Chapter IV: Part 4

Granting all this, however, most fully, there still remains a long stretch from this admission to that of forced military service. The drawbacks to this latter are many. In the first place compulsion anyhow is bad. A voluntary citizen army may be all right; but to _compel_ a man to fight, whether he will or not--in violation, perhaps, of his conscience, of his instinct, of his temperament--is an inexcusable outrage on his rights as a human being. In the second place it is gross folly; for a man who fights devoid of freewill and against his conscience, against his temperament, cannot possibly make a good fighter. An army of such recusants, however large, would be useless; and even a few mixed with the others do, as a matter of fact, greatly lower the efficiency of the whole force associated with them. In the third place compulsion means compulsion by a Government, and Government, at any rate to-day, means class-rule. Forced military service means service under and subjection to a Class. That means Wars carried on abroad to serve the interests, often iniquitous enough, of the Few; and military operations entered into at home to suppress popular discontent or to confirm class-power. To none of these things could any high-minded man of democratic temper consent. There are other drawbacks, but these will do to begin with.

On the other hand, if we reject enforced militarism are we to throw overboard the idea of "national service" altogether?

I think not. The way out is fairly clear and obvious. Let it be understood that there _is_ such a thing as national or public service, to which (within the limits of individual conscience and capacity) every one is bound to respond. Let it be understood that at a certain age, say from sixteen to eighteen (but the period would no doubt be a movable one) every one, boy or girl, rich or poor, shall go through a course of training fitting him or her for healthy and effective citizenship. This would include _first of all_ bodily exercises and drill (needed by almost all, but especially in the present day by town workers), all sorts of scouting-work, familiarity with Nature, camp and outdoor life; then all kinds of elementary and necessary trades, like agriculture in some form or other, metal-work, wood-work, cloth-work, tailoring, bootmaking; then such things as rifle-shooting, ambulance-work, nursing, cookery, and so on. Let it be understood that _every one_, male or female, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, is expected to qualify--not in the whole programme, but first of all and as far as humanly possible in the primary condition of physical health and development, and then after that in some one, at any rate, of the above-mentioned or similar trades--so that in case of general need or distress he can do _something_ of use. That would at least be an approach to a valuable and reasonable institution.

As things are it is appalling to think of the abject futility and _uselessness_ of vast classes in all the modern nations of to-day,--but perhaps especially in our own nation. Think of the populations of our drawing-rooms, of our well-to-do clubs, of our universities, of our commercial and professional offices, whose occupations, whatever they are, are entirely remote from the direct needs and meanings of life; or again of the vast masses who inhabit the mean streets of our great towns, ignorant, ill-grown, unskilled, and in a chronic state of most precarious and uncertain employment. What would these populations do in any case of national crisis--say in a case of serious war or famine or huge bankruptcy of trade or multitudinous invasion by Chinese or Japanese, or of total collapse of credit and industry? With a few brilliant exceptions they would collapse too. They could not feed themselves, clothe themselves, or defend themselves; they could not build shelters from the storm, or make tools or weapons of any kind for their own use; they would be unable to nurse each other in illness or cook for each other in health. A tribe of Arabs or a commando of Boer farmers would be far more competent than they.

But the said deficiency, which would be painfully illustrated by a serious crisis, is there equally in ordinary humdrum times of peace. The crippled and idiotic life which would bring disaster _then_ is undermining our very existence _now_. Is it not time that a sensible nation should look to it that every one of its members, when adult, should at least be healthy, well-fed, and well-grown, and that each should not only be decently developed in himself or herself, but should be capable of bearing a useful part of some kind in the life of the nation? Is it not time that the nation should place _first of all_ on its programme the creation of capable and healthy citizens? Can a nation be really effective, really strong, really secure, without this? I do not seem to doubt a large _willingness_ among our people to-day for mutual service and helpfulness--I believe a vast number of our young women of the well-to-do type are at this moment deeply regretting their inability to do anything except knit superfluous mufflers--but was there ever in the history of the world such huge, such wide-flooding _incompetence_? The willingness of the well-to-do classes may be judged from their readiness to come forward with subscriptions, their incompetence from the fact that they have _nothing else to offer_: that is, that all they can offer is to set _some one else_ (by means of their money) to do useful work in their place. They cannot themselves nurse wounded soldiers, or make boots for them, or build huts or weave blankets; they cannot help in housing or building schemes, or in schemes for the reclaiming and cultivation of waste lands; they cannot grow corn or bake bread or cook simple meals for the assistance of the indigent or the aged or the feeble, because they understand none of these things; but they can _pay some one else_ to do them--that is, they can divert some of the money, which they have already taken from the workers, to setting the latter toiling again! But what use would that be on the day when our monetary system broke down--as it nearly did at the commencement of this war? What use would it be on some critical day when a hostile invasion called every competent man and woman to do the work of defence absolutely necessary at the moment? What use would it be in the hour when complete commercial dislocation caused downright famine? Who would look at offers of money then? Could the nation Carry this vast mass of incompetents and idlers on its back then; and can it reasonably be expected to do so now?

