enjoy every initial advantage if there should be war. There results a manoeuvring for position that is already a beginning of war. It is true' that every nation is in a measure guilty. For years Europe has been so zealously engaged in a hypothetical war as to make the transition to real war an easy and natural one. But it can scarcely be denied that efforts to reduce arma- ments and estabHsh peace upon a permanent basis have met with least encouragement in Ger- many, and this owing not so much to German militarism as to German scepticism.
The German loves peace, but doesn't believe in it; he hates war, but resigns himself to it as inevitable. The Yellow Peril or the Slav Peril is forcing it upon him, and thrusting the sword into his reluctant hands. With admirable resolu- tion and skill he makes ready to meet these fantastic perils, and lo, by his very readiness he has made them for the first time real. He has himself brought the Japanese to Kiaochow and the Russian to Konigsberg.
If German explanations of the war have con-
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firmed and aggravated the prejudice they were designed to correct, it is because they fail to go to the individual centres of human responsibility. It is natural for Englishmen or Americans to want to know who made the war, not what made it. And this is not a mere habit of mind; it is good history and sound psychology. In order to cause events, the passions which move men and societies must find expression in action. Before they can do this they must undergo selection and limitation, through their reciprocal interplay, and through the various checks of habit, author- ity and reason. Eventually passion may pass over into volition and overt action. But it is during this transition from tendencies and poten- tialities to particular acts of particular individuals that they are subject to control. The tendencies and potentialities themselves, such as race hatred or land hunger, are indeterminate as to their effects. They may result in this or that, accord- ing to the turn they are given at the crisis of action. The full absurdity of invoking them as causes of war can be understood only when one reflects that there always exist such causes of war between aU the peoples of the earth. They are among the constant forces which human policy must take account of, but they are not the
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differential causes which actualize specific events, nor the instrumental causes with which these are controlled.
We do not explain the sinking of the Titanic by the law of gravitation. Ships do tend toward the bottom of the sea, as men tend to lie prone upon the earth; nevertheless many ships float and men do for a time stand erect and even rise into the air. In other words, there are other forces besides gravitation, and the physical history of man is due to the balance and regulation of these forces. There is jealousy, bitterness and sus- picion enough between some Americans and some Japanese to provide abundant "underl3dng causes" for the outbreak of war. And should such a disaster be visited upon us no doubt these and other more remote generalizations would be invoked in order to obscure and excuse individual responsibihty. But it will in fact be as unneces- sary to-morrow as to-day, unless it be for the wanton recklessness, selfishness or stupidity of some individual who at a particular crisis allows these sentiments to break forth into hostile deeds. There are underlying causes for a brawl between every man and his neighbor, inasmuch as there are in every human heart impulses of self-aggrandizement and anger that would, if
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conditions were favorable and checks removed, drive each man at his neighbor's throat. But when such deeds of lawlessness occur we do not ascribe them to these impulses, but to the de- fects of will and reason by which they were let loose.
Human nature is warlike. True, but not con- clusive. The Eskimos of Greenland and the African Pigmies, for example, are not at war. Then we must add that human nature, condi- tions being favorable, is also peaceful. And if we admit this, we must conclude that since man is capable of either, whether he be at war or at peace, is going to be determined not by these deeper and more constant capacities, but by the conditions that stimulate, evoke and facilitate them. These conditions may be controlled so that the peaceful possibilities are reahzed, and the warlike possibilities held in check or transmuted into their opposite. In this fact lies the hope of civilization.
IX
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE recent course of events has forced to the front an old and crucial issue. The need for economic and military preparedness, for a more vivid national consciousness, and for some comprehensive and synthetic treatment of acute social maladies, have steadily inclined opinion toward centraUzation and institutional control. But this trend appears to threaten that individual latitude and diversity which is the most cherished tradition among English and French speaking peoples. It behooves us, then, to seek for the tap- root of that individualism which we prize, in order to know on what its life and nourishment depend.
