War and insurance; an address delivered before the Philosophical union of the University of California at its twenty-fifth anniversary at Berkeley, California, August 27, 1914

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Preface

As a preparation for an address which I had been invited to deliver on the occasion of the twenty -fifth anniversary of the Philosophical Union of the University of California, I read to a general audience, at the summer session of that University at Berkeley (during the last fortnight of July, in the present year) a series of six philosophical lectures. These six preparatory lectures contained a restatement of the theory of what I had called, in a recent book of mine, the " Process of Interpretation," and, in particular, discussed the nature and functions of " Communities of Interpretation." What this last term means the reader of this present book may learn, if he pleases, on pages 47-64.

I had intended to continue and to summarize the main theses of these six lectures in my anniversary address before the Union.

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PREFACE

The summer session ended. The war began.

My address, in the form in which I had intended to read it, was thus rendered useless, and was thrown aside. But the theory both of the "process of interpretation" and of "the communities of interpretation" had, during the last two years, seemed to me capable of a wide range of practical applications ; and some of these, including a sketch of certain very general philosophical aspects of banking and of insurance, had been already presented to my audience at Berkeley during the July lectures just mentioned.

Abandoning, then, my previous plans for the address before the Union, I wrote this present address, — partly in the neighborhood of Los Gatos, in the Santa Cruz mountains of the California Coast Range, and partly at Berkeley. This writing took place between August 2 and August 27, under the immediate influence of impressions due to the events which each day's news then brought to the notice of us all ; and yet with a longing to see how the theory of "interpre-

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PREFACE

tation" which I owe to the logical studies of the late Mr. Charles Peirce, would bear the test of an application to the new problems which the war brings to our minds.

I have to thank my friend, Mr. John Graham Brooks, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as my colleague, Mr. H. B. Dow (lecturer on Insurance at Harvard University) ; and, above all, my philosophical colleague at the University of California, Professor Charles H. Rieber (who was my host while I was at Berkeley, and who is also the president of the Philosophical Union), for some careful criticisms of this address; and for their aid in preparing it for publication.

JOSIAH ROYCE.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 15, 1914.

Table Of Contents

ADDRESS ON WAR AND INSURANCE

SECTION PAGE

I. The Utopia of Universal Peace . . 4

II

The next objection which readily occurs to the mind, and which the reader of the plan for international insurance herein expounded is especially asked to notice, is founded upon the fact that if the nations, by large contributions to the common fund, won for themselves large and important rights through their insurance agreements, they would win hereby no safety against the dangers of war, and in particular of conquest. Yet amongst all the evils against which nations could xxviii insure, if a scheme for mutual insurance proved to be successful, some at least of the evils due to war would surely be the most important. The objector might well continue that, if it were possible to give to the plan such a development as to enable the international board to insure an individual nation against any considerable portion of the losses and expenses which war might entail, the very success of the plan, up to that point, would tend to render individual nations careless, and so more disposed, if possible, than they otherwise would be, to engage in war. For the man whose house is insured may thereby be rendered less rather than more careful with regard to the risk of fire. To both these objections the plan outlined in this essay provides what may be regarded as at least a partial answer. This answer must be judged in the light of the few passages in the essay which directly deal with these aspects of the question. I call attention to these passages, and expressly point out that what I propose involves a

xxix tentative suggestion, which is proposed for the sake of revision.

What it is worth while to mention in this Introduction is that this essay suggests an extension to international insurance of devices which are already known in the insurance of individuals. In particular, a part of the plan here tentatively set forth would involve a way in which the life of every one of the insured nations was. so to speak, insured by the general insurance organization for the benefit of mankind.

That is, the more rights an individual nation had acquired by virtue of previous insurance, the less motive a conqueror would have for finding this nation attractive prey. For the insurance board of trustees might undertake, by special agreements, functions which were not only those of insurance but also those of investment, so far as concerned an individual nation. That is. an individual nation might put a portion of its property in trust, and under the administration of the board. One could even now conceive that some South American republic might find such an investment of a portion of its wealth possible and useful. In the future still greater nations might be attracted into similar undertakings.

But if either insurance rights or trust funds thus belonged to a nation which happened to suffer the accident of occupation or of conquest, the conqueror of such a nation would not, according to this plan, be able to find so much of the conquered nation's property, or to use it. For the plan defined in this essay includes the provision, that, if a nation loses its life, then its insurance rights, and of course its funds deposited in any form in trust with the international board, simply revert to the common fund of mankind, and are henceforth used and held in trust by the international board for the benefit of all the insuring nations.

