national character. * * * * * a thanksgiving discourse, delivered november 15th, 1855, in the franklin street presbyterian church, by the pastor, rev. n. c. burt. * * * * * baltimore: printed by john d. toy. 1855. baltimore, _november_ 17, 1855. rev. n. c. burt, _pastor of franklin street presbyterian church_: dear sir--we earnestly solicit a copy of the discourse delivered by you on thanksgiving day, for publication. with great respect, yours, &c. george s. gibson. r. k. hawley. j. henry stickney. i. c. canfield. horace w. taylor. jos. b. fenby. s. patterson. c. d. culbertson. r. h. humphreys. henry d. harvey. david ferguson. john bigham. e. s. allnutt. chas. u. stobie. h. w. hayden. hiram woods. geo. w. uhler. e. b. babbitt. ashur clarke. m. m. bigham. wm. l. mccormick. jno. barber. algernon r. wood. alexander close. john r. cole. m. shaw. a. coulter. j. perkins fleming. james v. d. stewart. joel n. blake. j. henry giese. w. e. barber. robert busby. john s. mckim. j. dean smith. david s. courtenay. wm. r. seevers. s. a. leakin. patrick gibson. j. p. polk. william white. geo. w. bradford. edward duffy. thos. h. quinan. samuel w. barber. matthew horn. morgan coleman. stephen williams. james wilson, howard-st. j. h. patterson. lancaster ould. geo. c. morton. geo. ross veazey. daniel holliday. d. h. blanchard. e. h. thomson. w. j. dickey. john p. coulter. alex. e. brown. h. c. reed. cornelius e. beatty. john t. dick. wm. h. brown. r. h. pennington. john p. richardson. robert leslie. baltimore, _november_ 25, 1855. gentlemen--the request for a copy of my thanksgiving discourse, so generally made, i cannot refuse. the manuscript is herewith placed at your disposal. very truly yours, n. c. burt. dr. g. s. gibson. r. k. hawley, esq. j. henry stickney, esq. and others. discourse. psalm 33: 12.--blessed is the nation whose god is the lord. we have met to-day, at the call of the governor of this commonwealth, to render thanks to the supreme governor of the world for his mercies granted us during the past year. surely we have abundant cause for thanksgiving. in the present instance, our annual festival not only calls us to recognize the common bounties of god's providence most richly bestowed, but also affords a most suitable opportunity for rendering special offerings of gratitude for our happy exemption from that pestilence, which, for months just past, lifted its frowning clouds in our near horizon, and committed its devastations on our very borders,--a pestilence which, if god had permitted it to march upon our city and to do a like deadly work amidst our population, would now be exulting over as many slain victims from among us, as there are persons now assembled in all our churches for this thanksgiving service. let us give hearty thanks for this distinguishing sparing goodness. being called together by our civil authorities, and that to recognize the hand of god over us as a people, the occasion is suitable for considering the general subject of national character, and in connection with it, the duties and destinies of our own nation. what now, to begin at the beginning, is the proper idea of a nation? the idea is a complex one, involving, to a greater or less extent, the ideas of community of birth, community of language, occupation of the same territory, citizenship under the same government. the _word_ nation signifies a body of men descended from the same progenitor,--those having community of birth. we may, from the sense of the word, call the jews a nation, though using a diversity of languages, and though scattered over the earth, without distinct territory or separate government. community of language commonly follows upon community of birth. yet community of language does not of itself determine or secure nationality. the english and ourselves speak the same language, yet are distinct nations. the swiss are one nation, yet speak some of them french, others german, others italian. occupation of the same territory is not essential to nationality. not only may a nation be scattered,--its parts dwelling in several lands,--as in the case of the jews, but a nation may migrate in a body and preserve its national character in transit, or it may have no fixed territorial abode whatever. the tartars and the arabs are nations ever in motion, and held but the most loosely by any tenure of soil. and even citizenship under the same government, does not of itself exhaust the idea of a nation. russia may be said to include many nations under her sway. yet the ideas of race, language, country and government, all enter into, and with greater or less distinctness, and to a greater or less extent, constitute the general idea of a nation. the french have in general the same origin: they speak the same language: they possess a definite territory: they live under one government. they are of gallic origin: we call their language french: their home is france: they are the subjects of napoleon. these several ideas of a nation do not, however, seem to be equally essential. it is in the idea of government, the idea of the state, in which an associated body of men rises to view as a personality, and as a sovereign power, clothed with divine privileges and prerogatives, subsisting for high moral ends, dispensing justice amongst its own citizens in the name of god, and treating with other states as responsible persons like itself, with whom it dwells as in a family of nations to possess the earth;--it is in this idea that the ideas of community of origin and of language, and occupation of the same territory, merge themselves as subordinate or accidental, and that our view of a nation is most satisfactory and complete. the functions of supreme government are rarely exercised over a very small body of men. and nations need to be of some magnitude to realize the benefits of national existence. a nation, just in virtue of its national constitution, is in a measure separated from the rest of mankind. it has an existence by itself. it ought, then, to have a completeness in itself. it should be made up of so many and such variety of parts, that these parts in their inter-action, may produce a sufficient life. its classes of citizens and their occupations, should be so diversified and numerous, that in the mutual dependence and support, the highest possible benefit may result. _size_ has to do materially with the idea of a nation. this, indeed, makes all the difference between a family and a nation, if only sovereign prerogatives be conceded to the family, as was done in patriarchal times. it is in the life of the state rather than that of the family, that we have civilization. the very word civilization implies this--_civis_, being a citizen, and _civitas_, a state. the importance of national relations may be seen in the consideration of the nature of history. what is history? is it a collection of the biographies of individual men? we do not, as a fact, give to such collection the name of history. history has been called "the biography of society." but of society founded upon what basis, working by what agencies, involving what interests, proposing what ends? not surely voluntary associations, formed for the promotion of the arts, or commerce, or philosophy, or benevolent undertakings. such associations are too limited in the numbers which belong to them, too narrow and partial in the ends they propose and the means they use, to justify us in calling their biography history. we must find a society which, as nearly as possible, shall comprehend in its members the entire human race, command in its workings all human energies, involve in its consideration all human interests; the biography of such a society we may call history. such a society we find in the state. and it is because the whole human race is gathered into nations; it is because the state proposes as its true object the highest good of all its citizens; and especially is it because the state as a sovereign power, not only holds the persons and property of its citizens at its disposal, but deals with its citizens and with all mankind as moral beings, and as itself a moral person responsible to god,--being a sovereign only as his minister;--it is because of all this, that we give the name history to the biography of nations rather than to that of any other society. and the idea of history generally accepted is this,--it is a record of the changes which come over the aspect and fortunes of nations, in their self-development and their mutual intercourse.[a] the highest truth of history is unquestionably the providence of god. now, it gives us a most impressive view of the importance of national relations, when we consider the bible representation of nations as the great agents of god's providence. the assyrian nation sent against the people of israel is "the rod of his anger" and "the staff of his indignation." said god to his ancient people, "i will bring a nation on you from far, o house of israel." god of old sent his prophets to this nation and that; elijah to israel, jeremiah to judah, jonah to assyria. moreover, the bible recognizes the importance of national relations in the position it assigns to nations in the historic and prophetic development of the plan for man's redemption. before the advent of our saviour, god was in covenant with a nation. to conserve the true religion amidst the corruptions which a second time were coming over the whole earth, god took abraham and his family into special relations to himself. yet god did not see fit to keep these special relations confined to a single family in successive generations. it entered directly into his plan, to make of this chosen family a nation, to set them in a land of their own, to give them a government of their own, to place them amidst the other nations of the earth. the influence of a nation was required to prepare the world for the coming of messiah. so also in prophecy. whatever may be thought of the beasts of the revelation, with their heads and horns, the beasts of daniel are distinctly stated to be "kingdoms upon earth." they are states and empires. it is, moreover, a kingdom which the lord god will set up upon earth, which, as a little stone cut out of the mountain, shall smite and break and crush the kingdoms of earth, and itself occupy their place. "the saints of the most high shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever." with this consideration of the idea of a nation, and of the importance of national relations, let us now, turning and beholding the race of men dwelling together in a family of nations, ask more particularly after their duties and destinies. * * * * * i. the state has a religious character. nations derive their existence as such from god. the state is of divine institution. it enjoys and exercises divine prerogatives. it is hence under duty to god; it has herein a religious character. i do not propose to argue the question of the nature of civil government. i will not undertake to show that the theory of a social compact--the theory that all just powers of government are derived from the people, who voluntarily yield them up and consent to their exercise--that this theory is false. enough for me--enough for you, i presume,--that it is unscriptural and infidel. enough for us that the scriptures say, "the powers that be are ordained of god," and the civil ruler is "the minister of god." i do not deny,--the scriptures do not deny--the distinction between things _civil_ and things _religious_. the christian does not demand that the state shall be a theocracy. the state and the church has each its appropriate end and sphere. the prime end of the state is the dispensing of justice, the protecting of its citizens, and the securing by agriculture and commerce and the arts, and by the intelligence and virtue of its citizens, of the general welfare. the prime end of the church, so far as man is concerned, is the promotion of his spiritual and eternal good, through the agency of the scriptures of revealed truth. the sphere of the one is the affairs of this life,--that of the other, the affairs of the life to come. yet the state and the church are not wholly separated and absolutely independent; and neither is independent of god. again: man in his entirety, is a religious being, and must carry his religion with him into all his relations. he is a religious citizen; so that not only is government instituted by god and to be administered in his name, and is therefore religious, but being administered by men and upon men, who themselves are under responsibility to god, it is therefore again religious. and again: although the prime end of the state be the promotion of man's temporal welfare, and that of the church, the promotion of his spiritual welfare, and although the prime sphere of the state be the things of the present life, and that of the church those of the life to come, yet things temporal and things spiritual, and the things of the present life and those of the life to come, have most intimate and important connections. the spiritual welfare tells upon the temporal, and the life to come is but the issue and result of the present life. here, once more, is the state seen to have a religious character. all this admits of abundant proof and illustration. the state, then, has a character directly religious, due to its origin and nature, as instituted by god for doing his ministry with men. hence, its laws should be founded on the highest views of the divine will ascertainable. it should enact that alone to be crime which god pronounces to be sin. and again, the state has a character indirectly religious, in view of the fact, that it is administered by and upon those who are under religious obligations, and in view of the fact that religion has material connection with that public welfare which it is the design and duty of the state to promote. the state must, on the one hand, respect the conscience of its citizens, leaving them free in religious opinions and practices; and yet, on the other hand, it must seek to promote the interests of true religion, with whose prosperity the public welfare is vitally connected. it belongs to our government, my hearers, to conform its legislation to the principles of the bible, and to impose its penalties for violated law, on the authority and with the sanction of the god of the bible: and it belongs to our government, while indulging the largest and most liberal toleration of religious opinions and practices, still to seek the diffusion and establishment of christianity throughout the length and breadth of our land. it is right that our government enforces, to a good degree, the observance of the christian sabbath. it is demanded that such observance be enforced in still larger degree. our government, if it be bound to afford an education to the children of its citizens at all, is bound to give them a christian education. the bible should be in all our public schools. chaplains should be provided for all state institutions, as they are for the army and navy. i know, indeed, that these views, when fully expressed, are not generally conceded. many seem to think that government has no proper connection with religion. the cry of church and state--of the invasion of religious rights--is raised against these views.[b] but not only has government a necessary connection with religion, but what may seem still more objectionable, the freest government must have reference, in its laws and institutions, to some _form_ of religion, as that held by the great body of its citizens: and it is a mistake, as egregious as it is frequent, which supposes that because our federal constitution prescribes no religion as that of this country, and unites the government to no church, our country is therefore as much pagan or infidel as it is christian. the constitution and the legislation of our country presuppose and take for granted, if they do not distinctly affirm, that bible christianity is the religion of this country. and they must do so, in order that this be a free government, since the great body of our people are believers in this religion. the president of the united states, standing in the portico of the capitol, before the face of heaven and in view of the assembled people, swears upon the bible to support the constitution. the great functions of government cease to be exercised among us when the morning of the christian sabbath dawns. the executive closes his mansion, congress vacates its halls, the judge comes down from his bench;--all pause and wait through the day of which the god of the bible and the lord our saviour has said--it is mine. how solemn the testimony, and how frequently recurring, that this is a christian nation. and whose rights are invaded by this observance of the christian religion? the jew's? why he can observe his sabbath on saturday, and the law will protect him in the observance. none shall molest or make him afraid. the infidel's? it may be that he is put to inconvenience. he cannot have his cause tried in court; he cannot lay his petition before congress or the executive; he may not be able to procure his letters from the post office: but is this an invasion of his rights? who has the right to compel the judge to violate the sabbath by trying his cause, or the mail-carrier or post master by delivering his letters? would not the non-observance of the sabbath by the government operate at once to close the doors of office against four-fifths of our conscientious citizens? for the very reason, then, that the body of our people are christians, our government does and must, as a free government, respect the christian religion; and furthermore, because this religion is, as we know, the true religion of god, and its influence most happy in sustaining a free government, the state is bound not simply coldly to protect it in common with all forms of religion, but warmly to foster it as its own chosen religion. it would not be well longer to dwell on this topic. it may only be added that while the understanding of this subject is of the very first consequence to us as a nation, there is no subject of general interest which seems to be so little understood.[c] nations of necessity have a religious character. the civil government is of god's ordination, and does god's ministry. the civil government is administered by and upon men who are religious beings, who cannot under any circumstances divest themselves of their religious character. the prevalence of true religion amongst its citizens, is of the highest advantage to the state. every nation has its god or its gods. "blessed is the nation whose god is the lord." blessed is america so long as a pure, scriptural christianity stimulates and governs its public life. it may be mentioned, but need not be discussed as a distinct topic, although its full consideration would greatly enforce the views just presented, that, as a matter of fact, god does regard nations as responsible persons, and does hold them in strict account to himself. the highest truth of universal history being the universal and comprehending providence of god, and the great factors of history being the nations of mankind, and the personal and responsible character of nations continuing only in this life and obtaining god's full judgment of mercy or wrath during the time of their present continuance, the historic page, recording the majestic movements of empires in their rise and fall, becomes unspeakably sublime as the record of the almighty's manifested character, smiling and blessing in their righteous prosperity, and frowning and overthrowing in their guilty doom. * * * * * ii. but let us pass to another view of nations. the race of men we behold in a family of nations. we may consider the relations of these nations one to another. i use the word _family_ in reference to nations, to indicate at once, at the outset, and as fully as possible, their true relations. nations are most closely and most tenderly related. their relation is one of blood, and their one parent is god. "he hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation." each nation has a certain completeness in itself, yet it is but a partial completeness. nations are still connected. they are dependent on one another. they are under obligations to one another. they are alike and together bound to the same god. they are a brotherhood before god their common father. patriotism has its limits, and philanthropy, its appropriate and transcendent sphere. see the physical dependence of nations. does not every nation on the face of the earth contribute to the conveniences and comforts and luxuries, not to say the necessities of our every-day life? and do we not, as a nation, contribute something for the physical well-being of every nation in turn? what mean these thousand ships, at all times and in all directions traversing the main? are they not all hastening on the wings of the wind, with their precious burdens, to do the ministries of nations one toward another? all commerce is significant, first of all, of national interdependence. this mutual dependence in things physical is, however, but an image of a higher dependence. what is civilization? is it the culture of the national life? yet how is national life cultivated? is it by self-effort only, put forth from a stimulus self-begotten? or is not civilization, like the education of the individual, in some measure dependent on the efforts of others? must there not be an outward contact, and a stimulus provoked by such contact? turn a child into the woods, and let him grow up to manhood without the society or the sight of his fellow-men. where is his self-culture? he is a wild man of the woods; he is a barbarian. so nations need the stimulus which comes from a contact with their fellow nations; and that, not only that they may advance in civilization, but even that they may save themselves from going down into barbarism. see china, the largest empire of men, yet separated from its neighbors by a stone wall. see hindostan, insulated by surrounding seas and mountains, and destitute of commerce for many hundred years. see africa, secluded from all the world by its miasmatic regions and its fever-bound coasts. what stereotyped character! what stagnant life! what hopeless barbarism! interchange of thought among the nations,--communication of the products of art and literature, and of the discoveries of science;--this is requisite for the welfare of nations. it would easily follow from this mutual dependence of nations, even if it did not come to us in a more direct way, that the intercommunion of nations should be guided and governed by religious principles, and for the end of highest mutual spiritual benefit. nay, the statement may be made thus, in reference to us who know what true religion is, and who are bound to go according to the light we possess, and not according to the darkness of others,--that the intercommunion of nations should be conducted on christian principles, and for the end of the diffusion and establishment of the gospel of christ. blessed is the nation whose god being the lord, who, as the first-born, and fullest-grown, and highest-favored, in the lord's family of nations, becomes the loving instructor and helper of the younger brethren. looking this day upon the brotherhood of nations, we behold one sight which might excite our joyful hope, were it not for another closely connected with it, which must excite our astonishment and sorrow. we behold, on the one hand, the nations of the earth brought into close proximity and to the possibility of easy friendship, by the many physical improvements of the age. these improvements, as we see, are made and first used by enlightened and christian nations,--and we are encouraged to ask, shall not these improvements be the channels and vehicles for conveying to all nations the influences of the gospel? in this bringing of the ends of the earth together, by those whose great glory is their possession of the knowledge of god's salvation, shall not "all the ends of the earth," through their agency, speedily be brought "to see the salvation of god?" but alas! the ardency of our hopes is quenched, when we behold this day the most enlightened and powerful and happy of the whole brotherhood of nations, whose great tie is that of natural and christian love, and whose great duty is to strengthen the cords of love amongst all their brotherhood,--when we behold these nations, submitting themselves to the demon of national hatred and revenge, employing the agencies which should convey the gospel of peace to all mankind, in transporting the munitions of war, and then putting forth all their skill and energies in planning and executing, with the aids of the most matured science, and by means of the most ingenious and mighty enginery, the devilish work of national desolation and destruction. can we, my hearers, conceive of a higher and more horrid contradiction of the whole spirit of our religion than a national war? and can there be anything more discouraging to him who hopes for the speedy diffusion of the gospel amidst the nations, than the contemplation of the present war,--a war not only waged by nations the most christian, but a war involving no principle and devoid of all glory,--a war stamped in its every feature, and chargeable at its every step, with the attribute and the crime of murder. o when shall war be recognized in its brutality and fiendishness and hellish horrors? when shall patriotism separate itself from a proud ambition and a cruel revenge, and become the loving handmaid of a pure philanthropy? when shall christian nations become capable of a christian transaction? must "the sword devour forever?" * * * * * iii. we may not omit on such an occasion, and with such a subject before us, to speak of the destiny of our own nation. it would seem from many considerations often presented, that god intends great things for us as a nation. the time and circumstances of the original settlement of our country, and the character of the original settlers, is regarded as one indication of promise. how long god kept this continent concealed from the view of the civilized world! and, when it was discovered, how long he kept back the nations from its successful settlement! not until the protestant reformation had wrought its great results, and nations were prepared for the work under its tuition, did god begin to people this country;--and even then, it was a "winnowed seed" which he planted here. men tried in the fires of persecution, and strong in the love of god and the desire of liberty, laid the foundations of our republic. is not this peculiar beginning prophetic of a glorious consummation? our past experience and present condition seem to confirm the tokens of our auspicious beginning. colonial dependence has given way to national independence. thirteen states have increased to thirty-one. three millions of people have increased to thirty. immense forests have been subdued, and the soil yields supplies for the famishing of other lands. great manufactories crowd our rivers and darken our towns. our commerce whitens every sea and swarms in every port. our people are intelligent, and virtuous, and happy beyond all example. our government is strong and efficient. what is needed to make our destiny glorious, but just to go on in the way that we have come? then see the prospect which invites us on. vast territories are still unoccupied. what shall prevent the flood of population from pouring westward and overflowing these territories? our internal resources have only begun to be developed. what shall prevent their utmost and magnificent development? the commerce of the pacific waits to be ours. how long till pacific railroads shall bind our eastern and western coasts together, and our country, standing in the midst of the earth and reaching out its arms on either hand, clasp the entire sphere in its embrace? our country is in the dew of its rejoicing youth, and has but the dimmest consciousness and dream of its own strength, and who can predict the glory of its manhood, when in the fullest self-consciousness, it shall exert to the utmost its matured and mighty energies? thus are we accustomed to talk. our destiny is manifest--our glory is inevitable. it is pleasant to talk thus, and it is unpleasant to talk otherwise. yet we ought to desire to see and know the truth. self-flattery is an odious folly. is our destiny, then, manifest? is our glory inevitable? has god so conspicuously favored us that he cannot but continue to bless? ah! it is our self-flattery and odious folly to think so. we need not look again to our history or our prospects, to gather evidences of a different destiny, although such evidences might not be wanting. yes, we might find the evidences which, duly weighed, would make us shudder in view of our possible or probable future. we might come to think it very problematical whether our country has sufficient vital force to work into good american citizens the hordes of infidels, paupers, criminals, cast upon our shores from the nations of the old world;--whether our country has sufficient wisdom to guide its own vexed domestic questions to a proper and satisfactory issue, and to balance and regulate the rival and numberless interests of a country widening indefinitely in extent;--whether--but no, we do not need thus to forecast the future to ascertain our probable destiny. we may determine the question by the teaching of god's word. "blessed is the nation whose god is the lord." and blessed is that nation alone. here is the solution of the question of our destiny. it is in making the lord the god of our country, that we are safe--that we are prosperous--that our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. our destiny is left to ourselves. the means of its glory are placed in our hands. we may use them or not, as we will. and now, i utter it to you, my hearers and fellow-citizens, as the solemn testimony of the lord our god, that so surely as ignorance and moral corruption and lust of power, become generally prevalent, and popery and infidelity attain the supremacy among us, it matters not at all that we have had a ballot-box, and a free press, and free schools, and the whole circle of liberal institutions,--these will become but the insignia of our shame; it matters not that we have had a boundless territory, and a teeming soil, and mighty cities, and universal commerce,--the grass will grow again on our prairies,--the red man return to his forsaken forests,--our cities become black with desolation, and the sails of our commerce be rent on the seas, or the hulks of our commerce rot at our wharves; it matters not that god has been wonderfully gracious to us as a nation,--the more wonderful the grace, the deeper the insult and crime of our despising it, and the deeper our doom;--this, this is our manifest destiny. and it is only as america teaches her children to fear god and do their duty; it is only as our virtuous citizenship escape from the chains of corrupt party and procure for themselves a fair representation in the offices of government--exerting themselves for the purification of corrupt men, rather than for the promotion of their evil designs; it is, in a word, only as the power of our blessed religion shall go out from the hearts of the truly pious in our land, leavening the mass of the population and bringing them under its sway;--it is only as we truly make the lord our country's god, that we can hope to be blessed, and can, with any just confidence, await our country's future glory. need i, my hearers, deduce and enforce the exhortations of this subject? or do they not lie upon its surface, and do they not make their own appeal to every patriot's and christian's heart? the god of nations, looking forth upon our happy land this day, may be conceived as breathing the benevolent desire once expressed in behalf of his ancient people, "o that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever." * * * * * n. b. in the delivery of the foregoing discourse, the following remarks were interjected near the commencement: "permit me to state to you my conviction, that desirable as it is that days of religious observance be appointed by our civil authorities, the regular appointment of annual fast-days or thanksgivings, will not secure for any long period a general and hearty observance. i should much prefer the appointment by our civil authorities of a fast-day, in view of any public calamity impending or experienced, or of a day of thanksgiving, in view of deliverence or exemption from such calamity. in such case we might hope that the day would secure a suitable and profitable observance." it is the writer's apprehension that days of special religious observance occurring at regular intervals, and hence occurring, oftentimes, when there is no special providential call for a religious service, and being destitute of the binding obligation a divine appointment, will degenerate into mere holidays; and in his opinion, the providential call ought to guide our rulers in the designation of times of special religious observance; so that when we fast, we do so in direct view of special calamity, and when we render thanks, we do so for special mercies actually experienced. the thanksgiving of last year occurred at a time of most trying financial embarrassment, at the close of a season remarkable for its drought and meagre harvests, and for the prevalence of disease and the destruction of property by land and sea. surely, god called us then to humble ourselves and fast, rather than to rejoice and give thanks, and a thanksgiving service was appropriate only for the reason that god always deals with us better than we deserve. we need the evident appropriateness of the service to secure its continued and suitable observance. who does not remember the appointment by our national executive, some years since, of a day of national humiliation, when a visitation of the cholera was threatened? and now solemn and affecting the service of that day throughout the land! in new england, the regular, annual thanksgiving preserves its sacredness through customs and associations, which were established in the very infancy of the country, and which have grown up with it,--customs and associations, which cannot elsewhere be created. footnotes: [footnote a: see dr. arnold's "lectures on modern history." the above statement is correct, so long as we take a merely _natural_ view of mankind--so long as we view men merely in their _moral_ relations. viewing men by the light of revelation and in relations more strictly _religious_, church-biography would still better deserve the name of history. but for some reason, these religious relations are not commonly recognized in their importance. like the historian, the moral philosopher commonly ignores man's lapsed condition, and all the great truths which distinguish supernatural religion. see wardlaw's "christian ethics." it ought also to be observed that human governments, at the best, are obliged to leave many interests of their citizens uncared for, or to be cared for by other agents than their own; also, that human governments are often corrupt and fail to discharge their proper functions. hence, the historian needs the supplement of individual biographies, and transactions of voluntary societies, and pictures of domestic and social life, in order to a full representation of his subject. who would dispense with the book of ruth in the old testament history, or with macaulay's picture of england in 1685 in his english history?] [footnote b: see congressional reports--col. e. m. johnson on sunday mails, and mr. petit on chaplains to congress. of course, in practically meeting and adjusting the two claims upon the government, first to respect the conscience of its citizens, and secondly, to promote the interests of religion, great diversity of opinion may exist even among those who hold to the same principles. there is room for a variety of prudential considerations. yet the _principles_ above expressed are discarded in the documents referred to, as they very often are elsewhere.] [footnote c: a volume entitled "the position of christianity in the united states," by stephen colwell, esq. of philadelphia, deserves the attentive and serious perusal of every american citizen.] "america for americans!" the typical american. _thanksgiving sermon_ of rev. john p. newman, d.d., ll.d., at metropolitan m. e. church, washington, d. c., thursday, november 25th, 1886. subject: "our place among the nations." published by request of the congregation. washington: rufus h. darby, printer. 1886. for sale by c. c. pursell. ten cents per copy. fifteen copies for one dollar. * * * * * washington, d. c., _nov. 26th, 1886_. rev. j. p. newman, d.d.: dear sir: the universal approval by every loyal, liberty-loving american citizen who listened to your thanksgiving sermon yesterday, together with the philosophic and fearless manner with which the great themes therein discussed were treated, prompts a desire to extend its influence by a wider circulation than even that large congregation can give. we would, therefore, to meet the wishes of the congregation as expressed by their unanimous vote at the close of the discourse, request that you furnish us with a copy for publication. very respectfully, j. c. tasker, j. d. croissant, a. p. lacey, geo. h. la fetra, b. charleton. * * * * * washington, d. c., _nov. 30th, 1886_. dear friends: the sermon has excited a public interest beyond any thought of mine. i herewith send you the stenographic report of the discourse, made by messrs. dawson and tasker. the wisdom of your request is confirmed by many letters from eminent citizens here and abroad, commending the sentiment and demanding the publication. i would like to print some of these letters, indicative of the deep feeling on this great subject. as stated in the sermon, intelligent foreigners approve my course. the germans of wisconsin have sent me a copy of their memorial to congress, asking for such a modification of our naturalization laws as will protect our free institutions from selfish and ignorant immigrants. the intelligent foreigners have taken the initiative. your pastor, john p. newman. america for americans. "i have set thee on high above all the nations of the earth."--deut. xxviii., 1. by the voice of magisterial authority this secular day has been hushed into the sacred quiet of a national sabbath. from savannahs and prairies, from valleys and mountains, from the atlantic to the pacific, more than fifty millions of freemen have been invited to gather around the altars of the god of our fathers, and pour forth the libation of their gratitude to him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift. if in all the past, nations have made public recognition of the divinities which have presided over their destiny, according to their faith and practice, it is but reasonable and highly appropriate that we, as a christian people, enlightened as no other people, favored as no other nation, should once in the twelve months consecrate a day to the recognition of him whose throne is on the circle of the heavens, who is the benefactor of the husbandman, the genius of the artisan, the inspiration of the merchant, and from whom comes all those personal, domestic, social, and national benedictions which render us a happy people and this day memorable in the annals of time. if the year that ends to-day has been marked with severity it has also been distinguished by goodness. if chastisements have come to us as individuals, families, communities, and as a nation; if the earthquake, and the tornado, and the conflagration, have combined to teach us our dependence on the supreme being--all these should be esteemed as ministers of the highest to teach us that we are pensioners upon the infinite bounty of the almighty; that in our prosperity we should remember his mercies; in our adversity we should deplore our transgressions. it is evident to the most casual observer that the past year has been significant in the manifestations of divine guidance and goodness. to-day peace reigns throughout our vast domain. no foreign foe invades our shores. how superior our condition by way of contrast with our neighbors on this side of the globe. in contrast with central and south america, the home of turbulence and misrule, where ignorance, combined with a perverted christianity, has darkened and enslaved; where the wheels of industry have been impeded and the march to a higher civilization obstructed--how bold the contrast between these two sections of our continent--a contrast that must be suggestive to every thoughtful mind and awaken the question whether this is due to what some call the fortuities of national life or whether it is the result of a genius of government that is sublime and a religion that is divine. and if we turn our eyes over the great deep to the most favored nations beyond the atlantic, the contrast inspires grateful emotions, and we are equally led to contemplate the causes which have brought about a condition so favorable to us. the most venerable nations in europe, countries that have lived through more than a millennium, are to-day shaken by internal disturbance. those institutions which have come down from the hoary past, which have been considered pre-eminent in the affections and faith of mankind, now topple to their fall. "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," whether man or woman; and no government in europe is in a state of peaceful security. alarm dwells in the palace. fear, like a bloody phantom, haunts the throne, and the vast nations of europe, with all their agriculture and commerce and manufacture, and all their majesty of law and ordinances of religion, are maintained in a questionable peace by not less than three millions of men armed to the teeth; while in this country, so vast in its domain, so complicated in its population, from north to south, from east to west, preserved in peace, not by standing armies or floating navies, but by a moral sense, a quickened conscience, the guardian of our homes, our altars, and our nation. certainly the farmer stands nearest to god. agriculture underlies all national wealth. the farmer ministers to the wants of king and prince, of president and senator; the farmer must be esteemed as the direct medium of blessing through whom god manifests his goodness to the nation. we have been accustomed to such phenomenal crops that it almost goes without saying that the past year has been phenomenal in its agricultural productions. indeed there has been a wealth in the soil, a wealth in the mines, a wealth in the seas, which awakens astonishment and admiration in the minds of those beyond the deep--for it is a statistical fact that our agricultural products for the year just closing is not less than three and a half thousand millions of dollars in valuation. how difficult to appreciate the fact! one thousand seven hundred million bushels of corn, valued at five hundred and eighty millions of dollars; four hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, valued at three hundred and fifty-five millions of dollars; six and a half million bales of cotton, estimated in valuation at two hundred and fifty millions of dollars. and including all the other agricultural products, the statistician of the government estimates the value at three and a half thousand millions of dollars. and this is but a repetition of other years. no! it exceeds other years! it is a great fact that one and a half millions of square miles of cultivated land in this country now subject to the plow could feed a thousand millions of persons, and then we could have five thousand millions of bushels of grain for exportation. in ten years, from 1870 to 1880, we produced over seven hundred millions of dollars of precious metals, and the last year the valuation is estimated at seventy-five millions in gold and silver; and rising above these colossal and phenomenal figures, our great manufacturing people during the past year have produced not less than five thousand millions of dollars in valuation. the mind staggers in the presence of these tremendous facts. then our national wealth is as phenomenal as are the annual products of soil, and mine, and skill, and commerce. in 1880 our national wealth was estimated at forty-four thousand millions of dollars, which would buy all russia, turkey, italy, south africa, and south america--possessions inhabited by not less than one hundred and seventy-seven millions of people. this enormous national wealth exceeds the wealth of great britain by two hundred and seventy-six millions of dollars. england's wealth is the growth of centuries, while our wealth, at the most, can be said to be the growth of one century. nay, the fact is that most of ours has been created in the last twenty years. in 1860 our national wealth was estimated at sixteen thousand millions of dollars. but from 1860 to 1880 our wealth increased twenty-eight thousand millions of dollars--ten thousand millions more than the entire wealth of the empire of russia. from 1870 to 1880, ten years, the increase was twenty thousand millions. this is without a parallel. surely these great facts call upon the president of the united states to convoke the freemen of this country around their religious altars to offer their gratitude and praise to him from whom cometh all these blessings; for in his hand are the resources of national wealth. with him are the ministers of good and the ministers of evil. he can marshal the insect. he can excite the malaria. he can call forth the tornado. he can put down his foot and wreck the earth with earthquake throes. the ministers of evil are with him, and stand with closed eyes and folded wings around his throne, but not with deaf ears, waiting to hear his summons, "go forth." so also around his throne stand the angels of plenty, in whose footfalls rise the golden harvest; who quicken human genius on the land, on the ocean, the artificer, the artisan, the scholar, the philanthropist, and the patriot. it is by these resources of good and evil, forever the ministers of the great god, we learn our dependence on him; it is with the utmost propriety that this christian nation recognize him as god over all and blessed forevermore. it is eminently proper on a national day like this, standing in the presence of these phenomenal mercies, these crowning plenties, that we differentiate ourselves from the nations of our own continent and from the most favored nations beyond the sea. it is proper for us to inquire the divine purpose in placing us among the nations of the earth, and what is our great mission. there are certain facts which prophesy--for facts are as eloquent in prophetic announcement as are the lips of prophet or seer. we should remember that our location is everything to us as a national power, of intelligence and wealth, and that this location is in the wake of national prosperity and greatness. it may have escaped your notice that around this globe is a narrow zone, between the thirtieth and sixtieth parallels of north latitude, and within that narrow zone is our home. within that belt of power have existed all the great nations of the past, and in it exist all the great nations of the present. what is there in this charmed circle, in this favored zone, that brings national power? we may contract this zone by ten degrees and the same thing is true. it is true that north of this zone there have been nations of wealth, of luxury, and of influence. south of this zone are egypt and arabia and india, and other nations that have lived in splendor. but the peoples that have given direction to the thought of mankind, that have created the philosophy for the race, that have given jurisprudence and history and oratory, and poetry and art and science, and government, to mankind, have been crowded, as it were, within this zone of supremacy, within this magical belt of national prosperity. examine your globe, and there is greece, that gave letters to the world; rome, that gave jurisprudence to mankind; palestine, that gave religion to our race. and to-day there is germany, that gave a luther to the church and a gutenberg to science, and there is england swaying her mighty sceptre over land and sea. our location is in this wake of power--within this magical zone. surely there must be a destiny foretold by this great fact, and it is but wise for us as intelligent freemen on this national day to consider the significance of the prophecy. our national home is not amid the polar snows of northern russia nor the burning sands of central africa, but sweeping over the lovely regions of the temperate zone, it lies too far south to be bound in perpetual chains of frost, and too far north to sink under the enervating influences of a tropical sun. although on the side of the equator destined to be the great receptacle of human life, yet it is too far from the belligerent powers of the old world to fall a victim to their corruption or to the weight of their combined forces. with a shore line equalling the circuit of the globe, and with a river navigation duplicating that vast measurement, our national domain is only one-sixth less than that of the sixty states--republics, kingdoms, and empires--of europe. indeed, it is equal to old rome's vast domain, which extended from the river euphrates to the western ocean and from the walls of antoninus to the mountains of the moon. our location is for a purpose. for if you and i believe in the mission of individuals who accomplish the purposes of providence, we must believe in the mission of nations for the elevation of mankind to a better future. and, my countrymen, it is equally significant that we stand above all nations in our origin. we started where other nations left off. unrivalled for luxury and oriental splendor, the assyrians sprung from a band of hunters. grand in her pyramids, and obelisks, and sphinxes, egypt rose from that race despised by mankind. great in her jurisprudence, giving law to the world, the romans came from a band of freebooters on the seven hills that have been made immortal by martial genius; and that very nation, whose poets we copy, whose orators we seek to imitate, whose artistic genius is the pride of the race, came from barbarians, cannibals; and that proud nation beyond the sea, that sways her sceptre over land and ocean, sprang from painted barbarians--for such were the aborigines of proud albion's isle when cæsar invaded those shores. our forefathers stood upon the very summit of humanity. recall our constitutional convention. perhaps no such convention had ever assembled in the halls of a nation. that convention, composed of fifty-five men, and such men! they were giants in intellect, in moral character; all occupying a high social position; twenty-nine were university men, and those that were not collegiates were men of imperial intellects and of commanding common sense. in such a gathering were franklin, the venerable philosopher; washington, who is ever to be revered as patriot and philanthropist; and madison, and hamilton, two of the most profound thinkers of that or of any other age. it is one of those marvels that we should recall of which we have a right to be proud; but in our pride we should not fail to ascertain why the almighty should start us as a nation at the very acme of humanity--redeemed, educated, and made grand by the influences of a divine christianity. those men were not mere colonists, nor were they limited in their patriotism. "no pent-up utica" could confine their patriotism, for those men grasped the fundamental principle of human rights. nay, they declared the ultimate truth of humanity, leaving nothing to added since, though a century has passed. great modifications have come to the governments of europe. some changes have taken place in our national life. yet i appeal to your intelligent memory, to your calm judgments, if anything has been added to our declaration of rights, those declarations founded upon the constitution of nature. these men voiced the brotherhood of the race. all other declarations prior to this were but for dynasties, or were ethnic at most. but those men swept the horizon of humanity. these men called forth, as it were, the oncoming centuries of time, and in their presence declared that all men are created free and equal. they not only declared the ultimate truth of human rights, but they exhausted the right of revolution. they created a constitution founded upon the will of the people, based upon our great declaration of rights, embracing man's inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness. the instrument which their genius created was left amendable by the oncoming wants of time, modified in subordinate relations which might be suggested by emergencies and the unfolding of our race. here then are the great fingers of prophecy pointing to our future. and we have been equally favored in our population, whether we take the puritans who landed in new england, the dutch who landed in new york, or the english who crowded maryland and virginia. they were first-class families. especially do we trace back with pride that glorious genius for liberty, for intelligence, for devotion manifested by those heroic men and women who, amid the desolations of a terrific winter landed on a barren rock to transform a vast wilderness, through which the wild man roamed, into a garden wherein should grow the flowers and the fruits of freedom. we sometimes deprecate the cosmopolitan character of our population. it is a fact, however, that the best blood of the old world came to us until within ten years--not the decrepit, not the maimed, not the aged; for over fifty per cent. of those who came were between fifteen and thirty, and have grown up to be honorable citizens in the composition of our constitutional society. they came not as paupers. many of them came, each bringing seventy dollars, some $180 dollars, and in the aggregate they brought millions of dollars. there has been, however, a change, a manifest change, in the character of those from foreign shores within the last decade. the time was when we welcomed everybody that might immigrate to this country; when we threw our gates wide open; when in our fourth of july orations, we proclaimed this to be the asylum of the oppressed, the home of the down-trodden. but in the process of time this great opportunity afforded the nations of the old world came to be abused, and to-day is the largest source of our national danger. we are now bound to call a halt all along the line of immigration; to say to those peoples of the old world that this is not a new africa, nor a new ireland, nor a new germany, nor a new italy, nor a new england, nor a new russia; that this is not a brothel for the mormon, a fetich for the negro, a country for the ticket-of-leave-men; not a place for the criminals and paupers of europe; but this country is for man--man in his intelligence, man in his morality, man in his love of liberty, man, whosoever he is, whencesoever he cometh. [cries of amen, followed by applause.] the time has come for us to call a halt all along the line, and if we do not close the gates we should place them ajar. we should do two things: first, declare that this country is for americans. [applause.] it is not for germans, nor for irishmen, nor for englishmen, nor for spaniards, nor for the chinese, nor for the japanese, but it is for americans. [cries of amen and applause.] i am not to-day reviving the know-nothing cry, for i am glad to say that i am not a know-nothing in any sense. [laughter.] nor am i reviving what may be called the old native american cry, for we have outlived that. but i am simply declaring that america is for typical americans. in other words, that we are determined by all that is honorable in law, by all that is energetic in religion, by all that is dear to our altars and our firesides, that this country shall not become un-american. let us to-day proclaim to the world that he is an american, whether native-born or foreign-born, who accepts seven great ideas which shall differentiate him from all other peoples on the face of the globe. i am bound to say, and you will agree with me, that in proportion there are as many intelligent foreigners (that is, foreign-born) in this congregation, in our city and in our country, who are in full accord with this utterance as there are of those to the manor born. in other words could i call the roll, i would find as many intelligent foreigners who came here, not for selfishness, but for liberty and for america's sake, who would be in accord with me in declaring that america is for the typical american. [applause.] i speak without prejudice; i know that there are those here of foreign birth who are ornaments in every department of society. they minister to the sick as learned physicians. they plead in all our courts of justice. they are the eloquent exponents of divine truth. they are in our halls of legislation. they beautify private life in all the immunities and refinements thereof. they have added to the wealth of the nation. but while i make this concession, and i do it cheerfully and proudly, yet i must affirm that there are three classes of americans: the native-born, the foreign-born and the typical american. the native american has the advantage of birth, out of which flows one supreme advantage--he may be the president of the united states. this is a wise provision, as nativity is a primary source of patriotism, and time is necessary to appreciation. but the native may be a worthless citizen. he should be the typical american, but he has too often failed to be. the tweeds, the wards, their like, are no honor whatever to the native stock. some of the worst scoundrels who have scandalized our nation have been born to the soil. then there is the foreign-born american, who is such by naturalization. he may be worthy of our free institutions, as many are; he may be unworthy, as many have proved themselves to be. but, rising above these, is the typical american, without regard to place of birth. he is the possessor of the seven great attributes, which, in my humble judgment, constitute the true american: i. that our civil and political rights are not grants from superiors to inferiors, but flow out of the order and constitution of nature. ii. that the force to maintain these rights is not physical, but moral. iii. that the safeguard of such rights is individual culture and responsibility. iv. that secular education is provided by the state, and is forever free from sectarian control. v. that there is no alliance of state and church; the government non-religious, but not irreligious. vi. that the sabbath is a day of rest from ordinary care and toil. vii. that christianity, in its ethics and charities, is the religion of this land. it was a bold venture for the fathers of this republic to declare personal liberty foremost, without regard to birth or education or civilization. this has elevated our nation above all nations. it was sublime courage for those grand men to declare that our civil and political rights are not grants from superiors to inferiors, but that they flow out of the order and the constitution of nature. it is this, my countrymen, that differentiates us, that distinguishes us from englishmen, and frenchmen, and russians. what are the two great declarations of which england is proud? take the _magna charta libertatum_. the historians say that this is the bulwark of english freedom. yes, englishmen, you do right to so esteem it. but then you should remember that the _magna charta libertatum_ was a concession from king john--a concession from a superior to inferiors, and the men who wrung that concession from that english king did not esteem themselves his equals, but permitted themselves to be treated as inferiors. then take what is known in english parliamentary history as a petition of rights. it secured a concession from king charles i--a superior to inferiors. but our fathers said we are the superiors. [applause.] we recognize no superior but god; we declare a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. [applause.] we ask not for a _magna charta libertatum_. we offer no petition of rights. jefferson made our declaration of rights and the fathers signed it, saying, we are born free and equal, created in the image of god; our political rights are inalienable, inseparable from our birth. [applause.] that declaration turned the corner of political history. it astounded all europe. it sent a chill through royal blood. it caused a paleness to come over kings and queens; yet it was a declaration which oncoming generations approved, and oncoming centuries will applaud, because born of truth, justice and liberty. the naturalized american must renounce all allegiance to foreign prince or potentate or government; in so doing he must reject the assumed superiority of any human grantor and assert the superiority of the individual citizen in whom inhere these rights. [applause.] the fathers ventured the assertion that a government of the people and by the people and for the people should be supported, not by physical force, but by a moral power, an astounding fact in the national history. the power that conquered in the war for independence was a moral force. it was the _spirit_ of '76. it was the spirit of '76 that inspired warren to say: "put me where the battle is hottest." it was the spirit of '76 that moved putnam to shout out on the eve of battle: "powder! powder! ye gods, give us powder!" it was the spirit of '76 that caused the new jersey dominie, when the army was destitute of wadding, to rush to the church and, getting a copy of watts's psalms, shout out: "there, boys, put watts into them." it was the spirit of '76 that led washington to consecrate himself, his time, his wealth, and the grandest men in the country to consecrate themselves for the accomplishment of the grandest of facts. the continental army was an army of plowmen and artisans, poorly armed and poorly clothed. baron steuben, when he came to this country with lafayette to organize our army, declared that the only regularity that he saw was, that the short men were put in front and the tall men put behind, and old putnam gave him this explanation, that americans didn't care about their heads; they only cared about their legs; shelter their legs and they would fight forever. baron steuben attempted to organize those troops, but lost his temper and swore at them in three languages at the same time. [laughter.] but the spirit of '76 led to history. we maintain our free institutions by moral force. our twenty thousand soldiers scattered here and there wherever they can find an indian to shoot is hardly a respectable police force. [laughter.] the founders of this republic knew that freemen are soldiers in the disguise of citizens. let the tocsin of war be founded; let a foreign foe invade our shores; let an insurrectionary body arise in our midst, and a million of freemen, armed to the teeth, will "rally round the flag, boys, rally once again." [vociferous applause.] it is difficult for immigrants coming to this country to appreciate this fact. they pass through the land and see no gens d'armes, no standing armies, and rarely a policeman. [laughter.] the true american stands forever on duty, a soldier of the republic in the disguise of a citizen, the custodian of the republic's life. out of such a citizenship comes the moral sentiment which in its aggregation is public opinion, which is mightier than standing armies or floating navies. [applause.] a third attribute is the individuality of the citizen, out of which comes the collective man, our national life. we have exalted the individual; the american citizen is a republic of one. whether we have fifty millions, or ten millions, or a million, whatever may be the ratio of our population, the government recognizes the individuality of the citizen as paramount. as god is the center of the universe, and christ the center of the church, so the citizen is the center of this government. all its laws, all its administrations, all its soldiers in the army, all its guns in the navy, are for the protection of the american citizen. wherever he wanders, whether in africa, or europe, or asia, or germany, or ireland, or cuba, or mexico, the american citizen must and shall be protected. [applause.] it is difficult for men coming from europe, where men are contemplated in masses, to realize the potency of individuality; but it underlies our free institutions. fourthly, he is an american, whether native-born or foreign-born, who accepts the bold venture of the fathers to segregate public education from the teachings of the church. it was a bold move in political science. there is no authority under the constitution of the united states, there should be no authority in the constitution of any state, there should be no authority in the municipality of any part of the country, to impose religious instruction upon the childhood of america. you and i may tremble in the presence of this tremendous fact, this daring project in the science of statecraft, but then you must remember that, according to the organic law of our country, we know no class but citizens, we know no obligation but protection, no duty but the welfare of the people. in all the nations abroad there is the combination of secular and religious instruction. arithmetic, geometry, geography, physiology, must be taught under the sanctions of religion. but in this country public education is separated from sectarian religious teaching. we may pause in the presence of such a fact. we know that intelligence is almost a boundless power. intelligence has produced as much evil as it has good; the greatest monsters who have damned humanity have been men of the highest possible culture, and the men who are sowing the seed in this country of discord are men of sublime intellects and polished education. and therefore the founders of the republic recognized the duty of the individual citizen to add home instruction, instruction in the church, instruction in the sunday-school, to sanctify this intelligence. whenever they expounded constitutional law, or spoke in behalf of the perpetuity of our institutions, they never failed to give pre-eminence to private virtue and public morality; nor did they hesitate to say that this virtue in private life and this morality in the public society must flow out of that religion which we esteem divine. those great men ventured on another and a desperate mission, the segregation of state from church. in the nations of the old world these are allied. the czar is the head of the church. victoria is the head of the church. the king of germany is the head of the church. the hapsburg, of austria, is the head of the church. the sultan is the head of the church. but here we have no earthly head of the church. to the individual christian christ is the head of the church. this is fundamental in our government. here we have "a free church in a free country." christianity had been supported by thrones in the old world. religion had been enforced by armies and navies. the great cathedrals, and what are called the church livings, had been maintained by a tax imposed upon people who did not believe the creed taught, and did not observe the forms of worship practiced. in our organic law it is stated that congress shall not legislate on the subject of religion. religion shall be free. here the mohammedan may rear his mosque and read his koran. here the brahmin may rear his pagoda and read his shasta. all religionists may come and worship here, but their worship shall not infringe upon the worship of others nor work injury to the body-politic. the typical american should set his face against all seeming alliance of church and state. we say to the holy father, live in peace. stay in rome. live on the banks of the tiber. if you come here, you must be an american citizen, rejecting your doctrine of temporal power. you may come and be naturalized and be a voter, but we can have no temporal _popes_ here. [applause and laughter.] so we say to our countrymen that come from dear old ireland, the best country in the world to emigrate from, [laughter], to the italian, to the spaniard, to the german, you may belong to the church of the spiritual pontiff but you must renounce all allegiance to temporal pontiffs. i hold that under our laws of naturalization, that it is the duty of every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, and every priest, every monk, franciscan or jesuit, to solemnly renounce before god and the holy angels, all political allegiance to the pope as a temporal prince, who to-day is seeking to re-establish diplomatic relations with england and other european nations in recognition of his temporal sovereignty. and he is a true american citizen, whether foreign-born or native-born, who maintains, as an american institution, the holy sabbath-day. he can call it sunday, after the old pagan god, but he must rest on the seventh day, rest from toil, rest in the interest of the dignity of labor, rest as discount upon capital, rest for intelligence, rest for compensation, rest for domestic happiness, rest for pious culture. the seventh day of every week should be consecrated to cessation from labor and devoted to physical and mental repose. it should not be a day of recreation to be spent in riotous living and in brawls, but a day peaceful, in harmony with the institutions of religion and the dominant sentiment of the country. our fathers consecrated the sabbath, and had you the patience to hear and i, the time to read from franklin, from jefferson, from washington, touching the sabbath, in recognition of it as indispensable to the welfare of our body politic, you would be confirmed in this great truth. the danger to-day is that we are becoming un-american in cutting loose from the sabbath-day as a day of rest and of worship. i cannot invoke the civil law to do more than to say that it shall be a day of rest. i cannot invoke the civil law to say that that man shall worship here or worship there, or worship at all, but i can invoke the civil law to say that it shall be a non-secular day; not a day for the transaction of business, but a day on which the laboring man shall walk out under god's free skies and say: this is my day, the day of a freeman. [applause.] the tendency is to transplant a european sabbath here; the german with his lager, and the frenchman with his wine, and the irishman with his shillalah. [laughter.] no, no, gentlemen, stay on the other side of the great deep. we don't want these things or this day on this side of the broad atlantic. there is another attribute that belongs to the true american citizen--the recognition of christianity as the religion of our country. webster, our greatest expounder of constitutional law, did not hesitate to declare that christianity--not methodist christianity, not roman catholic christianity, not presbyterian christianity--but christianity as taught by the four evangelists, is the recognized religion of this land. recognized how far? so far that its ethics shall be embodied in our constitutional and statutory law; so far that its teachings of the brotherhood of mankind shall be accepted; so far that its lessons of fraternity, equality, justice; and mercy shall be incorporated in the law of society. those beautiful moralities that fell from the lips of the divine son of god have been incorporated in the laws of the land, and that with few exceptions. our chaplains for the army and navy and for congress are in recognition of this. on that sacred book the oath of presidential responsibility is taken. and this thanksgiving day, appointed by the president, is a monument of proof. these point to christianity as the dominant religion of the land, not to the exclusion of the jew, not to the exclusion of the greek, not to the exclusion of the mohammedan, not to the exclusion of the brahmin, but permeating society with its principles. then, citizens, the danger which comes from this foreign population is to be met in this way, first, to hold that this country is for americans who are clothed with these seven attributes. i do not exaggerate the danger when i remind you that there are great movements among the peoples of the earth, as never before. remember that the population of europe has increased twenty-seven millions from 1870 to 1880, and at this rate of increase europe can send to us two millions of immigrants a year for the next hundred years. our foreign-born population is said to be seven millions, and their children of the first generation would make fifteen millions. in 1882 immigration reached the enormous figure of eight hundred thousand, and at the present rate of immigration it is said there will be in the year 1900, fourteen years from now, nineteen millions of persons of foreign birth, and with their children of the first generation there will be forty-three millions in this land of foreign born. now the question, and a serious one, is, who are those that come? i have said some are noble, some are true, some are easily transformed into the typical american. but then we are to remember that most of the foreigners who come here are twelve times as much disposed to crime as are the native stock. our population of foreign extraction is sadly conspicuous in our criminal records. this element constituted, in 1870, 20 per cent. of the population of new england, and furnished 75 per cent. of the crime. the howard society of london reports that 74 per cent. of the irish discharged convicts have come to the united states. i hold in my hand the annual rum bill of this country for the last year. it is nine hundred millions of dollars! i ask myself, who drinks this rum? native americans? some! [laughter.] some drink a good deal. [renewed laughter.] but let us see the danger that comes to us from inebriety among our foreign population. the wholesale dealers in liquor are estimated at sixty-five per cent. foreign born, and the brewers seventy-five per cent. let us take philadelphia, that old quaker city, the city of brotherly love, that city that seems to be par excellence the city of the world, and here are the figures: there were 8,034 persons in the rum traffic, and who were they? chinamen, 2; jews, 2; italians, 18; spaniards, 140; welsh, 160; french, 285; scotch, 497; english, 568; germans, 2,179; irish, 3,041; africans, 265; american, 205. i suppose we will have to mix the africans with the americans, and the total would be 470 americans, and then there were persons of unknown nationality in the rum traffic, 672; the sum total being 8,034. of this number 3,696 were females, but out of the 3,696 all were foreigners but one. there was one american woman in the rum business, and i blush for my country. yet there were 1,104 german women, and 2,548 irish, and of the whole number of the 8,034 engaged in the liquor traffic of that city, 6,418 had been arrested for some crime. [applause.] we are bound to look at these facts. are we a nation of foreign drunkards? then there is another danger--the tendency of emigrant colonization. i suppose it is known to you that new mexico is in the hands of foreigners--in the hands of the catholic church. it is also a fact of congressional report that 20,557,000 acres of land are in the possession of twenty-nine alien corporations and individuals, an area greater than the whole of ireland. i would have no part of this country subject to any church. i would have no foreign language taught in the public schools to the exclusion of or in preference to the english language. i would have no laws published in a foreign language, whether for the french of louisiana or the germans of cincinnati. [loud applause.] i would utter my solemn protest, and that in the hearing of all politicians, especially those men who want to be presidents and can not be presidents, and those who hope to be ere long--i would utter my solemn protest to-day against what is known as the "irish vote" and the "german vote." [applause.] we do not want any "foreign vote." down with the politician that would seek an "irish vote" or "german vote." [great applause.] all we want here is an american vote. i would not vote for any man for president who would stoop so low as to bid for the german vote or the irish vote. [continued applause.] the other safeguard is an extension of the term of residence required for naturalization. some say make the term twenty-one years. what is the term now? five years. i read from "revised statutes," section 2165 and 2174, that a person applying for citizenship must be a resident of the united states at least five years, and one year within the state or territory wherein the application is made, and that during that term (i wish i had all the judges here to-day) and that during that term he is to give satisfactory assurance to the court that he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the constitution of the united states, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same. "a man of good moral character!" what a sublime utterance, and how infinite. i would be glad to know what judge takes the pains, when a hundred of these foreigners apply just on the eve of the election, that they may qualify themselves to vote, what judge inquires whether they are men of good moral character? yet such is the provision of the law of the land. we have assumed the authority to limit suffrage. we say that women shall not vote, which is a great mistake. [sensation.] you are not up to that. [laughter.] my wife is as competent to vote as i. on all moral questions, especially the temperance question, i would trust the women ten times before i would the men. it is an abuse of the very genius of our government to proscribe the chinese. we say the negro may vote because his skin is black. we say the dutchman, the irishman, the italian may vote, because his skin ought to be white, but the chinese can not vote because his skin is yellow. the word "white" is used in the statute of limitation. we say to the young american who graduates with the highest honors at eighteen, you must wait three years longer before you can stand with the irishman with his brogans and the teuton with his lager and vote for the rulers of your native land. i would have the term of naturalization extended, some say till the foreigner has been here twenty-one years. extend the term to ten years, fifteen years. say to all persons who come to this country from foreign lands, that after 1890 they shall remain here fifteen years to become indoctrinated in our free institutions, learn the seven attributes of the american citizen, and then be prepared to love america for america's sake. [applause.] thus protected we can look forward to a glorious future, and the eye of prophecy can sweep the horizon of a deathless hope. look forward to the time when our place among the nations shall be the umpire of the world. when england and germany and france shall refer their international questions to us for adjudication which otherwise would be adjusted on the field of carnage; when we shall dictate to the world by moral suasion, what shall be the rights of citizens and what shall be the duty of the government over them. the proud position of my country looms up before me. england may plant commercial colonies around the globe, and so may germany and so may france, but let it be the mission of this country to plant colonies of moral ideas wherever the sun shines, and transform the political sentiments of the world until all men shall be recognized as created free and equal by the father almighty. let this be our proud position. then it shall never be said that the ocean was dug for america's grave, that the winds were woven for her winding sheet, that the mountains were reared for her tombstone. but rather we shall live on, and gifted with immortal youth, america shall ascend the mountain tops of the oncoming centuries with the old flag in her hand, symbol of universal liberty, the light of whose stars shall blend their radiance with the dawn of the millennium. extracts from letters. "your sermon yesterday upon the essential features of americanism deserves the applause of the nation. god speed you in your noble mission." washington, d. c. "your sermon to-day was a masterpiece. god bless you." washington, d. c. "i thank you from the bottom of my american heart for your sermon on 'america for americans.'" washington, d. c. "your sermon exactly describes my sentiments, which you have put in a cleaner and plainer light than i can." maryland. "let me congratulate you with all my heart on your immigration sermon yesterday." wisconsin. "i have read the report of your sermon, and had i been present would have risen to my feet in an 'amen' applause." ohio. "i have read your sermon, and thank god that one man has the manhood to speak his mind on a subject which must soon come to the forefront for investigation." st. louis. "you struck the people's heart on thanksgiving day, and put a needed truth just right." new york. _nationality and race_ _from an anthropologist's point of view_ being the robert boyle lecture delivered before the _oxford university junior scientific club_ _on november 17, 1919_ by arthur keith, m.d., ll.d., f.r.s. humphrey milford oxford university press london edinburgh glasgow new york toronto melbourne cape town bombay 1919 printed in england at the oxford university press nationality and race from an anthropologist's point of view nationality and race in boyle's time it was during the lifetime of robert boyle that our forefathers began to come into close contact with the races and nationalities of the outer world. when he was born in county cork in the year 1627, small and isolated bands of englishmen were elbowing red indians from the eastern sea-board of north america; before his death in london in 1691, at the age of sixty-four, he had seen these pioneer bands become united into a british fringe stretching almost without a break from newfoundland to florida. neither he nor any one else in england could then have guessed that in less than two centuries the narrow fringe of colonists would have spread from shore to shore, thus carpeting a continent with a new people. it was in his time, too, that english merchants and sailors made a closer acquaintance with the peoples of india, of the far east, and with the sea-board natives of africa and of south america. we have only to turn to the six splendid volumes in which his experiments, observations, and writings are preserved to see how he viewed the world which his countrymen were opening up beneath his eyes. in a short paper, drafted some time before his death, he gives the most minute directions to guide navigators in drawing up reports of newly discovered lands. his directions relate to every conceivable property or aspect of a new country--its geography, mineral wealth, natural products, climate--all but its inhabitants. like many englishmen of his time, boyle conceived that his duty by native peoples began and ended when he had seen that they were supplied with copies of the bible. for him, and for most of his contemporaries, there seem to have been no racial problems; for they did not regard the meeting and mingling of diverse races or of peoples of different nationalities as matters which deserved investigation and explanation. boyle witnessed the acutest phases of the 'plantation' of ireland, but the inquiries he set on foot regarding that country were: 'how it cometh to pass that there are not frogs, toads, snakes, moles, nightingales, rarely magpies' within its borders; he inquired, too, concerning the true nature of 'diverse things which the irish foolishly report of st. patrick'--especially concerning the 'birds turned into stones for chirping when st. patrick was preaching'. there were, of course, racial and national problems in boyle's time, but they had not then presented themselves before the tribunal of the public mind as matters demanding investigation and treatment. race and nationality in recent years we need not blame the statesmen and writers of boyle's time for failing to recognize the inward significance of national and racial manifestations any more than we condemn his contemporary physicians for failing to separate from the mass of disease such conditions as are known to modern medical men as appendicitis and typhoid fever. typhoid fever and appendicitis existed in boyle's time just as did national disturbances and racial antipathies, but their nature and significance passed undiagnosed. it was not until england had laid siege, by means of armies of colonists, to lands inhabited by native races, or had come to guide the destinies of great tropical empires by handfuls of civil servants, that she realized that racial contact gives rise to live and burning antagonisms. nor are national problems new to england; they have always dogged the footsteps of her statesmen. in boyle's time a people could make its national spirit heard and felt only by resorting to brute force. in our times there are other means; a people mobilizes its national spirit by means of the daily press; the promulgation of national propaganda has become a fine art; modern statesmen have learned that national feelings, rightly directed, have the force of an avalanche. the problems of race and of nationality, then, are by no means new, but in their modern form they are new. the far-flung lines of the british empire and the mobilization of the popular spirit by means of the press and propaganda have compelled our statesmen, historians, publicists, psychologists, and anthropologists to re-examine the nature of the forces which lie behind racial movements and national agitations. of the importance of a right understanding of the nature of these forces for the future maintenance and development of the british empire there cannot be any question. in the guiding of its destinies oxford men will, in the future as in the past, take a leading part, and much of their success will depend on how far they have grasped the nature of the inward forces which group mankind into races and nations. that is my reason for making the problems of race and nationality the subject of this lecture in memory of robert boyle. inherited instincts and modern ideals are out of harmony it has scarcely been possible in recent years to open a newspaper without our eye being arrested by head-lines telling us of racial strifes or international contentions. one day we read of race riots; on the next we learn that the inhabitants of a certain area of land demand separation from all surrounding peoples. by a process of 'self-determination' they demand to be recognized as a separate people or nation. these racial and national contentions are not restricted to any particular people or land; we find them in every country. the politician is too near to these racial and national manifestations of the modern world to see them in their proper light; even the historian is not far enough away from them to see them in their right perspective. you cannot explore the secret sources from which they spring unless you have grasped the immensity of man's unwritten history. let me make my meaning quite clear by an historical example chosen from man's body. among our modern populations there are no ailments more prevalent than those which arise from a disordered working of the great bowel. why this part of our bodily machinery should fail us under modern conditions of diet becomes quite apparent when we survey the history of man's distant past. for the anthropologist there are only two well-marked phases in human history. the first phase is that of natural subsistence--an infinitely long and monotonous chapter, stretching over a million of years or more. the second is the phase of artificial subsistence--a short chapter covering a period of 10,000 or 12,000 years at the utmost, but a period crowded with events which have a critical bearing on our present and future welfare. in the first or long phase mankind was broken into small and scattered groups which gained as best they could a sparse, uncertain, and coarse sustenance from the natural produce of shore and stream, moorland and woodland. in the second or short phase man conquered nature; by means of cultivation and domestication he forced from the soil a sure and abundant supply of food, thus rendering possible the existence of our modern massed populations. now the machinery of man's body and the instinctive outfit of his brain, which had been evolved to answer to the conditions of life presented by the first long phase of his history, were also those which had to serve him when he entered the new conditions of the short or modern phase. we need not be surprised to find, then, that part of his ancient outfit is ill adapted to modern conditions of life. man's great bowel, including the caecum, appendix, and colon, which answered his needs well when his dietary was coarse and uncooked, is ill contrived to deal with foods which are artificially prepared and highly concentrated. a school, which was headed by the late professor metchnikoff, even goes so far as to maintain that man would be improved by the complete removal of his great bowel--a doctrine with which i totally disagree. we are all alive to the fact that there is a lack of harmony between the ancient machinery of our bodies and the modern conditions under which we live, but we are only now awakening to the fact that what is true of our bodies is also true of our minds. in that immense first phase of our history an elaborate mental machinery had been evolved for binding small groups of mankind into social units. this subconscious or instinctive mental outfit, we shall see, is part of the machinery which nature has employed in the evolution of races of mankind. the mental adaptations which modern man has inherited from the immensity of his past we may briefly describe as part of nature's tribal machinery. the thesis, then, which i propose to expound to you is that in our modern racial strifes and national agitations we see man's inherited tribal instincts at war with his present-day conditions of life. we have broken up, or are attempting to break up, nature's ancient tribal machinery and at the present time are striving to replace her designs by others evolved in the minds of modern statesmen and politicians. we moderns are like hill sheep turned into fenced fields with all our wandering instincts still grafted on our original nature. as in them, our instincts are at war with our surroundings. it is the most natural thing in the world that we should blame the barriers which have been set round us because we are scarcely conscious of the inherited predispositions with which nature encompasses her tribal fields. we cannot understand the nature of our modern racial and national problems until we perceive that in these days we are endeavouring to build a new world out of the wreckage of an old. racial and national problems in the united states of america having thus laid before you the general lines on which i propose to deal with problems relating to race and nationality, i propose now that we should make a lightning trip round the world and cull, as we go, samples which will illustrate the kind of friction which arises wherever races or nationalities come into close contact. as i have already said, every country can yield us material for our study, but none on such a vast experimental scale as the united states of north america; we shall therefore commence our hurried survey in that country. within the frontiers of the states is massed a population of 110 millions. when we look closely we see that over ten millions of these inhabitants are marked off from the rest by a frontier, a colour line, as sharply defined and jealously guarded as the frontiers of a kingdom. across that racial frontier all legitimate social traffic is barred, the custodians of the frontier being those who stand on the white side of the line. any attempt to cross that racial frontier produces mob war. while these ten millions of segregated citizens abide within their racial fence, they see millions arrive from europe and pass freely through the national and social gateways--which for them are barred. in the course of a generation they see these new arrivals, men, women, and children born and bred within the diverse nationalities of europe, differing markedly in appearance and speech from the original colonial stock, become slowly stript of their alien outlook and gradually incorporated within a new national mass. in the states, then, we see a machinery at work which maintains racial frontiers but breaks down all national barriers. the nature of that machinery we shall have to inquire into later, but in the meantime i will briefly define the essential difference between a racial and a national frontier. a marriage across a racial frontier gives rise to an offspring so different from both parent races that it cannot be naturally grouped with either the one or the other. a marriage across a national frontier gives rise to a progeny which may pass as a member of either parent nationality. further, as i shall attempt to prove later, nationality is the incipient stage in the process which leads on to racial differentiation. problems of canada when we cross the line which separates the united states from canada we find a national mechanism at work which converts immigrants of alien nationalities into loyal canadians. in canada, however, our attention is arrested by an example which illustrates the persistence and the strength of the force which perpetuates a national spirit. the ancestors of the french canadians began to settle in the province of quebec early in the seventeenth century, 150 years before the canadian national mill was set agoing by englishmen. the french settlers never passed through that mill. they came, for the greater part, from the north-west of france, and although speaking a different tongue, adopting a different religion, and following different customs, they were yet in point of race not essentially different from the english founders of canada. yet the descendants of these early french settlers, now numbering well over a million and a half, and although forming but a small island in the midst of an english-speaking ocean for more than a century and a half, have maintained their sense of separateness--their national frontiers--intact. there is no question here of a racial frontier as yet, but were this national isolation of french canadians to become permanent, then in course of time a racial differentiation would be produced within their territory. when we turn our faces westward and cross the rocky mountains we find the minds of the white inhabitants, along the whole stretch of the pacific coast, occupied with a racial problem. they have erected a racial barrier to keep out the native peoples of asia. the native of india is excluded just as strictly as the chinaman or japanese. they are not excluded because of their speech or of their civilization, but because the people of the united states and of canada are conscious of a certain feeling of difference--call it race prejudice, race antipathy, or what you will. it is a conscious or subconscious state of feeling which rebels against racial fusion. racial problems of spanish america when we pass from the united states to mexico we cross the boundary line which separates the two most immense experiments in human breeding the world has ever seen. north of this experimental rubicon, as we have just seen, the basal stock, which is north-west european or nordic in origin, has been ruled by a sense of race-caste and has consequently maintained its racial characters. but south of our rubicon the result of racial contact has been absolutely different. the south-west european or iberian stock broke down the natural barrier which nature had set up between them and the natives of mexico and south america and solved their racial antagonisms by the fusion of blood. the results of these two experiments, carried out on such an immense scale, we can see to-day. the northern experiment, which is now three centuries old, has given the world two of her most virile peoples destined to hold their place whether humanity becomes planted out on a vast, peaceful, and uniform cabbage-patch or still remains, as now, broken up into national and racial factions. these northern peoples are as effective, so far at least as concerns their chances of survival, as the original nordic stock. the southern experiment, which began four centuries ago, has given the world a jangling series of small peoples, not any one of which is equal, either in body or in mind, to the pioneer iberian stock. from the anthropologist's point of view the northern experiment is the successful one. we have been glancing at the national and racial problems of the american continent and we ought now to pass on to note the form in which they are presented to us by australasia. before passing on, however, there is one very important aspect of the southern or iberian experiment which we must consider now because it throws light on the path along which i want to lead you. why did the racial barrier between iberian and indian break down? was it because the iberian did not possess--was not influenced by--a sense of race-caste such as we have seen to dominate the nordic colonist? i believe that race-caste or race-prejudice is and has been a more potent force in the nordic than in the iberian stock. the iberian people are near neighbours of the african races; in physique they are differentiated from the african stocks in a somewhat less degree than the nordic stocks which represent the utmost point in the physical specialization of all european peoples. if the iberian pioneer carried with him to america a lesser degree of race-caste, the process of hybridization would begin the more easily. the great north and south experiments differed, however, in another important circumstance. the nordic encountered a scattered, nomadic, proud race; the iberian a settled people living in dense communities. the iberian was thus exposed to conditions in which a racial barrier was harder to maintain. struggle between race and sex impulses but neither of these two circumstances--a lesser developed sense of race-caste in the iberian, nor the massing of the southern indians in settled communities--explain the disappearance of a racial frontier. the true explanation lies in the fact that nature has grafted in the human mind instinctive impulses which are far stronger than those designated as race-prejudice. nature has spent her most painstaking efforts in establishing within the human organization a mechanism to ensure, above all other ends, that the individual shall continue. the instinct to propagate is the strongest of the instinctive impulses with which mankind has been fitted. it dominates and conquers the race instinct on all occasions save one. sex impulse is the battery which breaks down race-barriers. race instinct becomes the master of sexual impulse only when a pure stock has established itself as a complete and growing community in a new country. sexual impulses are the endowments of individual men and women; they dominate and are manifested by individuals, whereas race antipathies are manifestations not of the individual, but of the mass. race instinct comes into play only when men, women, and children of the same stock are organized into communities. until such a community is organized sex instinct traffics freely across racial barriers; once organized, race instinct conquers or restrains hybridization. it is a right understanding of the conditions under which human instincts work that gives us the true key to the hybridization of spaniard and american indian. the iberian pioneers exposed themselves to racial contact in mexico and peru under conditions which were bound to give their sex impulses a victory over their race instinct. no _mayflower_ reached the spanish coasts of america; only bands of adventurers, who established no independent home-like settlements to form the cradles of race-feeling. the sex instinct was left dominant, and by this force the racial barriers south of the mexican rubicon were broken down. north of this rubicon the american continent was colonized; south of it, there was not a colonization but a plantation. from an anthropologist's point of view, as we shall note later, colonization and plantation are totally different processes. race problems in australia and new zealand when we cross the pacific to australia we see the same racial and national factors at work as in saxon america. it has taken only a little over a century for a british or nordic stock, now numbering five millions, to establish itself as occupant and owner of a great continent. the australians have had to face both national and racial problems. the continent was colonized from separate centres, and there was a tendency on the part of each colony to isolate itself from its neighbours and grow up into a separate state or nationality. these separate states or incipient nationalities were united at the commencement of the present century by the craft of statesmanship which made the shores of the new continent the frontiers of a national commonwealth. the british communities in australia bred and exhibited the usual saxon sense of race discrimination; almost from the first they drew a racial frontier between themselves and the native blacks, and so strictly has this frontier been maintained that there is no trace of the vanishing aboriginal blood in the veins of the new nationality. the 50,000 survivors of the original owners of the continent now present a philanthropic rather than a racial problem. but it is otherwise as regards the millions of native peoples occupying the countries which flank the indian and china seas. seas are the highways along which modern peoples spread and invade accessible lands. hence round their shores the australians have erected a racial barrier, admitting the entrance of peoples of european descent but excluding all others. the student of racial and national problems cannot afford to pass new zealand by. in these two islands english, scotch, irish, and welsh immigrants have, in the course of the last eighty years, built up a new nation, now numbering well over a million souls. here and there in the islands there has been a tendency for the immigrants to group themselves according to their inherited nationality, but such separate groupings tend to disappear as the new national spirit becomes dominant. herein we see exhibited a law with which herdsmen are familiar. a herd of cattle which has occupied a field for some time will resist the intrusion of a second or strange herd; but turn both herds together into a strange pasture and mutual antipathies cease almost at once. the arrival in a new land of immigrants from diverse countries breaks down the national barriers within which they were born and bred. a national spirit breeds true only on its native soil; when transplanted to a new land it becomes plastic and mouldable. a new country dissolves ancient nationalities; no country illustrates this truth more emphatically than new zealand. the relationship which exists between the new nationality of new zealand and the ancient owners of the country--the maori, now numbering about 50,000--is one of a unique kind. the physical differences which separate the british and maori types are such in degree that there can be no question of the distinctness of their racial stocks. in former cases we have seen that it was the saxon who drew and guarded the racial frontier; but in new zealand each of the contending human stocks has drawn its racial line, and each regards the other's delimitation with respect. such respect is rendered possible because the territorial frontiers of maoriland have been clearly defined. thus wise statesmanship keeps racial problems in a latent condition in new zealand. national and racial problems in south africa if we now pass to south africa we find problems of race and of nationality in a more acute and tangled form than anywhere else in the world. long before the portuguese had turned the cape of good hope towards the end of the sixteenth century, this land was occupied by a confusion of contending tribal peoples belonging to at least three well-differentiated human stocks. bantu peoples were pushing southwards, ousting and exterminating hottentot tribes; these were at the same time exercising a continuous pressure on the bush people. at the present time this great territory, with a total area of nearly twenty times that of england, is occupied by about six and a quarter millions of people, fully five millions being descendants of the original native tribes, with a slight admixture of asiatic elements. the masters and owners of this territory, numbering only a little over a million, are of the nordic or north-west european stock. about one-half of the dominant stock drew its original guiding spirit from holland, the other half carried to its new home the national spirit of england. these two nationalities, both derived from the same north sea stock, have been thrown together in south africa for over a century, and yet a sense of difference in nationality has persisted, even in face of dangers which threaten both alike. thus south africa has an acute friction arising from the rubbing of one nationality on another. she has also her racial problems; the more closely they are examined the more do their potential dangers seem to grow. boer and briton may differ in speech, habit, and outlook, but both agree that there is an impassable frontier between them and the native races of africa and asia. they do not even camouflage the racial barricade which they have erected; they purposely expose it in its nakedness to full view, so that none may fail to see it. the dark natives maintain their tribal and racial frontiers by their inherited organizations, but the surveillance of the social barrier between them and the whites lies with the dominant race. only those who have come into direct contact with racial antagonisms know how deeply they are situated in the primitive organization of the human brain. let me cite only one witness on this point--one who would willingly believe, if he could, that racial antagonisms are both superficial and acquired. "that a very real problem exists in the race-consciousness of the white and coloured peoples is evident, is sometimes painfully evident, sometimes dangerously so. there is nothing to be gained by under-estimating its deep-seated nature and the gravity of its issues." this is a quotation from the presidential address given by dr. w. flint to the last meeting (1919) of the south african association for the advancement of science. the mixture of races in south africa has roused to activity instincts or subconscious states which lie dormant in members of a uniform population. national and racial frontiers, we shall see, are part of nature's evolutionary machinery. meantime we merely note that modern industrial ideals clash with the working of nature's instinctive mechanisms, and in south africa the two are in actual collision. some of the national and racial problems of europe as we pass northwards along the african continent, over a welter of tribal peoples, we need merely note the cry for national recognition which ascends to us from the lower valley of the nile. the descendants of the ancient egyptians, mixed with a conglomeration of racial stocks drawn from africa, asia, and europe, are agitating for 'national' independence and isolation. it would take us too far afield to consider the national and racial problems of the 300 millions of diverse peoples of india who are linked together by only one bond--the government extended to them by the british empire. nor need we stay now to speculate on the nationalities which will arise from the wreckage of turkey, austria, or russia, nor shall we dally with the balkan jumble of nationalities. we simply note that these instincts or feelings which compel men of like speech, habits, and traditions to group themselves into independent national units are most active and powerful where racial or national boundaries are most confused. are the jews a separate race? in the strict sense in which the anthropologist uses the term 'race' there is in europe no racial problem. our universal disturbances are those of nationality. there are no two nationalities in europe, so different in physical appearance, that their hybrid progeny may not pass as a member of either parent nationality. in the anthropologist's sense there are no racial bastards produced by the union of european nationalities. if we except the lapps and other mongolian elements in russia there is only one people in europe with a legitimate claim to be regarded as racially different from the general population. that exception is the jewish people. there are seven millions of them forming an archipelago in the sea of european peoples, their main islands lying in the centre of the continent, north and south of the carpathians. the jews maintain a racial frontier, such as dominant races surround themselves with; they carry themselves as if racially distinct. their original stock was clearly eastern in its derivation; the peoples of europe sprang from another racial source. the outliers of the jewish racial archipelago are exposed to the cross-currents of the gentile seas. the smaller islets are too far removed to be sheltered and strengthened by the race sense which is bred and nursed wherever permanent jewish settlements are established. however much the jewish racial frontier may be strengthened by the faith which is the standard of the race, raids have been made, are now made, across that frontier and a certain degree of hybridization has occurred. even thus exposed in the eddying seas of modern civilization, the race spirit of the jews has preserved the greater part of the original characters carried into europe by the pioneer semitic bands. in 90 per cent. of jews the physical or semitic characters are apparent to the eye even of the uninitiated gentile. in the jewish people we see nature steering one of her cargoes of differentiated humanity between the scylla and charybdis of the modern sea of industrial civilization. and race instinct is her steersman. national movements are of two kinds the processes of nationalization in europe are of two kinds; on the one hand we see smaller nationalities being compounded into larger units; on the other we see large nationalities being disintegrated. we see fusion taking place and we see disruption. which is nature's method? all the great nationalities of europe have been built up by fusion--italy, spain, france, great britain, and germany. as the last named is the most recent and most clearly understood case of fusion we may glance at the means by which it was accomplished. the nationalities and separate states which were united to form the german empire were derived from at least three stocks, each of which show well-differentiated physical characters. these human stocks were united by a common tongue. by war and conquest the empire surrounded itself--isolated itself--by a ring of enemies. the germans carried their frontiers beyond the limits of their speech and set out to make danes, frenchmen, and poles members of their own nationality. they sought to strengthen their national frontiers by tariff barricades. they linked themselves together by the multiplication of means of rapid transit and fostered the growth of a national or tribal spirit by active, persistent, and widespread tribal propaganda. the tribal spirit, which is an innate quality of every people, was roused to such a pitch that in the crisis of war the national or tribal bonds held; sixty millions of people acted as if they were members of a highland clan. even defeat, if it has loosened, has not broken the national bonds which were forged by the governing classes of germany. in all these processes of national fusion, as in the formation of all trusts in the modern commercial world, the anthropologist observes that the operation commences from above and works downwards through the mass of the people. the governing class plays upon and fans into flame the tribal embers of the popular mind. it is altogether a different process which brings about the disruption of a nationality. disruption has nothing to do with race; the nearer the blood relationship between two adjacent peoples the more likely is disruption to occur. we can find no better illustration of this truth than when we cross the baltic from germany to scandinavia. the people of norway and sweden are of the same racial composition; they have many interests in common; union should have given strength. yet after a partnership which lasted for less than a century, they agreed to separate. in this case the movement came from below; a tribal feeling which swept through the people of norway compelled a disruption. all the natural inherited forces in a people tend towards disruption. only when reason takes the helm can these natural disruptive forces be overcome and the process of fusion be effected. british national problems having thus made a hurried survey of some of the more instructive, racial, and national problems abroad we now return homewards to apply the knowledge thus gained to the understanding of the national manifestations of our own countrymen. there is no need to remind you that the national spirit of robert boyle's native country is always boiling up, often boiling over. scotland, too, has a national spirit, so has wales; in both countries this spirit is separatist in its essence, but the national instinctive tendencies are curbed and guided by the higher reasoning centres of the brain. in england itself the sense of nationality is usually dormant; only an insult or a threat from without stirs this gigantic force into life. in ireland the national kettle is kept always on the boil; in scotland and wales it is kept simmering; in england, on the other hand, it dozes quietly on the hob. nevertheless english nationality is a force which pervades the whole population lying between berwick-on-tweed and land's end. in the course of centuries statesmanship has succeeded in raising up in the minds of all the inhabitants of the british isles--all save in the greater part of ireland--a new and wider sense of nationality, a spirit of british nationality. why we never succeeded in raising that spirit in the whole of ireland represents the major part of our present quest. are celts and saxons of different racial stocks? at the outset of our inquiry we are met by the ancient belief that the british isles are divided by a racial frontier which separates the western or celtic peoples from the eastern inhabitants of saxon origin. it was my fortune to be born on the border of the celtic fringe, and no one growing up under these circumstances can fail to realize that the celtic spirit is a real and live force. is it a racial antagonism which is elicited when celt and saxon are in conflict? what is the physical difference between a celt and a saxon? that is a matter to which i have given my attention for some years, and the results of my inquiries i will place before you as briefly as i may. in the audience now before me there are certain to be pure representatives of all our four nationalities; celts and saxons as pure as any in the country are sure to be present in any university audience. but except for a trick of speech or a local mannerism, the most expert anthropologist cannot tell celt from saxon or an irishman from a scotsman. there are, to be sure, certain physical types which prevail in one country more than in another, but i do not know of any feature of the body or any trait of the mind, or of any combination of features or traits which will permit an expert, on surveying groups of university students, to say this group is from scotland, that from wales, the third from ireland, and the fourth from england. in stature and in colouring, in form of skull and of face, elaborate trials have revealed national difference only of the most minor kind. nay, we know very well the physical features of the saxon pioneers who became the masters of england and dominated the lowlands of scotland. their graveyards have been examined by the score, but it is not by the form of the skulls and the strength of the limb bones that we know we are dealing with the graves of ancient saxons, but by the implements, ornaments, and utensils which were buried with them. as regards shape of skull or form of bones i do not think a practised craniologist could distinguish the skulls and bones found in an ancient saxon cemetery in surrey from the remains of a celtic grave in connemara, so much are celtic and saxon types alike. were we to dress one group of fishermen from the coast of norfolk and another from the shores of connaught in the same garb, i do not think there is an anthropologist in europe who by mere inspection could tell the irish from the english group. from a physical point of view the celt and saxon are one; whatever be the source of their mutual antagonism, it does not lie in a difference of race. it is often said that we british are a mixed and mongrel collection of types and breeds; the truth is that as regards physical type the inhabitants of the british isles are the most uniform of all the large nationalities of europe. all british nationalities are of the north sea stock the statement which i have just made, that britons are really a uniform folk, seems altogether at variance with the teaching of history. what i am to say now will explain a discrepancy which, in its essence, is only superficial. our written history opens with the roman invasion and occupation of britain; it was an 'occupation' or 'plantation', not a true colonization. on the other hand, the saxon and danish invasions ended in widely spread and true colonizations of britain. the norman invasion, on the other hand, was of the nature of a plantation. i will make the difference between the various forms of invasion apparent presently. there have been, too, flocks of immigrant refugees at various times. we have the most positive evidence that long before the dawn of written history the processes of invasion and colonization had been going on in britain. in all these invasions, historic and prehistoric, with one important exception, no strange or new racial stock was added to the british isles; all were apparently branches of the human stock which still occupy the north-west of europe--men of the nordic type--or as i should prefer to call them, the north sea breed. we are only now beginning to realize that even at the dawn of the present period, a period marked by the retreat of the ice sheet from the baltic basin, the seashore and the sea itself were the high roads along which primitive peoples migrated and spread. they were people of the same human type who spread themselves along the shores of the mediterranean and occupied its coastal lands. the distribution of the mediterranean breed was determined by the limits of their sea. apparently the shores of the north sea were settled in a similar way. we have but scanty remains from the midden heaps along its ancient shores to tell us about the kind of folk these early settlers were, but so far as the evidence goes it supports the supposition that the nordic type was already in possession of north-west europe before the dawn of the neolithic period. we can only explain the distribution of the nordic type along the shorelands of the north sea, of the baltic, and of the british seas, on the supposition of a primitive and ancient north sea stock--made up of men of the nordic type. the earliest cave dwellers of england were of this type. it was this north sea stock which gave britain not only her original population but also her succession of colonists. it is certain that there were also invasions of britain from the mediterranean stock, but we have only to compare a sample of our modern population with one drawn from a mediterranean people to see how little our blood has been affected by a southern mixture. in all these invasions and colonizations there is only one which was not drawn from the north sea stock. that invasion took place in the second millenium before christ, when the round-headed stock of central europe broke through the nordic belt, reached the shores of the north sea, and invaded britain on a scale which has never been equalled before or since save in saxon times. that invasion of round-heads broke first on england and scotland, but wales and particularly ireland received in time a full share of the fresh arrivals. with this one exception all the invaders and settlers of the british isles were waves derived from the same prolific source--the north sea breed. we see, then, why there should be little physical difference between celt and saxon. the one was an earlier wave, the other a much later wave of the same stock. but each wave brought its own mode of speech and its own tribal spirit. of all the inhabitants of the british isles the irish may be regarded as the purest representatives of the north sea or nordic stock. there are kinds of colonization--spontaneous and forced the refusal of the irish to merge their sense of nationality in a common british whole cannot be explained by any difference in blood or race. we shall get nearer to the heart of the problem if we can discover why the people on the north-east of ireland, particularly in counties antrim and down, in contrast with the rest of ireland, are sharers in the common british spirit. it is true that, even in ancient times, there was a community of feeling between ulstermen and the west scotch. even in neolithic times their cultures show a free intercourse. before the plantation of ireland by lowland folk in the seventeenth century, ulster was frequented by bands of highland scots. neither of these circumstances explain the unionist spirit of ulster. nor is the spirit of north-east ulster a matter of british admixture. a careful examination of all the available data relating to the plantation of ireland between 1560 and 1660 will show that an even greater proportion of british blood was poured into leinster and munster than into ulster. at the end of the plantation period probably one irishman out of every three in the provinces of leinster and munster had blood of british colonists in his veins. in this reckoning no count is made of the people who landed and settled in ireland in the five centuries which preceded 1560--danes, normans, welsh, and english. it is not the number of british colonists which has made north-east ulster separatist in spirit, so far as the rest of ireland is concerned--and unionist, so far as great britain is concerned. the north-east region of ireland was the only part which was truly colonized; only a real or spontaneous colonization can carry a tribal or national spirit to a new land. for the anthropologist a true or spontaneous colonization is a totally different process from one which is false or forced. at the very time at which the english government was settling or planting colonists on irish soil and among irish people, a spontaneous exodus set in among the north sea peoples. this exodus--a people's movement--established a saxon fringe along the eastern sea-board of north america. the exodus, which began in the seventeenth century, has continued to the present time--three full centuries. thus fed, the fringe extended until it reached the pacific shore. the original fringe represented a true tribal settlement; within the pioneer communities grew up the consciousness of nationality and of race-antagonism, which we have already noted in the saxon peoples of north america. the break-away--the natural process of disintegration, represented by the war of independence--is usually explained as a result of bad government. the disputes between the british government and the colonists were certainly the circumstances which determined the disruption, but the forces which impelled the colonists to action were those subconscious impulses which nature has planted deep in the human mind as part of her evolutionary machinery. the saxon settlement of britain the colonization of north america, which took place in the full light of history, gives us the means of understanding the saxon colonization of england, which otherwise lies obscure in the twilight of our written records. in both cases we have to deal with a spontaneous or popular movement. one was across the wide atlantic, the other across an almost land-locked sea. both commenced by the formation of a fringe of true settlement wherein inherited tribal traditions and organizations were nursed and strengthened; in both cases the original fringe was fed by a stream of immigrants continuing over several centuries. the chief difference between the two movements lies in this: the american colonists encountered a people who were so physically unlike themselves as to raise a racial frontier, whereas the saxon people pushed their way into a land inhabited by people of their own stock. the progeny of the captured british native could be reared so as to become a true saxon. the saxon colonization, as it spread over the land, engulfed--when it did not exterminate--the natives and their tribal organizations in their agricultural village communities. the saxon settlement of england held and prospered because it was a true colonization. the plantation and colonization of ireland in ireland we have an opportunity of contrasting the results of an artificial or forced settlement with those of a natural or spontaneous colonization. elizabeth, james, and cromwell settled their colonists on irish tribal lands, thus exposing them to the full force of the clannish or tribal spirit which then animated the natives of ireland. the consequence was that the progeny of the british colonists, as it grew up, absorbed the irish tribal spirit, for this spirit, being more primitive and more easily understood than a sense of nationality, always makes a dominant appeal to the young mind. the blood which english statesmen of the seventeenth century poured into ireland to quench its national flame only served to feed it. it was otherwise in the north-east of ireland--particularly in down and antrim. these counties were settled in the earlier decades of the seventeenth century by a process of spontaneous colonization. the movement commenced in a small way in 1606 by hugh montgomery, a south scotch laird, purchasing a large tract of the o'neill's land in county down. he settled that land with his relations and tenantry--a farming community. such was the beginning of the colonial fringe on the north-east coast of ulster. the fringe was fed by a spontaneous exodus of farming folk mainly from the south of scotland, but the stream was also kept up and maintained from the north of england and from scottish counties as far north as those of aberdeen and inverness. the men who flocked to ulster found it easier to raise crops on the greensward of antrim than on the heathery hill-sides of aberdeenshire. herein we see a repetition, but on a small scale, of the saxon colonization of england. the settled communities established by the scotch pioneers sheltered and nursed the national spirit they brought with them. as the fringe of colonists expanded it came to cover antrim and down and made inroads on adjacent counties, overwhelming and absorbing the tribal organization of the native population. in 1672 sir william petty estimated that there were 100,000 scots in ulster. thus in the north-east of ireland there has been established a people which manifests all the qualities of a new nationality. history can explain to us how it has come about that the inhabitants of ireland, all of them derivatives of the same breed of europeans, should be divided into two peoples, each possessed by its own peculiar sense of nationality. the north is predominantly industrial and protestant; the south is predominantly pastoral and catholic. but these circumstances are not sufficient to account for a national--almost a racial--antagonism between the inhabitants of a single small island who have so much to gain by a sense of unity. to understand national antagonisms we have to look at the inheritance which modern man has carried with him from his distant past. the nature of tribal instinct i now enter the third stage of my argument. in the first i cited and discussed the various forms in which racial and national feelings are manifested by various peoples abroad; in my second i dealt with the nature of the various national movements at home. we now set out in search of the root from which the flower of our complex modern civilization has sprung. in the world of to-day we see many peoples exhibiting every phase in the evolution of that organization which permits mankind to live in massed populations. fortunately for us there yet survive, in outlandish parts of the earth, remnants of native races retaining the primitive organization which guided mankind through that great hinterland of time lying between the emergence from apedom and the dawn of the modern world. for the student of sociology the immense primitive first stage of man's history is by far the more important. in his _voyage of the beagle_, darwin draws a picture of the fuegians which gives us a real insight into the ancient state of social organization. spencer and gillan supply us with complementary pictures representing the conditions of life among native tribes of central australia. these primitive peoples live on the natural produce of the territory which they inhabit and claim as their own. their social organization represents for us the conditions in which the modern races of mankind were evolved. it is in such primitive societies that there must have existed the machinery which differentiated mankind into races and racial breeds. it is in the long first phase that we must search for the origin of the social impulses and tendencies which have come down to modern man by inheritance.[1] when we survey a country still in the most primitive stage of human society, the first observation to impress us is the fact that its inhabitants are separated into definitely isolated groups. such groups are usually small, consisting of men, women, and children belonging to several closely related families and numbering two or three hundred souls. each group, forming an elemental community, occupies, and considers itself the owner of, a definite tract of country; there is developed in them a feeling--an attachment--which serves to bind them to the soil on which they live. when we look at the nature of the bonds which serve to bind the members of a primitive community together, we see that they are formed out of subconscious impulses or instincts. these instincts form an essential part of the machinery of organization. there is usually no head man or chieftain to determine the action of the community; there is no deliberative assembly to lay down rules of conduct. in galton's phrase the members of a primitive community form 'a sentient web', dominated by traditional beliefs and customs. i have no wish to analyse the subconscious states and instinctive reactions which rule and bind together the members of a primitive community; what i want to make clear is that the tribal instincts have above all an isolating effect. these instincts serve not only as a machinery for binding the members of a community together, but also as a means of separating them from all surrounding groups. within the community this machinery compels unity of sentiment and of action; it serves to repress schism and faction. but the tribal machinery is operative only up to the territorial boundaries of the community. at that limit the tribal instincts immediately change in their mode of action. the tribal instincts surround the community with a frontier, across which there is no peaceful traffic, only robbery and plunder; or at the best covert enmity. the tribal frontier is also a blood barrier; across it the tribal instinct forbids any form of peaceful matrimonial exchange or tribal intermixture. nothing impressed darwin so much as the ring of neutral territory which surrounded the primitive fuegian settlements. tribal isolation provides the conditions necessary for race-breeding the tribal or clannish spirit tends to manifest itself in many forms, but in all its varieties there is a common factor--that of isolation. at first sight we are tempted to regard the tribal spirit as part of a machinery evolved for the protection and survival of a primitive community, but to any one who has searched for conditions which will explain the origin of separate races of mankind, the conviction grows that the tribal spirit is an essential part of nature's evolutionary machinery. it was in these isolated cradles of primitive mankind that nature nursed and reared new races. when a breeder wishes to produce a new type of animal, or to preserve a 'sport', his first step is to isolate the group of animals with which he is to experiment. the isolated stock becomes the cradle in which he hopes to rear his new breed. the experimental breeder, in such instances, copies the conditions which rule in primitive human communities. under modern civilization nature's cradles have been smashed to atoms, but the tribal instincts which nature intended for the propagation of new breeds of humanity have come down to modern man in undiminished force. hence our present national and racial troubles. the conditions of tribal disintegration the tribal spirit, which maintains the unity of an elementary community, is efficient just so long as personal contact between its members is possible. if a tribal community becomes overgrown, so that mutual contact between its members is rendered impossible, then a manifestation of a different nature appears--that of disruption or swarming. the disintegrating tendency is just as much a part of nature's evolutionary contrivance as is the isolating and unifying effect of the tribal spirit. for breeding purposes the group must be kept within certain bounds. modern man has overcome the tendency to disruption on the part of massed communities by the invention of means of rapid intercommunication. the daily press, the hourly post, and a network of electric wires can bind a hundred millions of modern people into a sentient tribal web. the origin of race feeling small isolated communities are the cradles in which new tribal breeds of mankind are reared. but how do new races arise? if isolation were to be continued throughout long intervals of time we may justly infer that the physical and mental characters of a breed would become more and more emphasized until a stage of differentiation is reached which we must regard as racial. a racial spirit is merely the tribal spirit matured and consolidated. the manifestations which begin as tribal, end, in the course of time, by becoming racial. we cannot account for the differentiation of mankind into distinct races, nor the existence of many intermediate forms which link one human race to another, unless we postulate the existence in mankind of a deeply rooted tribal mechanism. transformation of a tribal into a national spirit having thus glanced at the nature of the instinctive machinery which has controlled human communities throughout the greater part of man's history we now return to ask ourselves: what have become of the tribal instincts which were so deeply grafted in the nature of our ancestors? our tribal forefathers are not so far removed from us. we can still trace the distribution of the highland clans in scotland; the tribal spirit is still strong in the scottish glens. the organization of ireland was on a tribal basis even when the anglo-normans settled there; in subsequent centuries, even until the times of the british settlements, the tribal spirit was still rampant in ireland; even now it is very much alive. two thousand years ago great britain was in a tribal state from end to end. practically every one of us is the descendant of ancestors who, forty generations back, were exercising their tribal instincts to the full. the roman occupation did much to break down the tribal organization of britain; the saxon colonization did still more. the forces, however, which forged the tribal links into a national chain were commerce, communication, and the building of massed populations. tribes were united to form nations, but there is no greater mistake than to suppose that the subconscious tribal impulses or instincts were wholly converted into a sense of common nationality. tribal instincts now manifested in everyday life we have only to watch our commoner actions and predilections to see that in our modern states the spirit of nationality has only absorbed a fraction of our tribal instincts. every one of you regards your own college and all the men belonging to it with pride; other colleges and other men you view with a critical eye. you cheer your own crews and teams; you want to see them beat all their rivals; you take sides. in all of these actions and prejudices you manifest the elementary basis of a tribal spirit. every week we see hundreds of thousands attend football or other competitive games, not so much to see an exhibition of skill as to see their own side win. the spectators, as they cheer, are moved by a tribal spirit. if we do not belong to a cricketing county we may go so far as to adopt one as a foster-parent in order that we may exercise our tribal instincts in being elated by its success or cast down by its failure. local national politics give us many opportunities of exercising our tribal instincts. in politics we have to take sides; a political party is a tribal organization, using ancient means for compelling a unity of sentiment amongst its members. the church, too, provides modern tribesmen with occasions for exercising their inherited impulses; a heresy hunt finds its counterpart in the most ancient of tribal communities. women even more than men are slaves of their tribal instincts; they are as susceptible to the dictates of fashion as their ancient sisters were impressionable to the movings of the tribal spirit. the local spirit which is so inherent a trait of the countryman, particularly in the case of the scotsman, irishman, and welshman, is another, and often a very powerful, manifestation of the tribal spirit. men from the same locality or district, when they go to live in foreign communities, are drawn together by a clannish sentiment--a manifestation of their inherited tribal instincts. turn in what direction you will, you will find amongst modern peoples innumerable tribal manifestations which find no room for display in the more intellectual exhibitions of a national spirit. in present-day politics we see the tribal spirit striving to work out certain novel effects. although in ancient times a tribal frontier usually corresponded to a territorial frontier, such was not always the case. the tribal spirit is strong enough to hold a people together even when there is no territorial boundary. in modern massed populations, as in the organization of both ancient and modern india, the tribal spirit works so as to produce frontiers between classes of citizens; trades unions are in essence artificial tribal organizations. except for the existence of tribal instincts within the inherited mental organization of the manual workers, such unions were impossible. many writers believe that class or sectional tribal organizations can actually be made to cut across national and even racial frontiers. we have seen, however, that at the declaration of war, all such sectional bonds snap, for war is the match which fires the tribal spirit, exalts it to a national flame, and destroys intertribal schisms. all the petty manifestations of the tribal spirit are changed by war; the impulses which moved men and women in peace time to games and sports, to party politics, to heresy hunting--even to displays of fashion--are turned to patriotic desires and deeds. a knowledge of tribal and racial spirit is essential for statesmen several modern statesmen have grasped the important part played by the tribal spirit in unifying the action of modern nations. i shall cite only three examples to illustrate this form of political insight--bismarck, lincoln, and lloyd george. bismarck employed war to rouse and unify the german peoples; three campaigns were sufficient to raise an unbounded feeling of tribal confidence and superiority. he gave the german empire a sharply demarcated tribal frontier; he purposely surrounded his country with a ring of animosity, true to his tribal instincts. abraham lincoln's tribal problem was of another kind. the conditions which led up to the civil war concerned the freeing of slaves; but lincoln made the war, when it became inevitable, an intratribal quarrel. he realized that the danger to the united states was disintegration, one which must continually threaten all nationalities compounded out of great massed populations. lincoln therefore made the main issue of the war the right of a single state or a confederation of states to secede from the main tribe or union. the civil war determined the issue in favour of the north: the natural process of tribal disruption was declared illegal. lloyd george's task was of a different nature. he touched and wakened britain's sleeping tribal instincts with the insight of genius. war gave him his opportunity, but had he not known that tribal instincts lie deeply buried in man's emotional nature and are intertwined with his most primitive feeling he could not have known how to touch the ancient strings. intellectual appeals had failed to stir the primitive and basal tribal impulses of the people. the problem of ireland there was one part of the country, however, where lloyd george's appeal did not succeed in evoking british patriotism; it left the greater part of the people of ireland not only apathetic but even more actively hostile than before. yet their country formed an intrinsic part of these islands; their economic interests had much more to gain by the success of britain than of germany. history throws light on only part of this thorny problem; the real difficulty thus encountered dates back to prehistoric days--to the origin of the inherent, inherited, and deeply-rooted tribal instincts of the irish people. the irish spirit leapt up, as it had often done before, into a naming tribal antagonism directed against everything british. what then is a british statesman to do? we too have our tribal instincts, and their first impulse on being awakened is--as it was in ancient days--to meet force with force, even to extermination. that is the ancient tribal practice; but in these days we have entered another era in the world's history when intelligent effort must master and direct our inherited instincts. statesmen know that forcible means, when applied to extinguish a national flame, only serve to feed it. statecraft has never discovered, and i think it never will discover, a method of forcing or grafting a new national or tribal spirit on an old people. we have seen that a nation can colonize only when the force which drives its members to migrate arises spontaneously within the communities; a colonization initiated and conducted by a government always fails to hold. nationalization is a similar process; the forces which control and guide it must arise within the hearts of the people; it cannot be imposed on them from above. all that a statesman can do is to provide conditions in which a favourable spirit is most likely to develop and mature. he must sow judiciously for years and wait patiently for his harvest--even if it be for generations. ireland's friendship is a prize which is worth working for and waiting for, even if it costs britain a weary century of patient courtship. footnote: [1] i have dealt more fully with primitive tribal organization in 'certain factors concerned in the evolution of human races', _journ. royal anthropological institute_, 1916, vol. 46, p. 10. works by sir rabindranath tagore +gitanjali (song offerings).+ with introduction by w. b. yeats and portrait. cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. +fruit-gathering. (a sequel to "gitanjali.")+ cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. +the crescent moon. child-poems.+ with 8 illustrations in colour. pott 4to. 4s. 6d. net. +the gardener. poems.+ with portrait. cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. +stray birds. poems.+ with frontispiece by willy pogány. cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. +lover's gift and crossing.+ cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +chitra. a play.+ ex. cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. +the king of the dark chamber. a play.+ cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. +the post office. a play.+ cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. +the cycle of spring. a play.+ cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. +sacrifice and other plays.+ cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +hungry stones and other stories.+ translated by various writers. cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +mashi and other stories.+ cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +personality: lectures delivered in america.+ illustrated. ex. cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +my reminiscences.+ illustrated. ex. cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. +sadhana: the realisation of life. lectures.+ ex. cr. 8vo. 5s. net. +nationalism.+ ex. cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. london: macmillan and co., ltd. nationalism [illustration: logo] macmillan and co., limited london · bombay · calcutta · madras melbourne the macmillan company new york · boston · chicago dallas · san francisco the macmillan co. of canada, ltd. toronto nationalism by sir rabindranath tagore macmillan and co., limited st. martin's street, london 1918 copyright _first edition 1917_ _reprinted 1918 (twice)_ contents page nationalism in the west 1 nationalism in japan 47 nationalism in india 95 the sunset of the century 131 nationalism in the west man's history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters. these have offered us problems and claimed their solutions from us, the penalty of non-fulfilment being death or degradation. these difficulties have been different in different peoples of the earth, and in the manner of our overcoming them lies our distinction. the scythians of the earlier period of asiatic history had to struggle with the scarcity of their natural resources. the easiest solution that they could think of was to organize their whole population, men, women, and children, into bands of robbers. and they were irresistible to those who were chiefly engaged in the constructive work of social co-operation. but fortunately for man the easiest path is not his truest path. if his nature were not as complex as it is, if it were as simple as that of a pack of hungry wolves, then, by this time, those hordes of marauders would have overrun the whole earth. but man, when confronted with difficulties, has to acknowledge that he is man, that he has his responsibilities to the higher faculties of his nature, by ignoring which he may achieve success that is immediate, perhaps, but that will become a death-trap to him. for what are obstacles to the lower creatures are opportunities to the higher life of man. to india has been given her problem from the beginning of history--it is the race problem. races ethnologically different have in this country come into close contact. this fact has been and still continues to be the most important one in our history. it is our mission to face it and prove our humanity by dealing with it in the fullest truth. until we fulfil our mission all other benefits will be denied us. there are other peoples in the world who have to overcome obstacles in their physical surroundings, or the menace of their powerful neighbours. they have organized their power till they are not only reasonably free from the tyranny of nature and human neighbours, but have a surplus of it left in their hands to employ against others. but in india, our difficulties being internal, our history has been the history of continual social adjustment and not that of organized power for defence and aggression. neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history. and india has been trying to accomplish her task through social regulation of differences, on the one hand, and the spiritual recognition of unity on the other. she has made grave errors in setting up the boundary walls too rigidly between races, in perpetuating in her classifications the results of inferiority; often she has crippled her children's minds and narrowed their lives in order to fit them into her social forms; but for centuries new experiments have been made and adjustments carried out. her mission has been like that of a hostess who has to provide proper accommodation for numerous guests, whose habits and requirements are different from one another. this gives rise to infinite complexities whose solution depends not merely upon tactfulness but upon sympathy and true realization of the unity of man. towards this realization have worked, from the early time of the upanishads up to the present moment, a series of great spiritual teachers, whose one object has been to set at naught all differences of man by the overflow of our consciousness of god. in fact, our history has not been of the rise and fall of kingdoms, of fights for political supremacy. in our country records of these days have been despised and forgotten, for they in no way represent the true history of our people. our history is that of our social life and attainment of spiritual ideals. but we feel that our task is not yet done. the world-flood has swept over our country, new elements have been introduced, and wider adjustments are waiting to be made. we feel this all the more, because the teaching and example of the west have entirely run counter to what we think was given to india to accomplish. in the west the national machinery of commerce and politics turns out neatly compressed bales of humanity which have their use and high market value; but they are bound in iron hoops, labelled and separated off with scientific care and precision. obviously god made man to be human; but this modern product has such marvellous square-cut finish, savouring of gigantic manufacture, that the creator will find it difficult to recognize it as a thing of spirit and a creature made in his own divine image. but i am anticipating. what i was about to say is this. take it in whatever spirit you like, here is india, of about fifty centuries at least, who tried to live peacefully and think deeply, the india devoid of all politics, the india of no nations, whose one ambition has been to know this world as of soul, to live here every moment of her life in the meek spirit of adoration, in the glad consciousness of an eternal and personal relationship with it. it was upon this remote portion of humanity, childlike in its manner, with the wisdom of the old, that the nation of the west burst in. through all the fights and intrigues and deceptions of her earlier history india had remained aloof. because her homes, her fields, her temples of worship, her schools, where her teachers and students lived together in the atmosphere of simplicity and devotion and learning, her village self-government with its simple laws and peaceful administration--all these truly belonged to her. but her thrones were not her concern. they passed over her head like clouds, now tinged with purple gorgeousness, now black with the threat of thunder. often they brought devastations in their wake, but they were like catastrophes of nature whose traces are soon forgotten. but this time it was different. it was not a mere drift over her surface of life,--drift of cavalry and foot soldiers, richly caparisoned elephants, white tents and canopies, strings of patient camels bearing the loads of royalty, bands of kettle-drums and flutes, marble domes of mosques, palaces and tombs, like the bubbles of the foaming wine of extravagance; stories of treachery and loyal devotion, of changes of fortune, of dramatic surprises of fate. this time it was the nation of the west driving its tentacles of machinery deep down into the soil. therefore i say to you, it is we who are called as witnesses to give evidence as to what our nation has been to humanity. we had known the hordes of moghals and pathans who invaded india, but we had known them as human races, with their own religions and customs, likes and dislikes,--we had never known them as a nation. we loved and hated them as occasions arose; we fought for them and against them, talked with them in a language which was theirs as well as our own, and guided the destiny of the empire in which we had our active share. but this time we had to deal, not with kings, not with human races, but with a nation--we, who are no nation ourselves. now let us from our own experience answer the question, what is this nation? a nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose. society as such has no ulterior purpose. it is an end in itself. it is a spontaneous self-expression of man as a social being. it is a natural regulation of human relationships, so that men can develop ideals of life in co-operation with one another. it has also a political side, but this is only for a special purpose. it is for self-preservation. it is merely the side of power, not of human ideals. and in the early days it had its separate place in society, restricted to the professionals. but when with the help of science and the perfecting of organization this power begins to grow and brings in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its boundaries with amazing rapidity. for then it goads all its neighbouring societies with greed of material prosperity, and consequent mutual jealousy, and by the fear of each other's growth into powerfulness. the time comes when it can stop no longer, for the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy. trading upon the greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force. it is just possible that you have lost through habit consciousness that the living bonds of society are breaking up, and giving place to merely mechanical organization. but you see signs of it everywhere. it is owing to this that war has been declared between man and woman, because the natural thread is snapping which holds them together in harmony; because man is driven to professionalism, producing wealth for himself and others, continually turning the wheel of power for his own sake or for the sake of the universal officialdom, leaving woman alone to wither and to die or to fight her own battle unaided. and thus there where co-operation is natural has intruded competition. the very psychology of men and women about their mutual relation is changing and becoming the psychology of the primitive fighting elements, rather than of humanity seeking its completeness through the union based upon mutual self-surrender. for the elements which have lost their living bond of reality have lost the meaning of their existence. like gaseous particles forced into a too narrow space, they come in continual conflict with each other till they burst the very arrangement which holds them in bondage. then look at those who call themselves anarchists, who resent the imposition of power, in any form whatever, upon the individual. the only reason for this is that power has become too abstract--it is a scientific product made in the political laboratory of the nation, through the dissolution of personal humanity. and what is the meaning of these strikes in the economic world, which like the prickly shrubs in a barren soil shoot up with renewed vigour each time they are cut down? what, but that the wealth-producing mechanism is incessantly growing into vast stature, out of proportion to all other needs of society,--and the full reality of man is more and more crushed under its weight? this state of things inevitably gives rise to eternal feuds among the elements freed from the wholeness and wholesomeness of human ideals, and interminable economic war is waged between capital and labour. for greed of wealth and power can never have a limit, and compromise of self-interest can never attain the final spirit of reconciliation. they must go on breeding jealousy and suspicion to the end--the end which only comes through some sudden catastrophe or a spiritual re-birth. when this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the nation, becomes all-powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity. when a father becomes a gambler and his obligations to his family take the secondary place in his mind, then he is no longer a man, but an automaton led by the power of greed. then he can do things which, in his normal state of mind, he would be ashamed to do. it is the same thing with society. when it allows itself to be turned into a perfect organization of power, then there are few crimes which it is unable to perpetrate. because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man. when this engine of organization begins to attain a vast size, and those who are mechanics are made into parts of the machine, then the personal man is eliminated to a phantom, everything becomes a revolution of policy carried out by the human parts of the machine, with no twinge of pity or moral responsibility. it may happen that even through this apparatus the moral nature of man tries to assert itself, but the whole series of ropes and pullies creak and cry, the forces of the human heart become entangled among the forces of the human automaton, and only with difficulty can the moral purpose transmit itself into some tortured shape of result. this abstract being, the nation, is ruling india. we have seen in our country some brand of tinned food advertised as entirely made and packed without being touched by hand. this description applies to the governing of india, which is as little touched by the human hand as possible. the governors need not know our language, need not come into personal touch with us except as officials; they can aid or hinder our aspirations from a disdainful distance, they can lead us on a certain path of policy and then pull us back again with the manipulation of office red tape; the newspapers of england, in whose columns london street accidents are recorded with some decency of pathos, need but take the scantiest notice of calamities which happen in india over areas of land sometimes larger than the british isles. but we, who are governed, are not a mere abstraction. we, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. what comes to us in the shape of a mere bloodless policy may pierce into the very core of our life, may threaten the whole future of our people with a perpetual helplessness of emasculation, and yet may never touch the chord of humanity on the other side, or touch it in the most inadequately feeble manner. such wholesale and universal acts of fearful responsibility man can never perform, with such a degree of systematic unawareness, where he is an individual human being. these only become possible, where the man is represented by an octopus of abstractions, sending out its wriggling arms in all directions of space, and fixing its innumerable suckers even into the far-away future. in this reign of the nation, the governed are pursued by suspicions; and these are the suspicions of a tremendous mass of organized brain and muscle. punishments are meted out, which leave a trail of miseries across a large bleeding tract of the human heart; but these punishments are dealt by a mere abstract force, in which a whole population of a distant country has lost its human personality. i have not come here, however, to discuss the question as it affects my own country, but as it affects the future of all humanity. it is not a question of the british government, but of government by the nation--the nation which is the organized self-interest of a whole people, where it is least human and least spiritual. our only intimate experience of the nation is with the british nation, and as far as the government by the nation goes there are reasons to believe that it is one of the best. then, again, we have to consider that the west is necessary to the east. we are complementary to each other because of our different outlooks upon life which have given us different aspects of truth. therefore if it be true that the spirit of the west has come upon our fields in the guise of a storm it is nevertheless scattering living seeds that are immortal. and when in india we become able to assimilate in our life what is permanent in western civilization we shall be in the position to bring about a reconciliation of these two great worlds. then will come to an end the one-sided dominance which is galling. what is more, we have to recognize that the history of india does not belong to one particular race but to a process of creation to which various races of the world contributed--the dravidians and the aryans, the ancient greeks and the persians, the mohammedans of the west and those of central asia. now at last has come the turn of the english to become true to this history and bring to it the tribute of their life, and we neither have the right nor the power to exclude this people from the building of the destiny of india. therefore what i say about the nation has more to do with the history of man than specially with that of india. this history has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the political and the commercial man, the man of the limited purpose. this process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of man's moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organization. we have felt its iron grip at the root of our life, and for the sake of humanity we must stand up and give warning to all, that this nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age, and eating into its moral vitality. i have a deep love and a great respect for the british race as human beings. it has produced great-hearted men, thinkers of great thoughts, doers of great deeds. it has given rise to a great literature. i know that these people love justice and freedom, and hate lies. they are clean in their minds, frank in their manners, true in their friendships; in their behaviour they are honest and reliable. the personal experience which i have had of their literary men has roused my admiration not merely for their power of thought or expression but for their chivalrous humanity. we have felt the greatness of this people as we feel the sun; but as for the nation, it is for us a thick mist of a stifling nature covering the sun itself. this government by the nation is neither british nor anything else; it is an applied science and therefore more or less similar in its principles wherever it is used. it is like a hydraulic press, whose pressure is impersonal, and on that account completely effective. the amount of its power may vary in different engines. some may even be driven by hand, thus leaving a margin of comfortable looseness in their tension, but in spirit and in method their differences are small. our government might have been dutch, or french, or portuguese, and its essential features would have remained much the same as they are now. only perhaps, in some cases, the organization might not have been so densely perfect, and, therefore, some shreds of the human might still have been clinging to the wreck, allowing us to deal with something which resembles our own throbbing heart. before the nation came to rule over us we had other governments which were foreign, and these, like all governments, had some element of the machine in them. but the difference between them and the government by the nation is like the difference between the hand-loom and the power-loom. in the products of the hand-loom the magic of man's living fingers finds its expression, and its hum harmonizes with the music of life. but the power-loom is relentlessly lifeless and accurate and monotonous in its production. we must admit that during the personal government of the former days there have been instances of tyranny, injustice and extortion. they caused sufferings and unrest from which we are glad to be rescued. the protection of law is not only a boon, but it is a valuable lesson to us. it is teaching us the discipline which is necessary for the stability of civilization and for continuity of progress. we are realizing through it that there is a universal standard of justice to which all men, irrespective of their caste and colour, have their equal claim. this reign of law in our present government in india has established order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races and customs. it has made it possible for these peoples to come in closer touch with one another and cultivate a communion of aspiration. but this desire for a common bond of comradeship among the different races of india has been the work of the spirit of the west, not that of the nation of the west. wherever in asia the people have received the true lesson of the west it is in spite of the western nation. only because japan had been able to resist the dominance of this western nation could she acquire the benefit of the western civilization in fullest measure. though china has been poisoned at the very spring of her moral and physical life by this nation, her struggle to receive the best lessons of the west may yet be successful if not hindered by the nation. it was only the other day that persia woke up from her age-long sleep at the call of the west to be instantly trampled into stillness by the nation. the same phenomenon prevails in this country also, where the people are hospitable, but the nation has proved itself to be otherwise, making an eastern guest feel humiliated to stand before you as a member of the humanity of his own motherland. in india we are suffering from this conflict between the spirit of the west and the nation of the west. the benefit of the western civilization is doled out to us in a miserly measure by the nation, which tries to regulate the degree of nutrition as near the zero-point of vitality as possible. the portion of education allotted to us is so raggedly insufficient that it ought to outrage the sense of decency of a western humanity. we have seen in these countries how the people are encouraged and trained and given every facility to fit themselves for the great movements of commerce and industry spreading over the world, while in india the only assistance we get is merely to be jeered at by the nation for lagging behind. while depriving us of our opportunities and reducing our education to the minimum required for conducting a foreign government, this nation pacifies its conscience by calling us names, by sedulously giving currency to the arrogant cynicism that the east is east and the west is west and never the twain shall meet. if we must believe our schoolmaster in his taunt that, after nearly two centuries of his tutelage, india not only remains unfit for self-government but unable to display originality in her intellectual attainments, must we ascribe it to something in the nature of western culture and our inherent incapacity to receive it or to the judicious niggardliness of the nation that has taken upon itself the white man's burden of civilizing the east? that japanese people have some qualities which we lack we may admit, but that our intellect is naturally unproductive compared to theirs we cannot accept even from them whom it is dangerous for us to contradict. the truth is that the spirit of conflict and conquest is at the origin and in the centre of western nationalism; its basis is not social co-operation. it has evolved a perfect organization of power, but not spiritual idealism. it is like the pack of predatory creatures that must have its victims. with all its heart it cannot bear to see its hunting-grounds converted into cultivated fields. in fact, these nations are fighting among themselves for the extension of their victims and their reserve forests. therefore the western nation acts like a dam to check the free flow of western civilization into the country of the no-nation. because this civilization is the civilization of power, therefore it is exclusive, it is naturally unwilling to open its sources of power to those whom it has selected for its purposes of exploitation. but all the same moral law is the law of humanity, and the exclusive civilization which thrives upon others who are barred from its benefit carries its own death-sentence in its moral limitations. the slavery that it gives rise to unconsciously drains its own love of freedom dry. the helplessness with which it weighs down its world of victims exerts its force of gravitation every moment upon the power that creates it. and the greater part of the world which is being denuded of its self-sustaining life by the nation will one day become the most terrible of all its burdens, ready to drag it down into the bottom of destruction. whenever power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly rides into its ultimate crash of death. its moral brake becomes slacker every day without its knowing it, and its slippery path of ease becomes its path of doom. of all things in western civilization, those which this western nation has given us in a most generous measure are law and order. while the small feeding-bottle of our education is nearly dry, and sanitation sucks its own thumb in despair, the military organization, the magisterial offices, the police, the criminal investigation department, the secret spy system, attain to an abnormal girth in their waists, occupying every inch of our country. this is to maintain order. but is not this order merely a negative good? is it not for giving people's life greater opportunities for the freedom of development? its perfection is the perfection of an egg-shell, whose true value lies in the security it affords to the chick and its nourishment and not in the convenience it offers to the person at the breakfast table. mere administration is unproductive, it is not creative, not being a living thing. it is a steam-roller, formidable in its weight and power, having its uses, but it does not help the soil to become fertile. when after its enormous toil it comes to offer us its boon of peace we can but murmur under our breath that "peace is good, but not more so than life, which is god's own great boon." on the other hand, our former governments were woefully lacking in many of the advantages of the modern government. but because those were not the governments by the nation, their texture was loosely woven, leaving big gaps through which our own life sent its threads and imposed its designs. i am quite sure in those days we had things that were extremely distasteful to us. but we know that when we walk barefooted upon ground strewn with gravel, our feet come gradually to adjust themselves to the caprices of the inhospitable earth; while if the tiniest particle of gravel finds its lodgment inside our shoes we can never forget and forgive its intrusion. and these shoes are the government by the nation,--it is tight, it regulates our steps with a closed-up system, within which our feet have only the slightest liberty to make their own adjustments. therefore, when you produce your statistics to compare the number of gravels which our feet had to encounter in former days with the paucity in the present régime, they hardly touch the real points. it is not a question of the number of outside obstacles but the comparative powerlessness of the individual to cope with them. this narrowness of freedom is an evil which is more radical, not because of its quantity but because of its nature. and we cannot but acknowledge this paradox, that while the spirit of the west