It has often been observed that what imperils individualism in these United States of America in this twentieth century is not institutional tyranny, but the imconscious and insidious tyranny which is exercised by the unorganized social mass. Here is a tyranny that is not only
powerful, but capricious. It has not even the
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merit of consistency. And the individualism which it suppresses is the essential individualism. Institutional authority, however tyrannical, may at least be credited with suppressing that lawless self-seeking which borrows the honorable name of liberty, but which is in fact its most ancient enemy. The mass influence, on the other hand, is a menace to that self-possession, that capacity for private judgment which is the soul of all disciplined and constructive liberty.
Since tyranny of this sort is not imposed by in- stitutional authority, it is futile to resist it merely by political means. It is not to be met directly either by curtailing the functions of the state or by enlarging the political activities of the indi- vidual. For it is primarily a question of how much thinking an individual is going to do for himself. The more a man thinks, the less is he imitative and suggestible. The problem, then, is to promote the practise of thinking. The problem is to be solved, if at all, by educational agencies, and these agen- cies must be directed to the end of cultivating the- oretical capacity, or the gift of knowledge. For to create a knower is to create an individual who may, notwithstanding the pressure of the social mass, remain an individual.
This platitude becomes less insufferable when
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one emphasizes the difference between knowledge and opinion, which everybody admits and which everybody ignores. That common sense is care- less about this difference is proved by the fact that the term "knowledge" is perpetually em- ployed where the terms "opinion," "information" or "beHef" would be more correct. For most of us the first lesson in knowledge proper is ge- ometry. We may remember, for example, the theorem that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. We have all forgotten how the proof nms; but we can, perhaps, recover what happened to our minds in the course of it. When we came to the theorem we knew what we were going to prove. One might say carelessly that we already "knew" that the interior angles of a triangle were equal to two right angles. But that would be to over- look the immensely important difference between the state of mind before and after the under- standing of the proof.
Before the proof we believed the proposition as hard as we did afterward. Our opinion was not changed. Nor did we get any new information. A surveyor who wished simply to use geometry, would have been as well off before. There are handy manuals of geometry for surveyors or navi-
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gators which contain only the theorems themselves without the proofs. But if we had simply learned from such a manual we would have failed alto- gether to experience just that flash of insight, that moment of illumination, when the proof is complete and one feels a comfortable glow in one's rational parts. I do not believe that there was ever a mind so benighted as not to expe- rience a tiny bit of pleasure at just that moment when it can say: "I see!" If one were a cock this would be the time to crow. But whether it be joyous or not, this is the moment of knowl- edge.
In other words, to know, one must know why, or on what grounds. For every proposition that is true there is somewhere a "because,'' the evi- dence that proves it. To assert the proposition in the light of the evidence for it, is to know. The evidence is not always, or even usually, of the geometrical sort. The proof of a pudding, for example, is in the eating. I am not insisting that everything must be argued or reasoned about in order to be proved, but only that for every as- sertion that is true there is some kind of a proof, and that one does not "know" the assertion un- less one's mind takes in the proof as well.
Now it is evident that if knowledge is to be
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defined in this very exacting way, then there cannot be nearly so much of it in the world as is ordinarily supposed. If everybody were for- bidden to say anything that he couldn't prove, a sudden hush would fall upon the world, and such events, for example, as an afternoon tea, or a debate in Congress, or the present essay would have to be stricken off the program altogether! If no one were allowed to use or act on any proposi- tions that he couldn't prove, most of the business of life would have to be stopped, and very few things indeed would get done. No, I do not rec- ommend that opinion, belief and information be abjured altogether, and that knowledge be put in their place. But, on the other hand, it does seem fairly apparent that somewhere, once in a while, there should be somebody that knows. Other- wise one does not see any way in which opinion, belief and information could be tested for truth, and have their trustworthiness guaranteed.
