IV.—THE HOPE AHEAD
It seems like pessimism to deal so much with the difficulties and dangers of our present state. But one would be guilty of cowardice if one’s mind shirked these unpleasant facts, and of extreme folly if one pretended to oneself that peace and prosperity are bound to come. They will only come if the evil forces that are active beneath our present uncertain peace and in the minds of men in many groups are checked, if not killed, by increasing knowledge, by counsels of international goodwill, by a spiritual revolt against the dark powers among masses of the common folk, and by wise and noble leadership.
In spite of all that I have put down on the black side of the picture, I am optimistic enough to believe, or at least to hope, that good may possibly prevail over ill will, that knowledge and wisdom are beginning to tell, just a little, against ignorance and insanity, and that after the frightful lessons of the last ten years a majority of people in many countries are eager to find some settlement of old causes of quarrels, old hatreds, new hostilities and future conflict, by friendly compromise and goodstatesmanship. That, after all, is a very great hope indeed. If we have moved as far as that, and I think we have, we are some way along the road to a better kind of world.
Not all the goodwill in the world will cure some of the troubles to which I have alluded. It will not eliminate the competition between cheap labour and dear labour. It will not restore the wealth wasted in the war nor the youth that died with splendid quality of blood and spirit. It will not relieve the pressure of enormous populations seeking, and not finding, their old markets or new fields of trade. Not quickly, anyhow. But knowledge and goodwill, a higher sense of spiritual values, and a determination to limit the areas and occasions of conflict, will at least ease the burdens and anxieties of mankind, and prevent another world war, or a series of spasmodic wars, until in a more distant future folly and force or some natural irresistible struggle for existence may play the devil again.
There are many hopeful signs in the world to-day which counteract the evil elements. The peace spirit is spreading between nations, if not between classes. The British people, in the Mother Country and in the sister nations of the Empire, stand solidly and almost passionately for peace in the world. It is true, as cynics point out, thatthe material interests of the British Empire are safeguarded by peace, and that poverty in gold and man-power and military strength has brought about this dove-like attitude. That is true, but not all the truth, nor the best part of it.
It is also true that in most of the homes in England, Scotland and Wales the memory of dead boys sacrificed to the war spirit has produced a loathing of war which compels these people to seek for some new leadership, some new philosophy of statesmanship, some new system of international agreement, which will prevent another sacrifice like that among their children and children’s children. They may not regret with passionate revolt the call which caused those boys of ours to die—though many do—and they may believe with unchanging faith that if it happened again in that way the duty of youth would be to fight as they fought and die as they died in a righteous cause and in defence of that country. There are not many pacifists in England or Scotland who think that all war is wrong, or even that the last war was wrong. But they are all pacifists in believing that another war must be prevented by eliminating the causes of quarrel. They are all League of Nations men—and women—in allegiance to the spirit of the League, even if they deplore its weakness and futility. In the vast majority they would refuse now to follow any leadership which involved them in war, beyond military police work on far frontiers, unless thesafety of the Empire or civilisation itself were utterly at stake.
That may seem like “hedging.” It leaves a loophole for wars in India, Africa, Egypt. To some extent it is “hedging,” for even the Labour Party, most vowed to peace, is prepared to use the regular army for the protection of the Soudan or the crushing of rebellion in India. But with certain mental reservations and irresistible exceptions, which I think all nations would make (the greatest pacifists in the United States would advocate force against a Black rebellion in the Southern States) the British people, apart from a very small minority, will give an eager support to any plan for general disarmament down to the irreducible minimum for maintaining the military police work of the world, and will be hostile to any power or leadership which is convicted of warlike policy and designs. It is not a negligible fact in world history when an assembly of nations like the British Empire is dedicated to the spirit of international peace, at least within the confines of the white races of the world, and, if possible, of liberal forms of government, gradual relaxation of direct control in its Eastern world. It is the first time that it has happened with such spiritual conviction in the minds of millions.