marches under its banner of freedom, the nation of the west forges its iron chains of organization which are the most relentless and unbreakable that have ever been manufactured in the whole history of man. when the humanity of india was not under the government of the organization, the elasticity of change was great enough to encourage men of power and spirit to feel that they had their destinies in their own hands. the hope of the unexpected was never absent, and a freer play of imagination, on the part both of the governor and the governed, had its effect in the making of history. we were not confronted with a future, which was a dead white wall of granite blocks eternally guarding against the expression and extension of our own powers, the hopelessness of which lies in the reason that these powers are becoming atrophied at their very roots by the scientific process of paralysis. for every single individual in the country of the no-nation is completely in the grip of a whole nation,--whose tireless vigilance, being the vigilance of a machine, has not the human power to overlook or to discriminate. at the least pressing of its button the monster organization becomes all eyes, whose ugly stare of inquisitiveness cannot be avoided by a single person amongst the immense multitude of the ruled. at the least turn of its screw, by the fraction of an inch, the grip is tightened to the point of suffocation around every man, woman and child of a vast population, for whom no escape is imaginable in their own country, or even in any country outside their own. it is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of this inhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning. not merely the subject races, but you who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetich of nationalism, living in the dense poisonous atmosphere of world-wide suspicion and greed and panic. i have seen in japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining toward the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not toward what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. the people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness. when questioned as to the wisdom of its course the newly converted fanatic of nationalism answers that "so long as nations are rampant in this world we have not the option freely to develop our higher humanity. we must utilize every faculty that we possess to resist the evil by assuming it ourselves in the fullest degree. for the only brotherhood possible in the modern world is the brotherhood of hooliganism." the recognition of the fraternal bond of love between japan and russia, which has lately been celebrated with an immense display of rejoicing in japan, was not owing to any sudden recrudescence of the spirit of christianity or of buddhism, but it was a bond established according to the modern faith in a surer relationship of mutual menace of bloodshedding. yes, one cannot but acknowledge that these facts are the facts of the world of the nation, and the only moral of it is that all the peoples of the earth should strain their physical, moral and intellectual resources to the utmost to defeat one another in the wrestling match of powerfulness. in the ancient days sparta paid all her attention to becoming powerful; she did become so by crippling her humanity, and died of the amputation. but it is no consolation to us to know that the weakening of humanity from which the present age is suffering is not limited to the subject races, and that its ravages are even more radical because insidious and voluntary in peoples who are hypnotized into believing that they are free. this bartering of your higher aspirations of life for profit and power has been your own free choice, and i leave you there, at the wreckage of your soul, contemplating your protuberant prosperity. but will you never be called to answer for organizing the instincts of self-aggrandizement of whole peoples into perfection and calling it good? i ask you what disaster has there ever been in the history of man, in its darkest period, like this terrible disaster of the nation fixing its fangs deep into the naked flesh of the world, taking permanent precautions against its natural relaxation? you, the people of the west, who have manufactured this abnormality, can you imagine the desolating despair of this haunted world of suffering man possessed by the ghastly abstraction of the organizing man? can you put yourself into the position of the peoples, who seem to have been doomed to an eternal damnation of their own humanity, who not only must suffer continual curtailment of their manhood, but even raise their voices in pæans of praise for the benignity of a mechanical apparatus in its interminable parody of providence? have you not seen, since the commencement of the existence of the nation, that the dread of it has been the one goblin-dread with which the whole world has been trembling? wherever there is a dark corner, there is the suspicion of its secret malevolence; and people live in a perpetual distrust of its back where it has no eyes. every sound of a footstep, every rustle of movement in the neighbourhood, sends a thrill of terror all around. and this terror is the parent of all that is base in man's nature. it makes one almost openly unashamed of inhumanity. clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. solemn pledges become a farce,--laughable for their very solemnity. the nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the nation is the greatest evil for the nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril. its one wish is to trade on the feebleness of the rest of the world, like some insects that are bred in the paralysed flesh of victims kept just enough alive to make them toothsome and nutritious. therefore it is ready to send its poisonous fluid into the vitals of the other living peoples, who, not being nations, are harmless. for this the nation has had and still has its richest pasture in asia. great china, rich with her ancient wisdom and social ethics, her discipline of industry and self-control, is like a whale awakening the lust of spoil in the heart of the nation. she is already carrying in her quivering flesh harpoons sent by the unerring aim of the nation, the creature of science and selfishness. her pitiful attempt to shake off her traditions of humanity, her social ideals, and spend her last exhausted resources in drilling herself into modern efficiency, is thwarted at every step by the nation. it is tightening its financial ropes round her, trying to drag her up on the shore and cut her into pieces, and then go and offer public thanksgiving to god for supporting the one existing evil and shattering the possibility of a new one. and for all this the nation has been claiming the gratitude of history, and all eternity for its exploitation; ordering its band of praise to be struck up from end to end of the world, declaring itself to be the salt of the earth, the flower of humanity, the blessing of god hurled with all his force upon the naked skulls of the world of no-nations. i know what your advice will be. you will say, form yourselves into a nation, and resist this encroachment of the nation. but is this the true advice? that of a man to a man? why should this be a necessity? i could well believe you if you had said, be more good, more just, more true in your relation to man, control your greed, make your life wholesome in its simplicity and let your consciousness of the divine in humanity be more perfect in its expression. but must you say that it is not the soul, but the machine, which is of the utmost value to ourselves, and that man's salvation depends upon his disciplining himself into a perfection of the dead rhythm of wheels and counterwheels? that machine must be pitted against machine, and nation against nation, in an endless bull-fight of politics? you say, these machines will come into an agreement, for their mutual protection, based upon a conspiracy of fear. but will this federation of steam-boilers supply you with a soul, a soul which has her conscience and her god? what is to happen to that larger part of the world where fear will have no hand in restraining you? whatever safety they now enjoy, those countries of no-nation, from the unbridled license of forge and hammer and turn-screw, results from the mutual jealousy of the powers. but when, instead of being numerous separate machines, they become riveted into one organized gregariousness of gluttony, commercial and political, what remotest chance of hope will remain for those others, who have lived and suffered, have loved and worshipped, have thought deeply and worked with meekness, but whose only crime has been that they have not organized? but, you say, "that does not matter, the unfit must go to the wall--they shall _die_, and this is science." no, for the sake of your own salvation, i say, they shall _live_, and this is truth. it is extremely bold of me to say so, but i assert that man's world is a moral world, not because we blindly agree to believe it, but because it is so in truth which would be dangerous for us to ignore. and this moral nature of man cannot be divided into convenient compartments for its preservation. you cannot secure it for your home consumption with protective tariff walls, while in foreign parts making it enormously accommodating in its free trade of license. has not this truth already come home to you now, when this cruel war has driven its claws into the vitals of europe? when her hoard of wealth is bursting into smoke and her humanity is shattered into bits on her battlefields? you ask in amazement what has she done to deserve this? the answer is, that the west has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. she has all along been starving the life of the personal man into that of the professional. in your mediæval age in europe, the simple and the natural man, with all his violent passions and desires, was engaged in trying to find out a reconciliation in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. all through the turbulent career of her vigorous youth the temporal and the spiritual forces both acted strongly upon her nature, and were moulding it into completeness of moral personality. europe owes all her greatness in humanity to that period of discipline,--the discipline of the man in his human integrity. then came the age of intellect, of science. we all know that intellect is impersonal. our life, and our heart, are one with us, but our mind can be detached from the personal man and then only can it freely move in its world of thoughts. our intellect is an ascetic who wears no clothes, takes no food, knows no sleep, has no wishes, feels no love or hatred or pity for human limitations, who only reasons, unmoved, through the vicissitudes of life. it burrows to the roots of things, because it has no personal concern with the thing itself. the grammarian walks straight through all poetry and goes to the root of words without obstruction, because he is not seeking reality, but law. when he finds the law, he is able to teach people how to master words. this is a power,--the power which fulfils some special usefulness, some particular need of man. reality is the harmony which gives to the component parts of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. you break it, and have in your hands the nomadic atoms fighting against one another, therefore unmeaning. those who covet power try to get mastery of these aboriginal fighting elements, and through some narrow channels force them into some violent service for some particular needs of man. this satisfaction of man's needs is a great thing. it gives him freedom in the material world. it confers on him the benefit of a greater range of time and space. he can do things in a shorter time and occupies a larger space with more thoroughness of advantage. therefore he can easily outstrip those who live in a world of a slower time and of space less fully occupied. this progress of power attains more and more rapidity of pace. and, for the reason that it is a detached part of man, it soon outruns the complete humanity. the moral man remains behind, because it has to deal with the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is impersonal and therefore abstract. thus, man with his mental and material power far outgrowing his moral strength, is like an exaggerated giraffe whose head has suddenly shot up miles away from the rest of him, making normal communication difficult to establish. this greedy head, with its huge dental organization, has been munching all the topmost foliage of the world, but the nourishment is too late in reaching his digestive organs, and his heart is suffering from want of blood. of this present disharmony in man's nature the west seems to have been blissfully unconscious. the enormity of its material success has diverted all its attention toward self-congratulation on its bulk. the optimism of its logic goes on basing the calculations of its good fortune upon the indefinite prolongation of its railway lines toward eternity. it is superficial enough to think that all to-morrows are merely to-days, with the repeated additions of twenty-four hours. it has no fear of the chasm, which is opening wider every day, between man's ever-growing storehouses and the emptiness of his hungry humanity. logic does not know that, under the lowest bed of endless strata of wealth and comforts, earthquakes are being hatched to restore the balance of the moral world, and one day the gaping gulf of spiritual vacuity will draw into its bottom the store of things that have their eternal love for the dust. man in his fulness is not powerful, but perfect. therefore, to turn him into mere power, you have to curtail his soul as much as possible. when we are fully human, we cannot fly at one another's throats; our instincts of social life, our traditions of moral ideals stand in the way. if you want me to take to butchering human beings, you must break up that wholeness of my humanity through some discipline which makes my will dead, my thoughts numb, my movements automatic, and then from the dissolution of the complex personal man will come out that abstraction, that destructive force, which has no relation to human truth, and therefore can be easily brutal or mechanical. take away man from his natural surroundings, from the fulness of his communal life, with all its living associations of beauty and love and social obligations, and you will be able to turn him into so many fragments of a machine for the production of wealth on a gigantic scale. turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruit. this process of dehumanizing has been going on in commerce and politics. and out of the long birth-throes of mechanical energy has been born this fully developed apparatus of magnificent power and surprising appetite which has been christened in the west as the nation. as i have hinted before, because of its quality of abstraction it has, with the greatest ease, gone far ahead of the complete moral man. and having the conscience of a ghost and the callous perfection of an automaton, it is causing disasters of which the volcanic dissipations of the youthful moon would be ashamed to be brought into comparison. as a result, the suspicion of man for man stings all the limbs of this civilization like the hairs of the nettle. each country is casting its net of espionage into the slimy bottom of the others, fishing for their secrets, the treacherous secrets which brew in the oozy depths of diplomacy. and what is their secret service but the nation's underground trade in kidnapping, murder and treachery and all the ugly crimes bred in the depth of rottenness? because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anæmic to a degree of ludicrousness. the nation's bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall. i am just coming from my visit to japan, where i exhorted this young nation to take its stand upon the higher ideals of humanity and never to follow the west in its acceptance of the organized selfishness of nationalism as its religion, never to gloat upon the feebleness of its neighbours, never to be unscrupulous in its behaviour to the weak, where it can be gloriously mean with impunity, while turning its right cheek of brighter humanity for the kiss of admiration to those who have the power to deal it a blow. some of the newspapers praised my utterances for their poetical qualities, while adding with a leer that it was the poetry of a defeated people. i felt they were right. japan had been taught in a modern school the lesson how to become powerful. the schooling is done and she must enjoy the fruits of her lessons. the west in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of japan, let there be a nation--and there was a nation. and now that it _has_ come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? why is it that i saw in an english paper an expression of bitterness at japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization--the thing that the british, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? because the idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a continual dose of self-laudation. but the same vices which seem so natural and innocuous in its own life make it surprised and angry at their unpleasantness when seen in other nations. therefore, when you see the japanese nation, created in your own image, launched in its career of national boastfulness you shake your head and say, it is not good. has it not been one of the causes that raise the cry on these shores for preparedness to meet one more power of evil with a greater power of injury? japan protests that she has her _bushido_, that she can never be treacherous to america, to whom she owes her gratitude. but you find it difficult to believe her,--for the wisdom of the nation is not in its faith in humanity but in its complete distrust. you say to yourself that it is not with japan of the _bushido_, the japan of the moral ideals, that you have to deal--it is with the abstraction of the popular selfishness, it is with the nation; and nation can only trust nation where their interests coalesce, or at least do not conflict. in fact your instinct tells you that the advent of another people into the arena of nationality makes another addition to the evil which contradicts all that is highest in man and proves by its success that unscrupulousness is the way to prosperity,--and goodness is good for the weak and god is the only remaining consolation of the defeated. yes, this is the logic of the nation. and it will never heed the voice of truth and goodness. it will go on in its ring-dance of moral corruption, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto machine; trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of man. but we delude ourselves into thinking that humanity in the modern days is more to the front than ever before. the reason of this self-delusion is because man is served with the necessaries of life in greater profusion, and his physical ills are being alleviated with more efficacy. but the chief part of this is done, not by moral sacrifice, but by intellectual power. in quantity it is great, but it springs from the surface and spreads over the surface. knowledge and efficiency are powerful in their outward effect, but they are the servants of man, not the man himself. their service is like the service in a hotel, where it is elaborate, but the host is absent; it is more convenient than hospitable. therefore we must not forget that the scientific organizations vastly spreading in all directions are strengthening our power, but not our humanity. with the growth of power the cult of the self-worship of the nation grows in ascendancy; and the individual willingly allows the nation to take donkey-rides upon his back; and there happens the anomaly which must have such disastrous effects, that the individual worships with all sacrifices a god which is morally much inferior to himself. this could never have been possible if the god had been as real as the individual. let me give an illustration of this in point. in some parts of india it has been enjoined as an act of great piety for a widow to go without food and water on a particular day every fortnight. this often leads to cruelty, unmeaning and inhuman. and yet men are not by nature cruel to such a degree. but this piety being a mere unreal abstraction completely deadens the moral sense of the individual, just as the man, who would not hurt an animal unnecessarily, would cause horrible suffering to a large number of innocent creatures when he drugs his feelings with the abstract idea of "sport." because these ideas are the creations of our intellect, because they are logical classifications, therefore they can so easily hide in their mist the personal man. and the idea of the nation is one of the most powerful anæsthetics that man has invented. under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion,--in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out. but can this go on indefinitely? continually producing barrenness of moral insensibility upon a large tract of our living nature? can it escape its nemesis for ever? has this giant power of mechanical organization no limit in this world against which it may shatter itself all the more completely because of its terrible strength and velocity? do you believe that evil can be permanently kept in check by competition with evil, and that conference of prudence can keep the devil chained in its makeshift cage of mutual agreement? this european war of nations is the war of retribution. man, the person, must protest for his very life against the heaping up of things where there should be the heart, and systems and policies where there should flow living human relationship. the time has come when, for the sake of the whole outraged world, europe should fully know in her own person the terrible absurdity of the thing called the nation. the nation has thriven long upon mutilated humanity. men, the fairest creations of god, came out of the national manufactory in huge numbers as war-making and money-making puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfection of mechanism. human society grew more and more into a marionette show of politicians, soldiers, manufacturers and bureaucrats, pulled by wire arrangements of wonderful efficiency. but the apotheosis of selfishness can never make its interminable breed of hatred and greed, fear and hypocrisy, suspicion and tyranny, an end in themselves. these monsters grow into huge shapes but never into harmony. and this nation may grow on to an unimaginable corpulence, not of a living body, but of steel and steam and office buildings, till its deformity can contain no longer its ugly voluminousness,--till it begins to crack and gape, breathe gas and fire in gasps, and its death-rattles sound in cannon roars. in this war the death-throes of the nation have commenced. suddenly, all its mechanism going mad, it has begun the dance of the furies, shattering its own limbs, scattering them into the dust. it is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal. those who have any faith in man cannot but fervently hope that the tyranny of the nation will not be restored to all its former teeth and claws, to its far-reaching iron arms and its immense inner cavity, all stomach and no heart; that man will have his new birth, in the freedom of his individuality, from the enveloping vagueness of abstraction. the veil has been raised, and in this frightful war the west has stood face to face with her own creation, to which she had offered her soul. she must know what it truly is. she had never let herself suspect what slow decay and decomposition were secretly going on in her moral nature, which often broke out in doctrines of scepticism, but still oftener and in still more dangerously subtle manner showed itself in her unconsciousness of the mutilation and insult that she had been inflicting upon a vast part of the world. now she must know the truth nearer home. and then there will come from her own children those who will break themselves free from the slavery of this illusion, this perversion of brotherhood founded upon self-seeking, those who will own themselves as god's children and as no bond-slaves of machinery, which turns souls into commodities and life into compartments, which, with its iron claws, scratches out the heart of the world and knows not what it has done. and we of no nations of the world, whose heads have been bowed to the dust, will know that this dust is more sacred than the bricks which build the pride of power. for this dust is fertile of life, and of beauty and worship. we shall thank god that we were made to wait in silence through the night of despair, had to bear the insult of the proud and the strong man's burden, yet all through it, though our hearts quaked with doubt and fear, never could we blindly believe in the salvation which machinery offered to man, but we held fast to our trust in god and the truth of the human soul. and we can still cherish the hope that, when power becomes ashamed to occupy its throne and is ready to make way for love, when the morning comes for cleansing the blood-stained steps of the nation along the highroad of humanity, we shall be called upon to bring our own vessel of sacred water--the water of worship--to sweeten the history of man into purity, and with its sprinkling make the trampled dust of the centuries blessed with fruitfulness. nationalism in japan i the worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves. we have been repeatedly told, with some justification, that asia lives in the past,--it is like a rich mausoleum which displays all its magnificence in trying to immortalize the dead. it was said of asia that it could never move in the path of progress, its face was so inevitably turned backwards. we accepted this accusation, and came to believe it. in india, i know, a large section of our educated community, grown tired of feeling the humiliation of this charge against us, is trying all its resources of self-deception to turn it into a matter of boasting. but boasting is only a masked shame, it does not truly believe in itself. when things stood still like this, and we in asia hypnotized ourselves into the belief that it could never by any possibility be otherwise, japan rose from her dreams, and in giant strides left centuries of inaction behind, overtaking the present time in its foremost achievement. this has broken the spell under which we lay in torpor for ages, taking it to be the normal condition of certain races living in certain geographical limits. we forgot that in asia great kingdoms were founded, philosophy, science, arts and literatures flourished, and all the great religions of the world had their cradles. therefore it cannot be said that there is anything inherent in the soil and climate of asia to produce mental inactivity and to atrophy the faculties which impel men to go forward. for centuries we did hold torches of civilization in the east when the west slumbered in darkness, and that could never be the sign of sluggish mind or narrowness of vision. then fell the darkness of night upon all the lands of the east. the current of time seemed to stop at once, and asia ceased to take any new food, feeding upon its own past, which is really feeding upon itself. the stillness seemed like death, and the great voice was silenced which sent forth messages of eternal truth that have saved man's life from pollution for generations, like the ocean of air that keeps the earth sweet, ever cleansing its impurities. but life has its sleep, its periods of inactivity, when it loses its movements, takes no new food, living upon its past storage. then it grows helpless, its muscles relaxed, and it easily lends itself to be jeered at for its stupor. in the rhythm of life, pauses there must be for the renewal of life. life in its activity is ever spending itself, burning all its fuel. this extravagance cannot go on indefinitely, but is always followed by a passive stage, when all expenditure is stopped and all adventures abandoned in favour of rest and slow recuperation. the tendency of mind is economical, it loves to form habits and move in grooves which save it the trouble of thinking anew at each of its steps. ideals once formed make the mind lazy. it becomes afraid to risk its acquisitions in fresh endeavours. it tries to enjoy complete security by shutting up its belongings behind fortifications of habits. but this is really shutting oneself up from the fullest enjoyment of one's own possessions. it is miserliness. the living ideals must not lose their touch with the growing and changing life. their real freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but in the highroad of adventures, full of the risk of new experiences. one morning the whole world looked up in surprise when japan broke through her walls of old habits in a night and came out triumphant. it was done in such an incredibly short time that it seemed like a change of dress and not like the building up of a new structure. she showed the confident strength of maturity, and the freshness and infinite potentiality of new life at the same moment. the fear was entertained that it was a mere freak of history, a child's game of time, the blowing up of a soap-bubble, perfect in its rondure and colouring, hollow in its heart and without substance. but japan has proved conclusively that this sudden revealment of her power is not a short-lived wonder, a chance product of time and tide, thrown up from the depth of obscurity to be swept away the next moment into the sea of oblivion. the truth is that japan is old and new at the same time. she has her legacy of ancient culture from the east,--the culture that enjoins man to look for his true wealth and power in his inner soul, the culture that gives self-possession in the face of loss and danger, self-sacrifice without counting the cost or hoping for gain, defiance of death, acceptance of countless social obligations that we owe to men as social beings. in a word, modern japan has come out of the immemorial east like a lotus blossoming in easy grace, all the while keeping its firm hold upon the profound depth from which it has sprung. and japan, the child of the ancient east, has also fearlessly claimed all the gifts of the modern age for herself. she has shown her bold spirit in breaking through the confinements of habits, useless accumulations of the lazy mind, which seeks safety in its thrift and its locks and keys. thus she has come in contact with the living time and has accepted with eagerness and aptitude the responsibilities of modern civilization. this it is which has given heart to the rest of asia. we have seen that the life and the strength are there in us, only the dead crust has to be removed. we have seen that taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of life to the fullest extent is living. i, for myself, cannot believe that japan has become what she is by imitating the west. we cannot imitate life, we cannot simulate strength for long, nay, what is more, a mere imitation is a source of weakness. for it hampers our true nature, it is always in our way. it is like dressing our skeleton with another man's skin, giving rise to eternal feuds between the skin and the bones at every movement. the real truth is that science is not man's nature, it is mere knowledge and training. by knowing the laws of the material universe you do not change your deeper humanity. you can borrow knowledge from others, but you cannot borrow temperament. but at the imitative stage of our schooling we cannot distinguish between the essential and the non-essential, between what is transferable and what is not. it is something like the faith of the primitive mind in the magical properties of the accidents of outward forms which accompany some real truth. we are afraid of leaving out something valuable and efficacious by not swallowing the husk with the kernel. but while our greed delights in wholesale appropriation, it is the function of our vital nature to assimilate, which is the only true appropriation for a living organism. where there is life it is sure to assert itself by its choice of acceptance and refusal according to its constitutional necessity. the living organism does not allow itself to grow into its food, it changes its food into its own body. and only thus can it grow strong and not by mere accumulation, or by giving up its personal identity. japan has imported her food from the west, but not her vital nature. japan cannot altogether lose and merge herself in the scientific paraphernalia she has acquired from the west and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. she has her own soul, which must assert itself over all her requirements. that she is capable of doing so, and that the process of assimilation is going on, have been amply proved by the signs of vigorous health that she exhibits. and i earnestly hope that japan may never lose her faith in her own soul, in the mere pride of her foreign acquisition. for that pride itself is a humiliation, ultimately leading to poverty and weakness. it is the pride of the fop who sets more store on his new headdress than on his head itself. the whole world waits to see what this great eastern nation is going to do with the opportunities and responsibilities she has accepted from the hands of the modern time. if it be a mere reproduction of the west, then the great expectation she has raised will remain unfulfilled. for there are grave questions that the western civilization has presented before the world but not completely answered. the conflict between the individual and the state, labour and capital, the man and the woman; the conflict between the greed of material gain and the spiritual life of man, the organized selfishness of nations and the higher ideals of humanity; the conflict between all the ugly complexities inseparable from giant organizations of commerce and state and the natural instincts of man crying for simplicity and beauty and fulness of leisure,--all these have to be brought to a harmony in a manner not yet dreamt of. we have seen this great stream of civilization choking itself from débris carried by its innumerable channels. we have seen that with all its vaunted love of humanity it has proved itself the greatest menace to man, far worse than the sudden outbursts of nomadic barbarism from which men suffered in the early ages of history. we have seen that, in spite of its boasted love of freedom, it has produced worse forms of slavery than ever were current in earlier societies,--slavery whose chains are unbreakable, either because they are unseen, or because they assume the names and appearance of freedom. we have seen, under the spell of its gigantic sordidness, man losing faith in all the heroic ideals of life which have made him great. therefore you cannot with a light heart accept the modern civilization with all its tendencies, methods and structures, and dream that they are inevitable. you must apply your eastern mind, your spiritual strength, your love of simplicity, your recognition of social obligation, in order to cut out a new path for this great unwieldy car of progress, shrieking out its loud discords as it runs. you must minimize the immense sacrifice of man's life and freedom that it claims in its every movement. for generations you have felt and thought and worked, have enjoyed and worshipped in your own special manner; and this cannot be cast off like old clothes. it is in your blood, in the marrow of your bones, in the texture of your flesh, in the tissue of your brains; and it must modify everything you lay your hands upon, without your knowing, even against your wishes. once you did solve the problems of man to your own satisfaction, you had your philosophy of life and evolved your own art of living. all this you must apply to the present situation, and out of it will arise a new creation and not a mere repetition, a creation which the soul of your people will own for itself and proudly offer to the world as its tribute to the welfare of man. of all countries in asia, here in japan you have the freedom to use the materials you have gathered from the west according to your genius and your need. therefore your responsibility is all the greater, for in your voice asia shall answer the questions that europe has submitted to the conference of man. in your land the experiments will be carried on by which the east will change the aspects of modern civilization, infusing life in it where it is a machine, substituting the human heart for cold expediency, not caring so much for power and success as for harmonious and living growth, for truth and beauty. i cannot but bring to your mind those days when the whole of eastern asia from burma to japan was united with india in the closest tie of friendship, the only natural tie which can exist between nations. there was a living communication of hearts, a nervous system evolved through which messages ran between us about the deepest needs of humanity. we did not stand in fear of each other, we had not to arm ourselves to keep each other in check; our relation was not that of self-interest, of exploration and spoliation of each other's pockets; ideas and ideals were exchanged, gifts of the highest love were offered and taken; no difference of languages and customs hindered us in approaching each other heart to heart; no pride of race or insolent consciousness of superiority, physical or mental, marred our relation; our arts and literatures put forth new leaves and flowers under the influence of this sunlight of united hearts; and races belonging to different lands and languages and histories acknowledged the highest unity of man and the deepest bond of love. may we not also remember that in those days of peace and goodwill, of men uniting for those supreme ends of life, your nature laid by for itself the balm of immortality which has helped your people to be born again in a new age, to be able to survive its old outworn structures and take on a new young body, to come out unscathed from the shock of the most wonderful revolution that the world has ever seen? the political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. it is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. it is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. it is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness. before this political civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp down great continents of the earth, we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy and consequent miseries, but never such a sight of fearful and hopeless voracity, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for turning great portions of the earth into mince-meat, never such terrible jealousies with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each other's vitals. this political civilization is scientific, not human. it is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. it betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. and it can be safely prophesied that this cannot go on, for there is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and to organized bodies of men. you cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. this public sapping of ethical ideals slowly reacts upon each member of society, gradually breeding weakness, where it is not seen, and causing that cynical distrust of all things sacred in human nature, which is the true symptom of senility. you must keep in mind that this political civilization, this creed of national patriotism, has not been given a long trial. the lamp of ancient greece is extinct in the land where it was first lighted, the power of rome lies dead and buried under the ruins of its vast empire. but the civilization, whose basis is society and the spiritual ideal of man, is still a living thing in china and in india. though it may look feeble and small, judged by the standard of the mechanical power of modern days, yet like small seeds it still contains life and will sprout and grow, and spread its beneficent branches, producing flowers and fruits when its time comes and showers of grace descend upon it from heaven. but ruins of sky-scrapers of power and broken machinery of greed, even god's rain is powerless to raise up again; for they were not of life, but went against life as a whole,--they are relics of the rebellion that shattered itself to pieces against the eternal. but the charge is brought against us that the ideals we cherish in the east are static, that they have not the impetus in them to move, to open out new vistas of knowledge and power, that the systems of philosophy which are the mainstays of the time-worn civilizations of the east despise all outward proofs, remaining stolidly satisfied in their subjective certainty. this proves that when our knowledge is vague we are apt to accuse of vagueness our object of knowledge itself. to a western observer our civilization appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man piano-playing appears to be mere movements of fingers and no music. he cannot think that we have found some deep basis of reality upon which we have built our institutions. unfortunately all proofs of reality are in realization. the reality of the scene before you depends only upon the fact that you can see, and it is difficult for us to prove to an unbeliever that our civilization is not a nebulous system of abstract speculations, that it has achieved something which is a positive truth,--a truth that can give man's heart its shelter and sustenance. it has evolved an inner sense,--a sense of vision, the vision of the infinite reality in all finite things. but he says, "you do not make any progress, there is no movement in you." i ask him, "how do you know it? you have to judge progress according to its aim. a railway train makes its progress towards the terminus station,--it is movement. but a full-grown tree has no definite movement of that kind, its progress is the inward progress of life. it lives, with its aspiration towards light tingling in its leaves and creeping in its silent sap." we also have lived for centuries, we still live, and we have our aspiration for a reality that has no end to its realization,--a reality that goes beyond death, giving it a meaning, that rises above all evils of life, bringing its peace and purity, its cheerful renunciation of self. the product of this inner life is a living product. it will be needed when the youth returns home weary and dust-laden, when the soldier is wounded, when the wealth is squandered away and pride is humbled, when man's heart cries for truth in the immensity of facts and harmony in the contradiction of tendencies. its value is not in its multiplication of materials, but in its spiritual fulfilment. there are things that cannot wait. you have to rush and run and march if you must fight or take the best place in the market. you strain your nerves and are on the alert when you chase opportunities that are always on the wing. but there are ideals which do not play hide-and-seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven's light to mature, and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect. the east with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the west, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window at the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. but the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. for if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. and thus shall wait the east till her time comes. i must not hesitate to acknowledge where europe is great, for great she is without doubt. we cannot help loving her with all our heart, and paying her the best homage of our admiration,--the europe who, in her literature and art, pours out an inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all time; the europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, winning her homage of knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all the resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit of hopeless resignation; the europe who is making the earth yield more fruit than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into man's service. such true greatness must have its motive power in spiritual strength. for only the spirit of man can defy all limitations, have faith in its ultimate success, throw its search-light beyond the immediate and the apparent, gladly suffer martyrdom for ends which cannot be achieved in its lifetime and accept failure without acknowledging defeat. in the heart of europe runs the purest stream of human love, of love of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. the christian culture of centuries has sunk deep in her life's core. in europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed; who have braved calumny and insult from their own people in fighting for humanity's cause and raising their voices against the mad orgies of militarism, against the rage for brutal retaliation or rapacity that sometimes takes possession of a whole people; who are always ready to make reparation for wrongs done in the past by their own nations and vainly attempt to stem the tide of cowardly injustice that flows unchecked because the resistance is weak and innocuous on the part of the injured. there are these knight-errants of modern europe who have not lost their faith in the disinterested love of freedom, in the ideals which own no geographical boundaries or national self-seeking. these are there to prove that the fountainhead of the water of everlasting life has not run dry in europe, and from thence she will have her rebirth time after time. only there, where europe is too consciously busy in building up her power, defying her deeper nature and mocking it, she is heaping up her iniquities to the sky, crying for god's vengeance and spreading the infection of ugliness, physical and moral, over the face of the earth with her heartless commerce heedlessly outraging man's sense of the beautiful and the good. europe is supremely good in her beneficence where her face is turned to all humanity; and europe is supremely evil in her maleficent aspect where her face is turned only upon her own interest, using all her power of greatness for ends which are against the infinite and the eternal in man. eastern asia has been pursuing its own path, evolving its own civilization, which was not political but social, not predatory and mechanically efficient but spiritual and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity. the solutions of the life problems of peoples were thought out in seclusion and carried out behind the security of aloofness, where all the dynastic changes and foreign invasions hardly touched them. but now we are overtaken by the outside world, our seclusion is lost for ever. yet this we must not regret, as a plant should never regret when the obscurity of its seed-time is broken. now the time has come when we must make the world problem our own problem; we must bring the spirit of our civilization into harmony with the history of all nations of the earth; we must not, in foolish pride, still keep ourselves fast within the shell of the seed and the crust of the earth which protected and nourished our ideals; for these, the shell and the crust, were meant to be broken, so that life may spring up in all its vigour and beauty, bringing its offerings to the world in open light. in this task of breaking the barrier and facing the world japan has come out the first in the east. she has infused hope in the heart of all asia. this hope provides the hidden fire which is needed for all works of creation. asia now feels that she must prove her life by producing living work, she must not lie passively dormant, or feebly imitate the west, in the infatuation of fear or flattery. for this we offer our thanks to this land of the rising sun and solemnly ask her to remember that she has the mission of the east to fulfil. she must infuse the sap of a fuller humanity into the heart of modern civilization. she must never allow it to get choked with the noxious undergrowth, but lead it up towards light and freedom, towards the pure air and broad space, where it can receive, in the dawn of its day and the darkness of its night, heaven's inspiration. let the greatness of her ideals become visible to all men like her snow-crowned fuji rising from the heart of the country into the region of the infinite, supremely distinct from its surroundings, beautiful like a maiden in its magnificent sweep of curve, yet firm and strong and serenely majestic. ii i have travelled in many countries and have met with men of all classes, but never in my travels did i feel the presence of the human so distinctly as in this land. in other great countries signs of man's power loomed large, and i saw vast organizations which showed efficiency in all their features. there, display and extravagance, in dress, in furniture, in costly entertainments, are startling. they seem to push you back into a corner, like a poor intruder at a feast; they are apt to make you envious, or take your breath away with amazement. there, you do not feel man as supreme; you are hurled against a stupendousness of things that alienates. but in japan it is not the display of power, or wealth, that is the predominating element. you see everywhere emblems of love and admiration, and not mostly of ambition and greed. you see a people whose heart has come out and scattered itself in profusion in its commonest utensils of everyday life, in its social institutions, in its manners, which are carefully perfect, and in its dealings with things which are not only deft but graceful in every movement. what has impressed me most in this country is the conviction that you have realized nature's secrets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but by sympathy. you have known her language of lines, and music of colours, the symmetry in her irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of movements; you have seen how she leads her immense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions; how the very conflicts in her creations break out in dance and music; how her exuberance has the aspect of the fulness of self-abandonment, and not a mere dissipation of display. you have discovered that nature reserves her power in forms of beauty; and it is this beauty which, like a mother, nourishes all the giant forces at her breast, keeping them in active vigour, yet in repose. you have known that energies of nature save themselves from wearing out by the rhythm of a perfect grace, and that she with the tenderness of her curved lines takes away fatigue from the world's muscles. i have felt that you have been able to assimilate these secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things has passed into your souls. a mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control. dominating nature from outside is a much simpler thing than making her your own in love's delight, which is a work of true genius. your race has shown that genius, not by acquirement, but by creation; not by display of things, but by manifestation of its own inner being. this creative power there is in all nations, and it is ever active in getting hold of men's natures and giving them a form according to its ideals. but here, in japan, it seems to have achieved its success, and deeply sunk into the minds of all men, and permeated their muscles and nerves. your instincts have become true, your senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill. the genius of europe has given her people the power of organization, which has specially made itself manifest in politics and commerce and in co-ordinating scientific knowledge. the genius of japan has given you the vision of beauty in nature and the power of realizing it in your life. all particular civilization is the interpretation of particular human experience. europe seems to have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the universe, which can only be brought under control by conquest. therefore she is ever ready for fight, and the best portion of her attention is occupied in organizing forces. but japan has felt, in her world, the touch of some presence, which has evoked in her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. she does not boast of her mastery of nature, but to her she brings, with infinite care and joy, her offerings of love. her relationship with the world is the deeper relationship of heart. this spiritual bond of love she has established with the hills of her country, with the sea and the streams, with the forests in all their flowery moods and varied physiognomy of branches; she has taken into her heart all the rustling whispers and sighing of the woodlands and sobbing of the waves; the sun and the moon she has studied in all the modulations of their lights and shades, and she is glad to close her shops to greet the seasons in her orchards and gardens and cornfields. this opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not confined to a section of your privileged classes, it is not the forced product of exotic culture, but it belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. this experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in the heart of the world, has been embodied in your civilization. it is a civilization of human relationship. your duty towards your state has naturally assumed the character of filial duty, your nation becoming one family with your emperor as its head. your national unity has not been evolved from the comradeship of arms for defensive and offensive purpose, or from partnership in raiding adventures, dividing among each member the danger and spoils of robbery. it is not an outcome of the necessity of organization for some ulterior purpose, but it is an extension of the family and the obligations of the heart in a wide field of space and time. the ideal of "maitri" is at the bottom of your culture,--"maitri" with men and "maitri" with nature. and the true expression of this love is in the language of beauty, which is so abundantly universal in this land. this is the reason why a stranger, like myself, instead of feeling envy or humiliation before these manifestations of beauty, these creations of love, feels a readiness to participate in the joy and glory of such revealment of the human heart. and this has made me all the more apprehensive of the change which threatens japanese civilization, as something like a menace to one's own person. for the huge heterogeneity of the modern age, whose only common bond is usefulness, is nowhere so pitifully exposed against the dignity and hidden power of reticent beauty as in japan. but the danger lies in this, that organized ugliness storms the mind and carries the day by its mass, by its aggressive persistence, by its power of mockery directed against the deeper sentiments of heart. its harsh obtrusiveness makes it forcibly visible to us, overcoming our senses,--and we bring sacrifices to its altar, as does a savage to the fetich which appears powerful because of its hideousness. therefore its rivalry with things that are modest and profound and have the subtle delicacy of life is to be dreaded. i am quite sure that there are men in your country who are not in sympathy with your inherited ideals; whose object is to gain, and not to grow. they are loud in their boast that they have modernized japan. while i agree with them so far as to say that the spirit of the race should harmonize with the spirit of the time, i must warn them that modernizing is a mere affectation of modernism, just as affectation of poesy is poetizing. it is nothing but mimicry, only affectation is louder than the original, and it is too literal. one must bear in mind that those who have the true modern spirit need not modernize, just as those who are truly brave are not braggarts. modernism is not in the dress of the europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned when they take their lessons; or in the square houses with flat, straight wall-surfaces, pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them loads of incongruities. these are not modern, but merely european. true modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. it is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under european schoolmasters. it is science, but not its wrong application in life,--a mere imitation of our science teachers who reduce it into a superstition, absurdly invoking its aid for all impossible purposes. life based upon mere science is attractive to some men, because it has all the characteristics of sport; it feigns seriousness, but is not profound. when you go a-hunting, the less pity you have the better; for your one object is to chase the game and kill it, to feel that you are the greater animal, that your method of destruction is thorough and scientific. and the life of science is that superficial life. it pursues success with skill and thoroughness, and takes no account of the higher nature of man. but those whose minds are crude enough to plan their lives upon the supposition that man is merely a hunter and his paradise the paradise of sportsmen will be rudely awakened in the midst of their trophies of skeletons and skulls. i do not for a moment suggest that japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. but this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation. she must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons; and when he, in his eagerness for power, multiplies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then it is he who is in even greater danger than his enemies. things that are living are so easily hurt; therefore they require protection. in nature, life protects itself within its coverings, which are built with life's own material. therefore they are in harmony with life's growth, or else when the time comes they easily give way and are forgotten. the living man has his true protection in his spiritual ideals, which have their vital connection with his life and grow with his growth. but, unfortunately, all his armour is not living,--some of it is made of steel, inert and mechanical. therefore, while making use of it, man has to be careful to protect himself from its tyranny. if he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul. and japan must have a firm faith in the moral law of existence to be able to assert to herself that the western nations are following that path of suicide, where they are smothering their humanity under the immense weight of organizations in order to keep themselves in power and hold others in subjection. what is dangerous for japan is, not the imitation of the outer features of the west, but the acceptance of the motive force of the western nationalism as her own. her social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics. i can see her motto, taken from science, "survival of the fittest," writ large at the entrance of her present-day history--the motto whose meaning is, "help yourself, and never heed what it costs to others"; the motto of the blind man who only believes in what he can touch, because he cannot see. but those who can see know that men are so closely knit that when you strike others the blow comes back to yourself. the moral law, which is the greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer the more he realizes himself in others. this truth has not only a subjective value, but is manifested in every department of our life. and nations who sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism will end their existence in a sudden and violent death. in past ages we had foreign invasions, but they never touched the soul of the people deeply. they were merely the outcome of individual ambitions. the people themselves, being free from the responsibilities of the baser and more heinous side of those adventures, had all the advantage of the heroic and the human disciplines derived from them. this developed their unflinching loyalty, their single-minded devotion to the obligations of honour, their power of complete self-surrender and fearless acceptance of death and danger. therefore the ideals, whose seats were in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies adopted by the kings or generals. but now, where the spirit of the western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means--by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. this is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. it is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. it is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. we can take anything else from the hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. never think for a moment that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you, or that the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to you for all time to come. to imbue the minds of a whole people with an abnormal vanity of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and ill-begotten wealth, to perpetuate humiliation of defeated nations by exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order to breed in children's minds contempt for others, is imitating the west where she has a festering sore, whose swelling is a swelling of disease eating into its vitality. our food crops, which are necessary for our sustenance, are products of centuries of selection and care. but the vegetation, which we have not to transform into our lives, does not require the patient thoughts of generations. it is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. likewise the culture, which has so kindly adapted itself to your soil--so intimate with life, so human--not only needed tilling and weeding in past ages, but still needs anxious work and watching. what is merely modern--as science and methods of organization--can be transplanted; but what is vitally human has fibres so delicate, and roots so numerous and far-reaching, that it dies when moved from its soil. therefore i am afraid of the rude pressure of the political ideals of the west upon your own. in political civilization, the state is an abstraction and relationship of men utilitarian. because it has no root in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals, which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. it is like a child who, in the excitement of his play, imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother. where man is at his greatest, he is unconscious. your civilization, whose mainspring is the bond of human relationship, has been nourished in the depth of a healthy life beyond reach of prying self-analysis. but a mere political relationship is all-conscious; it is an eruptive inflammation of aggressiveness. it has forcibly burst upon your notice. and the time has come when you have to be roused into full consciousness of the truth by which you live, so that you may not be taken unawares. the past has been god's gift to you; about the present, you must make your own choice. so the questions you have to put to yourselves are these--"have we read the world wrong, and based our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature? is the instinct of the west right, where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a universal distrust of humanity?" you must have detected a strong accent of fear whenever the west has discussed the possibility of the rise of an eastern race. the reason of it is this, that the power by whose help she thrives is an evil power; so long as it is held on her own side she can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. the vital ambition of the present civilization of europe is to have the exclusive possession of the devil. all her armaments and diplomacy are directed upon this one object. but these costly rituals for invocation of the evil spirit lead through a path of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. the furies of terror, which the west has let loose upon god's world, come back to threaten herself and goad her into preparations of more and more frightfulness; this gives her no rest, and makes her forget all else but the perils that she causes to others and incurs herself. to the worship of this devil of politics she sacrifices other countries as victims. she feeds upon their dead flesh and grows fat upon it, so long as the carcasses remain fresh,--but they are sure to rot at last, and the dead will take their revenge, by spreading pollution far and wide and poisoning the vitality of the feeder. japan had all her wealth of humanity, her harmony of heroism and beauty, her depth of self-control and richness of self-expression; yet the western nations felt no respect for her till she proved that the bloodhounds of satan are not only bred in the kennels of europe but can also be domesticated in japan and fed with man's miseries. they admit japan's equality with themselves, only when they know that japan also possesses the key to open the floodgate of hell-fire upon the fair earth whenever she chooses, and can dance, in their own measure, the devil dance of pillage, murder and ravishment of innocent women, while the world goes to ruin. we know that, in the early stage of man's moral immaturity, he only feels reverence for the god whose malevolence he dreads. but is this the ideal of man which we can look up to with pride? after centuries of civilization nations fearing each other like the prowling wild beasts of the night-time; shutting their doors of hospitality; combining only for purpose of aggression or defence; hiding in their holes their trade secrets, state secrets, secrets of their armaments; making peace-offerings to each other's barking dogs with the meat which does not belong to them; holding down fallen races which struggle to stand upon their feet; with their right hands dispensing religion to weaker peoples, while robbing them with their left,--is there anything in this to make us envious? are we to bend our knees to the spirit of this nationalism, which is sowing broadcast over all the world seeds of fear, greed, suspicion, unashamed lies of its diplomacy, and unctuous lies of its profession of peace and good-will and universal brotherhood of man? can our minds be free from doubt when we rush to the western market to buy this foreign product in exchange for our own inheritance? i am aware how difficult it is to know one's self; and the man who is intoxicated furiously denies his drunkenness; yet the west herself is anxiously thinking of her problems and trying experiments. but she is like a glutton, who has not the heart to give up his intemperance in eating, and fondly clings to the hope that he can cure his nightmares of indigestion by medicine. europe is not ready to give up her political inhumanity, with all the baser passions of man attendant upon it; she believes only in modification of systems, and not in change of heart. we are willing to buy their machine-made systems, not with our hearts, but with our brains. we shall try them and build sheds for them, but not enshrine them in our homes or temples. there are races who worship the animals they kill; we can buy meat from them when we are hungry, but not the worship which goes with the killing. we must not vitiate our children's minds with the superstition that business is business, war is war, politics is politics. we must know that man's business has to be more than mere business, and so should be his war and politics. you had your own industry in japan; how scrupulously honest and true it was, you can see by its products,--by their grace and strength, their conscientiousness in details, where they can hardly be observed. but the tidal wave of falsehood has swept over your land from that part of the world where business is business, and honesty is followed merely as the best policy. have you never felt shame when you see the trade advertisements, not only plastering the whole town with lies and exaggerations, but invading the green fields, where the peasants do their honest labour, and the hill-tops, which greet the first pure light of the morning? it is so easy to dull our sense of honour and delicacy of mind with constant abrasion, while falsehoods stalk abroad with proud steps in the name of trade, politics and patriotism, that any protest against their perpetual intrusion into our lives is considered to be sentimentalism, unworthy of true manliness. and it has come to pass that the children of those heroes who would keep their word at the point of death, who would disdain to cheat men for vulgar profit, who even in their fight would much rather court defeat than be dishonourable, have become energetic in dealing with falsehoods and do not feel humiliated by gaining advantage from them. and this has been effected by the charm of the word "modern." but if undiluted utility be modern, beauty is of all ages; if mean selfishness be modern, the human ideals are no new inventions. and we must know for certain that however modern may be the proficiency which cripples man for the sake of methods and machines, it will never live to be old. but while trying to free our minds from the arrogant claims of europe and to help ourselves out of the quicksands of our infatuation, we may go to the other extreme and blind ourselves with a wholesale suspicion of the west. the reaction of disillusionment is just as unreal as the first shock of illusion. we must try to come to that normal state of mind by which we can clearly discern our own danger and avoid it without being unjust towards the source of that danger. there is always the natural temptation in us of wishing to pay back europe in her own coin, and return contempt for contempt and evil for evil. but that again would be to imitate europe in one of her worst features, which comes out in her behaviour to people whom she describes as yellow or red, brown or black. and this is a point on which we in the east have to acknowledge our guilt and own that our sin has been as great, if not greater, when we insulted humanity by treating with utter disdain and cruelty men who belonged to a particular creed, colour or caste. it is really because we are afraid of our own weakness, which allows itself to be overcome by the sight of power, that we try to substitute for it another weakness which makes itself blind to the glories of the west. when we truly know the europe which is great and good, we can effectively save ourselves from the europe which is mean and grasping. it is easy to be unfair in one's judgment when one is faced with human miseries,--and pessimism is the result of building theories while the mind is suffering. to despair of humanity is only possible if we lose faith in truth which brings to it strength, when its defeat is greatest, and calls out new life from the depth of its destruction. we must admit that there is a living soul in the west which is struggling unobserved against the hugeness of the organizations under which men, women and children are being crushed, and whose mechanical necessities are ignoring laws that are spiritual and human,--the soul whose sensibilities refuse to be dulled completely by dangerous habits of heedlessness in dealings with races for whom it lacks natural sympathy. the west could never have risen to the eminence she has reached if her strength were merely the strength of the brute or of the machine. the divine in her heart is suffering from the injuries inflicted by her hands upon the world,--and from this pain of her higher nature flows the secret balm which will bring healing to those injuries. time after time she has fought against herself and has undone the chains which with her own hands she had fastened round helpless limbs; and though she forced poison down the throat of a great nation at the point of the sword for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw from it, to wash her hands clean again. this shows hidden springs of humanity in spots which look dead and barren. it proves that the deeper truth in her nature, which can survive such a career of cruel cowardliness, is not greed, but reverence for unselfish ideals. it would be altogether unjust, both to us and to europe, to say that she has fascinated the modern eastern mind by the mere exhibition of her power. through the smoke of cannons and dust of markets the light of her moral nature has shone bright, and she has brought to us the ideal of ethical freedom, whose foundation lies deeper than social conventions and whose province of activity is world-wide. the east has instinctively felt, even through her aversion, that she has a great deal to learn from europe, not merely about the materials of power, but about its inner source, which is of mind and of the moral nature of man. europe has been teaching us the higher obligations of public good above those of the family and the clan, and the sacredness of law, which makes society independent of individual caprice, secures for it continuity of progress, and guarantees justice to all men of all positions in life. above all things europe has held high before our minds the banner of liberty, through centuries of martyrdom and achievement,--liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in the ideals of art and literature. and because europe has won our deep respect, she has become so dangerous for us where she is turbulently weak and false,--dangerous like poison when it is served along with our best food. there is one safety for us upon which we hope we may count, and that is, that we can claim europe herself as our ally in our resistance to her temptations and to her violent encroachments; for she has ever carried her own standard of perfection, by which we can measure her falls and gauge her degrees of failure, by which we can call her before her own tribunal and put her to shame,--the shame which is the sign of the true pride of nobleness. but our fear is, that the poison may be more powerful than the food, and what is strength in her to-day may not be the sign of health, but the contrary; for it may be temporarily caused by the upsetting of the balance of life. our fear is that evil has a fateful fascination when it assumes dimensions which are colossal,--and though at last it is sure to lose its centre of gravity by its abnormal disproportion, the mischief which it creates before its fall may be beyond reparation. therefore i ask you to have the strength of faith and clarity of mind to know for certain that the lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by the iron bolts of efficiency, which runs upon the wheels of ambition, cannot hold together for long. collisions are certain to occur; for it has to travel upon organized lines, it is too heavy to choose its own course freely; and once it is off the rails, its endless train of vehicles is dislocated. a day will come when it will fall in a heap of ruin and cause serious obstruction to the traffic of the world. do we not see signs of this even now? does not the voice come to us, through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailings of despair, through the churning up of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages in the bottom of this nationalism,--the voice which cries to our soul that the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the dust, its light extinguished? my brothers, when the red light of conflagration sends up its crackle of laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those stars and not upon the fire of destruction. for when this conflagration consumes itself and dies down, leaving its memorial in ashes, the eternal light will again shine in the east,--the east which has been the birthplace of the morning sun of man's history. and who knows if that day has not already dawned, and the sun not risen, in the easternmost horizon of asia? and i offer, as did my ancestor rishis, my salutation to that sunrise of the east, which is destined once again to illumine the whole world. i know my voice is too feeble to raise itself above the uproar of this bustling time, and it is easy for any street urchin to fling against me the epithet of "unpractical." it will stick to my coat-tail, never to be washed away, effectively excluding me from the consideration of all respectable persons. i know what a risk one runs from the vigorously athletic crowds in being styled an idealist in these days, when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, i watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills,--with the great fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance,--the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and i felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment,--that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies. nationalism in india our real problem in india is not political. it is social. this is a condition not only prevailing in india, but among all nations. i do not believe in an exclusive political interest. politics in the west have dominated western ideals, and we in india are trying to imitate you. we have to remember that in europe, where peoples had their racial unity from the beginning, and where natural resources were insufficient for the inhabitants, the civilization has naturally taken the character of political and commercial aggressiveness. for on the one hand they had no internal complications, and on the other they had to deal with neighbours who were strong and rapacious. to have perfect combination among themselves and a watchful attitude of animosity against others was taken as the solution of their problems. in former days they organized and plundered, in the present age the same spirit continues--and they organize and exploit the whole world. but from the earliest beginnings of history india has had her own problem constantly before her--it is the race problem. each nation must be conscious of its mission, and we, in india, must realize that we cut a poor figure when we are trying to be political, simply because we have not yet been finally able to accomplish what was set before us by our providence. this problem of race unity which we have been trying to solve for so many years has likewise to be faced by you here in america. many people in this country ask me what is happening as to the caste distinctions in india. but when this question is asked me, it is usually done with a superior air. and i feel tempted to put the same question to our american critics with a slight modification, "what have you done with the red indian and the negro?" for you have not got over your attitude of caste toward them. you have used violent methods to keep aloof from other races, but until you have solved the question here in america, you have no right to question india. in spite of our great difficulty, however, india has done something. she has tried to make an adjustment of races, to acknowledge the real differences between them where these exist, and yet seek for some basis of unity. this basis has come through our saints, like nanak, kabir, chaitnaya and others, preaching one god to all races of india. in finding the solution of our problem we shall have helped to solve the world problem as well. what india has been, the whole world is now. the whole world is becoming one country through scientific facility. and the moment is arriving when you also must find a basis of unity which is not political. if india can offer to the world her solution, it will be a contribution to humanity. there is only one history--the history of man. all national histories are merely chapters in the larger one. and we are content in india to suffer for such a great cause. each individual has his self-love. therefore his brute instinct leads him to fight with others in the sole pursuit of his self-interest. but man has also his higher instincts of sympathy and mutual help. the people who are lacking in this higher moral power and who therefore cannot combine in fellowship with one another must perish or live in a state of degradation. only those peoples have survived and achieved civilization who have this spirit of co-operation strong in them. so we find that from the beginning of history men had to choose between fighting with one another and combining, between serving their own interest or the common interest of all. in our early history, when the geographical limits of each country and also the facilities of communication were small, this problem was comparatively small in dimension. it was sufficient for men to develop their sense of unity within their area of segregation. in those days they combined among themselves and fought against others. but it was this moral spirit of combination which was the true basis of their greatness, and this fostered their art, science and religion. at that early time the most important fact that man had to take count of was the fact of the members of one particular race of men coming in close contact with one another. those who truly grasped this fact through their higher nature made their mark in history. the most important fact of the present age is that all the different races of men have come close together. and again we are confronted with two alternatives. the problem is whether the different groups of peoples shall go on fighting with one another or find out some true basis of reconciliation and mutual help; whether it will be interminable competition or co-operation. i have no hesitation in saying that those who are gifted with the moral power of love and vision of spiritual unity, who have the least feeling of enmity against aliens, and the sympathetic insight to place themselves in the position of others, will be the fittest to take their permanent place in the age that is lying before us, and those who are constantly developing their instinct of fight and intolerance of aliens will be eliminated. for this is the problem before us, and we have to prove our humanity by solving it through the help of our higher nature. the gigantic organizations for hurting others and warding off their blows, for making money by dragging others back, will not help us. on the contrary, by their crushing weight, their enormous cost and their deadening effect upon living humanity, they will seriously impede our freedom in the larger life of a higher civilization. during the evolution of the nation the moral culture of brotherhood was limited by geographical boundaries, because at that time those boundaries were true. now they have become imaginary lines of tradition divested of the qualities of real obstacles. so the time has come when man's moral nature must deal with this great fact with all seriousness or perish. the first impulse of this change of circumstance has been the churning up of man's baser passions of greed and cruel hatred. if this persists indefinitely, and armaments go on exaggerating themselves to unimaginable absurdities, and machines and storehouses envelop this fair earth with their dirt and smoke and ugliness, then it will end in a conflagration of suicide. therefore man will have to exert all his power of love and clarity of vision to make another great moral adjustment which will comprehend the whole world of men and not merely the fractional groups of nationality. the call has come to every individual in the present age to prepare himself and his surroundings for this dawn of a new era, when man shall discover his soul in the spiritual unity of all human beings. if it is given at all to the west to struggle out of these tangles of the lower slopes to the spiritual summit of humanity then i cannot but think that it is the special mission of america to fulfil this hope of god and man. you are the country of expectation, desiring something else than what is. europe has her subtle habits of mind and her conventions. but america, as yet, has come to no conclusions. i realize how much america is untrammelled by the traditions of the past, and i can appreciate that experimentalism is a sign of america's youth. the foundation of her glory is in the future, rather than in the past; and if one is gifted with the power of clairvoyance, one will be able to love the america that is to be. america is destined to justify western civilization to the east. europe has lost faith in humanity, and has become distrustful and sickly. america, on the other hand, is not pessimistic or blasé. you know, as a people, that there is such a thing as a better and a best; and that knowledge drives you on. there are habits that are not merely passive but aggressively arrogant. they are not like mere walls, but are like hedges of stinging nettles. europe has been cultivating these hedges of habits for long years, till they have grown round her dense and strong and high. the pride of her traditions has sent its roots deep into her heart. i do not wish to contend that it is unreasonable. but pride in every form breeds blindness at the end. like all artificial stimulants its first effect is a heightening of consciousness, and then with the increasing dose it muddles it and brings an exultation that is misleading. europe has gradually grown hardened in her pride in all her outer and inner habits. she not only cannot forget that she is western, but she takes every opportunity to hurl this fact against others to humiliate them. this is why she is growing incapable of imparting to the east what is best in herself, and of accepting in a right spirit the wisdom that the east has stored for centuries. in america national habits and traditions have not had time to spread their clutching roots round your hearts. you have constantly felt and complained of your disadvantages when you compared your nomadic restlessness with the settled traditions of europe--the europe which can show her picture of greatness to the best advantage because she can fix it against the background of the past. but in this present age of transition, when a new era of civilization is sending its trumpet-call to all peoples of the world across an unlimited future, this very freedom of detachment will enable you to accept its invitation and to achieve the goal for which europe began her journey but lost herself midway. for she was tempted out of her path by her pride of power and greed of possession. not merely your freedom from habits of mind in individuals, but also the freedom of your history from all unclean entanglements, fits you in your career of holding the banner of civilization of the future. all the great nations of europe have their victims in other parts of the world. this not only deadens their moral sympathy but also their intellectual sympathy, which is so necessary for the understanding of races which are different from one's own. englishmen can never truly understand india, because their minds are not disinterested with regard to that country. if you compare england with germany or france you will find she has produced the smallest number of scholars who have studied indian literature and philosophy with any amount of sympathetic insight or thoroughness. this attitude of apathy and contempt is natural where the relationship is abnormal and founded upon national selfishness and pride. but your history has been disinterested, and that is why you have been able to help japan in her lessons in western civilization, and that is why china can look upon you with her best confidence in this her darkest period of danger. in fact you are carrying all the responsibility of a great future because you are untrammelled by the grasping miserliness of a past. therefore of all countries of the earth america has to be fully conscious of this future, her vision must not be obscured and her faith in humanity must be strong with the strength of youth. a parallelism exists between america and india--the parallelism of welding together into one body various races. in my country we have been seeking to find out something common to all races, which will prove their real unity. no nation looking for a mere political or commercial basis of unity will find such a solution sufficient. men of thought and power will discover the spiritual unity, will realize it, and preach it. india has never had a real sense of nationalism. even though from childhood i had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for god and humanity, i believe i have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their india by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity. the educated indian at present is trying to absorb some lessons from history contrary to the lessons of our ancestors. the east, in fact, is attempting to take unto itself a history which is not the outcome of its own living. japan, for example, thinks she is getting powerful through adopting western methods, but, after she has exhausted her inheritance, only the borrowed weapons of civilization will remain to her. she will not have developed herself from within. europe has her past. europe's strength therefore lies in her history. we, in india, must make up our minds that we cannot borrow other people's history, and that if we stifle our own we are committing suicide. when you borrow things that do not belong to your life, they only serve to crush your life. and therefore i believe that it does india no good to compete with western civilization in its own field. but we shall be more than compensated if, in spite of the insults heaped upon us, we follow our own destiny. there are lessons which impart information or train our minds for intellectual pursuits. these are simple and can be acquired and used with advantage. but there are others which affect our deeper nature and change our direction of life. before we accept them and pay their value by selling our own inheritance, we must pause and think deeply. in man's history there come ages of fireworks which dazzle us by their force and movement. they laugh not only at our modest household lamps but also at the eternal stars. but let us not for that provocation be precipitate in our desire to dismiss our lamps. let us patiently bear our present insult and realize that these fireworks have splendour but not permanence, because of the extreme explosiveness which is the cause of their power, and also of their exhaustion. they are spending a fatal quantity of energy and substance compared to their gain and production. anyhow, our ideals have been evolved through our own history, and even if we wished we could only make poor fireworks of them, because their materials are different from yours, as is also their moral purpose. if we cherish the desire of paying our all to buy a political nationality it will be as absurd as if switzerland had staked her existence on her ambition to build up a navy powerful enough to compete with that of england. the mistake that we make is in thinking that man's channel of greatness is only one--the one which has made itself painfully evident for the time being by its depth of insolence. we must know for certain that there is a future before us and that future is waiting for those who are rich in moral ideals and not in mere things. and it is the privilege of man to work for fruits that are beyond his immediate reach, and to adjust his life not in slavish conformity to the examples of some present success or even to his own prudent past, limited in its aspiration, but to an infinite future bearing in its heart the ideals of our highest expectations. we must recognize that it is providential that the west has come to india. and yet some one must show the east to the west, and convince the west that the east has her contribution to make to the history of civilization. india is no beggar of the west. and yet even though the west may think she is, i am not for thrusting off western civilization and becoming segregated in our independence. let us have a deep association. if providence wants england to be the channel of that communication, of that deeper association, i am willing to accept it with all humility. i have great faith in human nature, and i think the west will find its true mission. i speak bitterly of western civilization when i am conscious that it is betraying its trust and thwarting its own purpose. the west must not make herself a curse to the world by using her power for her own selfish needs, but, by teaching the ignorant and helping the weak, she should save herself from the worst danger that the strong is liable to incur by making the feeble acquire power enough to resist her intrusion. and also she must not make her materialism to be the final thing, but must realize that she is doing a service in freeing the spiritual being from the tyranny of matter. i am not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations. what is the nation? it is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. this organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. but this strenuous effort after strength and efficiency drains man's energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative. for thereby man's power of sacrifice is diverted from his ultimate object, which is moral, to the maintenance of this organization, which is mechanical. yet in this he feels all the satisfaction of moral exaltation and therefore becomes supremely dangerous to humanity. he feels relieved of the urging of his conscience when he can transfer his responsibility to this machine which is the creation of his intellect and not of his complete moral personality. by this device the people which loves freedom perpetuates slavery in a large portion of the world with the comfortable feeling of pride of having done its duty; men who are naturally just can be cruelly unjust both in their act and their thought, accompanied by a feeling that they are helping the world to receive its deserts; men who are honest can blindly go on robbing others of their human rights for self-aggrandizement, all the while abusing the deprived for not deserving better treatment. we have seen in our everyday life even small organizations of business and profession produce callousness of feeling in men who are not naturally bad, and we can well imagine what a moral havoc it is causing in a world where whole peoples are furiously organizing themselves for gaining wealth and power. nationalism is a great menace. it is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of india's troubles. and inasmuch as we have been ruled and dominated by a nation that is strictly political in its attitude, we have tried to develop within ourselves, despite our inheritance from the past, a belief in our eventual political destiny. there are different parties in india, with different ideals. some are struggling for political independence. others think that the time has not arrived for that, and yet believe that india should have the rights that the english colonies have. they wish to gain autonomy as far as possible. in the beginning of the history of political agitation in india there was not the conflict between parties which there is to-day. at that time there was a party known as the indian congress; it had no real programme. they had a few grievances for redress by the authorities. they wanted larger representation in the council house, and more freedom in municipal government. they wanted scraps of things, but they had no constructive ideal. therefore i was lacking in enthusiasm for their methods. it was my conviction that what india most needed was constructive work coming from within herself. in this work we must take all risks and go on doing the duties which by right are ours, though in the teeth of persecution; winning moral victory at every step, by our failure and suffering. we must show those who are over us that we have in ourselves the strength of moral power, the power to suffer for truth. where we have nothing to show, we have only to beg. it would be mischievous if the gifts we wish for were granted to us at once, and i have told my countrymen, time and again, to combine for the work of creating opportunities to give vent to our spirit of self-sacrifice, and not for the purpose of begging. the party, however, lost power because the people soon came to realize how futile was the half policy adopted by them. the party split, and there arrived the extremists, who advocated independence of action, and discarded the begging method,--the easiest method of relieving one's mind from his responsibility towards his country. their ideals were based on western history. they had no sympathy with the special problems of india. they did not recognize the patent fact that there were causes in our social organization which made the indian incapable of coping with the alien. what should we do if, for any reason, england was driven away? we should simply be victims for other nations. the same social weaknesses would prevail. the thing we in india have to think of is this--to remove those social customs and ideals which have generated a want of self-respect and a complete dependence on those above us,--a state of affairs which has been brought about entirely by the domination in india of the caste system, and the blind and lazy habit of relying upon the authority of traditions that are incongruous anachronisms in the present age. once again i draw your attention to the difficulties india has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. her problem was the problem of the world in miniature. india is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. it is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. it is just the opposite of what europe truly is, namely, one country made into many. thus europe in its culture and growth has had the advantage of the strength of the many as well as the strength of the one. india, on the contrary, being naturally many, yet adventitiously one, has all along suffered from the looseness of its diversity and the feebleness of its unity. a true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden easily; but diversity is a many-cornered thing which has to be dragged and pushed with all force. be it said to the credit of india that this diversity was not her own creation; she has had to accept it as a fact from the beginning of her history. in america and australia, europe has simplified her problem by almost exterminating the original population. even in the present age this spirit of extermination is making itself manifest, in the inhospitable shutting out of aliens, by those who themselves were aliens in the lands they now occupy. but india tolerated difference of races from the first, and that spirit of toleration has acted all through her history. her caste system is the outcome of this spirit of toleration. for india has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences. the tie has been as loose as possible, yet as close as the circumstances permitted. this has produced something like a united states of a social federation, whose common name is hinduism. india had felt that diversity of races there must be and should be, whatever may be its drawback, and you can never coerce nature into your narrow limits of convenience without paying one day very dearly for it. in this india was right; but what she failed to realize was that in human beings differences are not like the physical barriers of mountains, fixed for ever--they are fluid with life's flow, they are changing their courses and their shapes and volume. therefore in her caste regulations india recognized differences, but not the mutability which is the law of life. in trying to avoid collisions she set up boundaries of immovable walls, thus giving to her numerous races the negative benefit of peace and order but not the positive opportunity of expansion and movement. she accepted nature where it produces diversity, but ignored it where it uses that diversity for its world-game of infinite permutations and combinations. she treated life in all truth where it is manifold, but insulted it where it is ever moving. therefore life departed from her social system and in its place she is worshipping with all ceremony the magnificent cage of countless compartments that she has manufactured. the same thing happened where she tried to ward off the collisions of trade interests. she associated different trades and professions with different castes. this had the effect of allaying for good the interminable jealousy and hatred of competition--the competition which breeds cruelty and makes the atmosphere thick with lies and deception. in this also india laid all her emphasis upon the law of heredity, ignoring the law of mutation, and thus gradually reduced arts into crafts and genius into skill. however, what western observers fail to discern is that in her caste system india in all seriousness accepted her responsibility to solve the race problem in such a manner as to avoid all friction, and yet to afford each race freedom within its boundaries. let us admit india has not in this achieved a full measure of success. but this you must also concede, that the west, being more favourably situated as to homogeneity of races, has never given her attention to this problem, and whenever confronted with it she has tried to make it easy by ignoring it altogether. and this is the source of her anti-asiatic agitations for depriving aliens of their right to earn their honest living on these shores. in most of your colonies you only admit them on condition of their accepting the menial position of hewers of wood and drawers of water. either you shut your doors against the aliens or reduce them into slavery. and this is your solution of the problem of race-conflict. whatever may be its merits you will have to admit that it does not spring from the higher impulses of civilization, but from the lower passions of greed and hatred. you say this is human nature--and india also thought she knew human nature when she strongly barricaded her race distinctions by the fixed barriers of social gradations. but we have found out to our cost that human nature is not what it seems, but what it is in truth; which is in its infinite possibilities. and when we in our blindness insult humanity for its ragged appearance it sheds its disguise to disclose to us that we have insulted our god. the degradation which we cast upon others in our pride or self-interest degrades our own humanity--and this is the punishment which is most terrible, because we do not detect it till it is too late. not only in your relation with aliens but with the different sections of your own society you have not achieved harmony of reconciliation. the spirit of conflict and competition is allowed the full freedom of its reckless career. and because its genesis is the greed of wealth and power it can never come to any other end but to a violent death. in india the production of commodities was brought under the law of social adjustments. its basis was co-operation, having for its object the perfect satisfaction of social needs. but in the west it is guided by the impulse of competition, whose end is the gain of wealth for individuals. but the individual is like the geometrical line; it is length without breadth. it has not got the depth to be able to hold anything permanently. therefore its greed or gain can never come to finality. in its lengthening process of growth it can cross other lines and cause entanglements, but will ever go on missing the ideal of completeness in its thinness of isolation. in all our physical appetites we recognize a limit. we know that to exceed that limit is to exceed the limit of health. but has this lust for wealth and power no bounds beyond which is death's dominion? in these national carnivals of materialism are not the western peoples spending most of their vital energy in merely producing things and neglecting the creation of ideals? and can a civilization ignore the law of moral health and go on in its endless process of inflation by gorging upon material things? man in his social ideals naturally tries to regulate his appetites, subordinating them to the higher purpose of his nature. but in the economic world our appetites follow no other restrictions but those of supply and demand which can be artificially fostered, affording individuals opportunities for indulgence in an endless feast of grossness. in india our social instincts imposed restrictions upon our appetites,--maybe it went to the extreme of repression,--but in the west the spirit of economic organization with no moral purpose goads the people into the perpetual pursuit of wealth; but has this no wholesome limit? the ideals that strive to take form in social institutions have two objects. one is to regulate our passions and appetites for the harmonious development of man, and the other is to help him to cultivate disinterested love for his fellow-creatures. therefore society is the expression of those moral and spiritual aspirations of man which belong to his higher nature. our food is creative, it builds our body; but not so wine, which stimulates. our social ideals create the human world, but when our mind is diverted from them to greed of power then in that state of intoxication we live in a world of abnormality where our strength is not health and our liberty is not freedom. therefore political freedom does not give us freedom when our mind is not free. an automobile does not create freedom of movement, because it is a mere machine. when i myself am free i can use the automobile for the purpose of my freedom. we must never forget in the present day that those people who have got their political freedom are not necessarily free, they are merely powerful. the passions which are unbridled in them are creating huge organizations of slavery in the disguise of freedom. those who have made the gain of money their highest end are unconsciously selling their life and soul to rich persons or to the combinations that represent money. those who are enamoured of their political power and gloat over their extension of dominion over foreign races gradually surrender their own freedom and humanity to the organizations necessary for holding other peoples in slavery. in the so-called free countries the majority of the people are not free, they are driven by the minority to a goal which is not even known to them. this becomes possible only because people do not acknowledge moral and spiritual freedom as their object. they create huge eddies with their passions, and they feel dizzily inebriated with the mere velocity of their whirling movement, taking that to be freedom. but the doom which is waiting to overtake them is as certain as death--for man's truth is moral truth and his emancipation is in the spiritual life. the general opinion of the majority of the present-day nationalists in india is that we have come to a final completeness in our social and spiritual ideals, the task of the constructive work of society having been done several thousand years before we were born, and that now we are free to employ all our activities in the political direction. we never dream of blaming our social inadequacy as the origin of our present helplessness, for we have accepted as the creed of our nationalism that this social system has been perfected for all time to come by our ancestors, who had the superhuman vision of all eternity and supernatural power for making infinite provision for future ages. therefore, for all our miseries and shortcomings, we hold responsible the historical surprises that burst upon us from outside. this is the reason why we think that our one task is to build a political miracle of freedom upon the quicksand of social slavery. in fact we want to dam up the true course of our own historical stream, and only borrow power from the sources of other peoples' history. those of us in india who have come under the delusion that mere political freedom will make us free have accepted their lessons from the west as the gospel truth and lost their faith in humanity. we must remember whatever weakness we cherish in our society will become the source of danger in politics. the same inertia which leads us to our idolatry of dead forms in social institutions will create in our politics prison-houses with immovable walls. the narrowness of sympathy which makes it possible for us to impose upon a considerable portion of humanity the galling yoke of inferiority will assert itself in our politics in creating the tyranny of injustice. when our nationalists talk about ideals they forget that the basis of nationalism is wanting. the very people who are upholding these ideals are themselves the most conservative in their social practice. nationalists say, for example, look at switzerland where, in spite of race differences, the peoples have solidified into a nation. yet, remember that in switzerland the races can mingle, they can intermarry, because they are of the same blood. in india there is no common birthright. and when we talk of western nationality we forget that the nations there do not have that physical repulsion, one for the other, that we have between different castes. have we an instance in the whole world where a people who are not allowed to mingle their blood shed their blood for one another except by coercion or for mercenary purposes? and can we ever hope that these moral barriers against our race amalgamation will not stand in the way of our political unity? then again we must give full recognition to this fact that our social restrictions are still tyrannical, so much so as to make men cowards. if a man tells me he has heterodox ideas, but that he cannot follow them because he would be socially ostracized, i excuse him for having to live a life of untruth, in order to live at all. the social habit of mind which impels us to make the life of our fellow-beings a burden to them where they differ from us even in such a thing as their choice of food, is sure to persist in our political organization and result in creating engines of coercion to crush every rational difference which is the sign of life. and tyranny will only add to the inevitable lies and hypocrisy in our political life. is the mere name of freedom so valuable that we should be willing to sacrifice for its sake our moral freedom? the intemperance of our habits does not immediately show its effects when we are in the vigour of our youth. but it gradually consumes that vigour, and when the period of decline sets in then we have to settle accounts and pay off our debts, which leads us to insolvency. in the west you are still able to carry your head high, though your humanity is suffering every moment from its dipsomania of organizing power. india also in the heyday of her youth could carry in her vital organs the dead weight of her social organizations stiffened to rigid perfection, but it has been fatal to her, and has produced a gradual paralysis of her living nature. and this is the reason why the educated community of india has become insensible of her social needs. they are taking the very immobility of our social structures as the sign of their perfection,--and because the healthy feeling of pain is dead in the limbs of our social organism they delude themselves into thinking that it needs no ministration. therefore they think that all their energies need their only scope in the political field. it is like a man whose legs have become shrivelled and useless, trying to delude himself that these limbs have grown still because they have attained their ultimate salvation, and all that is wrong about him is the shortness of his sticks. so much for the social and the political regeneration of india. now we come to her industries, and i am very often asked whether there is in india any industrial regeneration since the advent of the british government. it must be remembered that at the beginning of the british rule in india our industries were suppressed, and since then we have not met with any real help or encouragement to enable us to make a stand against the monster commercial organizations of the world. the nations have decreed that we must remain purely an agricultural people, even forgetting the use of arms for all time to come. thus india is being turned into so many predigested morsels of food ready to be swallowed at any moment by any nation which has even the most rudimentary set of teeth in its head. india therefore has very little outlet for her industrial originality. i personally do not believe in the unwieldy organizations of the present day. the very fact that they are ugly shows that they are in discordance with the whole creation. the vast powers of nature do not reveal their truth in hideousness, but in beauty. beauty is the signature which the creator stamps upon his works when he is satisfied with them. all our products that insolently ignore the laws of perfection and are unashamed in their display of ungainliness bear the perpetual weight of god's displeasure. so far as your commerce lacks the dignity of grace it is untrue. beauty and her twin brother truth require leisure and self-control for their growth. but the greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. its one object is to produce and consume. it has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. it is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, moulding them into money. it is this ugly vulgarity of commerce which brought upon it the censure of contempt in our earlier days, when men had leisure to have an unclouded vision of perfection in humanity. men in those times were rightly ashamed of the instinct of mere money-making. but in this scientific age money, by its very abnormal bulk, has won its throne. and when from its eminence of piled-up things it insults the higher instincts of man, banishing beauty and noble sentiments from its surroundings, we submit. for we in our meanness have accepted bribes from its hands and our imagination has grovelled in the dust before its immensity of flesh. but its very unwieldiness and its endless complexities are its true signs of failure. the swimmer who is an expert does not exhibit his muscular force by violent movements, but exhibits some power which is invisible and which shows itself in perfect grace and reposefulness. the true distinction of man from animals is in his power and worth which are inner and invisible. but the present-day commercial civilization of man is not only taking too much time and space but killing time and space. its movements are violent, its noise is discordantly loud. it is carrying its own damnation because it is trampling into distortion the humanity upon which it stands. it is strenuously turning out money at the cost of happiness. man is reducing himself to his minimum in order to be able to make amplest room for his organizations. he is deriding his human sentiments into shame because they are apt to stand in the way of his machines. in our mythology we have the legend that the man who performs penances for attaining immortality has to meet with temptations sent by indra, the lord of the immortals. if he is lured by them he is lost. the west has been striving for centuries after its goal of immortality. indra has sent her the temptation to try her. it is the gorgeous temptation of wealth. she has accepted it, and her civilization of humanity has lost its path in the wilderness of machinery. this commercialism with its barbarity of ugly decorations is a terrible menace to all humanity, because it is setting up the ideal of power over that of perfection. it is making the cult of self-seeking exult in its naked shamelessness. our nerves are more delicate than our muscles. things that are the most precious in us are helpless as babes when we take away from them the careful protection which they claim from us for their very preciousness. therefore, when the callous rudeness of power runs amuck in the broad-way of humanity it scares away by its grossness the ideals which we have cherished with the martyrdom of centuries. the temptation which is fatal for the strong is still more so for the weak. and i do not welcome it in our indian life, even though it be sent by the lord of the immortals. let our life be simple in its outer aspect and rich in its inner gain. let our civilization take its firm stand upon its basis of social co-operation and not upon that of economic exploitation and conflict. how to do it in the teeth of the drainage of our life-blood by the economic dragons is the task set before the thinkers of all oriental nations who have faith in the human soul. it is a sign of laziness and impotency to accept conditions imposed upon us by others who have other ideals than ours. we should actively try to adapt the world powers to guide our history to its own perfect end. from the above you will know that i am not an economist. i am willing to acknowledge that there is a law of demand and supply and an infatuation of man for more things than are good for him. and yet i will persist in believing that there is such a thing as the harmony of completeness in humanity, where poverty does not take away his riches, where defeat may lead him to victory, death to immortality, and where in the compensation of eternal justice those who are the last may yet have their insult transmuted into a golden triumph. the sunset of the century (_written in the bengali on the last day of last century_) 1 the last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the west and the whirlwind of hatred. the naked passion of self-love of nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance. 2 the hungry self of the nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its own shameless feeding. for it has made the world its food, and licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels, it swells and swells till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden shaft of heaven piercing its heart of grossness. 3 the crimson glow of light on the horizon is not the light of thy dawn of peace, my motherland. it is the glimmer of the funeral pyre burning to ashes the vast flesh,--the self-love of the nation--dead under its own excess. thy morning waits behind the patient dark of the east, meek and silent. 4 keep watch, india. bring your offerings of worship for that sacred sunrise. let the first hymn of its welcome sound in your voice and sing "come, peace, thou daughter of god's own great suffering. come with thy treasure of contentment, the sword of fortitude, and meekness crowning thy forehead." 5 be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful with your white robe of simpleness. let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. build god's throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty and know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting. the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. indian home rule by m. k. gandhi fifth edition as. 6 ganesh & co., madras books by c. f. andrews the claim for independence within or without the british empire =price as. 8.= non-co-operation the whys and wherefores =price as. 8.= indians in south africa helots within the british empire =price as. 8.= the drink and opium evil _miss la molte says_: "a nation that can subjugate 300,000,000 helpless indian people, and then turn them into drug addicts, for the sake of revenue, is a nation, which commits a cold-blooded atrocity unparalleled by any atrocity committed in the rage and heat of war." =price as. 4.= how india can be free "india has no need to take the sword in order to be free: she has a much more powerful weapon ready to her hand. if once her people unitedly decide to be free they can be free." =price as. 4.= indian independence: the immediate need to be in subjection to a band of foreign rulers, if seeley's historical maxim is true, cannot but lead to national deterioration. this is why the need for independence is so immediate. this is why it cannot be postponed. the verdict of the most sober english historians is this, that india, without a single hand being lifted to strike a single blow, can determine her own destiny. the sheer weight of numbers,--three hundred and twenty millions against a few thousands,--is so great, that if these numbers could once speak with one mind, their will must be carried out. =price as. 8.= ganesh & co., publishers, madras. indian home rule by m. k. gandhi reprinted with a new foreword by the author fifth edition ganesh & co., madras 1922 madras: the modern printing works, mount road. note the doctrine of violence is more widely believed in than is generally realised. the votaries of violence can be divided into two classes. some, a small and dwindling class, believe in it and are prepared to act according to their faith. others, a very large class always, and now, after bitter experiences of the failure of constitutional agitation, larger than ever, believe in violence, but that belief does not lead them to action. it disables them from work on any basis other than force. the belief in violence serves to dissuade them from all other kinds of work or sacrifice. in both cases the evil is great. there can be no reconstruction or hope for this land of ours, unless we eradicate the worship of force in all its forms, and establish work on a basis other than violence. a refutation of the doctrine of violence is, in the present situation of the affairs of our country, more necessary than ever. to this end, nothing better can be conceived than the publication and wide distribution of mr. gandhi's famous book. it was extremely patriotic of messrs. ganesh and company to have readily agreed to undertake the work when they were approached with the request. satyagrah sabha, } madras, } c. rajagopalachar. 6-6-19. } foreword i have re-read this booklet more than once. the value at the present moment lies in re-printing it as it is. but if i had to revise it, there is only one word i would alter in accordance with a promise made to an english friend. she took exception to my use of the word 'prostitute' in speaking of the parliament. her fine taste recoiled from the indelicacy of the expression. i remind the reader that the booklet purports to be a free translation of the original which is in gujarati. after years of endeavour to put into practice the views expressed in the following pages, i feel that the way shown therein is the only true way to swaraj. satyagrah--the law of love is the law of life. departure from it leads to disintegration. a firm adherence to it leads to regeneration. bombay, } _28th may, 1919_. } m. k. gandhi. hind swaraj or the indian home rule _reply to critics_ it is certainly my good fortune that this booklet of mine is receiving wide attention. the original is in gujarati. it had a chequered career. it was first published in the columns of the 'indian opinion' of south africa. it was written in 1908 during my return voyage from london to south africa in answer to the indian school of violence, and its prototype in south africa. i came in contact with every known indian anarchist in london. their bravery impressed me, but i feel that their zeal was misguided. i felt that violence was no remedy for india's ills, and that her civilization required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection. the _satyagrah_ of south africa was still an infant hardly two years old. but it had developed sufficiently to permit me to write of it with some degree of confidence. it was so much appreciated that it was published as a booklet. it attracted some attention in india. the bombay government prohibited its circulation. i replied by publishing its translation. i thought that it was due to my english friends that they should know its contents. in my opinion it is a book which can be put into the hands of a child. it teaches the gospel of love in the place of that of hate. it replaces violence with self-sacrifice. it pits soul force against brute force. it has gone through several editions and i commend it to those who would care to read it. i withdraw nothing except one word of it, and that in deference to a lady friend. i have given the reason for the alteration in the preface to the indian edition. the booklet is a severe condemnation of 'modern civilization.' it was written in 1908. my conviction is deeper to-day than ever. i feel that if india would discard 'modern civilization' she can only gain by doing so. but i would warn the reader against thinking that i am to-day aiming at the swaraj described therein. i know that india is not ripe for it. it may seem an impertinence to say so. but such is my conviction. i am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein. but to-day my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of parliamentary swaraj in accordance with the wishes of the people of india. i am not aiming at destroying railways or hospitals, though i would certainly welcome their natural destruction. neither railways nor hospitals are a test of a high and pure civilization. at best they are a necessary evil. neither adds one inch to the moral stature of a nation. nor am i aiming at a permanent destruction of law courts, much as i regard it as a 'consummation devoutly to be wished for.' still less am i trying to destroy all machinery and mills. it requires a higher simplicity and renunciation than the people are to-day prepared for. * * * * * the only part of the programme which is now being carried out in its entirety is that of non-violence. but i regret to have to confess that even that is not being carried out in the spirit of the book. if it were, india would establish swaraj in a day. if india adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics, swaraj would descend upon india from heaven. but i am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet. i offer these comments because i observe that much is being quoted from the booklet to discredit the present movement. i have even seen writings suggesting that i am playing a deep game, that i am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on india, and am making religious experiments at india's expense. i can only answer that _satyagrah_ is made of sterner stuff. there is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it. a portion of the whole theory of life described in 'hind swaraj' is undoubtedly being carried into practice. there is no danger attendant upon the whole of it being practised. but it is not right to scare away people by reproducing from my writings passages that are irrelevant to the issue before the country. m. k. gandhi, _young india, 26th january, 1921_. contents chap. page i the congress and its officials 11 ii the partition of bengal 18 iii the discontent and unrest 21 iv what is swaraj? 22 v the condition of england 26 vi civilization 30 vii why was india lost? 35 viii the condition of india 39 ix do. railways 43 x do. hindus and mahomedans 47 xi do. lawyers 55 xii do. doctors 60 xiii what is true civilization? 63 xiv how can india become free? 67 xv italy and india 71 xvi brute force 75 xvii passive resistance 84 xviii education 97 xix machinery 105 xx conclusion 110 appendices 123 indian home rule chapter i the congress and its officials reader: just at present there is a home rule wave passing over india. all our countrymen appear to be pining for national independence. a similar spirit pervades them even in south africa. indians seem to be eager after acquiring rights. will you explain your views in this matter? editor: you have well put the question, but the answer is not easy. one of the objects of a newspaper is to understand the popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects. the exercise of all these three functions is involved in answering your question. to a certain extent the people's will has to be expressed; certain sentiments will need to be fostered, and defects will have to be brought to light. but, as you have asked the question, it is my duty to answer it. reader: do you then consider that a desire for home rule has been created among us? editor: that desire gave rise to the national congress. the choice of the word "national" implies it. reader: that, surely, is not the case. young india seems to ignore the congress. it is considered to be an instrument for perpetuating british rule. editor: that opinion is not justified. had not the grand old man of india prepared the soil, our young men could not have even spoken about home rule. how can we forget what mr. hume has written, how he has lashed us into action, and with what effort he has awakened us, in order to achieve the objects of the congress? sir william wedderburn has given his body, mind and money to the same cause. his writings are worthy of perusal to this day. professor gokhale, in order to prepare the nation, embraced poverty and gave twenty years of his life. even now, he is living in poverty. the late justice buddrudin tyebji was also one of those who, through the congress, sowed the seed of home rule. similarly in bengal, madras, the punjab and other places, there have been lovers of india and members of the congress, both indian and english. reader: stay, stay, you are going too far, you are straying away from my question. i have asked you about home or self-rule; you are discussing foreign rule. i do not desire to hear english names, and you are giving me such names. in these circumstances, i do not think we can ever meet. i shall be pleased if you will confine yourself to home rule. all other wise talk will not satisfy me. editor: you are impatient. i cannot afford to be likewise. if you will bear with me for a while, i think you will find that you will obtain what you want. remember the old proverb that the tree does not grow in one day. the fact that you have checked me, and that you do not want to hear about the well-wishers of india, shows that, for you at any rate, home rule is yet far away. if we had many like you, we would never make any advance. this thought is worthy of your attention. reader: it seems to me that you simply want to put me off by talking round and round. those whom you consider to be well-wishers of india are not such in my estimation. why, then, should i listen to your discourse on such people? what has he whom you consider to be the father of the nation done for it? he says that the english governors will do justice, and that we should co-operate with them. editor: i must tell you with all gentleness that it must be a matter of shame for us that you should speak about that great man, in terms of disrespect. just look at his work. he has dedicated his life to the service of india. we have learned what we know from him. it was the respected dadabhai who taught us that the english had sucked our life-blood. what does it matter that, to-day, his trust is still in the english nation? is dadabhai less to be honoured because, in the exuberance of youth, we are prepared to go a step further? are we, on that account, wiser than he? it is a mark of wisdom not to kick against the very step from which we have risen higher. the removal of a step from a staircase brings down the whole of it. when, out of infancy we grow into youth, we do not despise infancy, but, on the contrary, we recall with affection the days of our childhood. if, after many years of study, a teacher were to teach me something, and if i were to build a little more on the foundation laid by that teacher, i would not, on that account, be considered wiser than the teacher. he would always command my respect. such is the case with the grand old man of india. we must admit that he is the author of nationalism. reader: you have spoken well. i can now understand that we must look upon mr. dadabhai with respect. without him and men like him, we would probably not have the spirit that fires us. how can the same be said of professor gokhale? he has constituted himself a great friend of the english; he says that we have to learn a great deal from them, that we have to learn their political wisdom, before we can talk of home rule. i am tired of reading his speeches. editor: if you are tired, it only betrays your impatience. we believe that those who are discontented with the slowness of their parents, and are angry because the parents would not run with their children, are considered disrespectful to their parents. professor gokhale occupies the place of a parent. what does it matter if he cannot run with us? a nation that is desirous of securing home rule cannot afford to despise its ancestors. we shall become useless if we lack respect for our elders. only men with mature thoughts are capable of ruling themselves and not the hasty-tempered. moreover, how many indians were there like professor gokhale, when he gave himself to indian education? i verily believe that whatever professor gokhale does he does with pure motives and with a view to serving india. his devotion to the motherland is so great, that he would give his life for it if necessary. whatever he says is said not to flatter anyone but because he believes it to be true. we are bound, therefore, to entertain the highest regard for him. reader: are we, then, to follow him in every respect? editor: i never said any such thing. if we conscientiously differed from him, the learned professor himself would advise us to follow the dictates of our conscience rather than him. our chief purpose is not to cry down his work, but to believe that he is infinitely greater than we, and to feel assured that compared with his work for india, ours is infinitesimal. several newspapers write disrespectfully of him. it is our duty to protest against such writings. we should consider men like professor gokhale to be the pillars of home rule. it is a bad habit to say that another man's thoughts are bad and ours only are good, and that those holding different views from ours are the enemies of the country. reader: i now begin to understand somewhat your meaning. i shall have to think the matter over, but what you say about mr. hume and sir william wedderburn is beyond comprehension. editor: the same rule holds good for the english as for the indians. i can never subscribe to the statement that all englishmen are bad. many englishmen desire home rule for india. that the english people are somewhat more selfish than others is true, but that does not prove that every englishman is bad. we who seek justice will have to do justice to others. sir william does not wish ill to india--that should be enough for us. as we proceed, you will see that, if we act justly, india will be sooner free. you will see, too, that, if we shun every englishman as an enemy, home rule will be delayed. but if we are just to them, we shall receive their support in our progress towards the goal. reader: all this seems to me at present to be simply nonsensical. english support and the obtaining of home rule are two contradictory things. how can the english people tolerate home rule for us? but i do not want you to decide this question for me just yet. to pass time over it is useless. when you have shown how we can have home rule, perhaps i shall understand your views. you have prejudiced me against you by discoursing on english help. i would, therefore, beseech you not to continue this subject. editor: i have no desire to do so. that you are prejudiced against me is not a matter for much anxiety. it is well that i should say unpleasant things at the commencement, it is my duty patiently to try to remove your prejudice. reader: i like that last statement. it emboldens me to say what i like. one thing still puzzles me. i do not understand how the congress laid the foundation of home rule. editor: let us see. the congress brought together indians from different parts of india, and enthused us with the idea of nationality. the government used to look upon it with disfavour. the congress has always insisted that the nation should control revenue and expenditure. it has always desired self-government after the canadian model. whether we can get it or not, whether we desire it or not, and whether there is not something more desirable, are different questions. all i have to show is that the congress gave us a foretaste of home rule. to deprive it of the honour is not proper, and for us to do so would not only be ungrateful, but retard the fulfilment of our object. to treat the congress as an institution inimical to our growth as a nation would disable us from using that body. chapter ii the partition of bengal reader: considering the matter as you put it, it seems proper to say that the foundation of home rule was laid by the congress. but you will admit that it cannot be considered a real awakening. when and how did the awakening take place? editor: the seed is never seen. it works underneath the ground, is itself destroyed, and the tree which rises above the ground is alone seen. such is the case with the congress. yet, what you call the real awakening took place after the partition of bengal. for this we have to be thankful to lord curzon. at the time of the partition, the people of bengal reasoned with lord curzon, but, in the pride of power, he disregarded all their prayers--he took it for granted that indians could only prattle, that they could never take any effective steps. he used insulting language, and, in the teeth of all opposition, partitioned bengal. that day may be considered to be the day of the partition of the british empire. the shock that the british power received through the partition has never been equalled by any other act. this does not mean that the other injustices done to india are less glaring than that done by the partition. the salt-tax is not a small injustice. we shall see many such things later on. but the people were ready to resist the partition. at that time, the feeling ran high. many leading bengalis were ready to lose their all. they knew their power; hence the conflagration. it is now well nigh unquenchable; it is not necessary to quench it either. partition will go, bengal will be re-united, but the rift in the english barque will remain: it must daily widen. india awakened is not likely to fall asleep. demand for abrogation of partition is tantamount to demand for home rule. leaders in bengal know this, british officials realise it. that is why partition still remains. as time passes, the nation is being forged. nations are not formed in a day; the formation requires years. reader: what, in your opinion, are the results of partition? editor: hitherto we have considered that for redress of grievances, we must approach the throne and, if we get no redress, we must sit still, except that we may still petition. after the partition, people saw that petitions must be backed up by force, and that they must be capable of suffering. this new spirit must be considered to be the chief result of partition. that spirit was seen in the outspoken writings in the press. that which the people said tremblingly and in secret began to be said and to be written publicly. the swadeshi movement was inaugurated. people, young and old, used to run away at the sight of an english face; it now no longer awed them. they did not fear even a row, or being imprisoned. some of the best sons of india are at present in banishment. this is something different from mere petitioning. thus are the people moved. the spirit generated in bengal has spread in the north to the punjab, and in the south to cape comorin. reader: do you suggest any other striking result? editor: the partition has not only made a rift in the english ship, but has made it in ours also. great events always produce great results. our leaders are divided into two parties: the moderates and the extremists. these may be considered as the slow party and the impatient party. some call the moderates the timid party, and the extremists the bold party. all interpret the two words according to their pre-conceptions. this much is certain--that there has arisen an enmity between the two. the one distrusts the other, and imputes motives. at the time of the surat congress, there was almost a fight. i think that this division is not a good thing for the country, but i think also that such divisions will not last long. it all depends upon the leaders how long they will last. chapter iii discontent and unrest reader: then you consider partition to be a cause of the awakening? do you welcome the unrest which has resulted from it? editor: when a man rises from sleep, he twists his limbs and is restless. it takes some time before he is entirely awakened. similarly, although the partition has caused an awakening, the comatose has not yet disappeared. we are still twisting our limbs and still restless, and just as the state between sleep and awakening must be considered to be necessary, so may the present unrest in india be considered a necessary and, therefore, a proper state. the knowledge that there is unrest will, it is highly probable, enable us to outgrow it. rising from sleep, we do not continue in a comatose state, but, according to our ability, sooner or later, we are completely restored to our senses. so shall we be free from the present unrest which no one likes. reader: what is the other form of unrest? editor: unrest is, in reality, discontent. the latter is only now described as unrest. during the congress-period it was labelled discontent; mr. hume always said that the spread of discontent in india was necessary. this discontent is a very useful thing. so long as a man is contented with his present lot, so long is it difficult to persuade him to come out of it. therefore it is that every reform must be preceded by discontent. we throw away things we have only when we cease to like them. such discontent has been produced among us after reading the great works of indians and englishmen. discontent has led to unrest, and the latter has brought about many deaths, many imprisonments, many banishments. such a state of things will still continue. it must be so. all these may be considered good signs, but they may also lead to bad results. chapter iv what is swaraj? reader: i have now learnt what the congress has done to make india one nation, how the partition has caused an awakening, and how discontent and unrest have spread through the land. i would now like to know your views on swaraj. i fear that our interpretation is not the same. editor: it is quite possible that we do not attach the same meaning to the term. you and i and all indians are impatient to obtain swaraj, but we are certainly not decided as to what it is. to drive the english out of india is a thought heard from many mouths, but it does not seem that many have properly considered why it should be so. i must ask you a question. do you think that it is necessary to drive away the english, if we get all we want? reader: i should ask of them only one thing that is: "please leave our country." if after they have complied with this request, their withdrawal from india means that they are still in india, i should have no objection. then we would understand that, in our language, the word "gone" is equivalent to "remained." editor: well then, let us suppose that the english have retired. what will you do then? reader: that question cannot be answered at this stage. the state after withdrawal will depend largely upon the manner of it. if, as you assume, they retire, it seems to me we shall still keep their constitution, and shall carry on the government. if they simply retire for the asking, we should have an army, etc. ready at hand. we should, therefore, have no difficulty in carrying on the government. editor: you may think so: i do not. but i will not discuss the matter just now. i have to answer your question, and that i can do well by asking you several questions. why do you want to drive away the english? reader: because india has become impoverished by their government. they take away our money from year to year. the most important posts are reserved for themselves. we are kept in a state of slavery. they behave insolently towards us, and disregard our feelings. editor: if they do not take our money away, become gentle, and give us responsible posts, would you still consider their presence to be harmful? reader: that question is useless. it is similar to the question whether there is any harm in associating with a tiger, if he changes his nature. such a question is sheer waste of time. when a tiger changes his nature, englishmen will change theirs. this is not possible, and to believe it to be possible is contrary to human experience. editor: supposing we get self-government similar to what the canadians and the south africans have, will it be good enough? reader: that question also is useless. we may get it when we have the same powers; we shall then hoist our own flag. as is japan, so must india be. we must own our navy, our army, and we must have our own splendour, and then will india's voice ring through the world. editor: you have well drawn the picture. in effect it means this: that we want english rule without the englishman. you want the tiger's nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make india english, and when it becomes english, it will be called not hindustan but englistan. this is not the swaraj that i want. reader: i have placed before you my idea of swaraj as i think it should be. if the education we have received be of any use, if the works of spencer, mill and others be of any importance and if the english parliament be the mother of parliaments, i certainly think that we should copy the english people and this to such an extent that, just as they do not allow others to obtain a footing in their country, so we should not allow them or others to obtain it in ours. what they have done in their own country has not been done in any other country. it is, therefore, proper for us to import their institutions. but now i want to know your views. editor: there is need for patience. my views will develop of themselves in the course of this discourse. it is as difficult for me to understand the true nature of swaraj as it seems to you to be easy. i shall, therefore, for the time being, content myself with endeavouring to show that what you call swaraj is not truly swaraj. chapter v the condition of england reader: then from your statement, i deduce the government of england is not desirable and not worth copying by us. editor: your deduction is justified. the condition of england at present is pitiable. i pray to god that india may never be in that plight. that which you consider to be the mother of parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. both these are harsh terms, but exactly fit the case. that parliament has not yet of its own accord done a single good thing, hence i have compared it to a sterile woman. the natural condition of that parliament is such that, without outside pressure, it can do nothing. it is like a prostitute because it is under the control of ministers who change from time to time. to-day it is under mr. asquith, to-morrow it may be under mr. balfour. reader: you have said this sarcastically. the term "sterile woman" is not applicable. the parliament, being elected by the people, must work under public pressure. this is its quality. editor: you are mistaken. let us examine it a little more closely. the best men are supposed to be elected by the people. the members serve without pay and, therefore, it must be assumed only for the public weal. the electors are considered to be educated and, therefore, we should assume that they would not generally make mistakes in their choice. such a parliament should not need the spur of petitions or any other pressure. its work should be so smooth that its effect would be more apparent day by day. but, as a matter of fact, it is generally acknowledged that the members are hypocritical and selfish. each thinks of his own little interest. it is fear that is the guiding motive. what is done to-day may be undone to-morrow. it is not possible to recall a single instance in which the finality can be predicted for its work. when the greatest questions are debated its members have been seen to stretch themselves and to dose. sometimes the members talk away until the listeners are disgusted. carlyle has called it the "talking shop of the world." members vote for their party without a thought. their so-called discipline binds them to it. if any member, by way of exception, gives an independent vote, he is considered a renegade. if the money and the time wasted by the parliament were entrusted to a few good men, the english nation would be occupying to-day a much higher platform. the parliament is simply a costly toy of the nation. these views are, by no means, peculiar to me. some great english thinkers have expressed them. one of the members of the parliament recently said that a true christian could not become a member of it. another said that it was a baby. and, if it has remained a baby after an existence of seven hundred years, when will it outgrow its babyhood? reader: you have set me thinking; you do not expect me to accept at once all you say. you give me entirely novel views. i shall have to digest them. will you now explain the epithet "prostitute"? editor: that you cannot accept my views at once is only right. if you will read the literature on this subject, you will have some idea of it. the parliament is without a real master. under the prime minister, its movement is not steady, but it is buffeted about like a prostitute. the prime minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of the parliament. his energy is concentrated upon securing the success of his party. his care is not always that the parliament shall do right. prime ministers are known to have made the parliament do things merely for party advantage. all this is worth thinking over. reader: then you are really attacking the very men whom we have hitherto considered to be patriotic and honest? editor: yes, that is true; i can have nothing against prime ministers, but what i have seen leads me to think that they cannot be considered really patriotic. if they are to be considered honest because they do not take what is generally known as bribery, let them be so considered, but they are open to subtler influences. in order to gain their ends, they certainly bribe people with honours. i do not hesitate to say that they have neither real honesty nor a living conscience. reader: as you express these views about the parliament, i would like to hear you on the english people, so that i may have your views of their government. editor: to the english voters their newspaper is their bible. they take cue from their newspapers, which latter are often dishonest. the same fact is differently interpreted by different newspapers, according to the party in whose interests they are edited. one newspaper would consider a great englishman to be a paragon of honesty, another would consider him dishonest. what must be the condition of the people whose newspapers are of this type? reader: you shall describe it. editor: these people change their views frequently. it is said that they change them every seven years. these views swing like the pendulum of a clock and are never steadfast. the people would follow a powerful orator or a man who gives them parties, receptions, etc. as are the people, so is their parliament. they have certainly one quality very strongly developed. they will never allow their country to be lost. if any person were to cast an evil eye on it, they would pluck out his eyes. but that does not mean that the nation possesses every other virtue or that it should be imitated. if india copies england, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined. reader: to what do you ascribe this state of england? editor: it is not due to any peculiar fault of the english people, but the condition is due to modern civilization. it is a civilization only in name. under it the nations of europe are becoming degraded and ruined day by day. chapter vi civilization reader: now you will have to explain what you mean by civilization. editor: it is not a question of what i mean. several english writers refuse to call that, civilization which passes under that name. many books have been written upon that subject. societies have been formed to cure the nation of the evils of civilization. a great english writer has written a work called "civilization: its cause and cure." therein he has called it a disease. reader: why do we not know this generally? editor: the answer is very simple. we rarely find people arguing against themselves. those who are intoxicated by modern civilization are not likely to write against it. their care will be to find out facts and arguments in support of it, and this they do unconsciously, believing it to be true. a man, whilst he is dreaming, believes in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his sleep. a man labouring under the bane of civilization is like a dreaming man. what we usually read are the work of defenders of modern civilization, which undoubtedly claims among its votaries very brilliant and even some very good men. their writings hypnotise us. and so, one by one, we are drawn into the vortex. reader: this seems to be very plausible. now will you tell me something of what you have read and thought of this civilization. editor: let us first consider what state of things is described by the word "civilization." its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life. we will take some examples. the people of europe to-day live in better-built houses than they did a hundred years ago. this is considered an emblem of civilization, and this is also a matter to promote bodily happiness. formerly, they wore skins, and used as their weapons spears. now, they wear long trousers, and for embellishing their bodies they wear a variety of clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry with them revolvers containing five or more chambers. if people of a certain country, who have hitherto not been in the habit of wearing much clothing, boots, etc., adopt european clothing, they are supposed to have become civilised out of savagery. formerly, in europe, people ploughed their lands mainly by manual labour. now, one man can plough a vast tract by means of steam-engines, and can thus amass great wealth. this is called a sign of civilization. formerly, the fewest men wrote books, that were most valuable. now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons people's minds. formerly, men travelled in waggons; now they fly through the air, in trains at the rate of four hundred and more miles per day. this is considered the height of civilization. it has been stated that, as men progress, they shall be able to travel in airships and reach any part of the world in a few hours. men will not need the use of their hands and feet. they will press a button, and they will have their clothing by their side. they will press another button, and they will have their newspaper. a third, and a motor-car will be in waiting for them. they will have a variety of delicately dished up food. everything will be done by machinery. formerly, when people wanted to fight with one another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is possible to take away thousands of lives by one man working behind a gun from a hill. this is civilization. formerly, men worked in the open air only so much as they liked. now, thousands of workmen meet together and for the sake of maintenance work in factories or mines. their condition is worse than that of beasts. they are obliged to work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occupations, for the sake of millionaires. formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion, now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy. there are now diseases of which people never dreamt before, and an army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. this is a test of civilization. formerly, special messengers were required and much expense was incurred in order to send letters; to-day, anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter for one penny. true, at the same cost, one can send one's thanks also. formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of homemade bread and vegetables; now, they require something to eat every two hours, so that they have hardly leisure for anything else. what more need i say? all this you can ascertain from several authoritative books. these are all true tests of civilization. and, if any one speaks to the contrary, know that he is ignorant. this civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. others put on the cloak of religion, and prate about morality. but, after twenty years' experience, i have come to the conclusion that immorality is often taught in the name of morality. even a child can understand that in all i have described above there can be no inducement to morality. civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails miserably even in doing so. this civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in europe that those who are in it appear to be half mad. they lack real physical strength or courage. they keep up their energy by intoxication. they can hardly be happy in solitude. women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets, or they slave away in factories. for the sake of a pittance, half a million women in england alone are labouring under trying circumstances in factories or similar institutions. this awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing suffragette movement. this civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed. according to the teaching of mahomed this would be considered a satanic civilization. hinduism calls it the black age. i cannot give you an adequate conception of it. it is eating into the vitals of the english nation. it must be shunned. parliament are really emblems of slavery. if you will sufficiently think over this, you will entertain the same opinion, and cease to blame the english. they rather deserve our sympathy. they are a shrewd nation and i therefore believe that they will cast off the evil. they are enterprising and industrious and their mode of thought is not inherently immoral. neither are they bad at heart. i, therefore, respect them. civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the english people are at present afflicted by it. chapter vii why was india lost? reader: you have said much about civilization--enough to make me ponder over it. i do not now know what i should adopt and what i should avoid from the nations of europe, but one question comes to my lips immediately. if civilization is a disease, and if it has attacked england why has she been able to take india, and why is she able to retain it? editor: your question is not very difficult to answer, and we shall presently be able to examine the true nature of swaraj; for i am aware that i have still to answer that question. i will, however, take up your previous question. the english have not taken india; we have given it to them. they are not in india because of their strength, but because we keep them. let us now see whether these propositions can be sustained. they came to our country originally for purposes of trade. recall the company bahadur. who made it bahadur? they had not the slightest intention at the time of establishing a kingdom. who assisted the company's officers? who was tempted at the sight of their silver? who bought their goods? history testifies that we did all this. in order to become rich all at once, we welcomed the company's officers with open arms. we assisted them. if i am in the habit of drinking bhang and a seller thereof sells it to me, am i to blame him or myself? by blaming the seller shall i be able to avoid the habit? and, if a particular retailer is driven away, will not another take his place? a true servant of india will have to go to the root of the matter. if an excess of food has caused me indigestion, i will certainly not avoid it by blaming water. he is a true physician who probes the cause of disease and, if you pose as a physician for the disease of india, you will have to find out its true cause. reader: you are right. now, i think you will not have to argue much with me to drive your conclusions home. i am impatient to know your further views. we are now on a most interesting topic. i shall, therefore, endeavour to follow your thought, and stop you when i am in doubt. editor: i am afraid that, in spite of your enthusiasm, as we proceed further we shall have differences of opinion. nevertheless, i shall argue only when you will stop me. we have already seen that the english merchants were able to get a footing in india because we encouraged them. when our princes fought among themselves, they sought the assistance of company bahadur. that corporation was versed alike in commerce and war. it was unhampered by questions of morality. its object was to increase its commerce, and to make money. it accepted our assistance, and increased the number of its warehouses. to protect the latter it employed an army which was utilised by us also. is it not then useless to blame the english for what we did at that time? the hindus and the mahomedans were at daggers drawn. this, too, gave the company its opportunity; and thus we created the circumstances that gave the company its control over india. hence it is truer to say that we gave india to the english than that india was lost. reader: will you now tell me how they are able to retain india? editor: the causes that gave them india enable them to retain it. some englishmen state that they took, and they hold, india by the sword. both these statements are wrong. the sword is entirely useless for holding india. we alone keep them. napoleon is said to have described the english as a nation of shop-keepers. it is a fitting description. they hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their commerce. their army and their navy are intended to protect it. when the transvaal offered no such attractions, the late mr. gladstone discovered that it was not right for the english to hold it. when it became a paying proposition, resistance led to war. mr. chamberlain soon discovered that england enjoyed a suzerainty over the transvaal. it is related that some one asked the late president kruger whether there was gold in the moon. he replied that it was highly unlikely, because, if there were, the english would have annexed it. many problems can be solved by remembering that money is their god. then it follows that we keep the english in india for our base self-interest. we like their commerce, they please us by their subtle methods, and get what they want from us. to blame them for this is to perpetuate their power. we further strengthen their hold by quarrelling amongst ourselves. if you accept the above statements, it is proved that the english entered india for the purposes of trade. they remain in it for the same purpose, and we help them to do so. their arms and ammunition are perfectly useless. in this connection, i remind you that it is the british flag which is waving in japan, and not the japanese. the english have a treaty with japan for the sake of their commerce, and you will see that, if they can manage it, their commerce will greatly expand in that country. they wish to convert the whole world into a vast market for their goods. that they cannot do so is true, but the blame will not be theirs. they will leave no stone unturned to reach the goal. chapter viii the condition of india reader: i now understand why the english hold india. i should like to know your views about the condition of our country. editor: it is a sad condition. in thinking of it, my eyes water and my throat get parched. i have grave doubts whether i shall be able sufficiently to explain what is in my heart. it is my deliberate opinion that india is being ground down not under the english heel but under that of modern civilization. it is groaning under the monster's terrible weight. there is yet time to escape it, but every day makes it more and more difficult. religion is dear to me, and my first complaint is that india is becoming irreligious. here i am not thinking of the hindu and mahomedan or the zoroastrian religion, but of the religion which underlies all religions. we are turning away from god. reader: how so? editor: there is a charge laid against us that we are a lazy people, and that the europeans are industrious and enterprising. we have accepted the charge and we, therefore, wish to change our condition. hinduism, islamism, zoroastrianism, christianity and all other religions teach that we should remain passive about worldly pursuits and active about godly pursuits, that we should set a limit to our worldly ambition, and that our religious ambition should be illimitable. our activity should be directed into the latter channel. reader: you seem to be encouraging religious charlatanism. many a cheat has by talking in a similar strain led the people astray. editor: you are bringing an unlawful charge against religion. humbug there undoubtedly is about all religions. where there is light, there is also shadow. i am prepared to maintain that humbugs in worldly matters are far worse than the humbugs in religion. the humbug of civilization that i endeavour to show to you is not to be found in religion. reader: how can you say that? in the name of religion hindus and mahomedans fought against one another. for the same cause christians fought christians. thousands of innocent men have been murdered, thousands have been burned and tortured in its name. surely, this is much worse than any civilization. editor: i certainly submit that the above hardships are far more bearable than those of civilization. everybody understands that the cruelties you have named are not part of religion, although they have been practised in its name: therefore there is no aftermath to these cruelties. they will always happen so long as there are to be found ignorant and credulous people. but there is no end to the victims destroyed in the fire of civilization. its deadly effect is that people came under its scorching flames believing it to be all good. they become utterly irreligious and, in reality, derive little advantage from the world. civilization is like a mouse gnawing, while it is soothing us. when its full effect is realised, we will see that religious superstition is harmless compared to that of modern civilization. i am not pleading for a continuance of religious superstitions. we will certainly fight them tooth and nail, but we can never do so by disregarding religion. we can only do so by appreciating and conserving the latter. reader: then you will contend that the pax britannica is a useless encumbrance? editor: you may see peace if you like; i see none. reader: you make light of the terror that thugs, the pindaris, the bhils were to the country. editor: if you will give the matter some thought, you will see that the terror was by no means such a mighty thing. if it had been a very substantial thing, the other people would have died away before the english advent. moreover, the present peace is only nominal, for by it we have become emasculated and cowardly. we are not to assume that the english have changed the nature of the pindaris and the bhils. it is, therefore, better to suffer the pindari peril than that some one else should protect us from it, and thus render us effeminate. i should prefer to be killed by the arrow of a bhil than to seek unmanly protection. india without such protection was an india full of valour. macaulay betrayed gross ignorance when he libelled indians as being practically cowards. they never merited the charge. cowards living in a country inhabited by hardy mountaineers, infested by wolves and tigers must surely find an early grave. have you ever visited our fields? i assure you that our agriculturists sleep fearlessly on their farms even to-day, and the english, you and i would hesitate to sleep where they sleep. strength lies in absence of fear, not in the quantity of flesh and muscle we may have on our bodies. moreover, i must remind you who desire home rule that, after all, the bhils, the pindaris, the assamese and the thugs are our own countrymen. to conquer them is your and my work. so long as we fear our own brethren, we are unfit to reach the goal. chapter ix the condition of india (_continued_) railways reader: you have deprived me of the consolation i used to have regarding peace in india. editor: i have merely given you my opinion on the religious aspect, but when i give you my views as to the poverty of india you will perhaps begin to dislike me, because what you and i have hitherto considered beneficial for india no longer appears to me to be so. reader: what may that be? editor: railways, lawyers and doctors have impoverished the country, so much so that, if we do not wake up in time, we shall be ruined. reader: i do now indeed fear that we are not likely to agree at all. you are attacking the very institutions which we have hitherto considered to be good. editor: it is necessary to exercise patience. the true inwardness of the evils of civilization you will understand with difficulty. doctors assure us that a consumptive clings to life even when he is about to die. consumption does not produce apparent hurt--it even produces a seductive colour about a patient's face, so as to induce the belief that all is well. civilization is such a disease, and we have to be very wary. reader: very well, then, i shall hear you on the railways. editor: it must be manifest to you that, but for the railways, the english could not have such a hold on india as they have. the railways, too, have spread the bubonic plague. without them, masses could not move from place to place. they are the carriers of plague germs. formerly we had natural segregation. railways have also increased the frequency of famines, because, owing to facility of means of locomotion, people sell out their grain, and it is sent to the dearest markets. people become careless, and so the pressure of famine increases. they accentuate the evil nature of man. bad men fulfil their evil designs with greater rapidity. the holy places of india have become unholy. formerly people went to these places with very great difficulty. generally, therefore, only the real devotees visited such places. now-a-days, rogues visit them in order to practise their roguery. reader: you have given an one-sided account. good men can visit these places as well as bad men. why do they not take the fullest advantage of the railways? editor: good travels at a snail's pace--it can, therefore, have little to do with the railways. those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time. but evil has wings. to build a house takes time. its destruction takes none. so the railways can become a distributing agency for the evil one only. it may be a debatable matter whether railways spread famines, but it is beyond dispute that they propagate evil. reader: be that as it may, all the disadvantages of railways are more than counter-balanced by the fact that it is due to them that we see in india the new spirit of nationalism. editor: i hold this to be a mistake. the english have taught us that we were not one nation before, and that it will require centuries before we become one nation. this is without foundation. we were one nation before they came to india. one thought inspired us. our mode of life was the same. it was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom. subsequently they divided us. reader: this requires an explanation. editor: i do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men travelled throughout india either on foot or in bullock-carts. they learned one another's languages, and there was no aloofness between them. what do you think could have been the intention of those far-seeing ancestors of ours who established shethubindu-rameshwar in the south, juggernaut in the south-east and hardwar in the north as places of pilgrimage? you will admit they were no fools. they knew that worship of god could have been performed just as well at home. they taught us that those whose hearts were aglow with righteousness had the