Closely connected with this provision of the plan here outlined, is another, whereby whatever nation won in a war would be prevented from extorting from any vanquished

xxxi nation, by means of any sort of treaty, either its insurance rights or any other funds which it had, before the war, put in trust with the board. This Introduction may well call attention to these aspects of the plan involved in this essay, since in case of the success of such a plan as the one here outlined, these provisions might become valuable allies to the cause of peace.

Finally, so far as the present set of objections is concerned, the important provision that any nation committing the "first act of war" with which a given contest began, would thereby vitiate so much of its policy as related to any possible insurance that it might possess against any of the costs or expenses of this particular war, — this important provision would tend to introduce a restraining motive against war. And many other such restraining motives could be readily devised and added to this first motive by means of insurance agreements. How far-reaching such a provision would prove may be left for the further study of the xxxii reader of this essay and for such future discussions as this essay, by good fortune, may arouse amongst students of the questions thus proposed. It is enough at this point simply to insist that there are here international questions which are worthy of careful consideration, and which do not involve any of tjie difficulties which have already played so large a part in the history of arbitration, and of other attempts at international agreements.

Ill

A colleague of mine, and a high authority upon problems of insurance, in replying to my request for his criticisms upon this essay, has pointed out, as a serious objection to any plan for international insurance, that strong nations would be likely to prefer to insure themselves, while if only the weak nations joined in the international agreement, little would be accomplished. The direct rejoinder to this objection which is suggested in the text of the present essay, consists in pointing xxxiii out, that if there were any evils, whether or not evils of war, against which international insurance proved to be feasible, and if the plan here proposed began, even very modestly, to accomplish something in the way of bringing several nations together for purposes of mutual insurance, every such mutual insurance would involve the nations in new forms of cooperation, whose motives would be of the essentially peace-making kind analyzed in the text of this essay.

But precisely in so far as such motives appeared at all as a result of international insurance, they would tend to make, more and more, national evils insurable. For if the nations begin thus to cooperate, they will, for the first time, learn what that sort of honor is which is involved in keeping agreements such as the insurance business exemplifies. What is called national honor is at present altogether too much a matter of capricious, private, and often merely personal judgment, simply because the nations are not as yet self-conscious moral beings. xxxiv

They have not learned, as corporate entities, what mutual loyalty is, because they have not begun to come together in those communities whose type is described in this essay.

Personal honor is always the correlative of some practical form of loyalty, and of some recognition of an obligation, — a recognition that one acquires through actual business of the sort that does not go on in those dangerous relations which this essay somewhat elaborately analyzes.

If the international body of trustees had in its charge any large trust in which a number of nations were interested, these nations, working through their board, would become clearly conscious of the sort of loyalty and hence of the sort of honor which is found upon the highest levels of the business world.

Thus a genuine and reasonable sense of honor would begin automatically to enter international relations. And the more it entered, the more chances there would be for mutual insurance. This mutual insur-

xxxv ance, if it once extended to any of the evils of war at all, would tend in time to extend to more and more of them. And in this way the community of mankind would be formed, and would gradually grow by methods and in accordance with principles which are at once ideal and businesslike.

So, even if one began with the mutual insurance of a comparatively few nations which were relatively weak, a new sort of international relation would begin to exist. And the more this relation existed, the more new international insurance enterprises would be possible. The whole very wonderful history of insurance tends to show this, and to warrant the somewhat enthusiastic prediction with which this essay closes.

IV

One further remark remains for this Introduction to emphasize. Important as it seems to the present writer that some beginning should be made in inducing a group of nations to contribute to a common fund for xxx vi insurance against some of the evils of war (however few of such risks may be as yet insurable) — still this essay, in dealing with "war and insurance," certainly does not intend to confine itself solely to the possibility of insurance against the risks of war. A widely varied list of natural calamities against which insurance is possible has already been presented.

It is noticeable that any international insurance, which dealt with natural calamities, would involve a contract in which the individual nation was indeed to receive some definable insurance payment in case of certain disasters ; but that, as a fact, the individual subjects would, in most such instances, be obviously, at least in part, the natural beneficiaries who would receive from their government the payments which would first come to the nation in question from the international board of insurance.

From the nature of the case, the international board would have no authority xxxvii whatever to direct any sovereign state how it was to distribute to its subjects funds delivered by it as proceeds of the payment made to it by the board, in accordance with the insurance policy. No possible international controversy could arise regarding the use which any sovereign state made of any of its insurance benefits when once they were received.