The United States is also pacific in purpose and in spirit. The American people have already insome ways taken up the leadership in the plan of peace. It was Mr. Secretary Hughes who carried through the Washington Agreement for naval disarmament and suggested the calling of the Dawes Committee. There is no doubt that the American Government will throw its weight of influence on behalf of a reasonable scheme for the general disarmament. It is, however, by the efforts of individuals and societies in the United States that public opinion in that country is being educated in the ideals of international peace. A great tide of pacifist emotion is beating up from the women’s clubs and all that vast number of idealistic groups which find expression in Summer Schools, Chatauqua lectures, literary societies, and political institutions which form a highly organised system of propaganda and “uplift” throughout the States by which mass opinion is formed and stimulated.
One can hardly exaggerate the power of this educative force in the minds of a hundred and ten million peoples. In no other country in the world is there such means of swaying public opinion towards a single ideal by emotional appeal. That is not without danger, because it might swing violently to some passionate impulse in response to some real or imaginary danger, challenge, or insult to the honour or interests of the American people. But at the present time they are “out” for world peace. Whatever administration is in power it will be subject to the pressure and insistence of a vast majority eager to subscribe to someplan which will demilitarise the civilised nations to a reasonable minimum of strength, and substitute international arbitration and law for the old argument and ordeal of battle, while maintaining the independence of the United States from all alliances and “entanglements.” It seems to me a national policy, not only wise and justified in its reservations, but immensely helpful to the progress of the peace idea. A close alliance with the United States would be tempting to Great Britain and France. But in my opinion it would be a calamity, because it would create a new “Balance of Power” so formidable that the other nations of the earth would either have to obey its dictates, just or unjust, or resist it by force. It will be far better for the world if the United States remains an arbitrator, and does not become an ally of any group of powers.
The peace spirit which is pervading the mentality of the British Empire and the United States is beginning to work in the mind of individuals and groups even among those European peoples who are closest to the danger zone and most tempted by reactionary tendencies in favour of force for defence or vengeance.
Even in France, which is reasonably afraid of what may happen when Germany gets strong again, there is an increasing desire to obtainsecurity by justice and conciliation rather than by military domination and a policy of coercion.
Even in Germany, resentful, bitter, brooding over “injustice,” inflamed to dreams of vengeance by old and new leaders who believe only in force and hatred, there are groups of idealists, societies of youth, bodies of working men, who are putting up a spiritual resistance to their Junkers and Nationalists. In spite of all their military parades in Bavaria, their secret drillings, their harking back to the sentiment of the old Imperialism, their hatred of France—most dangerous, as I have said—millions of working men and women in Germany have a loathing of war (its horror is in their souls) which would make them revolt against any attempts to prepare for a war of vengeance. Those people—convinced pacifists—are, I think, in a minority. The French adventure in the Ruhr weakened and almost destroyed, for the time, pacifist sentiment in Germany by causing an outburst of fury which has left smouldering fires of resentment and rage. But some of that will pass if the London Agreement is carried out by France in a generous spirit, and especially if the Ruhr is evacuated before another year has gone. It is my personal belief that the Nationalists will not have general support in the country for a revival of militarism if France relieves the pressure on Germany and makes a working agreement with her industrialists for their mutual benefit.
If Germany asks for war again she will get revolution first.
The hope of Europe—one good hope at least—is the new attitude of France under the Herriot Government. In his great speech defending the acceptance of the London Agreement it was significant that loud cheers were raised when he said that an end had been put to “the romantic idea that in order to make certain of the fruits of victory Germany must be ruined.” France, he said, must no longer count only on force and ultimatums. At present she needed to rest, to restore her finances, to build up her population. “Reassure the mothers!” he cried amidst passionate applause from the Left. “That also is patriotism.” Those words to the mothers of France found an echo in the hearts of all those women who have lost their sons. France above all, dreads a new sacrifice of youth, and the policy of Poincaré failed because it seemed to lead to that necessity, and aroused the fear of the peasant farmers and small shopkeepers who remember their dead sons.