ganges in their own homes. but they saw that india was one undivided land so made by nature. they, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. arguing thus, they established holy places in various parts of india, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. any two indians are one as no two englishmen are. only you and i and others who consider ourselves civilised and superior persons imagine that we are many nations. it was after the advent of railways that we began to believe in distinctions, and you are at liberty now to say that it is through the railways that we are beginning to abolish those distinctions. an opium-eater may argue the advantage of opium-eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of the opium habit after having eaten it. i would ask you to consider well what i have said on the railways. reader: i will gladly do so, but one question occurs to me even now. you have described to me the india of the pre-mahomedan period, but now we have mahomedans, parsees and christians. how can they be one nation? hindus and mahomedans are old enemies. our very proverbs prove it. mahomedans turn to the west for worship whilst hindus turn to the east. the former look down on the hindus as idolators. the hindus worship the cow, the mahomedans kill her. the hindus believe in the doctrine of non-killing, the mahomedans do not. we thus meet with differences at every step. how can india be one nation? chapter x the condition of india (_continued_) the hindus and the mahomedans editor: your last question is a serious one; and yet, on careful consideration, it will be found to be easy of solution. the question arises because of the presence of the railways, of the lawyers and of the doctors. we shall presently examine the last two. we have already considered the railways. i should, however, like to add that man is so made by nature as to require him to restrict his movements as far as his hands and feet will take him. if we did not rush about from place to place by means of railways and such other maddening conveniences, much of the confusion that arises would be obviated. our difficulties are of our own creation. god set a limit to a man's locomotive ambition in the construction of his body. man immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit. god gifted man with intellect that he might know his maker. man abused it, so that he might forget his maker. i am so constructed that i can only serve my immediate neighbours, but in my conceit, i pretend to have discovered that i must with my body serve every individual in the universe. in thus attempting the impossible, man comes in contact with different natures, different religions and is utterly confounded. according to this reasoning, it must be apparent to you that railways are a most dangerous institution. man has there through gone further away from his maker. reader: but i am impatient to hear your answer to my question. has the introduction of mahomedanism not unmade the nation? editor: india cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it. the introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it. a country is one nation only when such a condition obtains in it. that country must have a faculty for assimilation. india has ever been such a country. in reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals, but those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one another's religion. if they do, they are not fit to be considered a nation. if the hindus believe that india should be peopled only by hindus, they are living in dreamland. the hindus, the mahomedans, the parsees and the christians who have made india their country are fellow-countrymen, and they will have to live in unity if only for their own interest. in no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever been so in india. reader: but what about the inborn enmity between hindus and mahomedans? editor: that phrase has been invented by our mutual enemy. when the hindus and mahomedans fought against one another, they certainly spoke in that strain. they have long since ceased to fight. how, then, can there be any inborn enmity? pray remember this too, that we did not cease to fight only after british occupation. the hindus flourished under moslem sovereigns and moslems under the hindu. each party recognised that mutual fighting was suicidal, and that neither party would abandon its religion by force of arms. both parties, therefore, decided to live in peace. with the english advent the quarrels re-commenced. the proverbs you have quoted were coined when both were fighting; to quote them now is obviously harmful. should we not remember that many hindus and mahomedans own the same ancestors, and the same blood runs through their veins? do people become enemies because they change their religion? is the god of the mahomedan different from the god of the hindu? religions are different roads converging to the same point. what does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal? wherein is the cause for quarrelling? moreover, there are deadly proverbs as between the followers of shiva and those of vishnu, yet nobody suggests that these two do not belong to the same nation. it is said that the vedic religion is different from jainism, but the followers of the respective faiths are not different nations. the fact is that we have become enslaved, and, therefore, quarrel and like to have our quarrels decided by a third party. there are hindu iconoclasts as there are mahomedan. the more we advance in true knowledge, the better we shall understand that we need not be at war with those whose religion we may not follow. reader: now i would like to know your views about cow protection. editor: i myself respect the cow, that is i look upon her with affectionate reverence. the cow is the protector of india, because, it being an agricultural country, is dependant on the cow's progeny. she is a most useful animal in hundreds of ways. our mahomedan brethren will admit this. but, just as i respect the cow so do i respect my fellow-men. a man is just as useful as a cow, no matter whether he be a mahomedan or a hindu. am i, then, to fight with or kill a mahomedan in order to save a cow? in doing so, i would become an enemy as well of the cow as of the mahomedan. therefore, the only method i know of protecting the cow is that i should approach my mahomedan brother and urge him for the sake of the country to join me in protecting her. if he would not listen to me, i should let the cow go for the simple reason that the matter is beyond my ability. if i were over full of pity for the cow, i should sacrifice my life to save her, but not take my brother's. this, i hold, is the law of our religion. when men become obstinate, it is a difficult thing. if i pull one way, my moslem brother will pull another. if i put on a superior air, he will return the compliment. if i bow to him gently, he will do it much more so, and if he does not, i shall not be considered to have done wrong in having bowed. when the hindus became insistent, the killing of cows increased. in my opinion, cow protection societies may be considered cow-killing societies. it is a disgrace to us that we should need such societies. when we forgot how to protect cows, i suppose we needed such societies. what am i to do when a blood-brother is on the point of killing a cow? am i to kill him, or to fall down at his feet and implore him? if you admit that i should adopt the latter course, i must do the same to my moslem brother. who protects the cow from destruction by hindus when they cruelly ill-treat her? whoever reasons with the hindus when they mercilessly belabour the progeny of the cow with their sticks? but this has not prevented us from remaining one nation. lastly, if it be true that the hindus believe in the doctrine of non-killing and the mahomedans do not, what, i pray, is the duty of the former? it is not written that a follower of the religion of ahimsa (non-killing) may kill a fellow-man. for him the way is straight. in order to save one being, he may not kill another. he can only plead--therein lies his sole duty. but does every hindu believe in ahimsa? going to the root of the matter, not one man really practises such a religion, because we do destroy life. we are said to follow that religion because we want to obtain freedom from liability to kill any kind of life. generally speaking, we may observe that many hindus partake of meat and are not, therefore, followers of ahimsa. it is, therefore, preposterous to suggest that the two cannot live together amicably because the hindus believe in ahimsa and the mahomedans do not. these thoughts are put into our minds by selfish and false religious teachers. the english put the finishing touch. they have a habit of writing history; they pretend to study the manners and customs of all peoples. god has given us a limited mental capacity, but they usurp the function of the god-head and indulge in novel experiments. they write about their own researches in most laudatory terms and hypnotise us into believing them. we, in our ignorance, then fall at their feet. those who do not wish to misunderstand things may read up the koran, and will find therein hundreds of passages acceptable to the hindus; and the bhagavad-gita contains passages to which not a mahomedan can take exception. am i to dislike a mahomedan because there are passages in the koran i do not understand or like? it takes two to make a quarrel. if i do not want to quarrel with a mahomedan, the latter will be powerless to foist a quarrel on me, and, similarly, i should be powerless if a mahomedan refuses his assistance to quarrel with me. an arm striking the air will become disjointed. if every one will try to understand the core of his own religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him, there will be no room left for quarrelling. reader: but will the english ever allow the two bodies to join hands? editor: this question arises out of your timidity. it betrays our shallowness. if two brothers want to live in peace is it possible for a third party to separate them? if they were to listen to evil counsels, we would consider them to be foolish. similarly, we hindus and mahomedans would have to blame our folly rather than the english, if we allowed them to put us asunder. a claypot would break through impact; if not with one stone, then with another. the way to save the pot is not to keep it away from the danger point, but to bake it so that no stone would break it. we have then to make our hearts of perfectly baked clay. then we shall be steeled against all danger. this can be easily done by the hindus. they are superior in numbers, they pretend that they are more educated, they are, therefore, better able to shield themselves from attack on their amicable relations with the mahomedans. there is mutual distrust between the two communities. the mahomedans, therefore, ask for certain concessions from lord morley. why should the hindus oppose this? if the hindus desisted, the english would notice it, the mahomedans would gradually begin to trust the hindus, and brotherliness would be the outcome. we should be ashamed to take our quarrels to the english. everyone can find out for himself that the hindus can lose nothing by desisting. that man who has inspired confidence in another has never lost anything in this world. i do not suggest that the hindus and the mahomedans will never fight. two brothers living together often do so. we shall sometimes have our heads broken. such a thing ought not to be necessary, but all men are not equiminded. when people are in a rage, they do many foolish things. these we have to put up with. but, when we do quarrel, we certainly do not want to engage counsel and to resort to english or any law-courts. two men fight; both have their heads broken, or one only. how shall a third party distribute justice amongst them? those who fight may expect to be injured. chapter xi the condition of india (_continued_) lawyers reader: you tell me that, when two men quarrel, they should not go to a law-court. this is astonishing. editor: whether you call it astonishing or not, it is the truth. and your question introduces us to the lawyers and the doctors. my firm opinion is that the lawyers have enslaved india and they have accentuated the hindu-mahomedan dissensions, and have confirmed english authority. reader: it is easy enough to bring these charges, but it will be difficult for you to prove them. but for the lawyers, who would have shown us the road to independence? who would have protected the poor? who would have secured justice? for instance, the late mr. manomohan ghose defended many a poor man free of charge. the congress, which you have praised so much, is dependent for its existence and activity upon the work of the lawyers. to denounce such an estimable class of men is to spell justice injustice, and you are abusing the liberty of the press by decrying lawyers. editor: at one time i used to think exactly like you. i have no desire to convince you that they have never done a single good thing. i honour mr. ghose's memory. it is quite true that he helped the poor. that the congress owes the lawyers something is believable. lawyers are also men, and there is something good in every man. whenever instances of lawyers having done good can be brought forward, it will be found that the good is due to them as men rather than as lawyers. all i am concerned with is to show you that the profession teaches immorality; it is exposed to temptations from which few are saved. the hindus and the mahomedans have quarrelled. an ordinary man will ask them to forget all about it, he will tell them that both must be more or less at fault, and will advise them no longer to quarrel. they go to lawyers. the latter's duty is to side with their clients, and to find out ways and arguments in favour of the clients to which they (the clients) are often strangers. if they do not do so, they will be considered to have degraded their profession. the lawyers, therefore, will, as a rule advance quarrels, instead of repressing them. moreover, men take up that profession, not in order to help others out of their miseries, but to enrich themselves. it is one of the avenues of becoming wealthy and their interest exists in multiplying disputes. it is within my knowledge that they are glad when men have disputes. petty pleaders actually manufacture them. their touts, like so many leeches, suck the blood of the poor people. lawyers are men who have little to do. lazy people, in order to indulge in luxuries, take up such professions. this is a true statement. any other argument is a mere pretension. it is the lawyers who have discovered that theirs is an honourable profession. they frame laws as they frame their own praises. they decide what fees they will charge, and they put on so much side that poor people almost consider them to be heaven-born. why do they want more fees than common labourers? why are their requirements greater? in what way are they more profitable to the country than the labourers? are those who do good entitled to greater payment? and, if they have done anything for the country for the sake of money, how shall it be counted as good? those who know anything of the hindu-mahomedan quarrels know that they have been often due to the intervention of lawyers. some families have been ruined through them; they have made brothers enemies. principalities, having come under lawyer's power, have become loaded with debt. many have been robbed of their all. such instances can be multiplied. but the greatest injury they have done to the country is that they have tightened the english grip. do you think that it would be possible for the english to carry on their government without law-courts? it is wrong to consider that courts are established for the benefit of the people. those who want to perpetuate their power do so through the courts. if people were to settle their own quarrels, a third party would not be able to exercise any authority over them. truly, men were less unmanly when they settled their disputes either by fighting or by asking their relatives to decide upon them. they became more unmanly and cowardly when they resorted to the courts of law. it was certainly a sign of savagery when they settled their disputes by fighting. is it any the less so if i ask a third party to decide between you and me? surely, the decision of a third party is not always right. the parties alone know who is right. we, in our simplicity and ignorance, imagine that a stranger, by taking our money, gives us justice. the chief thing, however, to be remembered is that, without lawyers, courts could not have been established or conducted, and without the latter the english could not rule. supposing that there were only english judges, english pleaders and english police, they could only rule over the english. the english could not do without indian judges and indian pleaders. how the pleaders were made in the first instance and how they were favoured you should understand well. then you will have the same abhorrence for the profession that i have. if pleaders were to abandon their profession, and consider it just as degrading as prostitution, english rule would break up in a day. they have been instrumental in having the charge laid against us that we love quarrels and courts, as fish love water. what i have said with reference to the pleaders necessarily applies to the judges; they are first cousins, and the one gives strength to the other. chapter xii the condition of india (_continued_) doctors reader: i now understand the lawyers; the good they may have done is accidental. i feel that the profession is certainly hateful. you, however, drag in these doctors also, how is that? editor: the views i submit to you are those i have adopted. they are not original. western writers have used stronger terms regarding both lawyers and doctors. one writer has likened the whole modern system to the upas tree. its branches are represented by parasitical professions, including those of law and medicine, and over the trunk has been raised the axe of true religion. immorality is the root of the tree. so you will see that the views do not come right out of my mind, but they represent the combined experiences of many. i was at one time a great lover of the medical profession. it was my intention to become a doctor for the sake of the country. i no longer hold that opinion. i now understand why the medicine men (the vaids) among us have not occupied a very honourable status. the english have certainly effectively used the medical profession for holding us. english physicians are known to have used the profession with several asiatic potentates for political gain. doctors have almost unhinged us. sometimes i think that quacks are better than highly qualified doctors. let us consider: the business of a doctor is to take care of the body, or, properly speaking, not even that. their business is really to rid the body of diseases that may afflict it. how do these diseases arise? surely by our negligence or indulgence. i overeat, i have indigestion, i go to a doctor, he gives me medicine. i am cured, i overeat again, and i take his pills again. had i not taken the pills in the first instance, i would have suffered the punishment deserved by me, and i would not have overeaten again. the doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. my body thereby certainly felt more at ease, but my mind became weakened. a continuance of a course of a medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control over the mind. i have indulged in vice, i contract a disease, a doctor cures me, the odds are that i shall repeat the vice. had the doctor not intervened, nature would have done its work, and i would have acquired mastery over myself, would have been freed from vice, and would have become happy. hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. men take less care of their bodies, and immorality increases. european doctors are the worst of all. for the sake of a mistaken care of the human body, they kill annually thousands of animals. they practise vivisection. no religion sanctions this. all say that it is not necessary to take so many lives for the sake of our bodies. these doctors violate our religious instinct. most of their medical preparations contain either animal fat or spirituous liquors; both of these are tabooed by hindus and mahomedans. we may pretend to be civilised, call religious prohibitions a superstition and wantonly indulge in what we like. the fact remains that the doctors induce us to indulge, and the result is that we have become deprived of self-control and have become effeminate. in these circumstances, we are unfit to serve the country. to study european medicine is to deepen our slavery. it is worth considering why we take up the profession of medicine. it is certainly not taken up for the purpose of serving humanity. we become doctors so that we may obtain honours and riches. i have endeavoured to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind. doctors make a show of their knowledge, and charge exorbitant fees. their preparations, which are intrinsically worth a few pennies, cost shillings. the populace in its credulity and in the hope of ridding itself of some disease, allows itself to be cheated. are not quacks then, whom we know, better than the doctors who put on an air of humaneness? chapter xiii what is true civilization? reader: you have denounced railways, lawyers and doctors. i can see that you will discard all machinery. what, then, is civilization? editor: the answer to that question is not difficult. i believe that the civilization india has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. rome went, greece shared the same fate, the might of the pharaohs was broken, japan has become westernised, of china nothing can be said, but india is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. the people of europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of greece or rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. in trying to learn from them, the europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of greece and rome. such is their pitiable condition. in the midst of all this, india remains immovable, and that is her glory. it is a charge against india that her people are so uncivilised, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any changes. it is a charge really against our merit. what we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. many thrust their advice upon india, and she remains steady. this is her beauty; it is the sheet-anchor of our hope. civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. to observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. so doing, we know ourselves. the gujarati equivalent for civilization means "good conduct." if this definition be correct, then india, as so many writers have shown, has nothing to learn from anybody else, and this is as it should be. we notice that mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. the more we indulge our passions, the more unbridled they become. our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. they saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. a man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor. the rich are often seem to be unhappy, the poor to be happy. millions will always remain poor. observing all this, our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. we have managed with the same kind of plough as it existed thousands of years ago. we have retained the same kind of cottages that we had in former times, and our indigenous education remains the same as before. we have had no system of life-corroding competition. each followed his own occupation or trade, and charged a regulation wage. it was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre. they, therefore, after due deliberation, decided that we should only do what we could with our hands and feet. they saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet. they further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless encumbrance, and that people would not be happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing in them, and that poor men would be robbed by rich men. they were, therefore, satisfied with small villages. they saw that kings and their swords were inferior to the sword of ethics, and they, therefore, held the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the rishis and the fakirs. a nation with a constitution like this is fitter to teach others than to learn from others. this nation had courts, lawyers and doctors, but they were all within bounds. everybody knew that these professions were not particularly superior; moreover, these vakils and _vaids_ did not rob people; they were considered people's dependents, not their masters. justice was tolerably fair. the ordinary rule was to avoid courts. there were no touts to lure people into them. this evil, too, was noticeable only in and around capitals. the common people lived independently, and followed their agricultural occupation. they enjoyed true home rule. and where this cursed modern civilization has not reached, india remains as it was before. the inhabitants of that part of india will very properly laugh at your new-fangled notions. the english do not rule over them nor will you ever rule over them. those whose name we speak we do not know, nor do they know us. i would certainly advise you and those like you who love the motherland to go into the interior that has yet not been polluted by the railways, and to live there for six months; you might then be patriotic and speak of home rule. now you see what i consider to be real civilization. those who want to change conditions such as i have described are enemies of the country and are sinners. reader: it would be all right if india were exactly as you have described it; but it is also india where there are hundreds of child-widows, where two-year-old babies are married, where twelve-year-old girls are mothers and housewives, where women practise polyandry, where the practice of niyog obtains, where, in the name of religion, girls dedicate themselves to prostitution, and where, in the name of religion, sheep and goats are killed. do you consider these also symbols of the civilization that you have described? editor: you make a mistake. the defects that you have shown are defects. nobody mistakes them for ancient civilization. they remain in spite of it. attempts have always been made, and will be made, to remove them. we may utilise the new spirit that is born in us for purging ourselves of these evils. but what i have described to you as emblems of modern civilization are accepted as such by its votaries. the indian civilization, as described by me, has been so described by its votaries. in no part of the world, and under no civilization, have all men attained perfection. the tendency of indian civilization is to elevate the moral being, that of the western civilization is to propagate immorality. the latter is godless, the former is based on a belief in god. so understanding and so believing, it behoves every lover of india to cling to the old indian civilization even as a child clings to its mother's breast. chapter xiv how can india become free? reader: i appreciate your views about civilization. i will have to think over them. i cannot take in all at once. what, then, holding the views you do, would you suggest for freeing india? editor: i do not expect my views to be accepted all of a sudden. my duty is to place them before readers like yourself. time can be trusted to do the rest. we have already examined the conditions for freeing india, but we have done so indirectly; we will now do so directly. it is a world-known maxim that the removal of the cause of a disease results in the removal of the disease itself. similarly, if the cause of india's slavery be removed, india can become free. reader: if indian civilization is, as you say, the best of all, how do you account for india's slavery? editor: this civilization is unquestionably the best; but it is to be observed that all civilizations have been on their trial. that civilization which is permanent outlives it. because the sons of india were found wanting, its civilization has been placed in jeopardy. but its strength is to be seen in its ability to survive the shock. moreover, the whole of india is not touched. those alone who have been affected by western civilization have become enslaved. we measure the universe by our own miserable foot-rule. when we are slaves, we think that the whole universe is enslaved. because we are in an abject condition, we think that the whole of india is in that condition. as a matter of fact, it is not so, but it is as well to impute our slavery to the whole of india. but if we bear in mind the above fact we can see that, if we become free, india is free. and in this thought you have a definition of swaraj. it is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. it is therefore in the palm of our hands. do not consider this swaraj to be like a dream. hence there is no idea of sitting still. the swaraj that i wish to picture before you and me is such that, after we have once realised it, we will endeavour to the end of our lifetime to persuade others to do likewise. but such swaraj has to be experienced by each one for himself. one drowning man will never save another. slaves ourselves, it would be a mere pretension to think of freeing others. now you will have seen that it is not necessary for us to have as our goal the expulsion of the english. if the english become indianised, we can accommodate them. if they wish to remain in india along with their civilization, there is no room for them. it lies with us to bring about such a state of things. reader: it is impossible that englishmen should ever become indianised. editor: to say that is equivalent to saying that the english have no humanity in them. and it is really beside the point whether they become so or not. if we keep our own house in order, only those who are fit to live in it will remain. others will leave of their own accord. such things occur within the experience of all of us. reader: but it has not occurred in history! editor: to believe that, what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man. at any rate, it behoves us to try what appeals to our reason. all countries are not similarly conditioned. the condition of india is unique. its strength is immeasurable. we need not, therefore, refer to the history of other countries. i have drawn attention to the fact that, when other civilizations have succumbed, the indians has survived many a shock. reader: i cannot follow this. there seems little doubt that we shall have to expel the english by force of arms. so long as they are in the country, we cannot rest. one of our poets says that slaves cannot even dream of happiness. we are, day by day, becoming weakened owing to the presence of the english. our greatness is gone; our people look like terrified men. the english are in the country like a blight which we must remove by every means. editor: in your excitement, you have forgotten all we have been considering. we brought the english, and we keep them. why do you forget that our adoption of their civilization makes their presence in india at all possible? your hatred against them ought to be transferred to their civilization. but let us assume that we have to drive away the english by fighting; how is that to be done? reader: in the same way as italy did it. what it was possible for mazzini and garibaldi to do, is possible for us. you cannot deny that they were very great men. chapter xv italy and india editor: it is well that you have instanced italy. mazzini was a great and good man; garibaldi was a great warrior. both are adorable; from their lives we can learn much. but the condition of italy was different from that of india. in the first instance the difference between mazzini and garibaldi is worth noting. mazzini's ambition was not, and has not yet been realised, regarding italy. mazzini has shown in his writings on the duty of man that every man must learn how to rule himself. this has not happened in italy. garibaldi did not hold this view of mazzini's. garibaldi gave, and every italian took arms. italy and austria had the same civilization; they were cousins in this respect. it was a matter of tit for tat. garibaldi simply wanted italy to be free from the austrian yoke. the machinations of minister cavour disgrace that portion of the history of italy. and what has been the result? if you believe that, because italians rule italy, the italian nation is happy, you are groping in darkness. mazzini has shown conclusively that italy did not become free. victor emanuel gave one meaning to the expression; mazzini gave another. according to emanuel, cavour, and even garibaldi, italy meant the king of italy and his henchmen. according to mazzini, it meant the whole of the italian people, that is, its agriculturists. emanuel was only its servant. the italy of mazzini still remains in a state of slavery. at the time of the so-called national war, it was a game of chess between two rival kings, with the people of italy as pawns. the working classes in that land are still unhappy. they therefore indulge in assassination, rise in revolt, and rebellion on their part is always expected. what substantial gain did italy obtain after the withdrawal of the austrian troops? the gain was only nominal. the reforms, for the sake of which the war was supposed to have been undertaken, have not yet been granted. the condition of the people, in general, still remains the same. i am sure you do not wish to reproduce such a condition in india. i believe that you want the millions of india to be happy, not that you want the reins of government in your hands. if that be so, we have to consider only one thing: how can the millions obtain self-rule? you will admit that people under several indian princes are being ground down. the latter mercilessly crush them. their tyranny is greater than that of the english, and, if you want such tyranny in india, that we shall never agree. my patriotism does not teach me that i am to allow people to be crushed under the heel of indian princes, if only the english retire. if i have the power, i should resist the tyranny of indian princes just as much as that of the english. by patriotism i mean the welfare of the whole people, and, if i could secure it at the hands of the english, i should bow down my head to them. if any englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of india, resisting tyranny and serving the land, i should welcome that englishman as an indian. again, india can fight like italy only when she has arms. you have not considered this problem at all. the english are splendidly armed; that does not frighten me, but it is clear that, to fit ourselves against them in arms, thousands of indians must be armed. if such a thing be possible, how many years will it take. moreover, to arm india on a large scale is to europeanise it. then her condition will be just as pitiable as that of europe. this means, in short, that india must accept european civilization, and if that is what we want, the best thing is that we have among us those who are so well trained in that civilization. we will then fight for a few rights, will get what we can and so pass our days. but the fact is that the indian nation will not adopt arms, and it is well that it does not. reader: you are overassuming facts. all need not be armed. at first, we will assassinate a few englishmen and strike terror; then a few men who will have been armed will fight openly. we may have to lose a quarter of a million men, more or less, but we will regain our land. we will undertake guerilla warfare, and defeat the english. editor: that is to say, you want to make the holy land of india unholy. do you not tremble to think of freeing india by assassination? what we need to do is to kill ourselves. it is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. whom do you suppose to free by assassination? the millions of india do not desire it. those who are intoxicated by the wretched modern civilization think of these things. those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. those who believe that india has gained by dhingra's act and such other acts in india make a serious mistake. dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. he gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous. reader: but you will admit that the english have been frightened by these murders, and that lord morley's reforms are due to fear. editor: the english are both a timid and a brave nation. she is, i believe, easily influenced by the use of gunpowder. it is possible that lord morley has granted the reforms through fear, but what is granted under fear can be retained only so long as the fear lasts. chapter xvi brute-force reader: this is a new doctrine; that what is gained through fear is retained only while the fear lasts. surely, what is given will not be withdrawn? editor: not so. the proclamation of 1857 was given at the end of a revolt, and for the purpose of preserving peace. when peace was secured and people became simple-minded, its full effect was toned down. if i ceased stealing for fear of punishment, i would re-commence the operation so soon as the fear is withdrawn from me. this is almost a universal experience. we have assumed that we can get men to do things by force and, therefore, we use force. reader: will you not admit that you are arguing against yourself? you know that what the english obtained in their own country they have obtained by using brute-force. i know you have argued that what they have obtained is useless, but that does not affect my argument. they wanted useless things, and they got them. my point is that their desire was fulfilled. what does it matter what means they adopted? why should we not obtain our goal which is good, by any means whatsoever even by using violence? shall i think of the means when i have to deal with a thief in the house? my duty is to drive him out anyhow. you seem to admit that we have received nothing, and that we shall receive nothing by petitioning. why, then, may we not do so by using brute-force? and, to retain what we may receive, we shall keep up the fear by using the same force to the extent that it may be necessary. you will not find fault with a continuance of force to prevent a child from thrusting its foot into fire? somehow or other, we have to gain our end. editor: your reasoning is plausible. it has deluded many. i have used similar arguments before now. but i think i know better now, and i shall endeavour to undeceive you. let us first take the argument that we are justified in gaining our end by using brute-force, because the english gained theirs by using similar means. it is perfectly true that they used brute-force, and that it is possible for us to do likewise: but by using similar means, we can get only the same thing that they got. you will admit that we do not want that. your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. through that mistake even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a noxious weed. if i want to cross the ocean, i can do so only by means of a vessel; if i were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and i would soon find the bottom. "as is the god, so is the votary," is a maxim worth considering. its meaning has been distorted, and men have gone astray. the means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. i am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of god by laying myself prostrate before satan. if, therefore, anyone were to say: "i want to worship god: it does not matter that i do so by means of satan," it would be set down as ignorant folly. we reap exactly as we sow. the english in 1833 obtained greater voting power by violence. did they, by using brute-force, better appreciate their duty? they wanted the right of voting, which they obtained by using physical-force. but real rights are a result of performance of duty; these rights they have not obtained. we, therefore, have before us in england the force of everybody wanting and insisting on his rights, nobody thinking of his duty. and, where everybody wants rights, who shall give them and to whom? i do not wish to imply that they never perform their duty, but i do wish to imply that they do not perform the duty to which those rights should correspond; and, as they do not perform that particular duty, namely, acquire fitness, their rights have proved a burden to them. in other words, what they have obtained is an exact result of the means they adopted. they used the means corresponding to the end. if i want to deprive you of your watch, i shall certainly have to fight for it; if i want to buy your watch, i shall have to pay you for it; and, if i want a gift, i shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means i employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. thus we see three different results from three different means. will you still say that means do not matter? now we shall take the example given by you of the thief to be driven out. i do not agree with you that the thief may be driven out by any means. if it is my father who has come to steal i shall use one kind of means. if it is an acquaintance, i shall use another; and, in the case of a perfect stranger, i shall use a third. if it is a white man, you will perhaps say, you will use means different from those you will adopt with an indian thief. if it is a weakling, the means will be different from those to be adopted for dealing with an equal in physical strength; and, if the thief is armed from tip to toe, i shall simply remain quiet. thus we have a variety of means between the father and the armed man. again, i fancy that i should pretend to be sleeping whether the thief was my father or that strong-armed man. the reason for this is that my father would also be armed, and i should succumb to the strength possessed by either, and allow my things to be stolen. the strength of my father would make me weep with pity; the strength of the armed man would rouse in me anger, and we should become enemies. such is the curious situation. from these examples, we may not be able to agree as to the means to be adopted in each case. i myself seem clearly to see what should be done in all these cases, but the remedy may frighten you. i, therefore, hesitate to place it before you. for the time being, i will leave you to guess it, and, if you cannot, it is clear that you will have to adopt different means in each case. you will also have seen that any means will not avail to drive away the thief. you will have to adopt means to fit each case. hence it follows that your duty is _not_ to drive away the thief by any means you like. let us proceed a little further. that a well-armed man has stolen your property, you have harboured the thought, you are filled with anger; you argue that you want to punish that rogue, not for your own sake, but for the good of your neighbours; you have collected a number of armed men, you want to take his house by assault, he is duly informed of it, he runs away; he too, is incensed. he collects his brother-robbers, and sends you a defiant message that he will commit robbery in broad day-light. you are strong, you do not fear him, you are prepared to receive him. meanwhile, the robber pesters your neighbours. they complain before you, you reply that you are doing all for their sake; you do not mind that your own goods have been stolen. your neighbours reply that the robber never pestered them before, and that he commenced his depredations only after you declared hostilities against him. you are between sylla and charybdis. you are full of pity for the poor men. what they say is true. what are you to do? you will be disgraced if you now leave the robber alone. you, therefore, tell the poor men: "never mind. come, my wealth is yours, i will give you arms, i will teach you how to use them; you should belabour the rogue; don't you leave him alone." and so the battle grows; the robbers increase in number; your neighbours have deliberately put themselves to inconvenience. thus the result of wanting to take revenge upon the robber is that you have disturbed your own peace; you are in perpetual fear of being robbed and assaulted; your courage has given place to cowardice. if you will patiently examine the argument, you will see that i have not overdrawn the picture. this is one of the means. now let us examine the other. you set this armed robber down as an ignorant brother; you intend to reason with him at a suitable opportunity; you argue that he is, after all, a fellow-man; you do not know what prompted him to steal. you, therefore, decide that, when you can, you will destroy the man's motive for stealing. whilst you are thus reasoning with yourself, the man comes again to steal. instead of being angry with him, you take pity on him. you think that this stealing habit must be a disease with him. henceforth you, therefore, keep your doors and windows open; you change your sleeping-place, and you keep your things in a manner most accessible to him. the robber comes again, and is confused, as all this is new to him; nevertheless, he takes away your things. but his mind is agitated. he inquires about you in the village, he comes to learn about your broad and loving heart, he repents, he begs your pardon, returns you your things, and leaves off the stealing habit. he becomes your servant, and you find for him honourable employment. this is the second method. thus, you see different means have brought about totally different results. i do not wish to deduce from this that robbers will act in the above manner or that all will have the same pity and love like you; but i wish only to show that only fair means can produce fair results, and that, at least in the majority of cases, if not, indeed, in all, the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms. there is harm in the exercise of brute-force, never in that of pity. now we will take the question of petitioning. it is a fact beyond dispute that a petition, without the backing of force, is useless. however, the late justice ranade used to say that petitions served a useful purpose because they were a means of educating people. they give the latter an idea of their condition, and warn the rulers. from this point of view, they are not altogether useless. a petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery. a petition backed by force is a petition from an equal and, when he transmits his demand in the form of a petition, it testifies to his nobility. two kinds of force can back petitions. "we will hurt you if you do not give this" is one kind of force; it is the force of arms, whose evil results we have already examined. the second kind of force can thus be stated: "if you do not concede our demand, we will be no longer your petitioners. you can govern us only so long as we remain the governed; we shall no longer have any dealings with you." the force implied in this may be described as love-force, soul-force, or, more popularly but less accurately, passive resistance. this force is indestructible. he who uses it perfectly understands his position. we have an ancient proverb which literally means "one negative cures thirty-six diseases." the force of arms is powerless when matched against the force of love or the soul. now we shall take your last illustration, that of the child thrusting its foot into fire. it will not avail you. what do you really do to the child? supposing that it can exert so much physical force that it renders you powerless and rushes into fire, then you cannot prevent it. there are only two remedies open to you--either you must kill it in order to prevent it from perishing in the flames, or you must give your own life, because you do not wish to see it perish before your very eyes. you will not kill it. if your heart is not quite full of pity, it is possible that you will not surrender yourself by preceding the child and going into the fire yourself. you, therefore, helplessly allow it to go into the flames. thus, at any rate, you are not using physical force. i hope you will not consider that it is still physical-force, though of a low order, when you would forcibly prevent the child from rushing towards the fire if you could. that force is of a different order, and we have to understand what it is. remember that, in thus preventing the child, you are minding entirely its own interest, you are exercising authority for its sole benefit. your example does not apply to the english. in using brute-force against the english, you consult entirely your own, that is the national interest. there is no question here either of pity or of love. if you say that the actions of the english, being evil, represent fire, and that they proceed to their actions through ignorance, and that, therefore, they occupy the position of a child, and that you want to protect such a child, then you will have to overtake every such evil action by whomsoever committed, and, as in the case of the child, you will have to sacrifice yourself. if you are capable of such immeasurable pity, i wish you well in its exercise. chapter xvii passive resistance reader: is there any historical evidence as to the success of what you have called soul-force or truth-force? no instance seems to have happened of any nation having risen through soul-force. i still think that the evil-doers will not cease doing evil without physical punishment. editor: the poet tulsidas has said: "of religion, pity or love is the root, as egotism of the body. therefore, we should not abandon pity so long as we are alive." this appears to me to be a scientific truth. i believe in it as much as i believe in two and two being four. the force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. we have evidence of its working at every step. the universe would disappear without the existence of that force. but you ask for historical evidence. it is, therefore, necessary to know what history means. the gujarati equivalent means: "it so happened." if that is the meaning of history, it is possible to give copious evidence. but if it means the doings of kings and emperors, there can be no evidence of soul-force or passive resistance in such history. you cannot expect silver-ore in a tin-mine. history, as we know it, is a record of the wars of the world, and so there is a proverb among englishmen that a nation which has no history, that is, no wars, is a happy nation. how kings played how they become enemies of one another and how they murdered one another is found accurately recorded in history and, if this were all that had happened in the world, it would have been ended long ago. if the story of the universe had commenced with wars, not a man would have been found alive to-day. those people who have been warred against have disappeared, as, for instance, the natives of australia, of whom hardly a man was left alive by the intruders. mark, please, that these natives did not use soul-force in self-defence, and it does not require much foresight to know that the australians will share the same fate as their victims. "those that wield the sword shall perish by the sword." with us, the proverb is that professional swimmers will find a watery grave. the fact that there are so many men still alive in the world shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. therefore the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on. thousands, indeed, tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this force. hundreds of nations live in peace. history does not and cannot take note of this fact. history is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. two brothers quarrel: one of them repents and re-awakens the love that was lying dormant in him; the two again begin to live in peace: nobody takes note of this. but if the two brothers, through the intervention of solicitors or some other reason, take up arms or go to law--which is another form of the exhibition of brute-force--their doings would be immediately noticed in the press, they would be the talk of their neighbours, and would probably go down to history. and what is true of families and communities is true of nations. there is no reason, to believe that there is one law for families, and another for nations. history, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history. reader: according to what you say, it is plain that instances of the kind of passive resistance are not to be found in history. it is necessary to understand this passive resistance more fully. it will be better, therefore, if you enlarge upon it. editor: passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. when i refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, i use soul-force. for instance, the government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me: i do not like it, if, by using violence, i force the government to repeal the law, i am employing what may be termed body-force. if i do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, i use soul-force. it involves sacrifice of self. everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of others. moreover, if this kind of force is used in a cause that is unjust only the person using it suffers. he does not make others suffer for his mistakes. men have before now done many things which were subsequently found to have been wrong. no man can claim to be absolutely in the right, or that a particular thing is wrong, because he thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. it is, therefore, meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be. this is the key to the use of soul-force. reader: you would then disregard laws--this is rank disloyalty. we have always been considered a law-abiding nation. you seem to be going even beyond the extremists. they say that we must obey the laws that have been passed, but that, if the laws be bad, we must drive out the law-givers even by force. editor: whether i go beyond them or whether i do not, is a matter of no consequence to either of us. we simply want to find out what is right, and to act accordingly. the real meaning of the statement that we are a law-abiding nation is that we are passive resisters. when we do not like certain laws, we do not break the heads of law-givers, but we suffer and do not submit to the laws. that we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. there was no such thing in former days. the people disregarded those laws they did not like, and suffered the penalties for their breach. it is contrary to our manhood, if we obey laws repugnant to our conscience. such teaching is opposed to religion and means slavery. if the government were to ask us to go about without any clothing, should we do so? if i were a passive resister, i would say to them that i would have nothing to do with their law. but we have so forgotten ourselves and become so compliant, that we do not mind any degrading law. a man who has realised his manhood, who fears only god, will fear no one else. man-made laws are not necessarily binding on him. even the government do not expect any such thing from us. they do not say: "you must do such and such a thing," but they say: "if you do not do it, we will punish you." we are sunk so low, that we fancy that it is our duty and our religion to do what the law lays down. if man will only realise that it is unmanly to obey laws that are unjust, no man's tyranny will enslave him. this is the key to self-rule or home-rule. it is a superstition and an ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority. many examples can be given in which acts of majorities will be found to have been wrong, and those of minorities to have been right. all reforms owe their origin to the initiation of minorities in opposition to majorities. if among a band of robbers, a knowledge of robbing is obligatory, is a pious man to accept the obligation? so long as the superstition that men should obey unjust laws exists, so long will their slavery exist. and a passive resister alone can remove such a superstition. to use brute-force, to use gun-powder is contrary to passive resistance; for it means that we want our opponent to do by force--that which we desire but he does not. and, if such a use of force is justifiable, surely he is entitled to do likewise by us. and so we should never come to an agreement. we may simply fancy, like the blind horse moving in a circle round a mill, that we are making progress. those who believe that they are not bound to obey laws which are repugnant to their conscience have only the remedy of passive resistance open to them. any other must lead to disaster. reader: from what you say, i deduce that passive resistance is a splendid weapon of the weak but that, when they are strong, they may take up arms. editor: this is gross ignorance. passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is matchless. it is superior to the force of arms. how, then, can it be considered only a weapon of the weak? physical force men are strangers to the courage that is requisite in a passive resister. do you believe that a coward can ever disobey a law that he dislikes? extremists are considered to be advocates of brute-force. why do they, then, talk about obeying laws? i do not blame them. they can say nothing else. when they succeed in driving out the english, and they themselves become governors, they will want you and me to obey their laws. and that is a fitting thing for their constitution. but a passive resister will say he will not obey a law that is against his conscience, even though he may be blown to pieces at the mouth of a cannon. what do you think? wherein is courage required--in blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon or with a smiling face to approach a cannon and to be blown to pieces? who is the true warrior--he who keeps death always as a bosom-friend or he who controls the death of others? believe me that a man devoid of courage and manhood can never be a passive resister. this, however, i will admit: that even a man, weak in body, is capable of offering this resistance. one man can offer it just as well as millions. both men and women can indulge in it. it does not require the training of an army; it needs no jiu-jitsu. control over the mind is alone necessary, and, when that is attained, man is free like the king of the forest, and his very glance withers the enemy. passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. without drawing a drop of blood, it produces far-reaching results. it never rusts, and cannot be stolen. competition between passive resisters does not exhaust. the sword of passive resistance does not require a scabbard. it is strange indeed that you should consider such a weapon to be a weapon merely of the weak. reader: you have said that passive resistance is a speciality of india. have cannons never been used in india? editor: evidently, in your opinion, india means its few princes. to me, it means its teeming millions, on whom depends the existence of its princes and our own. kings will always use their kingly weapons. to use force is bred in them. they want to command, but those who have to obey commands, do not want guns; and these are in a majority throughout the world. they have to learn either body-force or soul-force. where they learn the former, both the rulers and the ruled become like so many mad men, but, where they learn soul-force, the commands of the rulers do not go beyond the point of their swords, for true men disregard unjust commands. peasants have never been subdued by the sword, and never will be. they do not know the use of the sword, and they are not frightened by the use of it by others. that nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. those who defy death are free from all fear. for those who are labouring under the delusive charms of brute-force, this picture is not overdrawn. the fact is that, in india, the nation at large has generally used passive resistance in all departments of life. we cease to co-operate with our rulers when they displease us. this is passive resistance. i remember an instance when, in a small principality, the villagers were offended by some command issued by the prince. the former immediately began vacating the village. the prince became nervous, apologised to his subjects and withdrew his command. many such instances can be found in india. real home-rule is possible only where passive resistance is the guiding force of the people. any other rule is foreign rule. reader: then you will say that it is not at all necessary for us to train the body? editor: i will certainly not say any such thing. it is difficult to become a passive resister, unless the body is trained. as a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind, there can be no strength of soul. we will have to improve our physique by getting rid of infant marriages and luxurious living. if i were to ask a man having a shattered body to face a cannon's mouth i would make of myself a laughing-stock. reader: from what you say, then, it would appear that it is not a small thing to become a passive resister, and, if that is so, i would like you to explain how a man may become a passive resister. editor: to become a passive resister is easy enough, but it is also equally difficult. i have known a lad of fourteen years become a passive resister; i have known also sick people doing likewise and i have also known physically strong and otherwise happy people being unable to take up passive resistance. after a great deal of experience, it seems to me that those who want to become passive resisters for the service of the country have to observe perfect chastity, adopt poverty, follow truth, and cultivate fearlessness. chastity is one of the greatest disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite firmness. a man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly. he whose mind is given over to animal passions is not capable of any great effort. this can be proved by innumerable instances. what, then, is a married person to do, is the question that arises naturally; and yet it need not. when a husband and wife gratify the passions, it is no less an animal indulgence on that account. such an indulgence, except for perpetuating the race, is strictly prohibited. but a passive resister has to avoid even that very limited indulgence, because he can have no desire for progeny. a married man, therefore, can observe perfect chastity. this subject is not capable of being treated at greater length. several questions arise: how is one to carry one's wife with one? what are her rights, and such other questions? yet those who wish to take part in a great work are bound to solve these puzzles. just as there is necessity for chastity, so is there for poverty. pecuniary ambition and passive resistance cannot well go together. those who have money are not expected to throw it away, but they are expected to be indifferent about it. they must be prepared to lose every penny rather than give up passive resistance. passive resistance has been described in the course of our discussion as truth-force. truth, therefore, has necessarily to be followed, and that at any cost. in this connection, academic questions such as whether a man may not lie in order to save a life, etc. arise, but these questions occur only to those who wish to justify lying. those who want to follow truth every time are not placed in such a quandary, and, if they are, they are still saved from a false position. passive resistance cannot proceed a step without fearlessness. those alone can follow the path of passive resistance who are free from fear whether as to their possessions, false honour, their relatives, the government, bodily injuries, death. these observances are not to be abandoned in the belief that they are difficult. nature has implanted in the human breast ability to cope with any difficulty or suffering that may come to man unprovoked. these qualities are worth having, even for those who do not wish to serve the country. let there be no mistake as those who want to train themselves in the use of arms are also obliged to have these qualities more or less. everybody does not become a warrior for the wish. a would-be warrior will have to observe chastity, and to be satisfied with poverty as his lot. a warrior without fearlessness cannot be conceived of. it may be thought that he would not need to be exactly truthful, but that quality follows real fearlessness. when a man abandons truth, he does so owing to fear in some shape or form. the above four attributes, then, need not frighten any one. it may be as well here to note that a physical-force man has to have many other useless qualities which a passive resister never needs. and you will find that whatever extra effort a swordsman needs is due to lack of fearlessness. if he is an embodiment of the latter, the sword will drop from his hand that very moment. he does not need its support. one who is free from hatred requires no sword. a man with a stick suddenly came face to face with a lion, and instinctively raised his weapon in self-defence. the man saw that he had only prated about fearlessness when there was none in him. that moment he dropped the stick, and found himself free from all fear. chapter xviii education reader: in the whole of our discussion, you have not demonstrated the necessity for education; we always complain of its absence among us. we notice a movement for compulsory education in our country. the maharaja of gaekwar has introduced it in his territories. every eye is directed towards them. we bless the maharaja for it. is all this effort then of no use? editor: if we consider our civilization to be the highest, i have regretfully to say that much of the effort you have described is of no use. the motive of the maharaja and other great leaders who have been working in this direction is perfectly pure. they, therefore, undoubtedly deserve great praise. but we cannot conceal from ourselves the result that is likely to flow from their effort. what is the meaning of education? if it simply means a knowledge of letters, it is merely an instrument, and an instrument may be well used or abused. the same instrument that may be used to cure a patient may be used to take his life, and so may a knowledge of letters. we daily observe that many men abuse it, and very few make good use of it, and if this is a correct statement, we have proved that more harm has been done by it than good. the ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of letters. to teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education. a peasant earns his bread honestly. he has ordinary knowledge of the world. he knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, his wife, his children and his fellow-villagers. he understands and observes the rules of morality. but he cannot write his own name. what do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? will you add an inch to his happiness? do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot? and even if you want to do that, he will not need such an education. carried away by the flood of western thought, we came to the conclusion, without weighing _pros_ and _cons_, that we should give this kind of education to the people. * * * * * now let us take higher education. i have learned geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry, etc. what of that? in what way have i benefitted myself or those around me? why have i learned these things? professor huxley has thus defined education:--"that man i think has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of, whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order ... whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of nature ... whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience ... who has learnt to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself. such an one and no other, i conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is in harmony with nature. he will make the best of her and she of him." if this be true education, i must emphatically say that the sciences i have enumerated above, i have never been able to use for controlling my senses. therefore, whether you take elementary education or higher education, it is not required for the main thing. it does not make of us men. it does not enable us to do our duty. reader: if that is so, i shall have to ask you another question. what enables you to tell all these things to me? if you had not received higher education, how would you have been able to explain to me the things that you have? editor: you have spoken well. but my answer is simple: i do not for one moment believe that my life would have been wasted, had i not received higher or lower education. nor do i consider that i necessarily serve because i speak. but i do desire to serve and, in endeavouring to fulfil that desire, i make use of the education i have received. and, if i am making good use of it, even then it is not for the millions, but i can use it only for such as you, and this supports my contention. both you and i have come under the bane of what is mainly false education. i claim to have become free from its ill-effects, and i am trying to give you the benefit of my experience, and, in doing so, i am demonstrating the rottenness of this education. moreover, i have not run down a knowledge of letters under all circumstances. all i have shown is that we must not make of it a fetish. it is not our kamdhuk. in its place it can be of use, and it has its place when we have brought our senses under subjection, and put our ethics on a firm foundation. and then, if we feel inclined to receive that education, we may make good use of it. as an ornament it is likely to sit well on us. it now follows that it is not necessary to make this education compulsory. our ancient school system is enough. character-building has the first place in it, and that is primary education. a building erected on that foundation will last. reader: do i then understand that you do not consider english education necessary for obtaining home rule? editor: my answer is yes and no. to give millions a knowledge of english is to enslave them. the foundation that macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. i do not suggest that he had any such intention, but that has been the result. is it not a sad commentary that we should have to speak of home rule in a foreign tongue? and it is worthy of note that the systems which the europeans have discarded are the systems in vogue among us. their learned men continually make changes. we ignorantly adhere to their cast-off systems. they are trying each division to improve its own status. wales is a small portion of england. great efforts are being made to revive a knowledge of welsh among welshmen. the english chancellor, mr. lloyd george, is taking a leading part in the movement to make welsh children speak welsh. and what is our condition? we write to each other in faulty english, and from this even, our m. a.'s are not free; our best thoughts are expressed in english; the proceedings of our congress are conducted in english; our best newspapers are printed in english. if this state of things continues for a long time, posterity will--it is my firm opinion--condemn and curse us. it is worth noting that, by receiving english education, we have enslaved the nation. hypocrisy, tyranny, etc., have increased; english-knowing indians have not hesitated to cheat and strike terror into the people. now, if we are doing anything for the people at all, we are paying only a portion of the debt due to them. is it not a most painful thing that, if i want to go to a court of justice, i must employ the english language as medium; that, when i become a barrister, i may not speak my mother-tongue, and that some one else should have to translate to me from my own language? is not this absolutely absurd? is it not a sign of slavery? am i to blame the english for it or myself? it is we, the english-knowing men, that have enslaved india. the curse of the nation will rest not upon the english but upon us. i have told you that my answer to your last question is both yes and no. i have explained to you why it is yes. i shall now explain why it is no. we are so much beset by the disease of civilization, that we cannot altogether do without english education. those who have already received it may make good use of it wherever necessary. in our dealings with the english people, in our dealings with our own people, when we can only correspond with them through that language, and for the purpose of knowing how much disgusted they (the english) have themselves become with their civilization, we may use or learn english, as the case may be. those who have studied english will have to teach morality to their progeny through their mother-tongue, and to teach them another indian language; but when they have grown up, they may learn english, the ultimate aim being that we should not need it. the object of making money thereby should be eschewed. even in learning english to such a limited extent we will have to consider what we should learn through it and what we should not. it will be necessary to know what sciences we should learn. a little thought should show you that immediately we cease to care for english degrees, the rulers will prick up their ears. reader: then what education shall we give? editor: this has been somewhat considered above, but we will consider it a little more. i think that we have to improve all our languages. what subjects we should learn through them need not be elaborated here. those english books which are valuable we should translate into the various indian languages. we should abandon the pretension of learning many sciences. religious, that is ethical, education will occupy the first place. every cultured indian will know in addition to his own provincial language, if a hindu, sanskrit; if a mahomedan, arabic; if a parsee, persian; and all, hindi. some hindus should know arabic and persian; some mahomedans and parsees, sanskrit. several northerners and westerners should learn tamil. a universal language for india should be hindi, with the option of writing it in persian or nagric characters. in order that the hindus and the mahomedans may have closer relations, it is necessary to know both the characters. and, if we can do this, we can drive the english language out of the field in a short time. all this is necessary for us, slaves. through our slavery the nation has been enslaved, and it will be free with our freedom. reader: the question of religious education is very difficult. editor: yet we cannot do without it. india will never be godless. rank atheism cannot flourish in that land. the task is indeed difficult. my head begins to turn as i think of religious education. our religious teachers are hypocritical and selfish; they will have to be approached. the mullas, the dasturs and the brahmins hold the key in their hands, but if they will not have the good sense, the energy that we have derived from english education will have to be devoted to religious education. this is not very difficult. only the fringe of the ocean has been polluted, and it is those who are within the fringe who alone need cleansing. we who come under this category can even cleanse ourselves, because my remarks do not apply to the millions. in order to restore india to its pristine condition, we have to return to it. in our own civilization, there will naturally be progress, retrogression, reforms, and reactions; but one effort is required, and that is to drive out western civilization. all else will follow. chapter xix machinery reader: when you speak of driving out western civilization, i suppose you will also say that we want no machinery. editor: by raising this question, you have opened the wound i had received. when i read mr. dutt's economic history of india i wept; and, as i think of it, again my heart sickens. it is machinery that has impoverished india. it is difficult to measure the harm that manchester has done to us. it is due to manchester that indian handicraft has all but disappeared. but i make a mistake. how can manchester be blamed? we wore manchester cloth, and that is why manchester wove it. i was delighted when i read about the bravery of bengal. there are no cloth-mills in that presidency. they were, therefore, able to restore the original hand-weaving occupation. it is true bengal encourages the mill-industry of bombay. if bengal had proclaimed a boycott of _all_ machine-made goods, it would have been much better. machinery has begun to desolate europe. ruination is now knocking at the english gates. machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it represents a great sin. the workers in the mills of bombay have become slaves. the condition of the women working in the mills is shocking. when there were no mills, these women were not starving. if the machinery craze grows in our country, it will become an unhappy land. it may be considered a heresy, but i am bound to say that it were better for us to send money to manchester and to use flimsy manchester cloth than to multiply mills in india. by using manchester cloth we would only waste our money, but by reproducing manchester in india, we shall keep our money at the price of our blood, because our very moral being will be sapped, and i call in support of my statement the very mill-hands as witnesses. and those who have amassed wealth out of factories are not likely to be better than other rich men. it would be folly to assume that an indian rockfeller would be better than the american rockfeller. impoverished india can become free, but it will be hard for an india, made rich through immorality, to regain its freedom. i fear we will have to admit that moneyed men support british rule; their interest is bound up with its stability. money renders a man helpless. the other thing is as harmful as sexual vice. both are poison. a snakebite is a lesser poison than these two, because the former merely destroys the body, but the latter destroys body, mind and soul. we need not, therefore, be pleased with the prospect of the growth of the mill-industry. reader: are the mills, then, to be closed down? editor: that is difficult. it is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. we, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a thing is, supreme wisdom. we cannot condemn mill-owners, we can but pity them. it would be too much to expect them to give up their mills, but we may implore them not to increase them. if they would be good, they would gradually contract their business. they can establish in thousands of households the ancient and sacred handlooms, and they can buy out the cloth that may be thus woven. whether the mill-owners do this or not, people can cease to use machine-made goods. reader: you have so far spoken about machine-made cloth, but there are innumerable machine-made things. we have either to import them or to introduce machinery into our country. editor: indeed, our gods even are made in germany. what need, then, to speak of matches, pins, and glassware? my answer can be only one. what did india do before these articles were introduced? precisely the same should be done to-day. as long as we cannot make pins without machinery, so long will we do without them. the tinsel splendour of glassware we will have nothing to do with and we will make wicks, as of old, with home-grown cotton, and use hand-made earthern saucers for lamps. so doing, we shall save our eyes and money, and will support swadeshi, and so shall we attain home rule. it is not to be conceived that all men will do all these things at one time, or that some men will give up all machine-made things at once. but, if the thought is sound, we will always find out what we can give up, and will gradually cease to use this. what a few may do, others will copy, and the movement will grow like the cocoanut of the mathematical problem. what the leaders do, the populace will gladly follow. the matter is neither complicated nor difficult. you and i shall not wait until we can carry others with us. those will be the losers who will not do it, and those who will not do it, although they can appreciate the truth, will deserve to be called cowards. reader: what, then, of the tram-cars and electricity? editor: this question is now too late. it signifies nothing. if we are to do without the railways, we shall have to do without the tram-cars. machinery is like a snake-hole which may contain from one to a hundred snakes. where there is machinery there are large cities; and where there are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways; and there only does one see electric light. english villages do not boast any of these things. honest physicians will tell you that, where means of artificial locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered. i remember that, when in a european town there was a scarcity of money, the receipts of the tramway company, of the lawyers and of the doctors, went down, and the people were less unhealthy. i cannot recall a single good point in connection with machinery. books can be written to demonstrate its evils. reader: it is a good point or a bad one that all you are saying will be printed through machinery? editor: this is one of those instances which demonstrate that sometimes poison is used to kill poison. this, then, will not be a good point regarding machinery. as it expires, the machinery, as it were, says to us: "beware and avoid me. you will derive no benefit from me, and the benefit that may accrue from printing will avail only those who are infected with the machinery-craze." do not, therefore, forget the main thing. it is necessary to realise that machinery is bad. we shall then be able gradually to do away with it. nature has not provided any way whereby we may reach a desired goal all of a sudden. if, instead of welcoming machinery as a boon, we would look upon it as an evil, it would ultimately go. chapter xx conclusion reader: from your views i gather that you would form a third party. you are neither an extremist nor a moderate. editor: that is a mistake. i do not think of a third party at all. we do not all think alike. we cannot say that all the moderates hold identical views. and how can those who want to serve only have a party? i would serve both the moderates and the extremists. where i should differ from them, i would respectfully place my position before them, and continue my service. reader: what, then, would you say to both the parties? editor: i would say to the extremists:--"i know that you want home rule for india; it is not to be had for your asking. everyone will have to take it for himself. what others get for me is not home rule but foreign rule; therefore, it would not be proper for you to say that you have obtained home rule, if you expelled the english. i have already described the true nature of home rule. this you would never obtain by force of arms. brute-force is not natural to the indian soil. you will have, therefore, to rely wholly on soul-force. you must not consider that violence is necessary at any stage for reaching our goal." i would say to the moderates:--"mere petitioning is derogatory; we thereby confess inferiority. to say that british rule is indispensable, is almost a denial of the godhead. we cannot say that anybody or anything is indispensable except god. moreover, commonsense should tell us that to state that, for the time being, the presence of the english in india is a necessity, is to make them conceited. "if the english vacated india bag and baggage, it must not be supposed that she would be widowed. it is possible that those who are forced to observe peace under their pressure would fight after their withdrawal. there can be no advantage in suppressing an eruption, it must have its vent. if, therefore, before we can remain at peace, we must fight amongst ourselves, it is better that we do so. there is no occasion for a third party to protect the weak. it is this so-called protection which has unnerved us. such protection can only make the weak weaker. unless we realise this, we cannot have home rule. i would paraphrase the thought of an english divine and say that anarchy under home rule were better than orderly foreign rule. only, the meaning that the learned divine attached to home rule is different to indian home rule according to my conception. we have to learn, and to teach others, that we do not want the tyranny of their english rule or indian rule." if this idea were carried out both the extremists and the moderates could join hands. there is no occasion to fear or distrust one another. reader: what, then, would you say to the english? editor: to them i would respectfully say: "i admit you are my rulers. it is not necessary to debate the question whether you hold india by the sword or by my consent. i have no objection to your remaining in my country, but although you are the rulers, you will have to remain as servants of the people. it is not we who have to do as you wish, but it is you who have to do as we wish. you may keep the riches that you have drained away from this land, but you may not drain riches henceforth. your function will be, if you so wish, to police india; you must abandon the idea of deriving any commercial benefit from us. we hold the civilization that you support to be the reverse of civilization. we consider our civilization to be far superior to yours. if you realise this truth, it will be to your advantage, and, if you do not, according to your own proverb, you should only live in our country in the same manner as we do. you must not do anything that is contrary to our religions. it is your duty as rulers that, for the sake of the hindus, you should eschew beef, and for the sake of the mahomedans, you should avoid bacon and ham. we have hitherto said nothing, because we have been cowed down, but you need not consider that you have not hurt our feelings by your conduct. we are not expressing our sentiments either through base selfishness or fear, but because it is our duty now to speak out boldly. we consider your schools and law courts to be useless. we want our own ancient schools and courts to be restored. the common language of india is not english but hindi. you should, therefore, learn it. we can hold communication with you only in our national language. "we cannot tolerate the idea of your spending money on railways and the military. we see no occasion for either. you may fear russia; we do not. when she comes we will look after her. if you are with us, we will then receive her jointly. we do not need any european cloth. we will manage with articles produced and manufactured at home. you may not keep one eye on manchester and the other on india. we can work together only if our interests are identical. "this has not been said to you in arrogance. you have great military resources. your naval power is matchless. if we wanted to fight with you on your own ground we would be unable to do so, but, if the above submissions be not acceptable to you, we cease to play the ruled. you may, if you like, cut us to pieces. you may shatter us at the cannon's mouth. if you act contrary to our will, we will not help you and, without our help, we know that you cannot move one step forward. "it is likely that you will laugh at all this in the intoxication of your power. we may not be able to disillusion you at once, but, if there be any manliness in us, you will see shortly that your intoxication is suicidal, and that your laugh at our expense is an aberration of intellect. we believe that, at heart you belong to a religious nation. we are living in a land which is the source of religions. how we came together need not be considered, but we can make mutual good use of our relations. "you english who have come to india are not a good specimen of the english nation, nor can we almost half anglicised indians, be considered a good specimen of the real indian nation. if the english nation were to know all you have done, it would oppose many of your actions. the mass of the indians have had few dealings with you. if you will abandon your so-called civilization, and search into your own scriptures, you will find that our demands are just. only on conditions of our demands being fully satisfied may you remain in india, and, if you remain under those conditions we shall learn several things from you, and you will learn many from us. so doing, we shall benefit each other and the world. but that will happen only when the root of our relationship is sunk in a religious soil." reader: what will you say to the nation? editor: who is the nation? reader: for our purposes it is the nation that you and i have been thinking of, that is, those of us who are affected by european civilization, and who are eager to have home rule. editor: to these i would say: it is only those indians who are imbued with real love who will be able to speak to the english in the above strain without being frightened, and those only can be said to be so imbued who conscientiously believe that indian civilization is the best, and that european is a nine days' wonder. such ephemeral civilizations have often come and gone, and will continue to do so. those only can be considered to be so imbued, who, having experienced the force of the soul within themselves, will not cower before brute-force, and will not, on any account, desire to use brute-force. those only can be considered to have been so imbued who are intensely dissatisfied with the present pitiable condition having already drunk the cup of poison. if there be only one such indian, he will speak as above to the english, and the english will have to listen to him. these demands are not demands, but they show our mental state. we will get nothing by asking; we shall have to take what we want, and we need the requisite strength for the effort and that strength will be available to him only who 1. will, only on rare occasions, make use of the english language; 2. if a lawyer, will give up his profession and take up a hand-loom; 3. if a lawyer, will devote his knowledge to enlightening both his people and the english; 4. if a lawyer, will not meddle with the quarrels between parties, but will give up the courts and from his experience induce the people to do likewise; 5. if a lawyer, will refuse to be a judge, as the will give up his profession; 6. if a doctor, will give up medicine, and understand that rather than mending bodies, he should mend souls; 7. if a doctor, will understand, that no matter to what religion he belongs, it is better that bodies remain diseased rather than that they are cured through the instrumentality of the diabolical vivisection that is practised in european schools of medicine; 8. although a doctor, will take up a hand-loom and, if any patients come to him, will tell them the cause of their diseases, and will advise them to remove the cause, rather than pamper them by giving useless drugs; he will understand that, if by not taking drugs, perchance the patient dies, the world will not come to grief, and that he will have been really merciful to him; 9. although a wealthy man, regardless of his wealth, will speak out his mind and fear no one; 10. if a wealthy man, will devote his money to establishing hand-looms, and encourage others to use hand-made goods by wearing them himself; 11. like every other indian, will know that this is a time for repentance, expiation and mourning; 12. like every other indian, will know that to blame the english is useless, that they came because of us, and remain also for the same reason, and that they will either go or change their nature, only when we reform ourselves; 13. like others, will understand that, at a time of mourning, there can be no indulgence, and that, whilst we are in a fallen state, to be in gaol or in banishment is much the best; 14. like others, will know that it is superstition to imagine it necessary that we should guard against being imprisoned in order that we may deal with the people; 15. like others, will know that action is much better than speech; that it is our duty to say exactly what we think and face the consequences, and that it will be only then that we shall be able to impress anybody with our speech; 16. like others, will understand that we will become free only through suffering; 17. like others, will understand that deportation for life to the andamans is not enough expiation for the sin of encouraging european civilization; 18. like others, will know that no nation has risen without suffering; that, even in physical warfare, the true test is suffering and not the killing of others, much more so in the warfare of passive resistance; 19. like others, will know that it is an idle excuse to say that we will do a thing when the others also do it; that we should do what we know to be right, and that others will do it when they see the way; that when i fancy a particular delicacy, i do not wait till others taste it; that to make a national effort and to suffer are in the nature of delicacies; and that to suffer under pressure is no suffering. reader: this is a large order. when will all carry it out? editor: you make a mistake. you and i have nothing to do with the others. let each do his duty. if i do my duty, that is, serve myself, i shall be able to serve others. before i leave you, i will take the liberty of repeating. 1. real home-rule is self-rule or self-control. 2. the way to it is passive resistance: that is soul force or love-force. 3. in order to exert this force, swadeshi in every sense is necessary. 4. what we want to do should be done, not because we object to the english or that we want to retaliate, but because it is our duty to do so. thus, supposing that the english remove the salt-tax, restore our money, give the highest posts to indians, withdraw the english troops, we shall certainly not use their machine-made goods, nor use the english language, nor many of their industries. it is worth nothing that these things are, in their nature, harmful; hence, we do not want them. i bear no enmity towards the english, but i do towards their civilization. in my opinion, we have used the term "swaraj" without understanding its real significance. i have endeavoured to explain it as i understand it, and my conscience testifies that my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment. appendices: some authorities. testimonies by eminent men. appendices. some authorities. the following books are recommended for perusal to follow up the study of the foregoing:-"the kingdom of god is within you"--_tolstoy_. "what is art?"--_tolstoy._ "slavery of our times"--_tolstoy_. "the first step"--_tolstoy_. "how shall we escape"--_tolstoy_. "letter to a hindoo"--_tolstoy_. "the white slaves of england"--_sherard_. "civilization: its cause and cure"--_carpenter_. "the fallacy of speed"--_taylor_. "a new crusade"--_blount_. "on the duty of civil disobedience"--_thoreau_. "life without principle"--_thoreau_. "unto this last"--_ruskin_. "a joy for ever"--_ruskin_. "duties of man"--_mazzini_. "defence and death of socrates"--from _plato_. "paradoxes of civilization"--_max nordau_. "poverty and un-british rule in india"--_naoroji_. "economic history of india"--_dutt_. "village communities"--_maine_. testimonies by eminent men. the following extracts from mr. alfred webb's valuable collection, if the testimony given therein be true, show that the ancient indian civilization, has little to learn from the modern:-victor cousin. (_1792--1867_). _founder of systematic eclecticism in philosophy._ "on the other hand when we read with attention the poetical and philosophical movements of the east, above all, those of india, which are beginning to spread in europe, we discover there so many truths, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which the european genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before that of the east, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy." j. seymour keay, m. p. _banker in india and india agent._ (_writing in 1883._) "it cannot be too well understood that our position in india has never been in any degree that of civilians bringing civilization to savage races. when we landed in india we found there a hoary civilization, which, during the progress of thousands of years, had fitted itself into the character and adjusted itself to the wants of highly intellectual races. the civilization was not prefunctory, but universal and all-pervading--furnishing the country not only with political systems but with social and domestic institutions of the most ramified description. the beneficent nature of these institutions as a whole may be judged of from their effects on the character of the hindu race. perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their characters the advantageous effects of their own civilization. they are shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compassionate towards the helpless, and patient under suffering." friedrich max muelier, ll.d. "if i were to ask myself from what literature we hear in europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of greeks and romans, and of one semetic race, the jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only but a transfigured and eternal life--again i should point to india." michael g. mulhall, f.r.s.s. _statistics_ (_1899_). prison population per 100,000 of inhabitants: several european states 100 to 230 england and wales 90 india 38 --"_dictionary of statistics_," _michael g. mulhall, f.r.s.s._, _routledge and sons, 1899_. colonel thomas munro. _thirty-two years' service in india._ "if a good system of agriculture, unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to convenience or luxury; schools established in every village, for teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic; the general practice of hospitality and charity among each other; and, above all, treatment of the female sex, full of confidence, respect and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilised people, then the hindus are not inferior to the nations of europe; and if civilization is to become an article of trade between the two countries, i am convinced that this country [england] will gain by the import cargo." frederick von schlegel. "it cannot be denied that the early indians possessed a knowledge of the true god; all their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions noble, clear and severely grand, as deeply conceived and reverently expressed as in any human language in which men have spoken of their god.... among nations possessing indigenous philosophy and metaphysics, together with an innate relish for these pursuits, such as at present characterises germany; and in olden times, was the proud distinction of greece, hindustan holds the first rank in point of time." sir william wedderburn, bart. "the indian village has thus for centuries remained a bulwark against political disorder, and the home of the simple domestic and social virtues. no wonder, therefore, that philosophers and historians have always dwelt lovingly on this ancient institution which is the natural social unit and the best type of rural life; self-contained, industrious, peace-loving, conservative in the best sense of the word.... i think you will agree with me that there is much that is both picturesque and attractive in this glimpse of social and domestic life in an indian village. it is a harmless and happy form of human existence. moreover, it is not without good practical outcome." j. young. _secretary, savon mechanics' institutes._ (_within recent years_). "those races, [the indian viewed from a moral aspect] are perhaps the most remarkable people in the world. they breathe an atmosphere of moral purity, which cannot but excite admiration, and this is especially the case with the poorer classes who, notwithstanding the privations of their humble lot, appear to be happy and contented. true children of nature, they live on from day to day, taking no thought of to-morrow and thankful for the simple fare which providence has provided for them. it is curious to witness the spectacle of coolies of both sexes returning home at nightfall after a hard day's work often lasting from sunrise to sunset. in spite of fatigue from the effects of the unremitting toil, they are, for the most part, gay and animated, conversing cheerfully together and occasionally breaking into snatches of light-hearted song. yet what awaits them on their return to the hovels which they call home? a dish of rice for food, and the floor for a bed. domestic felicity appears to be the rule among the natives, and this is the more strange when the customs of marriage are taken into account, parents arranging all such matters. many indian households afford examples of the married state in its highest degree of perfection. this may be due to the teachings of the shastras, and to the strict injunctions which they inculcate with regard to marital obligations; but it is no exaggeration to say that husbands are generally devotedly attached to their wives, and in many instances the latter have the most exalted conception of their duties towards their husbands." abbe j. a. dubois. _missionary in mysore. extracts from letter dated seringapatam, 15th december, 1820._ "the authority of married women within their houses is chiefly exerted in preserving good order and peace among the persons who compose their families: and a great many among them discharge this important duty with a prudence and a discretion which have scarcely a parallel in europe. i have known families composed of between thirty and forty persons, or more, consisting of grown-up sons and daughters, all married and all having children, living together under the superintendence of an old matron--their mother or mother-in-law. the latter, by good management, and by accommodating herself to the temper of the daughters-in-law, by using, according to circumstances, firmness or forbearance, succeeded in preserving peace and harmony during many years amongst so many females, who had all jarring interests, and still more jarring tempers. i ask you whether it would be possible to attain the same end, in the same circumstances, in our countries, where it is scarcely possible to make two women living under the same roof to agree together. "in fact, there is perhaps no kind of honest employment in a civilised country in which the hindu females have not a due share. besides the management of the household, and the care of the family, which (as already noticed) under their control, the wives and daughters of husbandmen attend and assist their husbands and fathers in the labours of agriculture. those of tradesmen assist theirs in carrying on their trade. merchants are attended and assisted by theirs in their shops. many females are shopkeepers on their own account and _without a knowledge of the alphabet_ or of the decimal scale, they keep by other means their accounts in excellent order, and are considered as still shrewder than the males themselves in their commercial dealings." the modern printing works, mount road, madras. books on liberty and freedom the ideal of swaraj. in education and government by nirpendra chandra banerjee with an introduction by c. f. andrews. those who are out of sheer prejudice and incapacity for political thought, sneer, at the goal of swaraj proclaimed by the national congress as merely a destructive and at best a visionary ideal as well as those who in spite of their approval of the goal are unable to visualise it in concrete contents, will do well to read this interesting and instructive book by an ardent bengali patriot and ex-school master. the author has political insight, and faith in the country's capacity. he recognises that the soul of india is in her numerous villages in rural centres and has given out practical suggestions for national reconstruction along sound lines. mr. andrews has written an introduction to the volume wherein he has dealt with the value of the swaraj ideal and his own conception of the same. it is a useful publication worthy to be placed in the hands of our young men and women.--_hindu._ =price rs. 1.= india's will to freedom. by =lala lajpat rai=. a collection of writings and addresses on the present situation and the work before us. "we in india should, one and all, take a vow that whether we have to lay down our life, whether we are mutilated or hanged, whether our women and children are mal-treated, our desire for swaraj will never grow a little any the less. every child of this land, whatever his religion or persuasion, should swear that, as long as there is life in his limbs, or breath in his nostrils, he would strive for national liberty." =price rs. 2-8.= footsteps of freedom. by =james h. cousins=. "another stunt which will also be vigorously vamped by the opponents of dyarehy, in fact of all reform will be the absolute necessity of politically educating the masses of india before giving them any measure of political freedom. in a book of charming essays which he has just published through messrs. ganesh & co., of madras, under the title of "footsteps of freedom" mr. james cousins attacks this particular fallacy and shatters it convincingly." _ditcher in capital._ =price rs. 2.= freedom's battle. a comprehensive collection of writings and speeches of mahatma gandhi on the present situation including the khilafat wrongs, the punjab agony, swaraj, hindu-muslim unity, indians overseas, the depressed classes, non-co-operation, etc., with an historical introduction by mr. c. rajagopalachar. "the war that the people of india have declared and which will purify and consolidate india, and forge for her a true and stable liberty is a war with the latest and most effective weapon. in this war, what has hitherto been in the world an undesirable but necessary incident in freedom's battles, the killing of innocent men has been eliminated; and that which is the true essential for forging liberty, the self-purification and self-strengthening of men and women has been kept pure and unalloyed." the best preparation for any one who desires to take part in the great battle now going on is a silent study of the writings and speeches collected herein. =price rs. 2-8.= ganesh & co., publishers, madras. transcriber's note: obvious typographical and printer errors have been corrected without comment. in addition to obvious errors, the following two changes have been made: page 62: 'four' replaced with 'our' in the phrase: "... to deepen our slavery." page 115: 'cover' changed to 'cower' in the phrase: "... will not cower before brute-force...." page 128: 'foot' changed to 'roof' in the phrase: "... living under the same roof....' other than this, any inconsistencies in the author's spelling, use of grammar and punctuation have been preserved in this text as they appear in the original publication. two possible printer errors which have not been corrected in this text include: page 116: "... the will give up his profession;" probably should read, "... he (or 'they') will give up his profession...." page 119: "it is worth nothing that these things are...." probably should read, "it is worth noting that these things are...." physics and politics or thoughts on the application of the principles of 'natural selection' and 'inheritance' to political society by walter bagehot new and cheaper edition (also published in the international scientific series, crown 8vo. 5s.) contents. i. the preliminary age ii. the use of conflict iii. nation-making iv. nation-making v. the age of discussion vi. verifiable progress politically considered no. i. the preliminary age. one peculiarity of this age is the sudden acquisition of much physical knowledge. there is scarcely a department of science or art which is the same, or at all the same, as it was fifty years ago. a new world of inventions--of railways and of telegraphs--has grown up around us which we cannot help seeing; a new world of ideas is in the air and affects us, though we do not see it. a full estimate of these effects would require a great book, and i am sure i could not write it; but i think i may usefully, in a few papers, show how, upon one or two great points, the new ideas are modifying two old sciences--politics and political economy. even upon these points my ideas must be incomplete, for the subject is novel; but, at any rate, i may suggest some conclusions, and so show what is requisite even if i do not supply it. if we wanted to describe one of the most marked results, perhaps the most marked result, of late thought, we should say that by it everything is made 'an antiquity.' when, in former times; our ancestors thought of an antiquarian, they described him as occupied with coins, and medals, and druids' stones; these were then the characteristic records of the decipherable past, and it was with these that decipherers busied themselves. but now there are other relics; indeed, all matter is become such. science tries to find in each bit of earth the record of the causes which made it precisely what it is; those forces have left their trace, she knows, as much as the tact and hand of the artist left their mark on a classical gem. it would be tedious (and it is not in my way) to reckon up the ingenious questionings by which geology has made part of the earth, at least, tell part of its tale; and the answers would have been meaningless if physiology and conchology and a hundred similar sciences had not brought their aid. such subsidiary sciences are to the decipherer of the present day what old languages were to the antiquary of other days; they construe for him the words which he discovers, they give a richness and a truth-like complexity to the picture which he paints, even in cases where the particular detail they tell is not much. but what here concerns me is that man himself has, to the eye of science, become 'an antiquity.' she tries to read, is beginning to read, knows she ought to read, in the frame of each man the result of a whole history of all his life, of what he is and what makes him so,--of all his fore-fathers, of what they were and of what made them so. each nerve has a sort of memory of its past life, is trained or not trained, dulled or quickened, as the case may be; each feature is shaped and characterised, or left loose and meaningless, as may happen; each hand is marked with its trade and life, subdued to what it works in;--if we could but see it. it may be answered that in this there is nothing new; that we always knew how much a man's past modified a man's future; that we all knew how much, a man is apt to be like his ancestors; that the existence of national character is the greatest commonplace in the world; that when a philosopher cannot account for anything in any other manner, he boldly ascribes it to an occult quality in some race. but what physical science does is, not to discover the hereditary element, but to render it distinct,--to give us an accurate conception of what we may expect, and a good account of the evidence by which we are led to expect it. let us see what that science teaches on the subject; and, as far as may be, i will give it in the words of those who have made it a professional study, both that i may be more sure to state it rightly and vividly, and because--as i am about to apply these principles to subjects which are my own pursuit--i would rather have it quite clear that i have not made my premises to suit my own conclusions. 1st, then, as respects the individual, we learn as follows: 'even while the cerebral hemispheres are entire, and in full possession of their powers, the brain gives rise to actions which are as completely reflex as those of the spinal cord. 'when the eyelids wink at a flash of light, or a threatened blow, a reflex action takes place, in which the afferent nerves are the optic, the efferent, the facial. when a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a reflex action through the same motor nerve, while the olfactory nerves constitute the afferent channels. in these cases, therefore, reflex action must be effected through the brain, all the nerves involved being cerebral. 'when the whole body starts at a loud noise, the afferent auditory nerve gives rise to an impulse which passes to the medulla oblongata, and thence affects the great majority of the motor nerves of the body. 'it may be said that these are mere mechanical actions, and have nothing to do with the acts which we associate with intelligence. but let us consider what takes place in such an act as reading aloud. in this case, the whole attention of the mind is, or ought to be, bent upon the subject-matter of the book; while a multitude of most delicate muscular actions are going on, of which the reader is not in the slightest degree aware. thus the book is held in the hand, at the right distance from the eyes; the eyes are moved, from side to side, over the lines, and up and down the pages. further, the most delicately adjusted and rapid movements of the muscles of the lips, tongue, and throat, of laryngeal and respiratory muscles, are involved in the production of speech. perhaps the reader is standing up and accompanying the lecture with appropriate gestures. and yet every one of these muscular acts may be performed with utter unconsciousness, on his part, of anything but the sense of the words in the book. in other words, they are reflex acts. 'the reflex actions proper to the spinal cord itself are natural, and are involved in the structure of the cord and the properties of its constituents. by the help of the brain we may acquire an affinity of artificial reflex actions. that is to say, an action may require all our attention and all our volition for its first, or second, or third performance, but by frequent repetition it becomes, in a manner, part our organisation, and is performed without volition, or even consciousness. 'as everyone knows, it takes a soldier a very long time to learn his drill--to put himself, for instance, into the attitude of 'attention' at the instant the word of command is heard. but, after a time, the sound of the word gives rise to the act, whether the soldier be thinking of it or not. there is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out 'attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. the drill had been gone through, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure. 'the possibility of all education (of which military drill is only one particular form) is based upon, the existence of this power which the nervous system possesses, of organising conscious actions into more or less unconscious, or reflex, operations. it may be laid down as a rule, that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the one of them will suffice to call up the other, and that whether we desire it or not.'[1] [1] huxley's elementary physiology, pp. 284-286. the body of the accomplished man has thus become by training different from what it once was, and different from that of the rude man; it is charged with stored virtue and acquired faculty which come away from it unconsciously. again, as to race, another authority teaches:--'man's life truly represents a progressive development of the nervous system, none the less so because it takes place out of the womb instead of in it. the regular transmutation of motions which are at first voluntary into secondary automatic motions, as hartley calls them, is due to a gradually effected organisation; and we may rest assured of this, that co-ordinate activity always testifies to stored-up power, either innate or acquired. 'the way in which an acquired faculty of the parent animal is sometimes distinctly transmitted to the progeny as a heritage, instinct, or innate endowment, furnishes a striking confirmation of the foregoing observations. power that has been laboriously acquired and stored up as statical in one generation manifestly in such case becomes the inborn faculty of the next; and the development takes place in accordance with that law of increasing speciality and complexity of adaptation to external nature which is traceable through the animal kingdom; or, in other words, that law, of progress from the general to the special in development which the appearance of nerve force amongst natural forces and the complexity of the nervous system of man both illustrate. as the vital force gathers up, as it were, into itself inferior forces, and might be said to be a development of them, or, as in the appearance of nerve force, simpler and more general forces are gathered up and concentrated in a more special and complex mode of energy; so again a further specialisation takes place in the development of the nervous system, whether watched through generations or through individual life. it is not by limiting our observations to the life of the individual, however, who is but a link in the chain of organic beings connecting the past with the future, that we shall come at the full truth; the present individual is the inevitable consequence of his antecedents in the past, and in the examination of these alone do we arrive at the adequate explanation of him. it behoves us, then, having found any faculty to be innate, not to rest content there, but steadily to follow backwards the line of causation, and thus to display, if possible, its manner of origin. this is the more necessary with the lower animals, where so much is innate.'[2] [2] maudsley on the physiology and pathology of the mind, p. 73. the special laws of inheritance are indeed as yet unknown. all which is clear, and all which is to my purpose is, that there is a tendency, a probability, greater or less according to circumstances, but always considerable, that the descendants of cultivated parents will have, by born nervous organisation, a greater aptitude for cultivation than the descendants of such as are not cultivated; and that this tendency augments, in some enhanced ratio, for many generations. i do not think any who do not acquire--and it takes a hard effort to acquire--this notion of a transmitted nerve element will ever understand 'the connective tissue' of civilisation. we have here the continuous force which binds age to age, which enables each to begin with some improvement on the last, if the last did itself improve; which makes each civilisation not a set of detached dots, but a line of colour, surely enhancing shade by shade. there is, by this doctrine, a physical cause of improvement from generation to generation: and no imagination which has apprehended it can forget it; but unless you appreciate that cause in its subtle materialism, unless you see it, as it were, playing upon the nerves of men, and, age after age, making nicer music from finer chords, you cannot comprehend the principle of inheritance either in its mystery or its power. these principles are quite independent of any theory as to the nature of matter, or the nature of mind. they are as true upon the theory that mind acts on matter--though separate and altogether different from it--as upon the theory of bishop berkeley that there is no matter, but only mind; or upon the contrary theory--that there is no mind, but only matter; or upon the yet subtler theory now often held--that both mind and matter are different modifications of some one tertium quid, some hidden thing or force. all these theories admit--indeed they are but various theories to account for--the fact that what we call matter has consequences in what we call mind, and that what we call mind produces results in what we call matter; and the doctrines i quote assume only that. our mind in some strange way acts on our nerves, and our nerves in some equally strange way store up the consequences, and somehow the result, as a rule and commonly enough, goes down to our descendants; these primitive facts all theories admit, and all of them labour to explain. nor have these plain principles any relation to the old difficulties of necessity and freewill. every freewillist holds that the special force of free volition is applied to the pre-existing forces of our corporeal structure; he does not consider it as an agency acting in vacuo, but as an agency acting upon other agencies. every freewillist holds that, upon the whole, if you strengthen the motive in a given direction, mankind tend more to act in that direction. better motives--better impulses, rather--come from a good body: worse motives or worse impulses come from a bad body. a freewillist may admit as much as a necessarian that such improved conditions tend to improve human action, and that deteriorated conditions tend to deprave human action. no freewillist ever expects as much from st. giles's as he expects from belgravia: he admits an hereditary nervous system as a datum for the will, though he holds the will to be an extraordinary incoming 'something.' no doubt the modern doctrine of the 'conservation of force,' if applied to decision, is inconsistent with free will; if you hold that force 'is never lost or gained,' you cannot hold that there is a real gain--a sort of new creation of it in free volition. but i have nothing to do here with the universal 'conservation of force.' the conception of the nervous organs as stores of will-made power does not raise or need so vast a discussion. still less are these principles to be confounded with mr. buckle's idea that material forces have been the main-springs of progress, and moral causes secondary, and, in comparison, not to be thought of. on the contrary, moral causes are the first here. it is the action of the will that causes the unconscious habit; it is the continual effort of the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end; it is the silent toil of the first generation that becomes the transmitted aptitude of the next. here physical causes do not create the moral, but moral create the physical; here the beginning is by the higher energy, the conservation and propagation only by the lower. but we thus perceive how a science of history is possible, as mr. buckle said,--a science to teach the laws of tendencies--created by the mind, and transmitted by the body--which act upon and incline the will of man from age to age. ii. but how do these principles change the philosophy of our politics? i think in many ways; and first, in one particularly. political economy is the most systematised and most accurate part of political philosophy; and yet, by the help of what has been laid down, i think we may travel back to a sort of 'pre-economic age,' when the very assumptions of political economy did not exist, when its precepts would have been ruinous, and when the very contrary precepts were requisite and wise. for this purpose i do not need to deal with the dim ages which ethnology just reveals to us--with the stone age, and the flint implements, and the refuse-heaps. the time to which i would go back is only that just before the dawn of history--coeval with the dawn, perhaps, it would be right to say--for the first historians saw such a state of society, though they saw other and more advanced states too: a period of which we have distinct descriptions from eye-witnesses, and of which the traces and consequences abound in the oldest law. 'the effect,' says sir henry maine, the greatest of our living jurists--the only one, perhaps, whose writings are in keeping with our best philosophy--'of the evidence derived from comparative jurisprudence is to establish that view of the primeval condition of the human race which is known as the patriarchal theory. there is no doubt, of course, that this theory was originally based on the scriptural history of the hebrew patriarchs in lower asia; but, as has been explained already, its connection with scripture rather militated than otherwise against its reception as a complete theory, since the majority of the inquirers who till recently addressed themselves with most earnestness to the colligation of social phenomena, were either influenced by the strongest prejudice against hebrew antiquities or by the strongest desire to construct their system without the assistance of religious records. even now there is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these accounts, or rather to decline generalising from them, as forming part of the traditions of a semitic people. it is to be noted, however, that the legal testimony comes nearly exclusively from the institutions of societies belonging to the indo-european stock, the romans, hindoos, and sclavonians supplying the greater part of it; and indeed the difficulty, at the present stage of the inquiry, is to know where to stop, to say of what races of men it is not allowable to lay down that the society in which they are united was originally organised on the patriarchal model. the chief lineaments of such a society, as collected from the early chapters in genesis, i need not attempt to depict with any minuteness, both because they are familiar to most of us from our earliest childhood, and because, from the interest once attaching to the controversy which takes its name from the debate between locke and filmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in english literature. the points which lie on the surface of the history are these:--the eldest male parent--the eldest ascendant--is absolutely supreme in his household. his dominion extends to life and death, and is as unqualified over his children and their houses as over his slaves; indeed the relations of sonship and serfdom appear to differ in little beyond the higher capacity which the child in blood possesses of becoming one day the head of a family himself. the flocks and herds of the children are the flocks and herds of the father, and the possessions of the parent, which he holds in a representative rather than in a proprietary character, are equally divided at his death among his descendants in the first degree, the eldest son sometimes receiving a double share under the name of birthright, but more generally endowed with no hereditary advantage beyond an honorary precedence. a less obvious inference from the scriptural accounts is that they seem to plant us on the traces of the breach which is first effected in the empire of the parent. the families of jacob and esau separate and form two nations; but the families of jacob's children hold together and become a people. this looks like the immature germ of a state or commonwealth, and of an order of rights superior to the claims of family relation. 'if i were attempting for the more special purposes of the jurist to express compendiously the characteristics, of the situation in which mankind disclose themselves at the dawn of their history, i should be satisfied to quote a few verses from the "odyssee" of homer:- "'_toã®sin d' out' agorai boulãªphã³roi oute thã©mistes, themisteãºei dã¨ hã©kastos paã­dã´n ed alã³chã´n, out' allã©lã´n alã©gousin._'" '"they have neither assemblies for consultation nor themistes, but everyone exercises jurisdiction over his wives and his children, and they pay no regard to one another."' and this description of the beginnings of history is confirmed by what may be called the last lesson of prehistoric ethnology. perhaps it is the most valuable, as it is clearly the most sure result of that science, that it has dispelled the dreams of other days as to a primitive high civilisation. history catches man as he emerges, from the patriarchal state: ethnology shows how he lived, grew, and improved in that state. the conclusive arguments against the imagined original civilisation are indeed plain to everyone. nothing is more intelligible than a moral deterioration of mankind--nothing than an aesthetic degradation--nothing than a political degradation. but you cannot imagine mankind giving up the plain utensils of personal comfort, if they once knew them; still less can you imagine them giving up good weapons--say bows and arrows--if they once knew them. yet if there were a primitive civilisation these things must have been forgotten, for tribes can be found in every degree of ignorance, and every grade of knowledge as to pottery, as to the metals, as to the means of comfort, as to the instruments of war. and what is more, these savages have not failed from stupidity; they are, in various degrees of originality, inventive about these matters. you cannot trace the roots of an old perfect system variously maimed and variously dying; you cannot find it, as you find the trace of the latin language in the mediaeval dialects. on the contrary, you find it beginning--as new scientific discoveries and inventions now begin--here a little and there a little, the same thing half-done in various half-ways, and so as no one who knew the best way would ever have begun. an idea used to prevail that bows and arrows were the 'primitive weapons'--the weapons of universal savages; but modern science has made a table,[3] and some savages have them and some have not, and some have substitutes of one sort and some have substitutes of another--several of these substitutes being like the 'boomerang,' so much more difficult to hit on or to use than the bow, as well as so much less effectual. and not only may the miscellaneous races of the world be justly described as being upon various edges of industrial civilisation, approaching it by various sides, and falling short of it in various particulars, but the moment they see the real thing they know how to use it as well, or better, than civilised man. the south american uses the horse which the european brought better than the european. many races use the rifle--the especial and very complicated weapon of civilised man--better, upon an average, than he can use it. the savage with simple tools--tools he appreciates--is like a child, quick to learn, not like an old man, who has once forgotten and who cannot acquire again. again, if there had been an excellent aboriginal civilisation in australia and america, where, botanists and zoologists, ask, are its vestiges? if these savages did care to cultivate wheat, where is the wild wheat gone which their abandoned culture must have left? if they did give up using good domestic animals, what has become of the wild ones which would, according to all natural laws, have sprung up out of them? this much is certain, that the domestic animals of europe have, since what may be called the discovery of the world during the last hundred years, run up and down it. the english rat--not the pleasantest of our domestic creatures--has gone everywhere; to australia, to new zealand, to america: nothing but a complicated rat-miracle could ever root him out. nor could a common force expel the horse from south america since the spaniards took him thither; if we did not know the contrary we should suppose him a principal aboriginal animal. where then, so to say, are the rats and horses of the primitive civilisation? not only can we not find them, but zoological science tells us that they never existed, for the 'feebly pronounced,' the ineffectual, marsupials of australia and new zealand could never have survived a competition with better creatures, such as that by which they are now perishing. we catch then a first glimpse of patriarchal man, not with any industrial relics of a primitive civilisation, but with some gradually learnt knowledge of the simpler arts, with some tamed animals and some little knowledge of the course of nature as far as it tells upon the seasons and affects the condition of simple tribes. this is what, according to ethnology, we should expect the first historic man to be, and this is what we in fact find him. but what was his mind; how are we to describe that? [3] see the very careful table and admirable discussion in sir john lubbock's pre-historic times. i believe the general description in which sir john lubbock sums up his estimate of the savage mind suits the patriarchal mind. 'savages,' he says, 'unite the character of childhood with the passions and strength of men.' and if we open the first record of the pagan world--the poems of homer--how much do we find that suits this description better than any other. civilisation has indeed already gone forward ages beyond the time at which any such description is complete. man, in homer, is as good at oratory, mr. gladstone seems to say, as he has ever been, and, much as that means, other and better things might be added to it. but after all, how much of the 'splendid savage' there is in achilles, and how much of the 'spoiled child sulking in his tent.' impressibility and excitability are the main characteristics of the oldest greek history, and if we turn to the east, the 'simple and violent' world, as mr. kinglake calls it, of the first times meets us every moment. and this is precisely what we should expect. an 'inherited drill,' science says, 'makes modern nations what they are; their born structure bears the trace of the laws of their fathers;' but the ancient nations came into no such inheritance; they were the descendants of people who did what was right in their own eyes; they were born to no tutored habits, no preservative bonds, and therefore they were at the mercy of every impulse and blown by every passion. the condition of the primitive man, if we conceive of him rightly, is, in several respects, different from any we know. we unconsciously assume around us the existence of a great miscellaneous social machine working to our hands, and not only supplying our wants, but even telling and deciding when those wants shall come. no one can now without difficulty conceive how people got on before there were clocks and watches; as sir g. lewis said, 'it takes a vigorous effort of the imagination' to realise a period when it was a serious difficulty to know the hour of day. and much more is it difficult to fancy the unstable minds of such men as neither knew nature, which is the clock-work of material civilisation, nor possessed a polity, which is a kind of clock-work to moral civilisation. they never could have known what to expect; the whole habit of steady but varied anticipation, which makes our minds what they are, must have been wholly foreign to theirs. again, i at least cannot call up to myself the loose conceptions (as they must have been) of morals which then existed. if we set aside all the element derived from law and polity which runs through our current moral notions, i hardly know what we shall have left. the residuum was somehow, and in some vague way, intelligible to the ante-political man, but it must have been uncertain, wavering, and unfit to be depended upon. in the best cases it existed much as the vague feeling of beauty now exists in minds sensitive but untaught; a still small voice of uncertain meaning; an unknown something modifying everything else, and higher than anything else, yet in form so indistinct that when you looked for it, it was gone--or if this be thought the delicate fiction of a later fancy, then morality was at least to be found in the wild spasms of 'wild justice,' half punishment, half outrage,--but anyhow, being unfixed by steady law, it was intermittent, vague, and hard for us to imagine. everybody who has studied mathematics knows how many shadowy difficulties he seemed to have before he understood the problem, and how impossible it was when once the demonstration had flashed upon him, ever to comprehend those indistinct difficulties again, or to call up the mental confusion, that admitted them. so in these days, when we cannot by any effort drive out of our minds the notion of law, we cannot imagine the mind of one who had never known it, and who could not by any effort have conceived it. again, the primitive man could not have imagined what we mean by a nation. we on the other hand cannot imagine those to whom it is a difficulty; 'we know what it is when you do not ask us,' but we cannot very quickly explain or define it. but so much as this is plain, a nation means a like body of men, because of that likeness capable of acting together, and because of that likeness inclined to obey similar rules; and even this homer's cyclops--used only to sparse human beings--could not have conceived. to sum up--law--rigid, definite, concise law--is the primary want of early mankind; that which they need above anything else, that which is requisite before they can gain anything else. but it is their greatest difficulty, as well as their first requisite; the thing most out of their reach, as well as that most beneficial to them if they reach it. in later ages many races have gained much of this discipline quickly, though painfully; a loose set of scattered clans has been often and often forced to substantial settlement by a rigid conqueror; the romans did half the work for above half europe. but where could the first ages find romans or a conqueror? men conquer by the power of government, and it was exactly government which then was not. the first ascent of civilisation was at a steep gradient, though when now we look down upon it, it seems almost nothing. iii. how the step from polity to no polity was made distinct, history does not record,--on this point sir henry maine has drawn a most interesting conclusion from his peculiar studies:-'it would be,' he tells us, 'a very simple explanation of the origin of society if we could base a general conclusion on the hint furnished us by the scriptural example already adverted to, and could suppose that communities began to exist wherever a family held together instead of separating at the death of its patriarchal chieftain. in most of the greek states and in rome there long remained the vestiges of an ascending series of groups out of which the state was at first constituted. the family, house, and tribe of the romans may be taken as a type of them, and they are so described to us that we can scarcely help conceiving them as a system of concentric circles which have gradually expanded from the same point. the elementary group is the family, connected by common subjection to the highest male ascendant. the aggregation of families forms the gens, or house. the aggregation of houses makes the tribe. the aggregation of tribes constitutes the commonwealth. are we at liberty to follow these indications, and to lay down that the commonwealth is a collection of persons united by common descent from the progenitor of an original family? of this we may at least be certain, that all ancient societies regarded themselves as having proceeded from one original stock, and even laboured under an incapacity for comprehending any reason except this for their holding together in political union. the history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the assumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible ground of community in political functions; nor is there any of those subversions of feeling, which we term emphatically revolutions, so startling and so complete as the change which is accomplished when some other principle--such as that, for instance, of local contiguity--establishes itself for the first time as the basis of common political action.' if this theory were true, the origin of politics would not seem a great change, or, in early days, be really a great change. the primacy of the elder brother, in tribes casually cohesive, would be slight; it would be the beginning of much, but it would be nothing in itself; it would be--to take an illustration from the opposite end of the political series--it would be like the headship of a weak parliamentary leader over adherents who may divide from him in a moment; it was the germ of sovereignty,--it was hardly yet sovereignty itself. i do not myself believe that the suggestion of sir henry maine--for he does not, it will be seen, offer it as a confident theory--is an adequate account of the true origin of politics. i shall in a subsequent essay show that there are, as it seems to me, abundant evidences of a time still older than that which he speaks of. but the theory of sir henry maine serves my present purpose well. it describes, and truly describes, a kind of life antecedent to our present politics, and the conclusion i have drawn from it will be strengthened, not weakened, when we come to examine and deal with an age yet older, and a social bond far more rudimentary. but when once polities were began, there is no difficulty in explaining why they lasted. whatever may be said against the principle of 'natural selection' in other departments, there is no doubt of its predominance in early human history. the strongest killed out the weakest, as they could. and i need not pause to prove that any form of politics more efficient than none; that an aggregate of families owning even a slippery allegiance to a single head, would be sure to have the better of a set of families acknowledging no obedience to anyone, but scattering loose about the world and fighting where they stood. homer's cyclops would be powerless against the feeblest band; so far from its being singular that we find no other record of that state of man, so unstable and sure to perish was it that we should rather wonder at even a single vestige lasting down to the age when for picturesqueness it became valuable in poetry. but, though the origin of polity is dubious, we are upon the terra firma of actual records when we speak of the preservation of polities. perhaps every young englishman who comes now-a-days to aristotle or plato is struck with their conservatism: fresh from the liberal doctrines of the present age, he wonders at finding in those recognised teachers so much contrary teaching. they both--unlike as they are--hold with xenophon--so unlike both--that man is the 'hardest of all animals to govern.' of plato it might indeed be plausibly said that the adherents of an intuitive philosophy, being 'the tories of speculation,' have commonly been prone to conservatism in government; but aristotle, the founder of the experience philosophy, ought, according to that doctrine, to have been a liberal, if anyone ever was a liberal. in fact, both of these men lived when men had not 'had time to forget' the difficulties of government. we have forgotten them altogether. we reckon, as the basis of our culture, upon an amount of order, of tacit obedience, of prescriptive governability, which these philosophers hoped to get as a principal result of their culture. we take without thought as a datum, what they hunted as a quaesilum. in early times the quantity of government is much more important than its quality. what you want is a comprehensive rule binding men together, making them do much the same things, telling them what to expect of each other--fashioning them alike, and keeping them so. what this rule is does not matter so much. a good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will appreciate, none can be very good. but to gain that rule, what may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably more important than its useful elements. how to get the obedience of men is the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less critical. to gain that obedience, the primary condition is the identity--not the union, but the sameness--of what we now call church and state. dr. arnold, fresh from the study of greek thought and roman history, used to preach that this identity was the great cure for the misguided modern world. but he spoke to ears filled with other sounds and minds filled with other thoughts, and they hardly knew his meaning, much less heeded it. but though the teaching was wrong for the modern age to which it was applied, it was excellent for the old world from which it was learnt. what is there requisite is a single government--call it church or state, as you like--regulating the whole of human life. no division of power is then endurable without danger--probably without destruction; the priest must not teach one thing and the king another; king must be priest, and prophet king: the two must say the same, because they are the same. the idea of difference between spiritual penalties and legal penalties must never be awakened. indeed, early greek thought or early roman thought would never have comprehended it. there was a kind of rough public opinion and there were rough, very rough, hands which acted on it. we now talk of political penalties and ecclesiastical prohibition, and the social censure, but they were all one then. nothing is very like those old communities now, but perhaps a 'trade's union' is as near as most things; to work cheap is thought to be a 'wicked' thing, and so some broadhead puts it down. the object of such organisations is to create what may be called a cake of custom. all the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule for a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill' which science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of men saw to be essential too. that this regime forbids free thought is not an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for the greatest good; it is necessary for making the mould of civilisation, and hardening the soft fibre of early man. the first recorded history of the aryan race shows everywhere a king, a council, and, as the necessity of early conflicts required, the king in much prominence and with much power. that there could be in such ages anything like an oriental despotism, or a caesarean despotism, was impossible; the outside extra-political army which maintains them could not exist when the tribe was the nation, and when all the men in the tribe were warriors. hence, in the time of homer, in the first times of rome, in the first times of ancient germany, the king is the most visible part of the polity, because for momentary welfare he is the most useful. the close oligarchy, the patriciate, which alone could know the fixed law, alone could apply the fixed law, which was recognised as the authorised custodian of the fixed law, had then sole command over the primary social want. it alone knew the code of drill; it alone was obeyed; it alone could drill. mr. grote has admirably described the rise of the primitive oligarchies upon the face of the first monarchy, but perhaps because he so much loves historic athens, he has not sympathised with pre-historic athens. he has not shown us the need of a fixed life when all else was unfixed life. it would be schoolboyish to explain at length how well the two great republics, the two winning republics of the ancient world, embody these conclusions. rome and sparta were drilling aristocracies, and succeeded because they were such. athens was indeed of another and higher order; at least to us instructed moderns who know her and have been taught by her. but to the 'philistines' of those days athens was of a lower order. she was beaten; she lost the great visible game which is all that short-sighted contemporaries know. she was the great 'free failure' of the ancient world. she began, she announced, the good things that were to come; but she was too weak to display and enjoy them; she was trodden down by those of coarser make and better trained frame. how much these principles are confirmed by jewish history is obvious. there was doubtless much else in jewish history--whole elements with which i am not here concerned. but so much is plain. the jews were in the beginning the most unstable of nations; they were submitted to their law, and they came out the most stable of nations. their polity was indeed defective in unity. after they asked for a king the spiritual and the secular powers (as we should speak) were never at peace, and never agreed. and the ten tribes who lapsed from their law, melted away into the neighbouring nations. jeroboam has been called the 'first liberal;' and, religion apart, there is a meaning in the phrase. he began to break up the binding polity which was what men wanted in that age, though eager and inventive minds always dislike it. but the jews who adhered to their law became the jews of the day, a nation of a firm set if ever there was one. it is connected with this fixity that jurists tell us that the title 'contract' is hardly to be discovered in the oldest law. in modern days, in civilised days, men's choice determines nearly all they do. but in early times that choice determined scarcely anything. the guiding rule was the law of status. everybody was born to a place in the community: in that place he had to stay: in that place he found certain duties which he had to fulfil, and which were all he needed to think of. the net of custom caught men in distinct spots, and kept each where he stood. what are called in european politics the principles of 1789, are therefore inconsistent with the early world; they are fitted only to the new world in which society has gone through its early task; when the inherited organisation is already confirmed and fixed; when the soft minds and strong passions of youthful nations are fixed and guided by hard transmitted instincts. till then not equality before the law is necessary but inequality, for what is most wanted is an elevated elite who know the law: not a good government seeking the happiness of its subjects, but a dignified and overawing government getting its subjects to obey: not a good law, but a comprehensive law binding all life to one routine. later are the ages of freedom; first are the ages of servitude. in 1789, when the great men of the constituent assembly looked on the long past, they hardly saw anything in it which could be praised, or admired, or imitated: all seemed a blunder--a complex error to be got rid of as soon as might be. but that error had made themselves. on their very physical organisation the hereditary mark of old times was fixed; their brains were hardened and their nerves were steadied by the transmitted results of tedious usages. the ages of monotony had their use, for they trained men for ages when they need not be monotonous. iv. but even yet we have not realised the full benefit of those early polities and those early laws. they not only 'bound up' men in groups, not only impressed on men a certain set of common usages, but often, at least in an indirect way, suggested, if i may use the expression, national character. we cannot yet explain--i am sure, at least, i cannot attempt to explain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how completely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how slowly, how gradually they can alone be altered, if they can be altered at all. but there is one analogous fact which may help us to see, at least dimly, how such phenomena are caused. there is a character of ages, as well as of nations; and as we have full histories of many such periods, we can examine exactly when and how the mental peculiarity of each began, and also exactly when and how that mental peculiarity passed away. we have an idea of queen anne's time, for example, or of queen elizabeth's time, or george ii.'s time; or again of the age of louis xiv., or louis xv., or the french revolution; an idea more or less accurate in proportion as we study, but probably even in the minds who know these ages best and most minutely, more special, more simple, more unique than the truth was. we throw aside too much, in making up our images of eras, that which is common to all eras. the english character was much the same in many great respects in chaucer's time as it was in elizabeth's time or anne's time, or as it is now; but some qualities were added to this common element in one era and some in another; some qualities seemed to overshadow and eclipse it in one era, and others in another. we overlook and half forget the constant while we see and watch the variable. but--for that is the present point--why is there this variable? everyone must, i think, have been puzzled about it. suddenly, in a quiet time--say, in queen anne's time--arises a special literature, a marked variety of human expression, pervading what is then written and peculiar to it: surely this is singular. the true explanation is, i think, something like this. one considerable writer gets a sort of start because what he writes is somewhat more--only a little more very often, as i believe--congenial to the minds around him than any other sort. this writer is very often not the one whom posterity remembers--not the one who carries the style of the age farthest towards its ideal type, and gives it its charm and its perfection. it was not addison who began the essay-writing of queen anne's time, but steele; it was the vigorous forward man who struck out the rough notion, though it was the wise and meditative man who improved upon it and elaborated it, and whom posterity reads. some strong writer, or group of writers, thus seize on the public mind, and a curious process soon assimilates other writers in appearance to them. to some extent, no doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process most intelligible, and not at all curious--the process of conscious imitation; a sees that b's style of writing answers, and he imitates it. but definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men who like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they feel they borrow. no man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he is studying to write a style not his own. after all, very few men are at all equal to the steady labour, the stupid and mistaken labour mostly, of making a style. most men catch the words that are in the air, and the rhythm which comes to them they do not know from whence; an unconscious imitation determines their words, and makes them say what of themselves they would never have thought of saying. everyone who has written in more than one newspaper knows how invariably his style catches the tone of each paper while he is writing for it, and changes to the tone of another when in turn he begins to write for that. he probably would rather write the traditional style to which the readers of the journal are used, but he does not set himself to copy it; he would have to force himself in order not to write it if that was what he wanted. exactly in this way, just as a writer for a journal without a distinctly framed purpose gives the readers of the journal the sort of words and the sort of thoughts they are used to--so, on a larger scale, the writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the readers of the age the sort of words and the sort of thoughts--the special literature, in fact--which those readers like and prize. and not only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style and meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen. a writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing it, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal in which the style is uncongenial or impossible to him. indeed if he mistakes he is soon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his compositions. how painfully this traditional style cramps great writers whom it happens not to suit, is curiously seen in wordsworth, who was bold enough to break through it, and, at the risk of contemporary neglect, to frame a style of his own. but he did so knowingly, and he did so with an effort. 'it is supposed,' he says, 'that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only then apprizes the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully eschewed. the exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must, in different ages of literature, have excited very different expectations; for example, in the age of catullus, terence, or lucretius, and that of statius or claudian; and in our own country, in the age of shakespeare and beaumont and metcher, and that of donne and cowley, or pope.' and then, in a kind of vexed way, wordsworth goes on to explain that he himself can't and won't do what is expected from him, but that he will write his own words, and only his own words. a strict, i was going to say a puritan, genius will act thus, but most men of genius are susceptible and versatile, and fall into the style of their age. one very unapt at the assimilating process, but on that account the more curious about it, says:- how we track a livelong day, great heaven, and watch our shadows! what our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be. do i look like that? you think me that: then i am that. what writers are expected to write, they write; or else they do not write at all; but, like the writer of these lines, stop discouraged, live disheartened, and die leaving fragments which their friends treasure, but which a rushing world never heeds. the nonconformist writers are neglected, the conformist writers are encouraged, until perhaps on a sudden the fashion shifts. and as with the writers, so in a less degree with readers. many men--most men--get to like or think they like that which is ever before them, and which those around them like, and which received opinion says they ought to like; or if their minds are too marked and oddly made to get into the mould, they give up reading altogether, or read old books and foreign books, formed under another code and appealing to a different taste. the principle of 'elimination,' the 'use and disuse' of organs which naturalists speak of, works here. what is used strengthens; what is disused weakens: 'to those who have, more is given;' and so a sort of style settles upon an age, and imprinting itself more than anything else in men's memories becomes all that is thought of about it. i believe that what we call national character arose in very much the same way. at first a sort of 'chance predominance' made a model, and then invincible attraction, the necessity which rules all but the strongest men to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they are expected to be, moulded men by that model. this is, i think, the very process by which new national characters are being made in our own time. in america and in australia a new modification of what we call anglo-saxonism is growing. a sort of type of character arose from the difficulties of colonial life--the difficulty of struggling with the wilderness; and this type has given its shape to the mass of characters because the mass of characters have unconsciously imitated it. many of the american characteristics are plainly useful in such a life, and consequent on such a life. the eager restlessness, the highly-strung nervous organisation are useful in continual struggle, and also are promoted by it. these traits seem to be arising in australia, too, and wherever else the english race is placed in like circumstances. but even in these useful particulars the innate tendency of the human mind to become like what is around it, has effected much: a sluggish englishman will often catch the eager american look in a few years; an irishman or even a german will catch it, too, even in all english particulars. and as to a hundred minor points--in so many that go to mark the typical yankee--usefulness has had no share either in their origin or their propagation. the accident of some predominant person possessing them set the fashion, and it has been imitated to this day. anybody who inquires will find even in england, and even in these days of assimilation, parish peculiarities which arose, no doubt, from some old accident, and have been heedfully preserved by customary copying. a national character is but the successful parish character; just as the national speech is but the successful parish dialect, the dialect, that is, of the district which came to be more--in many cases but a little more--influential than other districts, and so set its yoke on books and on society. i could enlarge much on this, for i believe this unconscious imitation to be the principal force in the making of national characters; but i have already said more about it than i need. everybody who weighs even half these arguments will admit that it is a great force in the matter, a principal agency to be acknowledged and watched; and for my present purpose i want no more. i have only to show the efficacy of the tight early polity (so to speak) and the strict early law on the creation of corporate characters. these settled the predominant type, set up a sort of model, made a sort of idol; this was worshipped, copied, and observed, from all manner of mingled feelings, but most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then accepted form of human action. when once the predominant type was determined, the copying propensity of man did the rest. the tradition ascribing spartan legislation to lycurgus was literally untrue, but its spirit was quite true. in the origin of states strong and eager individuals got hold of small knots of men, and made for them a fashion which they were attached to and kept. it is only after duly apprehending the silent manner in which national characters thus form themselves, that we can rightly appreciate the dislike which old governments had to trade. there must have been something peculiar about it, for the best philosophers, plato and aristotle, shared it. they regarded commerce as the source of corruption as naturally as a modern economist considers it the spring of industry, and all the old governments acted in this respect upon the philosophers' maxims. 'well,' said dr. arnold, speaking ironically and in the spirit of modern times--'well, indeed, might the policy of the old priest-nobles of egypt and india endeavour to divert their people from becoming familiar with the sea, and represent the occupation of a seaman as incompatible with the purity of the highest castes. the sea deserved to be hated by the old aristocracies, inasmuch as it has been the mightiest instrument in the civilisation of mankind.' but the old oligarchies had their own work, as we now know. they were imposing a fashioning yoke; they were making the human nature which after times employ. they were at their labours, we have entered into these labours. and to the unconscious imitation which was their principal tool, no impediment was so formidable as foreign intercourse. men imitate what is before their eyes, if it is before their eyes alone, but they do not imitate it if it is only one among many present things--one competitor among others, all of which are equal and some of which seem better. 'whoever speaks two languages is a rascal,' says the saying, and it rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and impressible man--such as he then is--to follow his unpleasant will without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary religion. the old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and for that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it. 'distinctions of race,' says arnold himself elsewhere in a remarkable essay--for it was his last on greek history, his farewell words on a long favourite subject--'were not of that odious and fantastic character which they have been in modern times; they implied real differences of the most important kind, religious and moral.' and after exemplifying this at length he goes on, 'it is not then to be wondered at that thucydides, when speaking of a city founded jointly by ionians and dorians, should have thought it right to add "that the prevailing institutions of the two were ionian," for according as they were derived from one or the other the prevailing type would be different. and therefore the mixture of persons of different race in the same commonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendancy, tended to confuse all the relations of human life, and all men's notions of right and wrong; or by compelling men to tolerate in so near a relation as that of fellow-citizens differences upon the main points of human life, led to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion that right and wrong had no real existence, but were mere creatures of human opinion.' but if this be so, the oligarchies were right. commerce brings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and brings it inevitably. it is now-a-days its greatest good that it does so; the change is what we call 'enlargement of mind'. but in early times providence 'set apart the nations;' and it is not till the frame of their morals is set by long ages of transmitted discipline, that such enlargement can be borne. the ages of isolation had their use, for they trained men for ages when they were not to be isolated. no. ii the use of conflict. 'the difference between progression and stationary inaction,' says one of our greatest living writers, 'is one of the great secrets which science has yet to penetrate.' i am sure i do not pretend that i can completely penetrate it; but it undoubtedly seems to me that the problem is on the verge of solution, and that scientific successes in kindred fields by analogy suggest some principles--which wholly remove many of its difficulties, and indicate the sort of way in which those which remain may hereafter be removed too. but what is the problem? common english, i might perhaps say common civilised thought, ignores it. our habitual instructors, our ordinary conversation, our inevitable and ineradicable prejudices tend to make us think that 'progress' is the normal fact in human society, the fact which we should expect to see, the fact which we should be surprised if we did not see. but history refutes this. the ancients had no conception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea. oriental nations are just the same now. since history began they have always been what they are. savages, again, do not improve; they hardly seem to have the basis on which to build, much less the material to put up anything worth having. only a few nations, and those of european origin, advance; and yet these think--seem irresistibly compelled to think--such advance to be inevitable, natural, and eternal. why then is this great contrast? before we can answer, we must investigate more accurately. no doubt history shows that most nations are stationary now; but it affords reason to think that all nations once advanced. their progress was arrested at various points; but nowhere, probably not even in the hill tribes of india, not even in the andaman islanders, not even in the savages of terra del fuego, do we find men who have not got some way. they have made their little progress in a hundred different ways; they have framed with infinite assiduity a hundred curious habits; they have, so to say, screwed themselves into the uncomfortable corners of a complex life, which is odd and dreary, but yet is possible. and the corners are never the same in any two parts of the world. our record begins with a thousand unchanging edifices, but it shows traces of previous building. in historic times there has been little progress; in prehistoric times there must have been much. in solving, or trying to solve, the question, we must take notice of this remarkable difference, and explain it, too, or else we may be sure our principles are utterly incomplete, and perhaps altogether unsound. but what then is that solution, or what are the principles which tend towards it? three laws, or approximate laws, may, i think, be laid down, with only one of which i can deal in this paper, but all three of which it will be best to state, that it may be seen what i am aiming at. first. in every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best. secondly. within every particular nation the type or types of character then and there most attractive tend to prevail; and, the most attractive, though with exceptions, is what we call the best character. thirdly. neither of these competitions is in most historic conditions intensified by extrinsic forces, but in some conditions, such as those now prevailing in the most influential part of the world, both are so intensified. these are the sort of doctrines with which, under the name of 'natural selection' in physical science, we have become familiar; and as every great scientific conception tends to advance its boundaries and to be of use in solving problems not thought of when it was started, so here, what was put forward for mere animal history may, with a change of form, but an identical essence, be applied to human history. at first some objection was raised to the principle of 'natural selection' in physical science upon religious grounds; it was to be expected that so active an idea and so large a shifting of thought would seem to imperil much which men valued. but in this, as in other cases, the objection is, i think, passing away; the new principle is more and more seen to be fatal to mere outworks of religion, not to religion itself. at all events, to the sort of application here made of it, which only amounts to searching out and following up an analogy suggested by it, there is plainly no objection. everyone now admits that human history is guided by certain laws, and all that is here aimed at is to indicate, in a more or less distinct way, an infinitesimally small portion of such laws. the discussion of these three principles cannot be kept quite apart except by pedantry; but it is almost exclusively with the first--that of the competition between nation and nation, or tribe and tribe (for i must use these words in their largest sense, and so as to include every cohering aggregate of human beings)--that i can deal now; and even as to that i can but set down a few principal considerations. the progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, i was about to say the most showy, fact in human history. ancient civilisation may be compared with modern in many respects, and plausible arguments constructed to show that it is better; but you cannot compare the two in military power. napoleon could indisputably have conquered alexander; our indian army would not think much of the retreat of the ten thousand. and i suppose the improvement has been continuous: i have not the slightest pretence to special knowledge; but, looking at the mere surface of the facts, it seems likely that the aggregate battle array, so to say, of mankind, the fighting force of the human race, has constantly and invariably grown. it is true that the ancient civilisation long resisted the 'barbarians,' and was then destroyed by the barbarians. but the barbarians had improved. 'by degrees,' says a most accomplished writer,[4] 'barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most effective, part of the roman armies. the body-guard of augustus had been so composed; the praetorians were generally selected from the bravest frontier troops, most of them germans.' 