But, on the whole, any modern sovereign state would be inevitably much influenced by the prevailing public opinion of its own people with regard to the distribution of its insurance funds. Consequently, the existence of insurance benefits and, in turn, the existence of contributions made by the individual state to the international insurance fund, would be of great possible benefit to any individual state, in dealing with its most pressing social problems. For whether a nation was amply able to insure itself against a risk or not, an insurance policy would constitute a convenient means of providing, in advance, by a single financial device, for a xxxviii definite class of the needs or the risks of its subjects.

A single example will suffice to indicate the way in which a system of international insurance, once established, would furnish an extremely simple mode — a wholly new sort of machinery — by means of which an individual state might deal with some of its most intimate internal problems and issues.

The various forms of workmen's insurance are now becoming of great importance in the life of individual states. Such problems are dealt with by different nations in modes which vary and ought to vary according to the special social problems which occupy the consciousness of the individual nations, and which also vary with the systems of legislation and of government which characterize different nationalities.

Every effort to apply the experience of one sovereign state with regard to the best form of workmen's insurance to the life of another sovereign state, has at present to involve new legislative or administrative decisions, xxxix and constitutional difficulties of the most varied sort.

Now international insurance, without in the least interfering with the discretion, with the constitution, or with the independence of any nation concerned, would furnish, if it existed, a most convenient mode whereby various nations could learn from one another's experience, how to deal with such a problem as that of workmen's insurance, and how to apply what they learned through such experience to the special modes of administration and of legislation which were suited to the constitution of each state.

Thus, suppose that the international board of trustees existed, and that the individual state was willing to contribute a fund to the general fund, thereby taking out a policy which insured to it, at suitable intervals, a payment adequate to cover the total cost of a given class of accidents occurring to its workmen in the various dangerous occupations. The form of such a policy, its costs and conditions, would depend entirely upon

xl what proposal the international board was prepared to entertain, and what contribution to the common insurance fund the sovereign state in question was willing to make. The insurance payments, when duly made, would be wholly at the disposal of the state receiving them.

Only, instead of devising some elaborate legislation of its own, hampered perhaps by numerous constitutional and legal restrictions, determined by the whole past history of its laws and customs, the insured sovereign state would now have on its hands simply the problem of distributing the fund paid to it as the result of its workmen's insurance policy, to the people to whom, in its opinion, this sum should be equitably distributed.

In a country such as the United States, where any plan for workmen's insurance of any type must at present pass through the slow ordeal of adjusting itself to the laws and customs of each separate state of the Union, and where a constitutional amendment, authorizing a general federal law on the subject,

xli would involve awkward and possibly dangerous complications, the whole subject could be much more simply dealt with if the international board of insurance, after due investigation of the facts about accidents, about old age, or about any other topic involving matters of interest to bodies of workmen in any state of the Union, named, not upon constitutional grounds, and not upon the ground of any treaty with any foreign power, a sum in return for which the international insurance board would be willing to pay, at stated intervals, into the treasury of the United States, a certain sum called for by a certain policy, in case the United States Congress simply appropriated the money to pay for the policy in question.

Now there is no doubt that the United States is amply able to insure itself against all risks and expenses that are due to disease or to accident or to old age, in so far as these things affect its various classes of laborers. It is equally sure that manifold constitutional difficulties and varieties of custom he in the

xlii way of carrying through any scheme affecting workmen's insurance throughout the various states of the American Union.

It would be, therefore, of advantage to the United States if an international insurance board existed, and if it had the opportunity to pay for any policy that might at any time seem good to it affecting workmen's insurance anywhere within its borders. For the constitutional difficulties and the varieties of state legislation which stand in the way of carrying out any one plan for workmen's insurance in the United States would not stand in the way of a plan for appropriating a certain sum to be paid by the authority of Congress to the international insurance board. Nor would such difficulties be nearly as great when the problem arose as to how the proceeds received from such a policy were to be distributed to individual workmen throughout the United States, or to any part of it. The insurance policy would not be needed as a financial investment. But it would furnish a new and valuable machinery

xliii for devising and carrying out possible social reforms.

This is but a single example. As soon as one considers the possible uses of an international insurance board, in case that, while it did its business with the nations, their individual subjects were the natural beneficiaries of the insurance in question, one sees that. without the least interference with the discretion or the independence of any nation, a vast simplification of the machinery whereby each nation might deal with its own social problems would be furnished.