A terrible and serious crisis, as I have already said, awaits us--even when the War is over--a crisis probably worse than that which we are passing through now. We have to remember the debts that are being piled up. If the nations are staggering along now under the enormous load of idlers and parasites living on interest, how will it be then? Unless we can reorganize our Western societies on a real foundation of actual life, of practical capacity, of honest and square living, and of mutual help instead of mutual robbery, they will infallibly collapse, or pass into strange and alien hands. Now is the critical moment when with the enormous powers of production which we wield it may be possible to make a new start, and base the social life of the future on a generous recognition of the fellowship of all. How many times have the civilizations of the past, ignoring this salvation, gone down into the gulf! Can we find a better hope for our civilization to-day?

It is clear, I think, that any nation that wants to stand the shock of events in the future, and to hold its own in the vast flux of racial and political changes which is coming on the world, will have to found its life, not on theories and views, or on the shifting sands of literature and fashion, but on the solid rock of the real _material_ capability of its citizens, and on their willingness, their readiness to help each other--their ingrained instinct of mutual service. A conscript army, forced upon us by a government and becoming inevitably a tool for the use of a governing class, we do not want and we will not have; but a nation of capable men and women, who know what life is and are prepared to meet it at all points--who will in many cases make a free gift of their capital and land for such purposes as I have just outlined--we _must_ have. Personally I would not even here--though the need is a crying one--advocate downright compulsion; but I would make these things a part of the recognized system of education, with appropriate regulations and the strongest recommendations and inducements to every individual to fall in and co-operate with them. Thus in time an urgent public opinion might be formed which would brand as disgraceful the conduct of any person who refused to qualify himself for useful service, or who, when qualified, deliberately refused to respond to the call for such service, if needed. Under such conditions the question of military defence would solve itself. Thousands and thousands of men would of their own free choice at an early age and during a certain period qualify themselves in military matters; other thousands, men and women, would qualify in nursing or ambulance work; other millions, again, would be prepared to aid in transport work, or in the production of food, clothing, shelter, and the thousand and one necessaries of life. No one would be called upon to do work which he had not chosen, no one would be forced to take up an activity which was hateful to him, yet all would feel that what they could do and did do would be helpful to the other ranks and ranges, and would be _solidaire_ with the rest of the nation. Such a nation would be sane and prosperous in time of peace, and absolutely safe and impregnable in the hour of danger.

X

HOW SHALL THE PLAGUE BE STAYED?

_Christmas_, 1914.

People ask what new arrangements of diplomacy or revivals of Christianity--what alliances, _ententes_, leagues of peace, Hague tribunals, regulation of armaments, weeks of prayer, or tons of Christmas puddings sent into the enemies' camps--will finally scotch this pestilence of war. And there is no answer, because the answer is too close at hand for us to see it.

Nothing but the general abandonment of the system of living on the labour of others will avail. _There is no other way_. This, whether as between individuals or as between nations, is--and has been since the beginning of the world--the root-cause of war. Early and primitive wars were for this--to raid crops and cattle, to carry off slaves on whose toil the conquerors could subsist; and the latest wars are the same. To acquire rubber concessions, gold-mines, diamond-mines, where coloured labour may be exploited to its bitterest extreme; to secure colonies and outlying lands, where giant capitalist enterprises (with either white or coloured labour) may make huge dividends out of the raising of minerals and other industrial products; to crush any other Power which stands in the way of these greedy and inhuman ambitions--such are the objects of wars to-day. And we do not see the cause of the sore because it is so near to us, because it is in our blood. The whole private life of the commercial and capitalist classes (who stand as the representatives of the nations to-day) is founded on the same principle. As individuals our one object is to find some worker or group of workers whose labour value we can appropriate. Look at the endless columns of stock and share quotations in the daily papers, and consider the armies of those who scan these lists over their breakfast-tables with the one view of finding some-where an industrial concern whose slave-driven toilers will yield the shareholder 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12 per cent, on his capital. Undisguised and shameless parasitism is the order, or disorder, of our days. The rapacity of beasts of prey is in our social life but thinly veiled--thinly veiled indeed by a wash of "Christian" sentiment and by a network of philanthropic institutions for the supposed benefit of the very victims whom we have robbed.

Is it any wonder that this principle of internecine warfare and rapacity which rules in our midst, this vulgar greed, which loads people's bodies with jewels and furs and their tables with costly food, regardless of those from whom these comforts are snatched, should eventuate ultimately in rapacity and violence on the vast stage of the drama of nations, and in red letters of war and conflict written across the continents? It is no good, with a pious snuffle, to say we are out to put down warfare and militarism, and all the time to encourage in our own lives, and in our Church and Empire Leagues and other institutions, the most sordid and selfish commercialism--which itself is in essence a warfare, only a warfare of a far meaner and more cowardly kind than that which is signalized by the shock of troops or the rage of rifles and cannon.