Theoretical capacity, then, means first of all the capacity to make truth, to reach sound con- clusions, and to distinguish between well-groimded and ungrounded assertions. But it involves, furthermore, some comprehension of the limits of knowledge. The common failure to under- stand the limits of practical knowledge is a case
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in point. If I know that by combining with another man, B, I may crush out a third com- petitor, C, monopolize an industry, raise prices, and win a fortune, my knowledge may be well- grounded, based upon the incontestable evidence of experience. But there is also much that I do not know; for example, what effect such practises may have upon the industrial world at large, and what effect this effect in turn may have upon the health of the body politic or upon the general welfare of men. I do not even know what effect the winning of the fortune may have upon my own personal happiness, or the saving of my soul. If I act on the narrower knowledge as though it were all-comprehensive, I am guilty of the sort of ignorance which consists in ignoring how little, after all, I do know; and my practical wisdom may, because of its very cock-sureness or sense of certainty, turn out to be the most egre- gious folly. Or if, having learned a little science, say, for example, the theory of electrons, I straight- way proceeded as though I lived in a world con- stituted wholly of electrons, and remained ig- norant of moral or religious truths, I should be so lacking in sense of proportion as to imperil all my deeper interests. This is what is meant when it is said that "a little knowledge is a dangerous
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thing." A little knowledge is dangerous when it is mistaken for much.
It is important, then, to have the unknown charted on the map as well as the known. And it is scarcely less important to know the difference between certain knowledge and probable knowl- edge. It appears that the certainty of knowledge is in inverse proportion to its importance. Every one would agree, I think, that the biggest ques- tions are those of politics and of religion. And yet here it is impossible to reach any conclusion at all comparable in certainty with the knowl- edge that "this book is on this table." Therefore we should learn so far as possible to regard pre- vailing opinions in the larger and more complex matters as subject to correction. If we do not, we simply cut ourselves off from the possibility of increased light where we are most in need of it.
Theoretical capacity is sustained, furthermore, by that primitive instinct of curiosity through which the pursuit of knowledge may be made to bring satisfaction of itself. It is an instinct which requires to be kept alive or reawakened, rather than an artificial interest which requires to be cultivated. There is no one who has not once felt this curiosity as a powerful impelling force. It is a matter of common observation and regret
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that the sophisticated youth often shows less eagerness of mind, less of that wondering, specula- tive impulse, than a small boy of seven. *^No sceptical philosopher," says Mr. Chesterton, "can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. 'Am I a boy ? Why am I a boy ? Why aren't I a chair ? What is a chair?' A child will sometimes ask questions of this sort for two hours. And the philosophers of Protestant Europe have asked them for two hundred years.'' One who has met with this sort of child will be surprised that Mr. Chesterton should speak of the child as "tired." Alas! it is the poor adult that is tired — ^perhaps I should say bored, or at best patiently indul- gent, because he has lost the hot interest, the ad- venturous zeal from which these interrogations spring. It isn't so much that the adult has grown wiser, as that he has grown busier, and is more dominated by habits, more broken to the harness. He is already in the rut of practical routine, and is annoyed at anything that sug- gests his ignorance and limitations.
Theoretical capacity, then, betokens the mind which is emancipated from imitative or dogmatic belief by a close regard for evidence and proof, and which is emancipated from the narrowing
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routine of "affairs" by that intellectual spon- taneity with which every naive mind is en- dowed. The quickened mind will complete its own emancipation. Thought loves generality and knows no bounds. It fixes upon the laws that abide, and neglects the local and the perishable. Its auxiliary and complement is the creative imagination — the one miracle that even science cannot deny, by which the mind may not only overcome time and space, but may also depart from the routine of perception and trace ideal connections and unities for the will to achieve.
The true individualism is this intellectual self- sufficiency, this capacity to do one's own thinking. Its substance is originality. It is not negative but creative. It is not lawlessness— a petulant assertion of impulse or private prefer- ence; but a deliverance from convention and the dead weight of vulgarity, to the end that the mind may freely judge and yield to the guidance of evidence and facts. It is that liberality of mind, that a large discourse, looking before and after, "that capability and Godlike reason," which is not given to "rust in us unused.'*
This is essentially an individual and not a so- cial attribute. Whereas passion may be social, only an individual can think. We speak, prop-
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erly, of an angry mob. The mob itself may be angry — and is a very different thing from, say, a thousand men each of whom is angry all by him- self. Individualities melt and coalesce in the heat of passion, and the mob feels and acts as a unity. There is also such a thing as social con- science, or as common opinion, or as customary belief. Opinion and belief are states of mind