While the various nations took out policies for any such social purpose by putting certain sums in trust with the board, they would very naturally take counsel together, by comparing their various modes of social insurance, and of other socially beneficent processes. Every word spoken in such counsel would tend toward mutual understanding among the nations and towards simplification of the social problems of each, or of the ways in which these problems were to be dealt with. Yet at

xliv no moment would such conference in the least interfere with the honor of the individual nations, or involve new disputes, or stand in the way of any national ambition.

It will be clearly observed that the international board of insurance would have no hostility to the growth of international arbitration, or to the authority of the Hague tribunal. Its existence would imply no hindrance to any other influence that at present furthers, or that may in future further, the substitution of peace for war in international life.

Therefore the strong nations could use, and could profitably use, international insurance quite as much and quite as hopefully as the weak. For it would provide them a new machinery for the financial care of reforms.

The more it was used, the more it would become useful. And the genuine community of mankind would indeed be begun, not as a merely fantastic hope, but as an institution

xlv whereby part of the world's daily business was done.

It seems well to close this Introduction with the words of a great authority on the theory of insurance, — words by which the present writer's thoughts have been constantly guided in the writing of this essay. The words are those of Charlton Thomas Lewis, Ph.D. They appear in the article on "Insurance," which the eleventh edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" prints on page 658 of Volume XIV: —

"The value of insurance as an institution cannot be measured by figures. No direct balance-sheet of profit and loss can exhibit its utility. The insurance contract produces no wealth. It represents only expenditure. If a thousand men insure themselves against any contingency, then, whether or not the dreaded event occurs to any, they will in the aggregate be poorer, as the direct result-, by the exact cost of the machinery for effecting it. The distribution of property is changed, its sum is not increased. But the

xlvi results in the social economy, the substitution of reasonable foresight and confidence for apprehension and the sense of hazard, the large elimination of chance from business and conduct have a supreme value. The direct contribution of insurance to civilization is made, not in visible wealth, but in the intangible and immeasurable forces of character on which civilization itself is founded. It is preeminently a modern institution. Some two centuries ago it had begun to influence centers of trade, but the mass of civilized men had no conception of its meaning. Its general application and popular acceptance began within the first half of the 19th century, and its commercial and social importance have multiplied a hundredfold within living memory. It has done more than all gifts of impulsive charity to foster a sense of human brotherhood and of common interests. It has done more than all repressive legislation to destroy the gambling spirit. It is impossible to conceive of our civilization in its full vigor and pro-

xlvii gressive power without this principle, which unites the fundamental law of practical economy, that he best serves humanity who best serves himself, with the golden rule of religion, 'Bear ye one another's burdens."

xlviii

/^i REAT tragedies are great opportunities. ^^ The new griefs which to-day beset the civilized nations call for new reflections and for new inventions. Our past methods of furthering the cause of peace on earth have disappointed many hopes that, in their day, seemed both fascinating and reasonable. We must not expect, at any time in the near future, to make an entire end of war, but we need to understand better than we now do the depth, the gravity, and the true nature of the motives which have thus far made warlike tendencies so persistent in the life of mankind. We also need to discover, if we can, methods not yet tried, whereby the wars of the nations may be gradually rendered less destructive, and less willful.

This essay is to be devoted to both the tasks thus indicated. The main part of this paper will give an account of some of the familiar, but too little heeded, and too ill defined reasons why wars are, despite our civilization, so fatally recurrent incidents of our international life. This first part of our paper must be somewhat lengthily stated; for, as the old Buddhist scripture says :

" Long is the night to him who is awake ; long is a mile to him who is tired ; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law." 1

And our poor human nature is still on the level on which we are often wakeful in the night and often have yet to seek after the knowledge of the true law which may some day bring us nearer to the life of peace.

This earlier and also lengthier part of our paper will gradually lead us, however, to the definition of some principles bearing on a fragment of the true law both of war and of peace. And so far this paper will be a contribution to what has been called, by the Dutch Ethnologist Steinmetz, the "Philosophy of War." But, at the very close of our

1 Max Muller, " Sacred Books of the East," Vol. X, p. 20.

discussion, we shall be led to an application of these principles which I believe to be in certain respects new. We shall then, in the second and much shorter part of our discussion, propose a method of practically furthering the gradual growth and reenforcement of the cause of peace on earth. This method has not yet been tried. I believe that the principles upon which it is founded are, in certain concrete instances, as familiar to the modern civilized man as are his most characteristic forms of prudence, of thrift, and of cooperation. But the application of these principles to the philosophy of war remains still inadequate ; and, at the present moment, this field for further efforts to form plans that look towards peace is still open. This paper will thus close with a brief indication of the nature of one such plan.