The London Agreement, based on the Dawes Report, may break down in its financial operations. I believe it will, for the reasons I have given. But those words of Herriot renouncing the romantic idea of Germany’s ruin as the fruits of victory forFrance promise a way of further compromise and conciliation if the burden of the London Agreement cannot be fulfilled, literally, by the German people, or if the effect of fulfilment is disastrous to other nations.
The London Agreement, after all, is only the first step towards the pacification of Europe, and its greatest benefit will be its clearing the way for other steps along the road to stable conditions and general security. The first of these is the demilitarisation of Europe, a relief from the crushing costs of great standing armies, preceded by absolute guarantees to prevent the re-arming of Germany. “The central fortress of Europe,” said Herriot, “must be demolished, and the German democrats must aid us.” That was a figure of rhetoric, for at the present time the “fortress” of Germany is dismantled of great artillery and under the power of French guns. But the French Premier was holding out a new hope for the world when he promised that France would base her security upon the moral guarantee of the world powers acting through the military control of Germany by the League of Nations in a general scheme of disarmament.
One other Conference and attempt at settlement will arise out of the London Agreement. That is the question of inter-allied debts, overshadowing the financial relations of the world and the cause of grave anxiety and much antagonism. At the present time Great Britain is the only country paying off her war debts. In spite of payments tothe United States which are weighing heavily upon her financial health, she is not receiving a penny from France or other countries to which she lent far more than she borrowed from the United States. If Germany is able to pay substantial reparations to France, Belgium and Great Britain, it will be an easy matter of arithmetic to write off many of these debts all round. I do not think it is going to be as easy as all this, because the future of German reparations is vastly uncertain. Nevertheless it is impossible for England to demand her “pound of flesh” from France if Germany is reprieved. I think England will act more generously than she can afford for the sake of good will all round, and I hope the United States will help her to be generous....
If all that could be cleared away, Europe and the whole world would indeed be in possession of a fair field of hope in which we could sow and reap new harvests in the security of peace. There is bound to be much trouble, argument, friction, heart-burning, before that work is accomplished, yet we are moving slowly along to that endeavour, and there is a light in the sky beyond the jungle of all the undergrowth in which international relations are entangled.
They are, after all, details. The spirit matters more than the letter. I think that in the spirit of the world, almost everywhere, there is a growing consciousness that the perils of new conflict are so frightful that civilisation might actually go down in chaos if the forces of evil are not subdued. At the back of many minds is the awful thought that machinery threatens to become the master of men and that science threatens to destroy humanity unless it is controlled. What were human valour, spiritual courage, superb physique, in that last war, up against long-range guns, aerial torpedoes, high explosives in concentrated fire, poison gas? At a distance of forty miles a platoon of men might be wiped out by a casual shell loosed from a fifteen-inch howitzer. What was the value of discipline, ardour, human strength, centuries of character building to produce the fine flower of civilisation, in the face of that explosive force which tore men’s bodies to bits far from the sight of their enemy, without means of resistance on their part, with no more defence than if a thunderbolt had struck them? That is not war between human forces. It is war with engines constructed by men but overpowering. Or, of what use were fair physique, athletic youth, soldierly qualities, heroic human stuff, when suddenly they were enveloped in a vapour which choked them, burnt their lungs, blinded them, stupefied them? All the discoveries of sciencewhich made men proud of the knowledge they had wrested from nature’s most hidden secrets, like gods, were used for this devilish purpose of increasing the efficiency of human slaughter. Even the victory of flight which had baffled humanity since men first walked on earth and envied the birds for their liberty of the sky was achieved in time to increase the terrors and range of war.
Yet we know that if there is a next war it will be worse than the last because the poison gases are more deadly, the guns have longer range, the aeroplanes will be more crowded in the sky, the cities will be more at the mercy of falling bombs. In many laboratories scientists are searching for new forms of destruction which may even make those weapons obsolete because so limited in their power of slaughter. It is not only possible but likely that some “death ray” projecting wireless force may sweep a countryside with a heat that would turn everything to flame and then to dust and ashes. Is mankind going to risk such an infernal ending to all its dreams of beauty and order and more perfect life? Is it going to allow its stupid brawls, its national ambitions, its little points of honour and argument, to be settled by this latest type of warfare which does not spare women or children, but, indeed, makes them the victims of its worst cruelties? With all its passionate follies, humanity can hardly be as mad as that.
