The war and after; short chapters on subjects of serious practical import for the average citizen in A.D. 1915 onwards

Front matter

Glass J|v Tl7 Book u S I

/3#^

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Preface

THE Workers' Educational Association, and other organizations, have provided or recommended for their students a large supply of historical literature connected with the war, and it may be hoped that much of it is being read by those whose voting power — surely under some strange providential guidance — helps to control the conduct of this country's affairs. But the mass of material is so great, and the time for reading so short, that an attempt to concentrate attention on special points and to emphasize some of the more pressing and practical features of the present difficult but hopeful situation, may be useful. It is with this sole but very serious aim that the following chapters have been written.

As I have no pretension to be an historian I shall often quote from other writers when deal - ing with historical facts and national characters. Of all the readily accessible treatises dealing with the crisis, perhaps the most noteworthy anticipation of current events and impartial survey of the national characteristics which have led to the present outburst is contained in a book called The Anglo-German Problem, vi THE WAR AND AFTER

written well before the outbreak of hostilities and published in 191 2 by that distinguished Belgian, Dr. Charles Sarolea, Head of the French Department of the University of Edinburgh. I shall quote a few passages from this book to illustrate the clear knowledge possessed by experts a few years ago.

As to the rights and wrongs of the diplomacy preceding this war, our own case is so clear and strong, and so emphasized by our just and honourable — but as it turns out lamentable — unpreparedness, that only a few people here and there, misled by false statements, can require a legal argument to prove it ; I do not touch on this subject, but note that an able summing-up by a Swiss -American jurist exists, in a book called The Evidence in the Case, by the Hon. James M. Beck, LL.D., of New York, with a Preface by the ex -American Ambassador to this country, Mr. Choate. The book was published by Putnam's Sons early in 191 5, and is fiercely interesting.

Only one other tract will I mention here — though from others I may quote — and that is the pamphlet by Professor Gilbert Murray entitled How Can War Ever be Right? which I hope will be read by all premature pacifists.

It is highly desirable at the present time to preserve our mental balance. We must, it is true, denounce in measured terms the inhuman atrocities which have been authorita-

PREFACE vii

tively sanctioned and enforced on helpless victims, and the campaign of lies and slander with which neutral nations have been affronted by diplomatists to whom every trace of the saving sense of humour seems to be denied ; and we must sorrowfully admit that the attitude of those politicians and rulers is approved and followed by droves of misguided patriots. Yet we should earnestly endeavour to distinguish between these recent outgrowths of unholy subservience to a dominating clique, and the more permanent and friendly aspect of the European nations with which we are at war. We should bear continually in mind — hard though it often be — the services to humanity, and the lovable, friendly, and homely past aspects of the majority of our present foes. What real quarrel have we with Austria, with the peasants of Bavaria, with the Rhine provinces, with Hanover, or with the down -trodden Prussian Poles ?

To mention no others, we actually have to reckon the Tyrolese among our foes at the present time — they are furnishing sharpshooters to the German army ; and in other only less flagrant cases we are being slain at the call of duty by those who are essentially our friends. To assist them in doing their duty, which else must be repulsive, a campaign of hate has been artificially fostered. This dementia is not reciprocated, and it would be ludicrous were its consequences not likely to be so serious viii THE WAR AND AFTER

to those of our number who happen to fall helpless into the hands of a temporarily insane people.

But, while admitting with sad astonishment the terrible Downfall in moral status which has been the accompaniment of half a century's aim at World Power, let us see to it that we remember our own shortcomings also ; and while proclaiming fully and fairly that they are of a kind differing toto ccelo from those with which we are contending, yet admit sorrowfully enough that we might have done far better in the past, and hope that we may have wisdom and resolution enough to do better in the future.

O. J. L.

England ! the time is come when thou should'st wean

Thy heart from its emasculating food ;

The truth should now be better understood ;

Old things have been unsettled ; we have seen

Fair seed-time, better harvest might have been

But for thy trespasses ; . . .