No, there is no other way; and only by the general abandonment of our present commercial and capitalist system will the plague of war be stayed.[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] When these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men return home after the war is over, do we expect them to go meekly back to the idiotic slavery of dingy offices and dirty workshops? If we do I trust that we shall be disappointed. These men who have fought so nobly for their land, and who have tasted, even under the most trying conditions, something of the largeness and gladness of a free open-air life, will, I hope, refuse to knuckle down again to the old commercialism. Now at last arises the opportunity for our outworn Civilization to make a fresh start. Now comes the chance to establish great self-supporting Colonies in our own countrysides and co-operative concerns where real Goods may be manufactured and Agriculture carried on in free and glad and healthy industry.

XI

COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY THE PROSPERITY OF A CLASS

The economics of the statement that "commercial prosperity means little more than the prosperity of a _class_"[24] may be roughly indicated by the following considerations: International trade means division of labour among the nations. There is certainly a gain in such division, a margin of advantage in production; and that gain, that margin, is secured by the trading class. That is all.

Let us take an example, and to simplify the problem let us leave out of account those exotic products--like tea or rubber or raw cotton--which _can_ only be produced in one of the exchanging countries. Let us take the case of Germany and England, both producing cutlery and both producing cloth. There is no reason why each country should not produce _both_ articles exclusively for its own use; and as a matter of fact for a long time they did so. But presently it was found that the cost of production of certain kinds of cutlery was less in Germany, and the cost of production of certain kinds of cloth less in England. Merchants and dealers came in and effected the exchange, and so an intertrade has sprung up. The effect of this on the workers in England is simply to transfer a certain amount of employment from the cutlery trade to the cloth trade, and on the workers in Germany to transfer an equal amount from the cloth trade to the cutlery trade. This may mean dislocation of industry; but the actual number of persons employed or of wages received in both countries may in such a case remain just the same as before. There is nothing in the mere fact of exchange to alter those figures. There is, however, a gain, there is a marginal advantage, in the exchange; and that is collared by the merchants and dealers. It is, in fact, _in order to secure this margin_ that the merchant class arises. This is, of course, a very simple and elementary statement of the problem, and the exceptions to it or modifications of it may be supplied by the reader. But in the main it embodies the very obvious truth that trade is created for the advantage of the trader (who often also in modern times is the manufacturer himself). What advantages may here and there leak through to the public or to the employee are small and, so to speak, accidental. The mere fact of exchange in itself forms no index of general prosperity. Yet it is often assumed that it does. If, for instance, it should happen that the whole production of cutlery, as between Germany and England, were secured by Germany, and the whole production of cloth were secured by England, so that the _whole_ of these products on each side had to be exchanged, then doubtless there would be great jubilation--talk of the immense growth of oversea trade in both countries, the wonderful increase of exports and imports, the great prosperity, and so forth; but really and obviously it would only mean the jubilation and the prosperity of the merchants, the brokers, the railway and shipping companies of both lands. There would be an increase in _their_ riches (and an increase in the number of their employees). It would mean more merchant palaces in Park Lane, bigger dividends on the shares of transport companies; but after that the general position of the manual workers in both trades, the numbers employed, and their rates of wages would be much as before. Prices also, as regards the general Public, would be but little altered. It is only because this great trading, manufacturing, and commercial class has amassed such enormous wealth and influence, and is able to command the Press, and social position, and votes and representation on public bodies and in both Houses of Parliament, that it succeeds in impressing the nation generally with the idea that _its_ welfare is the welfare of the whole people, and its prosperity the advantage of every citizen. And it is in this very fact that its great moral and social danger to the community lies.

It must not be thought (but I believe I have said this before) that in making out that the commercial classes are largely to blame for modern wars I mean to say that the present war, and many previous ones, have been _directly_ instigated by commercial folk. It is rather that the atmosphere of commercial competition and rivalry automatically leads up to military rivalries and collisions, which often at the last moment (though not always) turn out contrary to the wishes of the commercial people themselves. Also I would repeat that it is not _Commerce_ but the _class_ interest that is to blame. Commerce and exchange, as we know in a thousand ways, have the effect of drawing peoples together, giving them common interests, acquaintance, and understanding of each other, and so making for peace. The great jubilation during the latter half of the nineteenth century--from 1851 onwards--over world-wide trade and Industrial Exhibitions, as the heralds of the world's peace and amity--a jubilation voiced in Tennyson's earlier _Locksley Hall_--was to a certain extent justified. There is no doubt that the nations have been drawn together by intertrading and learned to know each other. Bonds, commercial and personal, have grown up between them, and are growing up, which must inevitably make wars more difficult in the future and less desirable. And if it had been possible to carry on this intertrade in a spirit of real friendliness and without grasping or greed the result to-day would be incalculably great. But, unfortunately, this latter element came in to an extent quite unforeseen and blighted the prophetic hopes. The second _Locksley Hall_ was a wail of disillusionment. The growth of large mercantile classes, intoxicated with wealth and pursuing their own interests _apart from, and indeed largely in opposition to_, those of the mass-peoples, derailed the forward movement, and led in some of the ways which I have indicated above to more of conflict between the nations and less of peace.