'thus,' he continues, 'in many ways was the old antagonism broken down, romans admitting barbarians to rank and office; barbarians catching something of the manners and culture of their neighbours. and thus, when the final movement came, the teutonic tribes slowly established themselves through the provinces, knowing something of the system to which they came, and not unwilling to be considered its members.' taking friend and foe together, it may be doubted whether the fighting capacity of the two armies was not as great at last, when the empire fell, as ever it was in the long period while the empire prevailed. during the middle ages the combining power of men often failed; in a divided time you cannot collect as many soldiers as in a concentrated time. but this difficulty is political, not military. if you added up the many little hosts of any century of separation, they would perhaps be found equal or greater than the single host, or the fewer hosts, of previous centuries which were more united. taken as a whole, and allowing for possible exceptions, the aggregate fighting power of mankind has grown immensely, and has been growing continuously since we knew anything about it. [4] mr. bryce again, this force has tended to concentrate itself more and more in certain groups which we call 'civilised nations.' the literati of the last century were for ever in fear of a new conquest of the barbarians, but only because their imagination was overshadowed and frightened by the old conquests. a very little consideration would have shown them that, since the monopoly of military inventions by cultivated states, real and effective military power tends to confine itself to those states. the barbarians are no longer so much as vanquished competitors; they have ceased to compete at all. the military vices, too, of civilisation seem to decline just as its military strength augments. somehow or other civilisation does not make men effeminate or unwarlike now as it once did. there is an improvement in our fibre--moral, if not physical. in ancient times city people could not be got to fight--seemingly could not fight; they lost their mental courage, perhaps their bodily nerve. but now-a-days in all countries the great cities could pour out multitudes wanting nothing but practice to make good soldiers, and abounding in bravery and vigour. this was so in america; it was so in prussia; and it would be so in england too. the breed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but the modern breed is not so impaired. a curious fact indicates the same thing probably, if not certainly. savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient. there is no lament in any classical writer for the barbarians. the new zealanders say that the land will depart from their children; the australians are vanishing; the tasmanians have vanished. if anything like this had happened in antiquity, the classical moralists would have been sure to muse over it; for it is just the large solemn kind of fact that suited them. on the contrary, in gaul, in spain, in sicily--everywhere that we know of--the barbarian endured the contact of the roman, and the roman allied himself to the barbarian. modern science explains the wasting away of savage men; it says that we have diseases which we can bear, though they cannot, and that they die away before them as our fatted and protected cattle died out before the rinderpest, which is innocuous, in comparison, to the hardy cattle of the steppes. savages in the first year of the christian era were pretty much what they were in the 1800th; and if they stood the contact of ancient civilised men, and cannot stand ours, it follows that our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than those the ancients carried with them. we may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a metre to gauge the vigour of the constitutions to whose contact he is exposed. particular consequences may be dubious, but as to the main fact there is no doubt: the military strength of man has been growing from the earliest time known to our history, straight on till now. and we must not look at times known by written records only; we must travel back to older ages, known to us only by what lawyers call real evidence--the evidence of things. before history began, there was at least as much progress in the military art as there has been since. the roman legionaries or homeric greeks were about as superior to the men of the shell mounds and the flint implements as we are superior to them. there has been a constant acquisition of military strength by man since we know anything of him, either by the documents he has composed or the indications he has left. the cause of this military growth is very plain. the strongest nation has always been conquering the weaker; sometimes even subduing it, but always prevailing over it. every intellectual gain, so to speak, that a nation possessed was in the earliest times made use of--was invested and taken out--in war; all else perished. each nation tried constantly to be the stronger, and so made or copied the best weapons; by conscious and unconscious imitation each nation formed a type of character suitable to war and conquest. conquest improved mankind by the intermixture of strengths; the armed truce, which was then called peace, improved them by the competition of training and the consequent creation of new power. since the long-headed men first drove the short-headed men out of the best land in europe, all european history has been the history of the superposition of the more military races over the less military of the efforts, sometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessful, of each race to get more military; and so the art of war has constantly improved. but why is one nation stronger than another? in the answer to that, i believe, lies the key to the principal progress of early civilisation, and to some of the progress of all civilisation. the answer is that there are very many advantages--some small and some great--every one of which tends to make the nation which has it superior to the nation which has it not; that many of these advantages can be imparted to subjugated races, or imitated by competing races; and that, though some of these advantages may be perishable or inimitable, yet, on the whole, the energy of civilisation grows by the coalescence of strengths and by the competition of strengths. ii. by far the greatest advantage is that on which i observed before--that to which i drew all the attention i was able by making the first of these essays an essay on the preliminary age. the first thing to acquire is if i may so express it, the legal fibre; a polity first--what sort of polity is immaterial; a law first--what kind of law is secondary; a person or set of persons to pay deference to--though who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies. 'there is,' it has been said, 'hardly any exaggerating the difference between civilised and uncivilised men; it is greater than the difference between a tame and a wild animal,' because man can improve more. but the difference at first was gained in much the same way. the taming of animals as it now goes on among savage nations, and as travellers who have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. the most wild are killed when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy to manage kept, because they are more agreeable to human indolence, and so the keeper likes them best. captain galton, who has often seen strange scenes of savage and of animal life, had better describe the process:--'the irreclaimably wild members of every flock would escape and be utterly lost; the wilder of those that remained would assuredly be selected for slaughter--whenever it was necessary that one of the flock should be killed. the tamest cattle--those which seldom ran away, that kept the flocks together, and those which led them homeward--would be preserved alive longer than any of the others. it is, therefore, these that chiefly become the parents of stock and bequeath their domestic aptitudes to the future herd. i have constantly witnessed this process of selection among the pastoral savages of south africa. i believe it to be a very important one on account of its rigour and its regularity. it must have existed from the earliest times, and have been, in continuous operation, generation after generation, down to the present day.'[5] [5] ethnological society's transactions, vol. iii. p. 137. man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself. and the way in which it happened was, that the most obedient, the tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the strongest and the conquerors. all are very wild then; the animal vigour, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have enough of it. but what makes one tribe--one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe--to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence. the slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. the compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. civilisation begins, because the beginning of civilisation is a military advantage. probably if we had historic records of the ante-historic ages--if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions of men ages before they could set them down for themselves--we should know that this first step in civilisation was the hardest step. but when we come to history as it is, we are more struck with the difficulty of the next step. all the absolutely incoherent men--all the 'cyclopes'--have been cleared away long before there was an authentic account of them. and the least coherent only remain in the 'protected' parts of the world, as we may call them. ordinary civilisation begins near the mediterranean sea; the best, doubtless, of the ante-historic civilisations were not far off. from this centre the conquering swarm--for such it is--has grown and grown; has widened its subject territories steadily, though not equably, age by age. but geography long defied it. an atlantic ocean, a pacific ocean, an australian ocean, an unapproachable interior africa, an inaccessible and undesirable hill india, were beyond its range. in such remote places there was no real competition, and on them inferior, half-combined men continued to exist. but in the regions of rivalry--the regions where the better man pressed upon the worse man--such half-made associations could not last. they died out and history did not begin till after they were gone. the great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. what is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion i phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better. this is the precise case with the whole family of arrested civilisations. a large part, a very large part, of the world seems to be ready to advance to something good--to have prepared all the means to advance to something good,--and then to have stopped, and not advanced. india, japan, china, almost every sort of oriental civilisation, though differing in nearly all other things, are in this alike. they look as if they had paused when there was no reason for pausing--when a mere observer from without would say they were likely not to pause. the reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve and use the fundamental peculiarity which was given by nature to man's organism as to all other organisms. by a law of which we know no reason, but which, is among the first by which providence guides and governs the world, there is a tendency in descendants to be like their progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to differ from their progenitors. the work of nature in making generations is a patchwork--part resemblance, part contrast. in certain respects each born generation is not like the last born; and in certain other respects it is like the last. but the peculiarity of arrested civilisation is to kill out varieties at birth almost; that is, in early childhood, and before they can develop. the fixed custom which public opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them or not. in that case the community feel that this custom is the only shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for they value. most oriental communities live on land which in theory is the property of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families could have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land upon some sort of fixed terms. land in that state of society is (for all but a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and all the unincreasable land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his holding is turned out of this world, and must die. and our notion of written leases is as out of place in a world without writing and without reading as a house of commons among andaman islanders. only one check, one sole shield for life and good, is then possible;--usage. and it is but too plain how in such places and periods men cling to customs because customs alone stand between them and starvation. a still more powerful cause co-operated, if a cause more powerful can be imagined. dryden had a dream of an early age, 'when wild in woods the noble savage ran;' but 'when lone in woods the cringing savage crept' would have been more like all we know of that early, bare, painful period. not only had they no comfort, no convenience, not the very beginnings of an epicurean life, but their mind within was as painful to them as the world without. it was full of fear. so far as the vestiges inform us, they were afraid of everything; they were afraid of animals, of certain attacks by near tribes, and of possible inroads from far tribes. but, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread. they fancied there were powers behind it which must be pleased, soothed, flattered, and this very often in a number of hideous ways. we have too many such religions, even among races of great cultivation. men change their religions more slowly than they change anything else; and accordingly we have religions 'of the ages'--(it is mr. jowett who so calls them)--of the 'ages before morality;' of ages of which the civil life, the common maxims, and all the secular thoughts have long been dead. 'every reader of the classics,' said dr. johnson, 'finds their mythology tedious.' in that old world, which is so like our modern world in so many things, so much more like than many far more recent, or some that live beside us, there is a part in which we seem to have no kindred, which we stare at, of which we cannot think how it could be credible, or how it came to be thought of. this is the archaic part of that very world which we look at as so ancient; an 'antiquity' which descended to them, hardly altered, perhaps, from times long antecedent, which were as unintelligible to them as to us, or more so. how this terrible religion--for such it was in all living detail, though we make, and the ancients then made, an artistic use of the more attractive bits of it--weighed on man, the great poem of lucretius, the most of a nineteenth-century poem of any in antiquity, brings before us with a feeling so vivid as to be almost a feeling of our own. yet the classical religion is a mild and tender specimen of the preserved religions. to get at the worst, you should look where the destroying competition has been least--at america, where sectional civilisation was rare, and a pervading coercive civilisation did not exist; at such religions as those of the aztecs. at first sight it seems impossible to imagine what conceivable function such awful religions can perform in the economy of the world. and no one can fully explain them. but one use they assuredly had: they fixed the yoke of custom thoroughly on mankind. they were the prime agents of the era. they put upon a fixed law a sanction so fearful that no one could dream of not conforming to it. no one will ever comprehend the arrested civilisations unless he sees the strict dilemma of early society. either men had no law at all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. those who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in their way who did not. and then they a themselves were caught in their own yoke. the customary discipline, which could only be imposed on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation which are the principle--of progress. experience shows how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to encourage the principle of originality. they will admit it in theory, but in practice the old error--the error which arrested a hundred civilisations--returns again. men are too fond of their own life, too credulous of the completeness of their own ideas, too angry at the pain of new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with a changing existence; or else, having new ideas, they want to enforce them on mankind--to make them heard, and admitted, and obeyed before, in simple competition with other ideas, they would ever be so naturally. at this very moment there are the most rigid comtists teaching that we ought to be governed by a hierarchy--a combination of savans orthodox in science. yet who can doubt that comte would have been hanged by his own hierarchy; that his essor materiel, which was in fact troubled by the 'theologians and metaphysicians' of the polytechnic school, would have been more impeded by the government he wanted to make? and then the secular comtists, mr. harrison and mr. beesly, who want to 'frenchify the english institutions'--that is, to introduce here an imitation of the napoleonic system, a dictatorship founded on the proletariat--who can doubt that if both these clever writers had been real frenchmen they would have been irascible anti-bonapartists, and have been sent to cayenne long ere now? the wish of these writers is very natural. they want to 'organise society,' to erect a despot who will do what they like, and work out their ideas; but any despot will do what he himself likes, and will root out new ideas ninety-nine times for once that he introduces them. again, side by side with these comtists, and warring with them--at least with one of them--is mr. arnold, whose poems we know by heart, and who has, as much as any living englishman, the genuine literary impulse; and yet even he wants to put a yoke upon us--and, worse than a political yoke, an academic yoke, a yoke upon our minds and our styles. he, too, asks us to imitate france; and what else can we say than what the two most thorough frenchmen of the last age did say?--'dans les corps a talent, nulle distinction ne fait ombrage, si ce n'est pas celle du talent. un due et pair honore l'academie francaise, qui ne veut point de boileau, refuse la bruyere, fait attendre voltaire, mais recoit tout d'abord chapelain et conrart. de meme nous voyons a l'academie grecque le vicomte invite, corai repousse, lorsque jormard y entre comme dans un moulin.' thus speaks paul-louis courier in his own brief inimitable prose. and a still greater writer--a real frenchman, if ever there was one, and (what many critics would have denied to be possible) a great poet by reason of his most french characteristics--beranger, tells us in verse:- je croyais voir le president fairs bailler--en repondant que l'on vient de perdre un grand homme; que moi je le vaux, dieu sait comme. mais ce president sans facon[6] ne perore ici qu'en chanson: toujours trop tot sa harangue est finie. non, non, ce n'est point comme a l'academia; ce n'est point comme a l'academie. admis enfin, aurai-jo alors, pour tout esprit, l'esprit de corps? il rend le bon sens, quoi qu'on dise, solidaire de la sottise; mais, dans votes societe, l'esprit de corps, c'est la gaite. cet esprit la regne sans tyrannie. non, non, ce n'est point comme a l'academie; ce n'est point comme a l'acadenie. [6] desaugiers. asylums of common-place, he hints, academies must ever be. but that sentence is too harsh; the true one is--the academies are asylums of the ideas and the tastes of the last age. 'by the time,' i have heard a most eminent man of science observe, 'by the time a man of science attains eminence on any subject, he becomes a nuisance upon it, because he is sure to retain errors which were in vogue when he was young, but which the new race have refuted.' these are the sort of ideas which find their home in academies, and out of their dignified windows pooh-pooh new things. i may seem to have wandered far from early society, but i have not wandered. the true scientific method is to explain the past by the present--what we see by what we do not see. we can only comprehend why so many nations have not varied, when we see how hateful variation is; how everybody turns against it; how not only the conservatives of speculation try to root it out, but the very innovators invent most rigid machines for crushing the 'monstrosities and anomalies'--the new forms, out of which, by competition and trial, the best is to be selected for the future. the point i am bringing out is simple:--one most important pre-requisite of a prevailing nation is that it should have passed out of the first stage of civilisation into the second stage--out of the stage where permanence is most wanted into that where variability is most wanted; and you cannot comprehend why progress is so slow till you see how hard the most obstinate tendencies of human nature make that step to mankind. of course the nation we are supposing must keep the virtues of its first stage as it passes into the after stage, else it will be trodden out; it will have lost the savage virtues in getting the beginning of the civilised virtues; and the savage virtues which tend to war are the daily bread of human nature. carlyle said, in his graphic way, 'the ultimate question between every two human beings is, "can i kill thee, or canst thou kill me?"' history is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it. but these nations have come out of the 'pre-economic stage' too soon; they have been put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn. such cases do not vitiate, they confirm, the principle--that a nation which has just gained variability without losing legality has a singular likelihood to be a prevalent nation. no nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others. the best history is but like the art of rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen. to make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much. but, not forgetting this caution, did not rome--the prevalent nation in the ancient world--gain her predominance by the principle on which i have dwelt? in the thick crust of her legality there was hidden a little seed of adaptiveness. even in her law itself no one can fail to see that, binding as was the habit of obedience, coercive as use and wont at first seem, a hidden impulse of extrication did manage, in some queer way, to change the substance while conforming to the accidents--to do what was wanted for the new time while seeming to do only what was directed by the old time. and the moral of their whole history is the same each roman generation, so far as we know, differs a little-and in the best times often but a very little--from its predecessors. and therefore the history is so continuous as it goes, though its two ends are so unlike. the history of many nations is like the stage of the english drama: one scene is succeeded on a sudden by a scene quite different,--a cottage by a palace, and a windmill by a fortress. but the history of rome changes as a good diorama changes; while you look, you hardly see it alter; each moment is hardly different from the last moment; yet at the close the metamorphosis is complete, and scarcely anything is as it began. just so in the history of the great prevailing city: you begin with a town and you end with an empire, and this by unmarked stages?--so shrouded, so shielded, in the coarse fibre of other qualities--was the delicate principle of progress, that it never failed, and it was never broken. one standing instance, no doubt, shows that the union of progressiveness and legality does not secure supremacy in war. the jewish nation has its type of progress in the prophets, side by side with its type of permanence in the law and levites, more distinct than any other ancient people. nowhere in common history do we see the two forces--both so necessary and both so dangerous--so apart and so intense: judaea changed in inward thought, just as borne changed in exterior power. each change was continuous, gradual and good. in early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. but the jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. for that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences. but i cannot deal with such matters here, nor are they to my purpose. as respects this essay, judaea is an example of combined variability and legality not investing itself in warlike power, and so perishing at last, but bequeathing nevertheless a legacy of the combination in imperishable mental effects. it may be objected that this principle is like saying that men walk when they do walk, and sit when they do sit. the problem, is, why do men progress? and the answer suggested seems to be, that they progress when they have a certain sufficient amount of variability in their nature. this seems to be the old style of explanation by occult qualities. it seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep because it has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an alimentary quality. but the explanation is not so absurd. it says: 'the beginning of civilisation is marked by an intense legality; that legality is the very condition of its existence, the bond which ties it together; but that legality--that tendency to impose a settled customary yoke upon all men and all actions if it goes on, kills out the variability implanted by nature, and makes different men and different ages facsimiles of other men and other ages, as we see them so often. progress is only possible in those happy cases where the force of legality has gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far enough to kill out all varieties and destroy nature's perpetual tendency to change.' the point of the solution is not the invention of an imaginary agency, but an assignment of comparative magnitude to two known agencies. iii. this advantage is one of the greatest in early civilisation--one of the facts which give a decisive turn to the battle of nations; but there are many others. a little perfection in political institutions may do it. travellers have noticed that among savage tribes those seemed to answer best in which the monarchical power was most predominant, and those worst in which the 'rule of many' was in its vigour. so long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism--despotism during the campaign--is indispensable. macaulay justly said that many an army has prospered under a bad commander, but no army has ever prospered under a 'debating society;' that many-headed monster is then fatal. despotism grows in the first societies, just as democracy grows in more modern societies; it is the government answering the primary need, and congenial to the whole spirit of the time. but despotism is unfavourable to the principle of variability, as all history shows. it tends to keep men in the customary stage of civilisation; its very fitness for that age unfits it for the next. it prevents men from passing into the first age of progress--the very slow and very gradually improving age. some 'standing system' of semi-free discussion is as necessary to break the thick crust of custom and begin progress as it is in later ages to carry on progress when begun; probably it is even more necessary. and in the most progressive races we find it. i have spoken already of the jewish prophets, the life of that nation, and the principle of all its growth. but a still more progressive race--that by which secular civilisation was once created, by which it is now mainly administered--had a still better instrument of progression. 'in the very earliest glimpses,' says mr. freeman, 'of teutonic political life, we find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements already clearly marked. there are leaders with or without the royal title; there are men of noble birth, whose noble birth (in whatever the original nobility may have consisted) entitles them to a pre-eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free and armed people, in whom it is clear that the ultimate sovereignty resides. small matters are decided by the chiefs alone; great matters are submitted by the chiefs to the assembled nation. such a system is far more than teutonic; it is a common aryan possession; it is the constitution of the homeric achaians on earth and of the homeric gods on olympus.' perhaps, and indeed probably, this constitution may be that of the primitive tribe which romans left to go one way, and greeks to go another, and teutons to go a third. the tribe took it with them, as the english take the common law with them, because it was the one kind of polity which they could conceive and act upon; or it may be that the emigrants from the primitive aryan stock only took with them a good aptitude--an excellent political nature, which similar circumstances in distant countries were afterwards to develop into like forms. but anyhow it is impossible not to trace the supremacy of teutons, greeks, and romans in part to their common form of government. the contests of the assembly cherished the principle of change; the influence of the elders insured sedateness and preserved the mould of thought; and, in the best cases, military discipline was not impaired by freedom, though military intelligence was enhanced with the general intelligence. a roman army was a free body, at its own choice governed by a peremptory despotism. the mixture of races was often an advantage, too. much as the old world believed in pure blood, it had very little of it. most historic nations conquered prehistoric nations, and though they massacred many, they did not massacre all. they enslaved the subject men, and they married the subject women. no doubt the whole bond of early society was the bond of descent; no doubt it was essential to the notions of a new nation that it should have had common ancestors; the modern idea that vicinity of habitation is the natural cement of civil union would have been repelled as an impiety if it could have been conceived as an idea. but by one of those legal fictions which sir henry maine describes so well, primitive nations contrived to do what they found convenient, as well as to adhere to what they fancied to be right. when they did not beget they adopted; they solemnly made believe that new persons were descended from the old stock, though everybody knew that in flesh and blood they were not. they made an artificial unity in default of a real unity; and what it is not easy to understand now, the sacred sentiment requiring unity of race was somehow satisfied: what was made did as well as what was born. nations with these sort of maxims are not likely to have unity of race in the modern sense, and as a physiologist understands it. what sorts of unions improve the breed, and which are worse than both the father-race and the mother, it is not very easy to say. the subject was reviewed by m. quatrefages in an elaborate report upon the occasion of the french exhibition, of all things in the world. m. quatrefages quotes from another writer the phrase that south america is a great laboratory of experiments in the mixture of races, and reviews the different results which different cases have shown. in south carolina the mulatto race is not very prolific, whereas in louisiana and florida it decidedly is so. in jamaica and in java the mulatto cannot reproduce itself after the third generation; but on the continent of america, as everybody knows, the mixed race is now most numerous, and spreads generation after generation without impediment. equally various likewise in various cases has been the fate of the mixed race between the white man and the native american; sometimes it prospers, sometimes it fails. and m. quatrefages concludes his description thus: 'en acceptant comme vraies toutes les observations qui tendent a faire admettre qu'il en sera autrement dans les localites dont j'ai parle plus haut, quelle est la conclusion a tirer de faits aussi peu semblables? evidemment, on est oblige de reconnaitre que le developpement de la race mulatre est favorise, retarde, ou empeche par des circonstances locales; en d'autres termes, qu'il depend des influences exercees par l'ensemble des conditions d'existence, par le milieu.' by which i understand him to mean that the mixture of race sometimes brings out a form of character better suited than either parent form to the place and time; that in such cases, by a kind of natural selection, it dominates over both parents, and perhaps supplants both, whereas in other cases the mixed race is not as good then and there as other parent forms, and then it passes away soon and of itself. early in history the continual mixtures by conquest were just so many experiments in mixing races as are going on in south america now. new races wandered into new districts, and half killed, half mixed with the old races. and the result was doubtless as various and as difficult to account for then as now; sometimes the crossing answered, sometimes it failed. but when the mixture was at its best, it must have excelled both parents in that of which so much has been said; that is, variability, and consequently progressiveness. there is more life in mixed nations. france, for instance, is justly said to be the mean term between the latin and the german races. a norman, as you may see by looking at him, is of the north; a provencal is of the south, of all that there is most southern. you have in france latin, celtic, german, compounded in an infinite number of proportions: one as she is in feeling, she is various not only in the past history of her various provinces, but in their present temperaments. like the irish element and the scotch element in the english house of commons, the variety of french races contributes to the play of the polity; it gives a chance for fitting new things which otherwise there would not be. and early races must have wanted mixing more than modern races. it is said, in answer to the jewish boast that 'their race still prospers, though it is scattered and breeds in-and-in,' 'you prosper because you are so scattered; by acclimatisation in various regions your nation has acquired singular elements of variety; it contains within itself the principle of variability which other nations must seek by intermarriage.' in the beginning of things there was certainly no cosmopolitan race like the jews; each race was a sort of 'parish race,' narrow in thought and bounded in range, and it wanted mixing accordingly. but the mixture of races has a singular danger as well as a singular advantage in the early world. we know now the anglo-indian suspicion or contempt for 'half-castes.' the union of the englishman and the hindoo produces something not only between races, but between moralities. they have no inherited creed or plain place in the world; they have none of the fixed traditional sentiments which are the stays of human nature. in the early world many mixtures must have wrought many ruins; they must have destroyed what they could not replace--an inbred principle of discipline and of order. but if these unions of races did not work thus; if, for example, the two races were so near akin that their morals united as well as their breeds, if one race by its great numbers and prepotent organisation so presided over the other as to take it up and assimilate it, and leave no separate remains of it, then the admixture was invaluable. it added to the probability of variability, and therefore of improvement; and if that improvement even in part took the military line, it might give the mixed and ameliorated state a steady advantage in the battle of nations, and a greater chance of lasting in the world. another mode in which one state acquires a superiority over competing states is by provisional institutions, if i may so call them. the most important of these--slavery--arises out of the same early conquest as the mixture of races. a slave is an unassimilated, an undigested atom; something which is in the body politic, but yet is hardly part of it. slavery, too, has a bad name in the later world, and very justly. we connect it with gangs in chains, with laws which keep men ignorant, with laws that hinder families. but the evils which we have endured from slavery in recent ages must not blind us to, or make us forget, the great services that slavery rendered in early ages. there is a wonderful presumption in its favour; it is one of the institutions which, at a certain stage of growth, all nations in all countries choose and cleave to. 'slavery,' says aristotle, 'exists by the law of nature,' meaning that it was everywhere to be found--was a rudimentary universal point of polity. 'there are very many english colonies,' said edward gibbon wakefield, as late as 1848, 'who would keep slaves at once if we would let them,' and he was speaking not only of old colonies trained in slavery, and raised upon the products of it, but likewise of new colonies started by freemen, and which ought, one would think, to wish to contain freemen only. but wakefield knew what he was saying; he was a careful observer of rough societies, and he had watched the minds of men in them. he had seen that leisure is the great need of early societies, and slaves only can give men leisure. all freemen in new countries must be pretty equal; every one has labour, and every one has land; capital, at least in agricultural countries (for pastoral countries are very different), is of little use; it cannot hire labour; the labourers go and work for themselves. there is a story often told of a great english capitalist who went out to australia with a shipload of labourers and a carriage; his plan was that the labourers should build a house for him, and that he would keep his carriage, just as in england. but (so the story goes) he had to try to live in his carriage, for his labourers left him, and went away to work for themselves. in such countries there can be few gentlemen and no ladies. refinement is only possible when leisure is possible; and slavery first makes it possible. it creates a set of persons born to work that others may not work, and not to think in order that others may think. the sort of originality which slavery gives is of the first practical advantage in early communities; and the repose it gives is a great artistic advantage when they come to be described in history. the patriarchs abraham, isaac, and jacob could not have had the steady calm which marks them, if they had themselves been teased and hurried about their flocks and herds. refinement of feeling and repose of appearance have indeed no market value in the early bidding of nations; they do not tend to secure themselves a long future or any future. but originality in war does, and slave-owning nations, having time to think, are likely to be more shrewd in policy, and more crafty in strategy. no doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost. when other sources of leisure become possible, the one use of slavery is past. but all its evils remain, and even grow worse. 'retail' slavery--the slavery in which a master owns a few slaves, whom he well knows and daily sees--is not at all an intolerable state; the slaves of abraham had no doubt a fair life, as things went in that day. but wholesale slavery, where men are but one of the investments of large capital, and where a great owner, so far from knowing each slave, can hardly tell how many gangs of them he works, is an abominable state. this is the slavery which has made the name revolting to the best minds, and has nearly rooted the thing out of the best of the world. there is no out-of-the-way marvel in this. the whole history of civilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison. a full examination of these provisional institutions would need half a volume, and would be out of place and useless here. venerable oligarchy, august monarchy, are two that would alone need large chapters. but the sole point here necessary is to say that such preliminary forms and feelings at first often bring many graces and many refinements, and often tend to secure them by the preservative military virtue. there are cases in which some step in intellectual progress gives an early society some gain in war; more obvious cases are when some kind of moral quality gives some such gain. war both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations. the romans probably had as much of these efficacious virtues as any race of the ancient world,--perhaps as much as any race in the modern world too. and the success of the nations which possess these martial virtues has been the great means by which their continuance has been secured in the world, and the destruction of the opposite vices insured also. conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world. in the last century it would have sounded strange to speak, as i am going to speak, of the military advantage of religion. such an idea would have been opposed to ruling prejudices, and would hardly have escaped philosophical ridicule. but the notion is but a commonplace in our day, for a man of genius has made it his own. mr. carlyle's books are deformed by phrases like 'infinities' and 'verities' and altogether are full of faults, which attract the very young, and deter all that are older. in spite of his great genius, after a long life of writing, it is a question still whether even a single work of his can take a lasting place in high literature. there is a want of sanity in their manner which throws a suspicion on their substance (though it is often profound); and he brandishes one or two fallacies, of which he has himself a high notion, but which plain people will always detect and deride. but whatever may be the fate of his fame, mr. carlyle has taught the present generation many lessons, and one of these is that 'god-fearing' armies are the best armies. before his time people laughed at cromwell's saying, 'trust in god, and keep your powder dry.' but we now know that the trust was of as much use as the powder, if not of more. that high concentration of steady feeling makes men dare everything and do anything. this subject would run to an infinite extent if any one were competent to handle it. those kinds of morals and that kind of religion which tend to make the firmest and most effectual character are sure to prevail, all else being the same; and creeds or systems that conduce to a soft limp mind tend to perish, except some hard extrinsic force keep them alive. thus epicureanism never prospered at rome, but stoicism did; the stiff, serious character of the great prevailing nation was attracted by what seemed a confirming creed, and deterred by what looked like a relaxing creed. the inspiriting doctrines fell upon the ardent character, and so confirmed its energy. strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger. such is no doubt one cause why monotheism tends to prevail over polytheism; it produces a higher, steadier character, calmed and concentrated by a great single object; it is not confused by competing rites, or distracted by miscellaneous deities. polytheism is religion in commission, and it is weak accordingly. but it will be said the jews, who were monotheist, were conquered by the romans, who were polytheist. yes, it must be answered, because the romans had other gifts; they had a capacity for politics, a habit of discipline, and of these the jews had not the least. the religious advantage was an advantage, but it was counter-weighed. no one should be surprised at the prominence given to war. we are dealing with early ages; nation-making is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations. nation-changing comes afterwards, and is mostly effected by peaceful revolution, though even then war, too, plays its part. the idea of an indestructible nation is a modern idea; in early ages all nations were destructible, and the further we go back, the more incessant was the work of destruction. the internal decoration of nations is a sort of secondary process, which succeeds when the main forces that create nations have principally done their work. we have here been concerned with the political scaffolding; it will be the task of other papers to trace the process of political finishing and building. the nicer play of finer forces may then require more pleasing thoughts than the fierce fights of early ages can ever suggest. it belongs to the idea of progress that beginnings can never seem attractive to those who live far on; the price of improvement is, that the unimproved will always look degraded. but how far are the strongest nations really the best nations? how far is excellence in war a criterion of other excellence? i cannot answer this now fully, but three or four considerations are very plain. war, as i have said, nourishes the 'preliminary' virtues, and this is almost as much as to say that there are virtues which it does not nourish. all which may be called 'grace' as well as virtue it does not nourish; humanity, charity, a nice sense of the rights of others, it certainly does not foster. the insensibility to human suffering, which is so striking a fact in the world as it stood when history first reveals it, is doubtless due to the warlike origin of the old civilisation. bred in war, and nursed in war, it could not revolt from the things of war, and one of the principal of these is human pain. since war has ceased to be the moving force in the world, men have become more tender one to another, and shrink from what they used to inflict without caring; and this not so much because men are improved (which may or may not be in various cases), but because they have no longer the daily habit of war--have no longer formed their notions upon war, and therefore are guided by thoughts and feelings which soldiers as such--soldiers educated simply by their trade--are too hard to understand. very like this is the contempt for physical weakness and for women which marks early society too. the non-combatant population is sure to fare ill during the ages of combat. but these defects, too, are cured or lessened; women have now marvellous means of winning their way in the world; and mind without muscle has far greater force than muscle without mind. these are some of the after-changes in the interior of nations, of which the causes must be scrutinised, and i now mention them only to bring out how many softer growths have now half-hidden the old and harsh civilisation which war made. but it is very dubious whether the spirit of war does not still colour our morality far too much. metaphors from law and metaphors from war make most of our current moral phrases, and a nice examination would easily explain that both rather vitiate what both often illustrate. the military habit makes man think far too much of definite action, and far too little of brooding meditation. life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings. the mistake of military ethics is to exaggerate the conception of discipline, and so to present the moral force of the will in a barer form than it ever ought to take. military morals can direct the axe to cut down the tree, but it knows nothing of the quiet force by which the forest grows. what has been said is enough, i hope, to bring out that there are many qualities and many institutions of the most various sort which give nations an advantage in military competition; that most of these and most warlike qualities tend principally to good; that the constant winning of these favoured competitors is the particular mode by which the best qualities wanted in elementary civilisation are propagated and preserved. no. iii nation-making. in the last essay i endeavoured to show that in the early age of man--the 'fighting age' i called it--there was a considerable, though not certain, tendency towards progress. the best nations conquered the worst; by the possession of one advantage or another the best competitor overcame the inferior competitor. so long as there was continual fighting there was a likelihood of improvement in martial virtues, and in early times many virtues are really 'martial'--that is, tend to success in war--which in later times we do not think of so calling, because the original usefulness is hid by their later usefulness. we judge of them by the present effects, not by their first. the love of law, for example, is a virtue which no one now would call martial, yet in early times it disciplined nations, and the disciplined nations won. the gift of 'conservative innovation'--the gift of matching new institutions to old--is not nowadays a warlike virtue, yet the romans owed much of their success to it. alone among ancient nations they had the deference to usage which, combines nations, and the partial permission of selected change which improves nations; and therefore they succeeded. just so in most cases, all through the earliest times, martial merit is a token of real merit: the nation that wins is the nation that ought to win. the simple virtues of such ages mostly make a man a soldier if they make him anything. no doubt the brute force of number may be too potent even then (as so often it is afterwards): civilisation may be thrown back by the conquest of many very rude men over a few less rude men. but the first elements of civilisation are great military advantages, and, roughly, it is a rule of the first times that you can infer merit from conquest, and that progress is promoted by the competitive examination of constant war. this principle explains at once why the 'protected' regions of the world--the interior of continents like africa, outlying islands like australia or new zealand--are of necessity backward. they are still in the preparatory school; they have not been taken on class by class, as no. ii., being a little better, routed effaced no. i.; and as no. iii., being a little better still, routed and effaced no. ii. and it explains why western europe was early in advance of other countries, because there the contest of races was exceedingly severe. unlike most regions, it was a tempting part of the world, and yet not a corrupting part; those who did not possess it wanted it, and those who had it, not being enervated, could struggle hard to keep it. the conflict of nations is at first a main force in the improvement of nations. but what are nations? what are these groups which are so familiar to us, and yet, if we stop to think, so strange; which are as old as history; which herodotus found in almost as great numbers and with quite as marked distinctions as we see them now? what breaks the human race up into fragments so unlike one another, and yet each in its interior so monotonous? the question is most puzzling, though the fact is so familiar, and i would not venture to say that i can answer it completely, though i can advance some considerations which, as it seems to me, go a certain way towards answering it. perhaps these same considerations throw some light, too, on the further and still more interesting question why some few nations progress, and why the greater part do not. of course at first all such distinctions of nation and nation were explained by original diversity of race. they are dissimilar, it was said, because they were created dissimilar. but in most cases this easy supposition will not do its work. you cannot (consistently with plain facts) imagine enough original races to make it tenable. some half-dozen or more great families of men may or may not have been descended from separate first stocks, but sub-varieties have certainly not so descended. you may argue, rightly or wrongly, that all aryan nations are of a single or peculiar origin, just as it was long believed that all greek-speaking nations were of one such stock. but you will not be listened to if you say that there were one adam and eve for sparta, and another adam and eve for athens. all greeks are evidently of one origin, but within the limits of the greek family, as of all other families, there is some contrast-making force which causes city to be unlike city, and tribe unlike tribe. certainly, too, nations did not originate by simple natural selection, as wild varieties of animals (i do not speak now of species) no doubt arise in nature. natural selection means the preservation of those individuals which struggle best with the forces that oppose their race. but you could not show that the natural obstacles opposing human life much differed between sparta and athens, or indeed between rome and athens; and yet spartans, athenians, and romans differ essentially. old writers fancied (and it was a very natural idea) that the direct effect of climate, or rather of land, sea, and air, and the sum total of physical conditions varied man from man, and changed race to race. but experience refutes this. the english immigrant lives in the same climate as the australian or tasmanian, but he has not become like those races; nor will a thousand years, in most respects, make him like them. the papuan and the malay, as mr. wallace finds, live now, and have lived for ages, side by side in the same tropical regions, with every sort of diversity. even in animals his researches show, as by an object-lesson, that the direct efficacy of physical conditions is overrated. 'borneo,' he says 'closely resembles new guinea, not only in its vast size and freedom from volcanoes, but in its variety of geological structure, its uniformity of climate, and the general aspect of the forest vegetation that clothes its surface. the moluccas are the counterpart of the philippines in their volcanic structure, their extreme fertility, their luxuriant forests, and their frequent earthquakes; and bali, with the east end of java, has a climate almost as arid as that of timor. yet between these corresponding groups of islands, constructed, as it were, after the same pattern, subjected to the same climate, and bathed by the same oceans, there exists the greatest possible contrast, when we compare their animal productions. nowhere does the ancient doctrine--that differences or similarities in the various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to corresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries themselves--meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. borneo and new guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be, are zoologically as wide as the poles asunder; while australia, with its dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts and its temperate climate, yet produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting the hot, damp, luxuriant forests which everywhere clothe the plains and mountains of new guinea.' that is, we have like living things in the most dissimilar situations, and unlike living things in the most similar ones. and though some of mr. wallace's speculations on ethnology may be doubtful, no one doubts that in the archipelago he has studied so well, as often elsewhere in the world, though rarely with such marked emphasis, we find like men in contrasted places, and unlike men in resembling places. climate is clearly not the force which makes nations, for it does not always make them, and they are often made without it. the problem of 'nation-making'--that is, the explanation of the origin of nations such as we now see them, and such as in historical times they have always been--cannot, as it seems to me, be solved without separating it into two: one, the making of broadly-marked races, such as the negro, or the red man, or the european; and the second, that of making the minor distinctions, such as the distinction between spartan and athenian, or between scotchman and englishman. nations, as we see them, are (if my arguments prove true) the produce of two great forces: one the race-making force which, whatever it was, acted in antiquity, and has now wholly, or almost, given over acting; and the other the nation-making force, properly so called, which is acting now as much as it ever acted, and creating as much as it ever created. the strongest light on the great causes which have formed and are forming nations is thrown by the smaller causes which are altering nations. the way in which nations change, generation after generation, is exceedingly curious, and the change occasionally happens when it is very hard to account for. something seems to steal over society, say of the regency time as compared with that of the present queen. if we read of life at windsor (at the cottage now pulled down), or of bond street as it was in the days of the loungers (an extinct race), or of st. james's street as it was when mr. fox and his party tried to make 'political capital' out of the dissipation of an heir apparent, we seem to be reading not of the places we know so well, but of very distant and unlike localities. or let anyone think how little is the external change in england between the age of elizabeth and the age of anne compared with the national change. how few were the alterations in physical condition, how few (if any) the scientific inventions affecting human life which the later period possessed, but the earlier did not! how hard it is to say what has caused the change in the people! and yet how total is the contrast, at least at first sight! in passing from bacon to addison, from shakespeare to pope, we seem to pass into a new world. in the first of these essays i spoke of the mode in which the literary change happens, and i recur to it because, literature being narrower and more definite than life, a change in the less serves as a model and illustration of the change in the greater. some writer, as was explained, not necessarily a very excellent writer or a remembered one, hit on something which suited the public taste: he went on writing, and others imitated him, and they so accustomed their readers to that style that they would bear nothing else. those readers who did not like it were driven to the works of other ages and other countries,--had to despise the 'trash of the day,' as they would call it. the age of anne patronised steele, the beginner of the essay, and addison its perfecter, and it neglected writings in a wholly discordant key. i have heard that the founder of the 'times' was asked how all the articles in the 'times' came to seem to be written by one man, and that he replied--'oh, there is always some one best contributor, and all the rest copy.' and this is doubtless the true account of the manner in which a certain trade mark, a curious and indefinable unity, settles on every newspaper. perhaps it would be possible to name the men who a few years since created the 'saturday review' style, now imitated by another and a younger race. but when the style of a periodical is once formed, the continuance of it is preserved by a much more despotic impulse than the tendency to imitation,--by the self-interest of the editor, who acts as trustee, if i may say so, for the subscribers. the regular buyers of a periodical want to read what they have been used to read--the same sort of thought, the same sort of words. the editor sees that they get that sort. he selects the suitable, the conforming articles, and he rejects the non-conforming. what the editor does in the case of a periodical, the readers do in the case of literature in general. they patronise one thing and reject the rest. of course there was always some reason (if we only could find it) which gave the prominence in each age to some particular winning literature. there always is some reason why the fashion of female dress is what it is. but just as in the case of dress we know that now-a-days the determining cause is very much of an accident, so in the case of literary fashion, the origin is a good deal of an accident. what the milliners of paris, or the demi-monde of paris, enjoin our english ladies, is (i suppose) a good deal chance; but as soon as it is decreed, those whom it suits and those whom it does not all wear it. the imitative propensity at once insures uniformity; and 'that horrid thing we wore last year' (as the phrase may go) is soon nowhere to be seen. just so a literary fashion spreads, though i am far from saying with equal primitive unreasonableness--a literary taste always begins on some decent reason, but once started, it is propagated as a fashion in dress is propagated; even those who do not like it read it because it is there, and because nothing else is easily to be found. the same patronage of favoured forms, and persecution of disliked forms, are the main causes too, i believe, which change national character. some one attractive type catches the eye, so to speak, of the nation, or a part of the nation, as servants catch the gait of their masters, or as mobile girls come home speaking the special words and acting the little gestures of each family whom they may have been visiting. i do not know if many of my readers happen to have read father newman's celebrated sermon, 'personal influence the means of propagating the truth;' if not, i strongly recommend them to do so. they will there see the opinion of a great practical leader of men, of one who has led very many where they little thought of going, as to the mode in which they are to be led; and what he says, put shortly and simply, and taken out of his delicate language, is but this--that men are guided by type, not by argument; that some winning instance must be set up before them, or the sermon will be vain, and the doctrine will not spread. i do not want to illustrate this matter from religious history, for i should be led far from my purpose, and after all i can but teach the commonplace that it is the life of teachers which is catching, not their tenets. and again, in political matters, how quickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community! we are most of us earnest with mr. gladstone; we were most of not so earnest in the time of lord palmerston. the change is what every one feels, though no one can define it. each predominant mind calls out a corresponding sentiment in the country: most feel it a little. those who feel it much express it much; those who feel it excessively express it excessively; those who dissent are silent, or unheard. after such great matters as religion and politics, it may seem trifling to illustrate the subject from little boys. but it is not trifling. the bane of philosophy is pomposity: people will not see that small things are the miniatures of greater, and it seems a loss of abstract dignity to freshen their minds by object lessons from what they know. but every boarding-school changes as a nation changes. most of us may remember thinking, 'how odd it is that this "half" should be so unlike last "half:" now we never go out of bounds, last half we were always going: now we play rounders, then we played prisoner's base;' and so through all the easy life of that time. in fact, some ruling spirits, some one or two ascendant boys, had left, one or two others had come; and so all was changed. the models were changed, and the copies changed; a different thing was praised, and a different thing bullied. a curious case of the same tendency was noticed to me only lately. a friend of mine--a liberal conservative--addressed a meeting of working men at leeds, and was much pleased at finding his characteristic, and perhaps refined points, both apprehended and applauded. 'but then,' as he narrated, 'up rose a blatant radical who said the very opposite things, and the working men cheered him too, and quite equally.' he was puzzled to account for so rapid a change. but the mass of the meeting was no doubt nearly neutral, and, if set going, quite ready to applaud any good words without much thinking. the ringleaders changed. the radical tailor started the radical cheer; the more moderate shoemaker started the moderate cheer; and the great bulk followed suit. only a few in each case were silent, and an absolute contrast was in ten minutes presented by the same elements. the truth is that the propensity of man to imitate what is before him is one of the strongest parts of his nature. and one sign of it is the great pain which we feel when our imitation has been unsuccessful. there is a cynical doctrine that most men would rather be accused of wickedness than of gaucherie. and this is but another way of saying that the bad copying of predominant manners is felt to be more of a disgrace than common consideration would account for its being, since gaucherie in all but extravagant cases is not an offence against religion or morals, but is simply bad imitation. we must not think that this imitation is voluntary, or even conscious. on the contrary, it has its seat mainly in very obscure parts of the mind, whose notions, so far from having been consciously produced, are hardly felt to exist; so far from being conceived beforehand, are not even felt at the time. the main seat of the imitative part of our nature is our belief, and the causes predisposing us to believe this, or disinclining us to believe that, are among the obscurest parts of our nature. but as to the imitative nature of credulity there can be no doubt. in 'eothen' there is a capital description of how every sort of european resident in the east, even the shrewd merchant and 'the post-captain,' with his bright, wakeful eyes of commerce, comes soon to believe in witchcraft, and to assure you, in confidence, that there 'really is something in it.' he has never seen anything convincing himself, but he has seen those who have seen those who have seen those who have seen. in fact, he has lived in an atmosphere of infectious belief, and he has inhaled it. scarcely any one can help yielding to the current infatuations of his sect or party. for a short time--say some fortnight--he is resolute; he argues and objects; but, day by day, the poison thrives, and reason wanes. what he hears from his friends, what he reads in the party organ, produces its effect. the plain, palpable conclusion which every one around him believes, has an influence yet greater and more subtle; that conclusion seems so solid and unmistakable; his own good arguments get daily more and more like a dream. soon the gravest sage shares the folly of the party with which he acts, and the sect with which he worships. in true metaphysics i believe that, contrary to common opinion, unbelief far oftener needs a reason and requires an effort than belief. naturally, and if man were made according to the pattern of the logicians, he would say, 'when i see a valid argument i will believe, and till i see such argument i will not believe.' but, in fact, every idea vividly before us soon appears to us to be true, unless we keep up our perceptions of the arguments which prove it untrue, and voluntarily coerce our minds to remember its falsehood. 'all clear ideas are true,' was for ages a philosophical maxim, and though no maxim can be more unsound, none can be more exactly conformable to ordinary human nature. the child resolutely accepts every idea which passes through its brain as true; it has no distinct conception of an idea which is strong, bright, and permanent, but which is false too. the mere presentation of an idea, unless we are careful about it, or unless there is within some unusual resistance, makes us believe it; and this is why the belief of others adds to our belief so quickly, for no ideas seem so very clear as those inculcated on us from every side. the grave part of mankind are quite as liable to these imitated beliefs as the frivolous part. the belief of the money-market, which is mainly composed of grave people, is as imitative as any belief. you will find one day everyone enterprising, enthusiastic, vigorous, eager to buy, and eager to order: in a week or so you will find almost the whole society depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. if you examine the reasons for the activity, or for the inactivity, or for the change, you will hardly be able to trace them at all, and as far as you can trace them, they are of little force. in fact, these opinions were not formed by reason, but by mimicry. something happened that looked a little good, on which eager sanguine men talked loudly, and common people caught their tone. a little while afterwards, and when people were tired of talking this, something also happened looking a little bad, on which the dismal, anxious people began, and all the rest followed their words. and in both cases an avowed dissentient is set down as 'crotchety.' 'if you want,' said swift, 'to gain the reputation of a sensible man, you should be of the opinion of the person with whom for the time being you are conversing.' there is much quiet intellectual persecution among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before he tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he will be called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be attended to. in this way the infection of imitation catches men in their most inward and intellectual part--their creed. but it also invades men--by the most bodily part of the mind--so to speak--the link between soul and body--the manner. no one needs to have this explained; we all know how a kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to imitate the manner of those around us. to conform to the fashion of rome--whatever the fashion may be, and whatever rome we may for the time be at--is among the most obvious needs of human nature. but what is not so obvious, though as certain, is that the influence of the imitation goes deep as well as extends wide. 'the matter,' as wordsworth says, 'of style very much comes out of the manner.' if you will endeavour to write an imitation of the thoughts of swift in a copy of the style of addison, you will find that not only is it hard to write addison's style, from its intrinsic excellence, but also that the more you approach to it the more you lose the thought of swift. the eager passion of the meaning beats upon the mild drapery of the words. so you could not express the plain thoughts of an englishman in the grand manner of a spaniard. insensibly, and as by a sort of magic, the kind of manner which a man catches eats into him, and makes him in the end what at first he only seems. this is the principal mode in which the greatest minds of an age produce their effect. they set the tone which others take, and the fashion which others use. there is an odd idea that those who take what is called a 'scientific view' of history need rate lightly the influence of individual character. it would be as reasonable to say that those who take a scientific view of nature need think little of the influence of the sun. on the scientific view a great man is a great new cause (compounded or not out of other causes, for i do not here, or elsewhere in these papers, raise the question of free-will), but, anyhow, new in all its effects, and all its results. great models for good and evil sometimes appear among men, who follow them either to improvement or degradation. i am, i know, very long and tedious in setting out this; but i want to bring home to others what every new observation of society brings more and more freshly to myself--that this unconscious imitation and encouragement of appreciated character, and this equally unconscious shrinking from and persecution of disliked character, is the main force which moulds and fashions men in society as we now see it. soon i shall try to show that the more acknowledged causes, such as change of climate, alteration of political institutions, progress of science, act principally through this cause; that they change the object of imitation and the object of avoidance, and so work their effect. but first i must speak of the origin of nations--of nation-making as one may call it--the proper subject of this paper. the process of nation-making is one of which we have obvious examples in the most recent times, and which is going on now. the most simple example is the foundation of the first state of america, say new england, which has such a marked and such a deep national character. a great number of persons agreeing in fundamental disposition, agreeing in religion, agreeing in politics, form a separate settlement; they exaggerate their own disposition, teach their own creed, set up their favourite government; they discourage all other dispositions, persecute other beliefs, forbid other forms or habits of government. of course a nation so made will have a separate stamp and mark. the original settlers began of one type; they sedulously imitated it; and (though other causes have intervened and disturbed it) the necessary operation of the principles of inheritance has transmitted many original traits still unaltered, and has left an entire new england character--in no respect unaffected by its first character. this case is well known, but it is not so that the same process, in a weaker shape, is going on in america now. congeniality of sentiment is a reason of selection, and a bond of cohesion in the 'west' at present. competent observers say that townships grow up there by each place taking its own religion, its own manners, and its own ways. those who have these morals and that religion go to that place, and stay there; and those who have not these morals and that religion either settle elsewhere at first, or soon pass on. the days of colonisation by sudden 'swarms' of like creed is almost over, but a less visible process of attraction by similar faith over similar is still in vigour, and very likely to continue. and in cases where this principle does not operate all new settlements, being formed of 'emigrants,' are sure to be composed of rather restless people, mainly. the stay-at-home people are not to be found there, and these are the quiet, easy people. a new settlement voluntarily formed (for of old times, when people were expelled by terror, i am not speaking) is sure to have in it much more than the ordinary proportion of active men, and much less than the ordinary proportion of inactive; and this accounts for a large part, though not perhaps all, of the difference between the english in england, and the english in australia. the causes which formed new england in recent times cannot be conceived as acting much upon mankind in their infancy. society is not then formed upon a 'voluntary system' but upon an involuntary. a man in early ages is born to a certain obedience, and cannot extricate himself from an inherited government. society then is made up, not of individuals, but of families; creeds then descend by inheritance in those families. lord melbourne once incurred the ridicule of philosophers by saying he should adhere to the english church because it was the religion of his fathers. the philosophers, of course, said that a man's fathers' believing anything was no reason for his believing it unless it was true. but lord melbourne was only uttering out of season, and in a modern time, one of the most firm and accepted maxims of old times. a secession on religious grounds of isolated romans to sail beyond sea would have seemed to the ancient romans an impossibility. in still ruder ages the religion of savages is a thing too feeble to create a schism or to found a community. we are dealing with people capable of history when we speak of great ideas, not with prehistoric flint-men or the present savages. but though under very different forms, the same essential causes--the imitation of preferred characters and the elimination of detested characters--were at work in the oldest times, and are at work among rude men now. strong as the propensity to imitation is among civilised men, we must conceive it as an impulse of which their minds have been partially denuded. like the far-seeing sight, the infallible hearing, the magical scent of the savage, it is a half-lost power. it was strongest in ancient times, and is strongest in uncivilised regions. this extreme propensity to imitation is one great reason of the amazing sameness which every observer notices in savage nations. when you have seen one euegian, you have seen all fuegians--one tasmanian, all tasmanians. the higher savages, as the new zealanders, are less uniform; they have more of the varied and compact structure of civilised nations, because in other respects they are more civilised. they have greater mental capacity--larger stores of inward thought. but much of the same monotonous nature clings to them too. a savage tribe resembles a herd of gregarious beasts; where the leader goes they go too; they copy blindly his habits, and thus soon become that which he already is. for not only the tendency, but also the power to imitate, is stronger in savages than civilised men. savages copy quicker, and they copy better. children, in the same way, are born mimics; they cannot help imitating what comes before them. there is nothing in their minds to resist the propensity to copy. every educated man has a large inward supply of ideas to which he can retire, and in which he can escape from or alleviate unpleasant outward objects. but a savage or a child has no resource. the external movements before it are its very life; it lives by what it sees and hears. uneducated people in civilised nations have vestiges of the same condition. if you send a housemaid and a philosopher to a foreign country of which neither knows the language, the chances are that the housemaid will catch it before the philosopher. he has something else to do; he can live in his own thoughts. but unless she can imitate the utterances, she is lost; she has no life till she can join in the chatter of the kitchen. the propensity to mimicry, and the power of mimicry, are mostly strongest in those who have least abstract minds. the most wonderful examples of imitation in the world are perhaps the imitations of civilised men by savages in the use of martial weapons. they learn the knack, as sportsmen call it, with inconceivable rapidity. a north american indian--an australian even--can shoot as well as any white man. here the motive is at its maximum, as well as the innate power. every savage cares more for the power of killing than for any other power. the persecuting tendency of all savages, and, indeed, of all ignorant people, is even more striking than their imitative tendency. no barbarian can bear to see one of his nation deviate from the old barbarous customs and usages of their tribe. very commonly all the tribe would expect a punishment from the gods if any one of them refrained from what was old, or began what was new. in modern times and in cultivated countries we regard each person as responsible only for his own actions, and do not believe, or think of believing, that the misconduct of others can bring guilt on them. guilt to us is an individual taint consequent on choice and cleaving to the chooser. but in early ages the act of one member of the tribe is conceived to make all the tribe impious, to offend its peculiar god, to expose all the tribe to penalties from heaven. there is no 'limited liability' in the political notions of that time. the early tribe or nation is a religious partnership, on which a rash member by a sudden impiety may bring utter ruin. if the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes wicked. a permitted deviation from the transmitted ordinances becomes simple folly. it is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest number. it is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure or a stupid whim, to bring terrible and irretrievable calamity upon all. no one will ever understand even athenian history, who forgets this idea of the old world, though athens was, in comparison with others, a rational and sceptical place, ready for new views, and free from old prejudices. when the street statues of hermes were mutilated, all the athenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should all be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so offended him. almost every detail of life in the classical times--the times when real history opens--was invested with a religious sanction; a sacred ritual regulated human action; whether it was called 'law' or not, much of it was older than the word 'law;' it was part of an ancient usage conceived as emanating from a superhuman authority, and not to be transgressed without risk of punishment by more than mortal power. there was such a solidarite then between citizens, that each might be led to persecute the other for fear of harm to himself. it may be said that these two tendencies of the early world--that to persecution and that to imitation--must conflict; that the imitative impulse would lead men to copy what is new, and that persecution by traditional habit would prevent their copying it. but in practice the two tendencies co-operate. there is a strong tendency to copy the most common thing, and that common thing is the old habit. daily imitation is far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are ancient. of course, however, something new is necessary for every man and for every nation. we may wish, if we please, that to-morrow shall be like to-day, but it will not be like it. new forces will impinge upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must alter to meet them. but the persecuting habit and the imitative combine to insure that the new thing shall be in the old fashion; it must be an alteration, but it shall contain as little of variety as possible. the imitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what their minds are best prepared for,--what is like the old, yet with the inevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old path, and puzzles least their minds. the doctrine of development means this,--that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is most of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines. the imitative and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but annexing some new but like practice--an additional turret in the old style. it is this process of adding suitable things and rejecting discordant things which has raised those scenes of strange manners which in every part of the world puzzle the civilised men who come upon them first. like the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller think not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as wonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as 'monstrosities,' which only some wild abnormal intellect could have hit upon. and wild and abnormal indeed would be that intellect if it were a single one at all. but in fact such manners are the growth of ages, like roman law or the british constitution. no one man--no one generation--could have thought of them,--only a series of generations trained in the habits of the last and wanting something akin to such habits, could have devised them. savages pet their favourite habits, so to say, and preserve them as they do their favourite animals; ages are required, but at last a national character is formed by the confluence of congenial attractions and accordant detestations. another cause helps. in early states of civilisation there is a great mortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection in itself--the child most fit to be a good spartan is most likely to survive a spartan childhood. the habits of the tribe are enforced on the child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot he dies. the imitation which assimilates early nations continues through life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked specimens. i suppose, too, that there is a kind of parental selection operating in the same way and probably tending to keep alive the same individuals. those children which gratified their fathers and mothers most would be most tenderly treated by them, and have the best chance to live, and as a rough rule their favourites would be the children of most 'promise,' that is to say, those who seemed most likely to be a credit to the tribe according to the leading tribal manners and the existing tribal tastes. the most gratifying child would be the best looked after, and the most gratifying would be the best specimen of the standard then and there raised up. even so, i think there will be a disinclination to attribute so marked, fixed, almost physical a thing as national character to causes so evanescent as the imitation of appreciated habit and the persecution of detested habit. but, after all, national character is but a name for a collection of habits more or less universal. and this imitation and this persecution in long generations have vast physical effects. the mind of the parent (as we speak) passes somehow to the body of the child. the transmitted 'something' is more affected by habits than, it is by anything else. in time an ingrained type is sure to be formed, and sure to be passed on if only the causes i have specified be fully in action and without impediment. as i have said, i am not explaining the origin of races, but of nations, or, if you like, of tribes. i fully admit that no imitation of predominant manner, or prohibitions of detested manners, will of themselves account for the broadest contrasts of human nature. such means would no more make a negro out of a brahmin, or a red-man out of an englishman, than washing would change the spots of a leopard or the colour of an ethiopian. some more potent causes must co-operate, or we should not have these enormous diversities. the minor causes i deal with made greek to differ from greek, but they did not make the greek race. we cannot precisely mark the limit, but a limit there clearly is. if we look at the earliest monuments of the human race, we find these race-characters as decided as the race-characters now. the earliest paintings or sculptures we anywhere have, give us the present contrasts of dissimilar types as strongly as present observation. within historical memory no such differences have been created as those between negro and greek, between papuan and red indian, between esquimaux and goth. we start with cardinal diversities; we trace only minor modifications, and we only see minor modifications. and it is very hard to see how any number of such modifications could change man as he is in one race-type to man as he is in some other. of this there are but two explanations; one, that these great types were originally separate creations, as they stand--that the negro was made so, and the greek made so. but this easy hypothesis of special creation has been tried so often, and has broken down so very often, that in no case, probably, do any great number of careful inquirers very firmly believe it. they may accept it provisionally, as the best hypothesis at present, but they feel about it as they cannot help feeling as to an army which has always been beaten; however strong it seems, they think it will be beaten again. what the other explanation is exactly i cannot pretend to say. possibly as yet the data for a confident opinion are not before us. but by far the most plausible suggestion is that of mr. wallace, that these race-marks are living records of a time when the intellect of man was not as able as it is now to adapt his life and habits to change of region; that consequently early mortality in the first wanderers was beyond conception great; that only those (so to say) haphazard individuals throve who were born with a protected nature--that is, a nature suited to the climate and the country, fitted to use its advantages, shielded from its natural diseases. according to mr. wallace, the negro is the remnant of the one variety of man who without more adaptiveness than then existed could live in interior africa. immigrants died off till they produced him or something like him, and so of the esquimaux or the american. any protective habit also struck out in such a time would have a far greater effect than it could afterwards. a gregarious tribe, whose leader was in some imitable respects adapted to the struggle for life, and which copied its leader, would have an enormous advantage in the struggle for life. it would be sure to win and live, for it would be coherent and adapted, whereas, in comparison, competing tribes would be incoherent and unadapted. and i suppose that in early times, when those bodies did not already contain the records and the traces of endless generations, any new habit would more easily fix its mark on the heritable element, and would be transmitted more easily and more certainly. in such an age, man being softer and more pliable, deeper race-marks would be more easily inscribed and would be more likely to continue legible. but i have no pretence to speak on such matters; this paper, as i have so often explained, deals with nation-making and not with race-making. i assume a world of marked varieties of man, and only want to show how less marked contrasts would probably and naturally arise in each. given large homogeneous populations, some negro, some mongolian, some aryan, i have tried to prove how small contrasting groups would certainly spring up within each--some to last and some to perish. these are the eddies in each race-stream which vary its surface, and are sure to last till some new force changes the current. these minor varieties, too, would be infinitely compounded, not only with those of the same race, but with those of others. since the beginning of man, stream has been a thousand times poured into stream--quick into sluggish, dark into pale--and eddies and waters have taken new shapes and new colours, affected by what went before, but not resembling it. and then on the fresh mass, the old forces of composition and elimination again begin to act, and create over the new surface another world. 'motley was the wear' of the world when herodotus first looked on it and described it to us, and thus, as it seems to me, were its varying colours produced. if it be thought that i have made out that these forces of imitation and elimination be the main ones, or even at all powerful ones, in the formation of national character, it will follow that the effect of ordinary agencies upon that character will be more easy to understand than it often seems and is put down in books. we get a notion that a change of government or a change of climate acts equally on the mass of a nation, and so are we puzzled--at least, i have been puzzled--to conceive how it acts. but such changes do not at first act equally on all people in the nation, on many, for a very long time, they do not act at all. but they bring out new qualities, and advertise the effects of new habits. a change of climate, say from a depressing to an invigorating one, so acts. everybody feels it a little, but the most active feel it exceedingly. they labour and prosper, and their prosperity invites imitation. just so with the contrary change, from an animating to a relaxing place,--the naturally lazy look so happy as they do nothing, that the naturally active are corrupted. the effect of any considerable change on a nation is thus an intensifying and accumulating effect. with its maximum power it acts on some prepared and congenial individuals; in them it is seen to produce attractive results, and then the habits creating those results are copied far and wide. and, as i believe, it is in this simple but not quite obvious way, that the process of progress and of degradation may generally be seen to run. no. iv. nation-making. all theories as to the primitive man must be very uncertain. granting the doctrine of evolution to be true, man must be held to have a common ancestor with the rest of the primates. but then we do not know what their common ancestor was like. if ever we are to have a distinct conception of him, it can only be after long years of future researches and the laborious accumulation of materials, scarcely the beginning of which now exists. but science has already done something for us. it cannot yet tell us our first ancestor, but it can tell us much of an ancestor very high up in the line of descent. we cannot get the least idea (even upon the full assumption of the theory of evolution) of the first man; but we can get a very tolerable idea of the paulo-prehistoric man, if i may so say--of man as he existed some short time (as we now reckon shortness), some ten thousand years, before history began. investigators whose acuteness and diligence can hardly be surpassed--sir john lubbock and mr. tylor are the chiefs among them--have collected so much and explained so much that they have left a fairly vivid result. that result is, or seems to me to be, if i may sum it up in my own words, that the modern pre-historic men--those of whom we have collected so many remains, and to whom are due the ancient, strange customs of historical nations (the fossil customs, we might call them, for very often they are stuck by themselves in real civilisation, and have no more part in it than the fossils in the surrounding strata)--pre-historic men in this sense were 'savages without the fixed habits of savages;' that is, that, like savages, they had strong passions and weak reason; that, like savages, they preferred short spasms of greedy pleasure to mild and equable enjoyment; that, like savages, they could not postpone the present to the future; that, like savages, their ingrained sense of morality was, to say the best of it, rudimentary and defective. but that, unlike present savages, they had not complex customs and singular customs, odd and seemingly inexplicable rules guiding all human life. and the reasons for these conclusions as to a race too ancient to leave a history, but not too ancient to have left memorials, are briefly these:--first, that we cannot imagine a strong reason without attainments; and, plainly, pre-historic men had not attainments. they would never have lost them if they had. it is utterly incredible that whole races of men in the most distant parts of the world (capable of counting, for they quickly learn to count) should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever possessed it. it is incredible that whole races could lose the elements of common sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and things mental--the benjamin franklin philosophy--if they had ever known it. without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. as lord bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' and in the absence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of reason as far as we are trained, they had no 'stuff.' even, therefore, if their passions were not absolutely stronger than ours, relatively they were stronger, for their reason was weaker than our reason. again, it is certain that races of men capable of postponing the present to the future (even if such races were conceivable without an educated reason) would have had so huge an advantage in the struggles of nations, that no others would have survived them. a single australian tribe (really capable of such a habit, and really practising it) would have conquered all australia almost as the english have conquered it. suppose a race of long-headed scotchmen, even as ignorant as the australians, and they would have got from torres to bass's straits, no matter how fierce was the resistance of the other australians. the whole territory would have been theirs, and theirs only. we cannot imagine innumerable races to have lost, if they had once had it, the most useful of all habits of mind--the habit which would most ensure their victory in the incessant contests which, ever since they began, men have carried on with one another and with nature, the habit, which in historical times has above any other received for its possession the victory in those contests. thirdly, we may be sure that the morality of pre-historic man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason. the same sort of arguments apply to a self-restraining morality of a high type as apply to a settled postponement of the present to the future upon grounds recommended by argument. both are so involved in difficult intellectual ideas (and a high morality the most of the two) that it is all but impossible to conceive their existence among people who could not count more than five--who had only the grossest and simplest forms of language--who had no kind of writing or reading--who, as it has been roughly said, had 'no pots and no pans'--who could indeed make a fire, but who could hardly do anything else--who could hardly command nature any further. exactly also like a shrewd far-sightedness, a sound morality on elementary transactions is far too useful a gift to the human race ever to have been thoroughly lost when they had once attained it. but innumerable savages have lost all but completely many of the moral rules most conducive to tribal welfare. there are many savages who can hardly be said to care for human life--who have scarcely the family feelings--who are eager to kill all old people (their own parents included) as soon as they get old and become a burden--who have scarcely the sense of truth--who, probably from a constant tradition of terror, wish to conceal everything, and would (as observers say) 'rather lie than not'--whose ideas of marriage are so vague and slight that the idea, 'communal marriage' (in which all the women of the tribe are common to all the men, and them only), has been invented to denote it. now if we consider how cohesive and how fortifying to human societies are the love of truth, and the love of parents, and a stable marriage tie, how sure such feelings would be to make a tribe which possessed them wholly and soon victorious over tribes which were destitute of them, we shall begin to comprehend how unlikely it is that vast masses of tribes throughout the world should have lost all these moral helps to conquest, not to speak of others. if any reasoning is safe as to pre-historic man, the reasoning which imputes to him a deficient sense of morals is safe, for all the arguments suggested by all our late researches converge upon it, and concur in teaching it. nor on this point does the case rest wholly on recent investigations. many years ago mr. jowett said that the classical religions bore relics of the 'ages before morality.' and this is only one of several cases in which that great thinker has proved by a chance expression that he had exhausted impending controversies years before they arrived, and had perceived more or less the conclusion at which the disputants would arrive long before the public issue was joined. there is no other explanation of such religions than this. we have but to open mr. gladstone's 'homer' in order to see with how intense an antipathy a really moral age would regard the gods and goddesses of homer; how inconceivable it is that a really moral age should first have invented and then bowed down before them; how plain it is (when once explained) that they are antiquities, like an english court-suit, or a stone-sacrificial knife, for no one would use such things as implements of ceremony, except those who had inherited them from a past age, when there was nothing better. nor is there anything inconsistent with our present moral theories of whatever kind in so thinking about our ancestors. the intuitive theory of morality, which would be that naturally most opposed to it, has lately taken a new development. it is not now maintained that all men have the same amount of conscience. indeed, only a most shallow disputant who did not understand even the plainest facts of human nature could ever have maintained it; if men differ in anything they differ in the fineness and the delicacy of their moral intuitions, however we may suppose those feelings to have been acquired. we need not go as far as savages to learn that lesson; we need only talk to the english poor or to our own servants, and we shall be taught it very completely. the lower classes in civilised countries, like all classes in uncivilised countries, are clearly wanting in the nicer part of those feelings which, taken together, we call the sense of morality. all this an intuitionist who knows his case will now admit, but he will add that, though the amount of the moral sense may and does differ in different persons, yet that as far as it goes it is alike in all. he likens it to the intuition of number, in which some savages are so defective that they cannot really and easily count more than three. yet as far as three his intuitions are the same as those of civilised people. unquestionably if there are intuitions at all, the primary truths of number are such. there is a felt necessity in them if in anything, and it would be pedantry to say that any proposition of morals was more certain than that five and five make ten. the truths of arithmetic, intuitive or not, certainly cannot be acquired independently of experience nor can those of morals be so either. unquestionably they were aroused in life and by experience, though after that comes the difficult and ancient controversy whether anything peculiar to them and not to be found in the other facts of life is superadded to them independently of experience out of the vigour of the mind itself. no intuitionist, therefore, fears to speak of the conscience of his pre-historic ancestor as imperfect, rudimentary, or hardly to be discerned, for he has to admit much the same so as to square his theory to plain modern facts, and that theory in the modern form may consistently be held along with them. of course if an intuitionist can accept this conclusion as to pre-historic men, so assuredly may mr. spencer, who traces all morality back to our inherited experience of utility, or mr. darwin, who ascribes it to an inherited sympathy, or mr. mill, who with characteristic courage undertakes to build up the whole moral nature of man with no help whatever either from ethical intuition or from physiological instinct. indeed of the everlasting questions, such as the reality of free will, or the nature of conscience, it is, as i have before explained, altogether inconsistent with the design of these papers to speak. they have been discussed ever since the history of discussion begins; human opinion is still divided, and most people still feel many difficulties in every suggested theory, and doubt if they have heard the last word of argument or the whole solution of the problem in any of them. in the interest of sound knowledge it is essential to narrow to the utmost the debatable territory; to see how many ascertained facts there are which are consistent with all theories, how many may, as foreign lawyers would phrase it, be equally held in condominium by them. but though in these great characteristics there is reason to imagine that the pre-historic man--at least the sort of pre-historic man i am treating of, the man some few thousand years before history began, and not at all, at least not necessarily, the primitive man--was identical with a modern savage, in another respect there is equal or greater reason to suppose that he was most unlike a modern savage. a modern savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a thousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand cruel superstitions. the whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say, tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place anywhere about it. but there is no reason to suppose the minds of pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken ages. in his nature, it may be said, pre-historic man was the same as a modern savage; it is only in his acquisition that he was different. it may be objected that if man was developed out of any kind of animal (and this is the doctrine of evolution which, if it be not proved conclusively, has great probability and great scientific analogy in its favour) he would necessarily at first possess animal instincts; that these would only gradually be lost; that in the meantime they would serve as a protection and an aid, and that pre-historic men, therefore, would have important helps and feelings which existing savages have not. and probably of the first men, the first beings worthy to be so called, this was true: they had, or may have had, certain remnants of instincts which aided them in the struggle of existence, and as reason gradually came these instincts may have waned away. some instincts certainly do wane when the intellect is applied steadily to their subject-matter. the curious 'counting boys,' the arithmetical prodigies, who can work by a strange innate faculty the most wonderful sums, lose that faculty, always partially, sometimes completely, if they are taught to reckon by rule like the rest of mankind. in like manner i have heard it said that a man could soon reason himself out of the instinct of decency if he would only take pains and work hard enough. and perhaps other primitive instincts may have in like manner passed away. but this does not affect my argument. i am only saying that these instincts, if they ever existed, did pass away--that there was a period; probably an immense period as we reckon time in human history, when pre-historic men lived much as savages live now, without any important aids and helps. the proofs of this are to be found in the great works of sir john lubbock and mr. tylor, of which i just now spoke. i can only bring out two of them here. first, it is plain that the first pre-historic men had the flint tools which the lowest savages use, and we can trace a regular improvement in the finish and in the efficiency of their simple instruments corresponding to that which we see at this day in the upward transition from the lowest savages to the highest. now it is not conceivable that a race of beings with valuable instincts supporting their existence and supplying their wants would need these simple tools. they are exactly those needed by very poor people who have no instincts, and those were used by such, for savages are the poorest of the poor. it would be very strange if these same utensils, no more no less, were used by beings whose discerning instincts made them in comparison altogether rich. such a being would know how to manage without such things, or if it wanted any, would know how to make better. and, secondly, on the moral side we know that the pre-historic age was one of much licence, and the proof is that in that age descent was reckoned through the female only, just as it is among the lowest savages. 'maternity,' it has been said, 'is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion;' and this not very refined expression exactly conveys the connection of the lower human societies. in all slave-owning communities--in rome formerly, and in virginia yesterday--such was the accepted rule of law; the child kept the condition of the mother, whatever that condition was; nobody inquired as to the father; the law, once for all, assumed that he could not be ascertained. of course no remains exist which prove this or anything else about the morality of pre-historic man; and morality can only be described by remains amounting to a history. but one of the axioms of pre-historic investigation binds us to accept this as the morality of the pre-historic races if we receive that axiom. it is plain that the wide-spread absence of a characteristic which greatly aids the possessor in the conflicts between race and race probably indicates that the primary race did not possess that quality. if one-armed people existed almost everywhere in every continent; if people were found in every intermediate stage, some with the mere germ of the second arm, some with the second arm half-grown, some with it nearly complete; we should then argue--'the first race cannot have had two arms, because men have always been fighting, and as two arms are a great advantage in fighting, one-armed and half-armed people would immediately have been killed off the earth; they never could have attained any numbers. a diffused deficiency in a warlike power is the best attainable evidence that the pre-historic men did not possess that power.' if this axiom be received it is palpably applicable to the marriage-bond of primitive races. a cohesive 'family' is the best germ for a campaigning nation. in a roman family the boys, from the time of their birth, were bred to a domestic despotism, which well prepared them for a subjection in after life to a military discipline, a military drill, and a military despotism. they were ready to obey their generals because they were compelled to obey their fathers; they centered the world in manhood because as children they were bred in homes where the tradition of passionate valour was steadied by the habit of implacable order. and nothing of this is possible in loosely-bound family groups (if they can be called families at all) where the father is more or less uncertain, where descent is not traced through him, where, that is, property does not come from him, where such property as he has passes to his sure relations--to his sister's children. an ill-knit nation which does not recognise paternity as a legal relation, would be conquered like a mob by any other nation which had a vestige or a beginning of the patria potestas. if, therefore, all the first men had the strict morality of families, they would no more have permitted the rise of semi-moral nations anywhere in the world than the romans would have permitted them to arise in italy. they would have conquered, killed, and plundered them before they became nations; and yet semi-moral nations exist all over the world. it will be said that this argument proves too much. for it proves that not only the somewhat-before-history men, but the absolutely first men, could not have had close family instincts, and yet if they were like most though not all of the animals nearest to man they had such instincts. there is a great story of some african chief who expressed his disgust at adhering to one wife, by saying it was 'like the monkeys.' the semi-brutal ancestors of man, if they existed, had very likely an instinct of constancy which the african chief, and others like him, had lost. how, then, if it was so beneficial, could they ever lose it? the answer is plain: they could lose it if they had it as an irrational propensity and habit, and not as a moral and rational feeling. when reason came, it would weaken that habit like all other irrational habits. and reason is a force of such infinite vigour--a victory-making agent of such incomparable efficiency--that its continually diminishing valuable instincts will not matter if it grows itself steadily all the while. the strongest competitor wins in both the cases we are imagining; in the first, a race with intelligent reason, but without blind instinct, beats a race with that instinct but without that reason; in the second, a race with reason and high moral feeling beats a race with reason but without high moral feeling. and the two are palpably consistent. there is every reason, therefore, to suppose pre-historic man to be deficient in much of sexual morality, as we regard that morality. as to the detail of 'primitive marriage' or 'no marriage,' for that is pretty much what it comes to, there is of course much room for discussion. both mr. m'clennan and sir john lubbock are too accomplished reasoners and too careful investigators to wish conclusions so complex and refined as theirs to be accepted all in a mass, besides that on some critical points the two differ. but the main issue is not dependent on nice arguments. upon broad grounds we may believe that in pre-historic times men fought both to gain and to keep their wives; that the strongest man took the best wife away from the weaker man; and that if the wife was restive, did not like the change, her new husband beat her; that (as in australia now) a pretty woman was sure to undergo many such changes, and her back to bear the marks of many such chastisements; that in the principal department of human conduct (which is the most tangible and easily traced, and therefore the most obtainable specimen of the rest) the minds of pre-historic men were not so much immoral as unmoral: they did not violate a rule of conscience, but they were somehow not sufficiently developed for them to feel on this point any conscience, or for it to prescribe to them any rule. the same argument applies to religion. there are, indeed, many points of the greatest obscurity, both in the present savage religions and in the scanty vestiges of pre-historic religion. but one point is clear. all savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck. savages believe that casual omens are a sign of coming events; that some trees are lucky, that some animals are lucky, that some places are lucky, that some indifferent actions--indifferent apparently and indifferent really--are lucky, and so of others in each class, that they are unlucky. nor can a savage well distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or ill-luck, as we should say, and a deity which causes the good or the ill; the indicating precedent and the causing being are to the savage mind much the same; a steadiness of head far beyond savages is required consistently to distinguish them. and it is extremely natural that they should believe so. they are playing a game--the game of life--with no knowledge of its rules. they have not an idea of the laws of nature; if they want to cure a man, they have no conception at all of true scientific remedies. if they try anything they must try it upon bare chance. the most useful modern remedies were often discovered in this bare, empirical way. what could be more improbable--at least, for what could a pre-historic man have less given a good reason--than that some mineral springs should stop rheumatic pains, or mineral springs make wounds heal quickly? and yet the chance knowledge of the marvellous effect of gifted springs is probably as ancient as any sound knowledge as to medicine whatever. no doubt it was mere casual luck at first that tried these springs and found them answer. somebody by accident tried them and by that accident was instantly cured. the chance which happily directed men in this one case, misdirected them in a thousand cases. some expedition had answered when the resolution to undertake it was resolved on under an ancient tree, and accordingly that tree became lucky and sacred. another expedition failed when a magpie crossed its path, and a magpie was said to be unlucky. a serpent crossed the path of another expedition, and it had a marvellous victory, and accordingly the serpent became a sign of great luck (and what a savage cannot distinguish from it--a potent deity which makes luck). ancient medicine is equally unreasonable: as late down as the middle ages it was full of superstitions founded on mere luck. the collection of prescriptions published under the direction of the master of the rolls abounds in such fancies as we should call them. according to one of them, unless i forget, some disease--a fever, i think--is supposed to be cured by placing the patient between two halves of a hare and a pigeon recently killed.[7] nothing can be plainer than that there is no ground for this kind of treatment, and that the idea of it arose out of a chance hit, which came right and succeeded. there was nothing so absurd or so contrary to common sense as we are apt to imagine about it. the lying between two halves of a hare or a pigeon was a priori, and to the inexperienced mind, quite as likely to cure disease as the drinking certain draughts of nasty mineral water. both, somehow, were tried; both answered--that is. both were at the first time, or at some memorable time, followed by a remarkable recovery; and the only difference is, that the curative power of the mineral is persistent, and happens constantly; whereas, on an average of trials, the proximity of a hare or pigeon is found to have no effect, and cures take place as often in cases where it is not tried as in cases where it is. the nature of minds which are deeply engaged in watching events of which they do not know the reason, is to single out some fabulous accompaniment or some wonderful series of good luck or bad luck, and to dread ever after that accompaniment if it brings evil, and to love it and long for it if it brings good. all savages are in this position, and the fascinating effect of striking accompaniments (in some single case) of singular good fortune and singular calamity, is one great source of savage religions. [7] readers of scott's life will remember that an admirer of his in humble life proposed to cure him of inflammation of the bowels by making him sleep a whole night on twelve smooth stones, painfully collected by the admirer from twelve brooks, which was, it appeared, a recipe of sovereign traditional power. scott gravely told the proposer that he had mistaken the charm, and that the stones were of no virtue unless wrapped up in the petticoat of a widow who never wished to marry again, and as no such widow seems to have been forthcoming, he escaped the remedy. gamblers to this day are, with respect to the chance part of their game, in much the same plight as savages with respect to the main events of their whole lives. and we well know how superstitious they all are. to this day very sensible whist-players have a certain belief--not, of course, a fixed conviction, but still a certain impression--that there is 'luck under a black deuce,' and will half mutter some not very gentle maledictions if they turn up as a trump the four of clubs, because it brings ill-luck, and is 'the devil's bed-post.' of course grown-up gamblers have too much general knowledge, too much organised common sense to prolong or cherish such ideas; they are ashamed of entertaining them, though, nevertheless, they cannot entirely drive them out of their minds. but child gamblers--a number of little boys set to play loo-are just in the position of savages, for their fancy is still impressible, and they have not as yet been thoroughly subjected to the confuting experience of the real world and child gamblers have idolatries--at least i know that years ago a set of boy loo-players, of whom i was one, had considerable faith in a certain 'pretty fish' which was larger and more nicely made than the other fish we had. we gave the best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring luck;' we fought for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered to buy it with many other fish from the envied holder, and i am sure i have often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from me. persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such there still are, will say that i ought not to mention this, because it seems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional little facts. i do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate explanations of the totem--the 'clan' deity--the beast or bird which in some supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it--do not seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives among--the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early boyhood. and very naturally so, for a grave philosopher is separated from primitive thought by the whole length of human culture; but an impressible child is as near to, and its thoughts are as much like, that thought as anything can now be. the worst of these superstitions is that they are easy to make and hard to destroy. a single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm and many idols. i doubt if even a single run of luck be necessary. i am sure that if an elder boy said that 'the pretty fish was lucky--of course it was,' all the lesser boys would believe it, and in a week it would be an accepted idol. and i suspect the nestor of a savage tribe--the aged repository of guiding experience--would have an equal power of creating superstitions. but if once created they are most difficult to eradicate. if any one said that the amulet was of certain efficacy--that it always acted whenever it was applied--it would of course be very easy to disprove; but no one ever said that the 'pretty fish' always brought luck; it was only said that it did so on the whole, and that if you had it you were more likely to be lucky than if you were without it. but it requires a long table of statistics of the results of games to disprove this thoroughly; and by the time people can make tables they are already above such beliefs, and do not need to have them disproved. nor in many cases where omens or amulets are used would such tables be easy to make, for the data could not be found; and a rash attempt to subdue the superstition by a striking instance may easily end in confirming it. francis newman, in the remarkable narrative of his experience as a missionary in asia, gives a curious example of this. as he was setting out on a distant and somewhat hazardous expedition, his native servants tied round the neck of the mule a small bag supposed to be of preventive and mystic virtue. as the place was crowded and a whole townspeople looking on, mr. newman thought that he would take an opportunity of disproving the superstition. so he made a long speech of explanation in his best arabic, and cut off the bag, to the horror of all about him. but as ill-fortune would have it, the mule had not got thirty yards up the street before she put her foot into a hole and broke her leg; upon which all the natives were confirmed in their former faith in the power of the bag, and said, 'you see now what happens to unbelievers.' now the present point as to these superstitions is their military inexpediency. a nation which was moved by these superstitions as to luck would be at the mercy of a nation, in other respects equal, which, was not subject to them. in historical times, as we know, the panic terror at eclipses has been the ruin of the armies which have felt it; or has made them delay to do something necessary, or rush to do something destructive. the necessity of consulting the auspices, while it was sincerely practised and before it became a trick for disguising foresight, was in classical history very dangerous. and much worse is it with savages, whose life is one of omens, who must always consult their sorcerers, who may be turned this way or that by some chance accident, who, if they were intellectually able to frame a consistent military policy--and some savages in war see farther than in anything else--are yet liable to be put out, distracted, confused, and turned aside in the carrying out of it, because some event, really innocuous but to their minds foreboding, arrests and frightens them. a religion full of omens is a military misfortune, and will bring a nation to destruction if set to fight with a nation at all equal otherwise, who had a religion without omens. clearly then, if all early men unanimously, or even much the greater number of early men, had a religion without omens, no religion, or scarcely a religion, anywhere in the world could have come into existence with omens; the immense majority possessing the superior military advantage, the small minority destitute of it would have been crushed out and destroyed. but, on the contrary, all over the world religions with omens once existed, in most they still exist; all savages have them, and deep in the most ancient civilisations we find the plainest traces of them. unquestionably therefore the pre-historic religion was like that of savages--viz., in this that it largely consisted in the watching of omens and in the worship of lucky beasts and things, which are a sort of embodied and permanent omens. it may indeed be objected--an analogous objection was taken as to the ascertained moral deficiencies of pre-historic mankind--that if this religion of omens was so pernicious and so likely to ruin a race, no race would ever have acquired it. but it is only likely to ruin a race contending with another race otherwise equal. the fancied discovery of these omens--not an extravagant thing in an early age, as i have tried to show, not a whit then to be distinguished as improbable from the discovery of healing herbs or springs which pre-historic men also did discover--the discovery of omens was an act of reason as far as it went. and if in reason the omen-finding race were superior to the races in conflict with them, the omen-finding race would win, and we may conjecture that omen-finding races were thus superior since they won and prevailed in every latitude and in every zone. in all particulars therefore we would keep to our formula, and say that pre-historic man was substantially a savage like present savages, in morals, intellectual attainments, and in religion; but that he differed in this from our present savages, that he had not had time to ingrain his nature so deeply with bad habits, and to impress bad beliefs so unalterably on his mind as they have. they have had ages to fix the stain on them selves, but primitive man was younger and had no such time. i have elaborated the evidence for this conclusion at what may seem needless and tedious length, but i have done so on account of its importance. if we accept it, and if we are sure of it, it will help us to many most important conclusions. some of these i have dwelt upon in previous papers, but i will set them down again. first, it will in part explain to us what the world was about, so to speak, before history. it was making, so to say, the intellectual consistence--the connected and coherent habits, the preference of equable to violent enjoyment, the abiding capacity to prefer, if required, the future to the present, the mental pre-requisites without which civilisation could not begin to exist, and without which it would soon cease to exist even had it begun. the primitive man, like the present savage, had not these pre-requisites, but, unlike the present savage, he was capable of acquiring them and of being trained in them, for his nature was still soft and still impressible, and possibly, strange as it may seem to say, his outward circumstances were more favourable to an attainment of civilisation than those of our present savages. at any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done. two preliminary processes indeed there are which seem inscrutable. there was some strange preliminary process by which the main races of men were formed; they began to exist very early, and except by intermixture no new ones have been formed since. it was a process singularly active in early ages, and singularly quiescent in later ages. such differences as exist between the aryan, the turanian, the negro, the red man, and the australian, are differences greater--altogether than any causes now active are capable of creating in present men, at least in any way explicable by us. and there is, therefore, a strong presumption that (as great authorities now hold) these differences were created before the nature of men, especially before the mind and the adaptive nature of men had taken their existing constitution. and a second condition precedent of civilisation seems, at least to me, to have been equally inherited, if the doctrine of evolution be true, from some previous state or condition. i at least find it difficult to conceive of men, at all like the present men, unless existing in something like families, that is, in groups avowedly connected, at least on the mother's side, and probably always with a vestige of connection, more or less, on the father's side, and unless these groups were like many animals, gregarious, tinder a leader more or less fixed. it is almost beyond imagination how man, as we know man, could by any sort of process have gained this step in civilisation. and it is a great advantage, to say the least of it, in the evolution theory that it enables us to remit this difficulty to a pre-existing period in nature, where other instincts and powers than our present ones may perhaps have come into play, and where our imagination can hardly travel. at any rate, for the present i may assume these two steps in human progress made, and these two conditions realized. the rest of the way, if we grant these two conditions, is plainer. the first thing is the erection of what--we may call a custom-making power, that is, of an authority which can enforce a fixed rule of life, which, by means of that fixed rule, can in some degree create a calculable future, which can make it rational to postpone present violent but momentary pleasure for future continual pleasure, because it ensures, what else is not sure, that if the sacrifice of what is in hand be made, enjoyment of the contingent expected recompense will be received. of course i am not saying that we shall find in early society any authority of which these shall be the motives. we must have travelled ages (unless all our evidence be wrong) from the first men before there was a comprehension of such motives. i only mean that the first thing in early society was an authority of whose action this shall be the result, little as it knew what it was doing, little as it would have cared if it had known. the conscious end of early societies was not at all, or scarcely at all, the protection of life and property, as it was assumed to be by the eighteenth-century theory of government. even in early historical ages--in the youth of the human race, not its childhood--such is not the nature of early states. sir henry maine has taught us that the earliest subject of jurisprudence is not the separate property of the individual, but the common property of the family group; what we should call private property hardly then existed; or if it did, was so small as to be of no importance: it was like the things little children are now allowed to call their own, which they feel it very hard to have taken from them, but which they have no real right to hold and keep. such is our earliest property-law, and our earliest life--law is that the lives of all members of the family group were at the mercy of the head of the group. as far as the individual goes, neither his goods nor his existence were protected at all. and this may teach us that something else was lacked in early societies besides what in our societies we now think of. i do not think i put this too high when i say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of lucky rites. i do not like to say religious rites, because that would involve me in a great controversy as to the power, or even the existence, of early religions. but there is no savage tribe without a notion of luck; and perhaps there is hardly any which has not a conception of luck for the tribe as a tribe, of which each member has not some such a belief that his own action or the action of any other member of it--that he or the others doing anything which was unlucky or would bring a 'curse'--might cause evil not only to himself, but to all the tribe as well. i have said so much about 'luck' and about its naturalness before, that i ought to say nothing again. but i must add that the contagiousness of the idea of 'luck' is remarkable. it does not at all, like the notion of desert, cleave to the doer. there are people to this day who would not permit in their house people to sit down thirteen to dinner. they do not expect any evil to themselves particularly for permitting it or sharing in it, but they cannot get out of their heads the idea that some one or more of the number will come to harm if the thing is done. this is what mr. tylor calls survival in culture. the faint belief in the corporate liability of these thirteen is the feeble relic and last dying representative of that great principle of corporate liability to good and ill fortune which has filled such an immense place in the world. the traces of it are endless. you can hardly take up a book of travels in rude regions without finding 'i wanted to do so and so. but i was not permitted, for the natives feared it might bring ill luck on the "party," or perhaps the tribe.' mr. galton, for instance, could hardly feed his people. the damaras, he says, have numberless superstitions about meat which are very troublesome. in the first place, each tribe, or rather family, is prohibited from eating cattle of certain colours, savages 'who come from the sun' eschewing sheep spotted in a particular way, which those 'who come from the rain' have no objection to. 'as,' he says, 'there are five or six eandas or descents, and i had men from most of them with me, i could hardly kill a sheep that everybody would eat;' and he could not keep his meat, for it had to be given away because it was commanded by one superstition, nor buy milk, the staple food of those parts, because it was prohibited by another. and so on without end. doing anything unlucky is in their idea what putting on something that attracts the electric fluid is in fact, you cannot be sure that harm will not be done, not only to the person in fault, but to those about him too. as in the scriptural phrase, doing what is of evil omen is 'like one that letteth out water.' he cannot tell what are the consequences of his act, who will share them, or how they can be prevented. in the earliest historical nations i need not say that the corporate liabilities of states is to a modern student their most curious feature. the belief is indeed raised far above the notion of mere 'luck,' because there is a distinct belief in gods or a god whom the act offends, but the indiscriminate character of the punishment still survives; not only the mutilator of the hermae, but all the athenians--not only the violator of the rites of the bona dea, but all the romans--are liable to the curse engendered; and so all through ancient history. the strength of the corporate anxiety so created is known to every one. not only was it greately than any anxiety about personal property, but it was immeasurably greater. naturally, even reasonably we may say, it was greater. the dread of the powers of nature, or of the beings who rule those powers, is properly, upon grounds of reason, as much greater than any other dread as the might of the powers of nature is superior to that of any other powers. if a tribe or a nation have, by a contagious fancy, come to believe that the doing of any one thing by any number will be 'unlucky,' that is, will bring an intense and vast liability on them all, then that tribe and that nation will prevent the doing of that thing more than anything else. they will deal with the most cherished chief who even by chance should do it, as in a similar case the sailors dealt with jonah. i do not of course mean that this strange condition of mind as it seems to us was the sole source of early customs. on the contrary, man might be described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many of the short descriptions. in whatever way a man has done anything once, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times he has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great tendency to make others do it also. he transmits his formed customs to his children by example and by teaching. this is true now of human nature, and will always be true, no doubt. but what is peculiar in early societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner or later a semi-supernatural sanction. the whole community is possessed with the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm unspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources you cannot imagine. as people now-a-days believe that 'murder will out,' and that great crime will bring even an earthly punishment, so in early times people believed that for any breach of sacred custom certain retribution would happen. to this day many semi-civilised races have great difficulty in regarding any arrangement as binding and conclusive unless they can also manage to look at it as an inherited usage. sir h. maine, in his last work, gives a most curious case. the english government in india has in many cases made new and great works of irrigation, of which no ancient indian government ever thought; and it has generally left it to the native village community to say what share each man of the village should have in the water; and the village authorities have accordingly laid down a series of most minute rules about it. but the peculiarity is that in no case do these rules 'purport to emanate from the personal authority of their author or authors, which rests on grounds of reason not on grounds of innocence and sanctity; nor do they assume to be dictated by a sense of equity; there is always, i am assured, a sort of fiction under which some customs as to the distribution of water are supposed to have emanated from a remote antiquity, although, in fact, no such artificial supply had ever been so much as thought of.' so difficult does this ancient race--like, probably, in this respect so much of the ancient world-find it to imagine a rule which is obligatory, but not traditional. the ready formation of custom-making groups in early society must have been greatly helped by the easy divisions of that society. much of the world--all europe, for example--was then covered by the primeval forest; men had only conquered, and as yet could only conquer, a few plots and corners from it. these narrow spaces were soon exhausted, and if numbers grew some of the new people must move. accordingly, migrations were constant, and were necessary. and these migrations were not like those of modern times. there was no such feeling as binds even americans who hate, or speak as if they hated, the present political england--nevertheless to 'the old home.' there was then no organised means of communication--no practical communication, we may say, between parted members of the same group; those who once went out from the parent society went out for ever; they left no abiding remembrance, and they kept no abiding regard. even the language of the parent tribe and of the descended tribe would differ in a generation or two. there being no written literature and no spoken intercourse, the speech of both would vary (the speech of such communities is always varying), and would vary in different directions. one set of causes, events, and associations would act on one, and another set on another; sectional differences would soon arise, and, for speaking purposes, what philologists call a dialectical difference often amounts to real and total difference: no connected interchange of thought is possible any longer. separate groups soon 'set up house;' the early societies begin a new set of customs, acquire and keep a distinct and special 'luck.' if it were not for this facility of new formations, one good or bad custom would long since have 'corrupted' the world; but even this would not have been enough but for those continual wars, of which i have spoken at such length in the essay on 'the use of conflict,' that i need say nothing now. these are by their incessant fractures of old images, and by their constant infusion of new elements, the real regenerators of society. and whatever be the truth or falsehood of the general dislike to mixed and half-bred races, no such suspicion was probably applicable to the early mixtures of primitive society. supposing, as is likely, each great aboriginal race to have had its own quarter of the world (a quarter, as it would seem, corresponding to the special quarters in which plants and animals are divided), then the immense majority of the mixtures would be between men of different tribes but of the same stock, and this no one would object to, but every one would praise. in general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered (most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but they would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder of civilisation are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow and tedious. and this is probably the better if they are to produce a good and quick effect in civilising those they have conquered. the experience of the english in india shows--if it shows anything--that a highly civilised race may fail in producing a rapidly excellent effect on a less civilised race, because it is too good and too different. the two are not en rapport together; the merits of the one are not the merits prized by the other; the manner-language of the one is not the manner-language of the other. the higher being is not and cannot be a model for the lower; he could not mould himself on it if he would, and would not if he could. consequently, the two races have long lived together, 'near and yet far off,' daily seeing one another and daily interchanging superficial thoughts, but in the depths of their mind separated by a whole era of civilisation, and so affecting one another only a little in comparison with what might have been hoped. but in early societies there were no such great differences, and the rather superior conqueror must have easily improved the rather inferior conquered. it is in the interior of these customary groups that national characters are formed. as i wrote a whole essay on the manner of this before, i cannot speak of it now. by proscribing nonconformist members for generations, and cherishing and rewarding conformist members, nonconformists become fewer and fewer, and conformists more and more. most men mostly imitate what they see, and catch the tone of what they hear, and so a settled type--a persistent character--is formed. nor is the process wholly mental. i cannot agree, though the greatest authorities say it, that no 'unconscious selection' has been at work at the breed of man. if neither that nor conscious selection has been at work, how did there come to be these breeds, and such there are in the greatest numbers, though we call them nations? in societies tyrannically customary, uncongenial minds become first cowed, then melancholy, then out of health, and at last die. a shelley in new england could hardly have lived, and a race of shelleys would have been impossible. mr. galton wishes that breeds of men should be created by matching men with marked characteristics with women of like characteristics. but surely this is what nature has been doing time out of mind, and most in the rudest nations and hardest times. nature disheartened in each generation the ill-fitted members of each customary group, so deprived them of their full vigour, or, if they were weakly, killed them. the spartan character was formed because none but people with, a spartan make of mind could endure a spartan existence. the early roman character was so formed too. perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back to a time of rigid and pervading discipline. in modern times, when society is more tolerant, new national characters are neither so strong, so featurely, nor so uniform. in this manner society was occupied in pre-historic times,--it is consistent with and explicable by our general principle as to savages, that society should for ages have been so occupied, strange as that conclusion is, and incredible as it would be, if we had not been taught by experience to believe strange things. secondly, this principle and this conception of pre-historic times explain to us the meaning and the origin of the oldest and strangest of social anomalies--an anomaly which is among the first things history tells us--the existence of caste nations. nothing is at first sight stranger than the aspect of those communities where several nations seem to be bound up together--where each is governed by its own rule of law, where no one pays any deference to the rule of law of any of the others. but if our principles be true, these are just the nations most likely to last, which would have a special advantage in early times, and would probably not only maintain themselves, but conquer and kill out others also. the characteristic necessity of early society as we have seen, is strict usage and binding coercive custom. but the obvious result and inevitable evil of that is monotony in society; no one can be much different from his fellows, or can cultivate his difference. such societies are necessarily weak from the want of variety in their elements. but a caste nation is various and composite; and has in a mode suited to early societies the constant co-operation of contrasted persons, which in a later age is one of the greatest triumphs of civilisation. in a primitive age the division between the warrior caste and the priestly caste is especially advantageous. little popular and little deserving to be popular now-a-days as are priestly hierarchies, most probably the beginnings of science were made in such, and were for ages transmitted in such. an intellectual class was in that age only possible when it was protected by a notion that whoever hurt them would certainly be punished by heaven. in this class apart discoveries were slowly made and some beginning of mental discipline was slowly matured. but such a community is necessarily unwarlike, and the superstition which protects priests from home murder will not aid them in conflict with the foreigner. few nations mind killing their enemies' priests, and many priestly civilisations have perished without record before they well began. but such a civilisation will not perish if a warrior caste is tacked on to it and is bound to defend it. on the contrary, such a civilisation will be singularly likely to live. the head of the sage will help the arm of the soldier. that a nation divided into castes must be a most difficult thing to found is plain. probably it could only begin in a country several times conquered, and where the boundaries of each caste rudely coincided with the boundaries of certain sets of victors and vanquished. but, as we now see, when founded it is a likely nation to last. a party-coloured community of many tribes and many usages is more likely to get on, and help itself, than a nation of a single lineage and one monotonous rule. i say 'at first,' because i apprehend that in this case, as in so many others in the puzzling history of progress, the very institutions which most aid at step number one are precisely those which most impede at step number two. the whole of a caste nation is more various than the whole of a non-caste nation, but each caste itself is more monotonous than anything is, or can be, in a non-caste nation. gradually a habit of action and type of mind forces itself on each caste, and it is little likely to be rid of it, for all who enter it are taught in one way and trained to the same employment. several non-caste nations have still continued to progress. but all caste nations have stopped early, though some have lasted long. each colour in the singular composite of these tesselated societies has an indelible and invariable shade. thirdly, we see why so few nations have made rapid advance, and how many have become stationary. it is in the process of becoming a nation, and in order to become such, that they subjected themselves to the influence which has made them stationary. they could not become a real nation without binding themselves by a fixed law and usage, and it is the fixity of that law and usage which has kept them as they were ever since. i wrote a whole essay on this before, so i need say nothing now; and i only name it because it is one of the most important consequences of this view of society, if not indeed the most important. again, we can thus explain one of the most curious facts of the present world. 'manner,' says a shrewd observer, who has seen much of existing life, 'manner gets regularly worse as you go from the east to the west; it is best in asia, not so good in europe, and altogether bad in the western states of america.' and the reason is this--an imposing manner is a dignified usage, which tends to preserve itself and also all other existing usages along with itself. it tends to induce the obedience of mankind. one of the cleverest novelists of the present day has a curious dissertation to settle why on the hunting-field, and in all collections of men, some men 'snub and some men get snubbed;' and why society recognises in each case the ascendancy or the subordination as if it was right. 'it is not at all,' mr. trollope fully explains, 'rare ability which gains the supremacy; very often the ill-treated man is quite as clever as the man who ill-treats him. nor does it absolutely depend on wealth; for, though great wealth is almost always a protection from social ignominy, and will always ensure a passive respect, it will not in a miscellaneous group of men of itself gain an active power to snub others. schoolboys, in the same way,' the novelist adds, 'let some boys have dominion, and make other boys slaves.' and he decides, no doubt truly, that in each case 'something in the manner or gait' of the supreme boy or man has much to do with it. on this account in early society a dignified manner is of essential importance; it is, then, not only an auxiliary mode of acquiring respect, but a principal mode. the competing institutions which have now much superseded it, had not then begun. ancient institutions or venerated laws did not then exist; and the habitual ascendancy of grave manner was a primary force in winning and calming mankind. to this day it is rare to find a savage chief without it; and almost always they greatly excel in it. only last year a red indian chief came from the prairies to see president grant, and everybody declared that he had the best manners in washington. the secretaries and heads of departments seemed vulgar to him; though, of course, intrinsically they were infinitely above him, for he was only 'a plundering rascal.' but an impressive manner had been a tradition in the societies in which he had lived, because it was of great value in those societies; and it is not a tradition in america, for nowhere is it less thought of, or of less use, than in a rough english colony; the essentials of civilisation there depend on far different influences. and manner, being so useful and so important, usages and customs grow up to develop it. asiatic society is full of such things, if it should not rather be said to be composed of them. 'from the spirit and decision of a public envoy upon ceremonies and forms,' says sir john malcolm, 'the persians very generally form their opinion of the character of the country he represents. this fact i had read in books, and all i saw convinced me of its truth. fortunately the elchee had resided at some of the principal courts of india, whose usages are very similar. he was, therefore, deeply versed in that important science denominated "kaida-e-nishest-oo-berkhast" (or the art of sitting and rising), in which is included a knowledge of the forms and manners of good society, and particularly those of asiatic kings and their courts. 'he was quite aware, on his first arrival in persia, of the consequence of every step he took on such delicate points; he was, therefore, anxious to fight all his battles regarding ceremonies before he came near the footstool of royalty. we were consequently plagued, from the moment we landed at ambusheher, till we reached shiraz, with daily almost hourly drilling, that we might be perfect in our demeanour at all places, and under all circumstances. we were carefully instructed where to ride in a procession, where to stand or sit within-doors, when to rise from our seats, how far to advance to meet a visitor, and to what part of the tent or house we were to follow him when he departed, if he was of sufficient rank to make us stir a step. 'the regulations of our risings and standings, and movings and reseatings, were, however, of comparatively less importance than the time and manner of smoking our kellians and taking our coffee. it is quite astonishing how much depends upon coffee and tobacco in persia. men are gratified or offended, according to the mode in which these favourite refreshments are offered. you welcome a visitor, or send him off, by the way in which you call for a pipe or a cup of coffee. then you mark, in the most minute manner, every shade of attention and consideration, by the mode in which he is treated. if he be above you, you present these refreshments yourself, and do not partake till commanded; if equal, you exchange pipes, and present him with coffee, taking the next cup yourself; if a little below you, and you wish to pay him attention, you leave him to smoke his own pipe, but the servant gives him, according to your condescending nod, the first cup of coffee; if much inferior, you keep your distance and maintain your rank, by taking the first cup of coffee yourself, and then directing the servant, by a wave of the hand, to help the guest. 'when a visitor arrives, the coffee and pipe are called for to welcome him; a second call for these articles announces that he may depart; but this part of the ceremony varies according to the relative rank or intimacy of the parties. 'these matters may appear light to those with whom observances of this character are habits, not rules; but in this country they are of primary consideration, a man's importance with himself and with others depending on them.' in ancient customary societies the influence of manner, which is a primary influence, has been settled into rules, so that it may aid established usages and not thwart them--that it may, above all, augment the habit of going by custom, and not break and weaken it. every aid, as we have seen, was wanted to impose the yoke of custom upon such societies; and impressing the power of manner to serve them was one of the greatest aids. and lastly, we now understand why order and civilisation are so unstable even in progressive communities. we see frequently in states what physiologists call 'atavism'--the return, in part, to the unstable nature of their barbarous ancestors. such scenes of cruelty and horror as happened in the great french revolution, and as happen, more or less, in every great riot, have always been said to bring out a secret and suppressed side of human nature; and we now see that they were the outbreak of inherited passions long repressed by fixed custom, but starting into life as soon as that repression was catastrophically removed and when sudden choice was given. the irritability of mankind, too, is only part of their imperfect, transitory civilisation and of their original savage nature. they could not look steadily to a given end for an hour in their pre-historic state; and even now, when excited or when suddenly and wholly thrown out of their old grooves, they can scarcely do so. even some very high races, as the french and the irish, seem in troubled times hardly to be stable at all, but to be carried everywhere as the passions of the moment and the ideas generated at the hour may determine. but, thoroughly to deal with such phenomena as these, we must examine the mode in which national characters can be emancipated from the rule of custom, and can be prepared for the use of choice. no. v. the age of discussion. the greatest living contrast is between the old eastern and customary civilisations and the new western and changeable civilisations. a year or two ago an inquiry was made of our most intelligent officers in the east, not as to whether the english government were really doing good in the east, but as to whether the natives of india themselves thought we were doing good; to which, in a majority of cases, the officers who wore the best authority, answered thus: 'no doubt you are giving the indians many great benefits: you give them continued peace, free trade, the right to live as they like, subject to the laws; in these points and others they are far better off than, they ever were; but still they cannot make you out. what puzzles them is your constant disposition to change, or as you call it, improvement. their own life in every detail being regulated by ancient usage, they cannot comprehend a policy which is always bringing something new; they do not a bit believe that the desire to make them comfortable and happy is the root of it; they believe, on the contrary, that you are aiming at something which they do not understand--that you mean to "take away their religion;" in a word, that the end and object of all these continual changes is to make indians not what they are and what they like to be, but something new and different from what they are, and what they would not like to be.' in the east, in a word, we are attempting to put new wine into old bottles-to pour what we can of a civilisation whose spirit is progress into the form of a civilisation whose spirit is fixity, and whether we shall succeed or not is perhaps the most interesting question in an age abounding almost beyond example in questions of political interest. historical inquiries show that the feeling of the hindoos is the old feeling, and that the feeling of the englishman is a modern feeling. 'old law rests,' as sir henry maine puts it, 'not on contract but on status.' the life of ancient civilisation, so far as legal records go, runs back to a time when every important particular of life was settled by a usage which was social, political, and religious, as we should now say, all in one--which those who obeyed it could not have been able to analyse, for those distinctions had no place in their mind and language, but which they felt to be a usage of imperishable import, and above all things to be kept unchanged. in former papers i have shown, or at least tried to show, why these customary civilisations were the only ones which suited an early society; why, so to say, they alone could have been first; in what manner they had in their very structure a decisive advantage over all competitors. but now comes the farther question: if fixity is an invariable ingredient in early civilisations, how then did any civilisation become unfixed? no doubt most civilisations stuck where they first were; no doubt we see now why stagnation is the rule of the world, and why progress is the very rare exception; but we do not learn what it is which has caused progress in these few cases, or the absence of what it is which has denied it in all others. to this question history gives a very clear and very remarkable answer. it is that the change from the age of status to the age of choice was first made in states where the government was to a great and a growing extent a government by discussion, and where the subjects of that discussion were in some degree abstract, or, as we should say, matters of principle. it was in the small republics of greece and italy that the chain of custom was first broken. 'liberty said, let there be light, and, like a sunrise on the sea, athens arose,' says shelley, and his historical philosophy is in this case far more correct than is usual with him. a free state--a state with liberty--means a state, call it republic or call it monarchy, in which the sovereign power is divided between many persons, and in which there is a discussion among those persons. of these the greek republics were the first in history, if not in time, and athens was the greatest of those republics. after the event it is easy to see why the teaching of history should be this and nothing else. it is easy to see why the common discussion of common actions or common interests should become the root of change and progress. in early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life. it may not have been quite so much so in ancient greece as in some other parts of the world. but it was very much so even there. as a recent writer has well said, 'law then presented itself to men's minds as something venerable and unchangeable, as old as the city; it had been delivered by the founder himself, when he laid the walls of the city, and kindled its sacred fire.' an ordinary man who wished to strike out a new path, to begin a new and important practice by himself, would have been peremptorily required to abandon his novelties on pain of death; he was deviating, he would be told, from the ordinances imposed by the gods on his nation, and he must not do so to please himself. on the contrary, others were deeply interested in his actions. if he disobeyed, the gods might inflict grievous harm on all the people as well as him. each partner in the most ancient kind of partnerships was supposed to have the power of attracting the wrath of the divinities on the entire firm, upon the other partners quite as much as upon himself. the quaking bystanders in a superstitious age would soon have slain an isolated bold man in the beginning of his innovations, what macaulay so relied on as the incessant source of progress--the desire of man to better his condition--was not then permitted to work; man was required to live as his ancestors had lived. still further away from those times were the 'free thought' and the 'advancing sciences' of which we now hear so much. the first and most natural subject upon which human thought concerns itself is religion; the first wish of the half-emancipated thinker is to use his reason on the great problems of human destiny--to find out whence he came and whither he goes, to form for himself the most reasonable idea of god which he can form. but, as mr. grote happily said--'this is usually what ancient times would not let a man do. his _gens_ or his _phratria_ required him to believe as they believed.' toleration is of all ideas the most modern, because the notion that the bad religion of a cannot impair, here or hereafter, the welfare of b, is, strange to say, a modern idea. and the help of 'science,' at that stage of thought, is still more nugatory. physical science, as we conceive it--that is, the systematic investigation of external nature in detail--did not then exist. a few isolated observations on surface things--a half-correct calendar, secrets mainly of priestly invention, and in priestly custody--were all that was then imagined; the idea of using a settled study of nature as a basis for the discovery of new instruments and new things, did not then exist. it is indeed a modern idea, and is peculiar to a few european countries even yet. in the most intellectual city of the ancient world, in its most intellectual age, socrates, its most intellectual inhabitant, discouraged the study of physics because they engendered uncertainty, and did not augment human happiness. the kind of knowledge which is most connected with human progress now was that least connected with it then. but a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the yoke of fixed custom. the idea of the two is inconsistent. as far as it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion, with the object of being guided by that discussion, is a clear admission that that subject is in no degree settled by established rule, and that men are free to choose in it. it is an admission too that there is no sacred authority--no one transcendent and divinely appointed man whom in that matter the community is bound to obey. and if a single subject or group of subjects be once admitted to discussion, ere long the habit of discussion comes to be established, the sacred charm of use and wont to be dissolved. 'democracy,' it has been said in modern times, 'is like the grave; it takes, but it does not give.' the same is true of 'discussion.' once effectually submit a subject to that ordeal, and you can never withdraw it again; you can never again clothe it with mystery, or fence it by consecration; it remains for ever open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation. the only subjects which can be first submitted, or which till a very late age of civilisation can be submitted to discussion in the community, are the questions involving the visible and pressing interests of the community; they are political questions of high and urgent import. if a nation has in any considerable degree gained the habit, and exhibited the capacity, to discuss these questions with freedom, and to decide them with discretion, to argue much on politics and not to argue ruinously, an enormous advance in other kinds of civilisation may confidently be predicted for it. and the reason is a plain deduction from the principles which we have found to guide early civilisation. the first pre-historic men were passionate savages, with the greatest difficulty coerced into order and compressed into a state. for ages were spent in beginning that order and founding that state; the only sufficient and effectual agent in so doing was consecrated custom; but then that custom gathered over everything, arrested all onward progress, and stayed the originality of mankind. if, therefore, a nation is able to gain the benefit of custom without the evil--if after ages of waiting it can have order and choice together--at once the fatal clog is removed, and the ordinary springs of progress, as in a modern community we conceive them, begin their elastic action. discussion, too, has incentives to progress peculiar to itself. it gives a premium to intelligence. to set out the arguments required to determine political action with such force and effect that they really should determine it, is a high and great exertion of intellect. of course, all such arguments are produced under conditions; the argument abstractedly best is not necessarily the winning argument. political discussion must move those who have to act; it must be framed in the ideas, and be consonant with the precedent, of its time, just as it must speak its language. but within these marked conditions good discussion is better than bad; no people can bear a government of discussion for a day, which does not, within the boundaries of its prejudices and its ideas, prefer good reasoning to bad reasoning, sound argument to unsound. a prize for argumentative mind is given in free states, to which no other states have anything to compare. tolerance too is learned in discussion, and, as history shows, is only so learned. in all customary societies bigotry is the ruling principle. in rude places to this day any one who says anything new is looked on with suspicion, and is persecuted by opinion if not injured by penalty. one of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. it is, as common people say, so 'upsetting;' it makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded; it is certain that till now there was no place allotted in your mind to the new and startling inhabitant, and now that it has conquered an entrance you do not at once see which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out, with which of them it can be reconciled, and with which it is at essential enmity. naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it. even nations with long habits of discussion are intolerant enough. in england, where there is on the whole probably a freer discussion of a greater number of subjects than ever was before in the world, we know how much power bigotry retains. but discussion, to be successful, requires tolerance. it fails wherever, as in a french political assembly, any one who hears anything which he dislikes tries to howl it down. if we know that a nation is capable of enduring continuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practising with equanimity continuous tolerance. the power of a government by discussion as an instrument of elevation plainly depends--other things being equal--on the greatness or littleness of the things to be discussed. there are periods when great ideas are 'in the air,' and when, from some cause or other, even common persons seem to partake of an unusual elevation. the age of elizabeth in england was conspicuously such a time. the new idea of the reformation in religion, and the enlargement of the moenia mundi by the discovery of new and singular lands, taken together, gave an impulse to thought which few, if any, ages can equal. the discussion, though not wholly free, was yet far freer than in the average of ages and countries. accordingly, every pursuit seemed to start forward. poetry, science, and architecture, different as they are, and removed as they all are at first sight from such an influence as discussion, were suddenly started onward. macaulay would have said you might rightly read the power of discussion 'in the poetry of shakespeare, in the prose of bacon, in the oriels of longleat, and the stately pinnacles of burleigh.' this is, in truth, but another case of the principle of which i have had occasion to say so much as to the character of ages and countries. if any particular power is much prized in an age, those possessed of that power will be imitated; those deficient in that power will be despised. in consequence an unusual quantity of that power will be developed, and be conspicuous. within certain limits vigorous and elevated thought was respected in elizabeth's time, and, therefore, vigorous and elevated thinkers were many; and the effect went far beyond the cause. it penetrated into physical science, for which very few men cared; and it began a reform in philosophy to which almost all were then opposed. in a word, the temper of the age encouraged originality, and in consequence original men started into prominence, went hither and thither where they liked, arrived at goals which the age never expected, and so made it ever memorable. in this manner all the great movements of thought in ancient and modern times have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion. athens, rome, the italian republics of the middle ages, the communes and states-general of feudal europe, have all had a special and peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and which states without that freedom have never communicated. and it has been at the time of great epochs of thought--at the peloponnesian war, at the fall of the roman republic, at the reformation, at the french revolution--that such liberty of speaking and thinking have produced their full effect. it is on this account that the discussions of savage tribes have produced so little effect in emancipating those tribes from their despotic customs. the oratory of the north american indian--the first savage whose peculiarities fixed themselves in the public imagination--has become celebrated, and yet the north american indians were scarcely, if at all, better orators than many other savages. almost all of the savages who have melted away before the englishman were better speakers than he is. but the oratory of the savages has led to nothing, and was likely to lead to nothing. it is a discussion not of principles, but of undertakings; its topics are whether expedition a will answer, and should be undertaken; whether expedition b will not answer, and should not be undertaken; whether village a is the best village to plunder, or whether village b is a better. such discussions augment the vigour of language, encourage a debating facility, and develop those gifts of demeanour and of gesture which excite the confidence of the hearers. but they do not excite the speculative intellect, do not lead men to argue speculative doctrines, or to question ancient principles. they, in some material respects, improve the sheep within the fold; but they do not help them or incline them to leap out of the fold. the next question, therefore, is, why did discussions in some cases relate to prolific ideas, and why did discussions in other cases relate only to isolated transactions? the reply which history suggests is very clear and very remarkable. some races of men at our earliest knowledge of them have already acquired the basis of a free constitution; they have already the rudiments of a complex polity--a monarch, a senate, and a general meeting of citizens. the greeks were one of those races, and it happened, as was natural, that there was in process of time a struggle, the earliest that we know of, between the aristocratical party, originally represented by the senate, and the popular party, represented by the 'general meeting.' this is plainly a question of principle, and its being so has led to its history being written more than two thousand years afterwards in a very remarkable manner. some seventy years ago an english country gentleman named mitford, who, like so many of his age, had been terrified into aristocratic opinions by the first french revolution, suddenly found that the history of the peloponnesian war was the reflex of his own time. he took up his thucydides, and there he saw, as in a mirror, the progress and the struggles of his age. it required some freshness of mind to see this; at least, it had been hidden for many centuries. all the modern histories of greece before mitford had but the vaguest idea of it; and not being a man of supreme originality, he would doubtless have had very little idea of it either, except that the analogy of what he saw helped him by a telling object-lesson to the understanding of what he read. just as in every country of europe in 1793 there were two factions, one of the old-world aristocracy, and the other of the incoming democracy, just so there was in every city of ancient greece, in the year 400 b.c., one party of the many and another of the few. this mr. mitford perceived, and being a strong aristocrat, he wrote a 'history,' which is little except a party pamphlet, and which, it must be said, is even now readable on that very account. the vigour of passion with which it was written puts life into the words, and retains the attention of the reader. and that is not all. mr. grote, the great scholar whom we have had lately to mourn, also recognising the identity between the struggles of athens and sparta and the struggles of our modern world, and taking violently the contrary side to that of mitford, being as great a democrat as mitford was an aristocrat, wrote a reply, far above mitford's history in power and learning, but being in its main characteristic almost identical, being above all things a book of vigorous political passion, written for persons who care for politics, and not, as almost all histories of antiquity are and must be, the book of a man who cares for scholarship more than for anything else, written mainly if not exclusively, for scholars. and the effect of fundamental political discussion was the same in ancient as in modern times. the whole customary ways of thought were at once shaken by it, and shaken not only in the closets of philosophers, but in the common thought and daily business of ordinary men. the 'liberation of humanity,' as goethe used to call it--the deliverance of men from the yoke of inherited usage, and of rigid, unquestionable law--was begun in greece, and had many of its greatest effects, good and evil, on greece. it is just because of the analogy between the controversies of that time and those of our times that some one has said, 'classical history is a part of modern history; it is mediaeval history only which is ancient.' if there had been no discussion of principle in greece, probably she would still have produced works of art. homer contains no such discussion. the speeches in the 'iliad,' which mr. gladstone, the most competent of living judges, maintains to be the finest ever composed by man, are not discussions of principle. there is no more tendency in them to critical disquisition than there is to political economy. in herodotus you have the beginning of the age of discussion. he belongs in his essence to the age which is going out. he refers with reverence to established ordinance and fixed religion. still, in his travels through greece, he must have heard endless political arguments; and accordingly you can find in his book many incipient traces of abstract political disquisition. the discourses on democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, which he puts into the mouth of the persian conspirators when the monarchy was vacant, have justly been called absurd, as speeches supposed to have been spoken by those persons. no asiatic ever thought of such things. you might as well imagine saul or david speaking them, as those to whom herodotus attributes them. they are greek speeches, full of free greek discussion, and suggested by the experience, already considerable, of the greeks in the results of discussion. the age of debate is beginning, and even herodotus, the least of a wrangler of any man, and the most of a sweet and simple narrator, felt the effect. when we come to thucydides, the results of discussion are as full as they have ever been; his light is pure, 'dry light,' free from the 'humours' of habit, and purged from consecrated usage. as grote's history often reads like a report to parliament, so half thucydides reads like a speech, or materials for a speech, in the athenian assembly. of later times it is unnecessary to speak. every page of aristotle and plato bears ample and indelible trace of the age of discussion in which they lived; and thought cannot possibly be freer. the deliverance of the speculative intellect from traditional and customary authority was altogether complete. no doubt the 'detachment' from prejudice, and the subjection to reason, which i ascribe to ancient athens, only went down a very little way among the population of it. two great classes of the people, the slaves and women, were almost excluded from such qualities; even the free population doubtless contained a far greater proportion of very ignorant and very superstitious persons than we are in the habit of imagining. we fix our attention on the best specimens of athenian culture--on the books which have descended to us, and we forget that the corporate action of the athenian people at various critical junctures exhibited the most gross superstition. still, as far as the intellectual and cultivated part of society is concerned, the triumph of reason was complete; the minds of the highest philosophers were then as ready to obey evidence and reason as they have ever been since; probably they were more ready. the rule of custom over them at least had been wholly broken, and the primary conditions of intellectual progress were in that respect satisfied. it may be said that i am giving too much weight to the classical idea of human development; that history contains the record of another progress as well; that in a certain sense there was progress in judaea as well as in athens. and unquestionably there was progress, but it was only progress upon a single subject. if we except religion and omit also all that the jews had learned from foreigners, it may be doubted if there be much else new between the time of samuel and that of malachi. in religion there was progress, but without it there was not any. this was due to the cause of that progress. all over antiquity, all over the east, and over other parts of the world which preserve more or less nearly their ancient condition, there are two classes of religious teachers--one, the priests, the inheritors of past accredited inspiration; the other, the prophet, the possessor of a like present inspiration. curtius describes the distinction well in relation to the condition of greece with which history first presents us:-'the mantic art is an institution totally different from the priesthood. it is based on the belief that the gods are in constant proximity to men, and in their government of the world, which comprehends every thing both great and small, will not disdain to manifest their will; nay, it seems necessary that, whenever any hitch has arisen in the moral system of the human world, this should also manifest itself by some sign in the world of nature, if only mortals are able to understand and avail themselves of these divine hints. 