England ! all nations in this charge agree :

But worse, more ignorant in love and hate,

Ear — far more abject, is thine Enemy :

Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the freight

Of thy offences be a heavy weight.

Oh grief that Earth's best hopes rest all with Thee !

Wordsworth, Sonnet XXI

Contents

PREFACE

PAGE V

Part I Chapter

I. THE GREAT AGE OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY .

II. GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS : THEIR STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS ....

III. REVULSION TOWARDS MATERIALISM

IV. REVOLT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY V. MORAL POWER OF NATIONS .

VI. MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

VII. A CONFLICT OF IDEALS

VIII. TWO FALLACIES

IX. GERMANY AND ENGLAND : GERMAN ATTITUDE

X. ENGLAND AND GERMANY : ENGLISH ATTITUDE

xi

9 13

21 27

Xll

Part II The Present Chapter

XI. "S.O.S." WHAT IS THE WAR FOR?

XII. MATERIAL EFFICIENCY AND SELF-INTEREST

XIII. EVIL OR AGGRESSIVE WAR .

XIV. SAVAGERY .

XV. NON-RESISTANCE AND DEFENSIVE WAR

XVI. CHRISTIANITY AND PACIFISM XVII. " LOVE YOUR ENEMIES"

Part III The Future

XVIII. THE OUTCOME ..... I37

XIX. ON THE DULNESS OF WAR, AND ITS CIVILIAN

ASPECT, AND ON EFFECTIVE NEUTRALITY . I42

XX. SOCIAL UNREST . . . . . 149

XXI. INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS . ,. ' . .159

XXII. SOCIAL REFORM ...... 170

XXIII. TASK OF HUMANITY . . . . . l8j

CONTENTS xm

CHAPTER

XXIV. PEACE AND DISARMAMENT

XXV. NATIONAL REARRANGEMENT

XXVI. THE FUTURE OF EUROPE .

XXVII. OTHER HOME REFORMS

XXVIII. CONCLUSION

Index

PAGE

• 193

. 206

. 215

. 228

• 233

• 237

PART I Corruptio optimi pessitna

In a democratic country of thirty-six millions it may seem infinitely unimportant what one individual does or thinks, as compared with what in an autocracy one man, and that the irresponsible ruler, does or thinks ; yet the fate of the democratic country depends clearly enough upon the collective effect of the views and character of each one of her individual citizens ; and whilst there is here less danger of a selfish policy, through the obvious difficulty or combination for such an end, and through the necessary conflict of interests, there is more danger of apathy, through each man thinking that these things are not his concern. — E. de Selincourt.

Chapter I The Great Age Of German Philosophy

WHY is the world so horrified at the outburst of savagery which has now occurred ? Because it is a blasphemous prostitution of high gifts and a dragging in the mire of a noble Past. The old Germany was full of attraction for thoughtful Englishmen : it had much that was consoling amid the welter of trade and politics and business and sport which seemed to saturate the British atmosphere. The peacefully social and calmly learned surroundings of Germany were restful, and it could really be regarded as a spiritual home.

Briefly let me try to illustrate, by a very few extracts from German literature, the kind of shock which must have been experienced by those who have been well acquainted with the Germany of the past.

The greatest Teutonic names in Philosophy are surely those of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. A few short extracts from these writers will give an idea of the peaceful absorption in which they lived and worked, and show how far the country was in its greatness from the Prussianized Germany of to-day.

Modern Germany is a young nation, and " may be said to have had a sober youth. She has been blamed for culpable absent-mindedness and absorption in mystic speculation, while other nations were stealing a march upon her in exploiting the habitable world. I believe," says J. H. Muirhead, " that never was she truer to herself."

In remote Konigsberg, in Eastern Prussia, on a monument to the memory of Immanuel Kant, the first sentence of perhaps the greatest passage written by him is inscribed, in which the two immensities of Nature and Spirit are held together as for a moment for men to contemplate.