Doubtless the growth of these mercantile classes has to a certain extent been inevitable; and we must do them the justice to acknowledge that their enterprise and ingenuity (even set in action for their own private advantage) have been of considerable benefit to the world, and that their growth may represent a necessary stage in affairs. Still, we cannot help looking forward to a time when, this stage having been completed, and commerce between nation and nation having ceased to be handled for mere private profit and advantage, the parasitical power in our midst which preys upon the Commonweal will disappear, the mercantile classes will become organic with the Community, and one great and sinister source of wars will also cease.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] See p. 50 above.

XII

COLONIES AND SEAPORTS

There is another point of economics on which there seems to be some confusion of mind. If mere extension of Trade is the thing sought for, it really does not matter much, in these days of swift and international transport, whether the outlying lands with which the Trader deals or the ports _through_ which he deals are the property of his own nation or of some other nation. The trade goes on all the same. England certainly has colonies all over the world; but with her free trade and open ports it often happens that one of her colonies takes more German or French goods of a certain class than English goods of the same class; or that it exports more to Germany and France than it does to England. The bulk, for instance, of the produce of our West African colonies goes, in normal times, to Germany. German or French trade does not suffer in dealing with English colonies, though English trade may sometimes suffer in dealing with French, German or other foreign colonies on account of the preferential duties they put on in favour of their own goods. Except for these tariff-walls and bounty systems (which after all, on account of their disturbing and crippling effect, seem to be gradually going out of fashion) trade flows over the world, regardless of national barriers, and will continue so to flow. It is all a question of relative efficiency and price. German goods, owing to their cheapness and their accuracy of construction, have of late years been penetrating everywhere; and to the German trader, as a pure matter of trade, it makes no difference whether he sells to a foreign nation or a German colony.

It is the same with seaports. Holland is delighted to provide passage for Germany's exports and imports, and probably does so at a minimum cost. The Berlin manufacturer or merchant would be no better off, as far as trade conditions are concerned, if Germany instead of Holland held the mouths of the Rhine. The same with a harbour like Salonika. Germany or Austria may covet dreadfully its possession; and for strategic or political reasons they may be right, but for pure trade purposes Salonika in the hands of the Greeks would probably (except for certain initial expenses in the enlargement of dock accommodation) serve them as well as in their own hands.

Of course there _are_ other reasons which make nations desire colonies and ports. Such things may be useful for offensive or defensive purposes against other nations; they feed a jealous sense of importance and Imperialism; they provide outlets for population and access to lands where the institutions and customs of the Homeland prevail; they supply financiers with a field for the investment of capital under the protection of their own Governments; they favour the development of a national _carrying_ trade; and, above all, they supply plentiful official and other posts and situations for the young men of the middle and commercial classes; but for the mere extension and development of the nation's general trade and commerce it is doubtful whether they have anything like the importance commonly credited to them.

XIII

WAR AND THE SEX IMPULSE

_January_, 1915.

It seems that War, like all greatest things--like Passion, Politics, Religion, and so forth--is impossible to reckon up. It belongs to another plane of existence than our ordinary workaday life, and breaks into the latter as violently and unreasonably, as a volcano into the cool pastures where cows and sheep are grazing. No arguments, protests, proofs, or explanations are of any avail; and those that are advanced are confused, contradictory, and unconvincing. Just as people quarrel most violently over Politics and Religion, because, in fact, those are the two subjects which no one really understands, so they quarrel in Warfare, not really knowing _why_, but impelled by deep, inscrutable forces. Spectators even and neutrals, for the same reason, take sides and range themselves bitterly, if only in argument, against each other.

But Logic and Morals are of no use on these occasions. They are too thin. They are only threads in a vast fabric. You extract a single thread from the weaving of a carpet, and note its colour and its concatenations, but that gives you no faintest idea of the pattern of the carpet; and then you extract another, and another, but you are no nearer the design. Logic and morals are similar threads in the great web of life. You may follow them in various directions, but without effective result. Life is so much greater than either; and War is a volcanic manifestation of Life which gives them little or no heed.

There is a madness of nations, as well as of individual people. Every one who has paid attention to the fluctuations of popular sentiment knows how strange, how unaccountable, these are. They seem to suggest the coming to the surface, from time to time, of hidden waves--groundswells of some deep ocean. The temper, the temperament, the character, the policy of a whole nation will change, and it is difficult to see why. Sometimes a passion, a fury, a veritable mania, quite unlike its ordinary self, will seize it. There is a madness of peoples, which causes them for a while to hate each other with bitter hatred, to fight furiously and wound and injure each other; and then lo! a little while more and they are shaking hands and embracing and swearing eternal friendship! What does it all mean?