'for this a special capacity is requisite; not a capacity which can be learnt like a human art or science, but rather a peculiar state of grace in the case of single individuals and single families whose ears and eyes are opened to the divine revelations, and who participate more largely than the rest of mankind in the divine spirit. accordingly it is their office and calling to assert themselves as organs of the divine will; they are justified in opposing their authority to every power of the world. on this head conflicts were unavoidable, and the reminiscences living in the greek people, of the agency of a tiresias and calchas, prove how the heroic kings experienced not only support and aid, but also opposition and violent protests, from the mouths of the men of prophecy.' in judaea there was exactly the same opposition as elsewhere. all that is new comes from the prophets; all which is old is retained by the priests. but the peculiarity of judaea--a peculiarity which i do not for a moment pretend that i can explain--is that the prophetic revelations are, taken as a whole, indisputably improvements; that they contain, as time goes on, at each succeeding epoch, higher and better views of religion. but the peculiarity is not to my present purpose. my point is that there is no such spreading impetus in progress thus caused as there is in progress caused by discussion. to receive a particular conclusion upon the ipse dixit, upon the accepted authority of an admired instructor, is obviously not so vivifying to the argumentative and questioning intellect as to argue out conclusions for yourself. accordingly the religious progress caused by the prophets did not break down that ancient code of authoritative usage. on the contrary, the two combined. in each generation the conservative influence 'built the sepulchres' and accepted the teaching of past prophets, even while it was slaying and persecuting those who were living. but discussion and custom cannot be thus combined; their 'method,' as modern philosophers would say, is antagonistic. accordingly, the progress of the classical states gradually awakened the whole intellect; that of judaea was partial and improved religion only. and, therefore, in a history of intellectual progress, the classical fills the superior and the jewish the inferior place; just as in a special history of theology only, the places of the two might be interchanged. a second experiment has been tried on the same subject--matter. the characteristic of the middle ages may be approximately--though only approximately--described as a return to the period of authoritative usage and as an abandonment of the classical habit of independent and self-choosing thought. i do not for an instant mean that this is an exact description of the main mediaeval characteristic; nor can i discuss how far that characteristic was an advance upon those of previous times; its friends say it is far better than the peculiarities of the classical period; its enemies that it is far worse. but both friends and enemies will admit that the most marked feature of the middle ages may roughly be described as i have described it. and my point is that just as this mediaeval characteristic was that of a return to the essence of the customary epoch which had marked the pre-athenian times, so it was dissolved much in the same manner as the influence of athens, and other influences like it, claim to have dissolved that customary epoch. the principal agent in breaking up the persistent medieval customs, which were so fixed that they seemed likely to last for ever, or till some historical catastrophe overwhelmed them, was the popular element in the ancient polity which was everywhere diffused in the middle ages. the germanic tribes brought with them from their ancient dwelling-place a polity containing, like the classical, a king, a council, and a popular assembly; and wherever they went, they carried these elements and varied them, as force compelled or circumstances required. as far as england is concerned, the excellent dissertations of mr. freeman and mr. stubbs have proved this in the amplest manner, and brought it home to persons who cannot claim to possess much antiquarian learning. the history of the english constitution, as far as the world cares for it, is, in fact, the complex history of the popular element in this ancient polity, which was sometimes weaker and sometimes stronger, but which has never died out, has commonly possessed great though varying power, and is now entirely predominant. the history of this growth is the history of the english people; and the discussions about this constitution and the discussions within it, the controversies as to its structure and the controversies as to its true effects, have mainly trained the english political intellect, in so far as it is trained. but in much of europe, and in england particularly, the influence of religion has been very different from what it was in antiquity. it has been an influence of discussion. since luther's time there has been a conviction more or less rooted, that a man may by an intellectual process think out a religion for himself, and that, as the highest of all duties, he ought to do so. the influence of the political discussion, and the influence of the religious discussion, have been so long and so firmly combined, and have so effectually enforced one another, that the old notions of loyalty, and fealty, and authority, as they existed in the middle ages, have now over the best minds almost no effect. it is true that the influence of discussion is not the only force which has produced this vast effect. both in ancient and in modern times other forces cooperated with it. trade, for example, is obviously a force which has done much to bring men of different customs and different beliefs into close contiguity, and has thus aided to change the customs and the beliefs of them all. colonisation is another such influence: it settles men among aborigines of alien race and usages, and it commonly compels the colonists not to be over-strict in the choice of their own elements; they are obliged to coalesce with and 'adopt' useful bands and useful men, though their ancestral customs may not be identical, nay, though they may be, in fact, opposite to their own. in modern europe, the existence of a cosmopolite church, claiming to be above nations, and really extending through nations, and the scattered remains of roman law and roman civilisation co-operated with the liberating influence of political discussion. and so did other causes also. but perhaps in no case have these subsidiary causes alone been able to generate intellectual freedom; certainly in all the most remarkable cases the influence of discussion has presided at the creation of that freedom, and has been active and dominant in it. no doubt apparent cases of exception may easily be found. it may be said that in the court of augustus there was much general intellectual freedom, an almost entire detachment from ancient prejudice, but that there was no free political discussion at all. but, then, the ornaments of that time were derived from a time of great freedom: it was the republic which trained the men whom the empire ruled. the close congregation of most miscellaneous elements under the empire, was, no doubt, of itself unfavourable to inherited prejudice, and favourable to intellectual exertion. yet, except in the instance of the church, which is a peculiar subject that requires a separate discussion, how little was added to what the republic left! the power of free interchange of ideas being wanting, the ideas themselves were barren. also, no doubt, much intellectual freedom may emanate from countries of free political discussion, and penetrate to countries where that discussion is limited. thus the intellectual freedom of france in the eighteenth century was in great part owing to the proximity of and incessant intercourse with england and holland. voltaire resided among us; and every page of the 'esprit des lois' proves how much montesquieu learned from living here. but, of course, it was only part of the french culture which was so derived: the germ might be foreign, but the tissue was native. and very naturally, for it would be absurd to call the ancien regime a government without discussion: discussion abounded there, only, by reason of the bad form of the government, it was never sure with ease and certainty to affect political action. the despotism 'tempered by epigram,' was a government which permitted argument of licentious freedom within changing limits, and which was ruled by that argument spasmodically and practically, though not in name or consistently. but though in the earliest and in the latest time government by discussion has been a principal organ for improving mankind, yet, from its origin, it is a plant of singular delicacy. at first the chances are much against its living. in the beginning, the members of a free state are of necessity few. the essence of it requires that discussion shall be brought home to those members. but in early time, when writing is difficult, reading rare, and representation undiscovered, those who are to be guided by the discussion must hear it with their own ears, must be brought face to face with the orator, and must feel his influence for themselves. the first free states were little towns, smaller than any political division which we now have, except the republic of andorre, which is a sort of vestige of them. it is in the market-place of the country town, as we should now speak, and in petty matters concerning the market-town, that discussion began, and thither all the long train of its consequences may be traced back. some historical inquirers, like myself, can hardly look at such a place without some sentimental musing, poor and trivial as the thing seems. but such small towns are very feeble. numbers in the earliest wars, as in the latest, are a main source of victory. and in early times one kind of state is very common and is exceedingly numerous. in every quarter of the globe we find great populations compacted by traditional custom and consecrated sentiment, which are ruled by some soldier--generally some soldier of a foreign tribe, who has conquered them, and, as it has been said, 'vaulted on the back' of them, or whose ancestors have done so. these great populations, ruled by a single will, have, doubtless, trodden down and destroyed innumerable little cities who were just beginning their freedom. in this way the greek cities in asia were subjected to the persian power, and so ought the cities in greece proper to have been subjected also. every schoolboy must have felt that nothing but amazing folly and unmatched mismanagement saved greece from conquest both in the time of xerxes and in that of darius. the fortunes of intellectual civilisation were then at the mercy of what seems an insignificant probability. if the persian leaders had only shown that decent skill and ordinary military prudence which it was likely they would show, grecian freedom would have been at an end. athens, like so many ionian cities on the other side of the aegean, would have been absorbed into a great despotism; all we now remember her for we should not remember, for it would never have occurred. her citizens might have been ingenious, and imitative, and clever; they could not certainly have been free and original. rome was preserved from subjection to a great empire by her fortunate distance from one. the early wars of rome are with cities like rome--about equal in size, though inferior in valour. it was only when she had conquered italy that she began to measure herself against asiatic despotisms. she became great enough to beat them before she advanced far enough to contend with them. but such great good fortune was and must be rare. unnumbered little cities which might have rivalled rome or athens doubtless perished without a sign long before history was imagined. the small size and slight strength of early free states made them always liable to easy destruction. and their internal frailty is even greater. as soon as discussion begins the savage propensities of men break forth; even in modern communities, where those propensities, too, have been weakened by ages of culture, and repressed by ages of obedience, as soon as a vital topic for discussion is well started the keenest and most violent passions break forth. easily destroyed as are early free states by forces from without, they are even more liable to destruction by forces from within. on this account such states are very rare in history. upon the first view of the facts a speculation might even be set up that they were peculiar to a particular race. by far the most important free institutions, and the only ones which have left living representatives in the world, are the offspring either of the first constitutions of the classical nations or of the first constitutions of the germanic nations. all living freedom runs back to them, and those truths which at first sight would seem the whole of historical freedom, can be traced to them. and both the germanic and the classical nations belong to what ethnologists call the aryan race. plausibly it might be argued that the power of forming free states was superior in and peculiar to that family of mankind. but unfortunately for this easy theory the facts are inconsistent with it. in the first place, all the so-called aryan race certainly is not free. the eastern aryans--those, for example, who speak languages derived from the sanscrit--are amongst the most slavish divisions of mankind. to offer the bengalese a free constitution, and to expect them to work one, would be the maximum of human folly. there then must be something else besides aryan descent which is necessary to fit men for discussion and train them for liberty; and, what is worse for the argument we are opposing, some non-aryan races have been capable of freedom. carthage, for example, was a semitic republic. we do not know all the details of its constitution, but we know enough for our present purpose. we know that it was a government in which many proposers took part, and under which discussion was constant, active, and conclusive. no doubt tyre, the parent city of carthage, the other colonies of tyre besides carthage, and the colonies of carthage, were all as free as carthage. we have thus a whole group of ancient republics of non-aryan race, and one which, being more ancient than the classical republics, could not have borrowed from or imitated them. so that the theory which would make government by discussion the exclusive patrimony of a single race of mankind is on the face of it untenable. i am not prepared with any simple counter theory. i cannot profess to explain completely why a very small minimum of mankind were, as long as we know of them, possessed of a polity which as time went on suggested discussions of principle, and why the great majority of mankind had nothing like it. this is almost as hopeless as asking why milton was a genius and why bacon was a philosopher. indeed it is the same, because the causes which give birth to the startling varieties of individual character, and those which give birth to similar varieties of national character, are, in fact, the same. i have, indeed, endeavoured to show that a marked type of individual character once originating in a nation and once strongly preferred by it, is likely to be fixed on it and to be permanent in it, from causes which were stated. granted the beginning of the type, we may, i think, explain its development and aggravation; but we cannot in the least explain why the incipient type of curious characters broke out, if i may so say, in one place rather than in another. climate and 'physical' surroundings, in the largest sense, have unquestionably much influence; they are one factor in the cause, but they are not the only factor; for we find most dissimilar races of men living in the same climate and affected by the same surroundings, and we have every reason to believe that those unlike races have so lived as neighbours for ages. the cause of types must be something outside the tribe acting on something within--something inherited by the tribe. but what that something is i do not know that any one can in the least explain. the following conditions may, i think, be historically traced to the nation capable of a polity, which suggests principles for discussion, and so leads to progress. first, the nation must possess the patria potestas in some form so marked as to give family life distinctness and precision, and to make a home education and a home discipline probable and possible. while descent is traced only through the mother, and while the family is therefore a vague entity, no progress to a high polity is possible. secondly, that polity would seem to have been created very gradually; by the aggregation of families into clans or gentes, and of clans into nations, and then again by the widening of nations, so as to include circumjacent outsiders, as well as the first compact and sacred group--the number of parties to a discussion was at first augmented very slowly. thirdly, the number of 'open' subjects--as we should say nowadays--that is, of subjects on which public opinion was optional, and on which discussion was admitted, was at first very small. custom ruled everything originally, and the area of free argument was enlarged but very slowly. if i am at all right, that area could only be enlarged thus slowly, for custom was in early days the cement of society, and if you suddenly questioned such custom you would destroy society. but though the existence, of these conditions may be traced historically, and though the reason of them may be explained philosophically, they do not completely solve the question why some nations have the polity and some not; on the contrary, they plainly leave a large 'residual phenomenon' unexplained and unknown. ii. in this manner politics or discussion broke up the old bonds of custom which were now strangling mankind, though they had once aided and helped it. but this is only one of the many gifts which those polities have conferred, are conferring, and will confer on mankind. i am not going to write an eulogium on liberty, but i wish to set down three points which have not been sufficiently noticed. civilised ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilised circumstances. a main and principal excellence in the early times of the human races is the impulse to action. the problems before men are then plain and simple. the man who works hardest, the man who kills the most deer, the man who catches the most fish--even later on, the man who tends the largest herds, or the man who tills the largest field--is the man who succeeds; the nation which is quickest to kill its enemies, or which kills most of its enemies, is the nation which succeeds. all the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that 'delays are dangerous,' and that the sluggish man--the man 'who roasteth not that which he took in hunting'--will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. and in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind. pascal said that most of the evils of life arose from 'man's being unable to sit still in a room;' and though i do not go that length, it is certain that we should have been a far wiser race than we are if 'we had been readier to sit quiet--we should have known much better the way in which it was best to act when we came to act. the rise of physical science, the first great body of practical truth provable to all men, exemplifies this in the plainest way. if it had not been for quiet people, who sat still and studied the sections of the cone, if other quiet people had not sat still and studied the theory of infinitesimals, or other quiet people had not sat still and worked out the doctrine of chances, the most 'dreamy moonshine,' as the purely practical mind would consider, of all human pursuits; if 'idle star-gazers' had not watched long and carefully the motions of the heavenly bodies--our modern astronomy would have been impossible, and without our astronomy 'our ships, our colonies, our seamen,' all which makes modern life modern life could not have existed. ages of sedentary, quiet, thinking people were required before that noisy existence began, and without those pale preliminary students it never could have been brought into being. and nine-tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers--who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them--who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars'--who were believed to be useless, if any one could be such. and the conclusion is plain that if there had been more such people, if the world had not laughed at those there were, if rather it had encouraged them there would have been a great accumulation of proved science ages before there was. it was the irritable activity, the 'wish to be doing something,' that prevented it. most men inherited a nature too eager and too restless to be quiet and find out things; and even worse--with their idle clamour they 'disturbed the brooding hen,' they would not let those be quiet who wished to be so, and out of whose calm thought much good might have come forth. if we consider how much science has done and how much it is doing for mankind, and if the over-activity of men is proved to be the cause why science came so late into the world, and is so small and scanty still, that will convince most people that our over-activity is a very great evil. but this is only part, and perhaps not the greatest part of the harm that over-activity does. as i have said, it is inherited from times when life was simple, objects were plain, and quick action generally led to desirable ends. if a kills b before b kills a, then a survives, and the human race is a race of a's. but the issues of life are plain no longer. to act rightly in modern society requires a great deal of previous study, a great deal of assimilated information, a great deal of sharpened imagination; and these pre-requisites of sound action require much time, and, i was going to say, much 'lying in the sun,' a long period of 'mere passiveness.' even the art of killing one another, which at first particularly trained men to be quick, now requires them to be slow. a hasty general is the worst of generals nowadays; the best is a sort of von moltke, who is passive if any man ever was passive; who is 'silent in seven languages;' who possesses more and better accumulated information as to the best way of killing people than any one who ever lived. this man plays a restrained and considerate game of chess with his enemy. i wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. the most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. it augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action--that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen 'something' ought to be done to stay and prevent it. one may incline to hope that the balance of good over evil is in favour of benevolence; one can hardly bear to think that it is not so; but anyhow it is certain that there is a most heavy debit of evil, and that this burden might almost all have been spared us if philanthropists as well as others had not inherited from their barbarous forefathers a wild passion for instant action. even in commerce, which is now the main occupation of mankind, and one in which there is a ready test of success and failure wanting in many higher pursuits, the same disposition to excessive action is very apparent to careful observers. part of every mania is caused by the impossibility to get people to confine themselves to the amount of business for which their capital is sufficient, and in which they can engage safely. in some degree, of course, this is caused by the wish, to get rich; but in a considerable degree, too, by the mere love of activity. there is a greater propensity to action in such men than they have the means of gratifying. operations with their own capital will only occupy four hours of the day, and they wish to be active and to be industrious for eight hours, and so they are ruined. if they could only have sat idle the other four hours, they would have been rich men. the amusements of mankind, at least of the english part of mankind, teach the same lesson. our shooting, our hunting, our travelling, our climbing have become laborious pursuits. it is a common saying abroad that 'an englishman's notion of a holiday is a fatiguing journey;' and this is only another way of saying that the immense energy and activity which have given us our place in the world have in many cases descended to those who do not find in modern life any mode of using that activity, and of venting that energy. even the abstract speculations of mankind bear conspicuous traces of the same excessive impulse. every sort of philosophy has been systematised, and yet as these philosophies utterly contradict one another, most of them cannot be true. unproved abstract principles without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men, and then carefully spun out into books and theories, which were to explain the whole world. but the world goes clear against these abstractions, and it must do so, as they require it to go in antagonistic directions. the mass of a system attracts the young and impresses the unwary; but cultivated people are very dubious about it. they are ready to receive hints and suggestions, and the smallest real truth is ever welcome. but a large book of deductive philosophy is much to be suspected. no doubt the deductions may be right; in most writers they are so; but where did the premises come from? who is sure that they are the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of the matter in hand? who is not almost sure beforehand that they will contain a strange mixture of truth and error, and therefore that it will not be worth while to spend life in reasoning over their consequences? in a word, the superfluous energy of mankind has flowed over into philosophy, and has worked into big systems what should have been left as little suggestions. and if the old systems of thought are not true as systems, neither is the new revolt from them to be trusted in its whole vigour. there is the same original vice in that also. there is an excessive energy in revolutions if there is such energy anywhere. the passion for action is quite as ready to pull down as to build up; probably it is more ready, for the task is easier. 'old things need not be therefore true, o brother men, nor yet the new; ah, still awhile the old thought retain, and yet consider it again.' but this is exactly what the human mind will not do. it will act somehow at once. it will not 'consider it again.' but it will be said, what has government by discussion to do with these things? will it prevent them, or even mitigate them? it can and does do both in the very plainest way. if you want to stop instant and immediate action, always make it a condition that the action shall not begin till a considerable number of persons have talked over it, and have agreed on it. if those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity. each kind of persons will have their spokesman; each spokesman will have his characteristic objection, and each his characteristic counter-proposition, and so in the end nothing will probably be done, or at least only the minimum which is plainly urgent. in, many cases this delay may be dangerous; in many cases quick action will be preferable. a campaign, as macaulay well says, cannot be directed by a 'debating society;' and many other kinds of action also require a single and absolute general. but for the purpose now in hand--that of preventing hasty action, and ensuring elaborate consideration--there is no device like a polity of discussion. the enemies of this object--the people who want to act quickly--see this very distinctly. they are for ever explaining that the present is 'an age of committees,' that the committees do nothing, that all evaporates in talk. their great enemy is parliamentary government; they call it, after mr. carlyle, the 'national palaver;' they add up the hours that are consumed in it, and the speeches which are made in it, and they sigh for a time when england might again be ruled, as it once was, by a cromwell--that is, when an eager, absolute man might do exactly what other eager men wished, and do it immediately. all these invectives are perpetual and many-sided; they come from philosophers, each of whom wants some new scheme tried; from philanthropists, who want some evil abated; from revolutionists, who want some old institution destroyed; from new aeraists, who want their new aera started forthwith. and they all are distinct admissions that a polity of discussion is the greatest hindrance to the inherited mistake of human nature, to the desire to act promptly, which in a simple age is so excellent, but which in a later and complex time leads to so much evil. the same accusation against our age sometimes takes a more general form. it is alleged that our energies are diminishing; that ordinary and average men have not the quick determination nowadays which they used to have when the world was younger; that not only do not committees and parliaments act with rapid decisiveness, but that no one now so acts. and i hope that in fact this is true, for according to me, it proves that the hereditary barbaric impulse is decaying and dying out. so far from thinking the quality attributed to us a defect, i wish that those who complain of it were far more right than i much fear they are. still, certainly, eager and violent action is somewhat diminished, though only by a small fraction of what it ought to be. and i believe that this is in great part due, in england at least, to our government by discussion, which has fostered a general intellectual tone, a diffused disposition to weigh evidence, a conviction that much may be said on every side of everything which the elder and more fanatic ages of the world wanted. this is the real reason why our energies seem so much less than those of our fathers. when we have a definite end in view, which we know we want, and which we think we know how to obtain, we can act well enough. the campaigns of our soldiers are as energetic as any campaigns ever were; the speculations of our merchants have greater promptitude, greater audacity, greater vigour than any such speculations ever had before. in old times a few ideas got possession of men and communities, but this is happily now possible no longer. we see how incomplete these old ideas were; how almost by chance one seized on one nation, and another on another; how often one set of men have persecuted another set for opinions on subjects of which neither, we now perceive, knew anything. it might be well if a greater number of effectual demonstrations existed among mankind; but while no such demonstrations exist, and while the evidence which completely convinces one man seems to another trifling and insufficient, let us recognise the plain position of inevitable doubt. let us not be bigots with a doubt, and persecutors without a creed. we are beginning to bee this, and we are railed at for so beginning. but it is a great benefit, and it is to the incessant prevalence of detective discussion that our doubts are due; and much of that discussion is due to the long existence of a government requiring constant debates, written and oral. this is one of the unrecognised benefits of free government, one of the modes in which it counteracts the excessive inherited impulses of humanity. there is another also for which it does the same, but which i can only touch delicately, and which at first sight will seem ridiculous. the most successful races, other things being equal, are those which multiply the fastest. in the conflicts of mankind numbers have ever been a great power. the most numerous group has always had an advantage over the less numerous, and the fastest breeding group has always tended to be the most numerous. in consequence, human nature has descended into a comparatively uncontentious civilisation, with a desire far in excess of what is needed; with a 'felt want,' as political economists would say, altogether greater than the 'real want.' a walk in london is all which is necessary to establish this. 'the great sin of great cities' is one vast evil consequent upon it. and who is to reckon up how much these words mean? how many spoiled lives, how many broken hearts, how many wasted bodies, how many ruined minds, how much misery pretending to be gay, how much gaiety feeling itself to be miserable, how much after mental pain, how much eating and transmitted disease. and in the moral part of the world, how many minds are racked by incessant anxiety, how many thoughtful imaginations which might have left something to mankind are debased to mean cares, how much every successive generation sacrifices to the next, how little does any of them make of itself in comparison with what might be. and how many irelands have there been in the world where men would have been contented and happy if they had only been fewer; how many more irelands would there have been if the intrusive numbers had not been kept down by infanticide and vice and misery. how painful is the conclusion that it is dubious whether all the machines and inventions of mankind 'have yet lightened the day's labour of a human being.' they have enabled more people to exist, but these people work just as hard and are just as mean and miserable as the elder and the fewer. but it will be said of this passion just as it was said of the passion of activity. granted that it is in excess, how can you say, how on earth can anyone say, that government by discussion can in any way cure or diminish, it? cure this evil that government certainly will not; but tend to diminish it--i think it does and may. to show that i am not making premises to support a conclusion so abnormal, i will quote a passage from mr. spencer, the philosopher who has done most to illustrate this subject:-'that future progress of civilisation which the never-ceasing pressure of population must produce, will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of individuation, both in structure and function; and more especially in nervous structure and function. the peaceful struggle for existence in societies ever growing more crowded and more complicated, must have for its concomitant an increase of the great nervous centres in mass, in complexity, in activity. the larger body of emotion needed as a fountain of energy for men who have to hold their places and rear their families under the intensifying competition of social life, is, other things equal, the correlative of larger brain. those higher feelings presupposed by the better self-regulation which, in a better society, can alone enable the individual to leave a persistent posterity, are, other things equal, the correlatives of a more complex brain; as are also those more numerous, more varied, more general, and more abstract ideas, which must also become increasingly requisite for successful life as society advances. and the genesis of this larger quantity of feeling and thought in a brain thus augmented in size and developed in structure, is, other things equal, the correlative of a greater wear of nervous tissue and greater consumption of materials to repair it. so that both in original cost of construction and in subsequent cost of working, the nervous system must become a heavier tax on the organism. already the brain of the civilised man is larger by nearly thirty percent, than the brain of the savage. already, too, it presents an increased heterogeneity--especially in the distribution of its convolutions. and further changes like these which have taken place under the discipline of civilised life, we infer will continue to take place.... but everywhere and always, evolution is antagonistic to procreative dissolution. whether it be in greater growth of the organs which subserve self-maintenance, whether it be in their added complexity of structure, or whether it be in their higher activity, the abstraction of the required materials implies a diminished reserve of materials for race-maintenance. and we have seen reason to believe that this antagonism between individuation and genesis becomes unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the costliness of nervous structure and function. in section 346 was pointed out the apparent connection between high cerebral development and prolonged delay of sexual maturity; and in sections 366, 367, the evidence went to show that where exceptional fertility exists there is sluggishness of mind, and that where there has been during education excessive expenditure in mental action, there frequently follows a complete or partial infertility. hence the particular kind of further evolution which man is hereafter to undergo, is one which, more than any other, may be expected to cause a decline in his power of reproduction.' this means that men who have to live an intellectual life, or who can be induced to lead one, will be likely not to have so many children as they would otherwise have had. in particular cases this may not be true; such men may even have many children--they may be men in all ways of unusual power and vigour. but they will not have their maximum of posterity--will not have so many as they would have had if they had been careless or thoughtless men; and so, upon an average, the issue of such intellectualised men will be less numerous than those of the unintellectual. now, supposing this philosophical doctrine to be true--and the best philosophers, i think, believe it--its application to the case in hand is plain. nothing promotes intellect like intellectual discussion, and nothing promotes intellectual discussion so much as government by discussion. the perpetual atmosphere of intellectual inquiry acts powerfully, as everyone may see by looking about him in london, upon the constitution both of men and women. there is only a certain quantum of power in each of our race; if it goes in one way it is spent, and cannot go in another. the intellectual atmosphere abstracts strength to intellectual matters; it tends to divert that strength--which the circumstances of early society directed to the multiplication of numbers; and as a polity of discussion tends, above all things, to produce an intellectual atmosphere, the two things which seemed so far off have been shown to be near, and free government has, in a second case, been shown to tend to cure an inherited excess of human nature. lastly, a polity of discussion not only tends to diminish our inherited defects, but also, in one case at least, to augment a heritable excellence. it tends to strengthen and increase a subtle quality or combination of qualities singularly useful in practical life-a quality which it is not easy to describe exactly, and the issues of which it would require not a remnant of an essay, but a whole essay to elucidate completely. this quality i call animated moderation. if anyone were asked to describe what it is which distinguishes the writings of a man of genius who is also a great man of the world from all other writings, i think he would use these same words, 'animated moderation.' he would say that such writings are never slow, are never excessive, are never exaggerated; that they are always instinct with judgment, and yet that judgment is never a dull judgment; that they have as much spirit in them as would go to make a wild writer, and yet that every line of them is the product of a sane and sound writer. the best and almost perfect instance of this in english is scott. homer was perfect in it, as far as we can judge; shakespeare is often perfect in it for long together, though then, from the defects of a bad education and a vicious age, all at once he loses himself in excesses. still, homer, and shakespeare at his best, and scott, though in other respects so unequal to them, have this remarkable quality in common--this union of life with measure, of spirit with reasonableness. in action it is equally this quality in which the english--at least so i claim it for them--excel all other nations. there is an infinite deal to be laid against us, and as we are unpopular with most others, and as we are always grumbling at ourselves, there is no want of people to say it. but, after all, in a certain sense, england is a success in the world; her career has had many faults, but still it has been, a fine and winning career upon the whole. and this on account of the exact possession of this particular quality. what is the making of a successful merchant? that he has plenty of energy, and yet that he does not go too far. and if you ask for a description of a great practical englishman, you will be sure to have this, or something like it, 'oh, he has plenty of go in him; but he knows when to pull up.' he may have all other defects in him; he may be coarse, he may be illiterate, he may be stupid to talk to; still this great union of spur and bridle, of energy and moderation, will remain to him. probably he will hardly be able to explain why he stops when he does stop, or why he continued to move as long as he, in fact, moved; but still, as by a rough instinct, he pulls up pretty much where he should, though he was going at such a pace before. there is no better example of this quality in english statesmen than lord palmerston. there are, of course, many most serious accusations to be made against him. the sort of homage with which he was regarded in the last years of his life has passed away; the spell is broken, and the magic cannot be again revived. we may think that his information was meagre, that his imagination was narrow, that his aims were short--sighted and faulty. but though we may often object to his objects, we rarely find much to criticise in his means. 'he went,' it has been said, 'with a great swing;' but he never tumbled over; he always managed to pull up 'before there was any danger.' he was an odd man to have inherited hampden's motto; still, in fact, there was a great trace in him of _mediocria firma_--as much, probably, as there could be in anyone of such great vivacity and buoyancy. it is plain that this is a quality which as much as, if not more than, any other multiplies good results in practical life. it enables men to see what is good; it gives them intellect enough for sufficient perception; but it does not make men all intellect; it does not' sickly them o'er with the pale cast of thought;' it enables them to do the good things they see to be good, as well as to see that they are good. and it is plain that a government by popular discussion tends to produce this quality. a strongly idiosyncratic mind, violently disposed to extremes of opinion, is soon weeded out of political life, and a bodiless thinker, an ineffectual scholar, cannot even live there for a day. a vigorous moderateness in mind and body is the rule of a polity which works by discussion; and, upon the whole, it is the kind of temper most suited to the active life of such a being as man in such a world as the present one. these three great benefits of free government, though great, are entirely secondary to its continued usefulness in the mode in which it originally was useful. the first great benefit was the deliverance of mankind from the superannuated yoke of customary law, by the gradual development of an inquisitive originality. and it continues to produce that effect upon persons apparently far remote from its influence, and on subjects with which it has nothing to do. thus mr. mundella, a most experienced and capable judge, tells us that the english artisan, though so much less sober, less instructed, and less refined than the artisans of some other countries, is yet more inventive than any other artisan. the master will get more good suggestions from him than from any other. again, upon plausible grounds--looking, for example, to the position of locke and newton in the science of the last century, and to that of darwin in our own--it may be argued that there is some quality in english thought which makes them strike out as many, if not more, first-rate and original suggestions than nations of greater scientific culture and more diffused scientific interest. in both cases i believe the reason of the english originality to be that government by discussion quickens and enlivens thought all through society; that it makes people think no harm may come of thinking; that in england this force has long been operating, and so it has developed more of all kinds of people ready to use their mental energy in their own way, and not ready to use it in any other way, than a despotic government. and so rare is great originality among mankind, and so great are its fruits, that this one benefit of free government probably outweighs what are in many cases its accessory evils. of itself it justifies, or goes far to justify, our saying with montesquieu, 'whatever be the cost of this glorious liberty, we must be content to pay it to heaven.' no. vi. verifiable progress politically considered. the original publication of these essays was interrupted by serious illness and by long consequent ill--health, i and now that i am putting them together i wish to add another which shall shortly explain the main thread of the argument which they contain. in doing so there is a risk of tedious repetition, but on a subject both obscure and important, any defect is better than an appearance of vagueness. in a former essay i attempted to show that slighter causes than is commonly thought may change a nation from the stationary to the progressive state of civilisation, and from the stationary to the degrading. commonly the effect of the agent is looked on in the wrong way. it is considered as operating on every individual in the nation, and it is assumed, or half assumed, that it is only the effect which the agent directly produces on everyone that need be considered. but besides this diffused effect of the first impact of the cause, there is a second effect, always considerable, and commonly more potent--a new model in character is created for the nation; those characters which resemble it are encouraged and multiplied; those contrasted with it are persecuted and made fewer. in a generation or two, the look of the nation, becomes quite different; the characteristic men who stand out are different, the men imitated are different; the result of the imitation is different. a lazy nation may be changed into an industrious, a rich into a poor, a religious into a profane, as if by magic, if any single cause, though slight, or any combination of causes, however subtle, is strong enough to change the favourite and detested types of character. this principle will, i think, help us in trying to solve the question why so few nations have progressed, though to us progress seems so natural-what is the cause or set of causes which have prevented that progress in the vast majority of cases, and produced it in the feeble minority. but there is a preliminary difficulty: what is progress, and what is decline? even in the animal world there is no applicable rule accepted by physiologists, which settles what animals are higher or lower than others; there are controversies about it. still more then in the more complex combinations and politics of human beings it is likely to be hard to find an agreed criterion for saying which nation is before another, or what age of a nation was marching forward and which was falling back. archbishop manning would have one rule of progress and decline; professor huxley, in most important points, quite an opposite rule; what one would set down as an advance, the other would set down as a retreat. each has a distinct end which he wishes and a distinct calamity which he fears, but the desire of the one is pretty near the fear of the other; books would not hold the controversy between them. again, in art, who is to settle what is advance and what decline? would mr. buskin agree with anyone else on this subject, would he even agree with himself or could any common enquirer venture to say whether he was right or wrong? i am afraid that i must, as sir wm. hamilton used to say, 'truncate a problem which i cannot solve.' i must decline to sit in judgment on disputed points of art, morals, or religion. but without so doing i think there is such a thing as 'verifiable progress,' if we may say so; that is, progress which ninety-nine hundredths or more of mankind will admit to be such, against which there is no established or organised opposition creed, and the objectors to which, essentially varying in opinion themselves, and believing one thing and another the reverse, may be safely and altogether rejected. let us consider in what a village of english colonists is superior to a tribe of australian natives who roam about them. indisputably in one, and that a main sense, they are superior. they can beat the australians in war when they like; they can take from them anything they like, and kill any of them they choose. as a rule, in all the outlying and uncontested districts of the world, the aboriginal native lies at the mercy of the intruding european. 'nor is this all. indisputably in the english village there are more means of happiness, a greater accumulation of the instruments of enjoyment, than in the australian tribe. "the english have all manner of books, utensils, and machines which the others do not use, value, or understand. and in addition, and beyond particular inventions, there is a general strength which is capable of being used in conquering a thousand difficulties, and is an abiding source of happiness, because those who possess it always feel that they can use it." if we omit the higher but disputed topics of morals and religion, we shall find, i think, that the plainer and agreed--on superiorities of the englishmen are these: first, that they have a greater command over the powers of nature upon the whole. though they may fall short of individual australians in certain feats of petty skill, though they may not throw the boomerang as well, or light a fire with earthsticks as well, yet on the whole twenty englishmen with their implements and skill can change the material world immeasurably more than twenty australians and their machines. secondly, that this power is not external only; it is also internal. the english not only possess better machines for moving nature, but are themselves better machines. mr. babbage taught us years ago that one great use of machinery was not to augment the force of man, but to register and regulate the power of man; and this in a thousand ways civilised man can do, and is ready to do, better and more precisely than the barbarian. thirdly, | civilised man not only has greater powers over nature, but knows better how to use them, and by better i here mean better for the health and comfort of his present body and mind. he can lay up for old age, which a savage having no durable means of sustenance cannot; he is ready to lay up because he can distinctly foresee the future, which the vague--minded savage cannot; he is mainly desirous of gentle, continuous pleasure, i whereas the barbarian likes wild excitement, and longs for stupefying repletion. much, if not all, of these three ways may be summed up in mr. spencer's phrase, that progress is an increase of adaptation of man to his environment, that is, of his internal powers and wishes to his external lot and life. something of it too is expressed in the old pagan idea 'mens sana in corpore sano.' and i think this sort of progress may be fairly investigated quite separately, as it is progress in a sort of good everyone worth reckoning with admits and i agrees in. no doubt there will remain people like the aged savage, who in his old age went back to his savage tribe and said that he had 'tried civilisation for forty years, and it was not worth the trouble.' but we need not take account of the mistaken ideas of unfit men and beaten races. on the whole the plainer sort of civilisation, the simpler moral training, and the more elementary education are plain benefits. and though there may be doubt as to the edges of the conception yet there certainly is a broad road of 'verifiable progress' which not only discoverers and admirers will like, but which all those who come upon it will use and value. unless some kind of abstraction like this is made in the subject the great problem 'what causes progress?' will, i am confident, long remain unsolved. unless we are content to solve simple problems first, the whole history of philosophy teaches that we shall never solve hard problems. this is the maxim of scientific humility so often insisted on by the highest enquirers that, in investigations, as in life, those 'who exalt themselves shall be abased, and those who humble themselves shall be exalted;' and though we may seem mean only to look for the laws of plain comfort and simple present happiness, yet we must work out that simple case first, before we encounter the incredibly harder additional difficulties of the higher art, morals and religion. the difficulty of solving the problem even thus limited is exceedingly great. the most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we should expect. lord macaulay tells us that 'in every experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. in every human being there is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two principles operating everywhere and always, might well have been expected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' indeed, taking verifiable progress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that nature gives a prize to every single step in it. everyone that makes an invention that benefits himself or those around him, is likely to be more comfortable himself and to be more respected by those around him. to produce new things 'serviceable to man's life and conducive to man's estate,' is, we should say, likely to bring increased happiness to the producer. it often brings immense reward certainly now; a new form of good steel pen, a way of making some kind of clothes a little better or a little cheaper, have brought men great fortunes. and there is the same kind of prize for industrial improvement in the earliest times as in the latest; though the benefits so obtainable in early society are poor indeed in comparison with those of advanced society. nature is like a schoolmaster, at least in this, she gives her finest prizes to her high and most instructed classes; still, even in the earliest society, nature helps those who can help themselves, and helps them very much. all this should have made the progress of mankind--progress at least in this limited sense-exceedingly common; but, in fact, any progress is extremely rare. as a rule (and as has been insisted on before) a stationary state is by far the most frequent condition of man, as far as history describes that condition; the progressive state is only a rare and an occasional exception. before history began there must have been in the nation which writes it much progress; else there could have been no history. it is a great advance in civilisation to be able to describe the common facts of life, and perhaps, if we were to examine it, we should find that it was at least an equal advance to wish to describe them. but very few races have made this step of progress; very few have been capable even of the meanest sort of history; and as for writing such a history as that of thucydides, most nations could as soon have constructed a planet. when history begins to record, she finds most of the races incapable of history, arrested, unprogressive, and pretty much where they are now. why, then, have not the obvious and natural causes of progress (as we should call them) produced those obvious and natural effects? why have the real fortunes of mankind been so different from the fortunes which we should expect? this is the problem which in various forms i have taken up in these papers, and this is the outline of the solution which i have attempted to propose. the progress of man requires the co--operation of men for its development. that which any one man or any one family could invent for themselves is obviously exceedingly limited. and even if this were not true, isolated progress could never be traced. the rudest sort of cooperative society, the lowest tribe and the feeblest government, is so much stronger than isolated man, that isolated man (if he ever existed in any shape which could be called man), might very easily have ceased to exist. the first principle of the subject is that man can only progress in 'co-operative groups;' i might say tribes and nations, but i use the less common word because few people would at once see that tribes and nations are co-operative groups, and that it is their being so which makes their value; that unless you can make a strong co-operative bond, your society will be conquered and killed out by some other society which has such a bond; and the second principle is that the members of such a group should be similar enough to one another to co-operate easily and readily together. the co-operation in all such cases depends on a felt union of heart and spirit; and this is only felt when there is a great degree of real likeness in mind and feeling, however that likeness may have been attained. this needful co-operation and this requisite likeness i believe to have been produced by one of the strongest yokes (as we should think if it were to be reimposed now) and the most terrible tyrannies ever known among men--the authority of 'customary law.', in its earlier stage this is no pleasant power--no 'rosewater' authority, as carlyle would have called it--but a stern, incessant, implacable rule. and the rule is often of most childish origin, beginning in a casual superstition or local accident. 'these people,' says captain palmer of the fiji,' are very conservative. a chief was one day going over a mountain-path followed by a long string of his people, when he happened to stumble and fall; all the rest of the people immediately did the same except one man, who was set upon by the rest to know whether he considered himself better than the chief.' what can be worse than a life regulated by that sort of obedience, and that sort of imitation? this is, of course, a bad specimen, but the nature of customary law as we everywhere find it in its earliest stages is that of coarse casual comprehensive usage, beginning, we cannot tell how, deciding, we cannot tell why, but ruling everyone in almost every action with an inflexible grasp. the necessity of thus forming co-operative groups by fixed customs explains the necessity of isolation in early society. as a matter of fact all great nations have been prepared in privacy and in secret. they have been composed far away from all distraction. greece, borne, judaea, were framed each by itself, and the antipathy of each to men of different race and different speech is one of their most marked peculiarities, and quite their strongest common property. and the instinct of early ages is a right guide for the needs of early ages. intercourse with foreigners then broke down in states the fixed rules which were forming their characters, so as to be a cause of weak fibre of mind, of desultory and unsettled action; the living spectacle of an admitted unbelief destroys the binding authority of religious custom and snaps the social cord. thus we see the use of a sort of 'preliminary' age in societies, when trade is bad because it prevents the separation of nations, because it infuses distracting ideas among occupied communities, because it 'brings alien minds to alien shores. and as the trade which we now think of as an incalculable good, is in that age a formidable evil and destructive calamity; so war and conquest, which we commonly and justly see to be now evils, are in that age often singular benefits and great advantages. it is only by the competition of customs that bad customs can be eliminated and good customs multiplied. conquest is the premium given by nature to those national characters which their national customs have made most fit to win in war, and in many most material respects those winning characters are really the best characters. the characters which do win in war are the characters which we should wish to win in war. similarly, the best institutions have a natural military advantage over bad institutions. the first great victory of civilisation was the conquest of nations with ill-defined families having legal descent through the mother only, by nations of definite families tracing descent through the father as well as the mother, or through the father only. such compact families are a much better basis for military discipline than the ill-bound families which indeed seem hardly to be families at all, where 'paternity' is, for tribal purposes, an unrecognised idea, and where only the physical fact of 'maternity' is thought to be certain enough to be the foundation of law or custom. the nations with a thoroughly compacted family system have 'possessed the earth,' that is, they have taken all the finest districts in the most competed-for parts; and the nations with loose systems have been merely left to mountain ranges and lonely islands. the family system and that in its highest form has been so exclusively the system of civilisation, that literature hardly recognises any other, and that, if it were not for the living testimony of a great multitude of scattered communities which are 'fashioned after the structure of the elder world,' we should hardly admit the possibility of something so contrary to all which we have lived amongst, and which we have been used to think of. after such an example of the fragmentary nature of the evidence it is in comparison easy to believe that hundreds of strange institutions may have passed away and have left behind them not only no memorial, but not even a trace or a vestige to help the imagination to figure what they were. i cannot expand the subject, but in the same way the better religions have had a great physical advantage, if i may say so, over the worse. they have given what i may call a confidence in the universe. the savage subjected to a mean superstition, is afraid to walk simply about the world--he cannot do this because it is ominous, or he must do that because it is lucky, or he cannot do anything at all till the gods have spoken and given him leave to begin. but under the higher religions there is no similar slavery and no similar terror. the belief of the greek _eis oianos aristos amãºnesthai perã¬ pã¡trãªs;_ the belief of the roman that he was to trust in the gods of borne, for those gods are stronger than all others; the belief of cromwell's soldiery that they were 'to trust in god and keep their powder dry,' are great steps in upward progress, using progress in its narrowest sense. they all enabled those who believed them 'to take the world as it comes,' to be guided by no unreal reason, and to be limited by no mystic scruple; whenever they found anything to do, to do it with their might. and more directly what i may call the fortifying religions, that is to say, those which lay the plainest stress on the manly parts of morality--upon valour, on truth and industry--have had plainly the most obvious effect in strengthening the races which believed them, and in making those races the winning races. no doubt many sorts of primitive improvement are pernicious to war; an exquisite sense of beauty, a love of meditation, a tendency to cultivate the force of the mind at the expense of the force of the body, for example, help in their respective degrees to make men less warlike than they would otherwise be. but these are the virtues of other ages. the first work of the first ages is to bind men together in the strong bond of a rough, coarse, harsh custom; and the incessant conflict of nations effects this in the best way. every nation, is an 'hereditary co-operative group,' bound by a fixed custom; and out of those groups those conquer which have the most binding and most invigorating customs, and these are, as a rough rule, the best customs. the majority of the 'groups' which win and conquer are better than the majority of those which fail and perish, and thus the first world grow better and was improved. this early customary world no doubt continued for ages. the first history delineates great monarchies, each composed of a hundred customary groups, all of which believed themselves to be of enormous antiquity, and all of which must have existed for very many generations. the first historical world is not a new-looking thing but a very ancient, and according to principle it is necessary that it should exist for ages. if human nature was to be gradually improved, each generation must be born better tamed, more calm, more capable of civilisation--in a word, more legal than the one before it, and such inherited improvements are always slow and dubious. though a few gifted people may advance much, the mass of each generation can improve but very little on the generation which preceded it; and even the slight improvement so gained is liable to be destroyed by some mysterious atavism--some strange recurrence to a primitive past. long ages of dreary monotony are the first facts in the history of human communities, but those ages were not lost to mankind, for it was then that was formed the comparatively gentle and guidable thing which we now call human nature. and indeed the greatest difficulty is not in preserving such a world but in ending it. we have brought in the yoke of custom to improve the world, and in the world the custom sticks. in a thousand cases--in the great majority of cases--the progress of mankind has been arrested in this its earliest shape; it has been closely embalmed in a mummy-like imitation of its primitive existence. i have endeavoured to show in what manner, and how slowly, and in how few cases this yoke of custom was removed. it was 'government by discussion ', which broke the bond of ages and set free the originality of mankind. then, and then only, the motives which lord macaulay counted on to secure the progress of mankind, in fact, begin to work; then 'the tendency in every man to ameliorate his condition' begins to be important, because then man can alter his condition while before he is pegged down by ancient usage; then the tendency in each mechanical art towards perfection begins to have force, because the artist is at last allowed to seek perfection, after having been forced for ages to move in the straight furrow of the old fixed way. as soon as this great step upwards is once made, all or almost all, the higher gifts and graces of humanity have a rapid and a definite effect on 'verifiable progress'--on progress in the narrowest, because in the most universally admitted sense of the term. success in life, then, depends, as we have seen, more than anything else on 'animated moderation,' on a certain combination of energy of mind and balance of mind, hard to attain and harder to keep. and this subtle excellence is aided by all the finer graces of humanity. it is a matter of common observation that, though often separated, fine taste and fine judgment go very much together, and especially that a man with gross want of taste, though he may act sensibly and correctly for a while, is yet apt to break out, sooner or later, into gross practical error. in metaphysics, probably both taste and judgment involve what is termed 'poise of mind,' that is the power of true passiveness--the faculty of 'waiting' till the stream of impressions, whether those of life or those of art have done all that they have to do, and cut their full type plainly upon the mind. the ill-judging and the untasteful are both over-eager; both move too quick and blur the image. in this way the union between a subtle sense of beauty and a subtle discretion in conduct is a natural one, because it rests on the common possession of a fine power, though, in matter of fact, that union may be often disturbed. a complex sea of forces and passions troubles men in life and action, which in the calmer region of art are hardly to be felt at all. and, therefore, the cultivation of a fine taste tends to promote the function of a fine judgment, which is a main help in the complex world of civilised existence. just so too the manner in which the more delicate parts of religion daily work in producing that 'moderation' which, upon the whole, and as a rule, is essential to long success, defining success even in its most narrow and mundane way, might be worked out in a hundred cases, though it would not suit these pages. many of the finer intellectual tastes have a similar restraining effect they prevent, or tend to prevent, a greedy voracity after the good things of life, which makes both men and nations in excessive haste to be rich and famous, often makes them do too much and do it ill, and so often leaves them at last without money and without respect. but there is no need to expand this further. the principle is plain that, though these better and higher graces of humanity are impediments and encumbrances in the early fighting period, yet that in the later era they are among the greatest helps and benefits, and that as soon as governments by discussion have become strong enough to secure a stable existence, and as soon as they have broken the fixed rule of old custom, and have awakened the dormant inventiveness of men, then, for the first time, almost every part of human nature begins to spring forward, and begins to contribute its quota even to the narrowest, even to 'verifiable' progress. and this is the true reason of all those panegyrics on liberty which are often so measured in expression but are in essence so true to life and nature. liberty is the strengthening and developing power--the light and heat of political nature; and when some 'caesarism' exhibits as it sometimes will an originality of mind, it is only because it has managed to make its own the products of past free times or neighbouring free countries; and even that originality is only brief and frail, and after a little while, when tested by a generation or two, in time of need it falls away. in a complete investigation of all the conditions of 'verifiable progress,' much else would have to be set out; for example, science has secrets of her own. nature does not wear her most useful lessons on her sleeve; she only yields her most productive secrets, those which yield the most wealth and the most 'fruit,' to those who have gone through a long process of preliminary abstraction. to make a person really understand the 'laws of motion' is not easy, and to solve even simple problems in abstract dynamics is to most people exceedingly hard. and yet it is on these out-of-the-way investigations, so to speak, that the art of navigation, all physical astronomy, and all the theory of physical movements at least depend. but no nation would beforehand have thought that in so curious a manner such great secrets were to be discovered. and many nations, therefore, which get on the wrong track, may be distanced--supposing there to be no communication by some nation not better than any of them which happens to stumble on the right track. if there were no 'bradshaw' and no one knew the time at which trains started, a man who caught the express would not be a wiser or a more business-like man than he who missed it, and yet he would arrive whole hours sooner at the capital both are going to. and unless i misread the matter, such was often the case with early knowledge. at any rate before a complete theory of 'verifiable progress' could be made, it would have to be settled whether this is so or not, and the conditions of the development of physical science would have to be fully stated; obviously you cannot explain the development of human comfort unless you know the way in which men learn and discover comfortable things. then again, for a complete discussion, whether of progress or degradation, a whole course of analysis is necessary as to the effect of natural agencies on man, and of change in those agencies. but upon these i cannot touch; the only way to solve these great problems is to take them separately. i only profess to explain what seem to me the political prerequisites of progress, and especially of early progress, i do this the rather because the subject is insufficiently examined, so that even if my views are found to be faulty, the discussion upon them may bring out others which are truer and better. [the end] proofreaders the war and democracy by r.w. seton-watson, _d.litt_. j. dover wilson alfred e. zimmern and arthur greenwood 1915 * * * * * to the workers' educational association * * * * * when wilt thou save the people? o god of mercy, when? not kings and lords, but nations! not thrones and crowns, but men! flowers of thy heart, o god, are they; let them not pass, like weeds, away- their heritage a sunless day. god save the people! ebenezer elliott. "to remake the map of europe, and to rearrange the peoples in accordance with the special mission assigned to each of them by geographical, ethnical and historical conditions--this is the first essential step for all." mazzini (1832). * * * * * preface for many years past the prospect of universal war has haunted the dreams of pacificists and militarists alike. many of us, without denying its growing menace, hoped against hope that it might be averted by the gradual strengthening of international goodwill and mutual intercourse, and the steady growth of democratic influences and political thought. but our misgivings proved more prophetic than our hopes; and last august the great war came upon us like a thief in the night. after four months of war we feel that, in spite of the splendid response of the nation at large, in spite of a unanimity which has no parallel in our previous history, there are still large sections of the community who fail to realise the vastness of the issues at stake, the formidable nature of the forces ranged against us, and the true inner significance of the struggle. and yet all that is worth living for depends upon the outcome of this war--for ourselves the future of the democratic ideal in these islands and in the british empire at large, for the peoples of europe deliverance from competing armaments and the yoke of racial tyranny. but before our future can be secured, sacrifices will be required of every citizen, and in a free community sacrifice can only spring from knowledge. moreover, if we are to put an end to the intolerable situation of an unwilling europe in arms, public opinion must think out very carefully the great problems which have been thrown into the melting-pot and be prepared for the day of settlement. the present volume has been written as a guide to the study of the underlying causes and issues of the war. it does not pretend to cover the whole of so vast a field, and it will have attained its aim if it provides the basis for future discussion. it originated in the experience of its five writers at the summer schools for working-class students held in connection with the workers' educational associations. in the early days of august, at the outbreak of the war, summer schools were in full swing at oxford, cambridge, eton, bangor, and durham, and it at once became apparent, not merely that the word "citizen" had suddenly acquired a new depth and significance for the men and women of our generation, but also that for the individual citizen himself a large new field of study and discussion had been opened up on subjects and issues hitherto unfamiliar. this book was planned to meet the need there expressed, but it is hoped that it may be found useful by a wider circle of readers. we have called the book _the war and democracy_, because our guiding idea throughout has been the sense of the great new responsibilities, both of thought and action, which the present situation lays upon british democracy and on believers in democracy throughout the world. in devoting one chapter to a survey of the issues raised for settlement by the war, we must disclaim most emphatically all idea of dividing the lion's skin before the animal has been killed. our object has not been to prophesy, but merely to stimulate thought and discussion. the field is so vast and complicated that unless public opinion begins to mobilise without further delay and to form clear ideas as to how the principles laid down by our statesmen are to be converted into practice, it may find itself confronted, as it was confronted in 1814, with a situation which it can neither understand nor control, and with a settlement which will perpetuate many of the abuses which this war ought to remove. our best excuse is supplied by the attitude of many leaders of german political thought--men like franz von liszt, ostwald; and paul rohrbach--who are already mapping out the world according to their victorious fancies. _december 1914._ r.w.s.-w. j.d.w. a.e.z. a.g. contents chapter i introductory by alfred e. zimmern, m.a., late fellow and tutor of new college, oxford; author of _the greek commonwealth_ chapter ii the national idea in europe, 1789-1914 by j. dover wilson, m.a., gonville and cains college, cambridge, late lecturer in the university of helsingfors, finland 1. nation and nationality 2. the birth of nationalism: poland and the french revolution 3. the congress of vienna and the international idea 4. the national idea in belgium and the problem of small nations 5. the national idea in italy: the ideal type 6. the national idea in germany: a case of arrested development 7. the map of europe, 1814-1914 chapter iii germany by alfred e. zimmern 1. the german state 2. the real germany 3. prussia 4. germany since 1870 chapter iv austria-hungary and the southern slavs by r.w. seton-watson, d.litt., new college, oxford, author of _racial problems in hungary, the southern slav question_, etc. introduction 1. austria and the habsburgs 2. hungary and magyar misrule 3. the decay of the dual system 4. the genesis of the southern slavs 5. the renaissance of serbia 6. serbo-croat unity 7. the balkan wars 8. the murder of the archduke 9. the future of the southern slavs chapter v russia by j. dover wilson 1. the russian state 2. religion 3. the revolutionary movement and its significance 4. the subject nationalities chapter vi foreign policy [_contributed_] a. the meaning of foreign policy 1. the foreign office 2. the work of the foreign office 3. the balance of power 4. the estimation of national forces b. the democratisation of foreign policy 1. democracy and peace 2. foreign policy and popular forces 3. foreign policy and education chapter vii the issues of the war by r.w. seton-watson 1. is there an idea behind the war? 2. the aims of british statesmanship 3. britain and germany 4. nationality and the german empire (1) alsace-lorraine, (2) schleswig-holstein, (3) poland 5. the future of austria-hungary--minimum and maximum losses 6. the southern slav question 7. the roumanian question 8. can the dual monarchy be replaced? 9. bohemia and hungary 10. germany and austria 11. italian aspirations 12. the balkan situation: bulgaria and greece 13. the future of turkey 14. russia and constantinople 15. asiatic turkey 16. russia and poland 17. general aims chapter viii social and economic aspects of the war by arthur greenwood, b.sc., lecturer in economics at the university of leeds introduction a. state action in industry and commerce b. immediate social and economic effects of the war 1. foreign trade 2. unemployment and short time 3. trade unions, co-operative societies, and distress 4. the new spirit c. after the war 1. general effects 2. possible industrial developments 3. social effects and the new outlook chapter ix german culture and the british commonwealth by alfred e. zimmern 1. the two issues 2. culture 3. culture as a state product 4. german and british ideals of education 5. german and british ideals of civilisation 6. the principle of the commonwealth 7. the future of civilisation 8. the two roads of advance: inter-state action and common citizenship index maps the partition of poland europe in 1815 germany in 1815 prussia since the accession of frederick the great austria-hungary: physical the franco-german frontier austria-hungary: political divisions racial and national boundaries in central europe chapter i introductory "it seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of waste and futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger in the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the world's system of collective organisations to the purpose before them. it follows from this very directly that only one thing can end war on the earth, and that is a subtle mental development, an idea, the development of the idea of the world commonweal in the collective mind."--h.g. wells in 1908. this is a testing time for democracy. the people of great britain and the dominions, to whom all the world looks as the trustees, together with france and america, of the great democratic tradition, are brought face to face, for the first time, with their full ultimate responsibility as british citizens. upon the way in which that responsibility is realised and discharged depends the future of the democratic principle, not only in these islands, but throughout the world. democracy is not a mere form of government. it does not depend on ballot boxes or franchise laws or any constitutional machinery. these are but its trappings. democracy is a spirit and an atmosphere, and its essence is trust in the moral instincts of the people. a tyrant is not a democrat, for he believes in government by force; neither is a demagogue a democrat, for he believes in government by flattery. a democratic country is a country where the government has confidence in the people and the people in the government and in itself, and where all are united in the faith that the cause of their country is not a mere matter of individual or national self-interest, but is in harmony with the great moral forces which rule the destinies of mankind. no form of government is so feeble as a democracy without faith. but a democracy armed with faith is not merely strong: it is invincible; for its cause will live on, in defeat and disaster, in the breast of every one of its citizens. belgium is a living testimony to that great truth. british democracy has carried this principle of confidence to the furthest possible point. alone among the states of europe, great britain relies for her existence and for the maintenance of her world-wide responsibilities upon the free choice of her citizens. her privileges are extended to all: her active obligations are forced upon none. trusting in the principle of individual freedom, and upon the sound instinct and understanding of her people, she leaves it to each citizen to make his choice whether, and in what manner, he shall serve his country. never have responsibilities so arduous and so urgent been laid upon the citizens of any community: and never have the citizens been so free to choose or to decline the burden. the world will judge great britain, and judge democracy, according to the measure of our free response. what is the nature of the responsibility cast upon us at this crisis? it is threefold. it concerns the present, the past, and the future. there are three questions which every citizen must needs ask, and try to answer, for himself. the first and most urgent is a matter of present decision: what is my duty here and now? the second involves a judgment of past events: why is it that we are at war? are we fighting in a just cause? the third involves an estimate of the future and of the part which british public opinion can and should play in shaping it: what are the issues involved in the various belligerent countries? what should be the principles of a just settlement? how can great britain best use her influence in the cause of human progress and for the welfare of the peoples involved in the war? it is with the second and especially with the third of these responsibilities that this volume is concerned. "what is the war about?" "are we fighting in a just cause?" every one by now has asked himself this question, and most people have studied some at least of the evidence, and tried to satisfy themselves as to the answer. the foreign office white paper and numberless books and pamphlets have enlightened the public on many of the questions at issue. yet the fact remains that the necessity of this educative campaign involves a confession of failure--or at least of grave neglect--on the part of british democracy. under our democratic constitution the people of great britain have assumed the responsibility for the management of their own affairs. one great department of those affairs, the most vital of all, they and their representatives have systematically neglected. deeply engaged and interested in domestic problems, they have left the control of their foreign relations in the hands of expert advisers. and so it was with something like stupefaction that they discovered, one day in august, that they were called upon to honour the obligations contracted in their name. there has been no desire to evade those obligations. but there has been a very real desire to understand them, and also a fixed determination never again to allow such a lack of contact, on vital issues, between the mind of the people and the activities of their ministers. but no mere changes in the machinery of democratic control can avail to save the people from the consequences of their own ignorance and neglect. there is only one way in which we can achieve full democracy in this country, and that is through education. in the sphere of domestic affairs, particularly in connection with social and industrial questions, the people have slowly realised this hard truth. after a generation or more of attempts and failures and disillusionments many thousands of workpeople have learnt the lesson that power without knowledge is not power at all, and that knowledge, whether for public affairs or for any other purpose, cannot be gained without effort and discipline. they have come to realise that democracy needs, for its full working, not only schools in which to train its young, but also--what no democracy save those of the ancient world has ever possessed--such facilities for the education for its adult citizens, engaged in the active work of the community, as will enable them to maintain unimpaired their intellectual freshness and vigour, and to face with wisdom and courage the problems for which, as citizens, they have assumed responsibility. they have come to think of education, not as a time of tutelage or training, but as a part of active life itself, woven of the same texture and concerned with the same issues, as being, in fact, the effort to understand the world in which they live. but they have naturally tended to confine those issues within the limits of their own domestic interests and experience. they are called upon now to widen their horizon, and to apply the democratic conception of education to the new problems which have arisen owing to the part which great britain is now playing in the affairs of europe. it is never easy to think things out clearly and coldly. but it is hardest of all in the crisis of a great war, when men's minds are blurred by passionate emotions of sorrow, anxiety, and indignation. hence a time of war is the heyday of fallacies and delusions, of misleading hopes and premature disillusionments: men tend to live in an unreal world of phrases and catchwords. yet never is it more necessary than at such a period, in the old greek phrase, "to follow the argument whithersoe'er it leads," to look facts squarely in the face, and, particularly, the great ugly outstanding fact of war itself, the survival of which democrats, especially in great britain and the united states, have of recent years been so greatly tempted to ignore. people speak as if war were a new sudden and terrible phenomenon. there is nothing new about the fact of war. what is new about this war is the scale on which it is waged, the science and skill expended on it, and the fact that it is being carried on by national armies, numbering millions, instead of by professional bodies of soldiers. but war itself is as old as the world: and if it surprises and shocks us this is due to our own blindness. there are only two ways of settling disputes between nations, by law or by war. as there is as yet no world-state, with the power to enforce a world-law between the nations, the possibility of war, with all its contingent horrors, should have been before our eyes all the time. the _occasion_ of this war was no doubt a surprise. but that it could happen at all should not be a surprise to us, still less a disillusionment. it does not mark a backward step in human civilisation. it only registers the fact that civilisation is still grievously incomplete and unconsolidated. terrible as this war is in its effect on individual lives and happiness, it ought not to depress us--even if, in our blindness, we imagined the world to be a far better organised place than it actually is. the fact that many of the combatants regard war as an anachronism adds to the tragedy, but also to the hope, of the struggle. it shows that civilised opinion is gathering strength for that deepening and extension of the meaning and range of citizenship which alone can make war between the nations of the world as obsolete as it has become between the nations of the british empire or between the component parts of the united states. it was perhaps inevitable that british citizens in particular, removed from the storm centres of continental europe, and never very logical in their thinking, should have failed to realise the possibility of another great war, similar to the napoleonic struggle of a hundred years ago. for nearly half a century the great european states had been at peace: and we had come to look upon their condition, and the attachment of their peoples, as being as ancient and as stable as our own. we had grown used to the map of europe as it had been left by the great convulsions between 1848 and 1871. upon the basis of that map and of the governments represented on it, and in response to the growing needs of the world as a whole, we had embarked on every kind of international co-operation and cosmopolitan effort. the hague congress, convened by the tsar of russia, looked forward to the day when war, and the causes of war, should be obsolete. the socialist movement, a growing force in all industrial communities, stood for the same ideal, and for the international comradeship of the working class. law and medicine, science and scholarship followed suit; and every summer, in quest of health and change, thousands of plain citizens have crossed international frontiers with scarcely greater sense of change than in moving from province to province in a single state. commerce and industry, the greatest material forces of our time, have become inextricably international, and in the palpable injury in which a war would involve them some thinkers of clear but limited vision saw the best hope of averting a european conflagration. and yet, throughout these two generations of economic and social development, the fear of war has never been absent from the mind of europe. her emperors and statesmen have talked of peace; but they have prepared for war, more skilfully and more persistently than ever before in the history of europe or of the world. almost the entire manhood of every european nation but england has been trained to arms; and the annual war budget of europe rose, in time of peace, to over 300 million pounds. the states of europe, each afraid to stand alone against a coalition of possible rivals, formed themselves into opposing groups; and each of the groups armed feverishly against the other, fearful lest, by any change in the diplomatic or political situation, they might be caught unawares and suffer loss. thus, it ought not to have surprised us that finally, through the accident of a royal murder, the spark should be fired and the explosion ensue, and that merchants and manufacturers, propagandists and philanthropists, scholars and scientists, should find the ground shaken beneath their feet and the projects patiently built up through years of international co-operation shattered by the events of a few days. now that the war has come it is easy to see that they were mistaken. they had built up the structure of a cosmopolitan society without looking to the foundations. the economic activities of mankind have indeed brought a world-society and a world-industry into being; but its political analogue, a world-state, can only be formed, not through the co-operation of individuals or groups of individuals, but through the union of nations and the federation of national governments. the first task of our time for europe, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, is to lay firm the foundations of those nations by carrying to victory the twin principles of nationality and democracy--to secure that the peoples of europe shall be enabled to have governments corresponding to their national needs and responsible to their own control, and to build up, under the care and protection of those governments, the social institutions and the civilisation of their choice. so long as there are peoples in europe under alien governments, curtailed in the use of their own language,[1] in the propagation of their literature and ideas, in their social intercourse, in their corporate life, in all that we in great britain understand by civil liberty, so long will there be men who will mock at the very idea of international peace, and look forward to war, not as an outworn instrument of a barbarous age, but as a means to national freedom and self-expression. englishmen sometimes forget that there are worse evils than open war, both in political and industrial relations, and that the political causes for which their fathers fought and died have still to be carried to victory on the continent. nationality and their national institutions are the very life-blood of english people. they are as natural to them as the air they breathe. that is what makes it sometimes so difficult for them to understand, as the history of ireland and even of ulster shows, what nationality means to other peoples. and that is why they have not realised, not only that there are peoples in europe living under alien governments, but that there are governments in europe so foolish as to think that men and women deprived of their national institutions, humiliated in their deepest feelings, and forced into an alien mould, can make good citizens, trustworthy soldiers, or even obedient subjects. [footnote 1: the german official _communiquã©_ on august 26, 1914, reports as follows: "all the newspapers in belgium, with the exception of those in antwerp, are printed in the german language." this, of course, is on the model of the prussian administration of poland. the magyars are more repressive even than the germans. see the bibliography given in _general books_ below.] the political causes of the present war, then, and of the half century of armed peace which preceded it are to be found, not in the particular schemes and ambitions of any of the governments of europe, nor in their secret diplomacy, nor in the machinations of the great armament interests allied to them, sinister though all these may have been, but in the nature of some of those governments themselves, and in their relation to the peoples over whom they rule. "if it were possible," writes prince bã¼llow, who directed german policy as imperial chancellor from 1900 to 1909, "for members of different nationalities, with different language and customs, and an intellectual life of a different kind, to live side by side in one and the same state, without succumbing to the temptation of each trying to force his own nationality on the other, things on earth would look a good deal more peaceful. but it is a law of life and development in history that where two national civilisations meet they fight for ascendancy. in the struggle between nationalities one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the vanquished."[1] no words could indicate more clearly the cause that is at stake in the present war. they show us that there are still governments in europe so ignorant as to believe that the different nationalities of mankind are necessarily hostile to one another, and so foolish and brutal as to think that national civilisation, or, as the german professors call it, "culture," can and indeed must be propagated by the sword. it is this extraordinary conception which is at the back of protests like that of professor haeckel and professor eucken (men whom, in the field of their own studies, all europe is proud to honour) against "england fighting with a half-asiatic power against germanism."[2] [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, by prince bernhard von bã¼low, english translation, 1st ed. pp. 245-6 (london, 1914).] [footnote 2: protest of professors ernst haeckel and rudolf eucken of jena, quoted in _the times_ from the _vossische zeitung_ of august 20, 1914.] there are not only half-asiatics, there are real asiatics side by side with england; and england is not ashamed of it. for she does not reckon the culture of europe as higher than the culture of asia, or regard herself as the hammer upon the anvil of india. prince bã¼low's words, and the theory of policy underlying them, really go to the root of the whole trouble in european politics. they explain the balance of power, the competition in armaments, the belief in the inevitability and the moral value of war, and all those common european shibboleths which seem so inexplicable to citizens of the more modern-minded states and communities of the world. why should germany and austria arm against france and russia when canada does not arm against the united states? why should a balance of power be necessary to the maintenance of european peace when we do not consider the preponderance of a single power, such as the united states in north, central and south america, or great britain in the pacific or southern asia dangerous to the peace of the whole world? why, finally, to press prince bã¼low's logic home, if members of different nationalities cannot live side by side without playing the game of hammer and anvil together, are not the english spending the whole of their energy fighting the welsh, the scotch, and the irish in the united kingdom, the dutch in south africa, and the french in canada, not to speak of the jews in every part of the british empire? the fact is that the statesmen of germany and austria-hungary, and of russia also, have missed the chief lesson of recent history and politics: that in the growing complexity of world-relations power is falling more and more, of necessity, into the hands of states which are not nations but commonwealths of nations, states composed, like the british empire and the united states, of a variety of nationalities and "cultures," living peacefully, each with its own institutions, under a single law and a single central government. but the time is not ripe yet for a commonwealth of europe. the peoples of europe have yet to win their liberties before they can be free to dream of a united states of europe. so long as the emperors and statesmen of central europe believe, like the mahomedans of old, that propaganda can be imposed by the sword, they can only be met by the sword, and controlled by the sword. not till they have been conquered and rendered harmless, or displaced by the better mind of the peoples whom they have indoctrinated, can europe proceed along the natural course of her development. so far we have been concerned--as we shall be concerned throughout this book--with the _political_ causes underlying the war. but it would not be right to ignore the fact that there are other deeper causes, unconnected with the actions of governments, for which we in this country are jointly responsible with the rest of the civilised world. this war is not simply a conflict between governments and nations for the attainment of certain political ends, freedom and nationality on the one side and conquest and tyranny on the other. it is also a great outburst of pent-up feeling, breaking like lava through the thin crust of european civilisation. on the _political_ side, as we have said just now, the war reveals the fact that civilisation is still incomplete and ill-organised. but on the _moral_ side it reveals the fact that modern society has broken down, that the forces and passions that divide and embitter mankind have proved stronger, at the moment of strain, than those which bind them together in fellowship and co-operation. "what we are suffering from," says one of the greatest of living democrats,[1] "is something far more widespread than the german empire. is it not the case that what we are in face of is nothing less than the breakdown in a certain idea and hope of civilisation, which was associated with the liberal and industrial movement of the last century? there was to be an inevitable and glorious progress of humanity of which science, commerce, and education were to be the main instruments, and which was to be crowned with a universal peace. older prophets like thomas carlyle expressed their contempt for the shallowness of this prevailing ideal, and during this century we have been becoming more and more doubtful of its value. but we are now witnessing its downfall. science, commerce, and education have done, and can do, much for us. but they cannot expel the human spirit from human nature. what is that? at bottom, love of self, self-interest, selfishness individual and corporate. as a theory, the philosophy of selfishness has often been exposed. but, to an extent that is difficult to exaggerate, it has been the motive, acknowledged and relied upon without shame or apology in commerce, in politics and in practical life. our civilisation has been based on selfishness, our commerce on competition and the unrestricted love of wealth, our education on the motive of self-advancement. and science and knowledge, made the instrument of selfishness and competition, have armed man against man, class against class, and nation against nation, with tenfold the power of destruction which belonged to a less educated and highly organised age." [footnote 1: _the war and the church_, by charles gore (oxford, mowbray, 1914).] the civilised world has been shocked during the past months at the spectacle of the open adoption by a great power of this philosophy of selfishness. men had not realised that the methods and principles underlying so much of our commercial and industrial life could be transferred so completely to the field of politics or so ruthlessly pressed home by military force. but it is well for us to remember that it is not prussia, even in the modern world, who invented the theory of blood and iron or the philosophy of force. the iron law of wages is a generation older than bismarck: and "business is business" can be no less odious a watchword than "war is war." treitschke and nietzsche may have furnished prussian ambitions with congenial ammunition; but bentham with his purely selfish interpretation of human nature and marx with his doctrine of the class-struggle--the high priest of individualism and the high priest of socialism--cannot be acquitted of a similar charge. if the appeal has been made in a less crude and brutal form, and if the instrument of domination has been commercial and industrial rather than military, it is because militarism is not the besetting sin of the english-speaking peoples. let us beware, therefore, at this moment, of anything savouring of self-righteousness. "some of us," says bishop gore, "see the chief security" against this disease which has infected our civilisation "in the progress of democracy--the government of the people really by the people and for the people. i am one of those who believe this and desire to serve towards the realising of this end. but the answer does not satisfy me. i do not know what evils we might find arising from a world of materialistic democracies. but i am sure we shall not banish the evil spirits which destroy human lives and nations and civilisations by any mere change in the methods of government. nothing can save civilisation except a new spirit in the nations." the task before europe, then, is a double one--a task of development and construction in the region of politics, and of purification and conversion in the region of the spirit. "for the finer spirits of europe," says the great french writer, romain rolland, who is none the less a patriot because he is also a lover of germany, "there are two dwelling-places: our earthly fatherland, and that other, the city of god. of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders. to the one let us give our lives and our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor fatherland, nor aught that we love has power over the spirit which is the light. it is our duty to rise above tempests and thrust aside the clouds which threaten to obscure it; to build higher and stronger, dominating the injustice and hatred of nations, the walls of that city wherein the souls, of the whole world may assemble."[1] [footnote 1: article in the _journal de genã¨ve_, translated in the _cambridge magazine_ and reprinted in _public opinion_, nov. 27, 1914. those who hold that christianity and war are incompatible would seem to be committed to a monastic and passively anarchist view of life, inconsistent with membership in a political society. but whatever the relation between christianity and war, there can be no question of the relation between christianity and _hatred_. hatred (which is not the same thing as moral indignation) is a poison which corrodes and embitters, and so degrades, and thereby weakens, the national spirit. it is a pity that some of our most prominent newspaper-proprietors do not understand this.] internationalism as a political theory has broken down: for it was based on a false conception of the nature of government and of the obligations of citizenship. the true internationalism--a spirit of mutual understanding and fellowship between men and nations, to replace the suspicions, the competition, and the watchful selfishness of the past generation--is the moral task that lies before europe and america to-day. if great britain is to lead the way in promoting "a new spirit between the nations" she needs a new spirit also in the whole range of her corporate life. for what britain stands for in the world is, in the long run, what britain is, and, when thousands are dying for her, it is more than ever the duty of all of us to try to make her worthier of their devotion. chapter ii the national idea in europe, 1789-1914 europe, what of the night?- ask of heaven, and the sea, and my babes on the bosom of me, nations of mine, but ungrown. there is one who shall surely requite all that endure or that err: she can answer alone: ask not of me, but of her. liberty, what of the night?- i feel not the red rains fall, hear not the tempest at all, nor thunder in heaven any more. all the distance is white with the soundless feet of the sun. night, with the woes that it wore, night is over and done. a.c. swinburne, _a watch in the night._ sixty-two years ago reaction reigned supreme in europe after the great national and social uprisings of 1848, and england looked on passively while the hopes of freedom were crushed in bohemia, hungary, and italy. mazzini, the noblest of italian patriots, the most prophetic soul among nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of profound despair to publish an essay, entitled _europe, its condition and prospects_, which, burning with the passion of an inextinguishable faith, pierced the veil of the future and foreshadowed in an almost miraculous fashion the situation which faces europe and england to-day. nothing printed in this country since the war broke out expresses more clearly the real issues of the mighty conflict and the part our country is called to play in it than the following words, in reference to the unredeemed peoples of europe, uttered by the great italian more than half a century ago: "they struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all. they speak the same language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the great pyramid of history. it is something moral which they are seeking; and this moral something is in fact, even politically speaking, the most important question in the present state of things. it is the organisation of the european task. in principle, nationality ought to be to humanity that which division of labour is in a workshop--the recognised symbol of association; the assertion of the individuality of a human group called by its geographical position, its traditions, and its language, to fulfill a special function in the european work of civilisation. "the map of europe has to be re-made. this is the key to the present movement; herein lies its initiative. before acting, the instrument for action must be organised; before building, the ground must be one's own. the social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this reorganisation of europe is effected; before the peoples are free to interrogate themselves, to express their vocation, and to assure its accomplishment by an alliance capable of substituting itself for the absolute league which now reigns supreme. "if england persist in maintaining a neutral, passive, selfish part, she will have to expiate it. a european transformation is inevitable. when it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples will remember that england stood by, an inert, immovable, sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts. the nation must rouse herself and shake off the torpor of her government. she must learn that we have arrived at one of those supreme moments in which one world is destroyed and another is to be created; in which, for the sake of others and for her own, it is necessary to adopt a new policy." england to-day has adopted this "new policy"; she has responded to mazzini's appeal by stepping into the arena and declaring herself ready to take part in "the organisation of the european task"; her sons are dying on the continent in defence of the principle of nationality, in support of the rights of other nations to that liberty which her insular position has secured for herself for many centuries, the liberty "to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea." she is fighting, moreover, not only on behalf of the threatened freedom of belgium, france, and serbia, on behalf of the unborn freedom of poland, alsace-lorraine, and the subject races of the austro-hungarian and ottoman empires, but also on her own behalf. it is not merely that she recognises that her empire is in danger; she recognises also that she is unable to work out her own salvation, unable to carry on her industrial development and her schemes for the betterment of her people in security, while the continent at her doors remains in constant peril of change. "the social idea cannot be realised under any form whatsoever before this reorganisation of europe is effected." â§1. _nation and nationality_.--the social idea and the national idea have been for a century past the twin pivots of european development. the political structure of the continent has oscillated this way and that according as these ideas have in turn assumed ascendancy over men's minds; and when, as in 1848, both claimed attention at the same time, the whole edifice was shaken to its very foundations. in england, on the other hand, it is the social idea alone which has been a motive force in the nineteenth century, although she has always had to reckon with the national idea across the st. george's channel. owing to her fortunate geographical situation, she acquired national unity many centuries ago and has always been able to defend it successfully against the danger of external aggression. the national idea, therefore, has long ceased to be an aspiration, and consequently a revolutionary force, among us; it has been realised in actual fact, we have grown as accustomed to it and as unconscious of it as of the air we breathe. thus englishmen, as their attitude towards ireland has shown, find it difficult to understand exactly what the principle of nationality means to those who have never possessed national freedom or are in constant danger of losing it. this is perhaps especially true of the english working classes, who grew to the full stature of political consciousness some fifty years after the last serious threat to our national existence was made by napoleon, and upon whom the burden of the social idea presses with peculiar weight. and yet, unless the significance of the principle of nationality and the part which it has played in the history of modern europe be realised, it is impossible to enter fully into the true meaning of the present tremendous conflict. what then is nationality? the question is more difficult to answer than appears at first sight. a nationality is not quite the same thing as a nation. for example, there is a german nation, ruled by the kaiser wilhelm ii., but this does not include twelve million people of german nationality who are the subjects of the emperor of austria; or again, there is the swiss nation, which is made up of no less than three distinct nationalities. still less are the terms state and nationality synonymous; for, if they were, then the natives of india might claim to be of the same nationality as ourselves, or, _vice versa_, the united states would be regarded as part of the british empire because a large proportion of their inhabitants happen to be of british descent. the word "race" brings us somewhat nearer to the point, but even this will not satisfy us when we remember that the slavonic race, for example, consists of a large number of nationalities, such as the russians, the poles, the czechs, the serbs, the montenegrins, etc., or that the english (as distinguished from the other three nations of the united kingdom) belong to the same teutonic race as the germans. nevertheless, a belief, whether well grounded or not, in a common racial origin is one of the root principles of the idea of nationality. "what is a nation?" the great magyar nationalist, kossuth, asked a serb representative at the hungarian diet of 1848. the reply was: "a race which possesses its own language, customs, and culture, and enough self-consciousness to preserve them." "a nation must also have its own government," objected kossuth. "we do not go so far," explained his interlocutor; "one nation can live under several different governments, and again several nations can form a single state."[1] both the magyar and the serb wore right, though the latter was speaking of "nationality" and the former of "nation." the conversation is in fact instructive in more ways than one. it would be difficult to find a better definition of _nationality_ than that given by the serb speaker. a common language, a common culture, and common customs: these are the outward and visible signs which make a people conscious of its common race, which make it, in other words, a nationality. [footnote 1: r.w. seton-watson, _the southern slav question_, p. 46.] the element of "consciousness" is all-important. there are, for example, members of the finnish race scattered all over northern russia, but they evince no consciousness of any kind that they are allied to the nationality which inhabits the country of finland. again, it is only within recent years that the serbs and the croats in the south-west corner of the austro-hungarian empire have begun to realise that the only things which divide them one from the other are a difference of religion and a difference of alphabet; and now that the realisation of this fact has spread from the study to the market-place, we see the formation of a new nationality, that of the serbo-croats. the researches of historians and other learned men have done an immense deal to stimulate the development of nationalities during the past century, but they are unable of themselves to create them. the fact of kinship is not enough; community of language, customs, and culture is not even enough; to be a real nationality a people must be conscious of all these things, and not merely conscious, but sufficiently conscious to preserve them and, if need be, to die for them. now the interesting thing for us about a nationality is that it is always striving to become a _nation_. a nation, as we have seen, may be composed of several nationalities; but such cases are rare, and are due to peculiar geographical conditions, as for example in switzerland and great britain, or to external pressure, as in belgium, which have as it were welded together the different racial elements into a single whole. in general, therefore, a nation is simply a nationality which has acquired self-government; it is nationality _plus_ state. "ireland a nation," the warcry of the irish nationalist party, is a claim, not a statement of fact; ireland will become a nation when its desire for self-government is satisfied. the case is instructive because it shows that it is not necessary for a nationality to become a _sovereign_ state in order to be in the full sense of the word a nation. it is perfectly possible, as our serb remarked, for several nations to form a single sovereign state; but as a general rule all such nations will be allowed to manage their own internal affairs. the self-governing dominions of the british empire and the magyars of hungary are nations, though they are subordinate to their respective imperial governments in questions of peace and war, treaty obligations, etc. the real test of national existence is ultimately a sentimental one. does the nationality inhabiting a given country regard the government under which it lives as a true expression of its peculiar genius and will? does the state, of which it forms a part, exist by its consent, or has it been imposed upon it by some alien authority or nationality? is it a territorial unity, or has it been split up into sections by artificial frontiers? all these questions must be answered before we can say of any nationality that it is also a nation. the "national idea," therefore, which has been one of the chief factors in modern history, is essentially an idea of development. its root is the conception of nationality, that is of a people consciously united by race, language, and culture; and from this springs the larger conception of nationhood, that is of a nationality possessing its own political institutions, governed by its own consent, and co-extensive with its natural boundaries. as we shall see later, political development does not always stop at the nation-state. further growth, however, is extra-national in character; it may either take the parasitical form of one nation imposing its will and its "culture" upon other nations, or it may assume the proportions of that highest type of polity yet known to mankind, a commonwealth of nations freely associating together within the confines of a single sovereign state.[1] [footnote 1: see chapter ix. for further treatment of this.] â§2. _the birth of nationalism: poland and the french revolution_.--with these general principles in mind let us now consider the national idea at work in the nineteenth century. nations, in the sense just defined, have of course long existed in europe. england, scotland, and switzerland are nations whose life-histories date right back to the middle ages. joan of are was a nationalist, and france has been a nation since the end of the hundred years' war in 1453. spain became a nation a few years later by the expulsion of the moors and the union of castille and aragon under ferdinand and isabella. holland, again, acquired her national freedom in her great struggle against spain in the sixteenth century. but it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that nationalism became a real force in europe, an idea for which men died and in whose name monarchies were overthrown. "in the old european system," writes lord acton, "the rights of nationalities were neither recognised by governments nor asserted by the people. the interest of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the frontiers, and the administration was conducted generally without any reference to popular desires. where all liberties were suppressed, the claims of national independence were necessarily ignored, and a princess, in the words of fã©nelon, carried a monarchy in her wedding portion."[1] the state was, in short, regarded as a purely territorial affair; it was the property, the _landed_ property, of the monarch, who in his capacity of owner controlled the destinies of the people who happened to live upon that territory. conquest or marriage might unite in the hands of a single monarch the most diverse peoples and countries, the notorious case of the kind being that of the emperor charles v., who in the sixteenth century managed to hold sway over germany, spain, the netherlands, naples, and a large part of the new world. [footnote 1: _history of freedom_, p. 273.] the golden age of the dynastic principle was, however, the eighteenth century, and the long and tedious wars of that period were nearly all occasioned by the aggrandisement of some royal house. the idea of a nation as a living organism, as something more than a collection of people dwelling in the same country, speaking the same language and obeying the same ruler, had not yet dawned upon the world. apart from england, scotland, switzerland, and holland, no european nation had really become conscious of its personality as distinct from that of its hereditary monarch. and as we have seen, until nationality becomes keenly self-conscious, the national idea remains unborn. only some great internal cataclysm or an overwhelming disaster inflicted by a foreign power could evoke this consciousness in a nation; and fate ordained that the two methods should be tried simultaneously at opposite ends of europe. france, "standing on the top of golden hours," and poland, crushed, dismembered, downtrodden--it would be difficult to say which of these contributed the more to the great national awakening in europe. poland was the first and greatest martyr of the nationalist faith. by its constitution, which was that of an oligarchical republic with an elective king, poland was placed beyond the pale of a europe ruled upon dynastic principles. its very existence was an insult to the accepted ideals of legitimacy and hereditary monarchy, and it was impossible for any particular house to acquire it in the honest way of marriage. this was particularly annoying to its immediate neighbours, prussia, russia, and austria, all of whom had grown into great powers while poland, torn by internal dissension, sank lower and lower in the political scale. it is significant that the earliest suggestion of partition came from frederick the great of prussia, who was obliged to take russia and austria into his counsels, as he knew that they would never allow him to annex the whole country himself. indeed, from first to last, the story of the polish partitions is a good example of prussian _realpolitik_. at length, after much hesitation on the part of russia and austria, the powers agreed among themselves in 1772 to what is known as the first partition, whereby the three monarchs enriched their respective territories by peeling, as it were, the unfortunate republic on all its frontiers. perhaps the most remarkable fact about the whole disgraceful concern is that it did not appear in the least disgraceful, either morally or politically, to the public opinion of the age. meanwhile poland by a heroic effort converted herself in self-defence into a hereditary constitutional monarchy on the model of england. prussia, playing the part of judas, pretended to welcome these reforms at first and lent the poles its encouragement; but when russia took up arms on behalf of the polish reactionary party, and the country turned to prussia to aid it in defending the constitution, the treacherous frederick william not only declined to do so, but began to send his troops to occupy polish territory. the upshot was the further dismemberment of poland known as the second partition (1793). "no sophistry in the world," writes mr. nisbet bain, "can extenuate the villainy of the second partition. the theft of territory is its least offensive feature. it is the forcible suppression of a national movement of reform, the hurling back into the abyss of anarchy and corruption of a people who, by incredible efforts and sacrifices, had struggled back to liberty and order, which makes this great political crime so wholly infamous. yet here again the methods of the russian empress were less vile than those of the prussian king. catherine openly took the risk of a bandit who attacks an enemy against whom he has a grudge; frederick william ii. came up, when the fight was over, to help pillage a victim whom he had sworn to defend."[1] after this the end came rapidly. the heroic patriot kosciuszko headed a popular rising against russia; but after a remarkable resistance to the combined forces of the three partitioning powers, the insurrection was finally suppressed in torrents of blood. the crowned bandits nearly quarrelled between themselves over the booty, but eventually in 1795 austria, russia, and prussia signed a treaty which left nothing of poland on the map at all. [footnote 1: _slavonic europe_, p. 404.] the effect upon the subsequent history of the world of this crime against humanity, carried out by the three most absolute dynasties in europe, was incalculable. "the annihilation of the polish nationality has probably done more to endanger the monarchies of europe than any one political act accomplished since the monarchies of europe were first founded. to trace its effects in all their various ramifications would lead us a long way. it is sufficient here to notice that the destruction of poland, like the destruction of jerusalem, produced a "dispersion," and that as the jews of the dispersion have discharged a peculiar office in the economy of the world as usurers and financiers, so, too, have the poles of the dispersion as agents and vectors of revolution. in all the republican movements of the continent the poles have taken a leading part. they are to be found in the saxon riots of '48; in the berlin barricades; in the struggle for the republic in baden; in the italian and hungarian wars of liberation; in the chartist movement, and in the french commune. homeless and fearless, schooled in war and made reckless by calamity, they have been the nerve of revolution wherever they have been scattered by the winds of misfortune."[1] and what mr. fisher, in this passage, puts in a concrete fashion, lord acton has expressed with equal emphasis, if more abstractly. "this famous measure," he writes of the final partition, "the most revolutionary act of the old absolutism, awakened the theory of nationality in europe, converting a dormant right into an aspiration, and a sentiment into a political claim. 'no wise or honest man,' wrote edmund burke, 'can approve of that partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating great mischief from it to all countries at some future date.' thenceforward there was a nation demanding to be united in a state--a soul, as it were, wandering in search of a body in which to begin life over again; and for the first time a cry was heard that the arrangement of states was unjust--that their limits were unnatural, and that a whole people was deprived of its right to constitute an independent community. before that claim could be efficiently asserted against the overwhelming power of its opponents--before it gained energy, after the last partition, to overcome the influence of long habits of submission, and of the contempt which previous disorders had brought upon poland--the ancient european system was in ruins, and a new world was rising in its place."[2] [footnote 1: _the republican tradition in europe_, pp. 212-213.] [footnote 2: _history of freedom_, p. 276.] [illustration: _present state boundaries_--the partition of poland.] the last sentence reminds us that, while in the east the dynastic principle was displaying with cynical indifference its true character to the world, events were occurring in the west which threatened to shake its very foundations. if poland was the first martyr of the national idea, revolutionary france was its first evangelist, for the new gospel which france preached was the gospel of liberty, and nationalism is an extension, a variant of this gospel. in france itself, at the time of the revolution, the doctrine of liberty was interpreted in its individual and constitutional sense, which involved the abolition of class privileges and of political institutions that conflicted with or did not adequately express what rousseau called the "general will." there was no national question to be settled in france, and she could therefore devote herself exclusively to the development of the "social idea," the establishment of democratic government, the foundation of a republic, and in general the determination of what should be the relations between the individual and the state, a question which in course of time led on to the problem of socialism. but indirectly the french revolution did an enormous deal to promote the national idea in europe. in the first place, the execution of louis xvi. and the proclamation of the republic administered a blow to the theory of legitimacy upon which the dynastic principle rested, from which it never recovered. if the french nation could rise and abolish its native dynasty, was there not hope that some day the italian, hungarian, and polish nations might also rise and throw off the still more objectionable yoke of their foreign rulers? in the second place, the revolution in and for itself produced a tremendous effect upon the rest of europe, and in every country men awoke from the long sleep of feudalism to the desire of sweeping away antiquated constitutions and rebuilding them upon a democratic basis. it is, however, sufficient to glance at a map of europe at the end of the eighteenth century to see why these dreams could not be at once realised. of what real value were ideals of democratic reform to the peoples dwelling in italy, germany, or the austrian empire? look, for example, at germany, split up like a jig-saw puzzle into over three hundred different states, each with its petty prince or grand-duke. her poets and philosophers might sing of liberty and dream utopian dreams, and here and there an experiment in popular government might be tried by some princeling who had caught the liberal fashion; but her political fabric, together with the rivalry between prussia and austria, kept her disunited and strangled all real hopes of reform. in short, the first and most crying need of europe was not the abolition of antiquated constitutions, but the redrawing of anomalous frontiers. the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people proclaimed in france presupposed the doctrine of the solidarity of the people proclaimed by the dismembered nations of europe. france could set its house in order; but belgium, germany, italy, bohemia, hungary, etc., had as yet no house of their own. the house had to be built before it could be furnished on the latest democratic lines; and before it could be even built, the ground had to be wrested from the hands of absentee landlords or cleared of the little dynastic state-shanties which cumbered it. the polish nationalists became the backbone of the republican movement in europe; the french republicans proclaimed the independence of nations as one of their cardinal principles. thus the social idea and the national idea were originally intimately connected. they were the twin children of poland and the french revolution, and in their cradle it was hard to tell them apart, so strongly were the features of each stamped with the likeness of liberty. for a time it seemed that the new ideas would carry all before them. even before france had herself abolished the monarchy, belgium threw off the austrian rule and declared for a republic. and when in 1792 france found herself at war with the austrian and prussian governments, and in the following year with practically all the governments of europe, her victorious armies were everywhere greeted as saviours by the subject peoples. but the old dynastic states proved to be of tougher material than was expected. moreover, it was not long before france found herself in conflict with the national aspirations which she had called into existence. the various republics which france set up all over europe soon discovered that they were nothing but tributary states of their "deliverer"; and when napoleon began his career of undisguised conquest, he unwittingly did even more than the revolution to strengthen the national idea in europe, for the nationalities had now become thoroughly hostile to france and fought in alliance with their old dynasties to throw off the yoke of the hated foreign tyrant. this strange change in france from liberator to despot is worthy of some attention. it is not good for a nation, any more than for an individual, to be too successful. moreover, the doctrine of liberty, whether in the individualist or nationalist sense, if carried to extreme, is liable to abuse. all to-day are aware that sheer individualism in the economic sphere is an almost unmitigated evil; sheer individualism in the political sphere and sheer nationalism are equally evil. france at the beginning of last century was suffering from too much success, too much political liberty, too much nationalism. having overthrown the old _rã©gime_ within the state quickly and easily, she began to think she could do without the state altogether: the result was anarchy, for which the only remedy is despotism. having, again, suddenly become conscious of her power and mission as a nation, she began to send her armies across her frontiers to carry the gospel of her peculiar "culture" to other and more benighted nations: the result was occupation, which degenerated into conquest. despotism within and conquest without, both being summed up in the one word napoleon--such was the fate of the mother of liberty, who had loved her child "not wisely but too well." yet napoleonism was a very necessary stage in the development of modern europe. it was the tramp of the invader which did more than anything else to awake sleeping nationalism all over the continent; it was before the roar of napoleon's cannon that the artificial boundaries which had divided peoples crumbled to dust. napoleon cleared the ground, and even did something toward laying the foundations of the great modern nation-states, germany and italy. what napoleon did for europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, germany, the napoleon-state among nations to-day, is doing for europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. â§3. _the congress of vienna and the international idea_.--the overthrow of napoleon was due in a large measure to the spirit of nationalism which his conquests had evoked against him among the various peoples of europe; the rewards of that overthrow, however, were reaped not by the peoples, but by the dynasties and state-systems of the old _rã©gime_. the congress of the powers which met at vienna in 1814 to resettle the map of europe, after the upheavals and wars of the previous twenty-five years, was a terrible disappointment; and we, who are now hopefully looking forward to a similar congress at the end of the present war, cannot do better than study the great failure of 1814, and take warning from it. the phrases which heralded the approaching congress were curiously and disquietingly similar to those on the lips of our public men and journalists to-day when they speak of the "settlement" before us. "the parliament of man, the federation of the world," which had become a remote dream when tennyson first coined the expression in 1842, seemed in 1814 on the eve of accomplishment. the work of the congress was to be no less than "the reconstruction of the moral order," "the regeneration of the political system of europe," the establishment of "an enduring peace founded on a just redistribution of political forces," the institution of an effective and a permanent international tribunal, the encouragement of the growth of representative institutions, and, last but not least, an arrangement between the powers for a gradual and systematic disarmament. "it seemed," writes sir a.w. ward, "as if the states composing the european family, free once more to take counsel together on terms of independence, were also free to determine their own destinies."[1] the congress of vienna was to inaugurate a new era. such of these views, however, as pointed in a democratic or nationalistic direction represented the expectations of the peoples, not the intentions of the crowned heads and diplomatists who met at the austrian capital. among the members of the congress the only man who at first voiced these aspirations of the world at large was the russian tsar, alexander i., and such concessions to popular opinion as were made were due to what the english plenipotentiary, lord castlereagh, described as the "sublime mysticism and nonsense" of the emperor. [footnote 1: _cambridge modern history_, vol. ix. p. 577.] instead, therefore, of establishing a new era, the congress did its utmost to restore the old one. everything which had happened in europe since the outbreak of the french revolution was regarded as a bad dream, the principles of popular freedom and national liberty were completely ignored, and an attempt was made to rivet again on the limbs of europe the shackles of the antiquated frontiers which had been struck off by the hammer of napoleon. everywhere the "national idea" was trampled upon. germany and italy were put back again into the eighteenth century, austria's territory in the latter country being largely increased; norway was unwillingly yoked with sweden, and belgium with holland; switzerland was made to surrender her democratic constitution and to return to the aristocratic cantonal system of the past; and, lastly, poland remained dismembered. the allies, while fighting napoleon, had issued the following proclamation to the world, couched in language almost identical with that used by the allies who are now fighting germany: "nations will henceforth respect their mutual independence; no political edifices shall henceforth be erected on the ruins of formerly independent states; the object of the war, and of the peace, is to secure the rights, the freedom, and the independence of all nations."[1] the congress of vienna failed to redeem these pledges: firstly, because its members had not grasped the principle of nationality, and used "nation" and "state" as if they were synonymous terms; secondly, because they did not represent the peoples whose destinies they took it upon them to determine, and made no attempt whatever to consult the views of the various masses of population which they parcelled out among themselves like so much butter. they honestly tried to lay the foundations of a permanent peace; but their method of doing so was not to satisfy the natural aspirations of the european nations and so leave them nothing to fight about, but to establish such an exact equipoise among the great states, by a nice distribution of the aforesaid butter in their respective scales, that they would be afraid to go to war with each other, lest they might upset the so-called "balance of power." the "settlement" of 1814, therefore, left a heritage of future trouble behind it which has kept europe disturbed throughout the nineteenth century, and is directly responsible for the present war. the real settlement is yet to come; and if we of this generation are to make it a final one we must avoid the errors committed by the congress of a hundred years ago. [footnote 1: alison phillips, _modern europe_, p. 8.] yet, when all is said, the congress of vienna represents an important milestone along the road of progress. it is a great precedent. as a disillusioned contemporary admitted, it "prepared the world for a more complete political structure; if ever the powers should meet again to establish a political system by which wars of conquest would be rendered impossible and the rights of all guaranteed, the congress of vienna, as a preparatory assembly, will not have been without use."[1] there is a prophetic ring about this, very welcome to us of the twentieth century. we cannot think altogether unkindly of our great-grandfathers' ill-judged attempt to avert the calamity which has now broken over us. [footnote 1: friedrich von gentz, quoted in _camb. mod. hist._ vol. x. p. 2.] nor was the congress altogether barren of positive result; for it gave birth to that conception of a "confederation of europe," which, though never realised, has been one of the guiding ideas of nineteenth-century politics. as this solution of the world's problems is likely to be urged upon us with great insistency at the conclusion of the present war, it will be well to look a little more closely into it and to see why it failed to secure the allegiance of europe a hundred years ago. the congress had met at vienna and settled all outstanding questions, to the satisfaction of its members; why should it not meet periodically, and constitute itself a supreme international tribunal? the question had only to be asked to receive the approbation of all concerned. the dreamer, alexander i., at once saw the destinies of the world entrusted to a holy alliance, which would rule according to "the sacred principles of the christian religion"; and even the more practical mind of castlereagh conceived that a council of the great powers, "endowed with the efficiency and almost the simplicity of a single state," was a possibility. yet, it is quite clear to-day that, at that time and under those conditions, the establishment of a permanent and effective confederation of europe would have proved disastrous to the world. the congress of vienna was followed by further congresses in 1818, 1819, 1820, and 1822; and each succeeding conference revealed to europe more clearly the true character of the new authority into whose hands the power was slipping. certain very dangerous tendencies became, for example, apparent. the first conference had assembled to confer the blessings of order upon a continent ravaged by the revolutionary and napoleonic wars of france. hence the confederation of europe started life as a kind of anti-jacobin society, whose main business it was to suppress revolution, whether it took the nationalistic or democratic form. furthermore, the interference with the internal affairs of france in 1814 and 1815 tended to establish a precedent for interference with the internal affairs of any country. the holy alliance, therefore, soon assumed the character of a "trust" of absolute monarchs, determined to aid each other when threatened by risings or agitations among their peoples, and to crush liberal aspirations wherever they were to be found in other parts of europe. the popular desire for peace was exploited in the interests of unpopular government; settlement by conference in regard to international matters was extended to settlement by a cabal of irresponsible crowned heads in regard to internal constitutional and national questions; a clique of despots threatened the liberties of the world and proposed to back up their decisions by using their armies as police. one government, however, even in that period of reaction, refused to lend its countenance to such proceedings. england at first protested and at length took up an attitude of complete opposition, and it is due to her that the confederation never became really effective. she had to choose between peace and liberty, and she chose the latter.[1] [footnote 1: see alison phillips, _the confederation of europe_, together with his chapter on "the congresses, 1815-1822" in vol. x. of the _cambridge modern history_. the whole subject of the concert of europe, which can only be touched upon here, is of great importance. it is again referred to in chap. viii.; see pp. 374 ff.] the truth is that there were three ideas in the air at the beginning of the nineteenth century, all excellent in themselves, but quite impossible to be realised at one and the same period. two of these, the social or democratic idea and the national idea, were made, as we have seen, living issues by the french revolution; the third, which may be called the international idea, was raised by the congress of vienna. it was an old idea, of course, for it had been embodied in that shadowy "holy roman empire" which was the medieval dream of rome the great; but its form was new, and now for the first time it became a dream of the future rather than a dream of the past. what men did not see then, and still for the most part fail to see, is that the human race can only work out these three ideas properly in a certain order. democracy and nationhood may, as in the case of italy, be acquired by a people at the same moment; but without the realisation of the national idea it is hardly possible to conceive of democratic government for any country. the national idea, therefore, precedes the social idea, as mazzini rightly insists. still more must it precede the international idea. by this it is not meant that every nation in the world must have grown to self-consciousness and have possessed itself of freedom before we come within sight of a world-concert and world-peace. but certainly in europe itself the national question had to be settled before there could be any chance of establishing an international tribunal. it is equally certain that the social idea also claims preference of the international idea. the great danger of setting up "an effective machine for regulating the affairs of europe" is that the machine may get into the wrong hands. the holy alliance is a warning, which should not be forgotten. it became an obstruction to progress, a strait-waistcoat which threatened to strangle the liberties of europe, because it got into the hands of a "vested interest," the dynastic interest, which was hostile both to nationalism and democracy. since 1814, however, there have been great strides along the paths both of democracy and of nationalism. and if germany loses this war, the congress of the settlement will meet in a very different atmosphere from that in which its predecessor assembled at vienna. it will be a conference of powers victorious over reaction not revolution, and pledged to the support of a liberal programme. and yet if such a conference became a permanent feature of european life, if, in other words, a new attempt were made to set up an international tribunal, it might easily become as dangerous to the liberties of the people as ever was the holy alliance. the dynastic principle it is to be hoped, will never again threaten the world's peace or progress; but there are other vested interests besides the dynastic one. during the nineteenth century economic development has given an enormous impetus to international movements and cosmopolitanism generally. unfortunately political development, though great, has not by any means kept pace with the economic; in other words, it is still possible in most countries, and in some more possible than in others, for a small oligarchy to gain control of the political machine. again, if there is one thing in the world more international than labour, it is capital; and, as mr. norman angell has shown, it is the capitalist who is hardest hit by international war and who stands to gain most from its abolition. european capital is almost certain to have a large say in the settlement, and considerable influence in the counsels of any new concert of europe that might come into existence. now suppose--a not impossible contingency--that a ring of capitalists gained complete control of some politically backward country like russia, and suppose a grave crisis arose in the labour world in england or france, what would be easier than for arrangements to be made at the international conference for the transference of russian troops to the west, "to preserve the sacred rights of property and the peace of europe"? this may seem a somewhat fantastic supposition, yet it was precisely in this way and on grounds like these that the holy alliance interfered with the internal affairs of european countries during the second and third decade of last century, and even as late as 1849 we have russia, still faithful to the principles of thirty years before, coming to the assistance of austria in her suppression of the liberties of hungary. it was a healthy instinct in the english people that led them to break up the concert of europe in 1818--"a system which not only threatened the liberties of others, but might, in the language of the orators of the opposition, in time present the spectacle of cossacks encamped in hyde park to overawe the house of commons";[1] and, if the prevailing "internationalism" has not quite blinded their eyes to-day, they will scrutinise with the greatest possible care any new proposals to re-erect the concert of europe as a permanent and authoritative tribunal. what the world needs at present is more nationalism and more democracy. and it is only after these two great nineteenth-century movements have worked themselves out to the full, at least on the continent of europe, that mankind will be able safely to make experiments towards the realisation of the third and crowning principle, the principle of a european commonwealth. [footnote 1: _cambridge modern history_, vol. x. p. 16.] [illustration: europe in 1815] the national problems which the congress of vienna bequeathed to posterity may be seen at a glance by looking at a political map of europe in 1815. the entire centre of the continent from ostend to palermo, and from kã¶nigsberg to constantinople, was left a political chaos. and it is not too much to say that the history of europe from 1814 to 1914 is the history of the settlement of this vast area. the only state whose frontiers have not altered during this period is switzerland, and even that country seized the opportunity which a disturbed europe offered her in 1848, to substitute a unified federal system for the constitution imposed upon her in 1815. the rest of the area falls into six sections: (1) the kingdom of the netherlands, containing the two distinct and often antagonistic nations, belgium and holland; (2) the german nationality split up into no less than thirty-eight[2] sovereign states, loosely held together in a "confederation"; (3) the italian nationality, distributed under eight independent governments, including four duchies, two kingdoms, the papal states, and the provinces under austrian rule; (4) the polish nationality, divided up between the three powers, prussia, russia, and austria; (5) the austrian empire, comprising a dozen distinct nationalities; and (6) the ottoman empire, in which at least five different christian peoples groaned beneath the sway of the mohammedan turk. thus, if we may regard the inhabitants of the southern netherland provinces, for the moment, as of one nationality, there were roughly ten great nationalities, the germans, the italians, the belgians, the poles, the bohemians, the hungarians, the southern slavs, the rumanians, the bulgarians, and the greeks, all left with national aspirations unsatisfied, all hampered by state frontiers which had no correspondence with their natural boundaries. can we wonder that there have been wars in the nineteenth century? should we not rather wonder that those wars have not been greater and more numerous? for the congress of the powers in 1814 having failed to give the nationalities what they wanted, nothing remained for them but to seize it for themselves. the only alternative to settlement by conference is "blood and iron," and it is with "blood and iron" that nearly every nationality which has attained nationhood in the last hundred years has cemented the structure of its state. [footnote 2: napoleon had succeeded in reducing the number from 360 to 38.] it is not our purpose in the present chapter to deal with the whole of this vast area; the three eastern sections, poland, the austrian empire, and turkey, present special problems of their own, and therefore need special treatment. still less do we intend to write a history of the nineteenth century, or even to adhere to a chronological treatment. rather our object is to exemplify the principle of nationality by watching it at work in the three western sections of the central european area; to show how the national idea has been moulded in belgium, italy, and germany, by the various problems which the nationalities in these countries have had to face, and the forces which they have overcome; and, lastly, to indicate the part which an over-developed nationalism in germany has played in bringing about the war of 1914. â§4. _the national idea in belgium and the problem of small nations_.--the problem of the netherlands, which it will be convenient to deal with first, introduces us to an aspect of nationhood which we have hitherto not touched upon. "the chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one state," wrote sir john seeley, "are three,--common nationality, common religion, and common interest. these may act in various degrees of intensity, and they may also act singly or in combination."[1] in the low countries religion has up to the present been a stronger nation-making force than nationality. three nationalities, each with its own language, live there side by side,--the dutch, the flemings, and the walloons; but of these the dutch and the flemings are very closely allied racially, flemish being only a slight variant of the dutch language. it would therefore seem natural on the face of it that these two sections would amalgamate together, leaving the walloons to attach themselves to their french cousins. that it is not so is due to the fact that the flemings and the dutch are adherents of two different and mutually hostile creeds, and that this distinction in their faith has been stamped upon the national memories by the whole history of their past. holland, the stronghold of calvinism, had at the end of the sixteenth century thrown off the yoke of catholic spain and asserted its independence, while the belgic provinces, after alva had cruelly crushed out such protestantism as existed among their peoples, returned to the faith and the allegiance of their fathers, and remained part of the hapsburg inheritance until the congress of vienna. thus the cleavage between protestantism and catholicism has made two nations out of one low german nationality in the netherlands, as it threatens to do with one celtic nationality in ireland. on the other hand, their common catholic faith has welded flemings and walloons together, making one nation out of two nationalities far more racially distinct than the flemings and the dutch, and this amalgamation has acquired a certain flavour of common nationality from the fact that the language of the upper classes is french. [footnote 1: _expansion of england_, p. 59.] it is obvious therefore that the attempt of the diplomatists in 1814 to ignore both historical and religious differences and to combine holland and belgium into a single state was doomed at the outset. fifteen years of constant friction were followed in 1830 by a rising in brussels against "dutch supremacy," which quickly spread to the rest of belgium. the great powers, recognising the inevitable, interfered on behalf of belgium, she was declared a neutral state, separate from holland, and took to herself a king in the person of leopold i. it is, however, highly significant that directly the dutch menace was removed from belgium the internal cleavage of nationality began to be felt. "in 1815 the differences between flemish and walloon were to a large extent concealed beneath a veneer of french culture and french manners. among the upper and commercial classes no language but french was ever spoken; and in their dislike of dutch supremacy the flemish belgians took a sort of patriotic pride in their borrowed speech, and for a time relegated their native tongue to the level of a rustic _patois_."[1] and yet, on the other hand, "the separation of belgium from holland had no sooner taken place than the newly aroused national spirit began to show itself among the flemish-speaking part of the people by a revival of interest in their ancestral teutonic language.... king william i.'s attempt to make dutch the official language had met with universal opposition; but as early as 1840 a demand was put forward for the use of the flemish tongue (which is closely akin to the dutch) on equal terms with french in the legislature, the law courts, and the army. as the years passed by, the movement gathered ever-increasing numbers of adherents, and the demand was repeated with growing insistence."[2] in 1897 the flemish party attained its ambition, and flemish became the official language of the country, side by side with french. the remarkable thing about this teutonising movement is that its mainstay has always been the extreme catholic party, which on religious grounds had been the most violent opponent of the attempted teutonification by the dutch. the opposition between flemish and walloon, indeed, became so marked in recent years that many feared that the belgian nation was about to split into two. germany has, however, postponed this national calamity for generations if not for ever, and the belgium which arises like a phoenix from the ashes of this third attempt at teutonification will, we cannot doubt, be a belgium indissolubly knit together by common memories of a glorious struggle for freedom and cemented by the blood and tears of the whole population. germany, like napoleon a century ago, will call many nations into being; the first and not the least of her creations is a transfigured and united belgium. [footnote 1: _cambridge modern history_, vol. x. p. 521.] [footnote 2: _ibid_. vol. xi. p. 693.] as a frontier state, a link between the latin and teutonic races to both of which her peoples are akin, belgium offers an extremely interesting study of the national idea at work. the peoples of germany and france, which have been perpetually at war with each other since the times of julius caesar, have almost always met on her fair and prosperous plains to fight their battles, since she is geographically the gateway from one to the other. neither could afford to let the other occupy her territory, and so she has won her independence as a state; both have constantly threatened her existence in times past, and so have forced upon her bi-lingual population that consciousness of common interests which if strong enough may become as firm a basis for national unity as actual community of nationality. it should be noticed further that it has become the practice in recent times to guarantee the neutrality of small frontier states like belgium which lie at the mercy of their greater neighbours, a practice intended not only to preserve the integrity of such states but also to prevent the frequent occurrence of war by closing, as it were, the military gate between the hostile countries.[1] it remains to be seen whether the violation of these principles by germany has the effect of strengthening them in the future, rather than the reverse. in any case, we may expect to see attempts to apply the same principles to other parts of europe. already the northern and southern ends of the frontier between germany and france are neutralised by the existence of belgium and switzerland; why, it may be asked, should not the whole frontier be treated in the same way by neutralising the disputed territory of alsace-lorraine? perhaps, too, a neutral poland would form a useful buffer between germany and russia. such neutralisation, it should be noted, need not necessarily carry with it independence. poland and alsace-lorraine might form part of russia and france respectively, and still be neutralised by a guarantee of other powers. a precedent exists for this in the terms of the cession of the ionian islands to greece in 1864, while savoy, though a province of france, is technically neutralised territory.[2] cases like these, however, it must be admitted, are extremely anomalous and could hardly stand the strain of a serious war. but, then, as recent experience has shown us, not even independent neutralised states are safe when all europe is aflame. the truth is that the whole conception of neutrality implies the existence of some power above and beyond the state, it may be simply a group of powerful states who are able to impose their will upon the rest of europe, it may be a general congress, like the congress of vienna. since the concert of europe disappeared and gradually gave place to the two opposing alliances of great powers, there has been no such authority in the civilised world. the results are before us in the ruined cities and starving population of violated belgium. [footnote 1: the neutralisation of sovereign states is very recent in origin. switzerland and luxembourg are the only other instances. the former was neutralised in 1815, the latter in 1867.] [footnote 2: _cambridge modern history_, xi. 642. see for the whole question of neutralised states, lawrence, _principles of international law_, â§â§ 246-248.] as independent states, therefore, small nations can only survive, in the long run, if their neutrality is permanently guaranteed by some international authority, which is itself permanently capable of enforcing its decrees upon recalcitrant states. sovereignty and independence, however, are not, as we have seen, essential to full nationhood, provided the nation possesses a certain amount of "home-rule" and regards the government under which it lives as a true expression of its genius and will. for example, from 1809 till the setting in of russian reaction in 1899, the finnish nation enjoyed all the privileges of complete nationhood except actual sovereignty. there is, therefore, a future for small nations, either as autonomous protã©gã©s of great powers, like russia, or as partners in some commonwealth of nations, like the british empire. but there is yet another consideration to be faced. why, it is asked, should we trouble ourselves about the preservation of small nationalities at all? "the state is power," and it is only the really powerful state, therefore, that can and ought to survive. there is something laughable in the idea of a small state; it is weakness trying to pose as strength. and as for nations which have lost their independence and have bowed to the yoke of the conqueror, their fate is incorporation. how can they hope or expect to retain their separate existence and their peculiar culture when they have surrendered the power upon which these privileges depend? "no nation can permit the jews to have a double nationality"; and the same applies to poles, finns, alsatians, irishmen, and belgians.[1] this is the point of view of bernhardi, treitschke, and the german government. this is the theory which is said to justify the practice of prussianisation, russianisation, magyarisation, and so on. it raises the whole question of the value and significance to civilisation of the existence of small nations. treitschke, of course, and his school are convinced that they possess neither value nor significance. in small states there is developed that beggarly frame of mind which judges the state by the taxes that it raises; there is completely lacking in small states the ability of the great state to be just; all real masterpieces of poetry and art arose upon the soil of great nationalities--such are a few of treitschke's dogmatic utterances on this subject.[2] but it is not merely the germans who think small beer of small nationalities. listen to sir john seeley: "the question whether large states or small states are best is not one which can be answered or ought to be discussed absolutely. we often hear abstract panegyrics upon the happiness of small states. but observe that a small state among small states is one thing, and a small state among large states quite another. nothing is more delightful to read of than the bright days of athens and florence, but those bright days lasted only so long as the states with which athens and florence had to do were states on a similar scale of magnitude. both states sank at once as soon as large country states of consolidated strength grew up in their neighbourhood. the lustre of athens grew pale as soon as macedonia arose, and charles v. speedily brought to an end the great days of florence. now if it be true that a larger type of state than any hitherto known is springing up in the world, is not this a serious consideration for those states which rise only to the old level of magnitude?"