I believe that before it is likely to happen the common folk of all countries will revolt from such a method of argument and demand some other means of settlement. The memory of the last war endures among those who realised its agony. Its futility is understood even by those who directed its forces. In Great Britain the generals—or many of them—are most convinced of the need of peace. In France Marshal Foch and many of those who led France to a victory at frightful cost wish to avoid another conflict beyond any other consideration. Some of them may believe in a supreme army as the only defence of peace, but it is peace and security which dominate their minds, not military adventures for ambition’s sake. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand the Generals of the Dominion forces are peace propagandists. In the United States the commanding officers who went to France are most in favour of generosity to Germany, within the limits of justice.
“What have we gained by the world war?” askedThe America Legion Weeklyten years after that war began. The answers came from many great people and with few exceptions they saw more loss than gain, and in most cases all loss and no gain. I was most struck by the answer of General Sir Arthur Currie who commanded the Canadians many times in great battles. I met him often and prophesied his military genius. His strength of character, his stubborn will power,his clear-cut judgment, marked him out as a man of great generalship and his record proved it I think. He was not popular with his men. They thought him ruthless. He was ruthless, while the war went on, but this was his message to the American Legion, founded to perpetuate the memories of the war, and rather prone, it was thought, for a time, to perpetuate the memories of hate and the use of force.
“By the world war we gained a truer appreciation and a better realisation of war’s unspeakable waste, its dreadful hardships, its cruel slaughter, and its aftermath of loneliness, sorrow and broken hearts. We now know that as a means of solving the world’s problems and removing international discord, war is a delusion and a lie. We know that no matter how much a nation may desire to hold itself aloof and to keep apart from the struggle it cannot escape war’s terrible effects.
“An appreciation of even these two things should influence nations to leave nothing undone that would help in even the slightest degree to lessen the possibility of international strife.
“We know that there is no glory in war, either in its methods or in its results, and that its only glory is the glory of a sacrifice for the ideals which are involved.”
When views like that are put before the minds of great bodies of men by such as General Currie there is a hope that reason will prevail over unreason, and that we may exorcise that infernalspectre of another world war which lurks in our bad dreams.
But we must first kill the idea of force and violence between classes as well as nations. There will be no world peace if those who preach the virtues of international brotherhood are at the same time organising a class warfare in a spirit of intolerance that is abominable. In many countries of the world—and the most civilised—at this present date, the nations are being divided by a passionate opposition between ideas roughly labelled as Capital and Labour, Liberty and Tyranny, Bolshevism and Fasciscism. In England the Left Wing of the Labour Party is using wild and whirling words which are a disgrace to civilised men and women. They are advocating “an orgy of blood” to overthrow the capitalist system and establish equality of labour in all countries. At a meeting in the Memorial Hall, London, last August, the Communists put forward a programme of violence which was an outrageous defiance of the moderate counsels of Ramsay MacDonald and his colleagues, and proposed a charter of labour “rights,” including a thirty-hours working week, which would bring Great Britain to the depths of ruin in a very short time. On the other side the English “Die-hards” are organising a secret society of Fascisti on the Italian lines, for thedefence of property, national discipline, and resistance to all liberal ideas. Intolerance, the spirit of violence, are at work among the extremists on both sides, both narrow-minded and ignorant, both asking for trouble, both believing in force rather than in argument, arbitration, and law. In England, by the grace of God and long tradition, there is between these two extremes a great body of middle class, moderate, reasonable, and steady opinion which is the safeguard of the nation against all violent revolution. The aristocracy as a whole is liberal, kindly and self-sacrificing, and by no means disposed to play into the hands of its own extremists represented by the Duke of Northumberland and that remarkable lady, Mrs. Nesta Webster. The Labour Party as long as it is led by its present chiefs is contemptuous of Mr. Tom Mann and his loud-throated “comrades.” Nevertheless the devil of intolerance is making disciples on both sides.