It is all as mad and unreasonable as Love is--and that is saying a good deal! In love, too, people desire to _hurt_ each other; they do not hesitate to wound one another--wounding hearts, wounding bodies even, and hating themselves even while they act so. What does it all mean? Are they trying the one to reach the other _at all costs_--if not by embraces, at least by injuries--each longing to make his or her personality felt, to _impress_ himself or herself upon the other in such wise as never again to be forgotten. Sometimes a man will stab the girl he loves, if he cannot get at her any other way. Sex itself is a positive battle. Lust connects itself only too frequently with violence and the spilling of blood.

Is it possible that something the same happens with whole nations and peoples--an actual lust and passion of conflict, a mad intercourse and ravishment, a kind of generation in each other, and exchange of life-essences, leaving the two peoples thereafter never more the same, but each strangely fertilized towards the future? Is it this that explains the extraordinary ecstasy which men experience on the battlefield, even amid all the horrors--an ecstasy so great that it calls them again and again to return? "Have you noticed," says one of our War correspondents,[25] "how many of our colonels fall? Do you know why? It is for five minutes of _life_. It is for the joy of riding, when the charge sounds, at the crest of a wave of men."

Is it this that explains the curious fact that Wars--notwithstanding all their bitterness and brutishness--do not infrequently lead to strange amalgamations and generations? The spreading of the seeds of Greek culture over the then known world by Alexander's conquests, or the fertilizing of Europe with the germs of republican and revolutionary ideas by the armies of Napoleon, or the immense reaction on the mediaeval Christian nations caused by the Crusades, are commonplaces of history; and who--to come to quite modern times--could have foreseen that the Boer War would end in the present positive alliance between the Dutch and English in South Africa, or that the Russo-Japanese conflict would so profoundly modify the ideas and outlook of the two peoples concerned?

In making these remarks I do not for a moment say that the gains resulting from War are worth the suffering caused by it, or that the gains are _not_ worth the suffering. The whole subject is too vast and obscure for one to venture to dogmatize on it. I only say that if we are to find any order and law (as we must inevitably _try_ to do) in these convulsions of peoples, these tempests of human history, it is probably in the direction that I have indicated.

Of course we need not leave out of sight the ordinary theory and explanation, that wars are simply a part of the general struggle for existence--culminating explosions of hatred and mutual destruction between peoples who are competing with each other for the means of subsistence. That there is something in this view one can hardly deny; and it is one which I have already touched upon. Still, I cannot help thinking that there is something even deeper--something that connects War with the amatory instinct; and that this probably is to be found in the direction of a physiological impact and fusion between the two (or more) peoples concerned, which fertilizes and regenerates them, and is perhaps as necessary in the life of Nations as the fusion of cells is in the life of Protozoa, or the phenomena of sex in the evolution of Man.

And while the Nations fight, the little mortals who represent them have only the faintest idea of what is really going on, of what the warfare means. They _feel_ the sweep of immense passions; ecstasies and horrors convulse and dislocate their minds; but they do not, cannot, understand. And the dear creatures in the trenches and the firing-lines give their lives--equally beautiful, equally justified, on both sides: fascinated, rapt, beyond and beside themselves, as foes hating each other with a deadly hatred; seized with hideous, furious, nerve-racking passions; performing heroic, magnificent deeds, suffering untold, indescribable wounds and pains, and lying finally side by side (as not unfrequently happens) on the deserted battlefield, reconciled and redeemed and clasping hands of amity even in death.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] H.M. Tomlinson, in the _Daily News_.

XIV

THE OVER-POPULATION SCARE

Some cheerful and rather innocent people insist that because of the over-population difficulty wars must go on for ever. The population of the world, they say--or at any rate of the civilized countries--is constantly increasing, and if war did not from time to time reduce the numbers there would soon be a deadlock. They seem to think that the only way to solve the problem is for the men to murder each other. This says nothing about the women, who, after all, are the chief instruments of multiplication. It may also be pointed out that even the barbaric method of slaughter is not practicable. Although wars of extermination may have now and then occurred in the past among tribes and small peoples, such wars are not considered decent nowadays; and the numbers killed in modern campaigns--horribly "scientific" and "efficient" as the methods are--is such a small fraction of the population concerned as to have no appreciable result. The population of Germany is about seventy millions, and I suppose the wildest anti-Teuton could hardly hope that _more_ than a million Germans will be actually killed in the present conflict--less than 1-1/2 per cent.--a fraction which would probably soon be compensated by the increased uxoriousness of the returning troops.

No, War is no solution for the over-population question. If that question is a difficulty, other means must be employed. We ask therefore: (1) Is it a serious difficulty? (2) If so, what is the remedy?