[3] the answer to which is, "yes, indeed, if the good old plan that he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can is to be the guiding principle in european politics of the future." but surely sir john seeley's argument, though undoubtedly telling as regards the sovereign independence of small _states_, tells for and not against the preservation of small _nations_. was it to the interest of the world as a whole that athens and florence should be crushed? is it not true, in spite of treitschke, that the great things of earth have been the product of small peoples? we owe our conceptions of law to a city called rome, our finest output of literature and art to small communities like athens, florence, holland, and elizabethan england, our religion to an insignificant people who inhabited a narrow strip of land in the eastern mediterranean. and small nations are as valuable to the world to-day as they have ever been. denmark has enriched our educational experience by the establishment of her famous high schools, which we can hardly imagine her doing had she been a province of prussia; norway has given us the greatest of modern dramatists, henrik ibsen; and belgium has not only produced maeterlinck and verhaeren, but is industrially the most highly developed country on the continent. the world cannot afford to do without her small peoples, who must be either independent or autonomous if they are to find adequate expression for their national genius, if they are to obtain proper conditions in which "to live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." can we guarantee to them this freedom? that is one of the great questions which this war will settle.[4] [footnote 1: see _selections from treitschke_, translated by a.l. gowans, pp. 17-20, 58-61.] [footnote 2: see _selections from treitschke_, pp. 17-20, 58-61.] [footnote 3: _the expansion of england_, p. 349. see also p. 1, "some countries, such as holland and sweden, might pardonably regard their history as in a manner wound up."] [footnote 4: see j.m. robertson, _introduction to english politics_, pp. 251-390; mr. h.a.l. fisher's pamphlet on _the value of small states_, in which, however, the distinction between _states_ and _nations_ is not made clear; and the article on "nationalism and liberalism" in _the round table_, december 1914.] â§5. _the national idea in italy: the ideal type_.--let us now turn to italy, a country which has in the past been as much of a european tom tiddler's ground as belgium, though for rather different reasons. italy is inhabited by a race speaking a common language and observing a common religion, she has historical memories as glorious as those of any other country in the world, and her natural boundaries are almost as well-defined as those of great britain; yet it was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that she managed to become a nation. the chief reason why she remained a "geographical expression" long after england, france, and spain had acquired national unity was the fact that she was until comparatively recent times an example of the less containing the greater. throughout the middle ages she was a suburb, not a country. rome was the capital of the world, italy only its environs. moreover, since all roads lead to rome, and the lord of rome was the master of europe, the roads romeward were worn by the tramp of the armies of all nations. thus italy was constantly subject to invasion, and the state-systems with which the congress of vienna resaddled her in 1814 were little more than relics of past military occupations of her soil by foreign armies. the main problem, therefore, in the making of modern italy was how to get rid of the heavy burden of the past, how to deal with rome and all that rome stood for. the problem would have been insoluble had not the prestige of rome declined considerably since the middle ages, a prestige which sprang from the fact that she was the capital of two empires--the spiritual empire of the papacy, and the secular empire founded by charles the great. the former had suffered from the reformation and the rise of the great protestant nations, the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it was abolished as an institution by napoleon. yet italy in 1814 still lay helpless and divided at the feet of rome. the pope held under his immediate sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to sea, and, as spiritual leader of half europe, he could at any moment summon to his assistance the catholic chivalry of the world. "the roman emperor" no longer existed, but "the austrian emperor" was another title for the same man, holding much the same territory; and the fact that he had renounced his vague suzerainty over the rest of europe did not prevent him exercising a very real suzerainty in italy, not merely over the eastern half of the lombard plain which definitely belonged to austria, but also over the other states of the peninsula which were, in theory at least, independent. the kingdom of the two sicilies in the south, the grand duchy of tuscany on the west, and the smaller duchies of parma, modena, and lucca were only stable in so far as austria bolstered up their corrupt and unpopular governments. even the papal states themselves, equally undermined with corruption and unpopularity, ultimately rested upon the same support. thus austria represented for italy all that evil past of which she wanted to be rid: the foreign yoke against which her newly conscious spirit of nationality revolted, the dynastic frontiers which were abhorrent to her desire for unity, the absolute _rã©gime_ under which her soul, after feeding on the principles of the french revolution, lay gagged and bound. the first step to be taken towards the creation of italy was the expulsion of the austrians. this fact in itself purified the struggle for italian freedom and raised italian nationalism to heights of nobility and heroism almost unparalleled in history. the nation had not merely to be unified, but _delivered_, and delivered from the oppression of that power which was the mainstay of reaction in europe. nor was it simply a question of national freedom; austria had declared war upon individual and constitutional liberty also, and used all her power to suppress them wherever they dared to raise their head. from beginning to end of her fight for national existence, italy never forgot that she was also fighting for individual liberty, or ceased to be conscious that the downfall of austria in italy would mean the downfall of reaction in europe. the banner which mazzini raised in 1831 had the words "unity and independence" on the one side and "liberty, equality, and humanity" on the other. italy was indeed greatly blessed, inasmuch as in seeking her own deliverance she could not help bursting the bands of brass which bound the whole world in captivity. it is not possible here to tell the glorious story of the resurrection of italy, or even to say anything of the three heroes at whose hands she received her freedom--cavour who gave her the service of his brain, mazzini who devoted to her the love and passion of his great heart, and garibaldi who fought for her with the strength of his own right arm. it must suffice to indicate very briefly the various stages in the development of her national idea, and the manner in which she finally realised it. liberal principles took root in italy at the time of the french revolution, and the first glimmerings of nationalism were due to napoleon, who bundled the princes out of the peninsula and even for a time exiled the pope himself. but it was constitutional rather than national freedom which seemed most urgent to the generation which succeeded napoleon. the carbonari, as the early italian revolutionaries were called, confined themselves almost entirely to the demand for a constitution in the various existing states, and though they eagerly desired the expulsion of austria, they did so not because she prevented italian unity, but because she forbade political reform. their risings, therefore, local and disunited in character, were bound to fail; the first fifteen years after the congress of vienna were occupied by a series of attempts to substitute a constitutional for an absolute _rã©gime_ in different parts of italy, attempts which austria crushed with a heavy hand. the period which followed, 1830-1848, belongs to mazzini and his "young italy" party. his task was to fire italy for the first time with the ideal of national unity and independence. the conception of unity was a difficult one for italians to grasp; all history seemed to fight against it. there were, for example, not only the traditions connected with rome to be reckoned with, but there was also the difference between north and south, and, perhaps most important of all, the local spirit of independence associated with the great cities like venice, milan, florence, naples, etc. thus, over against mazzini's ideal of a single unified state there arose the counter-ideal of a federal system. in this, however, later events proved mazzini to be right. where he failed in foresight was in regard to the constitutional character of the state he dreamed of. he wished not only to abolish all existing frontiers in italy, but to do away with all existing state-systems. the only italy he could conceive was a republic, and italy was not ripe for a republic, which was, for the rest, a form of government too much bound up with the disruptive traditions of the city-states to be acceptable.[1] but if italy was not to be a republic, she must be a monarchy, and where could she find a prince to put at the head of her united state? clearly, she would accept no one who was not the declared enemy of austria and the declared friend of constitutional reform. for a month or so in 1846 it seemed that the pope himself might be prevailed upon to undertake the rã´le; and the elevation of pius ix. to the chair of st. peter was greeted with wild enthusiasm in italy because he was believed to be a liberal. these hopes proved illusory, however, and so the eyes of all patriots turned more and more in the direction of piedmont. [footnote 1: it is noticeable that greece also played with the idea of a republic at first and eventually selected a monarchical form of government. as a matter of fact, not a single nation-state, formed in europe since the congress of vienna, has adopted the republican principle.] this principality, which was part of the kingdom of sardinia, ruled over by the semi-french house of savoy, shared the northern plain of italy with austria, and at first showed neither anti-austrian nor liberal proclivities. victor emmanuel came back smiling in 1814, saying that he had been asleep for fifteen years; the old _rã©gime_ was restored as though the revolution had never been; and a rising of the carbonari in 1821 was suppressed with the aid of austrian troops. but in 1831 a king, charles albert, came to the throne, who realised that it was the mission of his house to drive the austrians from italy, and who was enlightened enough to begin to institute reforms, as unostentatiously as possible, so as not to attract the unwelcome attention of vienna. then came the great outburst of 1848, which was the culmination of mazzini's propaganda for the past sixteen years. at first all went well. the austrian army was almost expelled from the peninsula; constitutions were granted in rome, naples, tuscany, and piedmont; venice and rome declared themselves republics. but no real scheme for all italy emerged; the mazzinians were heroic but unpractical; and next year austria returned once more, dealt as before piecemeal with the revolted provinces, and finally crushed the hopes of italy again at the battle of novara. yet all was not lost. the republican dreams of mazzini were, it is true, at an end. but piedmont had stepped into mazzini's shoes; she had championed the cause of freedom against austria; and, when the latter reasserted her sway, she alone of the various states refused to abrogate the newly-acquired constitution. thus began the third period in the emancipation of italy, the period of cavour, who became head of the piedmontese cabinet in 1850. his aim was first to make piedmont the model state and champion of all italy. he believed fervently in liberty--"italy," he said, "must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her"--and he was at the same time one of the ablest and most practical statesmen who have ever guided the destinies of a nation. in ten years he made the state of the north-west an oasis of freedom and good government which attracted the best intellects of italy to its service, and henceforth piedmont became the centre of italian aspirations. a new propaganda movement was set on foot, called the national society, which rejected both federalism and republicanism and declared in favour of a united italy under the crown of victor emmanuel of savoy; and when the chance of french support came in 1858, cavour felt it was time to act. this time the end crowned the work. austria was deprived of everything but venice; tuscany and romagna declared for incorporation by plebiscite; garibaldi conquered sicily and the south; and by the end of 1860 the king of sardinia was king of practically the whole of italy. all that still remained to be won was venice, which austria ceded in 1866; rome, which the french had occupied in the name of the pope, and were forced to evacuate in 1870; and the italia irredenta of to-day, viz. the trentino, trieste, and istria, which may be recovered as a result of the present war. it is worthy of note also that the trans-alpine provinces, savoy and nice, which had been part of the dominions of the sardinian kingdom, were ceded to france in 1858-1859 as a return for her aid, thus rounding off the western frontier of the new kingdom of italy so as to correspond fairly closely with the boundary of nationality. the foundation of modern italy shows us the "national idea" at its best; it was accomplished by noble means and by noble minds; and the latter, in their perpetual struggle against the forces of reaction, were never allowed to forget the claims of individual as well as of national freedom. three tests of true nationhood, it will be remembered, were suggested at the beginning of this chapter: a state-frontier co-extensive with the nationality-frontier, a unitary state-system, and a form of government recognised by the inhabitants as an expression of their general will. italy fulfils all these conditions; for, though the first has not yet been perfectly realised as regards italia irredenta, the exception is after all a trifling one. thus the development of the national idea in italy is almost a model of what such a development should be, and we have dwelt somewhat at length upon it for that very reason. the work of mazzini and cavour provides us with a standard of comparison which should be found very useful in dealing with the national idea in other countries. â§6. _the national idea in germany: a case of arrested development_.[1]--nothing, for example, could be more instructive, both as a study in nationalism and as an aid to the understanding of the present situation in europe, than a comparison between the making of modern italy and the making of modern germany. at first sight the german empire, with its marvellous progress, its vast resources, and its world-wide ambitions, would appear to be an even more successful example of national development than the kingdom of italy. its demand for "a place in the sun," its hustling diplomacy, its military spirit, its obvious intention to expand territorially, if not in europe itself then in asia or africa, are all taken as symptoms of this success. no doubt there is a certain amount of truth in this view. the truculence of german foreign policy is to be partly attributed to that form of swollen self-consciousness and self-complacency to which all nations are subject more or less, and which is most likely, one would suppose, to be found in countries where a nationality had recently succeeded in making itself into a nation. the natural instinct to regard one's own nation as the peculiar people of god and to look down on other nations as "lesser breeds without the law" is a phenomenon which must be constantly reckoned with in any comprehensive treatment of nationalism. every nation has its own variety of it; in england it is jingoism, in france chauvinism, in italy irredentism, in russia pan-slavism, and so on. these are instances of over-development of the national idea, due either to some confusion between race and nationality, or to simple national megalomania, which usually subsides after a healthy humiliation, such as we suffered in england, for example, in the boer war or as russia suffered in her struggle with the japanese. [footnote 1: the student is advised to read the chapter on germany before beginning this section.] yet a careful examination of the german body-politic will reveal symptoms unlike those to be found in any other nation. german nationalism is over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect in other directions. apply our three tests to the german nation, and it will be found to fail in them all. national boundary and state frontier do not coincide because there are still some twelve million germans living outside germany, in austria-hungary;[1] germany is a state, but not a unitary state, for she still retains the obsolete "particularism" of the eighteenth century, with its petty princes and dynastic frontiers; and lastly, the government of germany cannot claim to express the general will, while more than a third of the voters in the empire are sworn to overthrow the whole system at the earliest opportunity. the german nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology. that germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny. it has, however, not been so generally recognised that this disease--for it is nothing less--is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects, which are themselves the result of an unfortunate series of historical accidents. let us look a little closer into this matter, considering the three defects in german nationalism one by one, and using the story of italy as an aid to our investigation. [footnote 1: there are also germans living in switzerland, the baltic provinces of russia, and the united states of america; but these may be regarded as lost to the german nation as the french canadians are lost to france.] first, then, why was it that, while the unification of italy led to the inclusion of the whole italian nationality within the state frontiers, with the trifling exceptions above referred to, the unification of germany was only brought about, or even made possible, by the _exclusion_ of a large section of the nationality? germany, like italy, was hampered by traditions inherited from the mediaeval roman empire, represented by an ancient capital which stood in the path of unity. why was it that, while italy could not and would not do without rome, germany was compelled to surrender vienna and to exclude austria? the answer is: because the unification of germany was only possible through the instrumentality of prussia, which would not brook the rivalry of austria, and therefore the latter had to go. the problem of the making of germany as it presented itself to the mind of bismarck was first of all a problem as to which should be _supreme_ in germany, prussia or austria; in other words bismarck cared more for the aggrandisement of prussia than for the unity of germany.[1] to the mind of cavour the problem of the unification of italy presented itself in a totally different light. for him there was no question of the aggrandisement of piedmont, though he no doubt felt pride in the thought that the house of savoy was to possess the throne of italy. austria was expelled from italy in 1860, not that piedmont might take her place as ruler of the peninsula, but that piedmont might disappear in the larger whole of an emancipated italy. austria was expelled from germany in 1866 in order that prussia might rule undisturbed. thus, though the austro-prussian war of 1866 was an essential step in the foundation of the modern german state, its motives and results were not in the least comparable to those which inspired and followed the italian war of liberation in 1859-60. in the first place the austrians were not foreigners but germans, whom it was necessary for reasons of state not of nationality to place outside the rest of germany. germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and state unity; and she chose the latter, partly because prussia really decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the establishment of a strong german state was the essential prelude to the creation of a strong united nation. austria had to be shut out in 1866 in order that she might be received back again at some later date on germany's own terms. in the second place austria was in no sense the oppressor of germany as she had been of italy. she was simply the presiding member of the german confederation who, as the rival of prussia, as the inheritor of the mediaeval imperial tradition, as the ruler of millions of non-germanic people, would have rendered the problem of german unification almost insoluble. it was therefore necessary to get rid of her as gently and as politely as possible. after the crushing victory at kã¶niggrã¤tz, bismarck treated prussia's ancient foe with extraordinary leniency; for he had already planned the dual alliance in his mind; knowing as he did that, though in germany austria might be an inconvenient rival to prussia, in europe she was the indispensable ally of germany. and so, though the ramshackle old german imperial castle was divided in two, and the northern portion, at any rate, brought thoroughly up to date, the neighbours still lived side by side in a "semi-detached" kind of way. it would be a mistake then to call the war of 1866 a war of deliverance. indeed, since the defeat of napoleon at leipzig, germany has had no such war. that is in a great measure her national tragedy. italian nationalism was spiritualised by the very fact that it had to struggle for decades against a foreign oppressor, and the foundations of her unity were laid on the heroic memories of her efforts to expel the intruder. this spiritualisation, these heroic memories were germany's also in 1813-14, but the opportunity of unification was allowed to slip by, and when the task was performed fifty years later it was through quite other means and in a very different spirit. and yet, though there was no one to expel, germany could only hope to attain unity by fighting. in 1848 she made an attempt to do so by peaceable means, and a national parliament actually assembled at frankfurt to frame a constitution for the whole country. but the attempt, noble as it was in conception, proved a dismal failure, and it became clear that national unity in germany was to be won "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron." the words are bismarck's, and the task was his also. set them beside the words of cavour about italy and liberty, quoted above, or compare the harsh unscrupulous spirit of the great german master-builder with the spirit of mazzini, cavour, and garibaldi, and you get a measure of the difference between the developments of the national idea in germany and in italy. yet bismarck's famous sentence expressed the truth of the matter for germany. austria had been put outside the german pale, and germany north of the main had accepted unity under the hegemony of prussia, but there still remained the four great states of south germany to bring in. they had been the allies of austria in 1866, and prussia, had she willed it, might have incorporated them by conquest. but bismarck saw that they must put themselves willingly under prussia if the german empire was to be a stable concern; he therefore left them alone to think it over for a while. sooner or later they would have to come in, since now that austria had been excluded there remained only the choice between dependence on france and union with prussia. bismarck deliberately played upon south germany's fear of france, and napoleon iii's restless foreign policy admirably seconded his efforts. but a war was necessary to bring matters to a head. the opportunity came in 1870, and bismarck was able to make it appear a war not of his own choosing. the southern states threw themselves into the arms of prussia; france was crushed, and alsace-lorraine annexed; the german empire was proclaimed, and modern germany came into being. there had been no foreigner to expel from german soil, but bismarck found that an attack upon france served his purpose equally well. [footnote 1: perhaps it would be fairer to say that he was incapable of distinguishing between them. see his _reflections_, i. pp. 315, 316.] germany was made by a war of aggression, resulting in territorial expansion at the expense of another nation; italy by a war of liberation, driving the alien from her soil. and the subsequent history of the two nations is eloquent of this difference in their origins. since 1860 italy has in the main occupied herself with domestic reforms, with the working out of the "social idea" which had had to wait upon the realisation of the "national idea." she has had, it is true, her "adventures," more especially in africa, and her jingoism, which has taken the natural form of irredentism or the demand for the recovery of italian provinces still left in austrian hands; but she has never threatened the peace of europe, or sought power at the expense of other nationalities. since 1870, on the other hand, germany has had to sit armed to defend the booty taken from france. "we have earned in the late war respect, but hardly love," said general von moltke soon after the conclusion of peace. "what we have gained by arms in six months we shall have to defend by arms for fifty years." at the beginning of 1914 more than forty out of the fifty years named by moltke had passed by and the situation had undergone no material change. "the irreconcilability of france," writes the late imperial chancellor of germany, "is a factor that we must reckon with in our political calculations. it seems to me weakness to entertain the hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with france, so long as we have no intention of giving up alsace-lorraine. and there is no such intention in germany."[1] the annexation of two small provinces has thus made a permanent breach between two great nations, a breach which has poisoned the whole of european policy during the past half century, which has widened until it has split europe into two huge armed camps, and which has at last involved the entire world in one of the most terrible calamities that mankind has ever known. [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, von bã¼low, p. 69.] why did bismarck annex alsace-lorraine? to strengthen, he said, the german frontier against france. but there was another reason. fear of france had brought the southern states into the empire; fear of france should keep them there. the permanent hostility of france was necessary to assure the continuance of prussia's position as the supreme military power in germany. and so the plundered provinces became the very corner-stone of the german imperial system. there is surely something very strange about all this. why should it be necessary to retain the loyalty of nearly half germany by what practically amounts to terrorisation? the answer is that germany is not a single national state but a number of _dynastic_ states, federated together under the control of one predominant partner. in other words, the problem of alsace-lorraine has led us to the consideration of the second flaw in the development of the national idea in germany. the union of italy meant a clean sweep of all the old dynastic frontiers and states which had strangled the country for so long; the union of germany, on the contrary, riveted these obsolete chains still more firmly than ever on the country's limbs. bismarck claimed that this was necessary, inasmuch as the germans, unlike all other nations, were more alive to dynastic than to national loyalty; that, in short, germany was not really ready in 1870 for true unity.[1] the chief reason, however, for the retention of the old frontiers was that they suited the aims of prussia. the reformers of 1848, as professor erich marcks somewhat naã¯vely says, "had wanted to place prussia at the head, but only as the servant of the nation; prussia was also to cease to be a state by itself, a power on its own account. she was to create the nation's ideal--complete unity--and then to merge herself in the nation. but prussia would not and could not do this. she was far too great a power herself; _she could very well rule germany, but not serve_."[2] both germany and italy at first played with the idea of a confederation, but each was eventually forced to look to one of its existing states to give it the unity it desired. there was only one possible choice for each: for germany, prussia; for italy, piedmont; but while piedmont was content to serve, prussia was too proud to do anything but rule. the dynastic state frontiers were therefore retained because prussia refused to sacrifice her own state frontiers. the "unification of germany," in short, was an episode in the gradual expansion of the prussian dynastic state, which had begun far away back in the thirteenth century.[3] it assumed the air of a national movement, because prussia cleverly availed herself of the prevailing nationalistic sentiment for her own ends. the german empire is therefore something unique in the annals of the world; it is at once a nation-state, like italy, france, and great britain, and also a military empire, like rome under augustus, europe under napoleon, austria under joseph ii., _i.e._ a state in which the territory that commands the army holds political sway over the rest of the country. it is not mere accident of geographical proximity, or even the kinship between austrians and germans, which has led to the long and unshakable alliance of germany with the hapsburg dominions. they are associated by common political interests and by similarity of political structure. each stands for the supremacy of one dynastic state over a number of subordinate states or nationalities. [footnote 1: the chapter entitled "dynasties and stocks" in the _reflections_ should be carefully studied on this point. bismarck was obviously uncomfortable about the old frontiers.] [footnote 2: _lectures on the history of the nineteenth century_, p. 104.] [footnote 3: see chap. iii. p. 95.] her common nationality leads us to forget that the german empire should more rightly be called the prussian empire.[1] nor is there any reason at all why the empire of prussia should stop its process of expansion at the national boundaries; it has indeed already stepped beyond them, into poland in the east, into denmark in the north, into france in the west. why should not the process be carried farther still and germany become in europe, nay, in the world, what prussia is in germany? by preserving her identity as a state, and by establishing her hegemony, prussia, in the name of the national idea of germany, has been able to spread her own ideals throughout the empire, in other words to undertake that prussianisation of germany which is the most striking fact in her history since 1870. piedmont was swallowed up in italy, germany has been swallowed up in prussia; she has become the sharer of her victories and the accomplice of her crimes. and so under the tutelage of the spirit of bismarck the docile german people have adopted the prussian faith; and the policy of aggression and conquest once entered upon, there was no drawing back. bismarck fed the youthful nation upon a diet of blood and iron, and its appetite has grown by what it fed on. the success of 1870 turned the nation's head; the annexation of alsace-lorraine gave it the first taste of conquest. germany began to imagine that german character and german culture possessed some magical and unique quality which would alone account for this success. dreams of a european empire, of infinite expansion, of world-power, floated before the national consciousness. the german people were no longer content, to use mazzini's words, "to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the pyramid of history"; they now craved to impose their idea upon the world at large, and to place their stone on the top of the pyramid. modern germany is an example of nationalism "gone wrong," just as napoleon was an example of democratic individualism "gone wrong." the man of destiny has been followed by the nation of destiny, the "super-man" by the "super-nation." both have had to face a world in arms arrayed against them. [footnote 1: german writers are fond of calling it "prussia-germany" (_preussen-deutschland_), a phrase of treitschke's.] thus the national idea in germany has been cramped, contorted, and perverted by the prussian system and the dynastic frontiers. had the dreams of 1848 been realised, there might have been no franco-german war, no alsace-lorraine question, no war of 1914. and what of our third test of nationhood? do the people of germany feel that their government adequately expresses their general will, that it is truly representative, by which is not necessarily meant that it is democratic in form?[1] there is no doubt that in 1848 the educated classes of germany did actually desire a democratic form of polity. in that year germany was as liberal as italy; she also had risings in almost every state, not excluding prussia itself, which were everywhere answered with promises of a "constitution." but when reaction came in germany, as in italy, prussia did not, like piedmont, stand out for freedom and make itself the model state of germany; on the contrary she reverted to her old military absolutism at the first opportunity. and so the dreams of german liberty, like the dreams of complete german unity, disappeared before the stern necessity of accepting the supremacy of a politically reactionary state; and the prussianisation which followed did much to neutralise altogether the liberalising influences of the south. it is therefore possible to maintain that the political institutions of germany have come to represent more and more the genius and will of the population. "the germany of the twentieth century," maintains a recent writer, "is not two but one. the currents have mingled their waters, and the prussian torrent now has the depth and volume of the whole main-stream of german thought."[2] [footnote 1: _e.g._ russia has a representative government in this sense, though she is without "representative institutions" in the democratic sense.] [footnote 2: _round table_, sept. 1914, p. 628.] it may be so; it may be that the germany of goethe, schiller, and beethoven has been absorbed by the germany of bismarck, moltke, and roon; but it must not be forgotten at the same time that, since their day, yet another germany has come into being, the germany of marx, engels, and bebel, a germany which is represented by more than a third of the voters in the empire. the old line of cleavage had barely closed up when a new and much more fundamental schism appeared in the state, that between imperialism and social democracy. the existence of this tremendous revolutionary force in germany, determined to overthrow the militarist _rã©gime_ of prussia and to re-establish the state on a democratic basis, is an unanswerable proof that the government of the empire is not in any true sense representative. prussia has in this direction also impeded the development of the national idea and given mechanical unity at the expense of spiritual unity. it has created a vast political party of irreconcilables in the country, men who have been led to feel that they have neither part nor promise in the national life, and who therefore elect to stand outside it. "our social democratic party," writes von bã¼low, "lacks a national basis. it will have nothing to do with german patriotic memories which bear a monarchical and military character. it is not like the french and italian parties, a precipitate of the process of national historical development, but since its beginning it has been in determined opposition to our past history as a nation. it has placed itself outside our national life."[1] and again: "in the german empire, prussia is the leading state. the social democratic party is the antithesis of the prussian state."[2] nevertheless, the imperial government, not finding it possible to suppress the social democrats, does its best to employ them for its own ends. it uses them in fact as it uses irreconcilable france, namely, for the purpose of terrorisation, since it has discovered that the spectre of socialism is as effective to keep the middle classes loyal as the spectre of french revenge is to keep the southern states loyal. but it also hopes in time to eradicate socialism from the state. "a vigorous national policy" prince von bã¼low declares to be "the true remedy against the social democratic movement"; and though he makes no specific mention of war, it is obvious that a war like that in which germany is at present engaged is the most vigorous form a national policy could possibly take. was the outbreak of war last august in part occasioned by the desire on the side of the german government to win over the workers of germany? if so, it had yet another spectre ready to its hand for the purpose--the spectre of russia. [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, p. 184.] [footnote 2: _ibid_. p. 186.] in any case, with germany in this condition, europe could hardly have avoided a great war at some time or other; and 1914 follows naturally, almost inevitably, from 1870. the unification of 1870 was far from complete. the german national idea still awaits development in the direction of racial unity, political unity, and constitutional freedom. it is prussia that bars the way in all these directions, prussia, which, in itself not a nation but a military bureaucracy, a survival of the old territorial dynastic principle which the world has largely outgrown, has stamped its character and system upon the german people. "prussia," says one of its apologists, "has put an iron girdle round the whole of german life."[1] but in the end life proves itself stronger than iron bands. germany was bound to make another attempt to reach complete nationhood. she is doing so now. prussia fights for conquest, for world-power, and makes docile germany imagine that she is fighting for these also; but what germany is really fighting for, blindly and gropingly, is freedom and unity. she has indeed "to hack her way through." but it is not, as she supposes, hostile europe which hems her in and keeps her from her "place in the sun"; it is the prussian girdle and the prussian chains which hamper the free movements of her limbs and hold her close prisoner in the shadow of the hohenzollern castle. the overthrow of prussia means the release of germany; and france, who gave germany greatness in 1870, may with the help of the allies be able in the near future to give her an even greater gift, the gift of liberty. [footnote 1: _lectures on the history of the nineteenth century_, p. 106.] â§7. _the map of europe, 1814-1914_.--we have now watched the national idea at work in the three western countries of that central european area which the congress of vienna left unsettled in 1814, and in a later chapter we shall see the same principle acting in the two great divisions of south-east europe, austria-hungary and the balkan peninsula. let us, then, use this opportunity to pause for a moment, take a general survey of the map, and consider in broad outline what has actually been accomplished during the past century and what still remains to do. from 1814 to 1848, exhausted by the effort of the revolutionary and napoleonic wars and disillusioned by reactionary statesmanship, the larger nations slumbered: but belgium and greece secured their present liberties, and outside europe the national movement spread throughout the south american continent. then came 1848, the "wonderful year" of modern history. "there is no more remarkable example in history of the contagious quality of ideas than the sudden spread of revolutionary excitement through europe in 1848. in the course of a few weeks the established order seemed everywhere to be crumbling to pieces. the revolution began in palermo, crossed the straits of messina, and passed in successive waves of convulsion through central italy to paris, vienna, milan, and berlin. it has often been remarked that the latin races are of all the peoples of europe most prone to revolution; but this proposition did not hold good in 1848. the czechs in bohemia, the magyars in hungary, the germans in austria, rose against the paralysing encumbrance of the hapsburg autocracy. the southern slavs dreamed of an illyrian kingdom; the germans of a united germany; the bohemians of a union of all the slavonic peoples of europe. the authority of the austrian empire, the pivot of the european autocracy, had never been so rudely challenged, and if the crown succeeded in recovering its shattered authority it was due to the dumb and unintelligent loyalty of its slavonic troops."[1] [footnote 1: h.a.l. fisher, _the republican tradition in europe_, p. 193.] many of these risings were doomed to failure, but between 1848 and 1871 the alien governments in the italian peninsula were abolished, making way for a unitary government, in the form of a constitutional monarchy, which embraces with small exceptions the whole of the italian population of europe. in 1871, after three successful wars in seven years against denmark, austria, and france, a federal government was established in germany, with the kingdom of prussia as its leading state and the king of prussia as its monarch, with the title of german emperor. this was a step forward, though the new germany was neither a unitary nor a constitutional state. the austrian territories have also come in for their share of the general ferment, and francis joseph came to the throne in 1848 amid the uprisings of his subject peoples; but these were successfully tided over, though the hungarian portion of the austrian dominion achieved national recognition and institutions in 1867. after 1871 the national movement moved farther east. in 1878 roumania and serbia, both national states, were declared sovereign powers independent of turkey; bulgaria achieved its recognition as a principality; and montenegro, a small mountain community, which had never submitted to the turks, increased its territory and became a recognised european state. in 1908 and 1910 bulgaria and montenegro became kingdoms like their neighbours; and in 1913, after the two balkan wars, all the five balkan states--roumania, serbia, bulgaria, greece, and montenegro--obtained accession of territory, and the principality of albania was constituted out of the albanian portion of the old turkish dominion. finally, in quite another region of europe, norway, which had been joined in an anomalous union with sweden since 1814, satisfied her national aspirations unopposed by becoming an independent constitutional monarchy in 1905. all this represents a considerable clearing up of the central european problem. nevertheless, much still remains to be done. poland is as she was in 1814, a dismembered nation. the czechs of bohemia, the roumanians of transylvania, and the southern slavs, not to mention other and smaller subject races, continue to demand their freedom from the joint tyranny of vienna and budapest. russia has not yet solved the problem of finland, nor england the problem of ireland. the turk still occupies constantinople. and finally, the prussianised nationalism of germany has created new questions of nationality in alsace-lorraine and schleswig. all these problems together were as so much tinder ready to take fire directly the spark fell. they were the cause of the "armed peace" of the past forty-three years; they are the cause of the war to-day. the conflagration of 1914 is a proof of a profound dissatisfaction among civilised nations with the existing political structure of the continent. alsatians, poles, czechs, finns, serbo-croats, roumanians, and the rest "still struggle for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love, and labour for the benefit of all." the framework of society does not fit the facts of nationality, and so the framework has gone to pieces. "the map of europe has to be re-made. that is the key to the present movement." books i. nationality mazzini. _essays_. the scott library. 1s. mazzini. _duties of man_, etc. everyman library. 1s. anything written by mazzini, the prophet of the national idea, can be recommended. lord acton. _history of freedom and other essays_. 1907. 10s. net. contains an acute historical analysis of nationality in the nineteenth century. the conclusion reached is that "the theory of nationality is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism," but though the summing up is unfavourable, the whole essay is a masterly exposition of the national idea by one of the greatest of historical students. it forms a very useful foil to mazzini. henry sidgwick. _the elements of politics_. 1897. 14s. net. chapter xiv., on "the area of government," contains useful paragraphs on the distinction between nation, state, and nationality; see esp. pp. 222-225. sir john seeley. _the expansion of england_. first published in 1883. 4s. net. sir john seeley. _introduction to political science_. 1896. 4s. net. both these books, the first in particular, are important in this connection. there is no one chapter or section devoted exclusively to the consideration of nationality, but there are constant references to the subject. the point of view is, moreover, instructive. seeley is, perhaps, the nearest english approach to treitschke. j.m. robertson. _introduction to english politics_. 1900. 10s. 6d. net. critical from the rationalistic as acton is from the catholic point of view. see esp. part v., "the fortunes of the lesser european states," which after a preliminary essay on nationality, which the author declares to be "essentially a metaphysical dream," while "the motive spirit in it partakes much of the nature of superstition," goes on to give a valuable account of the development of the "small nations," holland, switzerland, portugal, etc., by way of showing their value to civilisation as a whole. p. milyoukov. _russia and its crisis_. 1905. 13s. 6d. chap. ii. contains some interesting matter on nationalism, especially of course as it has been developed in russia. j.s. mill. _on representative government_. 2s. chap, xvi., "of nationality as connected with representative government." ii. general historical works, etc. alison phillips. _modern europe. 1815-1899_. 1903. 6s. net. an excellent general history of europe, 1815-1899. seignobos. _a political history of contemporary europe since 1814_. 2 vols. 1901. 5s. net each. one of the best general histories of this scope available. it is a translation from the french, with good bibliographies. _lectures on the history of the nineteenth century_. cambridge. 1902. 4s. 6d. net. a series of studies, by recognised authorities, of various aspects of modern european history. chap. ii., on "the international history of europe during the nineteenth century," by the late professor westlake, is suggestive on the topic of nationality; chaps. v. and vi., on germany, by a german professor, are interesting as giving the german view of unification by bismarck; and chaps. ix. and x., on "the struggle for italian unity," and "mazzini," by mr. bolton king, are especially valuable. h.a.l. fisher. _the republican tradition in europe_. 1911. 6s. net. traces the development of the republican, as distinct from the nationalist tradition, in modern europe, and therefore forms a useful complement to other writers. chap. ix., on "italy," and chap. x., on "the german revolution," are excellent accounts of "1848" in those two countries. h.a.l. fisher. _the value of small states_. oxford pamphlets. 2d. e. levett. _europe since napoleon_. 1913. blackie. 3s. 6d. a useful little text-book. _the cambridge modern history_. vols. ix., x., xi., xii. 16s. net per vol. indispensable for knowledge of the facts of the period. r. nisbet bain. _slavonic europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net. chap. xviii. gives a good account of the partitions of poland. bolton king. _a history of italian unity_. 2 vols. 1899. 24s. net. bolton king. _mazzini_. 1903. dent, temple biographies. 4s. 6d. net. bismarck. _reflections and reminiscences_. 2 vols. 1898. smith elder. out of print. to be bought second-hand. bã�low. _imperial germany_. 1914. cassell. 2s. net. the last two are indispensable for a true understanding of the principles which underlie the german empire. t.j. lawrence. _principles of international law_. 1910. 12s. 6d. net. a useful text-book. see also _cambridge mod. hist_. vol. xii. chap. xxii. chapter iii germany "the germans are vigorously submissive. they employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration."--madame de staã�l (1810). "greatness and weakness are both inseparable from the race whose powerful and turbid thought rolls on--the largest stream of music and poetry at which europe comes to drink."--romain rolland (_jean christophe_). â§1. _the german state_.--the german nation is one of the oldest in europe: the german state is almost the youngest--of the great states quite the youngest. englishmen sometimes wonder why there are so many royal princes in germany--why it is that when a vacant throne has to be filled, or a husband to be found for a princess of royal standing, germany seems to provide such an inexhaustible choice. the reason is that germany consisted, until recently, not of one state but of a multitude of states, each of which had a court and a dynasty and sovereign prerogatives of its own. in 1789, at the outbreak of the french revolution, there were 360 of these states of every sort and size and variety. some were kingdoms, like prussia, some were electorates, like hanover (under our english george iii.), some were grand duchies, some were bishoprics, some were free cities, and some were simply feudal estates in which, owing to the absence of a central authority, noble families had risen to the rank of independent powers. these families were the descendants of those "robber-barons" whose castles on the rhine and all over south and west germany the tourist finds so picturesque. prince william of wied, the first prince of albania, is a member of one of them, and is thus entitled to rank with the royalties of europe: the father-in-law of ex-king manoel of portugal, the prince of hohenzollern-sigmaringen, a branch of the kaiser's own family, is another familiar recent instance. and every one remembers prince albert of saxe-coburg-gotha, the husband of queen victoria. in 1789 the possibility of a german national state was so remote that germans had not even begun to dream of one. each little principality was jealously tenacious of its local rights, or, as we should say, of its vested interests, as against the common interests of germany. most of them were narrow and parochial in their outlook; and the others, the more broad-minded, were not national but cosmopolitan in spirit. to the tradition of municipal thinking, which had lasted on uninterruptedly in the free cities of germany from the middle ages, germany owes the excellence of her municipal government to-day. to the broad and tolerant humanism of her more enlightened courts, such as weimar and brunswick, we owe the influences that shaped the work of goethe and of lessing, two of the greatest figures in european thought and letters. into these peaceful haunts of culture and parochialism napoleon, with the armies and the ideas of revolutionary france, swept like a whirlwind, breaking up the old settled comfortable life of the cities and countryside. one of the greatest of german writers, the jew heine, has described in a wonderful passage what the coming of napoleon meant to the inhabitants of a little german principality. it is worth transcribing at some length, for it gives the whole colour and atmosphere of the old local life in western germany, which has not even yet entirely passed away. the speaker is an old soldier giving reminiscences of his boyhood: "our elector was a fine gentleman, a great lover of the arts, and himself very clever with his fingers. he founded the picture gallery at dã¼sseldorf, and in the observatory in that city they still show a very artistic set of wooden boxes, one inside the other, made by himself in his leisure hours, of which he had twenty-four every day. "in those days the princes were not overworked mortals as they are to-day. their crowns sat very firmly on their heads, and at night they just drew their nightcaps over them, and slept in peace, while peacefully at their feet slept their peoples; and when these woke up in the morning they said, 'good morning, father,' and the princes replied, 'good morning, dear children.' "but suddenly there came a change. one morning when we woke up in dã¼sseldorf and wanted to say, 'good morning, father,' we found our father gone, and a kind of stupefaction over the whole city. everybody felt as though they were going to a funeral, and people crept silently to the market-place and read a long proclamation on the door of the city hall. it was grey weather, and yet thin old tailor kilian stood in his alpaca coat, which he kept for indoor use only, and his blue woollen stockings hung down so that his miserable little bare legs were visible above them and his thin lips were trembling, while he murmured the words of the proclamation. a veteran soldier at his side read somewhat louder, and at every few words a tear trickled down into his honest white beard. i stood by him and cried too, and asked him why we were crying. and then he told me: 'the elector expresses you his gratitude'--then he went on reading, and at the words 'for your loyal and trusted obedience, and releases you from your duties,' his tears broke out afresh.... while we were reading, the elector's arms were being taken down from the city hall, the whole place became as terrifyingly quiet as though there were going to be an eclipse of the sun, and all the city councillors went about hanging their heads as though no one had any more use for them... "when i woke up next morning, the sun was shining as usual, drums were beating in the streets, and when i came down to breakfast and said good-morning to my father i heard how the barber had whispered to him while he was shaving him that the new grand duke joachim was to receive the homage of his subjects at the city hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the emperor napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and i went and stood outside the door and watched the french troops marching in, those glorious happy frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour cockades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful horsemen, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt button up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows. i was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us--my mother was not--and i hurried to the market-place. there everything was quite different now. the world looked as if it had had a new coat of paint. a new coat-of-arms was hanging on the city hall, the iron railings on the balcony were covered with tapestry hangings, french grenadiers were standing sentry, the old city councillors had put on new faces, and were wearing sunday clothes, and looked at one another in french and said 'bon jour,' ladies were looking out of all the windows, curious bystanders and smart soldiers thronged the square, and i and the other boys climbed on to the big horse of the elector's statue and looked down on the gay crowd."[1] [footnote 1: heine, _collected works_, i. 228 (book _le grand_).] napoleon and his french soldiers, "marching through the world with songs and shining sabres," brought the germans more than this happy thrill of excitement and a supply of new and more elegant princes. they brought them that which gave strength to their own right arm--the spirit of nationality. "the soul of the german people," says a recent german writer, "has always lain very deep down, and has seldom come to the surface to become the spirit of the time and to inspire the movements of the world. hardly ever except in times of the deepest adversity has it come to the surface: but then it has claimed its rights, or rather, discovered its duties."[1] napoleon, by humiliating her, laid bare the soul of germany, as germany herself has laid bare the soul of belgium to-day. his arrogant pretensions roused the germans as they had never been roused since the days of the reformation; while at the same time his attempts to secure the support of the bigger german principalities by enlarging them at the expense of the smaller, simplified the map and laid the foundations of a united germany. the thinkers and dreamers of germany, stung at last into a sense of political reality, awoke from their dreams of cosmopolitanism and devoted their powers to the needs of the german nation. [footnote 1: daab's preface to paul de lagarde, _german faith, german fatherland, german culture_, p. vi. (jena, 1913).] the years between 1806 and 1813, between the disastrous battle of jena and the overwhelming victory of leipzig, are the greatest years in german history. shaking off the torpor and the prejudices of centuries the german nation arose and vanquished its oppressors. but with the twilight of that glorious day the bats returned. the defeat of napoleon was not only the defeat of french domination but the defeat of the french revolution, and of the principles of democracy and nationality which inspired it. the unity of spirit which the germans had achieved on the battlefield they were unable to transform after the victory into a unity of government or institutions. the congress of vienna, which redrew the map of europe after the revolutionary wars, did so, not in accordance with the principle of nationality or the wishes of the peoples of europe but according to what was called "legitimacy," that is to say, the interests of the princes. there was only one idealist at the conference, the russian emperor alexander, and he was put off with empty phrases. [illustration: germany of 1815.] for germany the result of the conference was the reestablishment, in smaller numbers and with larger units of territory, of the old undemocratic principalities, and of a confederation embodying their dynastic interests. several of the larger states, such as bavaria, wã¼rtemberg, saxony, and hanover, which napoleon had raised to the status of kingdoms, were confirmed in their new dignities, and the kingdom of prussia, the largest of them all, acquired, out of the debris of the old archbishopric of cologne and other small ecclesiastical and temporal states, the important provinces of westphalia and the rhineland, which have made possible for her the industrial growth of the last half century. cologne, dã¼sseldorf, elberfeld, essen, and other great industrial centres of western germany will next year be celebrating the centenary of their prussian connection. but the chief state in the confederation and its undisputed head was austria, which had for centuries enjoyed the prestige of supremacy over the german states; and it was the austrian statesman metternich who was mainly responsible for the vienna settlement. the german confederation of 1815-1866 went far outside the boundaries of modern germany. it included lands belonging to three non-german monarchs. the king of holland was a member of it in virtue of the dutch provinces of limburg and luxemburg; the king of denmark for the duchies of schleswig and holstein; and the emperor of austria (who, then as now, ruled over hungary, austrian poland, and the southern slav provinces) for bohemia, moravia, and german-speaking austria up to and beyond vienna. the confederation was in fact in no sense a national state, and was never intended to be so. it was a loosely knit assortment of principalities and free cities. germany was still broken up and divided in a manner almost inconceivable to the inhabitants of an old-established unity like great britain or france. at least five different kinds of money, for instance, were in use in the different states of the confederation, and, as stamp-collectors know, the postal system was bewildering in its complexity. more important was the deep gulf between different parts of the country due to religious divisions. the reformation, which left england with a national church, left germany hopelessly divided; and the division between the protestants in the north and east, and the catholics in the west and south, is still, half a century after the establishment of the united empire, a source of difficulty. yet the confederation has one undeniable achievement to its credit. it paved the way for german unity by facilitating the zollverein, or customs union, which was extended between 1830 and 1844 to practically all the german states except those under austrian rule. but the far-reaching importance of this development was not at that time appreciated. western europe was tired after the great napoleonic struggle and was not in a mood for big designs. to all outward appearance germany seemed to have relapsed, after the thrill and glamour of the wars of liberation, into the stuffy atmosphere of the old eighteenth century life. only a very patient, a very docile, and a very philosophic and law-abiding people would have endured such an anti-climax; and it is these qualities, together with a certain clumsiness and helplessness due to their complete inexperience of the responsibilities of a larger citizenship, which go far to explain the subsequent history of germany. but in the evil days after the congress of vienna the _idea_ of german unity lived on, and formed a constant theme of discussion and speculation, like the idea of the unity of poland and of the southern slavs in the present generation. the stirring memories of the great revolution were like a constant refrain at the back of men's minds all through that dreary time. in 1830, when the french established a liberal monarchy and the belgians freed themselves from the unwelcome supremacy of holland, there was much excitement throughout germany. but nothing serious occurred until 1848, when the liberal and nationalist movement, which had been gathering force throughout the educated classes of western europe for a generation, at length came to a head. the whole of germany was in a ferment, a strong republican movement manifested itself, and in almost every one of the many capital cities there was a rising with a demand for a free constitution and parliamentary government, and for the consolidation of german national unity in accordance with the same democratic ideals. the princes had no alternative but to give way, and, as a result, local constitutions were granted, and a national parliament was summoned to meet at frankfurt, to draw up a national german constitution on democratic lines. the task before the frankfurt parliament was similar to that which has confronted british statesmen several times during the last century, in framing the dominion of canada, the commonwealth of australia, and the union of south africa--the task of welding a number of separate state governments with the free consent of their populations into a homogeneous and democratic central authority. but in the case of an old and still largely feudal country like germany the task was infinitely more difficult, for it could not be successful without a levelling-up of the political ideals of the backward states, such as prussia, and the elimination of many ancient associations and dynastic interests. the frankfurt constitution did actually come into being, and it was nobly planned. it guaranteed to every german citizen the rights of civil liberty, equality before the law, and responsible parliamentary government, both central and local. but the mind of the german nation was not yet equal to its new responsibilities. the frankfurt parliament, like the first russian duma, was out of touch with realities; it wasted precious time on the discussion of abstract questions of principle, and failed to meet the practical needs of the moment. while it sat and talked, the enthusiasm which had created it gradually evaporated. meanwhile the more reactionary states, and the princes whose prerogatives were endangered, became more and more openly hostile. all through 1849 the parliament was losing members by defection, and by the end of the year its influence had sunk to vanishing point. the movement which collapsed thus ignominiously was not a popular agitation in the english sense of the term: like other movements of its generation it sprang, not from the people but from the well-to-do, and its strength lay among the professional and educated classes. the frankfurt parliament was a predominantly middle-class assembly: lawyers and professors, always an important element in german national life, were strongly represented in it and largely responsible for its failure. its collapse was a bitter disappointment, and drove many of its leaders into exile abroad, more particularly to the united states, where some of them, such as carl schurz, lived to play a noteworthy part under more democratic political institutions. after the failure of the frankfurt constitution it slowly became clear to far-sighted germans that there was only one way in which german unity could come about. if, unlike the separate provinces of canada and south africa, the german states would not voluntarily sink their identity in a larger whole, unity could only come through their acceptance of the supremacy of one of the existing states. there were only two possible candidates for the supremacy, austria and prussia. austria was still, at that time, as she had been for centuries, in a position of undisputed headship. but her german policy was always hampered because she had also to consider her non-german subjects. prussia, a younger and more homogeneous state, with a better organised administration and a better disciplined people, was preparing to assert herself. in 1862, at a moment when liberalism was gathering strength in prussia, count bismarck became chief minister of the prussian crown and the dominating force in prussian policy. bismarck was a conservative and a reactionary, wholly out of sympathy with the ideals of 1848. his immediate object was to secure the supremacy of prussia among the german states. in the very first months of his leadership he made it clear, in a famous sentence, by what methods he hoped to achieve his end. "the great questions are to be settled," he told the prussian diet, with a scornful hit at the confederation, "not by speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and iron." he was not long in translating words into action. in 1864 the king of denmark died, and difficulties at once arose as to the succession to the duchies of schleswig and holstein, which still belonged to the german confederation. austria and prussia intervened jointly in the name of the confederation, and, as a result, the duchies were separated from denmark, schleswig being administered by austria and holstein by prussia. the object of this rather clumsy plan, which originated with bismarck, was to create difficulties which would enable him to pick a quarrel with austria. in 1866 this manoeuvre proved successful. bismarck goaded austria into war and succeeded, after a six weeks' campaign, in expelling her from the german state system, following this up by rounding off her own dominions with the annexation of a number of the smaller pro-austrian states, amongst them the kingdom of hanover. his victory also had the effect of completely checking the growing agitation for the establishment of responsible government in prussia.[1] [footnote 1: on this point see bismarck's _recollections_, and the good short account in powicke's _bismarck_.] having made prussia supreme in germany, bismarck was now in a position to solve the problem of german unity. he resolved to employ the same well-tried method. in 1870 the somewhat high-handed manner of napoleon iii. made it possible for him to bring about a war between the german states and france, in which germany, under prussian leadership, was completely victorious. in the flush of their success, after the capture of paris in january 1871, the lesser states of germany agreed to enter into a federal union under prussian supremacy and to accept the king of prussia as its head, with the title of emperor. thus, at length, germany became a national state, with a national constitution. the term empire is misleading, for to english ears it suggests the government of dependencies. germany is not an empire in that sense: she is a federation, like the united states and switzerland, of independent states which have agreed to merge some of their prerogatives, notably the conduct of foreign affairs and of defence, in a central authority. since some of these independent states were, and still are, monarchies, a higher title had to be provided for the chief of the federation. an ace, as it were, was needed to trump the kings. after much deliberation the title emperor was agreed upon; but it is noteworthy that the kaiser is not "the emperor of germany": he bears the more non-committal title of "german emperor." the german imperial constitution, devised by bismarck in 1871, falls far short of the frankfurt experiment of 1848. it does indeed provide for the creation of a reichstag, or imperial parliament, elected by all male citizens over twenty-five. but the reichstag can neither initiate legislation nor secure the appointment or dismissal of ministers. in the absence of ministerial responsibility to parliament, which is the mainspring of our english constitutional system, the reichstag might be described as little more than an advisory body armed with the power of veto. like the english parliament in the days of charles i.'s ship-money, the reichstag could in the last resort refuse supplies, and so bring the machinery of government to a standstill. but this situation has never yet arisen or seemed likely to arise. the government has ridden the reichstag with a strong hand, turning awkward corners by concessions to the various groups in turn, and the reichstag has responded to this treatment. bismarck "took his majorities where he could get them"; and prince bã¼low's book contains some illuminating pages about the clever methods which that statesman adopted to "manage" his parliaments. above the reichstag is the bundesrat or federal council, on which all the federated states are represented, prussia having seventeen members as against forty-two from the other states. the bundesrat sits in secret; its members are selected by the different state governments and vote according to instructions received. all bills originate in the bundesrat before they are submitted to the reichstag, and are re-submitted to the bundesrat, to be passed or vetoed, after alteration in the reichstag. the twenty-six members of the german federation represented in the bundesrat comprise four kingdoms (prussia, bavaria, wã¼rtemberg, and saxony), a number of grand duchies and smaller ducal states, three free cities (hamburg, lã¼beck, and bremen), and the imperial territory of alsace-lorraine. all these (except the last named) preserve their own local parliaments and institutions, and the second largest, bavaria, even preserves in peace-time, like the british self-governing dominions, her own military organisation and has also her own postal system. but prussia in size, influence, and military strength is by far the most important, and for practical purposes her power preponderates over that of all the other states combined. the real control of legislation naturally lies with the state which controls two-fifths of the votes in the bundesrat, where legislation is initiated and can be vetoed; it is wielded by the kaiser, as king of prussia, and by his imperial chancellor, president of the bundesrat and always a prussian minister. the imperial chancellor, who is the only imperial minister, is chosen by the kaiser and is responsible to him alone: he countersigns all the kaiser's orders and edicts, and has the function, it may be added, of explaining away his indiscretions. it is inevitable, under these circumstances, that the policy and legislation of the central government should largely reflect prussian views and ideals. on the other hand, the temper of the rest of germany must always be kept in mind. as prince bã¼llow, the late imperial chancellor, says: "if the empire is governed without reference to prussia, ill-will towards the empire will grow in that country. if prussia is governed without reference to the empire, then there is the danger that mistrust and dislike of the leading state will gain ground in non-prussian germany.... the art of governing in our country will always have to be directed chiefly towards maintaining the harmony between germany and prussia, in the spirit as well as in the letter."[1] [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, pp. 191-192.] why should the government of germany be such an "art"? and why should there be any difficulty in maintaining a harmonious spirit between prussia and non-prussian germany? to answer these questions we must widen the scope of our inquiry. so far we have considered only the growth and development of the german state. it is now time to turn from the german state to the german people. â§2. _the real germany_.--the difficulty of establishing german unity has lain in the fact that there have really always been two germanies, different in history, in temper, in ideals, and in their stages of development in civilisation. there has been prussia, or north-eastern germany; and there has been the real germany, the germany of the south and west. it is only since 1870, and especially within the reign of the present kaiser, that, through education and common experience; the two have become fused into one; but even now, beneath the uniform surface of german life and public opinion, there is a great inner distinction. let us take what we have called the real germany first. this germany, the germany of the rhine country, of frankfurt and heidelberg and cologne and nã¼remberg, is the germany which so many englishmen know and admire. this germany is an integral part of the civilisation of western europe, and is closely akin to ourselves. it has grown and developed alongside with france and the netherlands and england, sharing in all the great spiritual and social movements of the west. it has passed, with them, through the middle ages, the revival of learning, the reformation, and the long struggle against the domination of france. its famous cities with their cathedrals and town halls breathe the same proud, free, municipal spirit as those of their great neighbours in the netherlands, ghent, antwerp, louvain, bruges, ypres and the rest. its scholars and teachers, poets, painters, and musicians, from luther to goethe, have made their special german contribution to the civilised life of the west--a contribution as great and as unique as that of renaissance italy or elizabethan england. its people are very similar in character to their neighbours of kindred stock. as industrious as the dutch, as persevering as the scotch, as steady and good-hearted as the english, good workers, good citizens, devoted in their family relations, they have found it easy to live at peace and on a good understanding with their neighbours, and when they have migrated abroad, they have by common confession made the best of settlers, both in the united states and in the british dominions. yet they have developed certain characteristic qualities in their social and political life, which distinguish them sharply from their western neighbours. history, which has deprived them, until recently, of a wider citizenship, has left them timid, docile, dreamy and unpractical in just that sphere of action where englishmen have learnt for centuries to think and to act for themselves. patriotism with englishmen is an instinct. we do not much care to wave flags or make speeches or sing songs about it: we assume it as the permanent background of our national life and our national consciousness. with the germans this is not so. in germany, partly owing to german history, partly owing to the constitution of the german mind, patriotism is not an instinct but an _idea_. now ideas do not grow up in men's minds by a natural process. they have to be implanted. the germans have needed to be _taught_ to be patriotic. the makers of german patriotism a century ago were teachers and philosophers. they did not simply appeal to their patriotic instincts, as englishmen would have done: they argued the point and _proved_ that germany was worth fighting for: they founded a school of patriotic german philosophy. there are few more curious documents in history, or more instructive for the light they shed on future events, than the famous _speeches to the german nation_ addressed to his fellow-countrymen by the philosopher fichte in 1808, when his country was under the heel of napoleon. they are not speeches at all, but philosophical lucubrations, discussing in abstract terms the whole subject of the nature of patriotism and of germany's right to exist as a nation. one argument, for instance, on which he lays great stress, is that germany is marked out to be a great political power because of the peculiar excellence of the german language, which he shows to his satisfaction to be superior to french, italian, and other latin languages. again, he points out that there is no word in the german language for "character" (_karakter_), a word borrowed from the greek; the reason is, he explains, that there is no need for one, because to have character and to be german are the same thing--a curious foretaste of the german arrogance of to-day. yet these speeches, which, issued in england at such a crisis, would have found no readers, reverberated through germany and helped to create the self-confident spirit which freed her from the invader. then, as now, under the inspiration of ideas which they had accepted from professors and philosophers, germans fought for the german language and for german culture. but whereas in 1814 they fought to preserve them, in 1914 they are fighting to impose them. just as patriotism in germany is wholly different from what it is in england, so also is democracy, and all those elements in the national life which feed and sustain it. british democracy does not depend upon our popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments. it depends upon the free spirit and self-respect of the british people. we have been accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our "ministers" or servants. there is a force called public opinion which, slow though it may be to assert itself, british statesmen have been taught by experience to respect. it is as true of british as it is of american democracy that "you can fool half the people all the time; and you can fool all the people half the time; but you cannot fool all the people all the time." but the german people, as a people, lacks this irreplaceable heritage of political self-respect. it has never yet dared to tread the path of democracy without leading strings. it has not yet learned to think for itself in politics, or formed the habit of free discussion and practical criticism of public affairs. this is the vital fact which must be borne in mind in all comparisons between german and british democracy. the germans have a parliament, elected by universal male suffrage. but this parliament is powerless to control policy, because the nation behind it does not give it sufficient support. it is because of the absence of the driving force of a public opinion in germany that the german people submit complacently to the infringements on political liberty which form part of the normal _rã©gime_ of german life--the domineering arrogance of officers and officials, the restraints upon the press and the shameless manufacture of news and inspiration of opinion from official sources, the control of the universities, the schools, and the public services by the state in the interest of "orthodox" political opinions, and the ridiculous laws which have sent editors and cartoonists to prison in scores for criticising the behaviour and utterances of the emperor or the crown prince. in england and in america underground attempts are sometimes made to injure the careers of men whose opinions are considered "dangerous" by those who employ them. in germany such interference with freedom of political thought is not the exception: it has become the rule. no man can make a successful career in the public service (and education is a public service) unless he is considered politically "orthodox" (_gesinnungstã¼chtig_); and orthodoxy does not simply mean abstention from damaging criticism or dangerous opinions: it means, in practice, deference to the opinions of those who "know better," that is, to the clique of prussian generals and bureaucrats who, together with the kaiser, control the policy of the country. british readers who do not know germany may think the foregoing indictment of german political incapacity severe. it is not so severe as prince bã¼llow's. the portion of the late imperial chancellor's book which deals with domestic policy opens with these crushing sentences: "the history of our home policy, with the exception of a few bright spots, is a history of political mistakes. despite the abundance of merits and great qualities with which the german nation is endowed, political talent has been denied it.... we are not a political people." a page or two later he goes even further and quotes with approval a dictum that the germans are "political donkeys." that a modern statesman should think this of his fellow-countrymen is remarkable enough; that he should say it outright is a still more remarkable proof of his unshakeable belief in their submissiveness. therein lies the whole tragedy of the present situation. the german people, so kindly and, alas! so docile, is suffering, not for its sins, but for its deficiencies; not for its own characteristic acts or natural ambitions, but for what it has too tamely allowed others, prussian statesmen and soldiers, with alien ideals and an alien temper, to foist upon it, until it has become an integral part of its natural life and consciousness. germany has been indoctrinated and prussianised not only into acquiescence, but into sympathy with the policy of its rulers. â§3. _prussia_.--this brings us to the consideration of the second and more powerful of the two germanies--namely, prussia. in order to understand prussia and the prussian spirit we must plunge ourselves into an atmosphere wholly different from that of the germany that has just been described. the very names of the two countries mark the measure of the difference. germany means the country of the germans, as england means the country of the english. but the name prussia commemorates the subjugation and extinction by german conquerors and crusaders from the west of the prussians or bo-russians, a tribe akin to the letts and lithuanians. the old duchy of prussia, which now forms the provinces of east and west prussia at the extreme north-east of the present german empire, consisted of heathen lands colonised or conquered, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, by a great religious and military organisation known as the "knights of the teutonic order." while southern and western germany was passing, with the rest of western europe, through the transition between mediaeval and modern europe, what is now north-eastern germany was still in a wholly primitive stage of development, and the knights of the teutonic order, with crusading fervour, were spreading christianity and german "culture" by force of arms, converting or repelling the slavonic population and settling german colonists in the territory thus reclaimed for civilisation. the great british admirer of prussia, thomas carlyle, in the first volume of his _frederick the great_, gives a vivid account of their activities in their forts or "burgs" of wood and stone, and helps us to realise what memories lie behind the struggle between german and slav to-day, and why the word "petersburg" has become so odious to the russians as the name of their capital. "the teutsch ritters build a burg for headquarters, spread themselves this way and that, and begin their great task. the prussians were a fierce fighting people, fanatically anti-christian: the teutsch ritters had a perilous never-resting time of it.... they built and burnt innumerable stockades for and against: built wooden forts which are now stone towns. they fought much and prevalently, galloped desperately to and fro, ever on the alert. how many burgs of wood and stone they built in different parts, what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody, boggy places they had, no man counted; their life, read in dryasdust's newest chaotic books (which are of endless length, among other ill qualities) is like a dim nightmare of unintelligible marching and fighting: one feels as if the mere amount of galloping they had would have carried the order several times round the globe.... but always some preaching, by zealous monks, accompanies the chivalrous fighting. and colonists come in from germany; trickling in, or at times streaming. victorious ritterdom offers terms to the beaten heathen; terms not of tolerant nature, but which will be punctually kept by ritterdom." here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in france and belgium, of uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of "germanisation" and devastation. when we hear the german professors of to-day preaching of the spread of german culture by the german arms, and when we feel disgust at the exaggerated religious phraseology which pervades the kaiser's oratory and seems to accord so ill with his policy and ambitions, we must remember the peculiar origins of the prussian state and how comparatively recent those origins are. "i have once before had occasion," said the kaiser at marienburg in east prussia on june 5, 1902, "to say in this place how marienburg, this unique eastern bulwark, the point of departure for the culture of the lands east of the vistula, will always be a symbol for our german mission. there is work for us again to-day. polish arrogance wishes to lay hands on germanism, and i am constrained to call my people to the defence of its national possessions. here in marienburg i proclaim that i expect all the brothers of the order of st. john to be at my service when i call upon them to protect german ways and german customs." the kaiser's crusading appeals are not hypocritical or consciously insincere: they are simply many centuries out of date--a grotesque medley of medieval romanticism and royal megalomania. what was possible for the warrior knights in north-east germany five or six centuries ago is a tragic absurdity and an outrageous crime to-day among a spirited and sensitive people like the poles--still more so in a highly civilised national state such as belgium or france. it is an absurdity that only a theatrical monarch could conceive and a crime that only a military autocracy could attempt to enforce. in the sixteenth century the reformation, spreading throughout the north of europe, undermined the basis of the teutonic order. the grand master of the time transformed himself into a lutheran prince holding the hereditary duchy of prussia as a vassal of the king of the neighbouring slavonic state of poland. in 1611 the duchy was amalgamated with the territory of brandenburg farther west, and in 1647 the enlarged prussian territories won their emancipation from poland. prussia now became a distinct state, essentially german in character (as opposed to the poles and lithuanians on its eastern border), but still remaining for a time outside the community of the other german states. the union between prussia and brandenburg had brought prussia under the rule of the house of hohenzollern, which, although originally a south german family, had borne rule in brandenburg since 1415. under the hohenzollerns prussia rapidly increased in territory and influence until in 1701 the ruler of the day, the grandfather of frederick the great, took on himself the title of king. under frederick the great, prussia's career of conquest and aggrandisement continued. seizing a convenient opportunity, he invaded and annexed the austrian province of silesia, and later joined with austria and russia in promoting the shameful partition of poland. the old conquering and "civilising" policy of the teutonic knights was continued, but under new conditions and in a brutal and cynical spirit which rendered it impossible of success. "the surest means of giving this oppressed nation better ideas and morals," wrote frederick the great, in words quoted with approval by prince bã¼low, "will always be gradually to get them to intermarry with germans, even if at first it is only two or three of them in every village." this spirit in prussian policy may have extinguished the ancient prussians, but it has not yet begun to germanise the poles, and has gone far to de-germanise the alsatians. but it explains the utterances and justifies the sincerity of those who believe that to-day, as in the early days of her history, prussia is fighting on behalf of "culture." prussia remains to-day, what she has been for the last two centuries, an aggressive military monarchy. "prussia attained her greatness," says prince bã¼low, "as a country of soldiers and officials, and as such she was able to accomplish the work of german union; to this day she is still, in all essentials, a state of soldiers and officials." power rests in the hands of the monarch and of a bureaucracy of military and civil officials, responsible to him alone, and traditionally and fanatically loyal to the monarch who is, before all things, their war lord. the prussian outlook is so foreign to western habits of thought that it is well that we should try to understand it at its best. prussia proper has not been rich, like the rest of germany, in poets and imaginative writers; but she is fortunate to-day in possessing in the greatest living greek scholar, professor von wilamowitz-moellendorff, a man who by birth and breeding is able to put the highest interpretation upon the aims and spirit of the prussian state. to wilamowitz prussia is not only nearer and dearer than athens. she is better, and more advanced. at the close of a wonderful address on "the glory of the athenian empire," in which he has employed all the resources of his wide learning to paint a picture of ancient greece at her best, wilamowitz breaks into this impassioned peroration: "but one element in life, the best of all, ye lacked, noble burghers of athens. your sages tell us of that highest love which, freed from all bodily entanglements, spends itself on institutions, on laws, on ideas. we prussians, a rough, much-enduring tribe of northerners, may be compacted of harder stuff; but we believe that love is on a higher level when the fullest devotion to an institution and an idea is inseparably linked with an entirely personal devotion to a human being; and at least we know how warm such a love can make a loyal heart. when our children have scarce learned to fold their hands before god, we set a picture before them, we teach them to recognise the noble features; we tell them, 'this is our good king.' our young men, when they are of age to bear arms, look with joy and pride on the trim garb of war, and say, 'i go in the king's coat.' and when the nation assembles to a common political celebration, the occasion is no feast of the constitution, no day of the bastille, no panathenaic festival. it is then that we bow in reverence and loyalty before him who has allowed us to see with our own eyes that for which our fathers dreamed and yearned, before him who ever extends the bounds of the kingdom in freedom, prosperity, and righteousness, before his majesty the emperor and king."[1] [footnote 1: _speeches and lectures_, 3rd edition, berlin, 1913, p. 65. the "good king" referred to is the old emperor william, as the address dates from 1877.] here, far better expressed than in the kaiser's speeches, we see the spirit of the prussian junker at its best. it is narrow, old-fashioned, and, to democratic ears, almost grotesque. yet, if it survives uncorrupted by the dangers to which progress always exposes a military caste, it will not be easy either to crush by defeat or to transform by humiliation. it is among the old prussian nobility and the large landed proprietors in the original prussian provinces, who have come to be known as the "junkers," that this spirit prevails. they stand for the old stern repressive military discipline and unchanging conservatism in its extremest form, regarding with well-founded suspicion and misgiving symptoms of development in any direction whatsoever. no party in germany acquiesced more unwillingly in the changes necessitated by her commercial and industrial development. even their militarism stopped short at the army, and it required a substantial increase in the protective tariff safeguarding their agricultural interests to purchase their reluctant adhesion to the kaiser's policy of naval expansion. even now the german navy, the pride of the commercial and industrial classes throughout the german empire, is regarded by them with uneasy suspicion as a parvenu service, in which the old prussian influences count for less in promotion than technical skill and practical efficiency. the institutions of the prussian state represent the spirit of its ruling caste. if the german empire is not democratic, prussia lags far behind it. the electoral system in use for the prussian lower house is too complicated to explain here. its injustice may be gauged from the fact that in 1900 the social democrats, who actually polled a majority of the votes, secured seven seats out of nearly 400. the whole spirit and practice of the government is inimical to inborn british conceptions of civil liberty and personal rights. there is one law and code of conduct for officers and another for civilians, and woe betide the civilian who resists the military pretensions. the incidents at zabern in alsace in 1913 are still fresh in public memory, reinforced by evidence of a similar spirit in german military proclamations in france and belgium. but it is important to realise that these incidents are not exceptional outbursts but common prussian practice, upheld, as the sequel to the zabern events proved, by the highest authority. prussia, and through prussia germany, is in effect ruled in accordance with the wishes of the official caste: and short of a popular rising nothing but defeat can dethrone it. "any one who has any familiarity at all with our officers and generals," says an authoritative german writer, in words that we may hope will be prophetic, "knows that it would take another sedan, inflicted on us instead of by us, before they would acquiesce in the control of the army by the german parliament."[1] no clearer statement could be given as to where the real power lies in germany, and how stern will be the task of displacing it. [footnote 1: professor delbrã¼ck (who succeeded to the chair of history in berlin held so long by treitschke), in a book published early in 1914 (_government and the popular will_, p. 136).] the foreign policy of prussia has reflected the same domineering spirit. its object has been the increase of its power and territory by conquest or cunning: and by the successful prosecution of this policy it has extended prussian authority and prussian influence over a large part of western germany. the best way of illustrating this will be to quote a passage from the _recollections of prince bismarck,_ who directed prussian policy from 1862 to 1890. in 1864 trouble arose as to the succession to the duchies of schleswig and holstein on the danish border. prussia had no claim whatever to the duchies; but she coveted holstein because it would give her a western sea-board, with the results that we all know. bismarck describes the arguments which he used to persuade his royal master to assert his claim. "i reminded him," he writes, "that each of his immediate predecessors had won an addition to the monarchy": he then went through the history of the six previous reigns, and ended by encouraging king william to be worthy of his ancestors. his advice, as we have seen, was successfully adopted. [illustration: prussia since the accession of frederick the great] the conquest of france in 1870, by means of the military power of germany under prussian leadership, made prussia supreme in germany, and the german army supreme in central europe. the treaty of frankfurt in may 1871, by which the new french republic ceded to the german empire the two french provinces of alsace and lorraine, marked the opening of a new epoch in european history, the period of the armed peace, which ended in 1914. it marked also the opening of a new epoch in germany, some features of which we must now examine. â§4. _germany since 1870_.--german history from 1871 to 1914 falls into two well-defined periods. during the first period, from 1871 to 1888, germany was ruled by her imperial chancellor, prince bismarck. but the accession of the present kaiser led to a change, not in the letter, but in the spirit of the new constitution, and since 1890, when william ii. "dropped the pilot" and selected a more amenable successor, the real control of policy has lain with the emperor. the relations between prince bismarck and the old emperor, who was over ninety when he died in 1888, form a touching passage in modern history. although his grandson has publicly claimed for him a peculiar measure of divine inspiration, his strength lay in his implicit confidence in his great minister. bismarck's attitude to him, as described in his _memoirs_, is rather like that of an old family retainer who has earned by long and faithful service the right to assert his views and to pit his judgment against his master's. his one formidable antagonist was the empress; and long experience, he tells us, enabled him to judge whether difficulties in persuading the old kaiser to adopt a given line of policy were due to his own judgment or conceived "in the interests of domestic peace." the faithful servant had his own appropriate methods of winning his way in either case. but with the new kaiser the old minister's astuteness availed nothing, and the story of bismarck's curt dismissal, after thirty-eight years of continuous service, from the post which he had created for himself, illustrates the danger of framing a constitution to meet a particular temporary situation. bismarck, put out of action by his own machinery, retired growling to his country seat, and lived to see the reversal of his foreign policy and the exposure of germany, through the franco-russian alliance, to the one danger he always dreaded, an attack on both flanks. like germany's present rulers, bismarck was not a scrupulous man; but unlike them he was shrewd and far-sighted, and understood the statesmen and the peoples with whom he had to deal. the main object of his foreign policy was to preserve the prestige of the german army as the chief instrument of power in central europe, and to allow the new germany, after three wars in seven years, time to develop in peace and to consolidate her position as one of the great powers. the situation was not an easy one; for germany's rapid rise to power, and the methods by which she had acquired it, had not made her popular. bismarck's foreign policy was defensive throughout, and he pursued it along two lines. he sought to strengthen germany by alliances, and to weaken her rivals by embroiling them with one another. the great fruit of his policy was the formation, completed in 1882, of the triple alliance between germany, austria-hungary and italy. there was nothing sentimental about the triple alliance. the italians hate the austrians, whom they drove out of venice as recently as 1866, while neither the german austrians nor the other races in the dual monarchy have any love lost for the prussians. but bismarck decided that this combination was the safest in germany's interest: so he set to work to play upon austria's fear of russia, and to embroil italy with france in north africa; and his manoeuvres were duly rewarded. but this was not sufficient. faced with the implacable hostility of france, on account of the lost provinces, bismarck saw danger of trouble from a french coalition with the two remaining great powers, britain and russia. bismarck never liked england; but he never made his successors' mistake of despising her. he cultivated good relations, but he rejected the idea of an alliance, because, as he said, "the english constitution is not compatible with treaties of assured continuity." in other words, he fought shy of british democracy, which he felt to be an incalculable factor. this threw him back upon russia. the relations between the german and the russian peoples have never been cordial. but between the reactionary bureaucracies of the prussian and russian governments there was a strong bond of mutual interest, which bismarck exploited to the full. both had popular movements to hold in check, both had stolen goods to guard in the shape of their polish possessions, and both had an interest in the preservation of reactionary institutions. the influence of prussia upon russia, and of the efficient, highly-organised, relentless prussian machine upon the arbitrary, tyrannical, but far less efficient and inhuman bureaucracy of russia, has been wholly sinister[1], both for russia and for europe. bismarck's object, of course, was not so much to keep down the russian revolutionaries as to check the aspirations of the panslavists, whose designs for the liberation of the slav nationalities, as we now see them unfolding, threaten the stability both of prussia and of austria-hungary. [footnote 1: the same remark applies to the influence of germany on turkey.] throughout the 'eighties bismarck succeeded in keeping on foot a secret understanding with russia. how deeply he had implanted the necessity of this policy in the mind of william i. is brought home by the fact that it was the thought uppermost in the old man's mind as he lay on his deathbed. "never lose touch with the tsar," whispered the old man to his grandson, when he was almost too weak to speak. "there is no cause for quarrel." the old emperor died in 1888. in 1890 the young emperor "dropped the pilot." in the same year russia refused to renew her secret treaty. in 1891 the first franco-russian treaty was signed, and the diplomatic supremacy of europe passed from the triple alliance to be shared between the two opposing groups with which we have been familiar in recent years. the disappearance of prince bismarck marked the beginning of a new phase in german policy and in german life. the younger generation, which had come to maturity, like the kaiser, since 1870, had never known the old divided germany, or realised the difficulties of her statesmen. every one wondered what use the young kaiser would make of the great army bequeathed to him. he was believed to be a firebrand. few believed that, imbued with prussian traditions, he would keep the peace for twenty-five years; fewer still that, when he broke it, germany would have the second navy in the world. but we are not now concerned with the baffling personality of the kaiser himself. what is important for us here is the general attitude of mind among the german public of the kaiser's generation, which has rendered possible the prosecution of the cherished ideas of their ruler. the school of thought which has been steadily gaining force, under official encouragement, during the last twenty-five years is best summed up in the popular watchwords, "germany's place in the sun" and "world-policy" (_weltpolitik_). these phrases embody, for germans, who always tend to be abstract in their thinking, not only a practical policy, but a philosophy of human society and government. this is not the place in which to analyse in detail the outlook upon life (_weltanschauung_) of the man in the street in modern germany. it is a confused and patchwork philosophy, drawn, consciously or unconsciously, from many quarters--from the old cosmopolitan tradition of german culture, dating from goethe and leasing; from the brave and arrogant claims of fichte and the prophets and poets of the napoleonic era; from the far-reaching influence of hegel and his idealisation of the prussian state; from the reaction to "realism" in politics after 1848; from the prestige of bismarck and the deep impression made by the apparent success of his methods and principles; from the gifted prussian historians, treitschke and sybel, who set their own interpretation upon bismarck's work and imprinted it, by speech and pen, upon the mind of the german nation; and from a hasty interpretation of the theories of writers like nietzsche and thomas carlyle, with their exaltation of "heroes" and "supermen," their encouragements to "live dangerously," their admiration for will-power as against reason and feeling, and their tirades against legal shams, "ballot-box democracy," and flabby humanitarianism. the practical object of the policy of _weltpolitik_ can be simply stated. it is to extend to the other continents, and to the world as a whole, the power and the prestige secured for germany in europe by the work of bismarck. "when germany had won a mighty position on a level with the older great powers," says prince bã¼low, "the path of international politics lay open to her ... in the emperor william ii. the nation found a clear-sighted, strong-willed guide who led them along the new road." some such expansion of german influence was inevitable from the facts of her economic development since 1871. the population of the empire, which in 1871 was 41,000,000, has now risen to 65,000,000. the resources of the country, the neglect of which during the days of disunion had forced so many germans to emigrate for a livelihood, have been rapidly and scientifically developed. already in the 'eighties "made in germany" had become a familiar talisman, and, before the outbreak of the present war, germany ranked with the united states as the second greatest commercial power in the world. simultaneously, of course, there has been a great change in the distribution of the population. in the year 1850 65 per cent, and in 1870 47 per cent of the working population were engaged in agriculture. by 1912 the proportion had sunk to 28.6 per cent. it was inevitable also that germany should share with the other great powers in the work of colonial government. the adjustment of the relations between the advanced and backward races of mankind is the greatest political task of our age; it is a responsibility shared jointly between all the civilised states, and when in the 'eighties and 'nineties the vast regions of africa were partitioned amongst them, germany, late in the field, asserted her claims and received her share in the responsibility. rapid economic development and a colonial empire--what was there in these to cause hostility between germany and great britain? the united states have passed through a similar development and have accepted a similar extension of responsibility far outside their own continent. america is a great, a growing, and a self-respecting power; yet americans see no ground for that inevitable conflict of interests between their country and great britain which forms the theme of so many german books, from prince bã¼low's candid self-revelations down to less responsible writers like bernhardi. the explanation lies in the nature of german thought and ambitions. when germans speak of "a place in the sun," they are not thinking of the spread of german trade, the success of german adventure or enterprise, or of the achievements of germans in distant lands. they are thinking of the extension of the german state. british influence beyond the seas has been built up during the last four centuries by the character and achievements of british pioneers. downing street has seldom helped, often hindered, and generally only ratified the accomplished facts of british settlement and influence. that is not the prussian theory or the prussian method. it is for the state to win the territory, and then to set the people to work there, on lines laid down from above. the individual englishman, when he goes out to colonise, carries england with him, as a part of his personality. not so the german, at least on the prussian theory. "the _rare case_ supervened," says prince bã¼low,[1] of an instance typical of the building up of the british empire, "that the establishment of state rule _followed and did not precede_ the tasks of colonising and civilisation." the state itself, on this theory, has a civilising mission of expansion towards which it directs the activities of its citizens. [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, 1st ed., p. 249.] under the influence of ideas such as these, germany, since the accession of william ii., has built a navy second to that of great britain alone. what was the purpose of the building of the german navy? the german official answer is that its purpose was the protection of german trade. "we are now vulnerable at sea," says prince bã¼low. "we have entrusted millions to the ocean, and with these millions, the weal and woe of many of our countrymen. if we had not in good time provided protection for them ... we should have been exposed to the danger of having one day to look on defencelessly while we were deprived of them. we should have been placed in the position of being unable to employ and support a considerable number of our millions of inhabitants at home. the result would have been an economic crisis which might easily attain the proportions of a national catastrophe." these words may yet prove prophetic. but the catastrophe will not be the result of germany's lack of a navy; it will be the result of challenging the naval supremacy of great britain. prince bã¼low's argument assumes, as a basis, the hostility of great britain. this assumption, as we know, was unjustified; and its persistence in the german mind can only be set down to an uneasy conscience. the hard fact of the matter is that it is impossible for germany or for any other power successfully to defend her foreign trade in case of war with great britain. no other power thinks it necessary to attempt to do so, for no other power has reason to desire or to foresee a naval conflict with great britain. ever since 1493, when the pope divided the monopoly of traffic on the ocean between spain and portugal, and english mariners flouted his edict, great britain has stood for the policy of the open sea, and there is no likelihood of our abandoning it. the german official theory of the purpose of their navy, with its suspicious attitude towards british sea-power, was, in effect, a bid for supremacy, inspired by the same ideas which made the german army, under bismarck, supreme in central europe. the kaiser's speeches on naval matters, notably his famous declaration that "our future is on the water," provide an official confirmation, if one were needed, of the real nature of germany's naval ambitions. but what right, it may be asked, has great britain to this naval supremacy? why should we, more than any other power, claim one of the elements for our own? has not germany some reason to be jealous? why should we not allow her, together with ourselves, "a place on the ocean"? the answer to this lies in the character of the british empire. one quarter of the human race live under the union jack, scattered throughout the oceans and controlled from a small island in the western seas. for great britain, alone among the states of the world, naval supremacy, and nothing less, is a daily and hourly necessity. india realised this truth recently in a flash when, after generations of silent protection by british sea-power, german shells fell one night at madras. any power that challenges the naval supremacy of great britain is quarrelling, not with the british government or the british people, but with the facts of history, of geography, and of the political evolution of the world. the british empire has not been built up, like the german, by the work of statesmen and thinkers; it is not the result, as germans think, of far-seeing national policy or persistent ambition and "greed." it has slowly taken shape, during the last four centuries, since intercourse was opened up by sea between the different races of mankind, in accordance with the needs of the world as a whole. its collapse, at the hands of germany or any other power, would not mean the substitution of a non-british empire for a british. it would inaugurate a period of chaos in all five continents of the world. the rulers and people of germany, who counted on the "decadence" of great britain and the disintegration of her unorganised empire, did not realise these simple facts. their lack of perception was due partly to their political inexperience; but a deeper reason for it lies in their wholly false estimate as to what "world-policy" and "world-empire" mean. trained in the prussian school, they thought of them, like soldiers, in terms of conquest, glory, and prestige. that way lies napoleonism. none of the great powers is wholly free from blame on this score. but until germans realise, as the other powers are slowly realising, that the true basis of empire is not a love of glory but a sense of responsibility towards backward peoples, it will be hard to readmit them into the comity of the great powers. only a sense of common purposes and ideals, and of joint responsibility for world-problems, can make the concert of europe a reality. such is the general attitude of mind among the german public of the younger generation. let us now turn to the effect of this new outlook upon the political parties and groupings. the chief result has been the extinction in germany, as a political force, of the great liberal movement of the mid-nineteenth century which in england, france, and other western countries has grown and developed during the last generation along lines corresponding to the needs of the new century. the younger generation of middle-class germans, indoctrinated with "orthodox" and "national" opinions at school and on military service, eschew the ideals which attracted their fathers and grandfathers in 1848; and, although so-called "liberal," "free-thinking," and radical parties still exist, they have steadily been growing more militarist. militarism in its new guise, bound up with ideas of industrial and commercial expansion, is far more attractive to them than in the form of the prussian army. the emperor's navy bills were from the first more popular in commercial and industrial circles than with the old prussian conservatives. but as the years went on the kaiser succeeded in converting both the junkers to his navy bills and the middle classes to his army bills, so that by 1913, when he demanded the "great national sacrifice" of a levy of 50 million pounds by a tax, not on income, but on property, there was no difficulty whatever about "managing" the reichstag. "the army bill of 1913," says prince bã¼low, "met with such a willing reception from all parties as had never been accorded to any requisition for armaments on land and sea.... so far as man can tell, every necessary and justifiable army and navy bill will always be able to count on a safe parliamentary majority."[1] [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, p. 169.] prince bã¼low's "safe parliamentary majority" means, of course, a majority sufficient to outvote the social democrats, with whom every german government has to reckon as a permanent opposition. so far we have left the social democrats out of the picture. it was necessary to do this, in discussing german policy and the relation between the german government and reichstag opinion; for the german government itself habitually leaves them out of the picture. hitherto in germany, so far as opinion on political questions has mattered at all, it is upper-and middle-class opinion that has counted, as it counted in england up to fifty years ago. to the german government and to the ordinary educated german the social democratic party, though it numbers in its voting ranks over 4 million german workmen and others, does not represent german opinion at all: it represents something un-german and anti-german--a public enemy. between the social democrats and the rest of society a great gulf is fixed, across which no intercourse is possible: as the pioneers who attempted to introduce the workers' educational association into germany found, such intercourse is forbidden from either direction. the social democrats are the "red danger," "men who," in the kaiser's words, are "the enemies of empire and fatherland," and "unworthy" (except, of course, in war-time) "to bear the name of germans." we must go back a hundred years in english history to realise the depth of the animosity between the social democratic party and the rest of german society. "the word radical," says an english historian, "conveyed a very different meaning in 1816 to what it does now.... the hands of the radicals were supposed to be against every man, and every man's hand was against them. scott, when he talks of rebels in arms, always styles them radicals. 'radicalism is a spirit,' wrote the vicar of harrow in 1820, 'of which the first elements are a rejection of scripture, and a contempt of all the institutions of your country, and of which the results, unless averted by a merciful providence, must be anarchy, atheism, and universal ruin.'"[1] the vicar of harrow in 1820 very fairly sums up the substance of innumerable german speeches, pamphlets, and election addresses in 1912 on the subject of the social democrats. [footnote 1: spencer walpole, _history of england_, vol. i. p. 348.] how is this extraordinary position maintained? how is it possible that in a modern, largely industrial community, the representatives of working-class opinion should be regarded as public enemies? the chief reason lies, of course, in the fact that the german empire is not a democracy and is not governed by ministers responsible to parliament. the immense numbers and rapid growth of the social democrats have therefore not really been a menace to the government. in fact, it has even been held in some quarters that it has been to the interest of the german government, which is based on the prussian military caste, to manoeuvre the social democrats into an extreme position and then to hold them up as a terrible example of what democracy means. "this," they can tell the german people, "is the alternative to prussian rule." a dangerous policy, it may be argued, for the social democrats may some day secure a majority in the reichstag. the prussian answer to this is that, without a redistribution of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink from it. another reason why it has been possible for the government to ignore the social democrats has been the absence of a practical alternative programme on the part of the social democrats themselves. "if i had to make out a school report for the social democratic movement," said prince bã¼low in the reichstag on one occasion, "i should say, 'criticism, agitation, discipline, and self-sacrifice, i. _a_; positive achievements, lucidity of programme, v. _b._'" the taunt is not undeserved. the socialist movement in germany has suffered, like so many german movements, through a rigid adherence to logical theories. under the leadership of old revolutionary thinkers like bebel it has failed to adapt itself to the facts of modern german life. the vague phrases of its republican programme, survivals from a past epoch of european thought, have attracted to it a large mass of inarticulate discontent which it has never been able to weld into a party of practical reformers. in the municipal sphere and in the field of trade unionism, under the education of responsibility, german socialism can show great achievements; but in national policy it has been as helpless as the rest of the german nation. what effect, it will be asked, is the war of 1914 likely to have on the german working-class movement? in 1848 middle-class germany made its stand for democracy. may we hope for a similar and more successful movement, in the direction of western ideals and methods of government, from working-class germany as a result of 1914? it is a tempting prophecy; but the outlook is not propitious. germany, prussian and south german, noble, bourgeois, and working class, has rallied round the emperor in this crisis of national history, as the brutal and cynical directors of german policy calculated that she would. for the social democratic movement the war comes with a peculiar appeal. it is a war against russia, a country about which the german workman knows little and understands less, but which he considers to be the home of a reaction far blacker than that of his own country. a war of aggression against the western powers would have found the social democrats divided. by representing russia as the aggressor and the western powers as the shameless allies of the "mongol," german diplomacy, more successful within than without, made certain of enlisting socialist support. moreover, the socialists too have to pass through a natural reaction from their refusal to recognise the forces of nationality--from utopian dreams of international action by the peoples across the barriers of separate governments. for the first time in the history of the party, german socialism has been allowed to be patriotic. it is an exhilarating and heartening experience, and it is certain to leave an indelible mark upon the spirit of the movement. the great party organisation, hitherto confined to the sterile work of agitation, is being used to cope with the many problems created by the war; and this work, rather than revolutionary agitation, is likely to occupy it for some time to come. a veil has fallen upon germany: german books and papers are stopped at our ports: we cannot know through what thoughts the german nation is passing. but as we look with the mind's eye across the north sea, past devastated belgium to the populous towns of industrial germany, we see a people skilful, highly instructed, and mechanically intelligent, yet equally devoid either of personal initiative or of great and inspiring leadership. two generations of prussian education have left german public life practically empty of names of more than local reputation. great changes are needed--a change of institutions and a change of spirit; yet whence this will come we cannot divine. only, as democrats, we can say with confidence that if the true spirit of the german people is to be liberated from its long imprisonment, its freedom must be won, not from without, but from within. not europe but only the germans can make germany herself again. bibliography books 1. german history bryce. _holy roman empire_. (deals with mediaeval germany, but also contains a most interesting final chapter on germany in the nineteenth century, written in 1873.) 1904. (7s. 6d.) carlyle. _frederick the great_, vol. i. (best account in english of the earlier history of prussia.) (2s. 6d.) h.a.l. fisher. _napoleonic statesmanship: germany_. 1903. (12s. 6d.) (germany in the napoleonic era.) seeley. _life of stein_. 1878. 3 vols. (30s.) (the standard work in english on reorganisation of prussia after napoleon.) bismarck. _reflections and reminiscences_. (the guiding mind in germany, 1862-1888.) 2 vols. 1898. (can only be bought second-hand.) headlam. _life of bismarck_. 1899. (6s.) (heroes of the nations.) holland. _germany to the present day_. 1913. (2s. net.) a useful short history if supplemented by other books. powicke. _bismarck_. 1914. (6d.) (people's books.) (excellent.) the two great modern german historians are treitschke and sybel, for whom see gooch's _history and historians in the nineteenth century_, pp. 140-53. treitschke's history is not available in english: sybel's has been translated under the title, _the founding of the german empire by william i._ vols., new york, 1890-1891. 2. germany under william ii. bã�low. _imperial germany_. 1914. (2s. net.) (the mind of the german government.) saunders. _the last of the huns_. 1914. (1s. net.) (in spite of its objectionable title this volume, by the late correspondent of the _times_ in berlin, is written with fairness and lucidity, and contains much valuable information.) henri lichtenberger. _germany and its evolution in modern times._ 1913. (10s. 6d net.) (translated from the french: suggestive, especially on economic questions and on the movements of german thought.) w.h. dawson. _the evolution of modern germany_. 1908. (5s. net.) (the best general account of modern germany in english.) c. tower. _germany of to-day._ 1913. home university library. (is.) (good.) c. sarolea. _the anglo-german problem_. (2s.) (a useful popular account of german political conditions and german policy.) _board of education special reports_, vols. iii. and ix. (3s. 3d. and 2s. 7d.) articles by dr. m.e. sadler on german education. _memoirs of prince hohenlohe_. (imperial chancellor, 1894-1900.) 2 vols. 1906. (24s. net.) the britannica war books. _germany_. (2s. 6d. net.) by w. alison phillips and j.w. headlam. (a somewhat carelessly abridged reprint from the standard article in the _encyclopaedia britannica_.) 3. general books h.s. chamberlain. _the foundations of the nineteenth century_. english translation. 2 vols. 1910. (25s. net.) (this book had an immense vogue in germany, and was particularly recommended by the kaiser to his subjects. it is full of interesting, if ill-founded, generalisations tending to emphasise the importance of race and to glorify the german race.) thomas. _german literature_. (6s.) robertson. _german literature_. 1914. home university library. (1s.) herford and others. _germany in the nineteenth century_. manchester. 1912. (2s. 6d.) essays on different aspects of german development. bernhardt. _germany and the next war_. 1912. (2s. net.) (the philosophy and aims of gorman militarism worked out.) cramb. _germany and england_. 1914. (2s. 6d. net.) (an account of treitschke and his school of thought: interesting for the light it throws on german misconceptions about great britain.) treitschke. _selections from his lectures on politics_. 1914. translated by a.l. gowans. (2s. net.) the writings of the following german professors will be found interesting if procurable: oncken, meinecke (both contributors to the _cambridge modern history_), delbrã¼ck, sombart, erich marcks (see his lectures on germany in _lectures on the history of the nineteenth century_, edited by kirkpatrick, cambridge, 1900, 4s. 6d.), schiemann, lamprecht, schmoller, and f. von liszt. _note_.--such considered german writings as have come to hand since the outbreak of the war show little tendency to cope with the real facts of the situation, or even to seek to understand them. they seem to indicate two developments in german opinion. (1) a great consolidation of german national unity (except, of course, in poland and alsace-lorraine). (2) a tendency to forgo the consideration of the immediate issues and to hark back in thought to 1870 or even to the wars of liberation. it is difficult to judge of a nation in arms from the writings of its stay-at-homes; but no one can read recent articles by the leaders of german thought without feeling that the germans are still, before all things and incurably, "the people of poets and philosophers," and that, by a tragic irony, it is the best and most characteristic qualities of the race which are sustaining and will continue to sustain it in the conflict in which its dreams have involved it. chapter iv austria-hungary and the southern slavs "for a century past attempts have been made to solve the eastern question. on the day when it appears to have been solved europe will inevitably be confronted by the austrian question."--albert sorel (1902). in april 1909, a week after the international crisis evoked by austria's annexation of bosnia had come to an end, i paid my first visit to cetinje, the tiny mountain-capital of montenegro, and was assured by the premier, dr. tomanovi, that the conflict had merely been postponed, not averted--a fact which even then was obvious enough. "but remember," he said, "it is a question of _aut aut_ (either, or)--either serbia and montenegro or austria-hungary. one or other has got to go, and you may rest assured that in four, or at most five, years from now there will be a european war over this very question." at the time i merely regarded his prophecy as a proof of serb megalomania, but it has been literally fulfilled. in 1908-1909 austria-hungary, with the aid of her german ally, enforced her wishes in respect of bosnia upon a reluctant europe; but instead of following up this success by a determined effort to solve the southern slav question on an austrian basis, she allowed the confusion to grow yearly worse confounded, and gradually created an intolerable situation from which a peaceful exit was well-nigh impossible. the actual event which precipitated the struggle, the event from which the diplomatic contest of last july, and thus the great war, first proceeded, was the assassination of the archduke francis ferdinand and his wife at sarajevo on june 28 and the consequent acute friction between austria-hungary and serbia. but the murder, as will be shown later, was merely made the pretext for austria's declaration of war. the real causes lie far deeper, and can only be properly understood on the basis of an historical survey. my apology for inflicting so many unfamiliar details upon the reader is that the key to the whole situation lies in austria-hungary, and that upon the fate of its provinces and races in this war depends to a very great extent the question whether the new europe which is to issue from this fiery ordeal is to be better than the old europe which is crumbling in ruins before our eyes. for the moment a thick fog of war obscures this point of view; but the time will assuredly come when it will emerge in its true perspective. in recent years it had become a cheap journalistic commonplace to refer to the coming "inevitable" struggle between teuton and slav, and the present war is no doubt widely regarded as proving the correctness of this theory, despite the fact that the two chief groups of teutons are ranged on opposite sides, and that the slavs enjoy the active support of celts and latins also. that such a struggle has come, is in the last resort due to the false conceptions of nationality which underly the policy of the two central powers, germany and austria-hungary. the freedom from foreign oppression which the germans so nobly vindicated against napoleon has not been extended to their own subject races, the poles, danes, and lorrainers; and recent years have seen the accentuation of a conflict the germs of which may be detected as far back as the fatal crime of the polish partition in the eighteenth century. the policy of germanisation in austria has been gradually undermined by causes which it would take too long to enumerate, but its sting has survived in the maintenance of a foreign policy which treats 26,000,000 slavs as a mere _annexe_ of militant germanism and as "gun-fodder" for the designs of berlin; while in hungary the parallel policy of magyarisation has increased in violence from year to year, poisoning the wells of public opinion, creating a gulf of hatred between the magyars and their subject races (the slovaks, roumanians, croats, serbs, etc.), and rendering cordial relations with the neighbouring balkan states impossible. nor is it a mere accident that official germany and official hungary should have pursued an actively turcophil policy; for the same tendencies have been noticeable in turkey, though naturally in a somewhat cruder form than farther west. just as the young turk policy of turkification rendered a war between turkey and the balkan states inevitable, so the policy of magyarisation pursued by two generations of hungarian statesmen sowed the seeds of war between austria and the southern slavs. in the former case it was possible to isolate the conflict, in the latter it has involved the greater part of europe in a common disaster. the struggle centres round the austro-serbian dispute. let us then attempt a brief survey of the two countries. â§1. _austria and the habsburgs_.--let us begin with austria-hungary. in this country many misconceptions prevail regarding austria-hungary; nor is this surprising, for it is unique among states, and whether we regard it from a political, a constitutional, a racial, or a social point of view, the issues are equally complicated and difficult to sum up. with the aid of a good gazetteer it is easy enough to elicit the facts that the austria-hungary of to-day is a state of fifty-two million inhabitants, divided into three component parts: _(a)_ the empire of austria, _(b)_ the kingdom of hungary, each with subdivisions which will be referred to later, and _(c)_ the annexed provinces of bosnia-herzegovina, jointly administered by the two governments. but this bald fact is meaningless except in connection with the historical genesis of the habsburg state. [illustration: austria-hungary; physical] austria--_oesterreich_--is the ancient eastmark or frontier province, the outpost of carlovingian power against the tribes of the east, then of the mediaeval german empire against slav and magyar. under the house of habsburg, which first rose to greatness on the ruins of a greater bohemia, austria grew steadily stronger as a distinct unit. two famous mottoes sum up the policy of that dynasty in the earlier centuries of its existence. _austriae est imperare orbi universo_ (austria's it is to rule the universe) ran the device of that canny frederick iii., who, amid much adversity, laid the plans which prompted an equally striking epigram about his son and successor maximilian, the "last of the knights"--_bella gerant alii, tu, felix austria, nube_ (let others wage war; do thou marry, o fortunate austria!). there were three great stages in habsburg marriage policy. in 1479 maximilian married the heiress of charles the bold, thus acquiring the priceless dowry of the low countries (what are now belgium and holland). in 1506 his son philip added the crown of spain and the indies by his marriage with the heiress of ferdinand and isabella. in 1526, when the battle of mohã¡cs placed hungary at the mercy of the turks, maximilian's grandson ferdinand, in his wife's name, united bohemia, hungary, and croatia with the austrian duchies. henceforth for over two centuries austria and habsburg became the bulwark of christendom against the turks; though delayed by wars of religion and by the excesses of religious bigotry, they yet never lost sight of the final goal. twice--at the beginning and at the end of this period, in 1527 and 1683--the turks were before the very walls of vienna, but the second of these occasions represents their final effort. in the closing years of the seventeenth and the first two decades of the eighteenth centuries the tide finally rolled back against them. foremost among the victors stands out the great name of prince eugene, comrade-in-arms of our own marlborough, whose song, "prinz eugen, der edle ritter" (prince eugene, the noble knight), has been sung in july and august 1914 on the streets of vienna, just as "marlbrook s'en va-t-en guerre" might be sung by our belgian allies. the peace of 1718 represents habsburg's farthest advance southwards; belgrade and half of present-day serbia owned allegiance to vienna. then came the check of 1739, when these conquests were restored to the sultan. due merely to incompetent generals, it need not have been permanent, had not frederick the great created a diversion from the north. by the time that the war of austrian succession and the seven years' war were over, that expansion southwards which had seemed so certain was irrevocably postponed. the organisation of fresh "military frontiers," the colonisation of waste lands in south hungary--all was admirable so far as it went, but was already a defensive rather than an offensive measure. meanwhile a formidable rival appeared in the shape of the russian colossus, and the history of two centuries is dominated by austro-russian rivalry in the balkans. here we are confronted by the first of those lost opportunities in which the history of modern austria is unhappily so rich. during the eighteenth century austria became, as it were, the chief home of bureaucratic government, first under maria theresa, one of the greatest women-sovereigns, then under her son joseph ii. a series of "enlightened experiments" in government, typical of the age of voltaire and of frederick, and honestly conducted _for_ the people, though never _by_ the people, ended as such experiments are apt to end, in failure. the most that can be said is that the bureaucratic machine had become more firmly fixed in the groove which it was henceforth to occupy. the failure of joseph ii. was above all due to his inability to recognise the meaning of nationality, to his attempt to apply germanisation as the one infallible remedy for all internal difficulties in his dominions. the idea of nationality, already gaining strength, obtained a fresh impetus from the french revolution. while in the west it sowed the seeds of united italy and united germany, which the nineteenth century was to bring to fruition, in the balkans it stirred waters which had seemed dead for centuries, and led to the uprising of the serbs and greeks, then of the roumanians, and finally a generation later of the bulgarians. in the habsburg dominions the same movement revealed itself in the revival of national feeling in hungary, bohemia, and croatia, but nowhere more strongly than in hungary, where it was accompanied by a remarkable literary revival and the appearance of a group of magyar poets of real genius. the kingdom of hungary, which from 1526 to 1687 had been partially under turkish rule, led a vegetable existence during the eighteenth century. this lull was a necessary period of recuperation after exhausting wars. the ancient hungarian constitution, dating in its essentials from the thirteenth century, but fallen on evil days during the turkish era, now came more and more out of abeyance. its fundamental principles were reaffirmed by the famous laws of leopold ii. (1790-92), and after a further relapse due to the napoleonic wars, a long series of constitutional and linguistic reforms were introduced by successive parliaments between 1825 and 1848. without entering into a discussion of the hungarian constitution, it is well to point out one factor which lies at the root of all political and constitutional development in hungary and explains the magyar outlook for centuries past, even up to the present day. till 1840 latin was the official language of the country, and in that latin the term for the political nation was _populus_, which we would naturally translate as people. but populus contrasted in hungarian law with plebs, the _misera plebs contribuens,_ that phrase of ominous meaning to describe the mass of the oppressed and unenfranchised people, the populus being the nobles, a caste which was relatively very wide, but none the less a caste, and which enjoyed a monopoly of all political power. till 1848 only the populus could vote, only the plebs could pay taxes--a delightful application of the principle, "heads i win, tails you lose!" in 1848 the distinction was broken down in theory, the franchise being extended beyond the privileged class by the initiative of that class itself. but in effect the distinction has survived to the present day in a veiled form. political power, and, above all, the parliamentary franchise and the county elective bodies, continued to be a monopoly--henceforth a monopoly of the magyar nobility, _plus_ those classes whom they had assimilated and attached to their cause, _against_ the other races, forming more than half the population of hungary. this point of populus and plebs may seem at first sight somewhat pedantic and technical; but in reality it is the key which explains the whole social structure of hungary, even its economic and agrarian problems. the period from the death of joseph ii. to the great revolutionary movement of 1848 may be regarded, so far as eastern europe is concerned, as a period when nationality is simmering everywhere. it is a period of preparation for the rise of national states--ushered in by the great crime of the polish partition, to which so many modern evils may be traced, and closed by a sudden explosion which shook europe from paris to budapest, from palermo to berlin. the first stage was of course the long napoleonic war, during which the seed was sown broadcast; the second, the era of reaction and political exhaustion (1815-1848), when all that was best in europe concentrated in the romantic movement in literature, art, and music. for austria this period was bound up with the name of metternich, who personified the old hide-bound methods of the bureaucracy, the diplomacy of a past age, to which the nations were mere pawns on a chessboard. under him the "police-state" assumed its most perfect form, a form not even surpassed by russia from 1881 to 1905. then came the year 1848, when the dams burst. the hungarian constitution, restored in its entirety, became for a time the watchword and inspirer of the movement, while austria for the first time received a serious constitution. unhappily the issue between reaction and progress was not a clear one. the magyars in hungary unquestionably stood for historic development and constitutional rights, but they also stood for racial hegemony, for the forcible assimilation of all the other races, for a unitary magyar state instead of the old polyglot hungary. they thus drove all the other races to coalesce with the dynasty and the forces of reaction. the result was a violent racial war, with all kinds of excesses. slovaks, croats, serbs, roumanians, saxons, all fought against the magyars, and finally the scale was turned by the russian troops who poured across the carpathians in the name of outraged autocracy. there followed the inevitable reaction, which again can be best summed up in two phrases--that of prince felix schwarzenberg, "austria will astonish the world by her ingratitude," so strikingly fulfilled in the crimean war, when austria left russia in the lurch; and that of a hungarian patriot, "the other races have received as reward what we magyars receive as punishment." in short, the statesmen of vienna, untaught by experience, reverted to the old bureaucratic and absolutist _rã©gime_. for ten years (1849-1859) this endured--clericalism rampant, financial ruin, stagnation everywhere. then nationality burst its bonds once more. the war with napoleon iii. ended in austria's loss of lombardy and the creation of the italian kingdom. faced by the bankruptcy of the whole political and financial system, francis joseph launched into a period of constitutional experiment. following the line of least resistance, as throughout his long reign, he inclined now to federalism, now to centralism, and he was still experimenting when the war of 1866 broke out. for austria this war was decisive, for its results were her final expulsion both from germany and from italy, and the creation of that fatal dual system which has distorted her whole subsequent development. under the ausgleich or compromise of 1867 the dual monarchy is composed of two equal and separate states, the empire of austria and the kingdom of hungary, each possessing a distinct parliament and cabinet of its own, but both sharing between them the three joint ministries of foreign affairs, war, and finance. the chiefs of these three offices are equally responsible to both delegations, which are committees of the two parliaments, sitting alternately in vienna and budapest, but acting quite independently of each other. this system really secured the political power in austria and hungary to two races--the germans and the magyars, and they, as the strongest in each country, bought off the two next strongest, the poles and the croats, by the grant of autonomy to galicia and croatia. the remaining eight were not considered at all. at first this ingenious device seemed to offer fair prospects of success. but ere long--for reasons which would lead us too far--the german hegemony broke down in austria, and the whole balance was disturbed. it gradually became clear that the system was only workable when one scale was high in the air. the history of the past forty-seven years is the history of the gradual decay of the dual system. austria has progressed in many ways; her institutions have steadily grown freer, her political sense has developed, universal suffrage has been introduced, racial inequalities have been reduced though not abolished, industry, art, and general culture have advanced steadily. but she has been continually hampered by hungary, where racial monopoly has grown worse and worse. the magyar chauvinists attempted the impossible--the assimilation by seven million people of twelve million others. yet in spite of every imaginable trick--a corrupt and oppressive administration, gross manipulation of the franchise, press persecution, the suppression of schools and ruthless restriction of every form of culture--the non-magyar races are stronger to-day than in 1867. and the result of the struggle has been in hungary a decay of political standards, a corruption of public life, such as fills even the greatest optimists with despair. â§2. _hungary and magyar misrule_.--such an assertion may seem to run counter to the common idea of hungary as the home of liberty and the vanguard of popular uprisings against despotism, and it is certainly incompatible with the arrogant claim of magyar statesmen that "nowhere in the world is there so much freedom as in hungary." at the risk of disturbing the proportion of this chapter, i propose to give a few classic illustrations of magyar methods, selected almost at random from an overwhelming mass of damning evidence. on paper hungary possesses a most admirable and enlightened law guaranteeing "the equal rights of nationalities" (1868); in practice, it has remained almost from the very first a dead letter. let us take the field of education. every effort, legal and illegal, has been made to magyarise the educational system, with the result that in all the primary and secondary schools under state control magyar is the exclusive language of instruction, while the number of denominational schools has been steadily diminished and their sphere of action, as more favourable to the non-magyar races, materially restricted. fifty years ago the slovaks, who even then numbered over two millions, possessed three gymnasia (middle schools) which they had founded and maintained by their own exertions. in 1875 all three were arbitrarily closed by orders of the hungarian government, and since that date the unhappy slovaks have not been allowed a single secondary school in which their own language is taught, while the number of their primary schools has been reduced from 1821 in 1869 to 440 in 1911. the deliberate aim is, of course, to prevent the growth of a slovak middle class. it is quite a common thing for schoolboys to be persecuted or even dismissed for showing slovak proclivities or even talking their mother--tongue "ostentatiously" on the street. only last year a brilliant young slovak student, known to me personally, was deprived by the magyar authorities of a scholarship in oriental languages, for no other reason than that he was "untrustworthy in a national sense"![1] such instances are even more frequent among the roumanians of hungary. a specially notorious case occurred in march 1912 at grosswardein, when sixteen roumanian theological students were expelled from the catholic seminary for the "demonstrative use" of their language, which was regarded as offensive by their fellow-students and professors! [footnote 1: this document is in my possession.] linguistic restrictions are carried to outrageous lengths. there is not a single inscription in any language save magyar in any post office or railway station throughout hungary. slovak medals and stamps, produced in america and bearing such treasonable inscriptions as "for our slovak language" and "i am proud to be a slovak," have been confiscated in hungary. only magyar inscriptions are tolerated on the tombstones of the budapest cemeteries. the erection of monuments to roumanian or slovak patriots has more than once been prohibited, and the funds collected have been arbitrarily seized and applied to magyar purposes. national colours, other than the magyar, are strictly forbidden. two years ago, at the funeral of a roumanian poet at kronstadt (transylvania) gendarmes pressed up to the hearse and clipped off the colours from a wreath which had been sent by the society of journalists in bucarest. about the same time a nurse was sent to prison because a child of three was found wearing a roumanian tricolor bow, and its parents were reprimanded and fined. last july on the very eve of war, fifteen theological students, returning to bucarest from an excursion into transylvania, were arrested at the frontier by hungarian gendarmes, hauled by main force out of the train, sent back to hermannstadt and kept for days in gaol; their offence consisted in waving some roumanian tricolors from the train windows as they steamed out of the last station in hungary! no law of association exists in hungary, and the government uses its arbitrary powers to prohibit or suppress even such harmless organisations as temperance societies, choral unions, or women's leagues. perhaps the most notorious examples are the dissolution of the slovak academy in 1875 and of the roumanian national party's organisation in 1894; but the treatment meted out to trades unions and working-class organisations, both magyar and non-magyar, for years past, has been equally scandalous. the right of assembly is no less precarious in a country where parliamentary candidates are arrested or expelled from their constituencies, where deputies are prevented from addressing their constituents, where an electoral address is often treated as a penal offence. as for hungary's electoral system, the less said the better. gerrymandering, a narrow and complicated franchise, bribery and corruption on a gigantic scale, the wholesale use of troops and gendarmes to prevent opposition voters from reaching the polls, the cooking of electoral rolls, illegal disqualifications, sham counts, official terrorism, and in many cases actual bloodshed--such are but a few of the methods which preserve a political monopoly in the hands of a corrupt and increasingly inefficient racial oligarchy, in a country where the absence of the ballot places the peasant peculiarly at the mercy of the authorities. small wonder, then, if the non-magyar races of hungary, who on a basis of population would have had 198 deputies, never were allowed to elect more than 25, and if even this scanty number was at the infamous elections of 1910 reduced by terrorism and corruption to eight! in judicial matters the situation is no less galling. petitions are not accepted in the courts, unless drawn up in magyar, and the whole proceedings are invariably conducted in the same language. the non-magyar "stands like an ox" before the courts of his native land, and a whole series of provisions exists for his repression, notably the monstrous paragraphs dealing with "action hostile to the state," with the "incitement of one nationality against another" and with the "glorification of a criminal action"--applied with rigorous severity to all political opponents of magyarisation but never to its advocates. let me cite one classic example of the latter. in 1898 a well-known slovak editor was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for two articles severely criticising the magyarisation of place-names in hungary. on his return from prison he was met at the railway station of the little county town by a crowd of admirers: songs were sung, a short speech of welcome was delivered and a bouquet of flowers was presented. the sequel of this perfectly orderly incident was that no fewer than twenty-four persons, including mr. hurban the leading slovak poet, were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from fourteen days to six months. the three girls who had presented the flowers were let off with a fine of â£16. perhaps the reader will regard me as a very dangerous conspirator, when i tell him that in june 1910 an old lady of seventy-three, the widow of a high-school headmaster, was fined â£4 because i had called at her house for twenty minutes on election day without its being notified to the police, and that in june 1914 an enquiry was instituted by the local authorities against some slovak friends who had entertained me to luncheon! and yet i can honestly assert that i have never been guilty of any worse crime than captain grose, of whom burns warned my countrymen a hundred years ago in the famous line: a chiel's amang ye takin' notes! the fabric of magyar rule is far too rotten and corrupt to regard with equanimity any extensive note-taking on the part of the outer world. whole books might be written to illustrate the contention that in matters of education, administration, and justice, of association and assembly, of the franchise and the press, the non-magyar nationalities of hungary have long been the victims of a policy of repression which is without any parallel in civilised europe. it is this magyar system, from which i have lifted but a corner of the veil, that is one of the mainsprings of the present war, and if there is to be a new and healthy europe in the future, this system must be swept away root, branch and stock. to such lengths has national fanaticism driven the magyars that in 1906 it was possible for an ex-premier of hungary, speaking in open parliament amid the applause of the majority, to lay down the following axiom: "the legal state is the aim: but with this question we can only concern ourselves when we have already assured the national state.... hungary's interests demand its erection on the most extreme chauvinist lines." men who applaud such a sentiment are worthy allies of those so-called statesmen who regard international treaties as "a mere scrap of paper." â§3. _the decay of the dual system_.--the radical divergence of political development in austria and in hungary, its paralysing effect upon the foreign policy of the monarchy as a whole, coupled with the growth of national feeling among the minor nationalities and their steady emancipation from the economic thraldom of the german and the jew--all this has slowly but surely undermined the dual system and rendered its final collapse inevitable. indeed for some time past it has merely owed its survival to the old age of the emperor, who has a natural reluctance to destroy his own creation. for some years it has been known that his heir, francis ferdinand, was the advocate of far-reaching changes, which would have taken the form of a compromise between a federalist and a centralist system. his abrupt removal from the scene was secretly welcomed by all those whose political and racial monopoly was bound up with the existing _rã©gime_. german dominance in austria, it should be added, meant a close alliance with the german empire; and every fresh effort of the subject races to emancipate themselves from germanising or magyarising tendencies forged the chains of the alliance closer and increased the dependence of the magyar oligarchy upon berlin. as in mediaeval times, so in the twentieth century habsburg policy is explained by two famous latin mottoes--_viribus unitis_ ("union is strength") and _divide et impera_ ("divide and rule"). between these two watchwords francis joseph and his advisers have wavered for sixty-five years. what then are the forces which have held austria-hungary together under francis joseph? first unquestionably comes the dynasty; for it would be difficult to over-estimate the power exercised by the dynastic tradition on the many races under habsburg sway. next comes the joint army; for there is no finer body of men in europe than the austrian officers' corps, poorly paid, hard-worked, but inspired to the last man with unbounded devotion to the imperial house, and to a large extent immune from that spirit of caste which is the most offensive feature of the allied german army.[1] hardly less important are the catholic church, with its vast material resources and its powerful influence on peasant, small tradesman and court alike, and the bureaucracy, with its traditions of red tape, small-mindedness, slowness of movement and genial _gemã¼tlichkeit_ ("easy-goingness"). it is only _after_ these forces that we can fairly count the parliaments and representative government. and yet there are no fewer than twenty-three legislative bodies in the monarchy--the two central parliaments of vienna and budapest, entirely distinct from each other; the two delegations; the provincial diets, seventeen in austria, one in croatia; and the diet of bosnia, whose every legislative act requires the ratification of the joint minister of finance and of the austrian and hungarian governments. [footnote 1: it is in no way a "preserve" of the aristocracy, being largely recruited from the middle and even lower-middle class.] against all this there is one supremely disintegrating force--the principle of nationality. only a map can make clear the racial complications of the dual monarchy, and even the largest scale map fails to show how inextricably the various races are interwoven in many districts of hungary or bohemia. the following table offers at least a statistical survey: (1) racial- austria. hungary. bosnia. germans 9,950,266 2,037,435 .. czechs {6,435,983 .. .. slovaks { 1,967,970 .. poles 4,967,984 .. .. ruthenes 3,518,854 472,587 .. magyars (including 900,000 jews) .. 10,050,575 .. croats } 783,334 1,833,162 {1,875,000 serbs } 1,106,471 { slovenes 1,252,940 .. .. roumanians 275,422 2,949,032 .. italians 768,422 27,307 .. others .. 374,105 .. (2) religious- roman catholic 22,530,000 10,888,138 451,686 uniate catholic 3,417,000 2,025,508 .. orthodox 660,000 2,987,163 856,158 calvinist } 589,000 2,621,329 .. lutheran } 1,340,143 .. mohammedan .. .. 626,649 jewish 1,314,000 932,458 .. minor sects 56,000 91,748 .. total population 28,324,940 20,886,487 1,898,044 â§4. _the genesis of the southern slavs._--the foregoing survey of tendencies in austria-hungary is utterly incomplete and inadequate, but it may perhaps serve as a basis for further study. let us now consider her rival in the dispute which has led to the great war--serbia. here, at the outset, it cannot be emphasised too strongly that those who regard the problem merely as a dispute between the government of vienna and the government of belgrade have not grasped even its elements. the southern slav question goes far deeper and wider than that; it must be treated as a whole, and of it serbia is only a part. in any study of the slavonic races the first fact which emerges is that they fall naturally into two main groups--the northern and the southern--divided by a solid wedge of three non-slavonic races, the german, the magyar, and the roumanian, stretching from the kiel canal to the black sea. it is with the southern group that we are concerned. the southern slavs fall into four sections--the slovenes, croats, serbs, and bulgars, who between them occupy the whole country from southern carinthia to central thrace. the significance of the bulgars will be dealt with elsewhere, and of the slovenes it will suffice for our present purpose to say that they are a small and ancient race, of vigorous stock and clerical leanings, whose true importance lies in their geographical position and its latent possibilities for the future. the croats and serbs occupy the border-line between west and east, between rome and byzantium, between catholicism and orthodoxy. broadly speaking, every croat is a catholic, every serb an orthodox. broadly speaking again, the croat language is serb written with latin characters, the serb language croat written in the cyrilline alphabet. despite their common language, the two kindred races have never all been united under a single ruler. from the ninth to the end of the eleventh century the duchy, then kingdom, of croatia was governed by native princes, upon whose extinction it was conquered by hungary. for eight centuries croatia has enjoyed an autonomous position under the holy crown of st. stephen; its scope has varied according to the political constellation, but till 1912 its constant tradition had remained unbroken. meanwhile the dalmatian coast towns remained a bone of contention between venice and hungary; but the marble lions on their battered walls are still the best proof of the triumph of italian culture within them. ragusa alone resisted both venetians and turks, and preserved herself inviolate as the home of commerce and the muses, until her tiny republic was destroyed by napoleon in 1808. the kingdom of serbia developed on more distinctively slavonic lines. during its great days in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries under the nemanja dynasty it dominated the balkan peninsula, produced a code of law which is unique in mediaeval records, developed a prosperous commerce and mining industries, and seemed on the point of striking a new note in architecture. her greatest tsar, stephen dushan, died mysteriously of poison, when his hosts were already thundering at the gates of constantinople (1356). but the greatness of his empire did not survive him, and only a generation later serbian independence received its death-blow on the fatal field of kosovo--the flodden of the balkans, but an event far direr in its consequences than flodden was to scotland. bosnia and a fragment of serbia lingered on under more or less independent rulers till the middle of the fifteenth century. then the turkish night replaced the turkish twilight. from 1463 to 1804 the national life of the serbs lay utterly crushed. in serbia their nobility was literally wiped out, in bosnia it accepted islam in order to save its lands. the relations of conqueror and conquered are best characterised by the single fact that a christian who failed to dismount from his horse on meeting a turk was liable to be killed on the spot. throughout this period of utter gloom only two things served to keep alive the serb tradition--their splendid popular ballads, unequalled in europe for directness and imagination, save, perhaps, by the ballads of the anglo-scottish border; and the clergy of the orthodox church, poor ignorant despised peasants like their flock, yet bravely keeping the national flame burning. the one bright spot was the tiny mountain eyrie of montenegro, which stubbornly maintained its freedom under a long succession of warrior-priests. the serb patriarchate, which had long had its seat in ipek, migrated to austria in 1690, at the special invitation of the emperor leopold i., and has ever since been established (though the title of patriarch lapsed for a time) at karlowitz on the danube. large settlements of refugee serbs from turkey followed their spiritual chief to croatia, slavonia and the southern plains of hungary between 1690 and 1740. the special privileges granted to them by the emperor were, however, gradually undermined and revoked by the hungarian estates. meanwhile the "military frontiers" were extended on essentially democratic lines: a land-tenure subject to military service bred a hereditary race of soldiers and officers devoted to the imperial idea, and it has taken many long long years of bungling on the part of viennese and magyar diplomacy to efface that devotion. thus the habsburg dominions became the centre of culture for the serbs, whose literary revival came from neusatz, karlowitz and even buda. it was not only under prince eugene that they looked to the habsburgs for aid. kara george, who led their first serious rising in 1804 more than once offered himself to vienna. in the balkans the serbs were the first to revolt, and won their own freedom, with less help than greeks, roumanians or bulgarians, and under far less favourable circumstances. thus serbia is essentially a self-made man among states, built from the foundations upwards, and possessing no aristocracy and hardly even a middle class. her curse has been the rivalry of two, or rather three native dynasties, the karageorgevitch, the obrenovitch and the petrovitch; and this rivalry has borne fruit in three dastardly political crimes--the murder of the heroic black george in 1817, by order of his rival milosh obrenovitch; of prince michael, serbia's wisest ruler, by the adherents of george's son; and finally of king alexander and his wife in june 1903. the history of the southern slavs for the last century has been a slow movement towards national unity, overshadowed, sometimes hastened, sometimes paralysed, by the rivalry of austria and russia for the hegemony of the balkan peninsula. till 1875 the influence of the two powers alternated in belgrade, and there was nothing definite to suggest which influence would win, though of course russia may be said to have possessed an advantage in her position as the foremost orthodox power and as the greatest among the slavonic brotherhood of races. that year, however, brought a fresh rising of bosnia and herzegovina against turkish rule, and in defence of this purely serbo-croat province public opinion in serbia and montenegro rose. side by side the two little principalities fought the turks and risked their all upon the issue. the provinces were to the last man friendly and welcomed their action. then, when the battle seemed won, austria-hungary at the congress of berlin stepped in and occupied bosnia and herzegovina--with the active approval of disraeli and salisbury. the inhabitants resisted stoutly, but were overcome. thus was realised the first stage upon the road of the austrian advance towards salonica. serbia received compensation at nia�, pirot, and vranja; montenegro acquired the open roadstead of antivari and a scrap of barren coast-line; but the hearts of both still clung to bosnia. henceforth the friction between vienna and belgrade has been permanent, though often latent. it was accentuated by the fact that king milan was little better than an austrian agent, the most notorious example of this being the ill-considered and ill-managed war with bulgaria into which he plunged serbia at the instigation of the ballplatz[1](1885). afterwards, it is true, vienna intervened to rob the bulgarians of the fruits of victory and argued that serbia was thus under her debt; but this crass application of the principle of _divide et impera_ could not deceive any one. milan was a man of great ability, but vicious and corrupt. the ceaseless scandals of his private life, the frequent political _coups d'etat_ in which he indulged, tended to confirm the dislike of his subjects for the austrophilism with which he was identified. alexander, his son and successor, was even worse; indeed, it is not too much to say that he was the most "impossible" monarch whom europe has known since the days of the tsar paul. his court was characterised by gross favouritism and arbitrary revisions of the constitution; and his position became finally untenable when he committed the fatal error of marrying draga mashin, a woman of no position and notorious private character. two incidents in her tragic story remind us of similar scandals in english history--the fond delusion of mary tudor and the legend of mary of modena's warming-pan. the last straw was the design, widely attributed to her and the infatuated king, for securing the succession to her brother, who had as little claim to the throne as any other serbian subject. on june 10, 1903, alexander and draga were assassinated by a gang of serbian officers, under circumstances of the utmost brutality such as nothing can excuse. in the light of recent events, however, it is important to note that both austria and russia knew of the plot at least ten days before the murder and did nothing to stop it.[2] on the day after the crime the _fremdenblatt_, the organ of the austro-hungarian foreign office, published a leading article couched in terms of the utmost cynicism, and declaring that it mattered little to austria-hungary which dynasty reigned in serbia. the serbian government might have been excused for enclosing a copy of this article in its reply to the austrian note of july 23, 1914! [footnote 1: the austro-hungarian foreign office.] [footnote 2: in 1908 this was confirmed to me by a distinguished member of the then austrian cabinet, since dead, who was certainly in a position to know.] the obrenovitch dynasty was thus at an end. its rival, the karageorgevitch dynasty, returned to power--naturally under a black cloud of european disgust and suspicion. king peter is not, however, as black as he has sometimes been painted. he fought gallantly in 1870 as a french officer; as a young man he translated stuart mill's _essay on liberty_ into serb, and for a generation he lived by preference in democratic geneva and in paris. under him serbia has for the first time enjoyed real constitutional government. quietly, as occasion arose, the regicides were removed to the background, the old methods of favouritism were steadily discouraged, and it is not too much to say that an entirely new atmosphere has been created in belgrade since 1903. among the younger politicians in serbia, as in other slavonic countries, the moral influence of professor masaryk, the great czech philosopher and politician, has grown more and more marked. the depth of serb aspirations in bosnia has two obvious grounds--on the one hand, pure national sentiment of the best kind; on the other, the urgent economic need for a seaboard, serbia being the only inland country in europe save switzerland, and not enjoying the latter's favoured position in the immediate vicinity of great world-markets. austria-hungary, on her part, set herself deliberately not merely to block this access to the sea, but also to keep serbia in complete economic dependence. under the new dynasty the little kingdom showed a keener desire to shake off its vassalage and find new markets. the so-called "pig war"--the breeding of swine is serbia's staple industry, and the founders of her two rival dynasties were wealthy pig-breeders--proved an unexpected success, for new trade outlets were found in egypt and elsewhere. but the initial strain hit every peasant in his pocket and thus greatly accentuated the feeling against austria-hungary. at this stage came the young turk revolution and its sequel, the annexation of bosnia. to any impartial observer it had been obvious from the first that those who dreamt of austria-hungary's voluntary withdrawal from the two provinces were living in a fool's paradise. the formal act of annexation merely set a seal to thirty years of effective austrian administration, during which the sultan's rule had been confined to the official celebration of his birthday. educational and agrarian problems had been neglected, popular discontent had smouldered, but at least great material progress had been made. roads, railways, public buildings had been created out of nothing, capital had been sunk, a new machine of government had been constructed. austria had come to stay, and aehrenthal, in annexing the provinces, felt himself to be merely setting the seal to a document which had been signed a generation earlier. he had failed to reckon with the outcry which this technical breach of international law evoked: like bethmann-hollweg, he had no blind faith in "scraps of paper," and had no scruple in tearing up the treaty of berlin on which the whole balkan settlement had rested. nowhere was the outburst of feeling so violent as in serbia and montenegro, who had never ceased to dream of the lost serb provinces. for some months the two little states challenged the accomplished fact, and seemed bent on staking their very existence upon war with the great neighbouring monarchy. aehrenthal remained unmoved by their cries of impotent fury and settled down to a trial of strength with his rival izvolsky, the russian foreign minister, who encouraged the sister slavonic states in their resistance. at length in march 1909 germany stepped forward in "shining armour" to support her austrian ally, and russia, to avoid european war, gave way and abandoned the serbs to their fate. nothing was left but a humiliating submission: the serbian government was obliged to address a note to the great powers, declaring that the annexation and internal condition of bosnia did not in any way concern her.