" Two things, the longer and oftener I contemplate them, fill my soul with ever new and ever growing awe — the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

"I cannot regard either of them as veiled in darkness, or as belonging to some transcendental realm beyond the range of my perception. I see them before me. I connect them directly with the consciousness of my own being.

" The first of them begins from the position I occupy in the world of sense. It extends my connexion therewith into an immeasurable space — with world upon worlds and systems upon systems — with the boundless time of their periodic motions, their beginning and their duration .

" The second begins from my invisible self, from my personality. It places me in a world which has true infinitude, whose outlines only the understanding can trace, and with which my connexion is not merely accidental, as it is with the world of sense: my relation to it is universal and necessary.

GREAT GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 5

" The vision of the first nullifies my importance. I am but a brute creature, which has borrowed the material of which it is made, and must give it back again to the planet on which it lives — the planet itself hardly more than a speck in the vast universe. But the vision of the second raises my worth beyond all limitations. It exhibits me as a being which has mind, and is endowed with personality. In me is revealed the moral law, which shows me independent of all animality and of the whole world of sense, accepting neither conditions nor bounds but pointing onwards to infinitude."

And Sir Henry Jones, commenting on this passage and on the philosophy of Kant generally, in his Provincial Assembly Lecture 191 2, on "The Immanence of God and the Individuality of Man," writes thus : —

' The world of sense is now being revaluated : the whole scheme, including man, is being interpreted anew. It is maintained, with a confidence which is growing, that sense and the things of sense, and the whole scheme of finitude, do not obscure but reveal the eternal verities. The temporal is not secular any more, nor is there anything in this wide world which is common and unclean ; unless, alas ! man has made it so."

Such philosophy is by no means barren ; and, as a practical outcome, a friendly and co-operative federation of humanity is looked forward to as an ideal for the future.

Professor J. H. Muirhead tells us, in his admirable little book German Philosophy in Relation to the War, that " there dawned upon Kant, not as in the Middle Ages as a theological dogma or as a legal speculation, nor as with some moderns as a poetic dream, but as a consequence of a mature philosophical conviction, the possibility of a peaceful federation of States, which should replace the present transitional phase of armed violence tempered by partial and precarious treaties."

It was this idea that he worked out in his old age in the short essay on Eternal Peace. He there sets out in the form of preliminary and definitive articles the conditions, negative and positive, of such a peace. " No treaty of peace can be a real one which is made with the secret reservation of material for a future war." No independent State (great and small are here the same) shall be acquired by another, by inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift. Standing armies shall in time cease. No public debt shall be contracted for purposes of external action. No State shall forcibly interfere with the Constitution or Government of another State. No State at war with another State shall commit such hostile acts as must make mutual trust impossible in a future condition of peace. He denounces assassination, poisoning, breaches of capitulation, and attempts to make use of treachery among the enemy ; and he adds a warning against " punitive wars " between States, as inconsistent with the idea of political right. All these things are the destruction of trust between nations. If practised and persisted in they can only end in a war of extermination and " the kind of eternal peace that would be found in the great graveyard of the human race."

" The fact," says Kant, " that the sense of community among the peoples of the earth has gone so far that the violation of right in one place is felt everywhere, has made the idea of a citizenship of the world no fantastic dream,

GREAT GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 7

but a necessary extension of the unwritten code of States and Peoples."

To those who regard attempts at permanent international friendship as hopeless and Utopian, Muirhead would reply that " the essential principle on which we are to go in all politics is that the practicable is to be measured by the right, and not the right by the practicable. We must gradually learn to say in politics as in morals, ' I ought, therefore I can.' "

This also is the view taken by one of Germany's greatest philosophers : —

'The binding cord," writes Hegel, "is not force, but the deep-seated feeling of order that is possessed by us all." He has no words strong enough to denounce von Haller — the von Treitschke of his time, who had written : "It is the eternal unchangeable decree of God that the most powerful must rule, and will for ever rule," and who had poured contempt on the national liberties of Germany and our own Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights as '- mere documentary liberties." In all this, Hegel says, Haller has confused the force of right with the right of force. " The power he means is not the power of the right, but the power of the vulture to tear in pieces the innocent lamb."