That over-population is in certain localities a serious difficulty few would deny. China, with her four hundred millions, is probably over-populated; that is, with her present resources in production the population presses against the margin of subsistence and can only just maintain itself. There is evidence to show that in the past the natives of some of the Pacific islands, isolated in the great ocean and unable to migrate to other lands, have suffered from the same trouble. Britain is often said to be over-populated; but here quite other considerations come in. Though it might be pleasant for many reasons to have more land at our immediate command, we cannot fairly say that our population presses against the margin of subsistence, for the simple reason that with our immense powers of industrial production and the enormous wealth here yearly obtained the total, if evenly distributed (anything like as well, for instance, as in China), would yield to every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom an ample affluence.[26] The _appearance_ here of over-population arises from the fact that while the wage-earners actually produce this mass of wealth, two-thirds of it are taken by the employers and employing classes. Great portions, therefore, of the actual producers or producing classes _are_ on the margin of subsistence, while the rest of the wealth of the country is absorbed by those trading and dividend-consuming classes of whom I have spoken more than once in previous pages. There is over-population certainly, but it is an over-population (as any one may see who walks through the West End of London or the corresponding quarters of any of our large towns) of idlers and futile people, who are a burden to the nation. With our extraordinary industrial system--or want of system--it commonly happens that the abundance of ill-paid or unemployed workers at one end of the social scale, by reducing the rates of wages and so increasing the rates of dividends, actually creates a greater abundance of unemployed rich at the other end; but neither excess points in itself to over-population --only to a diseased state of distribution. What we really ought to aim at creating is a nation in which every one was capable of doing useful or beautiful work of some kind or other and was gladly occupied in doing it. Such a nation would be truly healthy. It would be powerful and productive beyond all our present dreams. But the Western nations of to-day, with their huge burdens of unskilled, ill-grown poor and their huge burden of incompetent, feeble rich--it is a wonder that they survive. They would not survive a decade or two if the Chinese or the Japanese in their numbers were to come into personal and direct competition with them.

If Britain is not really at present over-populated, the same is probably even more true of Germany. For Germany, with a larger and more fertile area in proportion to her population, is safer than we are in the matter of self-support. But again in Germany the outcry of over-population has arisen, and has arisen from the same cause as here--namely, the rise of the commercial system, the division of the nation into extremes of poverty and riches, and the consequent _appearance_ of excess population in both directions. And this diseased state of the nation has led to a fever of "expansion" and has been (as already said) one of the chief causes of the present war. As long as the modern nations are such fools as to conduct their industrial affairs in the existing way they will not only be full of strife, disease, and discord in themselves, but they will inevitably quarrel with their neighbours.

All this, however, does not prove that a genuine over-population difficulty may not occur even now in localities, and possibly in some far future time over the whole earth. And it may be just as well to consider these possibilities.

Dismissing War and Disease as solutions--as belonging to barbarous and ignorant ages of human evolution--there remain, perhaps, three rational methods of dealing with the question: (1) the organization and improvement of industrial production on existing lands so far as to allow the support of a larger population; (2) the transport of excess populations to new and undeveloped lands (colonization); (3) the limitation of families.

The first method hardly needs discussion here. Its importance is too obvious. It needs, however, more public discussion in England than it has hitherto received. The second method--operating at present only in a very casual and unsystematic way--ought, one would say, to be very systematically considered and dealt with by the modern States. For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very expensive one, considering the end in view. And in such a case there would really be no adequate reason for jealousy between States having colonies in the neighbourhood of each other. If Germany (or any other country) wishes to have a colony in East Africa or West Africa, it is really ridiculous to go to war about such a matter. Any peaceful arrangement would be less expensive; and, as a matter of fact, a flourishing German (or other) colony in the neighbourhood of a British settlement would help to bring prosperity to the latter. The two colonies would benefit each other. It is only _unreasoning jealousy_ which prevents people understanding this.

Finally, there is the third method, of the intentional limitation of families. Surely the time has come when blind and unlimited propagation among civilized and self-respecting peoples must come to an end. The old text "Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of them" has ceased to have any use or application. Eugenic and healthy conditions of child-rearing and nurture demand small families. The well-to-do and educated do already limit their families; and for the poorer classes to breed and propagate indefinitely is only to play into the hands of the dividend-hunting rich by increasing the supply of cheap labour, while at the same time the general standard of the population becomes more and more degraded. It is indeed a curious question why, in the Press and among the official classes, every effort to spread abroad the knowledge of how in a healthy, humane, and eugenic way to limit the size of the family is discountenanced. Sometimes one thinks that this is done partly in order to encourage that said pullulation of workers which is so favourable to, the keeping down of wages; but, of course, ancient reasons of ignorance and religious bias weigh also. In the United States the persecutions of Comstockery are worse than here.

The aborigines of Australia are so ignorant that they do not even know that conception arises from the meeting of the male and female elements. They think that certain bushes and trees are haunted by the spirits of babies, which leap unawares into the bodies of passing women. It can be imagined what evils and delusions spring from such a theory. We do not want to return to such a period; and yet it would seem that many folk do not want to go forward from our present condition, with all _its_ evils and delusions, to something better and more intelligent.