Not only in England. There are many little Mussolinis about the world who are in favour of tyranny under the name of discipline and prefer hammering their political opponents in a physical way rather than converting them by arguments and beating them at the polls. There are many little Lenins skulking about factory yards or drawing good salaries as labour agitators who have an equal scorn for the old traditions of Parliamentary Government and the Common Law of the land, and advocate short cuts to the equality of men by “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”—whichallows no equality to those who disagree with their point of view—and by violent assault upon the lives and property of the middle classes.
The old liberal principles of free speech, religious liberty, racial equality before the law and obedience to the law itself until it is altered by the will of the majority, is being attacked from both wings on the Left and Right. The Swastika or “Hackenkreuz” societies in Germany and Austria, becoming very powerful and aggressive, have declared war against the Jews, and vengeance against France. In Hungary the persecution of Jews is a passionate article of faith among those who support the present dictatorship. In the United States of America the Ku Klux Klan defies the very spirit of liberty and law which inspired the American constitution and preaches Intolerance as its creed—intolerance of Jews, intolerance of the Negro Race, intolerance of Catholics, intolerance of political labour. It is a secret society which seems to me in violent conflict with all the idealism stirring in the soul of America. If it is not checked or killed by public opinion it will certainly lead to social conflict in the United States of very grave consequences. The argument of the Ku Klux Klansmen that they stand for purity in politics, the old traditions of American character menaced by the tyranny andcorruption of Irish politicians, Jewish financiers and Labour revolutionaries, seems to me no defence of their methods or their principles. It is not by defiance of the law that they will exact obedience to the law. It is not by setting up a secret government that they will destroy Tammany which is also a secret government. It is not by spreading a propaganda of hate against the Jewish race—which has been greatly loyal to American ideals and by its genius has brought great wealth in art, music and literature as well as in dollars to the United States—that the gospel of Christianity will be more faithfully observed. It is not by burning Catholic Churches that Christ will be served. It is not by lynch law against negroes or any other class of American citizens that the United States is going to give a spiritual lead to the world or improve its own state of civilisation. All that is a hark-back to barbarity and not a stride forward to a more civilised world. It is the revival of cruelty which we want to slay with other qualities of the beast in us. It is the spirit of “Prussianism” against which we were supposed to be fighting in the great war.
It is true of course that tolerance cannot be carried to extreme limits. One cannot tolerate obscenity, incitements to murder, or to “orgies of blood” in the cause of “liberty,” or revolutionary attacks upon the ordinary rights of citizenship and the common law of the land. There comes a point when tolerance must become intolerance unless it makes an abject surrender to the forces ofevil and anarchy. That is the argument of those who justify Mussolini and his Fascisti, the Ku Klux Klan, the Swastika societies in Germany, and the “Die-hards” in England. It is a sound argument when that point of conscience is reached. But the danger of intolerance is far greater than that of tolerance, and it is apt to encourage and inflame the very evils which it is opposing. Free speech is a great safety valve for overheated air as the English people have found through centuries of history, and are finding now. Revolution is most dangerous when it is driven underground by autocracy and tyranny. Above all, religious and racial equality before the law is the foundation of all civilised states. Without that a state is not only uncivilised but its form of government is doomed to destruction, as history has shewn a thousand times.
Ten years after the beginning of the world war, fought on our side with a high appeal to such great words as “Liberty,” “Justice,” “a world made safe for democracy” and “the overthrow of militarism,” one is dismayed to find the beginning of a class warfare with appeals to force, and denials of liberty and justice, on both sides. Surely the one sacred remembrance worth keeping, the only glory that belonged to that war, is the spiritualemotion which for a time exalted our common clay above self-interest, above the fear of death itself, and united all classes in the nation in a comradeship of sacrifice and service. It was so in Germany as well as in England, in the United States as well as in France. Each side believed itself to be in the right, prayed God for aid with no sense of blasphemy.