"- War is not the sequel, it is the failure of politics. The sequel of politics is art, science, religion — all that goes to make what Aristotle called the good life — for the full development of which the State is the essential condition. But the State is far from supreme. Above and beyond the State there is the spirit of the World, which is also the spirit of God, before which all things are judged : The history of the world is the judgment of the world " (a saying usually attributed to Schiller).

Wherefore, says Hegel again, looking forward to the future, " let us together greet the dawn of a better time, when the spirit that has hitherto been driven out may return to itself again, and win room and space wherein to found a kingdom of its own."

And so once more back to the anticipation of Kant :—

" We may reasonably hail the Kingdom of Heaven as soon as ever the principle has taken root generally in the public mind that the efforts and creecls of the Churches should all point in one direction — all have one aim — a Divine community upon this earth. For this principle, because it is the motive force of a continual striving towards perfection, is like a seed that grows up and produces other seed like itself ; and thus contains implicitly the whole fabric which will one day illuminate and rule the world."

Finally let us quote the aspiration of Fichte, whereby he encouraged his Nation to strive towards this great end : —

" All ages, all the wise and good who have ever breathed on this earth, all their thoughts and aspirations after a Highest, mingle in these voices and surround you, and raise supplicating hands to you. Even Providence, if one may say so, and the Divine plan of the world in the creation of a race of man, which indeed only exists that it may be taken into men's thoughts and brought to reality by them, pleads with you to save its honour and its very being."

To us and the Allies these words might be addressed to-day. Alas ! only a lunatic would now address them to Germany.

Chapter II German Characteristics

THEIR STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

OW are we to understand the strange differences of aim and outlook between the Germans and ourselves? An enlightening article by Baron von Hugel in a magazine called The Quest for April 1 9 1 5 is of considerable help. He speaks of the German thirst for theory, and of the English contrary habit of shrinking from all systematic thought, as specially characteristic : —

" Theory, system {Weltanschauung), is, for the average Englishman, something that instantly puts him ill at ease, or at least something that he disbelieves and avoids ; for the German, it is in his very blood. ... It is this innate need of system that renders the German steady, but also obstinate ; virile and brutal ; profound and pedantic ; comprehensive and rich in outlook, and rationalist and doctrinaire."

Germany must be considered a sentimental nation. The feeling of patriotism is allowed a good deal of sentimental expression. They seem to have but little faculty of self-criticism ; or perhaps it is the absence of any sense of humour that enables them to say and sing things, at meetings and suppers and smoking concerts, which trend perilously near balderdash. An Irish gathering of the same kind is less sentimental and more amusing.

The Kaiser's speeches are typical of this sort of attitude, and, though rather fine, would be impossible to any one who realized that he was on the verge of making himself ridiculous.

The ethnologist Dr. A. H. Keane, in The Living Races of Mankind, writes :

" All admit that the German is capable of a deep love of nature, of rare poetical feeling, and devotion to any cause he may have embraced. [But] he is easily led into extremes, genuine sentiment becomes oversensitive, anger rises to fury, resentment to rancour and hatred, in the pursuit even of noble ideals."

Imperial enthusiasm, however legitimate, always seems liable to lead to exaggeration and to a trampling on the rights of others. So Germanic enthusiasm has been misled, warped, and made harmful by the dominating influence of Prussia in practical politics ; advantage has been taken of current sentiment, and it has been applied in practice with untoward and bombastic and essentially stupid results. The nation has submitted itself unduly to the Prussian spirit, but we can trust that the general German characteristics will eventually overcome this same evil spirit — " a spirit," says von Hiigel, " not confined to Germany, and which is even more the enemy of the German soul than it can ever be of our own military peace."