If the nations haven't the sense to be able (if they wish) to limit their families--short of resorting to such methods as War, Cannibalism, the spread of Disease, the exposure of Infants, and the like--one can only conclude that they must go on fighting and preying upon each other (industrially and militarily) till they gain the sense. Mere unbridled and irrational lust may have led to wars of extermination in the past. Love and the sacrament of a true and intimate union may come some day with the era of peace.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Militating also against the idea of over-population is the fact that so much of our agricultural land is obviously uncared for and neglected.

XV

THE FRIENDLY AND THE FIGHTING INSTINCTS

_January_, 1915.

Fighting is certainly a deeply ingrained instinct in the human race--the masculine portion. In the long history of human development it has undoubtedly played an important part. It has even (such is the cussedness and contrariety of Nature) helped greatly in the evolution of love and social solidarity. There is no greater bond in early stages between the members of a group or tribe than the consciousness that they have a common enemy.[27] It is also obviously still a great _pleasure_ to a very large proportion of our male populations--as, indeed, the fact of its being the fulfilment of a deep instinct would lead us to expect. It does not follow, however, from these remarks that we expect war in its crudest form to continue for ever. There will come a term to this phase of evolution. Probably the impact and collision between nations--if required for their impregnation and fecundity--will come about in some other way.

If fighting is an ingrained instinct, the sociable or friendly instinct is equally ingrained. We may, indeed, suppose it roots deeper. In the midst of warfare maddest foes will turn and embrace each other. In the tale of _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_[28] he (Cuchulain) and Ferdiad fought for three days on end, yet at the close of each day kissed each other affectionately; and in the present war there are hundreds of stories already in circulation of acts of grace and tenderness between enemies, as well as the quaintest quips and jokes and demonstrations of sociability between men in opposing trenches who "ought" to have been slaying each other. In the Russo-Japanese War during the winter, when military movement was not easy, and the enemy lines in some cases were very near each other, the men, Russians and Japanese, played games together as a convenient and pleasant way of passing the time, and not unfrequently took to snowballing each other.

A friend of mine, who was in that war, told me the following story. The Japanese troops were attacking one of the forts near Port Arthur with their usual desperate valour. They cut _zig-zag_ trenches up the hillside, and finally stormed and took a Russian trench close under the guns of the fort. The Russians fled, leaving their dead and wounded behind. After the _mêlée_, when night fell, five Japanese found themselves in that particular trench with seven Russians--all pretty badly wounded--with many others of course dead. The riflemen in the fort were in such a nervous state, that at the slightest movement in the trench they fired, regardless of whom they might hit. The whole party remained quiet during the night and most of the next day. They were suffering from wounds, and without food or water, but they dared not move; they managed, however, to converse with each other a little--especially through the Japanese lieutenant, who knew a little Russian. On the second night the fever for water became severe. One of the less wounded Russians volunteered to go and fetch some. He raised himself from the ground, stood up in the darkness, but was discerned from the fort, and shot. A second Russian did the same and was shot. A Japanese did likewise. Then the rest lay, quiet again. Finally, the darkness having increased and the thirst and the wounds being intolerable, the Japanese lieutenant, who had been wounded in the legs and could not move about, said that if one of the remaining Russians would take him on his back he would guide the whole party into a place of safety in the Japanese lines. So they did. The Russian soldier crawled on his belly with the Japanese officer lying on his back, and the others followed, keeping close to the ground. They reached the Japanese quarters, and were immediately, looked after and cared for. A few days afterwards the five Russians came on board the transport on which my friend was engineer. They were being taken as prisoners to Japan; but the Japanese crew could not do enough for them in the way of tea and cigarettes and dressing their wounds, and they made quite a jolly party all together on deck. The Japanese officer was also on board, and he told my friend the story.

Gallantry towards the enemy has figured largely in the history of War--sometimes as an individual impulse, sometimes as a recognized instruction. European records afford us plenty of examples. The Chinese, always great sticklers for politeness, used to insist in early times that a warrior should not take advantage of his enemy when the latter had emptied his quiver, but wait for him to pick up his arrows before going on with the fight. And in one tale of old Japan, when one Daimio was besieging another, the besieged party, having run short of ammunition, requested a truce in order to fetch some more--which the besiegers courteously granted!

The British officer who the other day picked up a wounded German soldier and carried him across into the German lines, acted in quite the same spirit. He saw that the man had been left accidentally when the Germans were clearing away their wounded; and quite simply he walked forward with the object of restoring him. But it cost him his life; for the Germans, not at first perceiving his intention, fired and hit him in two or three places. Nevertheless he lifted the man and succeeded in bearing him to the German trench. The firing of course ceased, and the German colonel saluted and thanked the officer, and pinned a ribbon to his coat. He returned to the British lines, but died shortly after of the wounds received.

