Chapter II

. of this section, to which the reader may be referred. I have there attempted to make plain that _pari passu_ with the drift from physical force towards economic inducement goes a corresponding diminution of pugnacity, until the psychological factor which is the exact reverse of pugnacity comes to have more force even than the economic one. Quite apart from any economic question, it is no longer possible for any government to order the extermination of a whole population, of the women and children, in the old Biblical style. In the same way, the greater economic interdependence which improved means of communication have provoked must carry with it a greater moral interdependence, and a tendency which has broken down profound national divisions, like those which separated the Celt and the Saxon, will certainly break down on the psychological side divisions which are obviously more artificial.

Among the multiple factors which have entered into the great sweeping tendency just mentioned are one or two which stand out as most likely to have immediate effect on the breakdown of a purely psychological hostility embodied by merely State divisions. One is that lessening of the reciprocal sentiment of collective responsibility which the complex heterogeneity of the modern State involves. What do I mean by this sense of collective responsibility? To the Chinese Boxer all Europeans are "foreign devils"; between Germans, English, Russians, there is little distinction, just as to the black in Africa there is little differentiation between the various white races. Even the yokel in England talks of "them foreigners." If a Chinese Boxer is injured by a Frenchman, he kills a German, and feels himself avenged--they are all "foreign devils." When an African tribe suffers from the depredations of a Belgian trader, the next white man who comes into its territory, whether he happens to be an Englishman or a Frenchman, loses his life; the tribesmen also feel themselves avenged. But if the Chinese Boxer had our clear conception of the different European nations, he would feel no psychological satisfaction in killing a German because a Frenchman had injured him. There must be in the Boxer's mind some collective responsibility as between the two Europeans, or in the negro's mind between the two white men, in order to obtain this psychological satisfaction. If that collective responsibility does not exist, the hostility to the second white man, in each case, is not even raised.

Now, our international hostilities are largely based on the notion of a collective responsibility in each of the various States against which our hostility is directed, which does not, in fact, exist. There is at the present moment great ill-feeling in England against "the German." Now, "the German" is a non-existent abstraction. Englishmen are angry with the German because he is building warships, conceivably directed against them; but a great many Germans are as much opposed to that increase of armament as are the English, and the desire of the yokel to "have a go at them Germans" depends absolutely upon a confusion just as great as--indeed, greater than--that which exists in the mind of the Boxer, who cannot differentiate between the various European peoples. Mr. Blatchford commenced that series of articles which has done so much to accentuate this ill-feeling with this phrase:

Germany is deliberately preparing to destroy the British Empire;

and later in the articles he added:

Britain is disunited; Germany is homogeneous. We are quarrelling about the Lords' Veto, Home Rule, and a dozen other questions of domestic politics. We have a Little Navy Party, an Anti-Militarist Party; Germany is unanimous upon the question of naval expansion.

It would be difficult to pack a more dangerous untruth into so few lines. What are the facts? If "Germany" means the bulk of the German people, Mr. Blatchford is perfectly aware that he is not telling the truth. It is not true to say of the bulk of the German people that they are deliberately preparing to destroy the British Empire. The bulk of the German people, if they are represented by any one party at all, are represented by the Social Democrats, who have stood from the first resolutely against any such intention. Now the facts have to be misstated in this way in order to produce that temper which makes for war. If the facts are correctly stated, no such temper arises.

What has a particularly competent German to say to Mr. Blatchford's generalization? Mr. Fried, the editor of _Die Friedenswarte_, writes:

There is no one German people, no single Germany.... There are more abrupt contrasts between Germans and Germans than between Germans and Indians. Nay, the contradistinctions within Germany are greater than those between Germans and the units of any other foreign nation whatever. It might be possible to make efforts to promote good understanding between Germans and Englishmen, between Germans and Frenchmen, to organize visits between nation and nation; but it will be forever impossible to set on foot any such efforts at an understanding between German Social Democrats and Prussian Junkers, between German Anti-Semites and German Jews.[108]

The disappearance of most international hostility depends upon nothing more intricate than the realization of facts which are little more complex than the geographical knowledge which enables us to see that the anger of the yokel is absurd when he pummels a Frenchman because an Italian has swindled him.