The difficult thing to understand, he goes on to say, is the thorough and " apparently lifeand-death allegiance of a people, not only highly educated and, in the professional classes, mostly awake even unto scepticism, but also, surely, incurably idealistic and mystical, to so

GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS 11

thoroughly cold and calculating, mechanical and cynical, a systefri as is the Prussian Realpolitik, with its conception, and largely its practice, of a frankly unmoral statesmanship.

" All men, at least here in England, see and know that this frankly Machiavellian policy, originally special to the Prussian militarist school, is now practised, inculcated, systematized and assumed by Germany (in so far as Germany now operates as a determining, political, diplomatic, and military power) with a deliberation, preparedness, persistency, and ruthlessness, both towards its own German instruments and towards its non-German opponents, unmatched, on such a scale and amidst such civilized peoples, throughout the annals of the world."

The veneer of civilization quickly peels off an upstart race and shows the barbarian beneath. This is always liable to happen amid the stress of war, but it is usually kept in control by higher authority. In the present case, however, there is no higher authority. The veneer of Prussian civilization was so thin it peeled off before the war began, and the brutalities were contemplated beforehand, and gloated on, and carried out, not in defiance of authority, but at its dictation.

In an atmosphere of this kind, Peace Conferences and all humanitarian talk must indeed have seemed absurd, and must have been encouraged from cynical motives. By laying real restrictions on ourselves, and getting the barbarian occasionally to assent to them in words, we were virtually playing his game. We should not attempt such a thing if we were contemplating a battle with savages ; and, most unexpectedly, it is a battle with savages that we are engaged in — though , unfortunately, savages with all the tools and weapons and ingenious devices of civilization. Their will to use them, moreover, for the slaughter and torture of their fellow -man, is sustained and intensified and made utterly unscrupulous by a heathen religion and a false philosophy. The whole civilized world should rise in unison against a foe to humanity of this diabolical character.

Chapter III Revulsion Towards Materialism

THE fact is that Philosophy has a much more effective influence on conduct than is generally in this country supposed. It may not be known by that name ; people may imagine that they have no particular philosophy of life ; but practically they have, and unless they are mere drifting casuals they cannot avoid having one — though its formulation is a subject for professors. And any country in which as a body the educated class loses its independence and becomes subservient to State officialism is in a parlous condition ; the blind are then led by those whose eyes are bandaged.

It may be thought that to associate recent German conduct with materialistic philosophy or with a philosophical revolt of any kind is far-fetched and absurd. It is not so. But to make the position clear may require a little technical argument. Ideas are not remote and inert things, but are living forces in the minds of men, continually influencing character and expressing themselves in action.

So now, as J. H. Muirhead has well said, 11 What we see confronting each other throughout the world are not so much armed hosts of men as opposing ideals of life that have their root in divergent theories as to the inner make of the universe and as to human destiny in it. . . . These things have come upon us, not because German thought has been faithful to its great philosophical tradition, but because it has broken away from its spirit and falsified its results. It is a story, not of a continuous development, but of a reaction — a great rebellion and apostasy."

Matter and Spirit

There are two main aspects of the physical universe — matter on the, one hand, the ether of space on the other.: For all practical purposes they are distinct, though doubtless ultimately related. Though distinct in being, they, are intimately connected in function ; and all activity consists in the transference of energy from one to the other, and back again. Static energy belongs to the ether, kinetic energy belongs to matter ; and in every case of activity, when work is done, energy is transmuted from static to kinetic or from kinetic to static ; and at the same time it is transferred from ether to matter or from matter to ether.

Alternations sometimes go on rapidly — many times in the hundredth of a second ; while in other cases energy is stored in one or other form for millions of years. The ultimate nature of both forms of energy is probably unknown, but if either is higher and more fundamental than the other, it must be the kinetic form ; and the static may ultimately be explicable as an aspect of that. Take this apparent digression as a parable.