rTIO propose any way for furthering the cause of universal peace is to arouse the objection that all such proposals, if definite in their formulation, and universal in their intention, have thus far always proved Utopian. As has often been asserted, man appears in history as essentially a fighting animal. When he becomes civilized, he changes, indeed, the fashion of his fighting, and, in the course of time, gradually improves both the morals and the methods of his warfare. Cruelty, pillage, and extermination become less prominent amongst the aims which absorb the warrior's mind. Wars are waged for purposes which become more ideal as time goes on. Humanity of mood directs, in a measure, the plans of rival nations. The modern national spirit itself sometimes appears to be a sort of preparation for some larger enthusiasm which, as we often hope, may, in a far-off future age, make the community of mankind its main object of fraternal devotion, and the whole earth its country.

But, on the other hand, as the nations grow in power and in self -consciousness, some of the disastrous but profoundly human motives which most tend to make men fight with their neighbors, not only survive in the midst of the highest cultivation which we have yet reached, but are even intensified by the very intelligence, by the loyalty, and by the resoluteness, which lie at the basis of what our civilization most needs and prizes. Nobody can rightly consider the problem of war who regards the war spirit as a mere relic of barbarism, or as due solely to the evil side of our nature. The mystery of war and of its fascination can be fathomed only in case we first observe that although, of old, wars were often due in a large part to the passions and ambitions of rulers and of the ruling classes of the warring peoples, modern wars, however much princes may take part in their beginnings, are, on the whole, waged by peoples, and are in part the expressions of the recently acquired power of an intelligent democracy. Ancient wars were frequently the result of ignorance, and of blind popular passion, of superstition, or of the greed of individuals. Modern wars are in many cases deliberately and thoughtfully planned by patriots who love their country's honor, who are clearly conscious of well-formulated ideals which they think righteous, and who fight in the name of the freedom of the people, and in the service of what they suppose to be the highest human culture. World-wide sympathies do not prevent warlike passions from seeming to many who cultivate them not qnly necessary, but morally indispensable; not only honorable, but holy ; not only fascinating, but rational.

Let us remember then that, whatever the mere form of any national government may be, it is at present the democracy itself, or at all events, the prevailing popular will, however it is expressed, which, in the more warlike modern nations, actually prepares for war, which dreams of it in advance, which tries cheerfully to bear the burdens of its expenses, which glories in its risks and in its victories, and which frequently and consciously justifies it as the highest, as the completest, and so as the most ethical expression of national loyalty. Let us remember too that modern democracy, or whatever else expresses the will of a people, does this not because it lacks a sympathetic interest in the concerns and in the sentiments of the men of other nations, but because our modern form of human solidarity is such that international hate travels as far, as fast, and as persuasively as does love. The civilized world thrills with sympathy for the calamities of obscure or of distant men; but it also thrills with a common admiration for high spirit, and for warlike enthusiasm. Sympathy implies a disposition to imitate, and so, just because of our present degree of solidarity, we tend to imitate whatever is impressively vigorous about the will and the power of interesting men and nations. Such imitation is, in many cases, an imitation of the war spirit.

Only in case we keep in mind both the vast masses of popular interest and the very high grade of intelligence which are now devoted, in many great nations, to the cultivation of warlike motives, and to the preparation for war, can we see how far away is the utopia of universal peace.

As a fact, the advance of civilization not only brings with it motives which tend to check and to control the barbarous aspects of war, but also motives, some of them new, which tend to make war appear, to many individuals and nations, more ideal, more righteous, more significant, than ever. The modern world, wherein every great human experience of passion, of sorrow, and of love arouses a warm response in the most distant parts of the inhabited earth, — this same world echoes the warlike passions as readily as it does the humane ones, longs to imitate the powerful peoples as well as to relieve the sufferers from an earthquake, and is stirred by its far-reaching rivalries as much as by its other expressions of solidarity. Its social problems are common to all the civilized lands ; but so too are the dispositions to encourage and to feel the contrasts of races, and the rivalries of commerce and of cultivation. The democracies are vast ; but so too are the conflicting interests for which these democracies are ready to fight. Science brings all men near to each other ; but science also originates new industrial arts, and these arts can be used for war as well as for peace. Civilization makes men more thoughtful about both social and moral issues. But such thoughtfulness, if once inspired by patriotism, and by international jealousies, can both counsel and wage war deliberately, and with a self-righteous assurance such as our elementally passionate or simply superstitious ancestors never knew.