It may be argued that there never has existed in the past this identification between a people and the acts of its Government which rendered the hatred of one country for another logical, yet that hatred has arisen. That is true; but certain new factors have entered recently to modify this problem. One is that never in the history of the world have nations been so complex as they are to-day; and the second is that never before have the dominating interests of mankind so completely cut across State divisions as they do to-day. The third factor is that never before has it been possible, as it is possible by our means of communication to-day, to offset a solidarity of classes and ideas against a presumed State solidarity.

Never at any stage of the world's development has there existed, as exists to-day, the machinery for embodying these interests and class ideas and ideals which cut across frontiers. It is not generally understood how many of our activities have become international. Two great forces have become internationalized: Capital on the one hand, Labor and Socialism on the other.

The Labor and Socialist movements have always been international, and become more so every year. Few considerable strikes take place in any one country without the labor organizations of other countries furnishing help, and very large sums have been contributed by the labor organizations of various countries in this way.

With reference to capital, it may almost be said that it is organized so naturally internationally that formal organization is not necessary. When the Bank of England is in danger, it is the Bank of France which comes automatically to its aid, even in a time of acute political hostility. It has been my good fortune in the last ten years to discuss these matters with financiers on one side and labor leaders on the other, and I have always been particularly struck by the fact that I have found in these two classes precisely the same attitude of internationalization. In no department of human activity is internationalization so complete as in finance. The capitalist has no country, and he knows, if he be of the modern type, that arms and conquests and jugglery with frontiers serve no ends of his, and may very well defeat them. But employers, as apart from capitalists, are also developing a strong international cohesive organization. Among the Berlin despatches in the London _Times_ of April 18, 1910, I find the following concerning a big strike in the building trade, in which nearly a quarter of a million men went out. Quoting a writer in the _North German Gazette_, the correspondent says:

The writer lays stress upon the efficiency of the employers' arrangements. He says, in particular, that it will probably be possible to extend the lock-out to industries associated with the building industry, especially the cement industry, and that the employers are completing a ring of cartel treaties, which will prevent German workmen from finding employment in neighboring countries, and will insure for German employers all possible support from abroad. It is said that Switzerland and Austria were to conclude treaties yesterday on the same conditions as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and France, and that Belgium and Italy would come in, so that there will be complete co-operation on the part of all Germany's neighbors except Russia. In the circumstances the men's organs rather overlabor the point when they produce elaborate evidence of premeditation. The _Vorwaerts_ proves that the employers have long been preparing for "a trial of strength," but that is admitted. The official organ of the employers says, in so many words, that any intervention is useless until "the forces have been measured in open battle."

Have not these forces begun already to affect the psychological domain with which we are now especially dealing? Do we place national vanity, for instance, on the same plane as individual vanity? Have we not already realized the absurdity involved?

I have quoted Admiral Mahan as follows:

That extension of national authority over alien communities, which is the dominant note in the world politics of to-day, dignifies and enlarges each State and each citizen that enters its fold.... Sentiment, imagination, aspiration, the satisfaction of the rational and moral faculties in some object better than bread alone, all must find a part in a worthy motive. Like individuals, nations and empires have souls as well as bodies. Great and beneficent achievement ministers to worthier contentment than the filling of the pocket.

Whatever we may think of the individuals who work disinterestedly for the benefit of backward and alien peoples, and however their lives may be "dignified and enlarged" by their activities, it is surely absurd to suppose that other individuals, who take no part in their work and who remain thousands of miles from the scene of action, can possibly be credited with "great and beneficent achievement."