There are likewise two aspects of the Universe as a whole. There may be many

MATTER AND SPIRIT 15

more, but there are at least two — the material and the spiritual — and all human existence depends on the interaction of these two. A right appreciation of the universe will attend to both these aspects. Wisdom lies in appreciating them both at their true value and recognizing due proportion between them. If either is dominant, surely it should be the higher — it should be spirit, mind, intelligence, soul ; which are not material things, but which utilize material things for their manifestation. Spirit and Matter appear to be distinct, though presumably they are ultimately related ; and the activities that we call life and mind depend on their connexion, or interaction, through nerve and brain mechanism.

The key-note of the material universe is recurrence — operation in cycles — the atoms going through various changes, but ultimately returning to their initial state ; — a cycle of transformation which may be simply typified by the evaporation of water from the sea and its condensation again as rain. Or again, as another example, we may adduce the storage of atmospheric ingredients in vegetation under the influence of sunshine, — in the form it may be of timber or of coal, — and their subsequent release during combustion : the same molecules being hereafter again acted upon by solar radiation in the leaves of plants, and stored as vegetable tissue once more. In all such cases we see a cycle of recurrence, the atoms and the material universe generally being fixed and unprogressive.

Even in the sea, we are now taught that sunshine is effective towards life. The sea harvest is only second in value to the land harvest. Animal life can only feed upon vegetable, it cannot directly assimilate material from the mineral kingdom ; and vegetation itself can only do so under the influence and with the aid of the energy of sunlight. Thus, as Professor Herdman points out with reference to marine organisms, they rise through the chain — Inorganic molecules, Diatoms or seaweed, Copepoda, Sprat, Whiting, Cod, Man ; — and then fall back to lower organisms and unorganized molecules once more, descending through the agency of Bacteria to diatoms and debris ; a never-ending cycle of changes.

And, even without special knowledge, Recurrence in the physical world is a commonplace of observation. Day and night succeed one another, and summer and winter ; while live things go on growing, reaching maturity, and then decay. The material parts of these also go through a cycle of changes, like seed time and harvest and seed time again ; but running through the organic world there is a soul which ages with the times ; the experience of the race is stored in mysterious fashion ; and instincts — the growth of ages — excite our wonder. The soul of man grows onward, never in closed curves : it is as old as time itself. In grief and in sorrow, aye and also in love and in joy, the world groweth old.

Thus the keynote of the psychical universe is progression ; — movement in spirals it may be, but not recurrent, not* cyclical. What may be called life, or the soul, utilizes matter to advance, to go through a real process of evolution. The material is the instrument by aid of which, or rather through the passive opposition of which, it rises ; rising in the very act of overcoming inherent difficulties and inertia-like obstruction. We ourselves utilize

MATTER AND SPIRIT 17

matter — the matter of this planet, " the dust of the earth/'— for the purpose of manifesting ourselves, our own personality, our own thoughts, our own identity ; which are not material, but which utilize matter and make it subservient to our needs.

This is conspicuously done by all artists. An artist is one who is specially skilful in utilizing matter for purposes of thought, of beauty, of something which he cannot otherwise convey to the rest of mankind. He arranges pigments, or he carves stone, or he erects a building, or he makes black marks on paper ; and the result is a painting, a statue, a cathedral, a poem, or an oratorio. The music has to be incarnated in order to be appreciated ; the poem has to be heard. In itself, as recorded, in its material aspect alone, it is nothing but black marks on paper ; and indeed the picture is nothing but cunningly arranged chemical material — pigments ; and yet what a soul is there displayed, what emotions are there exhibited ! The thought of the artist, the emotion of the artist, is called out, not in the matter, but in the receptive soul which has the potentiality for thoughts and ideas akin to his own ; and thus is conveyed to all succeeding generations something which the world will not willingly let die. Thought is creative — genuinely creative — in the sense of bringing into existence things which without it would not have been — things which are new to the universe ; — and matter is the vehicle in which the thought is incarnate and made manifest.