[1] [footnote 1: this declaration was made the basis of the austrian note to serbia in july 1914.] â§5. _the renaissance of serbia._--from this diplomatic defeat dates the renaissance of serbia. it restored her to a sense of hard realities, and taught her to substitute hard work for loud talk. so rough a challenge put the national spirit on its mettle. the brief period between 1908 and 1912 worked a real transformation in belgrade, which could not fail to impress those who took the trouble to look beneath the surface. nowhere was the change more marked than in the serbian army, from which the regicide elements had been slowly but steadily eliminated. the two balkan wars of 1912-1913 revealed serbia to the outside world as a military power, notable alike for the ã©lan of its infantry, the high efficiency of its artillery, the close camaraderie of officers and men. the first use made of her victories over the turks was the occupation of northern albania, her only possible outlet to the sea so long as dalmatia remains in austrian hands. austria-hungary, who had only remained inactive because she had taken a turkish victory for granted, now intervened, and by the creation of an artificial albanian state vetoed serbia's expansion to the adriatic. the austrian foreign minister, count berchtold, short-sighted and indolent then as now, failed to realise that the north albanian harbours, for obvious reasons of physical geography, could never be converted into naval bases, save at a prohibitive cost, and that their possession by serbia, so far from being a menace to austria, would involve the policing of a mountainous tract of country, inhabited by a turbulent and hostile population. it ought to have been obvious to him that the moment had arrived for tempting the serbs into the austrian sphere of influence by the bait of generous commercial concessions through bosnia and dalmatia. several far-sighted politicians in austria urged this course upon him, and the serbian premier actually approached vienna with far-reaching proposals in this very sense. their contemptuous rejection by berchtold and the little clique of foreign office officials who controlled his puppet figure, naturally strengthened still further the bonds which united belgrade and petrograd. serbia, shut out from the adriatic, had no alternative save to seek her economic outlet down the valley of the vardar towards the aegean, and in so doing she came into violent conflict with bulgarian aspirations in macedonia. these facts alone would justify the assertion that the war between the balkan allies was directly due to austro-hungarian initiative; but it has also transpired that the dissensions between sofia and belgrade were actively encouraged from vienna, that magyar influences were brought to bear upon king ferdinand, and that war material was sent down the danube from hungary to bulgaria. the outward and visible sign of these intrigues was a speech of the hungarian premier, count tisza, opposing the tsar's intervention in favour of peace and virtually inciting bulgaria to fight it out. the break-up of the balkan league was the first condition to that austrian advance on salonica which has always remained the ideal of the advocates of a forward policy in vienna and budapest, and which lies at the root of austria-hungary's action in provoking the present war. serbia and montenegro, however, are but one half of the problem. the issues involved are wider and deeper than the quarrels of vienna and budapest with belgrade. even if every man in serbia were willingly prostrate before the habsburg throne, there could be no real peace until the internal problem of austria-hungary's southern slav provinces is solved. what is at stake is the future of eleven million people, inhabiting the whole tract of country from sixty miles north of trieste to the centre of macedonia, from the southern plains of hungary to the north albanian frontier. of these, roughly four millions are in the two independent kingdoms; the remaining seven millions are divided between austria (the provinces of dalmatia, istria, and carniola) and hungary (the autonomous kingdom of croatia-slavonia), while bosnia-herzegovina are governed jointly by austria and hungary. the history of these provinces during the past generation is one of neglect and misgovernment. croatia has been exploited economically by the magyars, and the narrow interests of budapest have prevented railway development and hampered local industries by skilful manipulation of tariffs and taxation. a further result is that even to-day dalmatia (with the exception of ragusa) has no railway connections with the rest of europe, and those of bosnia are artificially directed towards budapest rather than towards agram, vienna, and western europe. it is not too much to say that the situation of those provinces had become less favourable (if compared with surrounding standards) than it was at earlier periods of their history; for the old system of trade-routes had broken down there as elsewhere in europe, but had not been replaced by modern communications. â§6. _serbo-croat unity._--parallel with the new era instituted in serbia since 1903, a strong movement in favour of national unity took root among her kinsmen across the austro-hungarian frontier. the disruptive tendencies which had hitherto been so marked in croatian politics began to weaken. the so-called serbo-croat coalition round which all the younger elements speedily rallied, put forward an ambitious programme of constructive democratic reform as the basis of joint political action on the part of both races, and held stubbornly together when the inevitable breach with the magyar oligarchy occurred. the magyar government felt that every effort must be made to restore that discord between croat and serb which had been for a generation one of the main pillars of their racial hegemony. these designs happened to coincide with the aims of the foreign office in vienna in connection with the annexation of bosnia, and budapest and vienna combined in a systematic campaign of persecution against the serbs of croatia. "wholesale arrests and charges of treason led up to the monster trial at agram, which dragged on for seven months amid scandals worthy of the days of judge jeffreys. the diet ceased to meet, the constitution of croatia was in abeyance, the elections were characterised by corruption and violence such as eclipsed even the infamous hungarian elections of 1910; the press and the political leaders were singled out for special acts of persecution and intimidation." these tactics were revealed to the outside world in the notorious friedjung trial (december 1909), resulting out of a libel action brought by the serbo-croat coalition leaders against dr. friedjung, the distinguished austrian historian. the documents, on the basis of which he had publicly accused them of being paid agents of the serbian government, had been supplied to him by the austro-hungarian foreign office, and the trial revealed them as impudent forgeries, concocted in the austro-hungarian legation in belgrade! the moral responsibility for these forgeries was subsequently brought home to count forgã¡ch, the minister in belgrade, and indirectly, of course, to count aehrenthal himself as foreign minister. but forgã¡ch, though publicly denounced as "count azev,"[1] was not allowed to fall into disgrace; on the contrary, he had become within two years of his exposure permanent under-secretary at the ballplatz, and inspirer of new plots to discredit and ruin serbia. [footnote 1: an allusion to the notorious russian _agent provocateur _who was at one and the same time a member of the secret police and of the revolutionary organisation.] the scandals of the friedjung trial led to the fall of the governor of croatia, but there was no change of system. after a temporary truce the old conflict revived, and within eighteen months the friction between magyars and croats was as acute as ever. the magyar government employed every possible device of administrative pressure in order to create dissensions between the croat and serb parties--repeated elections, wholesale corruption and violence, persecution of the press and of the political leaders. yet so far from languishing under such a system, the movement for unity gained fresh strength and extended to the kindred slovenes, striking root even among the extreme clericals, who had hitherto regarded the orthodox serbs with distrust and suspicion. in the spring of 1912 the conflict culminated in the abolition of the croatian constitution by the arbitrary decree of the hungarian premier, in the appointment of a reactionary official as dictator, and a few months later in the suspension of the charter of the serb orthodox church. â§7. _the balkan wars._--never in history had a more inopportune moment been chosen for such crying illegalities. for close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the balkan war, the crushing victories of the allies, the resurrection of the lost serb empire, the long-deferred revenge for the defeat of kosovo. the whole southern slav provinces of austria-hungary were carried off their feet by a wave of enthusiasm for the allies, and an impossibly strained situation was reached when the government of vienna placed itself in violent conflict with serbia, vetoed her expansion to the sea, insisted upon creating a phantom albanian state, egged on bulgaria against her allies, and finally mobilised in order to impose its will upon the serbs. every peasant in the slavonic south naturally contrasted magyar misrule in croatia with the splendid achievements of his serb kinsmen across the frontier. i know of poor villagers in the mountainous hinterland of dalmatia who, having no money to give to the cause of the balkan red cross, offered casks of country wine or even such clothes and shoes as they could spare from their scanty belongings. the total subscriptions raised among the southern slavs of the monarchy in aid of the allies far exceeded any sums previously raised for charitable purposes among so poor a population. "in the balkan sun," said a prominent croat clerical, "we see the dawn of our day." the national rejoicings which "the avenging of kosovo" evoked among the croats, serbs, and slovenes of austria-hungary were accompanied by lively protests against the bare idea of an austro-serbian war, which, so far as the southern slavs on both sides of the frontier were concerned, would have been a civil war in the most literal sense of the word (and this civil war, it must be remembered, is now actually being waged). the politicians, however, though well-nigh unanimous in their enthusiasm for the cause of the balkan allies, could not at one breath throw off the habits of a lifetime. petty jealousies still divided them and were skilfully played upon by the magyar government. the strain of five years of opposition and persecution had produced its effect upon the coalition leaders and rendered them all too prone to further concessions. but the younger generation had been profoundly affected by the croatian dictatorship and the balkan wars; at an age when our youth think of nothing but cricket and football, the students and even the schoolboys of croatia, dalmatia, and bosnia became engrossed in political speculation, brooded over the wrongs of their disunited race, and dreamt of serbia as the new piedmont of the balkans. to all alike even the most advanced politician seemed no better than an old fogey, and it is no exaggeration to assert that the existing parties had lost all hold upon the overwhelming majority of those who in ten years' time will represent the manhood and the intellect of the race. the widespread nature of the movement may be illustrated by the school strike of the spring of 1912, during which every boy and girl above the age of fourteen in most of the primary and secondary schools of croatia, dalmatia, and bosnia played truant as a protest against the misgovernment of croatia. on that occasion a crowd of 5000 school children paraded the streets of agram shouting "down with cuvaj" (the ban or governor of croatia), and cheering the police when they tried to intervene! as in all such movements, the views of individuals varied in intensity: some merely gave a theoretical adherence to the ideals of mazzini or of mill, others swallowed the nihilist doctrine of bakunin and dreamt of revolution, ushered in by terrorist propaganda. out of this milieu came the two young assassins who murdered the archduke francis ferdinand. â§8. _the murder of the archduke_.--by a hideous irony of fate francis ferdinand was the one man capable of restoring order to an already desperate internal situation. his very person was a programme and a watchword, and it had long been an open secret that his accession would be the signal for drastic reforms. it was his ambition to supersede the effete dual system by a blend of centralism and federalism such as would reconcile the national sentiment of individual races with the consciousness of a common citizenship and would at the same time restore to foreign policy the possibility of initiative. this programme involved the emancipation of the non-magyar races of hungary from the intolerable racial tyranny of the magyars, and at the same time a serious attempt to solve the southern slav question by unifying the race under habsburg rule. as his imperial uncle grew older and feebler, francis ferdinand is known to have elaborated his designs, and a regular staff of able lieutenants had grouped themselves round him. but on the very eve of action the strong man was removed, to the scarcely veiled relief of all those elements in the state whose political and racial monopoly was threatened by such far-reaching and beneficial changes. the circumstances of the murder are still shrouded in mystery. it is known that no proper measures were taken for the protection of the archduke and his wife in bosnia, though it is still impossible to assign the responsibility for such criminal negligence. it is notorious that in a country like bosnia, which has for years been infested with police spies and informers, and where every movement of every stranger is strictly under control, so elaborate and ramified a plot could hardly hope to escape the notice of the authorities. it has even been asserted that princip and cabrinovic, the two assassins, were _agents provocateurs_ in the pay of the police, and though no proof is as yet forthcoming, there is nothing inherently improbable in the idea.[1] certain it is that the gravest suspicion rests upon those who connived at the disgraceful anti-serb riots of which sarajevo was the scene for nearly forty-eight hours after the murder. [footnote 1: the fact that they have only been sentenced to terms of imprisonment, while some of their accomplices have been condemned to death, has a much simpler explanation. both men are under the age of twenty, and therefore by austrian law immune from the death penalty.] the murder provided an admirable pretext for aggression against serbia, and at the same time tended to revive all the latent prejudice with which the country of the regicides was still regarded in the west. yet those who seek to establish a connection between the crime of sarajevo and the serbian government are on an utterly false scent. i have tried to describe the atmosphere of universal and growing discontent which produced the explosion. those who know the slavonic south are well aware that bosnia, dalmatia, and croatia are a seething pot which needs no stirring from the outside, and that the assassins are but the natural successors of the wild young students who during the last five years fired upon the governors of croatia and bosnia.[1] but quite apart from this, the complicity of official belgrade is rendered incredible by urgent considerations of internal serbian politics. after a long and delicate negotiation the concordat with the vatican had just been concluded: the orient railway question had reached the critical stage: above all, a customs and military union between serbia and montenegro was on the point of being concluded. but, of course, quite apart from such considerations, serbia was suffering from the extreme exhaustion consequent upon waging two wars within a year, and her statesmen, despite the rebuffs administered by count berchtold, were genuinely anxious for a _modus vivendi_ with the neighbouring monarchy, as an essential condition to a period of quiet internal consolidation. but this was the very thing which the controllers of austrian foreign policy--the phantom minister berchtold, the sinister clique in the foreign office, and the magyar oligarchy, led by that masterful reactionary, count tisza, the hungarian premier--were anxious to avoid. they had never reconciled themselves to the new situation in the balkans; and having twice backed the wrong horse (turkey in the first war, bulgaria in the second) still continued to plot against the bucarest settlement of august 1913. salonica still remained the secret austrian objective, and serbia the main obstacle to the realisation of this dream. not for the first time, the interests of vienna and constantinople coincided, and the occult interests which link budapest with salonica played their part in the game. [footnote 1: june 1910, june and november 1912, june 1913.] the crime of sarajevo removed the chief restraining force in the councils of the monarchy and placed the fate of europe at the mercy of a group of gamblers in vienna, budapest, and berlin. the military party, under konrad von hoetzendorf, chief of the austrian general staff (who a year ago was seriously speculating as to the collapse of austria-hungary), joined hands with the magyar extremists, whose political monopoly was threatened by the advancing slavonic tide, and with the inner ring of prussian diplomacy, which believed the psychological moment to have arrived for measuring swords with russia. the murder served as an admirable pretext to veil grossly aggressive tactics. it was hoped that russia might be manoeuvred into a position where autocracy would rather abandon the slav cause than seem to condone assassination; and it was confidently believed that britain would hold aloof from a quarrel whose origin was so questionable. stripped of all outward seeming, the true issues of the conflict were very different. just as the policy of violent turkification adopted by the young turks inevitably provoked the balkan war, so the policy of magyarisation, which has dominated hungarian affairs for forty-five years and poisoned the relations of austria-hungary with her southern neighbours, has led directly to the present conflagration. â§9. _the future of the southern slavs_.--there have always been two fatal obstacles to an austrian solution of the southern slav problem,--magyar hegemony and the dual system, to which alone that hegemony owed its survival; and it is these two worn-out and reactionary ideas (if they can be described as "ideas") that are at present fighting their death-struggle. it was the ambition of francis ferdinand to achieve serbo-croat unity within the monarchy, and thus simultaneously to counteract the attractions of pan-serb propaganda and to remove the most fertile source of friction between austria-hungary and serbia. his death destroyed the last chance of such a solution; for the statesmen of vienna and budapest were not merely incapable but openly hostile. an appeal was to be made to the arbitrament of the sword. long before war broke out it had become a commonplace of political theory that the southern slav question could be solved in one of two ways--either inside the habsburg monarchy or outside it--either with its help and under its aegis, or against it and despite its resistance. with the outbreak of war the problem assumed a new form; the alternatives are the absorption of the two independent serb states in the neighbouring monarchy--in other words, the union of the entire southern slav race under habsburg rule--or the liberation of her kinsmen in the monarchy by serbia as the southern slav piedmont. this latter ideal, it has always been obvious, could only be achieved through the medium of a general european war, and it is in this manner that it is actually in process of achievement. the austrian note to serbia was deliberately framed in such a manner as to be unacceptable by any state which valued its self-respect or prestige. the military leaders desired war, while the foreign office, already committed for years to a violently serbophobe policy, was working hand in glove with the german ambassador tschirschky, and with the very highest quarters in berlin. the german government in its official case admits having given austria "a free hand against serbia," while there are good grounds for believing that the text of the note was submitted to the german emperor and that the latter fully approved of (if he did not actually suggest) the fatal time-limit of forty-eight hours, which rendered all efforts towards peace hopeless from the outset. the austrian case against serbia, as embodied in this note, rested upon a secret investigation in the prison of sarajevo. the persistent rumours that the assassins are _agents-provocateurs_, and that pressure of a somewhat drastic kind was brought to bear upon them after their arrest, cannot of course be accepted as proved. but the essential point to bear in mind is the fact that the details of the austrian "case," as embodied in the notorious note of july 23, originated in the same quarter as the previous attempts to slander and discredit serbia. count forgã¡ch, the arch-forger of the austrian legation in belgrade, was permanent under-secretary in the foreign office, and as count berchtold's right hand and prompter in balkan affairs, was directly responsible for the pronounced anti-serb tendencies which have dominated the foreign policy of the dual monarchy since the rise of the balkan league. as a magyar nobleman with intimate jewish connections, forgã¡ch was an invaluable link between magyar extremist policy and berlin on the one hand and salonica and constantinople on the other. in view of his record as the inspirer of the vasic forgeries, we are amply justified in declining to accept any "evidence" prepared by him and his subordinates, and insisting upon a full and open trial of the murderers as the only conceivable foundation for charges of complicity. when all is said and done, however, the murder of the archduke, though an event of world-importance so far as the internal development and future of the dual monarchy is concerned, is none the less a side-issue in the southern slav question. this seeming paradox will not surprise those who consider the currents of national life among the southern slavs. the diplomatic conflict between belgrade and vienna or budapest is but the outcome of a far deeper and wider movement. we are witnessing the birth-throes of a new nation, the rise of a new national consciousness, the triumph of the idea of national unity among the three southern slav sisters--the croats, serbs, and slovenes. fate has assigned to britain and to france an important share in the solution of the problem, and it is our duty to insist that this solution shall be radical and permanent, based upon the principle of nationality and the wishes of the southern slav race. only by treating the problem as an organic whole, by avoiding patchwork remedies and by building for a distant future, can we hope to remove one of the chief danger-centres in europe. books unfortunately some of the indispensable books are in german or french, but the following list offers a very considerable choice:-(a) austria-hungary _austria-hungary and poland_, by h.w. steed, w. alison phillips, and d. hannay. (britannica war books.) 2s. 6d. net. uncritical reprint of very valuable articles from the _encyclopaedia britannica_. louis leger. _history of austria-hungary_. 1889 (from french) (out of print). geoffrey drage. _austria-hungary_. 21s. net. 1909. a mine of economic facts. h.w. steed. _the habsburg monarchy_. 1914. (3rd ed.) 7s. 6d. net. far the best summary of tendencies, on the lines of bodley's _france_ and bryce's _american commonwealth_. r.w. seton-watson (scotus viator). _racial problems in hungary_. 1908. 16s. net. r.w. seton-watson. _corruption and reform in hungary_. 1911. 4s. 6d. net. hon.c.n. knatchrull-hugesson. _the political development of the hungarian nation_. 1910. 2 vols. 14s. net. a good exposition of the extreme magyar chauvinist point of view. r. mahaffy. _the emperor francis joseph_. 1910. 2s. 6d. a useful character-sketch. c.e. maurice. _bohemia_. (story of the nations.) 1896. 5s. an admirable text-book. c.e. maurice. _the revolutionary movement of_ 1848-49. 1887. 16s. the best epitome in english. count francis lutzow. _bohemia_. 1896. (everyman library.) 1s. emily g. balch. _our slavic fellow citizens_. new york. 1910. the best book on emigration. 10s. 6d. net. (b) serbia and the southern slavs w. miller. _the balkans_. 1896. (story of the nations.) the best general text-book. 5s. w. miller. _the ottoman empire, 1801-1913_. 1913. (cambridge historical series.) an excellent book, with a misleading title; it is really a history of the balkan christians, with special reference to the greeks. turkish history is only introduced incidentally. 7s. 6d. net. emile de laveleye. _the balkan peninsula_. 1887. (out of print,) by a distinguished belgian professor, who was in his day recognised as an authority on balkan questions. leopold von ranke. _history of servia_. 3s. 6d. (bohn's library.) this brilliant and sympathetic study by the greatest of german historians is of permanent value. sir arthur j. evans. _through bosnia on foot_. 1877. (out of print.) the distinguished archaeologist took part, as a young man, in the bosnian rising against the turks. r.w. seton-watson. _the southern slav question and the habsburg monarchy._ 1911. 12s. 0d. net. (greatly modified and extended in a german edition published in 1913.) r.w. seton-watson. _absolutism in croatia_. 1912. 2s. net. cedo mijatovic. _servia of the servians_. 1911. 16s. net. elodie mijatovic. _serbian folklore._. 1874. (c) three other books dealing with the balkans are strongly recommended sir charles eliot (odysseus). _turkey in europe_. 2nd ed. 7s. 6d. net. h.n. brailsford. _macedonia_. 1906. 12s. 6d. net. luigi villari and others. _the balkan question_. 1905. 10s. 6d. net. chapter v russia "god will save russia as he has saved her many times. salvation will come from the people, from their faith and their meekness. fathers and teachers, watch over the people's faith, and this will not be a dream. i have been amazed all my life in our great people by their dignity, their true and seemly dignity. i have seen it myself, i can testify to it; i have seen it and marvelled at it; i have seen it in spite of the degraded sins and poverty-stricken appearance of our peasantry. they are not servile; and, even after two centuries of serfdom, they are free in manner and bearing,--yet without insolence, and not revengeful and not envious. 'you are rich and noble, you are clever and talented, well be so, god bless you. i respect you, but i know that i too am a man. by the very fact that i respect you without envy i prove my dignity as a man....' "god will save his people, for russia is great in her humility. i dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly already, our future. it will come to pass that even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor; and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honourable shame. believe me that it will end in that; things are moving to that. equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will only be understood among us. if we were brothers, there would be fraternity; but before that they will never agree about the division of wealth. we preserve the image of christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. so be it, so be it!"--dostoieffsky, _the brothers karamazov._ "the french are a decent civilised lot of people; but i wish we were not allies of russia." this, or something very like it, is the spoken or unspoken thought of a very large number of persons, especially among the working-classes in england at the present time. english suspicion of russia is no new thing, though there is no doubt that the suppression of the revolution during the years 1906-1909 made it more general than ever before. it was responsible, for example, for the crimean war, and the "crafty russian" has become a catch-word almost as widely accepted in england as the phrase "perfidious albion" is upon the continent. i have seen russia at her worst: i saw the revolution stamped out cruelly and relentlessly; i have lived three years in finland, and know the weariness of spirit and aching bitterness of heart that comes to a fine and cultured race in its perpetual struggle for liberty against an alien government to whom the word liberty means nothing but rebellion. and yet i am firmly persuaded of the innate soundness of the russian people, and of the tremendous future which lies before it in the history of the world. i believe too that the english are suspicious of russia, not because russia is crafty or evil or barbaric, but because english people find it very difficult to understand a race which is so extraordinarily different from themselves. we fear the unknown; we suspect what is unlike ourselves; yet we shall do well, in the present crisis, whether we are thinking of our enemy germany or our ally russia, to remember the axiom laid down by edmund burke, the greatest of english political thinkers: "it is impossible to bring an indictment against a whole nation." in any case, for good or ill, russia is our ally, and if germany is beaten, russia seems likely to play as great a part in the settlement as she did in 1815. it therefore behoves us, in our own self-interest if for no higher motive, to try and understand the spirit and ideals of a great people, who, as they did a century ago at the time of napoleon, are once again coming forward to assist europe in ridding herself of a military despotism. â§1. _the russian state._--many of us do not realise the most obvious facts about russia. for example, our atlases, which give us europe on one page and asia on another, prevent us from grasping the most elementary fact of all--her vastness. mr. kipling has told us that "east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet." but russia confounds both mr. kipling and the map-makers by stretching from the baltic to the pacific. for her there is not europe and asia but one continent, and she is the whole _inside_ of it. all europe between the four inland seas, and all asia north of lat. 50â° (and a good deal south of it too)--that is russia, a total area of 8-1/4 million square miles! this enormous country, which comprises one-sixth of the land-surface of the globe, is at present thinly populated; it has roughly 20 persons to the square mile as against 618 to the square mile in england and wales. yet for all that it contains the largest white population of any single state on earth, numbering in all 171 million souls. moreover, this population is increasing rapidly; it has quadrupled itself during the last century, and with the advent of industrialism the increase is likely to be still more rapid. many among us alive to-day may see russia's population reach and perhaps pass that of teeming china. as yet, however, industrialism is only at its beginning in russia; more than 85 per cent of the inhabitants live in the country, as tillers of the soil. it will be at once evident that this fact gives her an immense advantage over industrial nations in time of war. she has, on the one hand, an almost inexhaustible supply of men to draw upon, while, on the other hand, her simple economic structure is hardly at all affected. a great european war may mean for a western country dislocation of trade, hundreds of mills and pits standing idle, vast masses of unemployed, leading to distress, poverty and in the end starvation; for russia it means little more than that the peasants grow fat on the corn and food-stuffs which in normal times they would have exported to the west. furthermore, her geographical and economic circumstances render russia ultimately invincible from the military point of view, as napoleon found to his cost in 1812. she has no vital parts, such as france has in paris or germany has in silesia or westphalia, upon which the life of the whole state organism depends; she is like some vast multi-cellular invertebrate animal which it is possible to wound but not to destroy. russia has much to gain from a great european war and hardly anything to lose. at first sight, therefore, there seems to be a great deal in favour of the theory, somewhat widely held at the moment, that to crush germany and austria will be to lay europe at the feet of russia, and that when germany has been driven out of france and belgium, the allies in the west might have to patch up a peace with her in order to drive the russians out of germany. behind this theory lies the assumption that russia is an aggressive military state, inspired by the same ideals as have led germany to deluge the world with blood. this is an assumption which is, i believe, absolutely unwarranted by anything in the history or character of the nation. historically speaking, the russian empire is an extension of the old roman empire; it is the direct heir of the eastern roman empire, which had its capital at constantinople, as the mediaeval "holy roman empire," founded by charlemagne in a.d. 800, was the heir of the western roman empire, which had its capital at rome itself. but the eastern empire survived its western twin by a thousand years; the goths deposed the last roman emperor in 476, the turks took constantinople in 1453. the russian empire, therefore, which did not begin its political development until after the fall of constantinople, entered the field some six and a half centuries later than the mediaeval empire of charlemagne, which was indeed already falling to pieces in the end of the fifteenth century. thus russia presents the strange spectacle of a mediaeval state existing in the twentieth century, and she is still in some particulars what western europe was in the middle ages. she has, however, attained a unity, a strength and a centralisation which the holy roman empire never succeeded in acquiring. there is nothing corresponding to the feudal system, with all the disruptive tendencies which that system carried with it, in modern russia; partly owing to the constant danger of mongolian invasion which threatened russia for so many centuries, partly as a result of ivan the terrible's destruction of the _boyars_, who were analogous to the mediaeval barons, and of peter the great's substitution of a nobility of service for that of rank, russia is politically more centralised than any mediaeval, and socially more democratic than any modern, country. russia has also solved that other great problem which perpetually agitated the mediaeval world--the conflict between the secular and the spiritual power. she is the most religious nation in the world, but she has no papacy; peter the great subordinated the church to the state by placing the holy synod, which controls the former, under the authority of a layman, a minister appointed by the tsar. yet, while she appears united and centralised when we think of her nebulous prototype, the holy roman empire, we have only to compare her with her western neighbours, and especially with that triumph of state-organisation, germany, to see how amorphous, how inefficient, how loose, how mediaeval is the structure of this enormous state. peter the great, who was more than any other man the creator of modern russia, saw clearly that the only way of holding this inchoate state-mass together was to call into existence a huge administrative machine, and he saw equally clearly that, if such a machine was not itself to become a disruptive force through the personal ambition and self-aggrandisement of its members, it must be framed on democratic and not aristocratic principles. as mr. maurice baring puts it, "peter the great introduced the democratic idea that service was everything, rank nothing. he had it proclaimed to the whole gentry that any gentleman, in any circumstances whatsoever and to whatever family he belonged, should salute and yield place to any officer. the gentleman served as a private soldier and became an officer, but a private soldier who did not belong to the nobility, and who attained the rank of a commissioned officer, became, _ipso facto_, a member of the hereditary nobility.... in the civil service he introduced the same democratic system. he divided it into three sections: military, civil, and court. every section was divided into fourteen ranks, or _chins_; the attainment of the eighth class conferred the privilege of hereditary nobility, even though those who received it might have been of the humblest origin. he hereby replaced the aristocratic hierarchy of pedigree by a democratic hierachy of service. promotion was made solely according to service; lineage counted for nothing. there was no social difference, however wide, which could not be levelled by means of state service." this is partly what was meant when it was stated in the last paragraph that russia was socially the most democratic of modern countries. the system established by peter the great exists to-day. russia is governed, not by a feudal nobility like that which ground the faces of the poor in france before the revolution of 1789, nor by a number of capitalists who live by exploiting the workers; for neither feudal nobility nor capitalism (as yet) has any real power in russia. she is governed by a civil service, and by a civil service more democratic than our own, where the higher posts are as a rule only open to members of the upper and middle classes, less exclusive than that of india, where the higher officials are nearly all recruited from the members of an alien race--a civil service, in short, whose only close parallel is the hierarchy of the roman catholic church. imagine the roman church as a secular institution, with a monarch at its head ruling by hereditary right instead of an elected president like the pope, and you get a very fair idea of the russian government machine. all that we associate with the word aristocracy in the west, the hereditary principle, primo-geniture, the accumulation of the land and capital of the country in the hands of a small class, the spirit of caste, the traditions of nobility handed down with the title-deeds from father to son, are either non-existent or of comparative unimportance in russian society. there is also none of the keen sensitiveness to minute social distinctions and to the social proprieties which mark them that is so striking a feature of the life in "democratic" england and to which we have given the name "snobbery." there are of course social strata in russia, but they are broadly marked and there is no sense of competition between them. a peasant is not ashamed of being a peasant, and when he meets a nobleman he meets him on terms of spiritual equality while acknowledging his superior position in the social scale. a twin-brother of english "snobbery" is english "hypocrisy." this, as has been well said, is a kind of "social cement," for it is a tribute to a standard of social conduct set up by the dominant class in a nation. and since there exists no dominant class in russia, but only a dominant hierarchy drawn from all classes, hypocrisy is absent from the russian character. mr. stephen graham, who was, i believe, at one time a clerk in a london office, found our civilisation so intolerable that one day he flung it off and escaped to russia, where he has lived as a peasant tramp for many years. to revolutionaries who met him and expressed their astonishment that an englishman should choose russia of all places to live in, he replied, "i came to russia because it is the only free country left in the world." there is, in truth, much to be said for this startling remark. in no country on earth is there such unaffected good-will, such open hospitality, such an instinctive respect for personal liberty--liberty of thought and of manners--such tolerance for the frailties of human nature, such an abundance of what the great russian novelist dostoieffsky called "all-humanness" and st. paul called "charity," as in russia. all this, of course, did not come about as a result of the bureaucratic system; it springs like that system itself from the fundamentally democratic spirit of the russian people. â§2. _religion_.--the last paragraph will read strangely to those people whose only ideas about russia are gleaned from newspaper accounts of the revolution of 1905. we shall come back to the revolution and its significance later; but meanwhile we must notice another very striking fact about russian life--its all-pervading religious atmosphere. russia is a land of peasants. in england and wales 78 per cent of the population live in towns and the remaining 22 per cent in the country; in russia something like 87 per cent live in the country as against 13 per cent in the towns. these figures are enough to show where the real centre of gravity of the russian nation lies. the peasant, or _moujik_, is a primitive and generally an entirely illiterate person, but he possesses qualities which his more sophisticated brothers in the west may well envy and admire, a profound common-sense, a grand simplicity of life and outlook, and an unshakable faith in the unseen world. the interior of russia is almost wholly unknown in the west; until a few years back it was as much of a _terra incognita_ as central africa. but the revolution led english writers and journalists to explore it, and when the dust and smoke of that upheaval, which had obscured the truth from the eyes of europe, passed away, an astonished world perceived the real russia for the first time. "russia," writes mr. stephen graham, who has done more than any other man to bring the truth home to us, "is not a land of bomb-throwers, is not a land of intolerable tyranny and unhappiness, of a languishing and decayed peasantry, of a corrupt and ugly church; the russians are an agricultural nation, bred to the soil, illiterate as the savages, and having as yet no ambition to live in the towns; they are as strong as giants, simple as children, mystically superstitious by reason of their unexplained mystery." russia is in fact 145 million peasants--ploughing and praying. and here once again one is reminded of the middle ages. cross the russian frontier and you enter the mediaeval world. miracles are believed in, holy men are revered as saints, thousands of pilgrims journey on foot every year to jerusalem, which is to every true believer the centre of the universe and therefore becomes at easter almost a russian city. russia is the most christian country in the world, and her people are the most christ-like. the turbulence and violence, so contrary to the christian spirit, which was an inseparable feature of mediaeval feudalism is absent from russia; and the gospel of non-resistance, of brotherly love, of patience under affliction, of pity and mercy, which tolstoi preached so eloquently to the world at large, he learnt from two teachers--the peasant of modern russia and the peasant of ancient palestine, who was crucified upon the cross. yet it is a mistake to talk, as some do, of the power of the russian church, or of "priestcraft." the church has little political power or social prestige. it is the power of religion, not that of ecclesiastical institutions, which is the arresting fact about modern russia. it is not so much that russia has a church, as that she _is_ a church. in england we have narrowed religion down to one day of the week and shut it up in special buildings which we call churches; in russia it is impossible to avoid religion. as you pass out of the gangway of the ticket-office at the railway station, you find yourself in front of a sacred picture with a lamp burning continually before it, and you are expected to utter a prayer before beginning your journey. every room in russia has its _eikon_--is in fact a chapel, every enterprise is sanctified by prayer and ceremony. all english travellers in russia have acknowledged this profound national sense of religion, and contrasted it with the religious formalism of the west. "italy," wrote mr. h.g. wells, on his recent visit to russia, "abounds in noble churches because the italians are artists and architects, and a church is an essential part of the old english social system, but moscow glitters with two thousand crosses because the people are organically christian. i feel in russia that for the first time in my life i am in a country where christianity is alive. the people i saw crossing themselves whenever they passed a church, the bearded men who kissed the relics in the church of the assumption, the unkempt grave-eyed pilgrim, with his ragged bundle on his back and his little tea-kettle slung in front of him, who was standing quite still beside a pillar in the same church, have no parallels in england." mr. rothay reynolds, in his interesting and sympathetic book _my russian year_, writes in much the same strain: "in russia god and his mother, saints and angels, seem near; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath their gaze. the people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, perfumed with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of the faith. saints and sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere; and so it has come about that russia is the land of lofty ideals." and mr. stephen graham, again, in his _undiscovered russia_, speaks with glowing admiration of the russian church. "the holy church," he says, "is wonderful. it is the only fervid living church in europe. it lives by virtue of the people who compose it. if the priests were wood, it would still be great. the worshippers are always there with one accord. there are always strangers in the churches, always pilgrims. god is the word that writes all men brothers in russia and all women sisters. the fact behind that word is the fountain of hospitality and friendship." the religious aspect of russian life has been dwelt upon at some length, because it is the key to everything in russia and has a direct bearing upon the present war. "religion in russia," writes mr. maurice baring, "is a part of patriotism. the russian considers that a man who is not orthodox is not a russian. he divides humanity, roughly, into two categories--the orthodox and the heathen--just as the greeks divided humanity into greeks and barbarians. not only is the church of russia a national church, owing to the large part which the state, the emperor, and the civil authority play in it, but in russia religion itself becomes a question of nationality, nationalism, and patriotism." russian christianity, like russian tsardom, is derived from the old roman empire of constantinople. the russian church is a branch, and far the most important branch, of the greek orthodox church, which drifted apart from the catholic church, which had its centre at rome, and finally separated from it in the eleventh century. as the greatest orthodox christian power in the world, russia naturally regards herself as the rightful protector of all orthodox christians. her mortal enemy, with whom so long as he remains in europe any lasting peace is impossible, is the turk; and her eyes are ever directed towards constantinople, as the ancient capital of her faith. the spirit of the crusades is far from dead in the russian people; the crimean war, for example, was fought in that spirit. it will be at once apparent that russia takes and must continue to take a profound interest in the christian peoples of the balkans. greeks, roumanians, servians, bulgarians and montenegrins all belong to the orthodox church; all have been engaged throughout the nineteenth century in a struggle for existence against the common foe, islam. moreover, all except the two first-mentioned peoples are allied to russia by ties of race as well as by religion, since they are members of the slavonic stock. to the average russian, therefore, the bulk of the balkan peninsula is as much russia irredenta, as the north-east coast of the adriatic is italia irredenta to the average italian; and as a matter of fact there is a good deal more to be said for russia's case than for italy's. there is, however, another great power which possesses interests in the balkans and which is viewed by russia with a suspicion and dislike hardly inferior to that entertained towards turkey--i mean the empire of austria-hungary. a catholic state, controlled by germans and magyars, austria-hungary contains in its southern portion a population of over seven million slavs, some three millions of whom are of the orthodox faith. the dual monarchy has constantly outraged national and religious feeling in russia by her treatment of this slavonic population, and her annexation in 1908 of bosnia and herzegovina, both of them slavonic countries, was regarded as an open challenge to russia. it is not therefore surprising that the tsar has intervened in the present crisis. had it refused to come to the assistance of servia when austria attacked her, the russian government would have been unable to face public opinion. even those who know russia best are amazed at the complete unanimity of the country in the matter of this war; and proof that it is not merely a war of aggression inspired by pan-slavist sentiment may be found in the fact that all political parties, revolutionaries, constitutionalists and reactionaries, have enthusiastically approved it. how far germany misunderstood (or affected to misunderstand) the real state of feeling in russia may be seen in the despatch of july 26 by the british ambassador in vienna, who, in talking the crisis over with the german ambassador and asking "whether the russian government might not be compelled by public opinion to intervene on behalf of a kindred nationality," was told that "everything depended on the personality of the russian minister for foreign affairs, who could resist easily, if he chose, _the pressure of a few newspapers._" england drew her sword in this struggle on behalf of belgium and in the name of civilisation and treaty rights; russia has done the same on behalf of serbia and in the name of common blood and a common altar. i, for one, firmly believe that her hands are as clean as ours. â§3. _the revolutionary movement and its significance._--it is now time to say something of the revolutionary movement of 1905 and of its ruthless suppression which gave russia so evil a reputation in the eyes of western europe. it was my good fortune to be a resident in the dominions of the tsar during the critical years of 1906-9, to be present at a session of the first duma and to mingle with the members of that historic assembly in the lobby of the parliament house, to catch something of the extraordinary belief in the coming of the millennium which was prevalent among all classes in petrograd in the first charmed months of 1906, and finally to have been acquainted with active revolutionaries and their friends throughout the whole of my period of residence. i can therefore speak with a certain amount of inner knowledge of the revolution; and though i do not wish to claim any particular authority for the opinions stated below, which are after all nothing but the opinions of a single individual who has lived for three years in a corner of the russian empire, yet they have at least this advantage over those entertained on the subject by the average englishmen, viz. that they are based not on newspaper reports but on actual experience, and that they were arrived at gradually and--it may be added--with considerable reluctance, since they had, as it were, to win their way through a number of my own personal sympathies and political prejudices. there is, of course, no room here for any detailed treatment of a movement upon which a big book might be written, and i shall therefore have to limit myself to a few rather bald generalisations which i must ask the reader to accept not as the truth, but as what one man of limited experience and vision conceives to be the truth about the russian revolution. the main reason why english people get mistaken ideas about russia is that they imagine russians to be nothing but englishmen picturesquely disguised in furs and top-boots, and because they interpret the political situation in russia in terms of english history and politics. as i have already tried to show, russians are built differently from english people, _from the soul outwards_, while the political and social condition of the russian empire is totally unlike anything that has ever existed in this country. if therefore the real causes of the movement of 1905 and of its failure are to be rightly understood, we must put away from our minds the desire to find analogies in the english revolutions of 1642 and 1688, or the french revolution of 1789, or the social revolution of which karl marx dreamed; russia can only be interpreted in terms of russian history and russian conditions. in one thing, however, the russian revolution was like all revolutions which have ever been or are ever likely to be, viz. that it was concerned with two distinct issues, one a narrow question of political and constitutional reform, and the other a far wider question involving an attempt to reconstruct not merely the institutions of society but also to transform the ideals and conceptions upon which society rested. let us first of all consider the narrower political issue. this was simple enough; the outbreak of 1905 had as its primary object the setting up of some form of representative government which would control the bureaucratic machine. it has been already pointed out that the constitution of modern russia was largely due to the genius of peter the great. during the nineteenth century, however, it became apparent to thinking russians that the constitution, for the sake both of stability and efficiency, needed development in the direction of popular representation. the plea of efficiency was really far the stronger of the two. had peter the great been eternal, he might possibly have continued to exercise an effective control over the administrative system which he created; for he was a man of superhuman energy and will-power. but most tsars, who are men of ordinary capacity, found it impossible to do so. the consequence was that the bureaucracy acquired what amounted in practice to absolute irresponsibility. now irresponsibility is demoralising to any administration, however democratic be the principles upon which its officials are selected. a bureaucracy, ruling without proper external control, becomes a prey to the demons of red tape, routine, officialdom and place-hunting; it tends to stifle individual initiative and the sense of moral responsibility, since it forgets the real object of its existence--the good government of the country--in its passion for self-preservation and its desire to secure the smooth-working of the machine; it becomes inhuman, intensely conservative and corrupt. above all it develops a hyper-sensitiveness to lay criticism, which compels it to do all in its power--and in russia that power is unlimited--to crush freedom of speech and freedom of the press. the problem, however, of devising some popular check upon its action was an extremely difficult one for the simple reason that the mass of the russian people never have taken, and even to-day do not take, any interest in political questions. nevertheless the tsar, alexander ii., who was one of the most enlightened monarchs that ever sat upon the russian throne, determined to attempt a solution. unfortunately on march 1, 1881, the very day when alexander had given his approval to a scheme of constitutional reform, involving the establishment of representative institutions, he was assassinated by revolutionaries. this fatal act put back the clock for twenty-five years, the court and the nation were thrown into the arms of the bureaucracy as their only protector against terrorism, and reaction reigned supreme. meanwhile the bureaucracy grew more corrupt, more tyrannical, more inefficient every day, while on the other hand the party of reform, thrust as it were underground and hunted like rats, became more and more bitter in spirit and more and more extreme in theory. it is important to bear in mind that the struggle has never from beginning to end been one which divided the nation as a whole into two hostile camps. public opinion, when it has not been indifferent, has swayed now to one side and now to the other, according as it was stirred by some flagrant act of oppression on the part of the bureaucracy or some outrageous act of terrorism on the part of the revolutionaries. the truth is that the civil war in russia--for it was nothing less--was confined to quite a narrow section of society. it has been said that there are practically speaking no class distinctions in the english sense of the word, in russia; there is, however, a very real distinction between the _intelligentsia_ and the peasants. the _intelligentsia_ are the few million educated russians who control, or seek to control, the destinies of the 145 million uneducated tillers of the soil. there is nothing quite like them in this country, though the expression "the professional class" describes them in part. broadly speaking, they are people who have passed through school and university, and can therefore lay claim to a certain amount of culture; their birth is a matter of no moment, they may be the children of peasants or of noblemen. it is from this "class," if we can call it so, that both the bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement draw their recruits. the real tragedy of russia is that neither the party of reform nor the party of reaction shares, or even understands, the outlook and ideals of the people. russian culture is still so comparatively recent that it has not yet passed out of the imitative stage; and, in spite of the work of pushkin, gogol, and dostoieffsky, the books that are read and studied in russia are for the most part translations from foreign authors. the result is that the political and social ideas of the _intelligentsia_ are almost wholly derived from countries whose structure is totally different from their own. we shall presently see that this fact had an important bearing on the development of the outbreak of 1905. it is sufficient here to notice that the struggle was one between two sections of the _intelligentsia_, political idealism against political stagnation, the red flag _versus_ red tape. after twenty years of bureaucratic government the country as a whole began to grow once again restless. in this period a proletariate had come into being. it was a mere drop in the bucket of 145 millions of peasants, but its voice was heard in the towns, and it was steeped in the marxian doctrines of social democracy. moreover the peasants themselves had their grievances. they cared nothing and understood less of the political theories which the revolutionaries assiduously preached among them, but they pricked up their ears when the agitators began to talk about land and taxation. up to 1861 the peasants had been serfs, the property, with the land on which they lived, of the landowner. at their emancipation it was necessary to provide them with land of their own; the state, therefore, bought what was considered sufficient for the purpose from the landowners, handed it over to the peasants, and recouped itself by imposing a land-tax on the peasants to expire after a period of forty-nine years. this tax was felt to be exceedingly onerous, and in addition to this by the beginning of the twentieth century it became clear that the land acquired in 1861 was not nearly enough to support a growing population. these factors, together with the disastrous russo-japanese war, which revealed an appalling state of corruption and incompetency in the government of the country, furnished the revolutionaries with an opportunity which was not to be missed. a rapid series of military and naval mutinies, agrarian disorders, assassinations of obnoxious officials, socialist risings in the towns, during the year 1905, culminating in the universal strike of october, brought the government to its knees, and on the 17th of the same month the tsar issued his manifesto granting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and a representative assembly. the revolution had, apparently, won on the constitutional issue. yet what looked like the end of bureaucratic absolutism proved to be the destruction of the revolutionary party. had the reformers of 1905 concentrated their energies upon the task of turning the new legislature into an adequate check upon the bureaucratic system, there is little doubt they would have succeeded. as it was their success in this direction was only partial. it is true that a duma still sits at the taurida palace at petrograd, but it is elected on a narrow property franchise, and its relations with the bureaucracy are as yet not properly defined; it criticises but it possesses no real control. this failure of the revolution was almost wholly due to the revolutionaries themselves, who, instead of confining their attacks to the government machine, sought to undermine the entire structure of society and to overthrow the moral and religious ideals of the nation. moreover, their attitude was entirely negative, and they possessed little or no constructive ability of any kind. even the first duma, which contained the ablest politicians among the reformers, did not succeed in passing acts of parliament, affirming the most elementary principles of civil liberty; and it damaged itself irreparably in the eyes of the country by refusing to condemn "terrorism" while demanding an amnesty for all political offenders. the unique opportunity which the first duma afforded was frittered away in futile bickerings and wordy attacks upon the government. meanwhile, though a temporary truce was observed during the duma's sessions, its dissolution on july 21, 1906, two and a half months after opening, was the signal for a fresh outburst of outrages on both sides. the country was fast drifting into anarchy; agrarian risings, indiscriminate bomb-throwing, _pogroms_, highway robberies carried out in the name of the "social revolution" and euphemistically entitled expropriation, outbreaks of a horrible kind of blood-lust which delighted in motiveless murder for the sake of murder, were the order of the day. the revolution was strong enough neither to crush the reactionaries nor to control the revolutionaries themselves. the foundations of the social structure seemed to be dissolving in a welter of blood and crime, and public opinion, which in its hatred of bureaucracy had hitherto sided with the revolution, suddenly drew back in horror from the abyss which opened out in front of it. stolypin, the strafford of modern russia, who condemned the extremists of both sides, was called to the helm of the state; his watchword, "order first, reform afterwards," was backed by the force of public opinion; and, as he stamped out the revolution with a heel of iron, the country shuddered but approved. the peasants were pacified by the remission of the hated tax, and by measures for providing them with more land; and russia sank once more into her normal condition. but political incompetency is not a reason sufficiently weighty in itself to account for the remarkable revulsion of public feeling against the revolutionary party. behind the narrow political issue lay the larger philosophical and moral one; and it was the discovery by the country of the real character and ultimate aims of the party which for a few months in 1906 seized the reins of power that will alone provide a sufficient explanation of one of the most astonishing political debacles of modern history. the revolution was nothing less than an attempt by a small minority of theorists and moral anarchists to force western civilisation upon russia, and not western civilisation as it actually is but a sort of abstract "westernism" derived from books. for the revolutionaries were far more western than the westerns. they had not merely swallowed wholesale the latest and most extreme political and social fads, picked up from the literature of england, france, and germany, but they possessed a courage of their convictions and a will to carry them out to the logical conclusion which many "advanced thinkers" of the west lack. they were not modernists or new theologians but atheists, not fabians or social reformers but revolutionary socialists armed with bombs, not radicals but republicans, not divorce-law-reformers but "free lovers." a remarkable book was published in 1910 called _landmarks_. it was written by a number of disillusioned revolutionaries, and gives a vivid picture of the effect which the foregoing principles had upon the lives of those who upheld them. here is one extract: "in general, the whole manner of life of the _intelligentsia_ was terrible; a long abomination of desolation, without any kind or sort of discipline, without the slightest consecutiveness, even on the surface. the day passes in doing nobody knows what, to-day in one manner, and to-morrow, as a result of a sudden inspiration, entirely contrariwise--everyone lives his life in idleness, slovenliness, and a measureless disorder--chaos and squalor reign in his matrimonial and sexual relations--a naã¯ve absence of conscientiousness distinguishes his work; in public affairs he shows an irrepressible inclination towards despotism, and an utter absence of consideration towards his fellow-creatures; and his attitude towards the authorities of the state is marked at times by a proud defiance, and at others (individually and not collectively) by compliance." as a set-off to this picture of moral chaos, it should be remembered that these people when called upon to die for their revolutionary faith did so with the greatest heroism. nor is the picture true of all revolutionaries; some of the noblest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet were russian revolutionaries. but these were the product of an earlier and sterner school, the puritanical "nihilism" of the 'eighties; and it is impossible to deny the substantial truth of the above description as far as the rank and file of the modern revolutionary school are concerned.[1] such people were divided by a whole universe from the peasants to whom they offered themselves as leaders and saviours; and the schemes of regeneration which they preached were not merely useless, because purely negative, but were exotic plants which could never flourish on russian soil. thus the revolution triumphed for about twelve months as a purely destructive force, but when the necessity for construction arose its adherents found that they were entirely ignorant of the elements of the problem before them. this problem was the peasant, and the revolutionaries, though they had worshipped the people (with a capital p) for years and had done their best to convert them, had never made any attempt to understand them. and when the peasant discovered what the revolutionary was like, he loathed and detested him. "they hate us," a writer in _landmarks_ confesses, "because they fail to recognise that we are men. we are, in their eyes, monsters in human shape, men without god in their soul; and they are right." [footnote 1: it is confirmed by all impartial observers, see _e.g._ professor pares' _russia and reform_, chap. ix., entitled "lives of the intelligents."] there is a characteristic story told by mr. maurice baring about a certain revolutionary who one day arrived at a village to convert the inhabitants to socialism. "he thought he would begin by disproving the existence of god, because if he proved that there was no god, it would naturally follow that there should be no emperor and no policeman. so he took a holy picture and said, 'there is no god, and i will prove it immediately. i will spit upon this _eikon_ and break it in pieces, and if there is a god he will send fire from heaven and kill me, and if there is no god nothing will happen to me at all.' then he took the _eikon_ and spat upon it and broke it to bits, and he said to the peasants, 'you see, god has not killed me.' 'no,' said the peasants, 'god has not killed you, but we will'; and they killed him." this story, whether true or not, is a parable, in which one may read the whole meaning of the failure of the russian revolution. it shows how an attack upon what they hold sacred may rouse to acts of fury a people who are admitted by all who know them to be the most tolerant, most tender-hearted, and most humane in europe. the notion that russia is a humane country may sound strange in english ears. yet capital punishment, which is still part of our legal system, was abolished in russia as long ago as 1753, except for cases of high treason. from 1855 to 1876 only one man was executed in the whole of that vast empire; and from 1876 to 1903 only 114. on the other hand between the years 1905 and 1908 the total of executions reached the appalling figure of 3629. this is but to translate into criminal statistics the story just quoted; for the years 1905-8 were the years when martial law reigned in russia, the years of revolution. the tsar, it is true, wore the black cap, and the hangman's rope was manipulated by the bureaucracy, but the jury who brought in the verdict was a jury of 145 million peasants. such, in broad outline, is the history of the revolutionary movement which is still so greatly misunderstood in england. it was not the uprising of an oppressed nation, which successful for a brief while was finally crushed by the brute force of reaction; it was a civil war between two sections of a small educated class, in which the sympathies of the nation after fluctuating for a time eventually came down heavily against the revolutionaries. there is in truth every excuse for misunderstanding amongst english people, especially if they belong to the party of progress in english politics; for the obvious things about russia are so deceptive. all that one saw on the surface were, on the one hand, an irresponsible bureaucracy using the knout, the secret agent, the _pogrom_, and siberia for the suppression of anything suspected of threatening existing conditions; and, on the other, a band of devoted reformers and revolutionaries risking all in the cause of political liberty, and dying, the "marseillaise" on their lips, with the fortitude of christian martyrs. but, beneath all this, something immensely bigger was in progress, which can only be described as a conflict of two philosophies of life diametrically opposed or, if you like, a life-and-death struggle between two civilisations, so different that they can hardly understand each other's language; it is a renewal of the titanic contest, which was decided in the west by the renaissance and the reformation, the contest between the mediaeval and the modern world. to the modern mind no period is so difficult to grasp as the middle ages; our dreams are of progress which is another word for process, of success which implies perpetual change, in either case of "getting on" somewhere, somehow, we know not where or how; our very universe, from which we have carefully excluded the supernatural, has become a development machine, a huge spinning-mill, and our religion, if we have one, a matter of "progressive revelation." we look before and after, forwards to some dim utopia, backwards to some ape-like ancestor who links us with the animal world. our outlook is horizontal, the mediaeval outlook perpendicular. the mediaeval man looked upward and downward, to heaven and hell, when he thought of the future, to sun and cloud, land and crops, when he thought of the present. he lived in the presence of perpetual miracle, the daily miracle of sunrise, sunset, and shower; and in the constant faith in resurrection, whether of the corn which he sowed in the furrow or of his body which his friends would reverently sow in that deeper furrow, the grave. and his life was as simple and static as his universe; the seasons determined his labours, the church his holidays. books did not disturb his faith in the unseen world, for he was illiterate; nor the lust of gold his contentment with his existence, for commerce was still confined to a few towns. russia to-day is in spirit what europe was in the middle ages.[1] the revolutionaries offered her western civilisation and western philosophy, and she rejected the gift with horror. [footnote 1: this, of course, by no means implies that she is _behind_ the west, or that she is of necessity bound to pass through the same process of development. the problem of modern russia is not to imitate the west but to discover some way of coming to terms with western ideals without surrendering her own.] will she continue to maintain this attitude? "the russian peasant," says mr. maurice baring, "as long as he tills the ground will never abandon his religion or the observance of it.... because the religion of the peasant is the working hypothesis taught him by life; and by his observance of it he follows what he conceives to be the dictates of common sense consecrated by immemorial custom." the crucial point of this passage is the conditional clause: "as long as he tills the ground." of course, russia, the granary of europe, must always be predominantly an agricultural country; yet she is at the present moment threatened in many parts with an industrial revolution, the ultimate effects of which may prove far more subversive than the attempted revolution of 1905. for beneath her soil lie explosive materials more deadly than any dynamite manufactured by _intelligentsia_. her mineral wealth, at present almost untouched, is incalculable in quantity and amazing in variety. when her mines are opened up russia will become, according to the judgment of dr. kennard, editor of _the russian year-book,_ "without a doubt the richest empire the world has ever seen." attracted by her vast mining possibilities, by her enormous virgin forests, by her practically unlimited capacity for grain-production, the capital of europe is knocking at the doors of russia. factories are rising, mines being started all over the country. russia is about to be exploited by european business enterprise, just as america and africa have been. the world has need of her raw materials, and is only interested in her people as potential cheap labour. thus within the last few years something analogous to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of europe has come into existence in russia. we may catch a glimpse of what these new classes are like from a recent book by mr. stephen graham, called _changing russia_. he writes: "the russian bourgeois is of this sort; he wants to know the price of everything. of things which are independent of price he knows nothing, or, if he knows of them, he sneers at them and hates them. talk to him of religion, and show that you believe the mystery of christ; talk to him of life, and show that you believe in love and happiness; talk to him of woman, and show that you understand anything about her unsexually; talk to him of work, and show that though you are poor you have no regard for money--and the bourgeois is uneasy.... instead of opera, the gramophone; instead of the theatre, the kinematograph; instead of national literature, the cheap translation; instead of national life, a miserable imitation of modern english life.... it may be thought that there is little harm in the commercialisation of the russian, the secularising of his life; and that after all the bourgeois population of england, france, and germany is not so bad as not to be on the way to something better. but that would be a mistake; if once the russian nation becomes thoroughly perverted, it will be the most treacherous, most vile, most dangerous in europe. for the perverted russian all is possible; it is indeed his favourite maxim, borrowed, he thinks, from nietzsche, that 'all is permitted,' and by 'all' he means all abomination, all fearful and unheard-of bestiality, all cruelty, all falsity, all debauch.... selfish as it is possible to be, crass, heavy, ugly, unfaithful in marriage, unclean, impure, incapable apparently of understanding the good and the true in their neighbours and in life--such is the russian bourgeois." mr. graham's picture of the new proletariat in the ural mines is an equally horrible one: "gold mining is a sort of rape and incest, a crime by which earth and man are made viler. if i had doubted of its influence on man i needed but to go to the ural goldfields. a more drunken, murderous, brother-hating population than that of this district i have not seen in all russia. it was a great sorrow to see such a delightful peasantry all in debauchery.... the miner has no culture, no taste, not even a taste for property and squiredom, so that when at a stroke he gains a hundred or a thousand pounds, it is rather difficult to know how to spend it. his ideal of happiness has been vodka, and all the bliss that money can obtain for him lies in that.... mias is a gold-mining village of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. it has two churches, four electric theatres, fifteen vodka shops, a score of beer-houses, and many dens where cards are played and women bought and sold to the strains of the gramophone. it is situated in a most lovely hollow among the hills, and, seen from the distance, it is one of the most beautiful villages of north russia; but seen from within, it is a veritable inferno." mr. graham writes as a poet rather than as an economist or a sociologist, but there is no doubt a grave danger to russia in a sudden adoption of industrial life. _intelligentsia_, bourgeoisie, and proletariate are all products of the same forces, all belong to the same family; they are westernised russians; they have passed from the fourteenth to the twentieth century at one stride, and the violent transition has cut them completely adrift from tradition and from all moral and religious standards; books, commerce, and industry, the three boasted instruments of our civilisation, have not civilised such russians, they have _de-civilised_ them. but, as yet, russians of this character form only a tiny fraction of the nation; and there are happily signs that the dangers of an exotic culture are being realised even by the _intelligentsia_ themselves. since the failure of the revolution there has been a remarkable revival of interest among russian thinkers in the native institutions, habits, and even the religion of the country; and it may be that in time there will emerge from this chaos of ideals a culture and a civilisation which will "make the best of both worlds" by adopting western methods without surrendering an inch of the nation's spiritual territory, above which floats the standard of religion, simplicity, and brotherly love. the present war, terrible as it is, may do something towards bringing this about, for the russian people, faced by a common danger and united in a common purpose, are now of one mind and one heart, in a way that they have not been since a century ago napoleon was thundering at the gates of moscow. and let this be said: if russia should ever cease to be russia, if she ever loses those grand national characteristics which make her so different from the west, and therefore so difficult for us westerns to understand, the world as a whole will be infinitely the poorer for that loss. we need russia even more than russia needs us; for, while we have grasped the trappings, she possesses the real spirit of democracy. of the three democratic ideals, proclaimed by france in 1789, the mystical trinity: liberty, fraternity, equality, how much has yet been realised by the peoples of the west? and russia is in the way of realising them all! fraternity and equality are, as we have seen, the distinctive features of her national spirit and social structure, and, if her liberty is as yet imperfect on the political side, it is far more complete than ours on the side of moral tolerance and respect for the sanctity of human personality. after all, the reason why russia has not got complete political freedom is because, as a nation, she has hitherto taken no interest in politics; for the first time in 1905 she discovered the use of political action, and she got out of it a solution of the agrarian distress and a representative assembly; when she _wants_ more liberty in this direction, she will have no difficulty in securing it. â§4. _the subject nationalities_.--it may fairly be objected at this point that while russia may possess these excellent qualities, she has consistently refused to allow liberty to other peoples, to the jews, for example, the poles, and the finns. it is necessary therefore to say something on the matter of russia's subject nationalities before bringing these remarks to a conclusion. out of the six or seven million jews in the world, over five million live within the boundaries of the russian empire. russia is therefore the motherland of the children of israel; though, perhaps, the phrase step-motherland would express more truly the actual relationship, both in its origin and its character. russia has inherited her tremendous responsibilities towards the hebrew race from poland, and her vexed "jewish question" is in part a just punishment for her complicity in the wicked partitions of that country in the eighteenth century. the matter, however, goes back much farther than the eighteenth century. in the middle ages poland was a more powerful state than russia, and comprised territory stretching from the gulf of riga to the black sea and from the oder to the dnieper. she was also the one country in europe which offered to the jews security from persecution and an opportunity of developing the commercial instincts of the race without interference. the result was that jews settled in large numbers all over the king of poland's possessions, and the presence of jews in any part of modern russia is almost a sure sign that that particular town or province has been polish territory in former times. the russian government has never, except for a short period, allowed the jews to live in russia proper, and it is very rare to find jews in north or central russia. even in large cities like petrograd and moscow their numbers are small, while it is interesting to note that the finns have copied the rest of russia in this respect at least that they have always resolutely refused to admit the hebrew. where russia found jews among the new subjects which she acquired by her gradual encroachments upon poland, she had of course to let them remain, but she has confined them strictly to these districts. the existence of this jewish pale is one of the grievances of the jews of russia, but it is not the heaviest. the liberal-minded alexander ii. had shown himself lenient to them; but his assassination in 1881 at the hands of terrorists and the accession of the reactionary alexander iii. began a period of persecution which has continued until the present day. alexander iii. was much influenced by his tutor, pobiedonostsev, who for the next thirty years was the most prominent exponent of the philosophy of slavophilism. this, which in its modern form may be traced back to 1835, was in fact nothing else than a perverted glorification of the russian national characteristics which have been dwelt upon above. the slavophils declared not only that the russians were a great and admirable nation, which few who really know them will be disposed to deny, but that their institutions--and in particular, of course, autocracy and bureaucracy--were a perfect expression of the national genius which could hardly be improved upon. furthermore, it was maintained that, since all other countries but russia had taken a wrong turn and fallen into decadence and libertinism, it was russia's mission to bring the world back into the paths of rectitude and virtue by extending the influence of her peculiar culture--and in particular again, of course, its special manifestations, autocracy and bureaucracy--as widely as possible. a variant of slavophilism is panslavism, which works for the day when all members of one great slav race will be united in one nation, presumably under the russian crown. both these movements are examples of that nationalism run mad to which reference has been made in the second chapter.[1] but the slavophils, who are of course ardent supporters of the orthodox church, were faced at the outset with a great difficulty; the western provinces of russia, from the arctic to the black sea, contained masses of population which were neither russian nor orthodox. the finns in the north were lutherans; the poles in the centre, though slavs, were roman catholic in religion and anti-russian in sentiment; and the jews in the centre and south were--jews. the first step, therefore, towards the slavophil goal was the "russification" of the subject peoples of russia. in theory "russification" means conferring the benefits of russian customs, speech, and culture upon those who do not already possess them; in practice it amounts to the suppression of local liberties and traditions. [footnote 1: see p. 57.] it is obvious that it is no easier to make a jew into a russian by force than to change the skin of the proverbial ethiopian; nor is it likely that the russian government ever entertained the idea of making such an attempt. if it had any definite plan at all, it was to render things so uncomfortable to the unfortunate hebrews that they would gradually leave the country. real persecution began at the accession of alexander iii. in 1881, when it spread into russia, significantly enough, from germany, where a violent anti-semite agitation had sprung up at the beginning of the year. riots directed against the jews, and winked at if not encouraged by the authorities, broke out in the towns of southern russia. edicts followed which excluded the jews from all direct share in local government, refused to allow more than a small percentage of jews to attend the schools and universities, forbade them to acquire property outside the towns, laid special taxes upon their backs, and so on. this attitude of the government encouraged the populace of the towns to believe that they might attack the jews with impunity. the jews are regarded in modern russia in much the same light as they were regarded by our forefathers in the middle ages. they are hated, that is to say, on two counts: as unbelievers and as usurers. the condition of affairs in a township where the population is half-jewish, half-christian, and where the christians are financially and commercially in the hands of the jews, and the jews are politically and administratively in the hands of the christians, is obviously an extremely dangerous one. add to this the presence of a large hooligan section which is found in almost every russian town of any size, the open disfavour shown towards the jews by the government, and the secret intrigues and incitement of the police, and you get a train of circumstances which lead inevitably to those violent anti-semitic explosions, known as _pogroms_, which have stained the pages of modern russian history. the revolutionary movement has complicated matters still further; for jews are naturally to be found in the revolutionary ranks, and the bureaucracy and its hooligan supporters have tended to identify the jewish race with the revolutionary party. nothing can excuse the treatment of the jews in russia during the last thirty-five years, and the guilt lies almost entirely upon the government, which, instead of leading the people and educating them by initiating an enlightened policy towards the jews, a policy which might in fact have done more than anything else to "russify" the latter, has persistently aided and abetted the worst elements of the population in their acts of violence. it has reaped its reward in the rise of one of the most formidable of the revolutionary parties in modern russia, the so-called jewish "bund." the governor of vilna, in a confidential report written in 1903, declared that "this political movement is undoubtedly a result of the abnormal position of the jews, legal and economic, which has been created by our legislation. a revision of the laws concerning the jews is absolutely urgent, and every postponement of it is pregnant with the most dangerous consequences." yet when we condemn russia for her _pogroms_ and her jew-baitings, we must not forget two facts: first, that these occurrences are the work, not of the real russian people, the peasantry which has been described above, but of the dregs of the population which are to be found at the base of the social structure in the towns of russia as in towns nearer home; second, that russia is not the only country in the world that has these racial problems to face. i once heard a russian and an american discussing the comparative demerits of their respective lands, and i am bound to say that the former held his own very well. when, for example, the american said, "what about the jews?" the other answered, "well, what about the negroes?" and he parried the further question, "what about _pogroms_?" with another of his own, "what about lynching?" the problems are not, of course, quite on all fours, nor do two wrongs make a right, but a reminder that similar problems exist in other parts of the world will perhaps be enough to show that the jewish question in russia is neither unique nor at all easy to solve. let us, instead of visiting the sins of a few townships upon the heads of the entire russian nation, be thankful that we have no such problems in our own islands. recent riots outside the shops of german pork-butchers in different parts of the country do not, it must be confessed, lead one to hope that our people would behave much more calmly and discreetly than the whites of the southern states or the christians of south-west russia, were they placed in the same circumstances. the polish question is at once simpler and its story less damaging to the russian government than that of the jews. the partitions, an account of which has already been given,[1] were of course iniquitous, but, as we have seen, prussia must bear the chief blame for them. in any case, the tsar alexander i. did his utmost for poland at the congress of vienna in 1815. he pleaded eloquently for a reunited poland, and he almost won over prussia by making arrangements to compensate her for her polish territory at the expense of saxony. but france, england, and austria opposed his project, and he was obliged to yield to the combined pressure of these powers. russia is, therefore, not more but less guilty of the present dismembered state of poland than her western neighbours, among whom we must not forget ourselves;[2] and she is to-day only attempting to carry out the promise which she made, but was not allowed to fulfill, a century ago. disappointed as he was, alexander i. made the best of a bad job by granting a liberal constitution to that part of poland which the congress assigned to russia. indeed he did everything possible, short of a grant of absolute independence, which at that time would have been absurd, to conciliate public opinion in the grand-duchy of warsaw. unfortunately the experiment proved a complete failure, largely owing to the factious and self-seeking polish nobility who have always been the worst enemy of their country. alexander after a time lost patience, and in 1820 he felt compelled to withdraw some of the liberties which he had conferred in 1815. after this the breach between the russian government and the polish people began to widen, partly owing to stupid and clumsy actions on the side of russia, partly to the incurable lack of political common-sense on the side of the upper classes in poland, partly to the fact that the country could never be anything but restless and unsatisfied while it remained divided. the history of russian poland since the time of alexander is the history of two great failures to throw off the russian yoke, the failure of 1830 and of 1863. these risings were marked by heroism, disunion, and incapacity on the one side, and by relentless repression on the other. the upshot was that poland was deprived of her constitutional rights one by one, until finally she became nothing more than so many provinces of russia itself. to some extent, however, the failure of 1863 proved a blessing in disguise. the rising had been almost entirely confined to the nobility; russia therefore turned to the peasants of poland, released them from all obligations to work upon the estates of the large landowners, and handed over to them at least half the land of the country as freehold property. the result of this measure, and of the removal of the customs barrier between the two countries in 1877, was twofold: the power of the factious nobility was shattered for ever, and a marvellous development of industry took place in poland which has united her to russia "with chains of self-interest likely to prove a serious obstacle to the realisation of polish hopes of independence."[3] it is indeed doubtful whether at this date the poles cherish any such hopes. what they desire is national unity and self-government rather than sovereign independence, and they know that they are at least as likely to receive these from russia as from prussia. [footnote 1: pp. 24-27.] [footnote 2: as a matter of fact our representative, lord castlereagh, was alexander's chief opponent at the congress in the question of poland. see _camb. mod. hist._ vol. x. p. 445.] [footnote 1: _camb. mod. hist._ vol. xi. p. 629.] while of late years the relations between russia and poland have steadily improved, those between russia and finland, on the contrary, have grown rapidly worse. until 1809 finland was a grand-duchy under the swedish crown, but in that year, owing to a war which had broken out between russia and sweden, she passed into the control of the nearer and more powerful state, after putting up a stubborn resistance to annexation which will always figure as the most glorious episode in the annals of the country. alexander i., who was at that time tsar, adopted the same policy towards finland as he did towards poland. he refused to incorporate the new province into the russian state-system, he took the title of grand-duke of finland (thereby implying that she lay outside the empire), and he confirmed the ancient liberties of the finns. later on they even secured greater liberty than they had possessed under sweden by the grant of a finnish diet, on the lines of the swedish diet in stockholm, which should have full control of all internal finnish affairs. finland, therefore, gained much from the transfer; she possessed for the first time in her history complete internal autonomy. this state of things lasted for practically ninety years, during which period finland made wonderful progress both economic and intellectual, so that by the end of the nineteenth century she was one of the happiest, most enlightened, and most prosperous countries in northern europe. "as regards the condition of finland," alexander i. had declared, "my intention has been to give this people a political existence, so that they may not feel themselves conquered by russia, but united to her for their own clear advantage; therefore, not only their civil but their political laws have been maintained." this liberal policy was continued by the various tsars throughout the century, the reformer alexander ii. taking particular interest in the development of the grand-duchy, which he evidently regarded as a place where experiments in political liberty were being worked out that might later be applied to the rest of russia. the weakness of finland's position lay in the fact that her liberties really depended upon the personal whim of the grand-duke: in theory her constitutional laws were only alterable by the joint sanction of monarch and people; in practice the small but courageous nation had no means of redress should the tsar, swayed by bureaucratic reaction, choose to go back upon the policy of his ancestors. and in 1894 a tsar mounted the throne, nicholas ii., who did so choose. the word went forth for the "russification" of finland. after picking a quarrel with the diet on the military question, the tsar on february 18, 1899, issued a manifesto suspending the finnish constitution and abolishing the diet. finland became with a stroke of the pen a department of the russian empire. a rigorous press censorship was established, the hated governor-general bobrikoff filled the country with gendarmes and spies, native officials were dismissed or driven to resign, an attempt was made to introduce the russian language into the schools, and, though the finns could only oppose a campaign of passive resistance to these wicked and short-sighted measures, at the end of seven years the nation which had for almost a century been the most contented portion of the tsar's dominions was seething with ill-feeling and disloyalty. the inevitable outcome was the assassination of general bobrikoff by a young student in june 1904; and when the russian universal strike took place in october 1905, the entire finnish nation joined in as one man. finland regained her liberties for a time, and immediately set to work putting her house in order by substituting for her old mediaeval constitution a brand new one, based on universal suffrage, male and female, and employing such up-to-date devices as proportional representation. the only result of seven years' "russification" was the creation of a united democracy, with a strong socialistic leaven, in place of a nation governed by an antiquated aristocratic diet, and divided into two hostile political camps on the question whether swedish or finnish should be the language of the national culture. but the fortunes of finland were accidentally but inextricably bound up with those of the party of reform in russia, and when the bureaucracy, after the downfall of the revolutionaries, found itself once more firmly seated in the saddle, it returned to the attack on the finnish constitution, not indeed with the open and brutal methods of bobrikoff, but by gradual and insidious means no less effective. and it must be admitted that the russian duma, as "reformed" by stolypin, so far from being of any help to finland in the struggle, has been made the instrument of the destruction of her liberties. finland is in a very unfortunate position. geographically she is bound to form part of the russian empire; even the extremest russophobes in the country have long ago given up hopes of re-union with sweden; and yet the frontier between finland and russia is one which divides two worlds, as all who have made the journey from helsingfors to petrograd must have noticed. in literature, art, education, politics, commerce, industry, and social reform finland is as much alive as any of the scandinavian states from whom she first derived her culture. in many ways indeed she is the most progressive country in europe, and it is her proud boast that she is "framtidsland," the land of the future. lutheran in religion, non-slavonic in race, without army, court, or aristocracy, and consequently without the traditions which these institutions carry with them, she presents the greatest imaginable contrast to the empire with which she is irrevocably linked. finland is western of the westerns, and keenly conscious of the fact just because of this irrevocable link; russia is--russia! and yet, as part of the russian system, she must come to terms sooner or later with the empire; she cannot receive the protection of the russian military forces, a protection to the value of which, if reports be true, she is at the present moment very much alive, and yet retain her claims to be what is virtually an independent state. that these claims have been pitched on a high note is no doubt largely the fault of the blundering and cruel policy of the russian bureaucracy. but it must be admitted that finland has never tried in the very least to understand her mighty neighbour; she has always sat, as it were, with her back to russia, looking westwards, and her statesmen have not even taken the trouble to learn the russian language. there has, in fact, been something a little "priggish" in her superior attitude, in her perpetually drawn comparison between russian "barbarism" and finnish "culture." though her capital, helsingfors, is but twelve hours by rail from petrograd, finland knows as little of the interior of russia as people do in england. the policy of the russian government, on the other hand, has been marked by that inconsistency, political blindness, and arbitrariness which one expects from an irresponsible bureaucracy. for ninety years finland was left alone to work out her own salvation, entirely apart from that of the rest of the empire; and then suddenly it was discovered that her coasts were of the highest strategical importance, and that she was developing a commercial and industrial system in dangerous competition with the tender plant of commerce and industry in russia itself. the slavophils raised an outcry, and the decree went out that the russian whale should swallow this active and prosperous little jonah. the former policy was really as stupid, though less cruel, than the latter. had there been anything like that steady political tradition and wide political experience in russia which we can draw upon in england, the imperial government would have from the first endeavoured to draw finland closer to the empire, not by bands of steel and iron but by the more delicate and more permanent ties of considerateness, affection, and self-interest. it is political stupidity, based upon ignorance and inexperience, and not inhumanity, which is the real explanation of russia's unfortunate relations with her subject peoples during the past century. moreover, the political machinery which has hitherto served her own internal needs is the worst possible instrument for dealing with provinces which possess a full measure of western political consciousness together with the traditions of political liberty. russia, therefore, requires representative institutions not merely for the political education of her own people and as a check upon bureaucratic tyranny and incompetency, but also in order that she may adopt some fair and _consistent_ policy towards her subject nationalities. it may be optimistic, but i cannot help feeling that the present war will do much for russia, much for finland, much for poland. russia is fighting to defend a small nation against oppression, she is fighting a life-and-death struggle with the military bureaucracy which we call "germany" for the moment, she is fighting on behalf of "liberty" and of the "scraps of paper" upon which the freedom of states and individuals depends. all this will leave a profound effect upon the national consciousness, and may even bring home for the first time to the people at large the meaning of political freedom. russia is so vast, so loose in structure, so undeveloped in those means of intercommunication such as roads, railways, newspapers, etc., which make england like a small village-community in comparison, that it takes the shock of a great war to draw the whole people together. that it has done so, no one who has read the papers during the last two months can doubt. war, as a historical fact, has always been beneficial to russia; the crimean war led to the emancipation of the serfs, the japanese war led to the establishment of a duma, and the present war has already led to surprising results. the consumption of alcohol has been abolished, concessions have been promised to a reunited poland, and, except against the unhappy jews in the polish war-area, there has been a subsidence throughout the empire of racial antagonism. it is the hope of all who love russia, and no one who really knows her can help loving her, that these beginnings may be crowned not only with victory over germany in the field of battle but with victory over the german spirit in the world of ideas, a victory of which the first-fruits would be the firm establishment of representative government, a cleansing of the bureaucratic augean stables, and a settlement of the problem of subject nationalities upon lines of justice and moderation. but whatever the outcome may be, let us in england be fair to russia. the road to fairness lies through understanding; and we have grossly misunderstood russia because we have not taken the trouble to acquaint ourselves with the facts, the real facts as distinct from the newspaper facts, of her situation. when those facts are realised, is it for us to cast the first stone? russia needs political reform, the tremendous task of peter the great needs completing, the bureaucracy must be crowned with representative institutions; but is russia's need in the sphere of political reform greater than ours in the sphere of social reform? look at our vast miserable slums, our sprawling, ugly, aimless industrial centres, inhabited by millions who have just enough education to be able to buy their thinking ready-made through the halfpenny press and just enough leisure for a weekly attendance at the local football match and an annual excursion to blackpool or ramsgate; who seldom, if ever, see the glorious face of nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony--monotonous toil, monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar;--until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die." and then look at those other millions--the millions of russia--look at the grand simple life they lead in the fields, a life of toil indeed, but of toil sweet and infinitely varied; russia is their country, not merely because they live there but because they--the peasants--now actually possess by far the greater part of the arable land; god is their god, not because they have heard of him as some remote being in the sunday school, but because he is very near to them--in their homes, in their sacraments, and in their hearts; and so contentment of mind and soul is theirs, not because they have climbed higher than their fellows, whether by the accumulation of knowledge or wealth, but because they have discovered the secret of existence, which is to want little, to live in close communion with nature, and to die in close communion with god. books maurice baring. _the mainsprings of russia._ 1914. nelson. 2s. net. this is an excellent introduction to the subject, recording as it does the general impressions of an acute and sympathetic observer; it does not, of course, pretend to be comprehensive, and says nothing, for example, of the jews, poles, finns, etc. bernard pares. _russia and reform._ 1907. 10s. 6d. net. milyoukov. _russia and its crisis._ 1905. 13s. 6d. net. maurice baring. _the russian people._ 1911. 15s. net. these three books may be consulted for the revolution of 1905 and the events which led up to it. professor milyoukov's book was actually published before the revolution, but its author was leader of the cadet party in the first duma, and it is therefore something in the nature of a liberal manifesto. professor pares' book, which is perhaps the most penetrating and well-balanced of all and contains most valuable chapters on the _intelligentsia,_ does not, unfortunately, deal with the years of reaction which followed the dissolution of the first duma. mr. baring's book may be recommended especially for the later chapters which deal with the causes of the failure of the revolution. all three contain a good deal of sound historical matter. h.w. williams. _russia of the russians._ 1914. 6s. net. rothay reynolds. _my russian year_. 1913. 10s. 6d. net. two good books dealing with life in contemporary russia. the first is the best and most comprehensive treatment of the new russia which has emerged from the revolutionary period, and gives one not merely the political but also the social and artistic aspect. the other book is lightly and entertainingly written. stephen graham. _undiscovered russia_. 1911. 12s. 6d. net. stephen graham. _changing russia_. 1913. 7s. 6d. net. stephen graham. _with the russian pilgrims to jerusalem_. 1913. 7s. 6d. net. mr. stephen graham may be said to have discovered the russian peasant for english people, and his books give an extraordinarily vivid and sympathetic picture of russian peasant-life by one who knows it from the inside. they afford also the best account of religion in russia as a living force, while those who wish to know more of the orthodox church as an institution may be referred to chaps. xxvi. and xxvii. of mr. baring's _russian people_; chap. viii. of the same writer's _mainsprings of russia_; and chap. vi. of sir c. eliot's (odysseus) _turkey in europe_ (7s. 6d. net). the second of mr. graham's books deals with the threatening industrial changes in russia. the third is a fine piece of literature as well as being the only account in any language of one of the most characteristic figures in modern russian life--the peasant-pilgrim. sir d.m. wallace. _russia_. 2 vols. 1905. 24s. net. _russia and the balkan states._ reprinted from the _encyclopedia britannica._ 2s. 6d. net. both these accounts, though written many years ago, have now been brought up to date in view of present events. r. nisbet bain. _slavonic europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net. f.h. skrine. _the expansion of russia, 1815-1900._ 1903. 4s. 6d. net. w.r. morfill. _russia_. 1890. 5s. w.r. morfill. _poland_. 1893. 5s. are all useful for the history of russia, and of her relations with poland, and finland. readers may also be referred to the _cambridge modern history_ (vol. ix. chap. xvi.; vol. x. chaps. xiii., xiv.; vol. xi. chaps. ix., xxii.; vol. xii. chaps. xii., xiii.). v o. klucheffsky. _a history of russia._ 3 vols. 1913. dent. 7s. 6d. net each. the standard economic and social history of russia up to the reign of peter the great. h.p. kennard. _the russian year-book._ eyre and spottiswoode. 10s. 6d. net. excellent for facts and figures. e. sã�mã�noff. _the russian government and the massacres._ 1907. 2s. 6d. net. an account of the _pogroms_ in russia from the jewish point of view. j.r. fisher. _finland and the tsars, 1800-1899._ 1899. 12s. 6d. the best account in english of the history of finland's relations with russia up to the beginning of the reactionary period. k.p. pobiedonostsev. _reflections of a russian statesman._ 1898. 6s. for slavophilism. p. khopotkin. _memoirs of a revolutionist._ 1907. 6s. maurice baring. _russian literature._ (home university library.) 1s. a. brã�ckner. _a literary history of russia._ 1908. 12s. 6d. net. maurice baring. _landmarks in russian literature._ 1910. 6s. net. the last-named are the best available books in english on russian literature. the works of the great russian novelists are now accessible to english readers. nothing helps one to understand russia so well as reading the works of tourgeniev, tolstoi, and dostoieffsky. the best translations are those of mrs. garnett. the following are recommended to those who are beginning the study of russian literature and who are desirous of reading novels which throw light on the springs of russian life and thought:-tourgeniev. _fathers and children._ heinemann. 2s. net. a study of russian nihilism in the 'eighties, which may be read and compared with kropotkin's _memoirs_. tolstoi. _war and peace._ heinemann. 3s. 6d. net. _anna karenin._ heinemann. 3s. 6d. net. the first of these is perhaps the finest treatment of war in modern literature, the subject being the russian campaign of napoleon in 1812. no other book gives one a better idea of the way the russians make war and of the essential greatness of the russian national spirit. dostoieffsky. _the brothers karamazov._ heinemann. 3s. 6d. net. this, which is one of the greatest novels ever written, depicts, at once relentlessly and with infinite tenderness, the spiritual conflict which has agitated russian society for at least fifty years past. joseph conrad. _under western eyes._ 6s. a powerful study of modern revolutionary types. conrad, of course, is not a russian novelist, but he is of polish origin. gogol. _the inspector-general._ walter scott. 1s. net. a comedy first produced in petrograd in 1836. gogol is one of russia's classics. this play is a humorous treatment of bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency. chapter vi foreign policy the present war has raised in the minds of many men a question which we as a people will soon be called upon to answer. was this war necessary? or was it caused by the ambitions and foolishness of statesmen? might it not have been averted if the peoples of europe had had more control over the way in which foreign policy was carried on? out of these questions has arisen a demand for the "democratisation of foreign policy"; that is, for greater popular control over diplomatic negotiations. in view of this, it becomes necessary for every british citizen to gain some idea of what foreign policy is and by what principles it should be governed. it is the purpose of this chapter to give, first, some account of the actual meaning of the words "foreign policy," and then, secondly, to consider how foreign policy may best be controlled in the interests of the whole population of the british empire, and in the interests of the world at large. a. the meaning of foreign policy â§1. _the foreign office._--to the ordinary man foreign policy is an affair of mystery, and it not unnaturally rouses his suspicions. he does not realise, what is nevertheless the simple truth, that he himself is both the material and the object of all foreign policy. the business of the government of a country is to maintain and further the interests of the individual citizen. that is the starting-point of all political institutions. the business of the foreign office is a part of this work of government, and consists in the protection of the interests of the individual citizen where those interests depend upon the goodwill of a foreign government. but just as in domestic politics the individual citizen is inclined to suspect--too often with truth--that the government does not give impartial attention to the interests of all the citizens, but is preoccupied in protecting the interests of powerful and privileged persons or groups, so in foreign policy the individual citizen is particularly prone to believe that the time of the foreign office is taken up in furthering the interests of rich bondholders or powerful capitalists. moreover, the charge is sometimes heard that some of the most powerful of these capitalists are engaged in the manufacture of armaments, and that the foreign office aims at securing orders from foreign governments for these firms, thus encouraging the nations of the world to provide themselves with means of destruction. now, just as no sensible man will say that governments do not often oppress the people under their care, so no sensible man will contend that foreign offices do not sometimes sin in the same way. but let us try to give an accurate picture of the work on which the british foreign office spends its time. the organisation of the foreign office consists of: (1) an office, situated in downing street, manned by a number of clerks, under the direction of the secretary of state for foreign affairs. (2) the diplomatic service--that is to say, from three to eight officials residing in the capital of each foreign country. in the more important countries these officials are called an embassy, and are under the direction of an ambassador; in the smaller countries they are called a legation, and are under the direction of a minister. these ambassadors and ministers receive instructions from and report to the secretary of state for foreign affairs, and are the mouthpiece of the british government in all business which great britain transacts with foreign countries. (3) the consular service--that is to say, a large number of officials, called consuls, distributed over all the towns of the world where british subjects have important trade connections or where there are a considerable number of british subjects. these consuls are under the direction of the foreign office and of the embassy or legation in the country where they reside, and their business is to assist british trade and protect british subjects. â§2. _the work of the foreign office._--the work of this whole organisation may be divided into four classes: (1) the protection of individual british subjects. this protection often extends to the most petty matters. through the offices of a consul and of an embassy or legation flows day by day a continual stream of british subjects who are in small difficulties or have small grievances against the officials of the country. one old lady has lost her luggage; a working man is stranded without work and wants to get back to england; a commercial traveller has got into trouble with the customs officials and asks for redress. but the protection thus given is often concerned with very important matters, and is constantly employed on behalf of the poorest and the most helpless. for instance, our officials in the united states are constantly occupied, in assisting british immigrant working men and women who are suffering hardships under the stringent provisions of the united states immigration laws. (2) the furthering of british trade. it is the duty of the whole foreign office organisation, but especially of the consuls, to give advice to the representatives of commercial firms, to report openings for the sale of british goods abroad, and generally to give assistance to british trade in its competition with foreign trade. enquiries will, for instance, be received by a consul at a chinese port from a manufacturer of pottery or harness or tin-tacks, asking what type of goods will be likely to find a market in that locality. the consul will then enquire and give such information as his local knowledge enables him to supply. or again, a foreign country will sometimes make regulations which hinder the importation of english products. english oats may, for instance, be affected with a blight which italy fears may infect her crops if she allows their importation. it may then become the duty of the british embassy at rome to make arrangements with the italian government in order that english farmers may not suffer by losing the market for their produce. but one important point must be remembered, because it is too often forgotten by those who criticise the foreign office. there is one general restriction on the activities of the foreign office in assisting british trade: no british official is allowed to invite, or try to persuade, any foreign government to give orders to british firms, whether for war material or for any other article. what we have already said applies to the relations between civilised countries. but the relations between civilised countries on the one hand, and uncivilised or semi-civilised countries on the other hand, are very much more difficult in many ways. difficulties especially arise with regard to commerce. many of the less-developed countries of the world, such as some south american countries and china, cannot, like their richer neighbours, undertake the development of their own resources. they lack money, scientific training, business ability, and so on. they therefore give what are called "concessions" to foreign companies or capitalists; that is, the government of the country leases some industry for a term of years to the foreign company. the mexican government, for instance, has leased its oil-wells to english, american, and dutch companies, and the chinese government has largely confided the construction and management of its railroads to english, french, and german companies. now, in many countries where this happens, the government is not strong enough or permanent enough to guarantee proper security of tenure to the foreign company to which it grants a concession; very likely some official is bribed to grant the concession to one company and then bribed by another company to cancel it, or the government is overthrown by a revolution and its successor cancels the concessions it has granted. by this means, british workmen may be thrown out of work and their employment may pass to workmen in the united states or germany. consequently, foreign governments--the governments of civilised countries--gradually begin to intervene and give protection to their subjects who have concessions in such countries, provided that they have obtained their concessions in a respectable and proper manner. competition between the different foreign companies then grows up; their governments gradually begin to support them against each other in this competition, until at last it becomes necessary for the different governments, if bad feeling is to be avoided, to try to arrive at some arrangement among themselves, fixing the way in which the concessions granted by this or that semi-civilised country shall be distributed among the subjects of the great powers. something like this has been recently happening in china. to a certain extent this line of action seems to be necessary in dealing with backward countries, and it may be made mutually beneficial both to those countries themselves and to the commerce of the great powers, but, on the other hand, the whole policy is obviously liable to great abuse. consequently, every self-respecting government knows that all matters relating to concessions must be treated with the greatest caution and forbearance, and that the interests of all concerned will be best served in the long run by gradually helping backward countries along the path of civilisation and strengthening their governments so that they may be able to assume complete control of their own finance and commercial enterprises. we have now described roughly the personal and the commercial work of the foreign office. this work covers all the immediate interests of individual british citizens in regard to foreign countries. if each british subject is protected when abroad, and if the trade and industry of the country on which the welfare and livelihood of every individual citizen ultimately depends is fostered and safe-guarded, then the primary duties of the british government in relation to other governments have been discharged. but this is not enough. if the interests of the individual citizen of great britain are to be permanently secured in relation to foreign countries, we must be assured that the policy of foreign governments is civilised and generally friendly to british subjects. there must be a general rule of law throughout the world on which british subjects can count with assurance of safety. and so the foreign office has a third and even more important class of work: (3) the maintenance of permanent good relations with foreign countries. these good relations are secured, not only by continually friendly communication with foreign governments over innumerable questions of policy, but also by the conclusion of a network of treaties, some of them designed to establish international co-operation in particular social or economic questions such, for instance, as the existing treaty between great britain and france providing for the mutual payment of compensation under the workmen's compensation laws of the two countries, and others concluded with the object of defining the mutual policy of different countries in general matters such as the regulation of trade. the newest and most important class of treaties are those which, like the hague conventions and the treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of belgium and luxemburg, attempt to lay down general rules of law which all countries agree to observe. in other words, the office of diplomacy is to secure _certainty_ in the government of the world, so that every man may know what to expect in dealing with his fellow-man of a different nationality. it is difficult to describe adequately the complexity of this diplomatic work. the economic and social systems of the world have become so involved and intertwined that there is hardly anything one country can do which does not react in some way on the interests of the subjects of another country. in every european country, and in the united states, the government is being more and more called upon to regulate the delicate economic and social machinery on which modern life depends. each government adopts an attitude towards such problems which is determined partly by the thought and the beliefs of its public men, and partly by the course of historical development through which each country has passed. there thus arises gradually in each country a more or less definite policy with which the country becomes identified. formerly the policy of most european countries was mainly confined to questions arising in europe itself, but in these days of industrial expansion the real aims of their policy generally lie outside europe. there are vast regions of the world where civilised government does not exist, or is only beginning to exist, but where the citizens of civilised countries travel and carry on trade. no civilised country can prevent its traders going where they please--indeed, the prosperity of every great country now depends to some extent at least upon its traders finding new markets for the sale of their goods--but if these traders go to an uncivilised country like central africa or the interior of china or the south sea islands the civilised country not only feels obliged to protect them there, but it must also, by every claim of justice and humanity, prevent them from ill-using the uncivilised and helpless natives. the horrors which accompany the unregulated activity of foreign traders in a savage country may be seen from the _life of john g. paton,_ a missionary in the new hebrides islands of the southern pacific. these islands, before they came under the government of any civilised power, were visited by european and american traders, especially traders in sandalwood. "the sandalwood traders," wrote paton, "are as a class the most godless of men.... by them the poor defenceless natives are oppressed and robbed on every hand; and if they offer the slightest resistance they are ruthlessly silenced by the musket or revolver.... the sale of intoxicants, opium, fire-arms, and ammunition by the traders among the new hebrideans, had become a terrible and intolerable evil." it became necessary for the civilised powers to prohibit, by international regulation, the sale of fire-arms and intoxicants in the islands. such international regulations are always very difficult to enforce, and finally the administration of the islands was taken over by great britain and france, who now govern them jointly. hence the civilised countries of the world have gradually been led to assume jurisdiction in uncivilised regions, and have converted many of them into colonies or "protectorates" or "spheres of influence." by this process the interests of the nations of europe reach out into all the far corners of the earth, and constant care and arrangement is needed to prevent those interests clashing. where the interests of the different powers do clash in an uncivilised or semi-civilised part of the world a general international agreement is often necessary to put things straight; for instance, during recent years the interests of germany, france, and spain--and to a less degree those of many other countries--were continually clashing in morocco, till it became necessary in 1906 to conclude a general international treaty called the algeciras act, whereby the relations of all the powers with regard to morocco were defined in great detail. â§3. _the balance of power._--it is this continual attempt to arrange matters and to keep the different powers clear of each other in order that their interests may not clash, which is the real underlying cause to-day of what is known as the "balance of power." the doctrine of the "balance of power" grew up at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century when europe was threatened by the policy of aggression and conquest undertaken by louis xiv. of france. from that day onward, european statesmen have sought to establish a definite european system and to limit the growth of the european states in such a way as to ensure that no state should be so strong as to threaten its neighbours. the history of this attempt has been somewhat as follows. a coalition of the states of europe was formed against the aggressions of louis xiv. after a series of wars a peace was signed at utrecht in 1713 defining the boundaries of the european states in such a way as to establish equality and a balance of power between them. for about ten years european statesmen attempted to maintain the system thus set up by means of what has since come to be known as the "concert of europe"--that is, by means of a series of international congresses where opportunity was given for the settlement of disputes between the different states. soon, however, it became impossible to satisfy the ambitions of the rulers and peoples of europe by this means, and the concert of europe broke up. wars followed, during which those statesmen, especially in england, who believed in the "balance of power" sought to prevent any european nation from being overwhelmed by its enemies. to this end, england supported austria against the attacks of prussia, and then later supported prussia against a coalition formed by the rest of europe to crush her. unfortunately neither england nor france had sufficient strength or courage to prevent the partition of poland between prussia, russia and austria, which constituted a fatal violation of the balance of power. peace did not return to europe till 1815, when the whole continent had been driven to combine for the overthrow of napoleon. at the congress of vienna in that year the "concert of europe" was revived, and for more than thirty years it practically succeeded by means of a series of international congresses in maintaining a stable and balanced system in europe. but this "concert of europe" was the very thing against which the democratic forces on the continent finally rebelled, for the "concert" took the form of the so-called "holy alliance" between the rulers of europe, whose object was to prevent popular movements from disturbing the neat and orderly peace which they had created. the system created by the congress of vienna began to break down in 1848. since then the warlike nationalist and democratic movements in europe, followed by the tremendous economic growth of the european nations, have made it almost impossible to secure any stable balance of power, though a more or less successful attempt to establish such a balance in the affairs of south-eastern europe was made at the congress of berlin in 1878. the two hague conferences of 1899 and 1907 did little but reveal the mutual fears and suspicions of the european nations, though many statesmen, especially english and american, laboured sincerely to make the hague conventions the guarantee of a lasting peace. but it must be observed that the "balance of power," which was originally a distinctly european conception, has now become a world-wide conception. in order to secure a balance of power between the european states it is no longer sufficient to settle european frontiers; it is necessary to settle and, as it were, dovetail into each other the economic interests of the european countries in africa, asia, and the southern pacific. it is also necessary to define the relations of european countries to the states in north and south america. what is the conclusion to be drawn from this history? the idea of the balance of power is unsatisfactory. you cannot really "balance" living forces. nations are not dead masses which can be weighed against each other, but living growths which expand according to obscure natural laws. human laws can never stop natural growth; growth can only be stopped by death, and so the balance of power seems to necessitate continual conflict. and so, at least twice in the last two centuries, the attempt to maintain a stable european system by a peaceful "concert of europe" has broken down. once, in the holy alliance, that concert itself became an intolerable tyranny. many men to-day hope to secure peace by re-establishing the concert of europe on a democratic basis, but it may well be doubted whether any such system can be permanent, unless there be a radical reform in the mind and character not only of european statesmen but of the european peoples. we shall discuss this later, but meanwhile we may say this at least. a balance of power is an imperfect conception. it is a rough and ready--almost barbarous--policy. the best that can be said for it is that no alternative policy has been devised, or at least none has succeeded. every one of us who has a spark of idealism believes that the day will come when it shall give place to some more perfect system. but at the present day not only international politics but also home politics are governed by this idea of a balance of power. no democracy has yet been able to establish itself in any country except by virtue of a continual conflict between class and class, between interest and interest, between capital and labour, and international conflicts are but the reflection of the domestic conflicts within each state; both are continual unsuccessful attempts to reach a stable equilibrium, and they can only be ended by a true fusion of hearts and wills. â§4. _the estimation of national forces._--it has been necessary to undertake this long discussion in order to give a more or less clear idea of the work done by diplomacy in maintaining a stable international system. arising out of this we have now to consider the fourth class of work--and the most difficult--which the foreign office has to perform. for want of a better name we may call it-(4) the estimation of national forces. nations are not mere agglomerations of individuals; they have each their own character, their own feelings, and their own life. science has done little to determine the laws of their growth, but, as we have seen, each nation does grow, reaches out slowly--almost insensibly--in this or that direction, and gathers to itself new interests which in their turn give new impulse to its growth. perhaps the best simile that we can use for the foreign policy of the world is that of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening and being threatened by new life. the point is that we are dealing with _life_--with its growth and decay; not with the movements of pieces on a chequer-board. now, the foreign office largely exists in order to watch this growth and, like a gardener, to train and lead it in directions where it can expand without danger. but for this work intimate knowledge is necessary--knowledge not so much of the personal character or policy of those who govern the different nations, but knowledge of the character, the economic needs, the beliefs, the feelings, and the aspirations of the half-dumb millions who form and ultimately determine the life of each nation. the diplomatist must study every political and social movement which goes on in a nation; he must estimate the effect which the national system of education is having on the mind of the nation; he must form an idea of the lessons which the government of his own country should learn from the government of other countries, whether it be, for instance, lessons in constitutional government or in municipal sanitation; and he must above all be able to warn his government of the dangers to his own country which the growth of foreign countries seems to entail, in order that peaceful measures may be taken in time to prevent a collision. this, then, is a rough account of the actual work of diplomacy. it is not a full account. there are many wrong things done which deserve criticism, but which we have not had space to mention. there is also much self-sacrificing and thankless work done by diplomatists and consuls in distant parts of the world--much seeming drudgery which can hope for no reward--many honourable services rendered to the public of which the public never hears. but the above account will suffice to give a rough idea of the organisation with which we are dealing, and we may now pass on to consider the question of how this organisation should be managed and controlled. b. the democratisation of foreign policy this phrase is rapidly becoming a political catchword. as such it requires to be approached with the utmost caution. before going further it is necessary to test the assumptions underlying it and to inquire how far they really correspond to the facts. â§1. _democracy and peace._--first of all, the main assumption made by englishmen who advocate the democratisation of foreign policy is that international peace would thereby be assured. true, the extension of the democratic principle is to many men an end in itself, quite apart from the question whether it tends to peace. but great masses of men are not moved to make political demands merely by theoretical considerations; it is the pressure of definite and imminent evils which arouses them to action. in the case of england the demand for greater democratic control in the sphere of foreign policy arose in large measure from the sudden realisation, in the late summer of 1911, at the time of the so-called agadir crisis, that war between this country and germany was a possibility with which english statesmen and the english people had to reckon. we had felt the breath of war actually on our cheek, and a large section of english sentiment revolted from it. a demand was raised for a democratic policy of peace. three years later, on august 3, 1914, when parliament met to decide the happiness or sufferings of the quarter of the human race comprised in the british empire, the same demand was voiced in a series of speeches which accurately expressed the belief that peace was the policy of the people, while war was the secret aim of their rulers. mr. t. edmund harvey, m.p., spoke as follows: "i am convinced that this war, for the great masses of the countries of europe, and not for our own country alone, is no people's war. it is a war that has been made ... by men in high places, by diplomatists working in secret, by bureaucrats who are out of touch with the peoples of the world, who are the remnant of an older evil civilisation which is disappearing by gradual and peaceful methods." mr. ponsonby, m.p., spoke in the same sense: "i trust that, even though it may be late, the foreign secretary will use every endeavour to the very last moment, disregarding the tone of messages and the manner of ambassadors, but looking to the great central interests of humanity and civilisation to keep this country in a state of peace." democracy means peace;--can we accept this assumption? contrasts are sometimes illuminating, and it may be well to turn from the parliamentary debate of august 3 to an article written sixty-two years ago in an english review by the greatest democrat of his time. in april 1852 mazzini published in the _westminster review_ an appeal to england to intervene on the continent in favour of the revolutionary movements in progress there since 1848. the following is an extract from that article: "the menace of the foreigner weighs upon the smaller states; the last sparks of european liberty are extinguished under the dictatorial veto of the retrograde powers. england--the country of elizabeth and cromwell--has not a word to say in favour of the principle to which she owes her existence. if england persist in maintaining this neutral, passive, selfish part, she will have to expiate it. a european transformation is inevitable. when it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples will remember that england had stood by, an inert, immovable, sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts.... england will find herself some day a third-rate power, and to this she is being brought by a want of foresight in her statesmen. the nation must rouse herself and shake off the torpor of her government." mr. ponsonby appealing in the name of the people to sir edward grey to stand aloof from european war; mazzini appealing in the name of the people to the respectable, peaceable, middle classes of england to forsake cobden's pacifist doctrines and throw england's sword into the scale of european revolution--it is a strange contrast which serves to remind us that the word "democracy," so lightly bandied about by political parties, has many different meanings and has stood for many different policies. it may be roughly said that it stood for internationalism in 1792, when france claimed as her mission the liberation of all nations under the tricolor; it stood for nationalism in 1848 in the mouth of mazzini, kossuth and the german constitutional party; to-day it again stands for internationalism in the more advanced countries of europe, but are we justified as yet in calling this more than a phase in the development of democratic doctrine? it is a very difficult question, which it would be presumptuous to try to answer offhand; all we have tried to show here is that, on the whole, the assumption as to the peaceful tendencies of a democratic foreign policy is a doubtful one, on which we must to some extent reserve our judgment. â§2. _foreign policy and popular forces._--the above considerations will help us to appreciate at its true value the second main assumption which lies behind the demand for increased democratic control of foreign policy--namely, the assumption that the stuff of international politics is at present spun from the designs of individual statesmen, and has no relation to the needs of the peoples they govern. stated thus, this idea will not bear examination for a moment. the doctrine of the "economic interpretation of history," which has received perhaps its most emphatic expression in the teaching of marxian socialists, is now in one form or another accepted by all thinking men. but "economics" is after all a rough name for the sum of the ordinary needs and efforts of every single human being, and the economic interpretation of history means that the history of the world is in the long run determined by the cumulative force of these humble needs and efforts. this and this alone is the real stuff of international politics. statesmen may attempt to found systems, but the only real force in international as in domestic politics is the education of the individual man's desires. it is indeed open to any critic to say that our present capitalist economic system is responsible for war because it dams up and diverts from their true channels the needs and the efforts of the mass of mankind. but to this an englishman may fairly answer that the free trade system under which our capitalist organisation has reached its greatest development was built up by the manchester school with the sincere and avowed object of introducing universal peace. cobden avowed this object clearly: "i see," he said, "in free trade that which shall act on the moral world as the law of gravitation in the universe, drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race and creed and language and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace... i believe that the desire and motive for large and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and mighty navies ... will die away." yet, in spite of these aspirations, great wars have come to england, not once, but at least three times, since these words were spoken, and armaments are immeasurably larger than ever before. let us understand one thing clearly in connection with the present war. mr. ponsonby, in the words already quoted, implored sir e. grey to "look to the great central interests of humanity and civilisation," and to preserve the neutrality of england in those interests. but at the moment at which he spoke the eyes of english statesmen were looking at one thing alone. it was not a question of what french statesmen expected them to do. the british government had explained quite clearly to french statesmen that they must not expect armed support from england. this fact had been made clear to the french foreign office long before in a series of conversations between the statesmen, and it had been embodied in a letter from sir e. grey to the french ambassador. but when the shadow of war actually fell on france these conversations and this letter faded into the background. it was no longer a question of what the french president expected from the king of england. it was a question of what jacques roturier, artisan in the streets of paris, knowing that the germans were on the frontier and might be dropping their shells into paris in a fortnight, expected from john smith, shopkeeper in the east india dock road, london, safe behind the english channel from all the horrors of war. that was, not rhetorically but in all soberness of fact, the real "international obligation" on august 3, 1914; for though treaties are made by statesmen they are in the long run interpreted, not by statesmen, but by the public opinion which becomes slowly centred on them--by the hopes and fears of millions of working men and women who have never read the terms of the treaty but to whom it has become the symbol of a friendship on which they can draw in case of need. the magistrate may write the marriage lines, but the marriage becomes what the husband and wife make it--a thing far deeper and more binding than any legal contract. in the light of these considerations, we can establish one point of supreme importance in dealing with foreign policy--namely, that the causes of war are very different from the immediate occasions of war. when the british government, at the outbreak of the present war, published a white paper containing the diplomatic correspondence between july 20 and august 4, 1914, they were publishing evidence as to the immediate occasion of war--namely the austrian ultimatum of july 23 to serbia which brought on the war. in the twelve days which intervened between the delivery of that ultimatum and the declaration of war between england and germany, the negotiations on which hung the immediate fate of europe were, it is true, conducted by a few leading statesmen. but it is of little use to argue whether or not these negotiations were conducted ill or well, for they were not the real _cause_ of the war. the cause of the war must be sought in the slow development of forces which can be traced back for years, and even for centuries. it was comparatively futile for parliament to discuss whether this or that despatch or telegram was wise or unwise; the real questions to be asked were--what produced the crowds in vienna surging round the serbian legation at the end of june, and round the russian embassy at the end of july; what produced the slow, patient sympathy for the balkan peoples and hatred for austria in the heart of millions of russian peasants; what produced the servian nationalist movement; above all, what produced that strange sentiment throughout germany which could honestly regard the invasion of belgium as justifiable? to answer those questions we have to estimate the force of the most heterogeneous factors in history:--for instance, on the one hand, the slow break-up of the turkish empire, extending over more than two centuries, which has allowed the cauldron of the slavonic balkan peoples to boil up through the thin crust of foreign domination; and on the other hand, the gradual development of the whole system of german state education, and the character of the german newspapers, which have turned the eyes of german public opinion in upon itself and have excluded from public teaching and from the formation of thought every breath of fresh air from the outside world, until at last german public sentiment, through extreme and incessant self-contemplation, has lost the calmness and simplicity which were once the strength of the german character. no man can allot the responsibility for these things, spreading as they do over generations; but assuredly the responsibility does not rest with the half-dozen ministers for foreign affairs who were in power in july 1914. if we are right in what we have said above, then the phrase "the democratization of foreign policy" takes on a new meaning. it does not mean merely the introduction into foreign policy of any set of democratic institutions; it means the realisation by both statesmen and people that foreign policy is already in its essence a fundamentally democratic thing, and that the success or failure of any line of action depends not upon the desires of politicians but upon the mighty forces which move and determine the life of peoples. at present the statesmen do not realise this sufficiently, and hence comes much futile and aimless talking and writing among politicians who fancy that what they say or write to each other in their studies can determine the course of the world. in order to enable diplomatists to discharge all the duties we have already enumerated under the heading of "the estimation of national forces," they need to have a better training and a fuller knowledge of the life and social movements both of their own country and of foreign countries. the royal commission on the civil service was still considering, when war broke out, how this could be accomplished. it is too long a question to enter on here, but it may safely be said that the more the problem is examined the more does it appear to be, like the wider problem of the whole body of 200,000 civil servants in the united kingdom, a question of national education, and not a mere matter of government regulations and democratic institutions. what is required, in the foreign office, as in the whole british civil service, has been well expressed by mr. graham wallas in his book _human nature in politics_: "however able our officials are and however varied their origin, the danger of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally resulted from official life would still remain and must be guarded against by every kind of encouragement to free intellectual development." â§3. _foreign policy and education_.--but if statesmen do not sufficiently realise the strength of existing popular forces in foreign policy, it is equally true that the people themselves do not realise it. the people of every country are inclined to think that they can alter the destiny of nations by ousting one foreign minister from power and setting up another; they think that speeches and the resolutions passed by congresses can change fundamental economic facts. they think that mere expressions of mutual goodwill can take the place of knowledge, and they forget that no nation can shake itself free in a moment from the historical development which has formed it, just as no man can wholly shake himself free from the character which he has inherited from his ancestors. indeed all our phrases--our whole attitude of mind--shows how little we, as a people, realise popular forces. we commonly speak, for instance, of russia as if nothing in that vast country had any influence on foreign affairs except the opinions of a few bureaucrats in petrograd. our sympathy for or hostility to russia is determined by our opinion of the russian bureaucracy, and we never spare a thought for the hopes and fears and the dumb but ardent beliefs of millions of russian peasants. we are apt to dismiss them from our minds as ignorant and superstitious villagers tyrannised over by the tsar, without troubling to enquire narrowly into the real facts of russian life. we thus make precisely the same mistake that diplomatists too often make. we forget that the masses of peasants who flow every year on pilgrimage to the shrines of their religion constitute a more vital fact in the history of the world than the deliberations of the duma or the decisions of police magistrates. here we have a lesson to learn from germany, for german statesmen, strangely enough, have taken immense trouble to make their policy a democratic one. the whole german nation is behind them because for years and years they have taught the nation through the schools, the universities, and the press, their own reading of history and their own idea of what true civilisation is. they have adapted their teaching to the fundamental characteristics and to the history of the german people. they have taken pains to ally the interests alike of capital and labour to their policy, and to fuse the whole nation by a uniform national education and by a series of paternal social reforms imposed from above. the real strength and danger of germany is not what her statesmen or soldiers _do_, but what germans themselves _believe_. we are fighting not an army but a false idea; and nothing will defeat a false idea but the knowledge of the truth. when this war is over, whatever its outcome may be, we must try to introduce a new era into the history of the world. but our fathers and our fathers' fathers have tried to do this same thing, and we shall not succeed if we go about the work in a spirit of self-sufficiency and hasty pride. only knowledge of the truth will enable us to succeed. knowledge of the truth is not an easy thing; it is a question of laborious thought, mental discipline, the humility which is content to learn and the moral courage which can face the truth when it is learnt. how are we to gain these things? first of all, by schools, universities, classes--all the machinery of our national and private education. then, by the same means as popular government employs in other matters--by discussion, by debates in parliament, by criticism of the government. now, these means are not employed at present partly because it is feared that criticism of the government in matters of foreign policy will weaken its hands in dealing with foreign nations. this is a just fear if criticism merely springs from the critics' personal likings or prejudices, but no such evil effects need be feared if the criticism springs from deep thought, from knowledge of the facts and from the patience and wisdom which thought and knowledge bring. but partly also effective discussion of foreign politics does not exist because we are more interested in home politics. we really have, if we cared to use it, as much democratic control over the foreign office under our constitution as over any government department, for the foreign office, like every other department, is under the control of a member of parliament, elected by the people. but we are more interested in social reform, in labour legislation, and in constitutional reform than in foreign politics; and so it is on questions of home policy that we make and unmake governments, and when we discuss whether a conservative or a liberal government ought to be in power, we never think what effect the change would have on foreign policy. if the democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, it must recognise that great responsibilities mean great sacrifices. we must be content to think a little less of our internal social reform, and give more of our attention to the very difficult questions which arise beyond the channel and beyond the atlantic ocean. we must live constantly in the consciousness that the world to-day is one community, and that in everything we do as a people we bear a responsibility not to ourselves alone but to the population of the british empire as a whole and to the family of nations. but when we have really set ourselves to understand and discharge the responsibilities of foreign policy, how shall we, the people of this country, make our opinions effective? how can we be sure that the foreign office will carry out a policy corresponding to the considered convictions which we as a people have formed? as already stated, we have in our hands the same means of parliamentary control over foreign policy as over internal policy. parliament can overthrow a government whose policy it disapproves, and it can refuse to grant supplies for the carrying out of such a policy. short of this, the people can express through parliament its views as to the way in which foreign policy should be conducted, and generally ministers will bow, in this as in other matters, to the clearly expressed views of parliament. we have, in fact, recently seen a striking example of this. when after the international crisis of 1911 the country clearly expressed the opinion that no secret engagements should be entered into with any power which would force great britain to go to war in support of that power, the prime minister stated, and has repeated his statement emphatically on several subsequent occasions, that the government of this country neither had entered, nor would enter, into any such secret engagements, and that any treaty entailing warlike obligations on this country would be laid before parliament. this has now become a fixed and recognised fact in british policy, and it is not too much to say that, like other constitutional changes under the british system of government, it is rapidly becoming a part of the unwritten constitution of the country. but many people would like to go beyond this, and lay down that no treaty between great britain and another country shall be valid until it has been voted by parliament. many countries have provisions of this kind in their constitutions; for instance, the constitution of the united states provides that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the senate, and the french constitution contains the following provision: "the president of the republic negotiates and ratifies treaties. he brings them to the knowledge of the chamber so soon as the interests and the safety of the state permit. "treaties of peace and of commerce, treaties which impose a claim on the finances of the state, those which relate to the personal status and property rights of french subjects abroad, do not become valid until they have been voted by the two chambers. no cession, exchange, or increase of territory can take place except by virtue of a law." such constitutional provisions may be good in their way, and it may be that we should copy them. but the question is one of secondary importance. whether treaties must actually be ratified by parliament, or merely laid before parliament for an expression of its opinion, as is commonly done in this country, the parliament and people of great britain will have control over foreign policy just in the measure that they take a keen interest in it. if they take a keen interest no statesman dependent for his position on the votes of the electorate will dare to embody in a treaty a policy of which they disapprove; while if they do not take an adequate interest, no amount of constitutional provisions will enable them to exercise an intelligent control over the actions of statesmen. the same may be said of another expedient adopted in many countries; namely, the appointment by parliament of committees on foreign affairs, with power to call for papers and examine ministers on their policy. democratic government both in foreign and internal affairs has hitherto rested on the idea that parliament should have adequate control over the principles on which policy is conducted, but must to a large extent leave the details of administration to the executive departments which are controlled by the ministers of the crown. parliament, whether through committees or otherwise, will never be able to follow or control all diplomatic negotiations, any more than it can control all the details of the administration necessary to carry out a complicated law like the insurance act; and committees of parliament, however useful, will have no influence unless the people of the country so recognise their responsibilities in foreign politics that they will demand from the men whom they elect to parliament a judgment and a knowledge of foreign affairs, at least as sound and well based as they now require in the case of internal affairs. it will be seen that this imposes a very difficult task on the british electorate. how are they to weigh foreign affairs and internal affairs against each other? what are they to do if they approve the internal policy of a government, but disapprove of its foreign policy, or _vice versa_? are we, for instance, to sacrifice what we believe to be our duty in foreign affairs in order that we may keep in power a government which is carrying out what we believe to be a sound policy of internal social reform? it is here, it would seem, that some reform is really needed. there is one solution: namely, to separate the control of domestic affairs on the one hand and foreign affairs on the other, placing domestic affairs in the hands of a parliament and and a cabinet who will stand or fall by their internal policy alone, and entrusting foreign affairs to an imperial parliament and an imperial cabinet formed of representatives not of great britain alone but of the whole british empire. this is an idea which merits the most careful consideration by the people of the united kingdom, for it may well be doubted whether any real popular control of foreign policy is possible until some such division of functions takes place. one word in conclusion. if it is true that domestic policy and foreign policy are separate functions of government, it is also true that the domestic policy of a country in the long run determines its foreign policy. international peace can never be attained between nations torn with internal dissensions; international justice will remain a dream so long as political parties and schools of thought dispute over the meaning of justice in domestic affairs. a true ideal of peace must embrace the class struggle as well as international war. if we desire a "concert of europe" which shall be based on true freedom and not on tyranny, it behoves us to realise our ideal first in england, and to raise our country itself above the political and social conflicts and hatreds which have formed so large and so sordid a part of our domestic history for the last decade. bibliography it is difficult to give a list of books illustrating foreign policy in general. the lists given in other chapters sufficiently illustrate the various problems with which foreign policy to-day has to deal. the diplomacy of a century ago is well illustrated by the _diaries and correspondence of the earl of malmesbury_. 4 vols. 1844. (out of print.) for the diplomacy of the middle of the nineteenth century, when the present national forces of europe were being created, the following biographies are useful: _life of lord stratford de redcliffe_, by lane-poole. 2 vols. 1888. _life of lord granville_, by lord fitzmaurice. 2 vols. 1905. _life of lord clarendon_, by sir herbert maxwell. 2 vols. 1913. _life of lord lyons_, by lord newton. 2 vols. 1898. _life of cavour_, by roscoe thayer. 2 vols. 1911. _bismarck's reflections_. there are many studies of the diplomatic problems of the present day, but as they deal with history in the making they are to be read for the general survey they give of forces at work rather than as authoritative statements. a very comprehensive survey of all the complexities of international politics will be found in fullerton's _problems of power_ (1913). 7s. 6d. net. the actual workings of diplomacy may best be seen in the "white books" of diplomatic correspondence, periodically published by the foreign office, such, for instance, as the successive volumes of _correspondence respecting the affairs of persia_. perhaps the best idea of the actual labour of foreign relations can be gained by consulting such compilations as hertslet's _commercial treaties_--23 vols. 1827-1905--which are a record of work actually completed. on the staffing of the foreign office and the diplomatic service, see the fifth report of the royal commission on the civil service (cd. 7748), just published (5-1/2 d.). chapter vii the issues of the war "march ahead of the ideas of your age, and it will follow you: go with them, and you can feel at ease: remain behind them, and you are lost."--napoleon iii. â§1. _is there an idea behind the war?_--the object of the preceding chapters has been to provide the historic background without which it is impossible to understand either the motives of our opponents or the events which led up to their quarrel. it is now necessary to attempt a survey of the issues raised by the war, both as concerns europe as a whole and the individual nations which form its component parts. this is a task of no small difficulty, for just as it is true to say that no war in the previous history of mankind has ever been waged on so huge a scale as this, so it is also true to say that the issues raised by it are vaster and more varied than those of any previous european conflict. it is as though by the pressure of an electric button some giant sluice had been opened, unchaining forces over which mortal men can hardly hope to recover control and whose action it is wellnigh impossible to foresee. yet complex as is the problem before us, it is essential that we should face it bravely. there is grave danger lest, just as we have been "rushed into" this war (through no fault of ours, as the diplomatic correspondence abundantly proves), so we may at a given moment be "rushed out" of it, without having reached any very clear idea as to what issues are involved, and how far our vital interests have been affected. the essence of the problem before us is to discover whether there is an idea behind this war--whether on our own side or on that of the enemy. a dangerous question, this!