"Ils sont superbes, ces braves!" said a French soldier in hospital to Mrs. Haden Guest, indicating the German wounded also there. And a dying German whispered to her: "I would never have fought against the French and English had I known how kind they were. I was told that I was only going on manoeuvres!"[29]

The French are generous in the recognition of bravery. A small company rushed a Prussian battery in the neighbourhood of the Aisne and put all the gunners out of action, except one who fought gamely to the last and would not give in till he was fairly surrounded and made prisoner. "_Tu est chic, tu--tu est bien chic_" shouted the _pioupious_ with one accord, and shook him cordially by the hand as they led him away. How preposterous do such stories as these make warfare appear!--and others, such as the two opposing forces tacitly agreeing to fetch water at the evening hour from an intervening stream without molestation on either side; or the two parties using an old mill as a post-office, by means of which letters could pass between France and Germany in defiance of all decent war-regulations! How they illustrate the absolutely instinctive and necessary tendency of the natural man (notwithstanding occasional bouts of fury) to aid his fellow and fall into some sort of understanding with him! Finally the fraternizations last Christmas between the opposing lines in Northern France almost threatened at one time to dissolve all the proprieties of official warfare. If they had spread a little farther and lasted a little longer, who knows what might have happened? High politics might have been utterly confounded, and the elaborate schemes of statesmen on both sides entirely frustrated. Headquarters had, through the officers, to interfere and all such demonstrations of amity to be for the future forbidden. Could anything more clearly show the beating of the great heart of Man beneath the thickly overlying husks of class and class-government? When, oh! when indeed, will the real human creature emerge from its age-long chrysalis?

FOOTNOTES:

[27] And even the hundred and one humane Associations of to-day derive a great part of their enthusiasm and vitality from fighting each other!

[28] Put into English by Lady Gregory. (John Murray, 6s. net.)

[29] From _T.P.'s Weekly_, November 7, 1914.

XVI

NEVER AGAIN!

Like a great cry these words to-day rise from the lips of the nations--"Never Again!" Never before certainly have such enormous masses of human beings been locked in deadly grip with each other over the earth, and never before, equally certainly, has their warfare been so horrible in its deliberate preparation, so hideous, so ghastly in its after-effects, as to-day. The nations stand round paralysed with disgust and despair, almost unable to articulate; and when they do find voice it is with the words above written.

How are we to give effect to the cry? Must we not call upon the Workers of all countries--those who are the least responsible for the inception of wars, and yet who suffer most by them, who bear the brunt of the wounds, the slaughter, the disease, and the misery which are a necessary part of them--to rise up and forbid them for ever from the earth? Let us do so! For though few may follow and join with us to-day, yet to-morrow and every day in the future, and every year, as the mass-peoples come into their own, and to the knowledge of what they are and what they desire to be, those numbers will increase, till the cry itself is no longer a mere cry but an accomplished fact.

It is a hopeful sign that not only among bewildered onlookers and outsiders but among the soldiers themselves (of the more civilized countries) this cry is being taken up. Who, indeed, should know better than they what they are talking about? The same words are on the lips at this moment of thousands and thousands of French and English and German soldiers,[30] and in no faint-hearted or evasive sense, but with the conviction and indignation of experience. We may hope they will not be forgotten this time when the war is over.

The truth is that not only was this particular war "bound to come," but (among the civilized peoples) the refusal of war is also bound to come. Two great developments are leading to this result. On the one hand, the soldiers themselves, the fighters, are as a class becoming infinitely more sensitive, more intelligent, more capable of humane feeling, less stupidly "patriotic" and prejudiced against their enemies than were the soldiers of a century ago--say, of the time of Wellington; on the other hand, the horrors, the hideousness, the folly, and the waste of war are infinitely greater. It is inevitable that these two contradictory movements, mounting up on opposite sides, must at last clash. The rising conscience of Humanity must in the end say to the War-fiend, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" Never before have there passed over the fields of Europe armies so intelligent, so trained, so observant, so sensitive as those to-day of Belgium, France, England, and Germany. Some day or other they will return to their homes; but when they do it will be with a tale that will give to the Western world an understanding of what war means, such as it never had before.

All the same, if the word _is_ to be "Never Again!" it must come through the masses themselves (from whom the fighters are mainly drawn); it must be through them that this consummation must be realized. It must be through the banding together and determined and combined effort of the Unions, local, national, and international, and through the weight of the workers' influence in all their associations and in all countries. To put much reliance in this matter upon the "classes" is rash; for though just now the latter are sentimentalizing freely over the subject--having got into nearer touch with it than ever before--yet when all is settled down, and the day arrives once more that _their_ interests point to war, it is only too likely that they (or the majority of them) will not hesitate to sacrifice the masses--unless, indeed, the power to do so has already departed from them.

And it is no good for _us_ to sentimentalize on the subject. We must not blink facts. And the fact is that "it's a long way" to _Never Again_. The _causes_ of War must be destroyed first; and, as I have more than once tried to make clear, the causes ramify through our midst; they are like the roots, pervading the body politic, of some fell disease whose outbreak on the surface shocks and affrights us. To dislodge and extirpate these roots is a long business. But there is this consolation about it--that it is a business which we can all of us begin at once, in our own lives!