A man who boasts of his possessions is not a very pleasant or admirable type, but at least his possessions are for his own use and do bring a tangible satisfaction, materially as well as sentimentally. His is the object of a certain social deference by reason of his wealth--a deference which has not a very high motive, if you will, but the outward and visible signs of which are pleasing to a vain man. But is the same in any sense true, despite Admiral Mahan, of the individual of a big State as compared to the individual of a small one? Does anyone think of paying deference to the Russian _mujik_ because he happens to belong to one of the biggest empires territorially? Does anyone think of despising an Ibsen or a Bjoernsen, or any educated Scandinavian or Belgian or Hollander, because they happen to belong to the smallest nations in Europe? The thing is absurd, and the notion is simply due to inattention. Just as we commonly overlook the fact that the individual citizen is quite unaffected materially by the extent of his nation's territory, that the material position of the individual Dutchman as a citizen of a small State will not be improved by the mere fact of the absorption of his State by the German Empire, in which case he will become the citizen of a great nation, so in the same way his moral position remains unchanged; and the notion that an individual Russian is "dignified and enlarged" each time that Russia conquers some new Asiatic outpost, or Russifies a State like Finland, or that the Norwegian would be "dignified" were his State conquered by Russia and he became a Russian, is, of course, sheer sentimental fustian of a very mischievous order. This is the more emphasized when we remember that the best men of Russia are looking forward wistfully, not to the enlargement, but to the dissolution, of the unwieldy giant--"stupid with the stupidity of giants, ferocious with their ferocity"--and the rise in its stead of a multiplicity of self-contained, self-knowing communities, "whose members will be united together by organic and vital sympathies, and not by their common submission to a common policeman."

How small and thin a pretence is all the talk of national prestige when the matter is tested by its relation to the individual is shown by the commonplaces of our everyday social intercourse. In social consideration everything else takes precedence of nationality, even in those circles where Chauvinism is a cult. British Royalty is so impressed with the dignity which attaches to membership of the British Empire that its Princes will marry into the royal houses of the smallest and meanest States in Europe, while they would regard marriage with a British commoner as an unheard-of _mesalliance_. This standard of social judgment so marks all the European royalties that at the present time not one ruler in Europe belongs, properly speaking, to the race which he rules. In all social associations an analogous rule is followed. In our "selectest" circles an Italian, Rumanian, Portuguese, or even Turkish noble, is received where an American tradesman would be taboo.

This tendency has struck almost all authorities who have investigated scientifically modern international relations. Thus Mr. T. Baty, the well-known authority on international law, writes as follows:

All over the world society is organizing itself by strata. The English merchant goes on business to Warsaw, Hamburg, or Leghorn; he finds in the merchants of Italy, Germany, and Russia the ideas, the standard of living, the sympathies, and the aversions which are familiar to him at home. Printing and the locomotive have enormously reduced the importance of locality. It is the mental atmosphere of its fellows, and not of its neighborhood, which the child of the younger generation is beginning to breathe. Whether he reads the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ or _Tit-Bits_, the modern citizen is becoming at once cosmopolitan and class-centred. Let the process work for a few more years; we shall see the common interests of cosmopolitan classes revealing themselves as far more potent factors than the shadowy common interests of the subjects of States. The Argentine merchant and the British capitalist alike regard the Trade Union as a possible enemy--whether British or Argentine matters to them less than nothing. The Hamburg docker and his brother of London do not put national interests before the primary claims of caste. International class feeling is a reality, and not even a nebulous reality; the nebula has developed centres of condensation. Only the other day Sir W. Runciman, who is certainly not a Conservative, presided over a meeting at which there were laid the foundations of an International Shipping Union, which is intended to unite ship-owners of whatever country in a common organization. When it is once recognized that the real interests of modern people are not national, but social, the results may be surprising.[109]

As Mr. Baty points out, this tendency, which he calls "stratification," extends to all classes:

It is impossible to ignore the significance of the International Congresses, not only of Socialism, but of pacificism, of esperantism, of feminism, of every kind of art and science, that so conspicuously set their seal upon the holiday season. Nationality as a limiting force is breaking down before cosmopolitanism. In directing its forces into an international channel, Socialism will have no difficulty whatever[110].... We are, therefore, confronted with a coming condition of affairs in which the force of nationality will be distinctly inferior to the force of class-cohesion, and in which classes will be internationally organized so as to wield their force with effect. The prospect induces some curious reflections.

We have here, at present in merely embryonic form, a group of motives otherwise opposed, but meeting and agreeing upon one point: the organization of society on other than territorial and national divisions. When motives of such breadth as these give force to a tendency, it may be said that the very stars in their courses are working to the same end.

## PART III

THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME

##