Never before in history, at least in France, England and the United States, was there such a “sacred union” of all ranks and classes under the first impulse of that immense emotion for a single purpose. All political differences were blotted out, all prerogatives of caste and wealth, all hatreds between groups of men, all intolerance were waived. In those days, as I have written, the society women went down on their knees to scrub floors for the wounded, or serve as drudges in wayside canteens. In those days, ten years ago, the young aristocrat marvelled at the splendour of his men—“nothing was too good for them.” In those days before the time of disillusion the men were uplifted by the love of the nation that went out to them. There was no spirit of class warfare, no Bolshevism, no hatred of “Labour.” The dirtiest soldier in the trenches, covered with mud and blood, was our national hero. Our soul did homage to him. And between the wounded soldier lying in his shell-hole beside his wounded officer there was no hostility, no gulf of class. They were crucified together on thesame cross. They were comrades in agony and death.
It was for war. The service which united all classes was the slaughter of men on the other side of the line drawn across the map of the world, or the provision of means of slaughter. That intense impulse of devotion, sacrifice and duty which in its first manifestations had something divine in its carelessness of self—in all countries—was in its effects destructive of the best human life in the world. Is it too much for humanity to get that same impulse for the cause of peace, to get back to that comradeship and co-operation within those nations for other purposes than that of war, to rise above self-interest for the commonwealth of civilisation?
It is very difficult, almost impossible I think, without tremendous leadership which we cannot yet perceive. War is a shock which thrills every soul by its terrific portent. Peace is a state in which the smaller interests of life seem more important than great issues. War provides the people with a single dominating purpose, inspired by passion. Peace has no definite goal to capture or defend, and human intelligence is divided by a million views in its gropings for the ideals of peace. It is only danger that rallies the human tribes in self-defence. In safety they scatter and are hostile to each other.
Well, the danger ahead is great enough in my judgment to provide the impulse again, and torecreate the passion which united classes and nations ten years ago. If we have that “next war” it is going to thrust us all into deep pits of ruin. If we have social warfare within the civilised nations we shall not emerge from it until tides of blood have flowed. If we have an unrestricted commercial war, a savage and ruthless competition between great powers out for world trade at all costs against each other, the other things will happen. The human tribes in the next phase of history, now approaching, must co-operate or perish.
There is no one cure for all these troubles, but they may be lessened, and their greatest perils averted surely by a spirit of reason against unreason, by tolerance against intolerance, by ideals of peace against ideals of force, by conciliation against conflict, by a change of heart in the individual as well as in the nation.
It comes back to that as it has always come back. Are we going to serve God or Devils? Is the Christian world going to crucify Christ again or obey His commands? There are many religions in the world but all men have the same God in their hearts. Catholic, Protestant or Jew, Mohammedan, Hindu or Buddhist, the God thatis revealed to them has the same attributes of mercy, justice, love, under whatever name they worship the Spirit. It is because men are disloyal to their God that the world is afflicted by so much unnecessary evil, by so many tragedies and tears.
The Christian peoples at least are dedicated to peace, by words that they cannot ignore without treachery to the spirit of their faith. There is no Christianity in hatred, none in class warfare, none in violence against our neighbour, none in envy of our neighbour’s goods, none in denial of the labourer’s hire, none without love and pity and self-sacrifice. It is only by rededicating ourselves to that spirit that we can hope to solve the problems that beset us on every side, and exorcise the evil powers in the heart of humanity which are working for destruction.
Ten years after the world war civilisation is still unsafe. Ten years after the great sacrifice of youth peace is not assured for the babes who are now in their cradles. But, ten years after, there is the beginning, at last, of a world opinion rising up against the war makers, eager for some new form of international law, determined to prevent another massacre of young manhood by the science and machinery of destruction, aware of the evil forces that are working for new conflict. The tides of hate are on the ebb in many countries. The spirit of peace is spreading, if slowly. It is the hope ahead.
Ten years after let us remember the splendour and the spirit of the youth that died for ideals not yet fulfilled.
THE END
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