--a question posed again and again by the jingoes and the fanatics of history, and invariably answered according to the dictates of their own convenience. and yet a question which we dare not shirk, a question which a carlyle, a ruskin, a william morris would not have hesitated to formulate. does britain stand for an idea? is it true that we are fighting in the main for the cause of liberty and democracy, for progress in europe and the world at large? and if this be really true to-day, how can we best ensure that it shall still be true at the close of this long war, if, as we hope and pray, victory crowns the arms of the allies? it was an idea that nerved britain for the struggle against napoleon. it was an idea that inspired germany in the great uprising of 1813 against napoleon. it was an idea that brought the balkan league into being and carried its armies in triumph to salonica and adrianople. freedom, unity, liberation, such were the forms which that idea took: the determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke. in each of these struggles error and even crimes were committed by the victors, and yet it is a thousand times true to assert that the victorious idea represented in each case the triumph of civilisation. to-day the position is equally clear. in opposing germany's claim to override international treaty obligations to suit the convenience of her military strategists, in associating ourselves with belgium and serbia in their vindication of the rights of the smaller nations, we are not merely resisting a fresh bid for world-dominion on the part of a single power, but are challenging the theory that might is superior to right in the political world. â§2. _the aims of british statesmanship._--mr. asquith on september 19 defined as follows the three main aims of british statesmanship in entering upon war: "(1) to vindicate the sanctity of treaty obligations and what is properly called the public law of europe, (2) to assert and to enforce the independence of free states, relatively small and weak, against the encroachments and the violence of the strong, and (3) to withstand, as we believe in the best interests not only of our own empire, but of civilisation at large, the arrogant claim of a single power to dominate the development of the destinies of europe." in speaking thus, mr. asquith had no intention of placing britain upon a moral pedestal or of suggesting that we have ever enjoyed a monopoly of political right dealing. every nation has blots upon its scutcheon; and the cynic may point to the irish union, the destruction of the danish fleet, the cyprus convention, as proofs that we have richly earned the name of "perfidious albion." let us forego the patriotic retort which would fling in prussia's teeth such incidents as the conquest of silesia, the partition of poland, the ems telegram, the seizure of kiaochau. but let us, while admitting our shortcomings in the past, nail our colours to the mast and insist that this war shall never degenerate into one of mere revenge or aggrandisement, that the fate of the nations of europe shall be decided, so far as possible, in accordance with their own aspirations rather than the territorial ambitions of dynasties or racial cliques. is it, then, possible, when considering the lines of settlement, to lay down any general principles? the europe which we have known has gone beyond recall; the new europe which is coming to birth will be scarcely recognisable to those who have known its predecessor. its political, racial, social, economic outlook will be radically changed. let us then meet fate halfway and admit boldly that we _want_ a new europe. but let us bear in mind the fiery process by which a huge bell is forged and the fate which befell the impatient apprentice who opened the furnace doors too soon. the prussian leaders, to whom war is an ideal and a programme, are entitled, if fortune should desert them, to manoeuvre for a "draw"; for they would console themselves with the hope of winning a subsequent match. but to us, who regard war as a hateful necessity, from which we do not shrink, but which we did everything in our power to avert--to us there can be no thought of relinquishing our task, until there is a reasonable prospect of a really lasting settlement. we should need no prompting from our statesmen to realise that this must be "a fight to a finish." there must be no reversion to the _status quo_, that accursed device of a worn-out diplomacy, with its inevitable seeds of new quarrels and yet another armageddon. public law, nationality, and a general reduction of armaments (as distinguished from complete disarmament) are the three foundation stones of the new era, as already envisaged in the public utterances of those who have some right to speak for the triple entente. let us then endeavour to apply these principles to the various problems raised by the war. it is obvious that their application depends upon the victory of the allies. if we are defeated, public law will have lost its value, for the germans will have asserted their right to violate its fundamental provisions. the idea of nationality will have received its death-blow; for not only will the independence of several of the smaller nations have been destroyed, but germany will have reasserted her right to dominate her own minor nationalities, and to drain the life-blood of the 26 million slavs of austria-hungary in a conflict with their own slavonic kinsmen. finally, all hope of reduced armaments will have been exploded, since the theory of blood and iron will have attained its fullest expression in the virtual domination of a single power on land and sea. regrets or misgivings we may have, but the time for their utterance has long since passed. the british nation must have no illusions; defeat means the downfall of the empire, and the reduction of britain to the position of a second-rate power. either we shall emerge victorious, or for all practical purposes we shall not emerge at all. even if _we_ shrink from a "fight to a finish," our enemies can be relied upon to persist to the bitter end. it is for this reason only, and not because i underestimate for a moment the vast resources, the splendid organisation, the military valour of germany, that i restrict myself in the following pages to a consideration of the possible effects of victory rather than of defeat. it would be the height of folly to anticipate victory before it is achieved; but it is essential that we should be prepared for all possible contingencies, and this involves a careful survey of the various factors in an extraordinarily complicated situation. â§3. _britain and germany._--in the forefront of the discussion stands our quarrel with germany. what are to be our future relations with germany after the war? if there is anything in the assertion that we are fighting for the cause of liberty and progress, it can only mean that we are fighting a system rather than a nation--prussian militarism and bureaucracy, but not german civilisation. we have to go still further and consider the motive powers behind that iron system. sitting in our little island, we are apt to forget what it means to possess a purely artificial frontier of 400 miles, and to see just beyond it a neighbour numbering 171,000,000 inhabitants, in an earlier stage of civilisation and capable of being set in motion by causes which no longer operate in the western world. if the final settlement is to be just and lasting, the demands of the victors must be adjusted to the minimum, not the maximum, of their own vital interests. for britain the central problem must inevitably be: what is to be the position of the german navy if we are successful in this war? is anything even remotely resembling disarmament to be attained unless that navy is rendered innocuous? is it conceivable that even if britain accepted the _status quo_, a victorious russia could ever tolerate a situation which secured to germany the naval supremacy of the baltic, and the possibility of bottling russian sea-trade? even the opening months of the war have shown what ought always to have been obvious, that sea-power differs from land-power in one vital respect: military supremacy can be shared between several powerful states, but naval supremacy is one and indivisible. in this war we shall either maintain and reassert our command of the sea, or we shall lose it: share it with germany we shall not, because we cannot. again, what is to be the fate of german shipping and german colonies? can we not curtail germany's war navy, while respecting her mercantile marine? is it either expedient or necessary to exact the uttermost farthing in the colonial sphere in the event of victory? it is obvious that just as germany offered to respect french territory in europe at the expense of the french colonial empire, so the allies, if victorious, might divide the german colonies between them. by so doing, however, we shall provide, in the eyes of the german nation, a complete justification of william ii.'s naval policy. one of the most widespread arguments among educated germans (including those friendly to this country) has always been that german colonies and shipping are at the mercy of a stronger sea-power, and that therefore germany only holds her sea-trade on sufferance. if, as a result of the war, we take from her all that we can, we shall ingrain this point of view in every german. we should thus tend to perpetuate the old situation, with its intolerable competition of armaments, unless indeed we could reduce germany to complete bankruptcy--a thing which is almost inconceivable to those who know her resources and which would deprive us of one of our most valuable customers. on the other hand, we must of course remember that any extra-european territorial changes depend not merely upon the attitude of britain and her allies, but upon the wishes of the dominions. even in the event of victory, it is still not london alone that will decide the fate of new guinea, of samoa, or of german south-west africa. the last word will probably be spoken by australia, new zealand, and south africa, and it is improbable that any one of the three will consent to the restoration of territory which they have occupied. it is only in the case of german colonies which border upon british crown colonies _(e.g._ togoland, cameroon, or east africa) that the decision will rest entirely with the european governments. at this stage it would be absurd to suggest even the bare outlines of a settlement; but it is well to emphasize the fact that it involves not only the united kingdom but the dominions, and that on its solution depends the future development of the british empire. in other words, the war can only result in the downfall of the empire or in the achievement of imperial federation and a further democratisation of the central government. â§4. _nationality and the german empire._--finally, there is a still graver question. is germany, if defeated, to lose territory _in europe_? and if so, would it be either possible or expedient to compensate her in other directions for such a loss? the application of the principle of nationality to the german empire would affect its territory in three directions--alsace-lorraine, schleswig-holstein, and posen. let us very briefly consider these three problems. [illustration: the franco-german frontier _boundary of france 1815-1871_ and _boundary of france 1871-1914_] (1) the population of the two provinces of alsace and lorraine is mainly german by race and language, but none the less it had become by 1870 almost entirely french in feeling, as the result of its long union with france. the germans, in reannexing the provinces after the war, were actuated almost equally by reasons of sentiment and strategy. they welcomed the recovery of a section of their race which had been wrested from them by the brutal aggression of louis xiv. and the dynastic policy of his successor; they also desired to secure their western frontier against the possible attacks of france, which, under the third empire, was still most emphatically an aggressive power. in drawing the new frontier they included for purely strategic reasons a small portion of western lorraine, round the fortress of metz, which was admittedly as french as champagne or picardy. from 1871 till 1911, alsace-lorraine was governed as a direct appanage of the imperial crown; in the latter year it received a constitution, but nothing even remotely resembling self-government. contrary to the expectation of most germans, the two provinces have not become german in sentiment; indeed the unconciliatory methods of prussia have steadily increased their estrangement, despite their share in the commercial prosperity of the empire. those who know intimately the undercurrents of feeling in alsace-lorraine are unanimous in asserting that if before last july an impartial plebiscite, without fear of the consequences, could have been taken among the inhabitants, an overwhelming majority would have voted for reunion with france. but having once been the battleground of the two nations and living in permanent dread of a repetition of the tragedy, the leaders of political thought in alsace and lorraine favoured a less drastic solution. they knew that germany would not relinquish her hold nor france renounce her aspirations without another armed struggle; but they believed that the grant of real autonomy within the empire, such as would place them on an equal footing with wã¼rtemberg or baden, would render their position tolerable, and by removing the chief source of friction between france and germany, create the groundwork for more cordial and lasting relations between germany and the two western powers.[1] now that the nightmare of war has once more fallen upon them, the situation has radically changed, and there can be no question that in the event of a french victory the provinces would elect to return to france. the fact that several of their leading politicians have fled to france and identified themselves with the french cause, is symptomatic, though doubtless not conclusive. that the government of the republic, if victorious, will make the retrocession of alsace-lorraine its prime condition of peace, is as certain as anything can be certain in the seething pot to which triumphant militarism has reduced unhappy europe. it may, then, seem merely pedantic to refer to an alternative solution; and yet there is unquestionably a great deal to be said in favour of forming the two provinces into an independent state, or better still, uniting them in federal union with luxemburg and belgium. thus would be realised that "middle kingdom" which so many efforts have been made to create, from the days of charlemagne onwards. henceforward the fate of alsace-lorraine would be neither french nor german; they would become a neutral clearing-house for the two cultures which have both come to be so inextricably bound up with the life and traditions of the border race. at the same time the most fertile source of friction between france and germany would be removed, and the two countries would no longer glare at each other across a frontier bristling with fortifications. [footnote 1: this ideal was being actively pursued by many thoughtful people on both sides of the frontier. only last june i was discussing it at some length with a prominent alsatian deputy and various other friends in berlin.] (2) the problem of schleswig-holstein presents far less difficulty, if treated on a basis of nationality. much has been written about the enormity of prussia's treatment of denmark in 1848 and 1863; but the plain truth is that the great majority of the population of the two duchies was as enthusiastic in favour of union with their german kinsmen farther south, as the population of alsace-lorraine was reluctant to be torn from france. the whole of holstein and much the greater part of schleswig always was, and is, pure german by race. unfortunately prussia, in annexing territory which is as german as kent is english, also acquired a portion of north schleswig, which is as unquestionably danish, alike by blood and by sentiment. hence a complete revision of frontiers on a racial basis would certainly involve the cession to denmark of the extreme eastern portions of schleswig, as far as and including the port of flensburg. to-day, however, this question is complicated by strategic considerations, due to the creation of the kiel canal as an almost impregnable naval base. the suggestion has already been seriously put forward, that denmark should be allowed, in the event of germany's defeat, to extend her territory as far as the north bank of the canal, which would thus become an international highway for peaceful commerce, possibly under a general guarantee of neutrality. whether such a present might not prove a very grave embarrassment to denmark, and whether the guarantee would be more effectual than the treaty which secured belgian independence, are questions which depend mainly upon the mood of the peoples of europe after they are tired of shedding each other's blood. but it is well to realise that the question of the kiel canal is one which may very possibly lead to a prolongation of the war, and which, as i have already hinted, russia will not allow to rest, even if britain should hesitate to complete the work. (3) the third point at which, on a basis of racial redistribution, a defeated germany must inevitably suffer territorial loss, is the polish district on her eastern frontier. the present kingdom of prussia includes 3,328,750 poles among its subjects, mainly in the former duchy of posen, but also in silesia and along the southern edge of west and east prussia (known as mazurians and kasubians). the pronouncedly anti-polish policy pursued by the german government for over twenty years past has aroused deep and insurmountable hatred against prussia in the heart of the poles, who even in the days when berlin was relatively conciliatory towards them had never relinquished their passionate belief in the resurrection of their country. above all, the attempt to denationalise the eastern marches by expropriation, colonisation of germans, and other still cruder methods, has not only been in the main unsuccessful, but it has roused the poles to formidable counter-efforts in the sphere of finance and agrarian co-operation. this coincided with remarkable changes in russian poland, which has rapidly become the chief industrial centre of the russian empire. economic causes have toned down the bitterness which russia's cruel repression of polish aspirations had inspired, and to-day prussia is unquestionably regarded by every pole as a far more deadly enemy than even the russian autocracy, the more so as the conviction has steadily gained ground that the polish policy of petrograd has been unduly subject to the directions of berlin. while, then, the poles look upon the promises from either of these two capitals with pardonable suspicion and reserve, it is certain that to-day such hopes as they may entertain from foreign aid centre more and more upon russia. any attempt to reconstruct the kingdom of poland, whether as an independent state or, as seems more practicable, as an autonomous unit within the empire of the tsar, would inevitably deprive prussia of the greater part of the duchy of posen (except the three or four western "kreise" or districts, in which the german element predominates), a strip of eastern silesia from the upper reaches of the vistula northwards, and a further strip of territory in east prussia, extending from near the fortress of thorn along the mazurian lakes (in fact, the scene of the opening battles of the present war). polish extremists, however, not content with these indubitably polish districts, are already laying claim to the lower reaches of the vistula and to danzig as the port of the historical poland; and there is a further tendency in certain russian circles to regard the whole province of east prussia as part of the natural spoils of war. and yet it is obvious that the annexation of danzig,[1] one of the bulwarks of the old hanseatic league, and of kã¶nigsberg, the cradle of the prussian crown and of modern german philosophy, would be a flagrant violation of that principle of nationality which the allies have inscribed upon their banner. the province of which kã¶nigsberg is the capital is to-day, whatever it may have been in the twelfth century, as german as any portion of the german empire. moreover, it is the stronghold of junkerdom, that arrogant but virile squirearchy which still forms the backbone of the old prussian system; and while it is doubtless the desire to undermine this caste by robbing it of hearth and home that prompts such drastic schemes of conquest, it cannot be too clearly realised that we should not only be guilty of a monstrous injustice in lending our support, but should be sowing the seeds of a new and even thornier problem than that of alsace-lorraine. it would, moreover, be a superfluous injustice, since it is perfectly possible to create on broad racial lines a new frontier at least as natural as that which divides russia and germany to-day. [footnote 1: strictly speaking, danzig, though under polish suzerainty till 1772, has always been a german town enjoying complete autonomy. it shares the fame of hamburg and lã¼beck as one of the greatest of the mediaeval hansa towns.] such are the changes which an application of the principle of nationality involves. let us then be under no illusions; they are changes such as can only be extracted from a germany which has virtually ceased to exist as a military power--a contingency which is still remote to-day, and which can only be attained by enormous sacrifices in blood and resources. it is only by readjustment and compensation in other directions that the german nation could be induced even to consider a revision of frontier, and from the nature of things such compensation can only have one meaning--the break-up of austria-hungary. â§5. _the future of austria-hungary._--for many years this break-up has been foretold by political pessimists inside and outside the habsburg dominions, and by many interested agitators both in central and in western europe. the present writer, on the other hand, has always regarded austria-hungary as an organism full of infinite possibilities of progress and culture, a state modelled upon that diversity of type which lord acton held to be the surest guarantee of liberty. those who affected to treat it as moribund under-estimated both the underlying geographical bases of its existence and its great natural resources; they emphasised what separates rather than what unites. in short, they saw the rivalry between the two mottoes "divide et impera" and "viribus unitis," and laid undue stress upon the former. just because they realised the extraordinarily complicated nature of the racial problems involved, they tended to overlook the steady advance made in recent years by austria in the conceptions of political and constitutional freedom. but at every turn hungary has been austria's evil genius: the influence of the magyar oligarchy has given a reactionary flavour alike to internal and to foreign policy, has hampered every reform, and poisoned the relations of the state with its southern neighbours. [illustration: austria-hungary: political divisions] for a short time the aggressive balkan policy of count aehrenthal, as exemplified in the annexation of bosnia and the diplomatic duel with russia, was hailed as worthy of the bismarckian tradition; but it soon became clear that he was far from being the genius whose advent the monarchy was so anxiously awaiting. in recent years, then, despite many hopeful signs, and despite increasing activity in almost every sphere of life, a kind of progressive paralysis has taken hold upon the body-politic. three main causes may be noted--the lack of any great men capable of counteracting the emperor's lack of initiative, which was always very marked, but has been accentuated by advancing old age; the superficial and malicious outlook of the capital and the classes which control it; the alliance between the magyar oligarchy and the jewish press and haute finance, working in a pronouncedly anti-slav direction. the wheels still went round, but the machine of state made less and less progress: stagnation and aimlessness were everywhere apparent. on all sides it was recognised that the existing system had become unworkable, and that a catastrophe could only be averted by speedy reforms. to many far-seeing patriots the last hope of salvation for the state seemed to lie with the late heir-apparent, not perhaps as the ideal prince, but as a man of courage and force of character, possessing the necessary energy to carry through drastic political changes. his removal was a crushing blow to all who still hoped against hope in the regeneration of the monarchy. his place was filled by a young man, lacking both experience and prestige; never was there less sign of the heaven-born genius who alone could save a desperate situation. in the life of nations and states, as in that of individuals, there sometimes comes a moment when it is possible to make the "great refusal" of which dante sang; and "history teaches that those who decline, or prove unworthy of, the leading rã´le which is offered to them, are trodden mercilessly underfoot." in closing the german edition of my book with these words, i expressed the conviction that "for a state such as austria there could only be one choice"; but unhappily her statesmen have preferred the fatal alternative.[1] "the historic mission of the house of habsburg is the vindication of equal rights and liberties for all races committed to its charge. the abandonment of this mission would endanger the very existence of a great power upon the middle danube."[2] austria has proved untrue to this mission, and the inexorable forces of history seem at this moment to be working her destruction. nations, like individuals, sometimes commit suicide; and those who have most earnestly warned them against such a crime are left as mourners in the funeral procession. [footnote 1: in july 1911 i dedicated _the southern slav question_ to "that austrian statesman who shall have the courage and the genius necessary to solve the southern slav question." in april 1913, in publishing a german edition, i added the words, "at the twelfth hour this dedication is repeated." in november 1914 it is unhappily only too evident that that hour has already struck.] [footnote 2: see _racial problems in hungary_, concluding sentence.] the war-fever which seized upon the populace of vienna and budapest last july typified the feelings of the three dominant races in the monarchy, the germans, the magyars, and the jews; but it is no criterion for the attitude of large masses of the population. in fact, the war has accentuated the centrifugal tendencies which were so marked a feature of recent years, and which the introduction of universal suffrage and the annexation of bosnia arrested but failed to eradicate; a stringent censorship may conceal, but cannot alter, this fact. disaffection is rife in portions of the army and affects its powers of resistance, while the financial and economic crisis grows from week to week. cynics have tried to define the mutual relations of germany and austria-hungary by comparing the former to a strong man carrying a corpse upon his shoulders, and the course of the war during the first three months would seem to confirm this view. so far as austria-hungary is concerned, its two outstanding features have been the signal failure of the "punitive expedition" against serbia and the debacle of auffenberg's army in galicia. friendly observers were prepared for a break-down in the higher command and were aware that many slav regiments could not be relied upon, but they had expected more from the german and magyar sections of the army and from the very efficient officers' corps, as a stiffening element. it is now known that despite the aggressive policy of its chiefs, the austro-hungarian army was far from ready, and that its commissariat and sanitary arrangements utterly broke down. the evident failure to profit by the experience of two general mobilisations within the previous six years is in itself a proof that there is "something rotten in the state," and it is already obvious that only a complete and crushing victory of germany can extricate austria-hungary from the war without loss of prestige and actual territory. unless the russians can be not merely defeated but driven out, it is absolutely certain that they will retain the province of galicia, or at least the eastern portion, with its ruthene or ukrainian population; unless the serbian army can be overwhelmed, bosnia and at least some portion of dalmatia will fall into the hands of serbia. this would be an eminently unsatisfactory solution or rather it would be no solution at all, for it would solve neither the polish, the ukraine, nor the southern slav questions. i merely refer to it as a possible outcome of one form of stalemate; it is hardly necessary to add that from every point of view stalemate is the result which is most to be dreaded, since it inevitably involves fresh wars in the immediate future. whatever happens, the effete dual system in its present form is doomed, for while an austrian defeat means dissolution, an austrian victory means the absorption of serbia and montenegro, and in either case the balance between austria and hungary will be fatally disturbed and a new constitutional arrangement rendered inevitable. it is thus a tragic paradox that while the attempt to bolster up the dual system was undoubtedly one of the great underlying causes of the war, its first effect is likely to be the collapse of that very system. the dual system once abolished, it might seem reasonable to aim at a reconstruction of austria-hungary on a modified federal basis. but this was essentially a peace-ideal. the war, far from kindling a common patriotism which in austria-hungary was so conspicuous by its absence, has placed a gulf of blood between race and race, and rendered their continued existence under the same roof not only difficult but undesirable. even in the event of only relative failure on the part of austria-hungary a much more radical solution may be expected, while the effect of her complete defeat would be to place the solution of the whole "austrian problem" in the hands of the entente powers and of her own disaffected populations. in that case there are two probable alternatives, one more radical than the other. both depend to a large extent upon the development of the military situation and upon as yet incalculable economic influences, but it is possible to indicate their broad outlines. indeed, this is the best means of illustrating the conflicting fears and aspirations which the great conflict has still further intensified in the racial whirlpool of central europe. let us consider the less drastic of the two first. austria, as distinguished from hungary, consists of seventeen provinces, of which galicia is the largest and most populous; yet there are many austrians who have long regarded its possession as anything but an unmixed blessing for the monarchy as a whole, and would scarcely regret its loss. it has always occupied a peculiar autonomous position of its own; its political, social, and economic conditions are at least a century behind those of the neighbouring provinces, and have given rise to many gross scandals. it has been a hot-bed of agrarian unrest, electoral corruption, and international espionage. instead of paying its own way, it has been financially a heavy drag upon the state, while racially it provides, in the polish-ruthene conflict, an object-lesson on the disagreeable fact that an oppressed race can become an oppressor when occasion arises. but the argument which weighs most with the germans of austria is that the poles of galicia have for a whole generation held in their hands the political balance in the austrian parliament, and that the disappearance of the polish and ruthene deputies would destroy the slav majority and correspondingly strengthen the germans. the magyars in their turn would no doubt view with some alarm the extension of the russian frontier to the line of the carpathians; but the change would bring to them certain obvious compensations, since it would greatly increase the relative importance of hungary inside what was left of the habsburg monarchy. in short, it is by no means impossible that if the russians succeed in holding galicia, austria-hungary may show a sudden alacrity to buy peace by disgorging a province which has never wholly fitted into her geographical or political system. it is obvious that the fate of the small province of bukovina is bound up with that of galicia; and in such circumstances as we have just indicated, it would doubtless be divided between russia and roumania on broad ethnographical lines, the northern districts being ruthene, the southern roumanian. this, however, must depend upon the attitude of the kingdom of roumania, to which reference will be made later. there is one other direction in which austria could afford to surrender territory, without serious loss save that of prestige. the southern portion of tirol--the so-called trentino, the district round the town of trent--is purely italian by race, and its union with the kingdom of italy has long been the chief point in the programme of the italian irredentists or extreme nationalists. it is a poor and mountainous country, which belongs geographically to its southern rather than to its northern neighbour. the pronouncedly italian sympathies of its inhabitants have complicated the problem of government and have been a permanent source of friction between austria and italy. the elaborate fortifications along the existing frontier would have to be sacrificed, but the new racial frontier could soon be made equally satisfactory from a strategic point of view. it should then be borne in mind that at a later stage of the war an attempt may be made by austria to buy off italy with the offer of the trentino. whether the latter would seriously consider such an offer, if made, will doubtless depend upon future events, but it is clear that italy, if her diplomatists are sufficiently adroit, has a fair prospect of acquiring the trentino, whichever side wins, and consequently that a much more tempting bait will be required in order to induce her to abandon her neutrality. these two losses, the one already probable, the other hypothetical, would still leave austria in the unquestioned position of a great power. the problem of her future relations with her balkan neighbours raises an infinitely more complicated issue. let us consider the southern slav and roumanian questions, first separately, and then in their bearing upon each other. â§6. _the southern slav question_.--the southern slav question, as has already been argued in an earlier chapter, can only be treated satisfactorily as an organic whole; and it may be taken for granted that austria-hungary, in the event of victory, will annex the two independent serb kingdoms, and unite the whole serbo-croat race under habsburg rule. the task of governing them, when once she has overcome their resistance, will be one of extraordinary difficulty, and will involve a complete revision of her own standards of government and administration. her record and that of hungary in the slavonic south does not inspire one with confidence as to the result. moreover, it is not too much to assert that the destruction of serb independence--a task which the present writer unhesitatingly regards as beyond the powers of austria--will in no way solve the southern slav problem, but merely transfer its centre of gravity. the task of southern slav liberation would pass to bulgaria, and austria-hungary would be involved in an ever-widening field of hostilities. hence, even if serbia's independence were not now inextricably bound up with the success of the british arms, it would still be essential that every effort should be made to heal what has long been an open sore upon the face of europe. people in this country are only too apt to ignore the question altogether, or at best to say, "oh yes, of course, if the allies win, the serbs will get bosnia." those who talk thus have not grasped the elements of the great problem, of which bosnia, like serbia itself, is only one section. the idea that to transfer bosnia alone from austro-hungarian to serbian hands would settle anything whatever, fatally ignores alike the laws of geography and those considerations of national sentiment which dominate politics in south-eastern europe. in every respect bosnia-herzegovina and dalmatia complement each other. so long as there were no railways in the balkans and bosnia stagnated under turkish rule, so long as the national consciousness of the serbo-croats slumbered or ran in purely provincial channels, the separation between coast and hinterland was possible, though even then unnatural. but with the advent of modern economic ideas the situation radically changed. it was above all the possession of the dalmatian seaboard that tempted austria to occupy bosnia, and so conversely the acquisition of bosnia by serbia would at once compel the latter, willy-nilly (quite apart from all racial affinities or sentiments), to aspire to dalmatia as well. geographically, it is inconceivable that to-day dalmatia should be in different hands from bosnia-herzegovina. herzegovina does actually touch the sea at two places--for a few miles at the swampy mouth of the narenta below metkoviã©, and for a mile at castelnuovo-zelenika, inside the bocche di cattaro. it is obvious that to allow serbia these two outlets, while leaving their surroundings to another state, would create immediate and intolerable friction; whereas to assign the southern half of dalmatia to bosnia, but to leave the northern half in other hands, would be keenly resented by the dalmatians themselves, as an outrage alike upon their national and their local traditions. when we consider the population of dalmatia we must apply the rival tests of history and of race. on the grounds of historical sentiment italy might claim dalmatia; for its chief towns (zara, sebenico, trau, spalato, lesina, curzola)[1] were venetian colonies, and not only they but even the republic of ragusa, which always maintained an independent existence, were saturated with italian culture and ideals. but on ethnical grounds dalmatia is now overwhelmingly slavonic. in 1900 only 3.1 per cent of its population--in other words, about 15,000 out of a total of 584,000--were italians, the remaining 97 per cent being serbo-croats. the census of 1910 is even more unfavourable to the italians, probably unduly so. it is, of course, true that the italian element, though numerically negligible, represents a higher percentage of the educated and cultured class; but while this would entitle italy to demand guarantees for the maintenance of existing italian schools and institutions, it cannot conceivably be employed as an argument in favour of an italian occupation. not only would it bring her inevitably into collision with the southern slavs who already are, and are likely to remain, a military power of no mean order; it would lead her on into the false and hopeless path of attempting to assimilate a hostile population by the aid of an insignificant minority which only exists in half a dozen towns, and in all the rest of the province is simply non-existent. the price paid would be the eternal enmity of all slavs, the jeopardising of italian interests in the balkans, the sacrifice of many of the benefits which the new trans-balkan railway route (odessa-bucarest-kladovo-sarajevo-spalato) would naturally bring to italy, a challenge to one of the finest maritime races in europe--the croats of dalmatia, croatia and istria--a challenge which would sooner or later involve the creation of a southern slav navy against italy. so far as britain is concerned, to separate dalmatia from bosnia is not only to prevent even the beginnings of a solution of the southern slav question, but to obscure the naval situation in the mediterranean, to alienate russia in a matter in which we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by accommodating her. but even when bosnia and dalmatia have been united to serbia and montenegro, the southern slav problem will still be far from solution. dalmatia is alike in constitutional theory and in political fantasy, though not in sober fact, an integral portion of the triune kingdom of croatia-slavonia-dalmatia, and it is unthinkable that serbo-croat opinion could ever consent to the liberation of the one without the other. no solution has any chance of permanence which ignores agram as the centre of croat political and religious life, of education, art and historic memories. the dalmatian croats, as the most virile and stubborn element in the race, have always formed the vanguard of political thought, but it is to agram that they have always turned for the necessary backing, and it is the peasantry of croatia who have always borne the brunt of every attempt at repression. latterly the dalmatians have been the soul of the student movement, which plays so vital a part in recent political development. [footnote 1: in the west they are only known under their italian names, but at home they are known as zadar, sibenik, trogir, split, hvar, korcula, and dubrovnik (ragusa).] croatia-slavonia is a vital part of the problem, indeed from a national point of view perhaps more vital than bosnia and dalmatia. but even this is not enough. no settlement will be complete which ignores the slovenes of eastern istria, carniola, and southern carinthia and styria: they must share the fate of their croat and serb kinsmen. so far, then, as the southern slavs are concerned, the triumph of the allies ought to mean the creation of a new state on the eastern adriatic, the expansion of gallant serbia into jugoslavia (jug is the slav word for south), and the achievement of unity by the three kindred races, serbs, croats, and slovenes. on the north it would be comparatively easy to draw a new frontier corresponding to the main requirements of ethnography, geography, and strategy. with only very slight deviations, this would follow the racial line between slovenes and germans from the present italian frontier as far as the little town of radkersburg in styria; thence, the course of the rivers mur and drave as far as the latter's junction with the danube. it is only in the banat--that portion of the great hungarian plain which faces belgrade across the danube--that an artificial frontier will be inevitable, if the serb districts of hungary are to be included in the new state and if the serb capital is to be rendered immune from the dangers of future bombardment. the weak spot in so drastic a solution is the inclusion of the slovene districts, which--in view of their geographical position, cutting off the german provinces of austria from the sea--is unthinkable, save in the event of a complete collapse of the monarchy. all depends upon the number of leaves which are pulled off the artichoke. if only a few of the outer rows are taken, a situation may arise in which it would be necessary to sacrifice the slovenes and to rest satisfied with the acquisition of bosnia, dalmatia, and croatia--in other words, with the frontier which at present divides croatia from austria and from hungary proper. but this, it must be remembered, would leave the work of southern slav unity incomplete, and is only to be regarded as a _pis aller._ the slovene section of the southern slav problem is further complicated by the attitude of italy, who cannot be indifferent to the fate of trieste and pola. on historic grounds italy cannot lay claim to trieste, which has been a possession of the house of habsburg since 1386 (400 years longer than dalmatia). but if as before we apply the principle of nationality, it is indisputable that trieste is an italian town, though the whole surrounding country up to the very suburbs is purely slovene. on the other hand, the commercial interests of trieste are entirely bound up with its hinterland, by which is meant not only the alpine provinces, but upper and lower austria and bohemia on the one hand and even south germany (bavaria) on the other. any settlement, then, must be a compromise between national and economic interests. as an ancient centre of italian culture, trieste would welcome the flag of the regno upon its municipality, as the surest guarantee that the town would remain italian in character to all time. but any attempt to include trieste within the tariff system of the kingdom of italy would produce fatal results, and the obvious solution is to proclaim the city as a free commercial port. of course, from a purely southern slav point of view, the fate of the town of trieste (as distinct from the district) ought to be a matter of complete indifference, though of course the extremists claim it. it is, however, well to bear in mind that the inclusion of trieste in italy's tariff system would mean the speedy economic ruin of a great and flourishing commercial centre. commercially, then, trieste is unthinkable save either as the port of austria or as a _porto franco_ under italian suzerainty. so far as istria is concerned, there would be no insurmountable difficulty in drawing a satisfactory frontier on ethnographical lines; the western portions, including capodistria, rovigno, and pola, are overwhelmingly italian, while the interior of the little province and the eastern shore (with abbazia, lovrana, etc.) is as overwhelmingly slavonic (croat and slovene mixed). any redistribution of territory on the basis of nationality must therefore inevitably assign western istria to italy, and no reasonable southern slav would raise any valid objection. once more the essential fact to consider is that the acquisition of trieste and pola by italy presupposes the disappearance of austria-hungary; otherwise it is not even remotely possible. hence it is no exaggeration to assert that the fate of trieste is one of the central issues in the whole european settlement. once make trieste a free port, under the italian flag, and _ipso facto_ the austro-hungarian navy ceases to exist, and with it all need for italian naval activity in the adriatic. in other words, such a settlement would lead to an almost idyllic reduction of naval armaments in the adriatic, since both italy and the new jugoslavia could afford to restrict themselves to a minimum of coast defence. it is obvious, however, that the dismantlement of pola--to-day an almost impregnable fortress--would be an essential condition to neighbourly relations between the two, the more so since under such altered circumstances an italian naval base at pola could only have one objective. there is an unfortunate tendency in italy to misread the whole situation on the eastern adriatic, to ignore the transformation which the revival of southern slav consciousness has wrought in lands which once owned the supremacy of venice. a short-sighted distrust of the slav blinds many italians to the double fact that he has come to stay, and that his friendship is to be had for the asking. the commercial future of dalmatia, bosnia, and serbia is intimately bound up with italy, and italy herself will be the chief loser if she closes her eyes to so patent a truth. the fate of trieste and istria is a triangular issue between teuton, slav, and latin. the italian, if his claims are too ambitious or exacting, may succeed in preventing the slav from obtaining his share of the spoils, but only by leaving them all in the hands of a still more dangerous rival, in other words, by a crude policy of dog-in-the-manger. one thing is certain in all this interplay of forces--that it is too late in the day to suppress southern slav national consciousness, and that there can never be durable peace and contentment on the eastern adriatic until the unity of the race has been achieved. it would be premature to discuss the exact forms which the new state would assume; but when the time comes it will be found that the people of bosnia-herzegovina, dalmatia, croatia-slavonia, istria and carniola, will acclaim their liberation at the hands of free serbia and montenegro. their watchword, however, will be not conquest from without, but free and voluntary union from within--a union which will preserve their existing political institutions and culture as a worthy contribution to the common southern slav fund. the natural solution is a federal union under which the sovereign would be crowned not only as king of serbia but with the crown of zvonomir as king of the triune kingdom of croatia-slavonia-dalmatia, thus reviving historic traditions dating from the tenth century and never abandoned or forgotten. the croatian parliament would continue in agrani, parallel with the serb parliament in belgrade, but both would be represented in a central federal parliament. the only question is whether the existing provincial divisions should be allowed to survive, the diets of bosnia, dalmatia, istria, and carniola thus forming conjointly with the serbian, montenegrin, and croatian parliaments the units on which the new constitution is based, or whether complete unification should be attempted. the latter would be the ideal arrangement, but in view of the great divergence of local customs and institutions it would probably be premature, and it might therefore be wiser to preserve the smaller units until they were ripe for fusion, rather than to compromise by creating a dual state of serbia and croatia. â§7. _the roumanian question._--i have dwelt at some length upon the southern slav problem, because it is as complicated as it is unfamiliar to public opinion in this country. it has been the _causa causans_ of the present struggle, and if neglected or mismanaged at the final settlement, may again plunge europe into trouble at some future date. parallel with any solution of the southern slav question must come the solution of the roumanian question, which represents the other half of austria-hungary's balkan policy. the kingdom of roumania is, alike in territory, population, and resources, the leading power in the balkan peninsula, but over five million roumanians, including the very cream of the race, still live under foreign domination. of these at least 3,500,000 are in austria-hungary, the great majority under the grossly oppressive rule of the magyars; and the redemption of transylvania and the neighbouring counties of hungary has always been the ideal of all patriotic roumanians, even of those who looked to a distant future for its realisation. russia's short-sighted policy in 1878, in annexing the roumanian province of bessarabia as a reward for their valiant support at plevna, drove the roumanians into the arms of austria-hungary, and for a whole generation not even the perpetual irritant of magyar tyranny in transylvania could avail to shake the _entente_ between vienna and bucarest, strengthened as it was by the personal friendship of the emperor francis joseph and king charles. but the spell was broken by austria's attitude during the balkan war. the imperious force of circumstances brought the interests of roumania and serbia into line; for it was obvious that any blow aimed against serbia's independent existence must threaten roumania also, just as any weakening of the serbo-croat element in the monarchy must react unfavourably on that of the roumanians and other nationalities of hungary. the growth of national feeling within the two neighbour races has proceeded for some time past on parallel lines, and even before the war there were manifest signs that the roumanians of hungary, whose economic and cultural progress since the beginning of the century has been very rapid, were at length nearing the end of their patience. the bomb outrage at debreczen last february--an event which is without parallel in roumanian history--was the first muttering of the gathering storm. roumania occupies a position of extreme delicacy. her natural tendency would be to espouse the cause of the allies, since they obviously have more to offer her than their rivals. but the somewhat equivocal attitude of her statesmen has been determined not merely by an astute desire to win the spoils of war without making the necessary sacrifice--a policy which is apt to overreach itself--but also by a very pardonable anxiety as to the attitude of bulgaria and turkey. roumania has hitherto been the foremost upholder of the treaty of bucarest, and it is only in the event of drastic territorial changes farther west that she is likely to consent to its being torn up. she has made no secret of the fact that she would not tolerate naked aggression against the greeks, whether from the turkish or bulgarian side. in view of the political record of king ferdinand of bulgaria and his present prime minister, the roumanians may perhaps be excused for adopting an attitude of vigilant reserve; for their statesmen suspect that bulgaria is only waiting until the roumanian army has crossed the carpathians in order to reoccupy the southern dobrudja. certain it is that roumania, while declining all temptations to join the central powers, has also rejected the russian invitation to occupy the bukovina, and has actually approached hungary with a view to securing the restoration of transylvanian autonomy. the magyars on their part have tried to buy off roumania by introducing the roumanian language of instruction in many of the state schools of transylvania--a wholly inadequate concession which would none the less have been inconceivable four short months ago. unfortunately the realisation of roumanian unity inevitably involves the inclusion in the new state of considerable magyar and saxon minorities, amounting in all to not less than 600,000 inhabitants. there are no means of overcoming the hard facts of geography, but it is essential that roumania, while incorporating magyar and saxon islets in the roumanian racial sea, should guarantee the existing institutions of the two races, and the fullest possible linguistic freedom in church,[1] school, and press. the saxons in particular have preserved their identity for over seven centuries in this little corner of the carpathians, and have contributed far more than their share to the cause of culture and progress in hungary. it would be a crying irony of fate if they were allowed to perish in the twentieth century at the hands of those who have pledged themselves to vindicate the rights of smaller nationalities. [footnote 1: the szekel (magyar) districts of transylvania are mainly calvinist, the saxons lutheran to a man, while the roumanians are divided between the orthodox and the roumanian uniate churches. transylvania is also the centre of an interesting sect of unitarians, who are for the most part magyar by race.] it must not be forgotten that the dream of roumanian unity can only be fully realised if russia restores at least a portion of bessarabia, which contains not less than a million and a quarter roumanians. a victorious russia might well afford such a concession; for it would involve no strategic dangers and would, especially if conveyed in the graceful form of a wedding dowry, triumphantly efface the last traces of russophobe feeling that still linger in roumania. but it would be absurd to expect such magnanimity on the part of russia unless roumania's action is prompt and vigorous. the abstract theory of nationality must be reinforced by the more practical argument of sterling services rendered to a common cause. â§8. _can the dual monarchy be replaced?_--the result of applying the principle of nationality to the southern slavs and roumanians would thus be to create two powerful national states at the expense of the habsburg monarchy; and here it is well to repeat that such drastic territorial changes are only possible if the military power of austria suffers an almost complete eclipse. but even the loss of galicia, bukovina, transylvania, the trentino, and the serbo-croat provinces would still leave austria-hungary a state of very considerable area, with a population of 32 millions. there is no reason why such a state should not continue to exist, provided that it retained the necessary access to the sea at trieste and pola, and this would involve the exclusion of the slovenes from the new jugo-slav state. under such circumstances it would be possible to reconstruct the state on a federal basis, with five main racial units, the germans, the czechs and slovaks, the magyars, the slovenes, and the italians. certain unimportant racial minorities would still be left, but these could unquestionably be dealt with by a law of guarantees, similar to those which have played so conspicuous a part in the theory, but sometimes also in the practice, of the dual monarchy. so many severe amputations might, however, prove too much for the vitality of the patient; and in any case we may assume that either austria-hungary will be able to prevent the operation, or that the allies, if they can once bring matters thus far, will insist upon completing the process by a drastic post-mortem inquiry. any sympathetic qualms are likely to be outweighed by the consideration that a state of this hybrid nature would tend to be more than ever a vassal of germany. moreover, there can be no doubt that one of the surest means of bringing germany to her knees is by crushing her most formidable ally, and thus tapping some of the sources of her own military and economic strength. it is safe to assume that this consideration plays an important part in the military plans of russia; and for many reasons--political, strategic, and economic--a russian occupation of bohemia must be regarded as the essential prelude to a decisive victory of the allies. the war has thrown the dual monarchy into the melting-pot; but it is not enough to accept the possibility of its disappearance from the map, it is also necessary to consider what new organisms would take its place. a complete partition would, as we have seen, remove the last obstacle to a unified southern slav state. the dreams of italia irredenta and greater roumania would be realised. western galicia and a part of silesia would be united to autonomous poland as reconstituted by the russian tsar. eastern galicia, northern bukovina, and the ruthene districts of hungary as far as ungvã¡r and munkã¡cs, would be incorporated in the russian empire, though it is to be hoped that an early result of this change would be the grant of a certain modified autonomy, or at least of special linguistic and religious privileges, to the ukraine population, thus united after centuries of partition in a single body politic. â§9. _bohemia and hungary._--but the most striking result of the partition would be the revival of the famous mediaeval kingdoms of bohemia and hungary as independent states. thus would be realised the dream of two races, the czechs and magyars, whose national revival forms one of the most romantic incidents of the nineteenth century. but it is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than their respective development. in bohemia the czechs, after losing their religious and civic liberty and enduring for two centuries the domination of the germans, raised themselves once more in the course of two generations, by sheer force of character and tireless industry, to a position of equality, and reorganised their national life on an essentially democratic basis. in hungary the magyars, thanks to their central position, their superior political sense, and their possession of a powerful aristocracy, succeeded in concentrating all government and administration in their own hands and reducing the other races of the country, who have always formed a majority of the population, to a state of veritable political helotry. and just as their evolution has been on very different lines, so must be their future fate. in bohemia all is activity and political progress, in hungary the sterility of a corrupt and reactionary system, staking the future upon the hollow credit of a long-vanished past. the czechs are beyond all question the most progressive, the most highly civilised, the most democratic of all slavonic nations. the stubborn spirit of john hus is still alive among them to-day, and their recent achievements in music, art, and industry are in every way worthy of the nation which has produced comenius and dvorã¡k and first lit the torch of reformation in europe. the ancient city of prague contains all the elements of culture necessary for the regeneration of bohemia, and the mineral riches and industrial resources of the country are infinitely greater than those of many european states which have successfully led a separate national existence. but the liberation of the czechs would not be complete unless their close kinsmen the slovaks were included in the new bohemian state; and every reason alike of politics, race, and geography tells overwhelmingly in favour of such an arrangement. the slovaks, who would to the last man welcome the change, have long suffered from the gross tyranny of magyar rule. their schools and institutions have been ruthlessly suppressed or reduced in numbers, their press muzzled, their political development arrested, their culture and traditions--far more truly autochthonous than those of the conquering magyar invaders--have been discouraged and hampered at every turn. the slovaks are a race whose artistic and musical gifts, whose innate sense of colour and poetry have won the sympathy and admiration of all who know them; and their systematic oppression at the hands of the magyar oligarchy is one of the greatest infamies of the last fifty years. in this war britain has proclaimed herself the champion of the small nations, and none are more deserving of her sympathy than the slovaks. unless our statesmen renounce that principle of nationality which they have so loudly proclaimed, the slovaks cannot be abandoned to their fate; for they form an essential part of the bohemian problem. without them the new kingdom could not stand alone, isolated as it would be among hostile or indifferent neighbours. in every way the slovak districts form the natural continuation of bohemia and are the necessary link between it and russia, upon whose moral support the new state must rely in the first critical years of its existence. the main difficulty would be the fate of racial minorities; for minorities there still must be, no matter how the frontiers may be drawn. at first sight the natural solution would be to pare down bohemia by assigning to the neighbouring provinces of germany the german fringe which almost completely surrounds the czech kernel. so far as the south-west and north-east districts of bohemia (near budweis and along the german silesian border) are concerned, the historic boundaries might fairly be revised on ethnographic lines, and in the same way the line of demarcation between bohemia and hungary could in the main be made to follow the racial boundary between slovak and magyar and later between slovak and ruthene. but in the north of bohemia there are insurmountable objections to any revision of the historic frontier of the kingdom; for not merely is its industrial life concentrated to a very considerable degree in the german districts, but this fact is responsible for the existence of important czech industrial minorities, which it would be difficult to sacrifice. so far as there is to be any sacrifice, it must be made by the losers rather than by the winners in this war. but it ought to be possible, under the rule of some carefully selected western prince as ruler of bohemia, to devise proper administrative guarantees for the linguistic rights of minorities in every mixed district of bohemia, whether it be czech or german. the case of hungary is different. that the allies, if victorious, should perpetuate the racial hegemony of the magyars, and with it many of the abuses which have contributed towards the present war, is as unthinkable as that they should once more bolster up the turkish rã©gime. if the habsburg monarchy should break up, hungary is fully entitled to her independence. she will become a national magyar state, but in a sense very different from that which her jingo politicians have intended--not by assimilating the non-magyar races of the country, but by losing to the other national states by which she will be surrounded all but the purely magyar districts of the central plains. hungary will then be more fully than before a danubian state; her rich alluvial lands will be developed, and a check will be put upon the unnecessary streams of magyar emigration which the present political and economic situation favours. the chief gainer by the change will be the magyar peasantry, who have in their own way been exploited by the ruling oligarchy as cruelly as their non-magyar neighbours. one result of the war will be to discredit the policy and methods of this oligarchy and to hasten the break-up of the vast latifundia of the great magnates and the church, and those other drastic land reforms without which hungary cannot hope to attain her full economic value as the granary of central europe. hitherto the government of the day has secured a parliamentary majority by corrupting and terrorising the non-magyar constituencies of the periphery and thus out-voting the radical magyar stalwarts of the great plain; and with the loss of the slovak, ruthene and roumanian districts this system would automatically collapse. the result might be a genuine strengthening of democratic elements and the dawn of a new era for the magyar race. â§10. _germany and austria._--one final problem connected with austria-hungary remains. what is to be the fate of the german provinces of austria? if the map of europe is to be recast on a basis of nationality, we obviously cannot withhold from the great german nation that right to racial unity which we accord to the czechs, the poles and many minor races. the seven german provinces--upper and lower austria, styria, carinthia, tirol, salzburg and vorarlberg--reconstituted perhaps as a kingdom of austria under the house of habsburg and augmented by the german population of western hungary, would then become an additional federal unit in the german empire. such an event, it cannot be too often repeated, is inconceivable except as the result of a complete defeat of the central powers, but if on that assumption germany loses alsace-lorraine and posen, the loss would be made good by the incorporation of german austria. the result of this in figures would be the subtraction of six million inhabitants and the addition of eight million others--a transaction which need not unduly alarm the british jingo, and at the same time might render defeat less galling to the german patriot. whether this fulfillment of the pan-german aspiration would meet with unqualified enthusiasm on either side of the present frontier, is a question on which it is not altogether easy to answer. the idea of admitting eight million additional catholic subjects into germany would certainly arouse misgivings in prussia, both among the stricter protestants and among the far more active section of "intellectuals" who merely regard protestantism as a political asset in the struggle against latin and slavonic influences. from a political point of view their admission would unquestionably transform the whole parliamentary situation and force the imperial government to revise its whole attitude; for the austrian voters would greatly strengthen the two parties to whose existence prussia has never become reconciled--the clerical centre and the social democratic left,--while contributing little or nothing to the parties of the conservative junkers or the middle-class "liberals." in other words, the new element might prove to be an effective leaven which would permeate the whole lump. all the arguments which induced bismarck to expel austria from germany in 1868 would still be upheld by the advocates of "preussen-deutschland" (see p. 65), and the prussian hegemony; but after an unsuccessful war and territorial losses the chance of making these good by the achievement of national unity would probably sweep away the dissentients, who would no longer represent a triumphant system, but a beaten and discredited caste. the old idea of the "seventy-million empire," which appealed so strongly to the liberals of frankfurt in 1848, should prove irresistible under these circumstances. the influence of austrian germans, already so marked in literature, art, music, and above all in political theory, might make itself felt in other spheres also. meanwhile, in view of the wild talk in which certain sections of the press are already indulging, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that only the germans can reform their political institutions, and that any attempt at external interference will not merely fail lamentably, but produce the very opposite effect from that which is intended. if the german emperor insists upon confusing the relative positions of the deity and some of his self-styled vicegerents upon earth, only the german people can restore him to a sense of proportion and modesty. all believers in human progress hope that after this war the monstrous theories of divine right propounded by the house of hohenzollern will be relegated to the lumber-room of a vanished past. but the sooner references to st. helena as a residence for deposed emperors are dismissed as arrant nonsense, the better. the future of german dynasties, as of german unity, rests with the german people itself; and those who challenge this statement repudiate _ipso facto_ the two principles of nationality and international law, which we have officially adopted as our programme for the future. the fate of the german provinces of austria is one of the central problems raised by this war, since it is the link between the fate of two empires. the present writer most emphatically disclaims all idea of prophecy; but he feels that the time has come for outlining some of the possible alternatives which confront the statesmen of "the new europe." so far as austria-hungary is concerned, it is clear that the splendid dream of "a monarchical switzerland," as conceived by many serious political thinkers, has already died a violent death; but it would be quite premature to dogmatise on the future grouping of the races of the dual monarchy at a moment when its ultimate fate has still to be decided on the field of battle. â§11. _italian aspirations._--we have already alluded to italy's position, in connection with the southern slav question, and have pointed out that a settlement which follows even approximately the lines of nationality would assign the trentino, the town of trieste (as a free port), and a strip of western istria to italy, but the remainder of the coast from cape promontore to the bojana river to the new "jugoslavia." there are, however, other directions in which italy may claim compensation for her friendly attitude towards the triple entente. she has already occupied the rocky islet of saseno, opposite valona, and in the event of the collapse of austria-hungary, she may demand the whole bay of valona, as the strategic key to the adriatic, and even a general protectorate of the embryo albanian state. the establishment of a miniature gibraltar on the eastern side of the straits of otranto is a step which neither france nor britain would oppose, if italy should insist upon it; but it may be questioned whether she would not thereby be laying up stores of trouble for a distant future, altogether incommensurate with any possible advantages which might accrue. indeed, italy would probably be well advised to abandon all idea of an albanian adventure (which, originally conceived as a counterstroke to austrian aggression, would lose its point if austria disappeared from the scene), to leave the greeks a free hand in south epirus, to cede to them rhodes and the other islands occupied during the tripolitan war, and then to secure, during the partition of turkey, the reversion of cilicia and the gulf of alexandretta. it is in any case clear that the powers of the triple entente will raise no objections to such action on the part of italy, and are resolved to show every consideration to a power whose great and vital interests in the mediterranean in no way conflict with their own. â§12. _the balkan situation: bulgaria and greece._--the creation of a greater roumania and of a new southern slav state would transform the whole balkan situation, and therefore obviously involves material concessions to bulgaria and greece. (a) if roumania succeeds in redeeming her kinsmen across the northern frontiers, she cannot be so ungenerous as to insist upon retaining territory whose population is overwhelmingly bulgarian, and the least which might be expected from her would be the retrocession to bulgaria of her bloodless acquisition during the second balkan war. this means a reversion to the boundary defined under russian arbitration at petrograd in january 1913--except outside the fortress of silistria, where strategic reasons demand its rectification. it is in the relations of bulgaria and serbia, however, that the key to the balkan situation is to be found. the serbo-bulgarian treaty of february 1912, which formed the groundwork of the balkan alliance, had limited serbia's sphere of influence to northern macedonia and referred to the arbitration of the russian tsar any disputes arising from conquests to the south of a certain specified line. serbia was tacitly given a free hand in her attempt to reach the sea in northern albania. the action of austria-hungary in vetoing her access to the adriatic forced serbia to turn her eyes from west to south and to seek her economic outlet to the sea down the valley of the vardar to salonica and the aegean. the cession of monastir, ochrida, and the vardar valley to bulgaria would have rendered this impossible, for it would not merely have driven a wedge between serbia and greece, but would have placed two customs frontiers, the bulgarian and the greek, between serbia and the sea, instead of only one, the turkish, as hitherto. shut in upon all sides, with all hope of expansion blocked by the powerful dual monarchy to north and west and by a big bulgaria to east and south, serbia would have found herself in a worse position than before the war. the bulgarians, intoxicated by their victories over the turks and seduced by the promptings of the austrian tempter, turned a deaf ear to the arguments of their serbian allies, and insisted upon their pound of flesh. they failed to realise that the most effective way of inducing the serbs to evacuate macedonia was to give them adequate backing in their demand for an adriatic port. every fresh intrigue of sofia with vienna confirmed belgrade in its view of the vital necessity for retaining the vardar valley. the hoary argument that "circumstances alter cases," appeared anew in the garb of the bismarckian theory that all treaties are subject to the provision "_rebus sic stantibus_"--a theory which many great international lawyers have unhesitatingly endorsed. in this form it appealed as irresistibly to the serbs as did the rival shibboleth of "the treaty, the whole treaty, and nothing but the treaty" to the bulgarians. it is impossible to absolve either side from blame; for the serbs, in formally denouncing a treaty into which they had voluntarily entered, were doing exactly what they had so bitterly resented in austria-hungary's treatment of bosnia, while the bulgarians, in flouting the tsar whom they had named as arbiter and in attempting to uphold the treaty by brute force and treachery, abandoned the ground of law, and placed themselves openly in the wrong. the events of the great war have already modified the problem. the one unanswerable argument of the serbs in declining to surrender macedonia was the plea that they would then have nothing to offer bulgaria for her neutrality or her support when their own inevitable day of reckoning with austria should arrive. in short, veles, monastir and ochrida were widely regarded as a pledge to be held until bosnia and dalmatia could be redeemed, but then to be handed over to the bulgarians. it is true that the serbo-bulgar war of 1913 and the passions which it aroused have converted this feeling into one of reluctance to sacrifice what was bought at such a fearful price. but the moment has now arrived to translate an instinct into a reality. if southern slav unity is to be achieved, a binding promise, under the guarantee of the entente powers, must be given to bulgaria, that, in proportion as the work of serbo-croat unification is achieved, the macedonian frontier will be revised in favour of bulgaria. it is possible that bulgaria may prefer a different formula, according to which the tsar with the approval of his western allies should arbitrate upon the original serbo-bulgar treaty. any such concession to bulgarian sentiment ought not to be resented in serbia, in view of the great issues involved. it is obvious that serbia cannot hope to achieve her national unity unless bulgaria abstains from hostile action, or to consolidate her new position when won unless she can win bulgaria's active friendship. the latter by her intervention could at any moment turn the scales against turkey or against serbia, and it is thus essential that the allies should treat her now with a generosity proportionate to the callous neglect with which europe left her to her fate in september 1913. the tendency to look down upon the balkan states from the fancied heights of a superior "culture" has never been so marked in france or britain as in germany, where the press is now engaged in comparing their own cultural exploits in belgium with the lack of culture displayed by the "bandits" and "assassins" of serbia, and where a man of such scientific distinction as werner sombart can describe the heroic kingdom of montenegro as "nothing but a bad joke in the history of the world!"[1] but even here the habit of condescension lingers, and amidst the threatened collapse of western civilisation it is well to remember the essential distinction between primitive and savage. the balkan nations have grown to manhood while we slept, and must henceforth be regarded as equals in the european commonwealth. [footnote 1: _berliner tageblatt,_ cited by _observer_, november 8, 1914.] (b) such territorial changes as have been outlined above would vitally affect the position of greece, who is also fully entitled to claim compensation for any serious disturbance of the balance of power. the first and most obvious form which compensation would take is the final occupation of southern epirus; no objections will be raised to this by the entente powers, and it is probable that italy has already made her own bargain with the cabinet of athens on this very point. it is to be hoped that italy may also consent to hand over rhodes and the neighbouring islands to greece, in return for a free hand in southern asia minor in the event of the turkish empire breaking up. by far the thorniest problem is provided by the future ownership of kavala, which the treaty of bucarest assigned to greece in august 1913, but which from an economic point of view is bulgaria's port on the aegean, and as vital a necessity for her future development as it is a superfluous luxury to greece. the statesmen of petrograd were not blind to these considerations, but the scale was turned at bucarest by the active intervention of the german emperor, who, under the plea of seconding his brother-in-law, king constantine, skilfully provided a permanent bone of contention between bulgaria and greece. his action may not unfairly be compared to that of the hungarian premier, count tisza, in fomenting the quarrel between serbia and bulgaria two months earlier. serbia's cession of central macedonia to bulgaria could not fail to be distasteful to the greeks, for it would automatically render their tenure of kavala highly precarious. it is to be hoped, however, that they may be brought to realise that its surrender and the consequent improvement of greco-bulgarian relations are in the highest interests of greece and the whole hellenic race. here again, the break-up of the turkish empire may enable the greeks to compensate themselves on the shores of asia minor. but the real key to the problem of kavala, and thus indirectly to the revival of the balkan league and all the far-reaching effects which that would have upon the fate of europe, lies in the hands of britain. it could instantly be solved by the cession of cyprus to greece, on condition that kavala and the valley of the strymon were restored to bulgaria. neither strategically nor economically is cyprus of any value to britain; thirty-five years ago it was taken over by disraeli "as a sort of fee for opposing russia," a foolish habit which we had abandoned long before the present war with turkey. its population is predominantly greek, and the hellenic national movement is steadily gaining ground. anything that we might gain by its retention is more than counterbalanced by its value as an instrument of barter. â§13. _the future of turkey._--the entry of turkey into the great war marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a regenerated europe will emerge. two of the main causes of the war are the turk and the magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its own manner and degree long kept south-eastern europe in a ferment of unrest and reaction. it is a matter of profound regret that two infinitely more virile and progressive races, the german and the jew, should be fighting their battles for them, and indeed bolstering up causes which would otherwise speedily collapse by reason of their own inward rottenness. it is the triple alliance which has made it possible for the iniquitous racial hegemony of the magyars to survive in hungary; it is the joint policy of vienna, budapest, and berlin which has hampered the progress of the balkan states, and above all the development of every slavonic nation; and in this their most valuable allies have been the jewish press and the jewish _haute finance_ of germany, austria and hungary. just as we hope and believe that one result of this war will be the emancipation of germany and german "culture" from the corroding influences of militarist doctrine, so there are good grounds for hoping that it will also give a new and healthy impetus to jewish national policy, grant freer play to their many splendid qualities, and enable them to shake off the false shame which has led men who ought to be proud of their jewish race to assume so many alien disguises and to accuse of anti-semitism those who refuse to be deceived by mere appearances. it is high time that the jews should realise that few things do more to foster anti-semite feeling than this very tendency to sail under false colours and conceal their true identity. the zionist and the orthodox jewish nationalist have long ago won the respect and admiration of the world. no race has ever defied assimilation so stubbornly and so successfully, and the modern tendency of individual jews to repudiate what is one of their chief glories suggests an almost comic resolve to fight against the course of nature. these cryptic tendencies of pseudo-national as opposed to national judaism have played a great part in the young turkish movement and the destruction which it is bringing upon turkey. the committee of union and progress at first enjoyed the moral and financial support of many men, both christians and jews, to whom its methods and secret currents were a sealed book. for a time the young turks, like the magyars farther west, deceived foreign opinion by claptrap phrases from the repertory of modern democracy. but "murder will out," and the committee--despite the tiny group of able, and in certain cases honourable, men who control its destinies--has gradually been revealed in its true colours, as a parasitic growth upon the body politic, preserving the worst faults of the old rã©gime and blending with it much of the decadence which lies like froth along the backwaters of western civilisation. since 1908, then, the fate of turkey has passed from the control of the turk and is being decided by an alien clique of infidels, renegades, political freemasons[1] and jews, in whose hands the caliph is a helpless tool, and to whom the teachings of christ and of mohammed are mere worn-out superstitions. in fact, the committee is in its essence non-turkish and non-moslem. in the name of a secret society, based openly upon the subversive ideas of the wilder french jacobins, and not shrinking from assassination as a convenient political weapon, a jehad or holy war is to be preached against the british empire, and the most sacred interests of islam are to be exploited in the interests of germany. what bitter irony is in the fact that william ii., who risked universal war to avenge the murder of his friend, the archduke francis ferdinand, should now find himself closely allied with enver pasha, the military adventurer who barely two years ago foully assassinated his own commander-in-chief, nazim pasha, and who therefore represents everything that is anathema to the prussian war lord with his exaggerated ideas of military discipline and personal loyalty! [footnote 1: not to be confused for a moment with the very different form of freemasonry which prevails in this country.] the die has been cast, and even those who most regret turkey's action cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it inevitably raises the whole question of constantinople and the dardanelles. if germany should emerge victorious, turkey is likely to fall under a more or less veiled german protectorate. in the event of the victory of the allies, turkey may continue to exist as an asiatic power, but there is little doubt that she will be eliminated from europe. the only real question is, who is to replace her? bulgaria will, it is to be hoped, recover adrianople and the enos-midia line, of which she was so cruelly robbed last year. the fact that the turks on their re-entry systematically wiped out the entire bulgarian population of northern thrace does not weaken, but enormously strengthens, the case for its restoration. but to offer constantinople to bulgaria would be a fatal gift. she has absolutely no historic claim to the great city of the caesars (tsarigrad, as it is rightly known to every slav); nor is there even any considerable bulgarian population which could rally round the new government. the administrative task is obviously far beyond the powers of a small peasant state, most of whose present leaders were born under a foreign yoke. nor is greece a serious candidate for the vacant post. the greeks, of course, unlike the bulgarians, have a definite claim, based on the traditions of the byzantine empire, and there is a large greek population in the city--at present close upon 350,000, though their numbers are likely to be materially reduced before this war is over. but in their case also constantinople would be a fatal gift. the resources even of the enlarged hellenic kingdom would inevitably prove unequal to the task. moreover, it must not be forgotten that a greek occupation would be opposed on many grounds by the entire commercial community of every other nation in europe. in some ways the ideal arrangement would be that roumania should assume the administration of the city, as trustee for a reconstituted balkan league, with proper guarantees for the commercial rights of all the powers. but it is to be feared that such a solution would please nobody, perhaps not even roumania herself. a league of the five balkan kings, with roumania as _primus inter pares_, is the dream of a remote future, and until it can be realised, constantinople cannot assume its natural position as capital of the balkan peninsula. â§14. _russia and constantinople._--in short, as matters stand to-day, there is only one power which can replace the turks as master of constantinople, and that power is russia. the russians could not of course incorporate the city in their empire for reasons of geography; and this fundamental fact destroys at a blow the numerous objections which might have told against the occupation, if constantinople had been contiguous to the russian dominions. it would obviously be necessary to establish a special autonomous administration under a russian governor. it is by no means impossible that russia would be satisfied with the expulsion of the turks and the internationalisation of constantinople as a free port under a christian prince or a commission of the powers. but, though admirable in theory, such a solution would give rise to endless complications and disputes. unless the western powers can trust russia sufficiently to leave her in full possession, they must make up their minds to bolstering up the impossible turk for a further period of years. such a surrender to the unreasoning and ignorant prejudices of a previous generation would be a sure prelude to the collapse of our alliance with russia, which it is the vital interest of all british patriots to uphold at all costs. happily, "the fear of russia," as of a strange and unknown colossus, is dying out, vague fancies inevitably yielding to the hard logic of facts. the disraeli policy in the near east must give place once and for all to the broader conceptions of gladstone, tempered by the cautious statesmanship of salisbury. the greatest of the christian powers must be allowed to replace the cross upon the dome of saint sofia. the religious appeal of such a change is clear enough, nor need there be any anxiety on economic grounds. there is nothing to prevent constantinople from becoming a free port under the russian flag, and filling a similar place to that which the free port of trieste would occupy under the flag of united italy. indeed it may be confidently assumed that the change would give an extraordinary impetus to trade in the whole eastern mediterranean. the recent history of batum and baku is a faint indication of what might be expected. the fate of the dardanelles cannot be separated from that of the capital; both must be in the same hands. at the same time a reasonable compensation for their cession to russia would be the dismantlement of their forts. in any case, whatever their fate may be, it is clear that an end must be put to the galling restrictions upon russia's black sea fleet. the essential point to bear in mind is that if the war goes well with the allies, and if russia expresses a definite desire to occupy constantinople and the straits, resistance on our part would be alike difficult, pointless, and undesirable. those who oppose have no arguments, so long as the special international needs and conditions of the city are properly recognised and guaranteed. with true oriental fatalism, the turk has always regarded his ultimate disappearance from europe as a certainty; the superstition which led the inhabitants of stamboul to prefer burial across the straits in asia has its parallel in the alarm aroused in the bazaars by the young turks' decision to exterminate the pariah dogs which have for centuries supplied the place of scavengers in the streets of the capital. to-day the prophecy which made their removal the prelude to the departure of their masters seems on the point of fulfillment, and all who believe in the retributive justice of history will re-echo mr. asquith's hope that the fall of ottoman rule will remove "the blight which for generations has withered some of the fairest regions of the world." â§15. _asiatic turkey._--what then will be the subsequent fate of the turks if they are once driven "bag and baggage" across the straits. the sultan will doubtless transfer his capital to brussa, or even to konieh. but can the khalifate survive such a loss of prestige on the part of the ottoman dynasty? it would be altogether premature to discuss in anything approaching detail the vast issues of the fate of turkey's asiatic dominions, but it is necessary to indicate that even after settling the fate of the straits we shall still be confronted by issues of appalling magnitude. it is the conjunction of the spiritual and temporal power in a single person which has given the khalifate its importance, and its expulsion from the golden horn would transform its whole political status. above all, it is necessary to reckon with the arab nationalist movement which is already a reality and a factor of permanent importance. here, too, the principle of nationality must be applied, though in a very different sense, for national feeling is of course at a much earlier stage of development among the arabs than in central europe. hitherto they have accepted the khalifate of the house of othman, though without enthusiasm; but recent events are likely to bring to a head the resentment with which they view the spectacle of the khalif as the helpless tool of a clique which in no way represents islam. will they repudiate him and restore the khalifate to some more authentic descendant of the prophet? is there to be an independent arab power? will it be practicable to create a central authority amid the virtual anarchy of so vast and primitive a country? or will britain, as the chief mahommedan power, be obliged to assume a loose protectorate over arabia and mesopotamia? if so, will she share this with the french in syria, and will lebanon be able to preserve its autonomy? only the course of events can provide an answer to such questions; only one fixed point emerges from the surrounding uncertainty--the firm pledge of the british government that the holy places of islam shall be respected. even this does not exhaust the possibilities of the immediate future. is palestine to become a jewish land? in recent years there has been a steady emigration of moslem and christian and an equally marked jewish immigration, and among other factors in the movement the potentialities of jewish nationalism in the united states deserve especial notice. america is full of nationalities which, while accepting with enthusiasm their new american citizenship, none the less look to some centre in the old world as the source and inspiration of their national culture and traditions. the most typical instance is the feeling of the american jew for palestine, which may well become a focus for his _dã©classã©_ kinsmen in other parts of the world. the jews quite realise that they can have no exclusive claim to the possession of such a religious centre as jerusalem, and it is clear that whatever happens to the holy land as a whole, the city itself must be subject to an impartial administration, which would be neither jewish, catholic, orthodox, protestant nor moslem in any exclusive sense, but would secure free play to the religious and educational aspirations of them all. herzl himself, the founder of modern zionism, dreamt of jerusalem as the shrine of all religions and never looked forward to the day when it would be a purely jewish city. lastly, what is to be the fate of asia minor? there can be no question that the russians must be allowed to occupy and retain the whole of turkish armenia. they will thus be conferring a benefit upon humanity and ending one of the most grinding and barbarous tyrannies that the modern world has ever seen; the progress made by the armenians under russian rule during the past twenty years is a happy augury for the future of this race when once united in common allegiance to the tsar, under a wise system of local autonomy. but will the ottoman empire be able to survive when shorn of its european possessions, of its armenian and arab populations? will not italy demand her share of the spoils, and side by side with the french in syria, assume in friendly rivalry the protectorate of cilicia from a point east of adalia as far as the gulf of alexandretta? will it be possible to arrest the process of disintegration even at this stage? will not greece attempt to annex smyrna and at least a portion of its hinterland, or has she not at least as good a title as any other competitor? here, again, it would be absurd to attempt any answer for the present, but we must at least be prepared for the possibility of a transformation as rapid and as overwhelming in asiatic turkey as that which freed the balkans from the turkish nightmare two short years ago. in asia, as in europe, the war is the prelude to a new era, and britain is faced with the alternative of weakly abandoning her imperial mission or assuming still greater responsibilities. "the turkish empire has committed suicide, and dug with its own hand its grave," and to britain will fall more fully than ever before the leadership of the mahommedan world. the loyalty and devotion of the moslem community in india can best be repaid by the most scrupulous and sympathetic attention to the interests of islam throughout the world. â§16. _russia and poland._--it is no mere accident that germany, austria-hungary, and turkey should be ranged on the same side in the great european struggle; for they represent, each in its own way, those false conceptions of nationality which have so long envenomed the public life of europe, and which, for want of better words, have been described as germanisation, magyarisation, and turkification. it would, however, be flagrantly untrue to suggest that those three states enjoyed a monopoly of racial intolerance; for the ideas on nationality which dominated official russia under the old absolutist rã©gime and which so rapidly regained the upper hand under stolypin and the triumphant bureaucracy, struck at the very root of tolerance and political liberty. but recent years have revealed a subtle change of attitude. the policy of russification had not been abandoned; indeed in finland and the ukraine it survived in its most odious form. but it was none the less possible to detect a growing note of interrogation even among the bureaucracy, and still more an increasing movement of impatient protest on the part of thinking russians. without in any way ignoring what has happened in persia, we have every right to point to the essential fact that russia has of her own accord raised the question of nationality and thus set in motion vast forces which are already shaking europe to its foundations. in proclaiming as one of her foremost aims the restoration of polish unity, russia did not, it is true, commit herself to any concrete project of autonomy. but whether her action represents genuine feeling on the part of the tsar and his advisers, as m. gabriel hanotaux so positively asserts, or whether it was originally a mere manoeuvre to prevent the polish question being raised against her, it is at least certain that russia has entered upon a new path from which it will be very difficult if not impossible to recede. the russian poles, under the leadership of m. dmowski, have rallied loyally round the tsar; and there are many signs that the long-deferred russo-polish _rapprochement_ is at length on the point of fulfillment. here economic interests play their part, for in recent years the district between warsaw and lodz has become one of the chief industrial centres of the russian empire, and its annexation to austria or to prussia would place a tariff wall between it and the south russian markets upon which it chiefly depends. the poles of galicia, having enjoyed the utmost liberty under austrian rule, have naturally been almost immune from the discontent so noticeable among their kinsmen in russia and prussia, and have indeed for a generation past formed the backbone of all parliamentary majorities in the austrian reichsrat. but even among them the first faint signs of russophil feeling have been noticeable in the last two years. this is partially due to the encouragement given by the austrian government to the ruthenes in galicia, but also to the disintegrating effect of universal suffrage upon the polish political parties, the growth of democratic tendencies at the expense of the austrophil nobility, and the consequent increased influence of the poles of warsaw. though the polish parties in galicia issued declarations of loyalty to austria at the beginning of the war, and though their _franc-tireurs_ are fighting in the austrian ranks, there is a growing perception of the fact that the only serious prospect of attaining polish unity lies in a russian victory. austria, they argue, might, if successful, unite the russian and austrian sections (at the expense of the former's economic future!), but never the prussian; and prussia, out of loyalty to her ally, could at best add _russian_ poland to her own territory: russia alone can hope, in the event of a victory, to unite all three fragments in a single whole. however profoundly they may differ on points of detail, all poles agree that the first essential is the attainment of that unity without which they may at any moment become, as now, the battleground of three great empires, and which provides the key with which they themselves can unlock the portals of their future destiny. should their dream be fulfilled, the valley of the vistula, restored to geographical unity, may soon play an important part in the political and economic life of europe. russia, then, is faced by one of the greatest choices in history. an opportunity will present itself after this war, for solving her own racial question which has in the past presented scarcely less grave embarrassment than the parallel problem of austria-hungary, and which, if left unsolved, may at no distant date endanger the unity and welfare of the empire. the grant of polish autonomy, the restoration of the finnish constitution, the recognition of the special position of the ukraine or ruthene language and cultural traditions, the relaxation of linguistic restrictions among the lesser races of the empire, and the adoption of a humaner attitude towards the jews of the pale--these are steps which follow logically from the proclamation of the grand duke nicholas, and indeed from the alliance with the western powers. incidentally much will depend upon the attitude adopted by the russian government towards its new catholic subjects. its relations with the vatican will require to be placed upon an entirely new footing, and due respect must be accorded to the uniate catholic church of the four million ruthenes of galicia. in this respect the concordat signed a few weeks before the outbreak of war between serbia and the vatican should form a very valuable precedent for the whole future relations of the catholic and orthodox churches, relations which are likely to assume increasing importance in the not too far distant future. and here it is worth while to emphasise, for the benefit of those who still regard russia with misgiving or dislike, the indisputable fact that it is just the most democratic and enlightened of the smaller slavonic states, and the most intellectual and enlightened politicians and thinkers in those states, who have always looked with the greatest confidence and enthusiasm to russia, and who to-day are most unanimous in welcoming her as the herald of a new era of humanity and progress. â§17. _general aims._--it would lead us much too far afield to consider the possible effects of the war upon colonial development and upon the political and commercial development of the far east. here again, the central fact to remember is that we may, indeed, that we must, defeat germany or perish in the attempt, but that a nation of 65 million inhabitants cannot be effaced or permanently reduced to impotence. after the war the two nations will have to live peaceably side by side once more, and repair so far as possible the wreckage to which this gigantic struggle has reduced their political, social, and commercial intercourse. any peace settlement will be good only so far as it avoids placing obstacles in the path of so difficult an achievement. it will be the first duty of our statesmen to watch over the alliance between russia and the western powers, sealed as it is by the fiery ordeal of war, and to neutralise the occult influences which are even now working to undermine it, to the advantage of interests which are anything but british. but it will also be their duty to create a situation which, while safeguarding the empire's vital interests, shall not render improved relations with the central european powers impossible from the very outset. it is one thing to abandon our allies and friends, it is quite another thing to perpetuate a feud which, though converted by circumstances into a struggle between two unanimous nations, was in the first instance the work of mischievous if powerful minorities. the final settlement will inevitably bring many disappointments and errors in its train. we can best guard against such a result by preparing ourselves for all eventualities and giving the most careful consideration to each of the many problems at issue. our obvious aim must be a settlement which shows some reasonable prospect of permanence, and this can best be achieved if we respect so far as possible the wishes of the populations concerned. the principle of nationality is not a talisman which will open all gates, for in some parts of europe the different races are so inextricably intermingled as to defy all efforts to create ethnographic boundaries. this does not, however, affect the central fact that nationality is the best salve for existing wounds, and that its application will enormously reduce the infected area. but if the peoples are to make their wishes felt there must be a regeneration of diplomatic methods throughout europe. attempts will be made to revive the pernicious principles of the congress of vienna, by which a few autocrats and aristocrats carved out the fate of millions according to their dynastic appetites or fancies, and thus tied a whole series of unnecessary knots for subsequent wars to sever. a healthy and informed public opinion--especially in the west--must watch over the doings of those who represent it at the fateful congress, according loyal support to their declared policy, but promptly checking the reactionary tendencies which are certain to reveal themselves. it is still unhappily possible for the arrogant impatience of a single ruler or the persistent intrigue and misrepresentation of an ambassador to embroil the european situation. unless the nations in council can devise some practical checks upon irresponsible meddling, the flower of their manhood will have massacred each other in vain. the antecedents of sir edward grey, and more especially his attitude during the crisis which led to war, justify us in the hope that his entire influence will be employed in the right direction when the decisive moment arrives, and that he will insist upon such crucial questions as the reduction of armaments, the substitution of "citizen" for "conscript" armies, the control of armament firms and their occult influence, the effective extension of arbitration and the elimination of impossible time-limits, being discussed in all seriousness, and not merely dismissed with a few ironic platitudes and expressions of hypocritical goodwill. we must not be unduly discouraged if some of these ideals prove impossible of realisation, for it would be childish to suppose that when the great war is over the nations will at once convert their swords into ploughshares and proclaim for the first time in history the sway of right over might. but it is obvious that in a world which has long ceased to be merely european, the european powers cannot long continue with impunity such internecine strife, and that unless some real shape and substance can be given to the concert of europe--so long and so justly a byword among all thinking men--our continent (and with it these islands) will inevitably forfeit the leadership which has hitherto been theirs and surrender the direction of the world's affairs into the hands of the extra-european powers. it will be remembered that sir edward grey, in a last despairing effort to preserve peace,[1] broached the idea of "some more definite rapprochement between the powers," and though admittedly "hitherto too utopian to form the subject of definite proposals," it may be hoped that the enormous difficulty of the task will not deter him from pleading before the future congress the outraged cause of international goodwill. [footnote 1: white paper, no. 101.] chapter viii social and economic aspects of the war "and the economic ravages of war are also much greater with civilised nations than with barbarians. a war nowadays may have stern, fearful consequences, especially through the destruction of the ingenious credit system."--treitschke. "those who have fallen have consecrated deaths. they have taken their part in the making of a new europe, a new world. i can see signs of its coming in the glare of the battlefield. the people will gain more by this struggle in all lands than they comprehend at the present moment.... a great flood of luxury and of sloth which had submerged the land is receding, and a new britain is appearing. we can see for the first time the fundamental things that matter in life and that have been obscured from our vision by the tropical growth of prosperity."--mr.d. lloyd george. it is obvious that a great war must profoundly disturb every side of the national life of the peoples taking part in it, and that these disturbances must react upon neutral states. the exact character and extent of these changes, however, are by no means easy to understand, and the present chapter does not pretend to offer an exhaustive treatment of them. it is impossible to appreciate the full significance of the immediate social and economic reactions of the war, whilst an attempt to state the ultimate effects of the war leads us along the slippery paths of prophecy. nevertheless, we are not likely to grasp the importance of the various phenomena which have followed so closely upon the heels of the declaration of war, nor to adapt ourselves to the new situation which will arise out of the war, unless we give our attention to the things which are happening around us. unfortunately we can gain little guidance from the past. the south african war inevitably disturbed the normal course of our industrial life, but it involved us in conflict with a nation of relatively little general economic importance; and so, costly and prolonged though it was, it bears no comparison in its magnitude and in the character of its main issues to the present war in europe. the crimean war of sixty years ago, though waged between four european nations--great britain, france, turkey, and russia--cost great britain much less in money than the boer war; the issues so far as this country was concerned were not so momentous; and industry and commerce, though important, were not then nearly so highly developed and complicated as they are now. the napoleonic wars, though comparable to the present war in fundamental importance, lasted for a generation, which the war of to-day can hardly do; the effects of the wars with napoleon were complicated by the industrial revolution; the industrial system and the commercial fabric erected on it were then only in process of formation and the power of the people was small. these differences enable us to see the new factors which have come into play during the past century. the present war is being fought under conditions which were non-existent during the struggle with napoleon--conditions which on the one hand add to the waste and loss and misery of war, but on the other give rise to the hope that many of its evil consequences may be averted. firstly, industry and commerce are world-wide; the remotest countries are bound together by economic ties; invisible cords link the belgian iron worker with the london docker and the clyde shipwright, the californian fruit grower with the malay tin miner and the german dye worker. the economic effects of modern warfare, therefore, reverberate throughout the whole world, and widespread dislocation ensues. in the next place, the gigantic scale on which war between great powers is conducted, though it tends to shorten the duration of wars, increases the intensity of the shock to human society. but besides these new material conditions, modern warfare is carried on under the eyes of more enlightened peoples than in the past. the struggle which is now being pursued is the first great war watched by a conscious or at any rate partly conscious democracy. it is the first modern war waged (except in our own case) by national armies constituting practically the entire fit male population. the masses of the people have in most civilised countries some measure of political power. and though to the elector diplomacy and the conduct of foreign affairs are a closed book, war once declared is war by the people; and their voice must be heard in matters connected with it and arising out of it. then, further, in the past the aftermath of war was in many ways as horrible as war itself, whilst the period during war witnessed an enormous amount of privation and suffering among non-combatants almost as ghastly as that of the battlefield. this was due not so much to inaction resulting from callousness as to unwise action and ignorance. during the past century political science and economic inquiry have made vast strides, and consequently the injurious social effects of warfare may be minimised, though not averted; and a considerable body of public opinion, far more enlightened than during any previous european war, is almost certain to exercise some pressure in the direction of wise and far-reaching action both during the war and after it is ended. these considerations must be borne in mind in discussing both the present position and possible future developments. it is clear that four great european powers and some smaller ones cannot engage in war without shaking the fabric of european civilisation to its foundations. the tramp of fifteen million armed men is the greatest social and economic fact of the present day, and indeed of the present generation. these millions of combatants have to be clothed, fed, armed, transported, and tended in health and in sickness; they are non-producers for the time, consuming in large quantities the staple commodities of life, and calling in addition for all the paraphernalia of war; sooner or later, they will desire to return to the plough and the mine, the factory and the railroad. these two facts alone are of tremendous importance. but besides this, the activity of those who stay at home is called into play in a thousand different ways, and economic and social life leave their well-trodden paths in answer to the imperious call of national necessity. social institutions of all kinds are inevitably led into new fields of thought and action, and states are driven to untried experiments in communal activity. the usual channels of thought dry up, the flood of new ideas and of old ideas throbbing with a new life rushes on unconfined, here in the shallows, there in the deeps, presently to overflow into the old channels, cleansing their beds and giving them a new direction, and linking up in fruitful union but remotely connected streams. when fighting ceases and there comes the calm of peace, society will tend to revert to its normal functions, based on peace; but the society of yesterday can never return. social life cannot be the same as it was before, not merely because those activities called forth by the war may persist in some form, but because of the growth of new ideas under the stimulus of the war. the struggle will almost certainly set in progress trains of thought not only connected with questions of war and peace, but with the wider questions of human destiny. coming to a closer view of the question, we must distinguish between the immediate effects of the war which are already in evidence and the ultimate effects which will but begin to unfold themselves after the return of peace. some of the latter results will grow out of the immediate effects; others will be more directly due to the events following on the conclusion of the war. it will also be advisable to distinguish between the economic reactions of the war, and the broader social consequences. at such an early stage it would be presumptuous and tempting providence to attempt to forecast the future in any detail or to try to trace the play and interplay of the various forces going towards the making of the future. this chapter will be concerned with broad tentative generalisations on quite simple lines. one of the things which struck the intelligent working man during the early days of the war was the rapidity with which the state acted in the face of the crisis. in next to no time large measures of state control and action were put successfully into operation and those who had advocated co-operative action in the past with but indifferent success were amazed at the swiftness with which the nation can act in the hour of need. the drastic action of the state cannot be better illustrated than by the steps which were taken to meet the sudden commercial deadlock which the war precipitated. a discussion of these financial measures will at the same time enable us to understand how, through credit, war strikes at the industry and trade of the modern world. a. state action in industry and commerce the austrian ultimatum to servia was followed by the paralysis of the world's international system of finance. before the end of july many important stock exchanges were closed, and by the 31st the london stock exchange for the first time in its history was also compelled to close. the remittance market collapsed and with it the fabric of international trade. widespread bankruptcy and ruin seemed imminent; so serious did the state of affairs become that moratoria were declared not only in several european countries but in parts of america, and in many continental countries specie payments were suspended. in a word, the possibility of war had thrown the delicately poised credit system of the commercial world out of gear; the declaration of war had brought it to a standstill. into an explanation of its working it is not possible to enter; it is sufficient for our immediate purpose to realise that the foreign exchange machinery by which the supply of commodities from other countries becomes practicable on a large scale was for a time altogether unworkable. london as the financial centre of the world has immense sums owing to it and in its turn owes large sums. the ultimate effect of the collapse of credit, which depends on confidence, was that london could neither receive nor make payment. the big finance houses, who had "accepted" bills of exchange and rendered themselves liable to meet the payments for the things they represented, on the understanding that the means to pay them were to be promptly despatched, found that these means were not forthcoming; their own resources were far from sufficient to meet these payments. utter ruin stared them in the face. at home also a run on the banks seemed probable, which would have meant ruin to large numbers of people. in this grave crisis the state acted with commendable promptness. the bank holiday was extended; state notes for 10s. and â£1 were issued; a moratorium was declared, legalising the postponement of the due payment of debts, with certain exceptions; the bank of england under a guarantee from the government that the latter would meet the loss, began discounting, or buying for cash, approved bills of exchange accepted before war was declared, many of which are hardly likely to be met by the people liable for payment. these steps were taken swiftly and boldly and allayed the panic. but more was needed; such measures were not in themselves sufficient to put the machinery of foreign exchange into operation again and the suspension of this method of settling international indebtedness was having serious effects. to carry on international trade, and to supply ourselves with the produce on which the very existence of the community depends, without the machinery, is a thousand times more difficult than to conduct our home trade by means of direct barter. without going into technical details, it may be said that the purchase of bills by the bank of england, whilst relieving the last holder from loss, did not extinguish the liability of persons whose names had appeared on the bills as acceptors, endorsers and drawers. this was true of traders and commercial people not only in this country but also in other parts of the world. in the face of these liabilities, in most cases unexpected, it was hardly likely that they would increase their liabilities under new bills. consequently the remittances coming to london shrank to next to nothing. as bills of exchange--or their equivalent--are the means by which both importers and exporters get paid for their goods, the difficulty of getting paid naturally began to have a serious effect on trade. as the figures of foreign trade during august show, cargoes were being held up. it was clear, therefore, that if this country were to continue to receive supplies of corn and meat, of cotton and wool, of hides and timber, something further must be done. the question the government had to decide was what steps could be taken to safeguard the food of the people, and to avoid a crushing volume of unemployment through the lack of the raw materials of industry. the produce was there; what was needed was to start the flow of the particular kind of currency--"credit money"--which would expedite exchange. the course taken by the state was to advance money to the large bill bankers or "accepting houses" in london to allow of the due payment of the enormous number of bills falling due in the three months succeeding the outbreak of war. the audacity of the step will be understood when it is realised that probably something like â£300,000,000 of bills fall due over a period of three months.[1] the necessary money was lent without security, the government promising not to demand repayment until twelve months after the end of the war. a proportion of this advance will be in the nature of a loss, though how much it is quite impossible to say. by this measure, in the event of the bills not being met by those who have promised to pay them--the acceptors--the liability which would ordinarily have fallen upon the drawers and endorsers through whose hands the bills had passed has been removed. the state has advanced to the commercial community a huge sum of money, risking the total loss of some part of it, in order to set in motion the machinery of international exchange. further steps, however, were taken. the general moratorium expired on november 4. useful as it had been, it still left many traders in financial difficulties because of the impossibility of collecting debts owing to them in enemy and other countries. the government, therefore, appointed a committee representing the treasury, the bank of england, the joint stock banks, and the association of chambers of commerce of the united kingdom to authorise advances in approved cases to british traders carrying on an export business in respect of debts outstanding in foreign countries and colonies, including unpaid foreign and colonial accepted bills which cannot be collected for the time being. it is safe to say that no government ever took such gigantic measures to meet a great crisis.[2] the prime minister, speaking at the guildhall on november 9, 1914, summarised as follows the effects of the steps taken: "the foreign exchanges are working in the case of most countries quite satisfactorily, and the gold reserves at the bank of england, which were 40 millions on july 22, and which had fallen on august 7 to 27 millions, now stand at the unprecedented figure of 69-1/2 millions. the central gold reserve of the country after three months of the war amounts to â£80,000,000, almost exactly twice the amount at which it stood at the beginning of the crisis. the bank rate, which rose, as you know, to 10 per cent, has now come down to 5, a figure, i think, not in excess of that at which it stood this time last year. food prices have been kept at a fairly normal level, and though trade has been curtailed in some directions, unemployment has been rather below than above the average." [footnote 1: mr. j.m. keynes (_economic journal,_ sept. 1914) estimates the aggregate value of outstanding bills in london at â£350,000,000.] [footnote 2: in addition to these various financial measures, the state has lent belgium â£10,000,000 and the union of south africa â£7,000,000, whilst it has also guaranteed â£5,000,000 of the new egyptian cotton loan.] but this is by no means the only example of state action. the government has established temporarily a state-aided system of marine insurance, by undertaking 80 per cent of the war risk, in order to encourage overseas trade. it has given substantial aid to the joint-stock banks "for the sole purpose that they might be fit to aid in every way possible the country's trade and finance."[1] it made arrangements for the direct purchase of forage and vegetables, etc., from farmers.[2] it took over the control of the railways. when, owing to panic, there was a rush for the purchase of food-stuffs, which was used to force up prices unduly, the government intervened to prevent exorbitant charges. particularly interesting is the action of the state regarding sugar, two-thirds of our supply of which comes from germany and austria. in the days immediately following the declaration of war wholesale prices were trebled. the government, therefore, decided to take upon itself the task of ensuring an adequate supply of sugar, and a royal commission was appointed. the leading refiners were approached and an arrangement was made with the whole body of refiners that they should stand aside from the market for raw sugars, leaving it free for the operations of the government. the royal commission pledged the refiners to buy their sugar from the commission, _i.e._ from the state; sugar was to be offered to them at a fixed price, and the refiners were to sell the refined product to the dealers also at a fixed price sufficient to yield the refiners a fair profit on manufacture. as a result of the corner, a big rise in the price of sugar, which is not only an important domestic commodity but the raw material of several industries, was averted. this merits the description given of it in _the nation_--"a really dashing experiment in state socialism." [3] on the other hand, it has done nothing to increase the world's supply of sugar, but has merely commandeered a part of the existing stock. the aid of the state has been invoked in other directions. already the government has assisted experimental cultivation of beet in this country. the suggestion has been made that the state should build two beet-sugar factories, which would cost about â£200,000 each; in this way it is suggested that our home supply of sugar would in the future be assured, and that agriculture would benefit considerably.[4] [footnote 1: _round table_, sept. 1914, p. 705.] [footnote 2: this was done through the board of agriculture for the war office. on the other hand, in the purchase of clothing, boots, blankets, etc., the war office approached the producers directly instead of through the board of trade.] [footnote 3: it was reported in the press on october 8, 1914, that the home secretary had purchased 900,000 tons of sugar at about â£20 per ton, the transaction involving an outlay of about â£18,000,000.] [footnote 4: see an article by mr. robertson scott in _the nineteenth century_, october 1914.] sir charles macara has put forward a scheme of state aid for the cotton industry. owing to the war, a third of the total cotton crop (usually taken by the continental countries) was thrown on the market. prices naturally fell, and there was a danger that the cotton planters might not be able to pay the debts they had contracted to enable them to grow their crops, in which case there would be a likelihood of the land being used for other saleable commodities, and the efforts which have been made in the past to increase the cotton crop would be nullified. in the meantime, the surplus cotton on the market created an uncertainty regarding prices, and buying came to a standstill, with the result that the position of the industry as a whole became very critical. the suggestion of sir charles macara is that the governments of this country and the united states, acting in conjunction, should take the temporarily unsaleable surplus of raw cotton off the market and store it for use in years when the crop is short. in other words, it is proposed to establish a permanent national cotton reserve. it is estimated that the cost of the scheme would mean an outlay of sixty to seventy millions sterling. if the plan were put into operation, however, it is claimed that it would restore confidence, prevent the wholesale stoppage of mills, and at the same time establish a cotton reserve to counteract the fluctuations of crops in the future.[1] these matters need but to be stated as examples of the remarkable adaptability of the state and the possibility of drastic action under the pressure of imperative needs.[2] [footnote 1: it should be pointed out that the serious condition of the cotton industry is not due to the war. the overstocking of the eastern and indian markets during the trade boom of 1913, together with the financial crisis in india last year, has reduced the demand for cotton goods. the war has merely emphasised a depression which had already fallen on the industry. sir charles macara's scheme, whilst it may be desirable on other grounds, cannot compensate for the shrinkage in the demand for lancashire products. the government, it is interesting to note, have commissioned certain firms in alexandria "to buy cotton extensively from small proprietors at a reasonable rate, on government account, to be stored until the arrival of more prosperous times." (press association telegram, _daily press,_ nov. 2, 1914).] [footnote 2: the voluntary gifts of different parts of the empire should not be overlooked. besides these other steps have been taken. the australian government, for example, in order to induce farmers to extend the area of cultivation, has guaranteed "a fixed minimum price of 4s." for all wheat grown on the newly cultivated land. (reuter's correspondent, _daily press_, oct. 27, 1914).] the course of events has shown the temporary collapse of economic individualism in the face of the european crisis. the economic system, which works during times of peace, could not meet successfully the crushing effects of a european war. it lacked not only adequate resources but the necessary power of corporate action and co-ordination. immediate state action seemed to be the only way to avert disaster. in a month, britain came nearer than ever before to being a co-operative commonwealth. it has been realised that industry and commerce are not primarily intended as a field for exploitation and profit, but are essential national services in as true a sense as the army and navy. the complexity of the modern economic world and the large individual gains which have been made in it have obscured the fact that the economic structure exists to serve the needs of the community. it was recognised by the government, at any rate to some extent, that the success of our armies in the field would be nullified if, in the economic sphere, the production of commodities and services were seriously diminished and if their interchange were hampered in a large degree. people have felt that the spinner, the miner, the weaver, the machinist, are all by following their occupations performing a valuable service to the community. how far this attitude of mind will persist after the war, when normal conditions in industry and commerce gradually return, remains to be seen. b. immediate social and economic effects of the war 1. _foreign trade_.--the effects of the war on industry and commerce will be complicated and far reaching. the british and german empires together transact about two-fifths of the international trade of the world, the british empire doing over a quarter and germany almost exactly an eighth. between them they own over half the merchant shipping of the world. a war in which they are both engaged, therefore, must have serious consequences not only to these countries themselves but to the countries with whom they carry on business relations, and through them, in a lesser degree, to all other commercial countries. but this is not all: france has a foreign trade amounting to â£615,000,000 a year; belgium's is valued at â£326,000,000, russia's at â£275,000,000, and austria-hungary's at â£256,000,000. besides a gigantic foreign trade there is a domestic trade, which is on a larger scale than the external trade of these countries. let us consider in more detail the case of germany. half her foreign trade is transacted with the nations now engaged in the great war. the trade of britain, russia, and france with the german empire is now at a standstill, except possibly for a very small amount transacted via neutral countries; her trade with austria-hungary must seriously decline. moreover, her imports from neutral countries and her exports to them have dwindled very considerably, and must remain small as long as british naval supremacy continues. more than one half of germany's total imports are raw materials for manufactures, about two-thirds of her exports being manufactured goods. assuming that she continues o conduct foreign trade through norway and sweden, denmark, holland, switzerland, and austria-hungary, the volume will be small, and even if her whole trade with neutral countries could be maintained she would still be without the trade of her enemies. for example, in 1913 this country sold goods to the value of â£40,000,000 to germany and purchased from her goods to the value of â£80,000,000.[1] [footnote 1: the following list indicates some of the chief articles of trade between the two countries: german imports into the united | british exports to germany, 1912 kingdom, 1912. | | â£ million. | â£ million. sugar 6â·2 | cottons and yarn 8â·3 cottons and yarn 5â·9 | woollens and yarn 6â·6 iron and steel and | coal, coke, etc. 4â·4 manufactures 5â·7 | herrings 2â·4 woollens and yarn 2â·6 | ironwork 2â·1 machinery 2â·4 | machinery 2â·1 glass and manufactures 1â·1 | it is not true, as dr. r.g. usher says, that germany is "literally self-sufficing" (_pan germanism_, p. 65).] in great britain, economic activity has been developed on the assumption of continued peace. in germany, however, though there were those who would "base all economic policy on an imaginary permanent peace,"[1] the government has had in view the possibility of war. "every conscientious government," writes von bã¼low, "seeks to avoid [war] so long as the honour and vital interests of the nation permit of so doing. but every state department should be organised as if war were going to break out tomorrow. this applies to economic policy as well."[2] it is with this idea in mind that the german government has striven to maintain the importance of agriculture. "economic policy must foster peaceful development; but it must keep in view the possibility of war, and, for this reason above all, must be agrarian in the best sense of the word."[3] it is held that in the event of war the home market in germany would be an important factor in maintaining intact the fabric of industry. "the home market," we are told, "is ... of very great importance. it would be called upon to replace the foreign market if in time of war our national frontiers should be wholly or partly closed. but in the home market agriculture is by far the most important customer of industry; only if agriculture is able to buy, if it earns enough itself to enable others to earn too, will it be able, in critical times, to consume a part of the products which cannot be disposed of abroad. the old proverb, "if the peasant has money then every one else has too," is literally true, as soon as industry is forced, to a greater extent than is necessary in times of peace, to find its customers at home."[4] "as in time of war industry is dependent on the buying power of agriculture, the productive power of agriculture is a vital question for the nation."[5] [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, by prince bernhard von bã¼low, p. 221.] [footnote 2: _ibid._ p. 220. see also bernhardi, _germany and the next war_, pp. 157-159 and 260 _et seq._] [footnote 3: _imperial germany_, pp. 220-221.] [footnote 4: _imperial germany_, p. 219.] [footnote 5: _ibid_. p. 221.] the importance of agriculture in germany is undoubtedly great; it may be, as bã¼low says, that "the value of its produce is equal to that of the produce of industry, or even surpasses it."[1] but if the demand for it were to shrink because the industrial population lost their work through a shortage of raw materials or in any other way, agriculture would also suffer. the population at present engaged in agriculture will in times of peace buy up to the practical limits of its purchasing power, and is hardly likely, especially in the early stages of a war, to "consume a part of the products which cannot be disposed of abroad," except in so far as they buy german goods (the production of which the declaration of the war may have seriously impeded), instead of commodities produced abroad. but it is questionable whether they will be able to maintain their aggregate purchasing power. prince bã¼low ignores the fact that production for the home market will be hampered by the possible non-arrival of foreign raw materials in war time; yet germany imported raw cotton to the value of over â£29,000,000 in 1913. her foreign purchases of hides and skins amounted to over â£22,500,000 and of wool to â£10,000,000. with even a partial suspension of imports of these and similar commodities, industries dependent on foreign products must be severely hit; unemployment must increase and the purchasing power of the urban workers diminish. the agricultural community must suffer also, and in all likelihood will not be able to take their normal share of goods off the market. it is true, of course, that germany buys large quantities of food-stuffs from abroad, and that home produce will be required to take their place; but they cannot be grown immediately; in the interval, industrial disorganisation must result, and before agriculture can begin to profit by the lack of foreign supplies the harm will have been done. moreover, agriculture must be impeded, as, owing to the size of the german empire, the transport of troops must seriously interfere with the conveyance of goods to the larger centres of population. it would seem, therefore, that the policy of developing german agriculture at the same time that her dependence on foreign commerce is increasing is not an effective reply to the british navy. the position in germany then is that she must for the present be satisfied with a much smaller amount of imported food-stuffs and of the raw materials of industry; and that in any case, even if the industrial machine could be kept at work, there will be practically no outlet for goods abroad. commercially isolated, she must, therefore, suffer an industrial and commercial collapse. on the other hand, the total volume of unemployment, which would have been enormous during the first weeks of the war, has of course been considerably reduced by the withdrawal of great masses of men to join the colours, and by the stimulus which the war has given to industries supplying the needs of the german armies. then also rotterdam, through which germany does a great deal of its trade, remains open, whilst a fraction of her foreign trade is being carried on through denmark, scandinavia, and switzerland. nevertheless, the amount of economic distress within a very few weeks after the outbreak of war, especially in the large towns, was considerable even on the showing of german newspapers.[2] the amount of distress was increased and intensified by steadily rising prices. as the rise has taken place not only in commodities of which there is a shortage, but in others such as sugar, it may be concluded that it is due largely to the inflation of the currency, owing to the adoption of the fatally easy expedient of issuing large masses of paper money. [footnote 1: _ibid_. p. 217.] [footnote 2: "let us imagine," says bernhardi, "the endless misery which a protracted stoppage or definite destruction of our oversea trade would bring upon the whole nation, and in particular on the masses of the industrial classes who live on our export trade" _(germany and the next war,_ p. 232). according to _the times_ (sept. 18, 1914) the german nautical newspaper _hansa_ on sept. 12 admitted that england had captured many millions of marks worth of german shipping, and that "the cessation of business will cost our shipowners many millions more." "it will hold up the development of our shipping trade for years." the _neue freie presse_ of vienna on sept. 11 admitted that the activity of the exporters in germany had been crippled. according to _the times_ (oct. 7), the german socialist paper _vorwaerts_, stated that "the state of want has reached an alarming extent, even though we are now only at the beginning of the catastrophe which has befallen the people of europe." "masses of unemployment grow every month."] austria-hungary, which is not an advanced industrial country, will not suffer quite so keenly, though even here the german newspapers admit that trade has come almost to a standstill.[1] in the western theatre of war the fighting has centred largely round the franco-belgian coalfield, on or near which stand on both sides of the frontier many industrial towns. lille, nancy, epinal, belfort, reims, amiens, and valenciennes on one side, and liã¨ge and charleroi on the other, are all of economic importance. even apart from the actual destruction due to the war which in some of these towns has been serious, the mere presence of the contending armies will have a more or less paralysing effect on industrial and commercial life in both france and belgium.[2] the position in belgium, however, is much more serious than in france. it may best be described in the words of professor sarolea, written after a visit of five weeks to his native country. "other belligerent nations may suffer from unemployment. in belgium alone there has been created a whole nation of unemployed. in other countries trade and industry are dislocated. in belgium they have come to a complete standstill. out of a population of eight millions, seven millions are under the heel of the invader. railwaymen are starving, for railways have ceased to work. office clerks are starving, for banks and offices are closed. public officials are starving, for no salaries can be paid.... journalists and printers are starving, for newspapers and books have ceased to appear. mill hands and coal miners and ironworkers are starving, for mills and coal mines and iron works are closed."[3] bad as this is, the condition of affairs is somewhat relieved so far as france and belgium are concerned by the fact that the seas are open to them, but even then we must add these areas to germany and austria-hungary as regions where industry and trade are at the best severely hampered, regions all of which are important factors in the markets of europe, and whose commercial paralysis will re-echo through the whole commercial world. [footnote 1: "the shortage of raw materials, notably cotton, wool, jute, and petroleum, is greatly restricting production in many branches of manufacture in austria-hungary. according to official estimates, the supplies of some of the most necessary raw products are barely sufficient for two more months. factories are closing down, and the number of unemployed is steadily increasing" (reuter's telegram from venice, oct. 21, 1914).] [footnote 2: for example, the probable number of french factories in a position to produce sugar in 1914-15, will be 82 or 83 as against 206 during the year 1913-14 _(times_, nov. 3, 1914).] [footnote 3: letter to the press dated sept. 12, 1914. mr. j.h. whitehouse, m.p., who visited belgium says, "the whole life of the nation has been arrested."] the most fortunately situated combatants in europe are russia and great britain. the former, covering half the area of europe, has almost limitless resources, and is much more easily capable of being self-supporting than any of the other great powers engaged in the war. this country still has the seas open to it.[1] the state subsidy to marine insurance has encouraged overseas trade, and the re-establishment of the remittance market has removed an obstacle to the flow of exports and imports. still, it is true that the financial world cannot recover all at once. "it is like a man whose nervous system has been shattered by a great shock. tonics and stimulants may save him from complete collapse, but real recovery is a matter of months and even years."[2] further, the work hitherto done and the services performed for germany and austria are now no longer called for; our allies in the west of europe are suffering acutely from the immediate economic effects of the war and the large destruction of capital; our neutral customers have not escaped scot-free. it would seem, therefore, that in spite of the british command of the seas, production must necessarily be seriously curtailed and that, therefore, the volume of unemployment must be very considerable. on the other hand, though production in france, belgium and russia may diminish in many directions, what goods they do produce for export will find no market in germany and austria-hungary and a proportion of them will find their way to this country. such commodities will not only be valuable as food and raw material for industry, but will set up a flow of british goods in payment for them. further, the production of commodities needed for the prosecution of the war, will increase the volume of employment. goods of all kinds are required not only for the british armies but for the allies generally. the manner and extent to which these factors have influenced unemployment will be considered presently. [footnote 1: according to an admiralty statement, corrected up to sept. 23, 1914, 12 british ships had been sunk by german cruisers, 8 had been sunk by mines, whilst a few fishing boats had been destroyed. british ships detained and captured by germany numbered 86, with a total tonnage of 229,000. on the other hand, 387 german vessels had been detained or captured, the total tonnage being 1,140,000. according to _the times_ (oct. 9, 1914), up to date 1.6 per cent of the tonnage registered in the united kingdom had been lost. the figures for germany and austria were 18 and 13 per cent respectively. the committee which prepared the state war insurance scheme estimated that the loss during the first six months of the war might be about 10 per cent of all british steamers employed in foreign trade.] [footnote 2: _round table_, sept. 1914, p. 704.] now the demand for the goods hitherto supplied by germany to her foreign customers, though abated, will still continue. as we have seen, she cannot for the present supply them. by whom will she be superseded?[1] the government of this country early in the war took steps to co-operate with british traders in an attempt to obtain some share of this trade, and the united states also strove to make the fullest use of the opportunity. in this country goods previously imported from germany will, if still needed, either be bought from the next cheapest importer or produced at home. commodities which we have in the past produced for german consumption are not now required from us. if they continue to be made, it must be for other countries. in other words, whether the volume of british foreign trade remains the same or not, a proportion of it will be diverted into new channels during the progress of the war. in a less degree, the trade of other states will be deflected from its accustomed channels. beyond this, special influences will be felt in the case of certain new countries, as for example canada. "canada's annual balance of trade is probably about â£60,000,000 against her: â£30,000,000 being the excess of her trade imports over her trade exports and the remaining â£30,000,000 representing her annual payment on money borrowed. she has balanced her account hitherto by borrowing very large sums of money. now she will be unable to do that any longer. nor will she at present, at any rate, obtain the immigrants on which she is counting to enable her to pay her interest. she cannot redeem the balance due by the export of gold. the burden would be too great in any case, and moreover she has suspended specie payments. a part of the balance due may be covered by the higher value of her exports, such as wheat. the remainder she can only meet either by increasing her exports or by reducing her imports. the latter she has already begun to do."[2] this new readjustment may be accompanied by great economic loss; in any case the dislocation will be harmful for the time, not only to the new countries, but to the countries with whom they trade. it is clear that foreign trade generally will during the war gradually be readjusted to the new conditions of the times. to what extent the various streams of the world's trade will be directed into new channels it is impossible to say; the readjustment will be partly temporary, and partly permanent.[3] this redistribution of production, if it leads to production under less favourable conditions than before, will tend to raise prices, and thereby probably diminish the power to buy other commodities. if it leads to the substitution of a well organised and well paid industry by an industry of a less skilled kind, there will be in effect a net lowering of wages. the widespread effects of the war on industry and commerce must, therefore, have a profound effect on the whole of the economic world. [footnote 1: towards the end of august, the tin-plate and steel-sheet trade in this country which had suffered badly on the outbreak of war revived, and "several mills were reopened, owing to the obtaining of orders which formerly went to germany" (_board of trade labour gazette_, sept. 1914, p. 330).] [footnote 2: _round table_, sept. 1914, pp. 708-9.] [footnote 3: this, of course, does not mean that great britain will "capture" german trade and increase its foreign commerce by the amount of its value.] 2. _unemployment and short time_.--we are now able to understand how the war has affected the individual workman. as we have seen, the panic caused by the outbreak of war and the collapse of the remittance market meant in many industries the holding up of production and the stoppage of the workman's wages. if it had not been possible to restart the machinery of exchange, starvation would have walked through the land, and the industries dependent on foreign raw material would have closed down altogether. as it was, the inevitable dislocation increased the amount of unemployment.[1] whereas the trade union percentage[2] of unemployment amongst their members was only 2.8 at the end of july, it had reached 7.1 by the end of august. this figure, however, is considerably below the percentage of unemployed during many periods of trade depression; the average for the whole of 1908 was 7.8 and for 1909, 7.7, whilst during the month of march 1912 it rose to 11.3 as a result of the coal strike. [footnote 1: note that unemployment prior to the war was showing a tendency to increase.] [footnote 2: it should be observed that these figures relate only to about a million trade unionists, no non-unionists being included. further, they ignore short time.] the volume of unemployment during august varied considerably from trade to trade. in the cotton industry, which, however, appeared to be in for a bad time anyhow, 17.7 per cent of the trade union members were returned as unemployed during august 1914, whilst in coal mining the percentage was 1.3. as compared with the previous month of july, there was a general decline in all industries except shipbuilding, which benefited by increased activity on government work. the contraction in the volume of employment was specially marked in the case of tin-plate works and in the textile, furnishing and woodworking, and pottery trades. again, in the trades where the government scheme of compulsory unemployment insurance applies, the volume of unemployment at the end of july was 3.6 per cent, but at the end of august it had reached 6.2 per cent or double the volume recorded in august 1913.[1] beyond this, there was during the month of august, an enormous amount of short time; in several industries for which particulars are available, thousands of workpeople were working half-time or less.[2] the rise which took place in the price of certain food-stuffs especially during the first part of august intensified the evil by reducing "real" wages. [footnote 1: the gradual increase during the month may be observed from the weekly returns:--aug. 7, 4.0 per cent; aug. 14, 5.1 per cent; aug. 21, 5.8 per cent; aug. 28, 6.2 per cent.] [footnote 2: the board of trade receives monthly reports from employers and others in different industries. these returns, though they do not cover the whole of the industries, are sufficiently reliable to indicate the widespread character of short time. during august 1914, in slate quarries and china clay works, "there was a good deal of short time and some unemployment in consequence of the war"; in tin-plate and sheet-steel works, "short time was very general. in some cases discharges were obviated by the sharing of work at the mills remaining open. the decrease in employment is to be attributed to the effects of the war, and in particular to the general restriction of the european market"; some branches of the engineering trade, particularly agricultural and textile machinery, and the motor car and cycle trades, were "disorganised by the war; many discharges took place and a large amount of short time was worked." in the miscellaneous metal trades, except in the manufacture of articles required for military and naval purposes, "much short time was reported." in the cotton industry, "the trade as a whole was working less than three days a week, and large numbers of workpeople were entirely unemployed." in the woollen trade, "about 60 per cent of the workpeople covered by the returns received were on short time, including over 20 per cent who were working half-time or less." the returns showed a decrease of "21.5 per cent in the amount of wages paid compared with a month ago." in the worsted industry, "about 65 per cent of the workpeople covered by the returns were working short time during the month, including over 30 per cent who were working only half time or less." the returns showed a decrease "of 26.5 per cent in the amount of wages paid compared with a month ago." in the linen trade "short time was reported generally." in the hosiery industry, "short time was reported by firms employing over 40 per cent of the operatives covered by the returns." in the silk trade "a great deal of short time was worked in all the districts." in the levers and curtains branches of the lace industry "the majority of the operatives ... were only working half time, and large numbers were altogether unemployed." in the carpet trade "short time was general, most districts working only half the usual hours." in the furnishing trades "short time was worked in almost every district." "short time was very generally reported" in printing. in the glass trades "short time was reported in several districts." in the potteries "most of the firms" were running short time (see the _board of trade labour gazette_, sept. 1914).] during the month of september, however, employment revived.[1] besides government work in shipbuilding yards, certain branches of the woollen industry were working at full pressure on the production of blankets and cloth for uniforms; the leather and boot and shoe industries on some sides received an impetus from the large orders placed for army boots; hosiery and knitted goods were required in large quantities. speaking generally, industries whose products were required for the army and navy were strained to the extent of their resources. but each industry supplies a large variety of goods of many different grades, and machinery and works equipment cannot always be easily converted to the production of other classes of commodities; so that even in the woollen and boot trades, for example, the whole industries were not uniformly busy. the many industries, however, to which the war brought no orders, enjoyed but a slight recovery, and in some cases none at all. as the month of september proceeded, the newspapers triumphantly referred to the fall in the percentage of unemployment. the truth is that the decline was by no means general or uniform, but was brought about, not so much by the gradual revival of normal activity, but by the rush of government orders. for instance, the cotton industry remained in the trough of a deep depression, and the furniture and piano making trades profited little. further, no account was taken of the prevalence of short time, though over a large field it was widespread especially amongst women. what the real position of the labour market was after we had been at war two months, cannot be precisely determined, but it was certainly more serious than the board of trade percentage would seem to indicate.[2] [footnote 1: the percentage of unemployment at the beginning of october in the trades compulsorily insured against unemployment was 5.1, as compared with 6.3 at the beginning of the previous month.] [footnote 2: "certain confidential statistical enquiries on a large scale are said to support the inference to be drawn from the figures published by the board of trade, that at least 10 per cent of the fifteen million wage-earners in the united kingdom are not at work at all, whilst quite as large a proportion are on short time. but out of more than a million men whose services the employers have thus temporarily dispensed with, some nine hundred thousand are being clothed, or are going to be clothed, in khaki, and given government pay. thus the actual unemployment among men is, except in (certain) black patches, only sporadic and scarcely more than we are accustomed to. very different is the situation of the women wage-earners. of these apparently half a million are now unemployed, and twice as many are working only short time. though the industrial situation is considerably better than would have been predicted for the end of the second month of a world war, it was, in fact, worse than it has been at any time during the past quarter of a century" _(new statesman,_ oct. 3, 1914).] the month of october saw a further recovery and a more normal state of affairs. the percentage of unemployment in insured trades continued to decline;[1] but whilst the number of men on the labour exchange registers fell (from 28,664 on october 2 to 24,690 on october 30), the number of women registered remained almost stationary. at the end of three months from the beginning of the war the condition of men's employment was about normal; but women were suffering from excessive unemployment, whilst short time was still common in many industries in which women are largely employed. [footnote 1: the percentages are as follows: oct. 2, 5.11; oct. 9, 4.80; oct. 16, 4.46; oct. 23, 4.29; oct. 30, 4.16.] the large volume of unemployment, which it had been anticipated would accompany a great war, was avoided, partly because of prompt state action in maintaining the fabric of commerce and finance, and therefore the supply of raw materials, and partly because of the large demand for commodities for the army and navy--a war demand vastly in excess of that in any previous war. in other words, state intervention and the navy have placed great britain in a much superior economic position to that of her adversaries. 3. _trade unions, co-operative societies and distress_.--before the outbreak of the war there were signs that the wave of industrial activity which reached a high point in 1913 was receding, and that unemployment was beginning to increase; but the trade unions did not anticipate that the ordinary ebb and flow of trade was to be disturbed by a great war. within a very short time after the declaration of war, the trade unions experienced a heavy drain on their funds in respect of unemployment benefit. it is, of course, obvious that the accumulated funds of trade unions were never intended as a subsidy to the community during a time of war, which is what, in point of fact, they became. it is true that the unions made efforts to conserve their resources in various ways, not least by advising their younger members without dependants to join the army; it is true also that most of them profited under section 106 of the national insurance act by the state refund of one-sixth of their payments to their unemployed members; but these measures--and others--were inadequate to maintain the unions in a sound financial condition, and many unions trembled on the verge of bankruptcy.[1] such a condition of affairs was viewed with apprehension not only by the trade union movement, but by the state, with the result that at the beginning of october the government subsidy of one-sixth was under certain conditions increased.[2] but even with this assistance, many unions will undoubtedly experience considerable difficulty in avoiding financial disaster. speaking generally, the trade union movement as a whole will emerge from the war in straitened circumstances. some unions may have collapsed, and amongst others the movement in favour of amalgamation may have received an impetus owing to financial embarrassments. [footnote 1: speaking generally, it cannot be said that the trade unions faced the crisis with either wisdom or courage. their attitude, on the whole, was one of utter bewilderment. the lack of the power of adaptability to new circumstances, together with the fact that sufficient pressure was not brought to bear upon the government in the first weeks of the war, accounts for the unfortunate position in which the trade unions found themselves.] [footnote 2: the scheme applies only to unions suffering from abnormal unemployment. there are also conditions that they "should not pay unemployment benefit above a maximum rate of 17s. per week, including any sum paid by way of state unemployment benefit," and that they "should agree while in receipt of the emergency grant to impose levies over and above the ordinary contributions upon those members who remain fully employed." the amount of the emergency grant in addition to the refund of one-sixth already payable will be either one-third or one-sixth of the expenditure on out-of-work pay, depending on the amount of the trade union levy. under special conditions the grant is to be retrospective. it is, therefore, possible for trade unions to be subsidised so far as unemployment benefit is concerned, to the extent of one-half their payments. but this scheme does nothing to assist trade unions (of which there are many) which get no unemployment benefit.] the decrease in earnings accompanying short time, and their total stoppage in the case of unemployment, mean amongst the workers a restriction of purchasing power. the shrinkage in the total wages bill, especially in lancashire, must lead to a diminution in the income of small traders and the co-operative societies. where trade is very bad the societies will be severely hit; smaller purchases will mean smaller profits, which, where there is no large reserve to fall back upon, will in turn mean the declaration of a smaller dividend. the "divi" received by the workers will be less, and the purchases which the thrifty housewife of the north usually makes with it in the way of clothing and replacement of household articles will be less also; where the "divi" has been left in the society, it will in a large number of cases be used to supplement the scanty wages earned on short time, or to provide the necessaries of life where the breadwinner is altogether unemployed. in places where times become very bad, the co-operative societies during the war, and for some time after, will suffer because of the conversion of the cash orders which ordinarily go to the "co-op" into credit orders at the shop round the corner. on the whole, however, the co-operative societies will probably come better out of the war than many classes of small shop-keepers. the small tailors, drapers, earthenware dealers, etc., and others who sell all but indispensable commodities, will see a shrinkage in their sales, especially if prices rise. the co-operative societies will also lose in this respect, but they will lose less on the whole, owing to the fact that a good deal of their capital is used in the sale of food-stuffs, the consumption of which will be restricted last. but admitting this, they cannot expect to escape unscathed, and the blow they suffer will be felt on other sides of their activity, such as their educational work, the income for which usually fluctuates with the prosperity of the societies. the diminution of the purchasing power of the working people because of the restriction of the national wages bill, however, may be minimised by common action. the national relief fund and the women's employment fund are intended really for this purpose. the establishment of women's training workshops and of maintenance grants on condition of attendance at schools and classes are steps in the same direction. the government has increased the disgracefully low payments made to dependants of soldiers on active service, and its scale of pensions for widows of soldiers and sailors and for those totally or partially disabled in the performance of military or naval duties. arrangements have been made for the payment of allowances of half wages up to a maximum of â£1 a week to dependants of sailors employed on insured british merchant ships captured or detained by the enemy. more important from the point of view of industry as a whole are the steps which have been taken to minimise the effects of a diminution in the volume of employment by the development of new openings. the government through the board of trade took the lead in the attempt to secure a share of the trade hitherto done by germany and austria. special efforts were made to develop the manufacture of toys, and other industrial experiments were begun by the central committee on women's employment. the government appointed a chemical products supply committee with a view to stimulating the production of dyes and drugs at home. these proposals are in the main an attempt to divert the trade of foreign countries, especially germany, into british channels. the second line of action is fuller provision of home needs which cannot be satisfied by foreign producers, but are essentially domestic. such needs are housing, public parks, roads, etc. between august 4 and september 21, 1914, the local government board received over 600 applications from local authorities for powers to borrow money amounting in all to over â£2,500,000. about a fifth of this amount it was intended to expend on housing. during this period the board sanctioned loans amounting in the aggregate to more than â£3,500,000, as compared with rather under â£2,000,000 in the same period in 1913. the road board arranged to put in hand the construction of certain new highways arranged for before the beginning of the war. in addition, in the first seven weeks of the war, the board arranged to make grants amounting to about â£450,000 in aid of new road construction and road improvements in many different parts of the country, which will involve a total expenditure of about a million sterling. the development commission began to consider schemes for the construction of light railways, for the improvement of the navigation of rivers, etc., in order that work of this kind should be ready to be put into operation when the necessity arose. the board of agriculture has urged that where practicable the acreage under wheat should be increased. this suggestion is, of course, valuable, but will not greatly affect the industrial situation. even if the schemes sanctioned by the local government board and those adopted by the road board were put into operation immediately, which is almost impossible, they would not make a very appreciable difference to the total wages bill of the country. but perhaps it is thought by the government that the state of employment is not sufficiently grave to warrant a greater expenditure at the present time. in spite of the insistence on forestalling destitution, there is still among local authorities much confusion of charity and relief work with anticipation of future needs calling for employment through the ordinary channels of trade. on the whole the government has not met the domestic problems of the war with the unanimity and boldness which has characterised its actions in the actual prosecution of the war and in dealing with the financial crisis. 4. _the new spirit._--the broader social effects which showed themselves in the early days of the war are illustrated by the remarkable growth of state socialism. the nation became a community, united in a single purpose; breaches which many imagined to be permanent, cleavages which were thought to be fundamental, no longer existed. none was for a party; all were for the state. the three political parties formed a parliamentary recruiting committee, and altogether impossible teams of people appeared on public platforms with a common aim; mr. ben tillett, in words that might have fallen from the lips of a tory ex-cabinet minister, declared that "every resource at our command must be utilised for the purpose of preserving our country and nation"; the anti-militarist trade union movement earnestly appealed to those of its members who were ex-non-commissioned officers to re-enlist; the queen and miss mary macarthur were members of the same committee. this unanimity, which has pushed into the background for the present causes of difference, has led the vast majority of people to submit cheerfully to the will of the state. the unity of to-day must necessarily make its influence felt even when the reason of its existence has passed away. in the meantime it is assisting in the growth of a new spirit which the war itself has fostered. the social outlook of the people and their attitude towards the larger problems of life is changing, and patriotism has taken a deeper meaning. so far we have devoted our attention to some of the immediate effects of the war. but on the return of peace there will be new influences at work, the immediate and ultimate effects of which will powerfully affect the course of future development. the european war will mark an era in international politics. it may also stand as a landmark in the history of the social and economic life of western europe. it is not unlikely that in this respect it will surpass in its importance all the wars of the past. the reasons are to be found in the magnitude and costliness of the war, the highly developed character and the inter-relatedness of foreign commerce, the possibility of new industrial forces coming into play, and the influence of the war on the political and social ideas of the european peoples. it may be that in this country the war will let loose economic forces destined to modify industrial organisation very profoundly; and that social forces, especially on the continent, will be liberated to work towards fuller political freedom. these things lie in the veiled future, and prophecy is dangerous. we may, however, turn to consider some of the probable effects the war will leave behind it. c. after the war 1. _general effects_.--when the war comes to an end, an immediate revival of commercial relations between the combatant states and a general revival of foreign trade cannot be reasonably expected. after the napoleonic wars, english manufacturers, assuming the eagerness of continental peoples to buy their goods, were met with the obvious fact that impoverished nations are not good customers. when peaceful relations are resumed in europe, we shall recognise very vividly the extent to which industry and commerce on the continent have been closed down. even assuming that british production continues, germany, belgium and austria will have little to send us in exchange. the closing of the overseas markets of germany, and the consequent shrinkage in production, the disruption of normal industrial life by the withdrawal of millions of men to join the colours, and the abnormal character of existing trade, due to the needs of the armies in the field, are not conditions favourable to the easy resumption of normal commercial relations. the dislocation of the mechanism of industry and commerce in europe, on a much larger scale than ever before--a mechanism which has with growing international relations and interdependence become more complicated and more sensitive in recent years--cannot be immediately remedied by a stroke of the pen or the fiat of an emperor. the credit system upon which modern industry and commerce are built depends upon mutual confidence. this confidence will not be restored among the combatant nations immediately on the cessation of war; it will require time to grow. further, europe during the war has been spending its substance and must emerge much poorer. this applies not only to combatant states, but to neutral countries, some of which have floated loans to meet the abnormal expenditure thrown upon them by prolonged mobilisation. the capital and credit of a large number of people will have suffered great loss or have vanished into thin air. houses, shops, and buildings of all kinds, produce manufactured and unmanufactured, bridges, ships, railway stations and stock of enormous value will have been destroyed. the community will have been impoverished, not only by the expenditure of great armies and the destruction of wealth, but by the utilisation for immediate consumption of wealth which would have been used as new capital, and by the withdrawal of probably close upon fifteen million men from production during the period of the war. even if we assume that the world has lost the production of only twelve million men[1], the loss is enormous. if each man were capable of producing, on the average, wealth to the value of â£100 per year, the loss of production per year during the continuance of the war would be about â£1,200,000,000. the effect of these factors will be heightened by the fact that the millions of men whose needs during the war have been satisfied by their non-combatant fellow-countrymen will be thrown upon their own resources. and though europe will still need to be fed and clad and housed, the effectual demand of the population for the goods and services it needs, a demand which it is able to satisfy because of its possession of exchangeable wealth, will be smaller than before the war. the demand will be more or less stifled until the credit system is re-established and mutual confidence restored, and until industry and commerce have adjusted themselves to the new situation. the volume of employment in this country during the war will have been swollen by temporary demands for war supplies which will cease when the war ends; foreign trade will be uncertain; a larger number of soldiers will be thrown on the labour market than ever before. it would seem, therefore, that in the absence of special steps, the volume of unemployment at the close of the war will be a good deal greater than during the progress of the war[2]. [footnote 1: the number must be larger than this, as the mobilisation of the armies of neutral states should be taken into account.] [footnote 2: it is thought by some that the war will be followed by a short boom, when europe will make good the necessities of industry and civilised life, but it is at least doubtful whether there will be a rapid reproduction of these commodities, owing to the conditions, already described, which will obtain at the close of the war. in any case, however, it will be merely a flash in the pan, and there will follow the gloom of a deep depression, unless there is clear-sighted state action.] it is just conceivable, though one hopes not probable, that the economic effects of the war will be complicated by the imposition of war indemnities. the indemnity is really a means of obtaining booty from a vanquished state, and has been looked upon as a justifiable means of further humiliating an already beaten enemy. it has been pointed out[1], however, that the advantages derived from an indemnity are not an unmixed gain. the indemnity recoils on the heads of those who impose it. it is unnecessary here to enter into a consideration of the detailed effects of huge payments by defeated nations; though it may be remarked that the ramifications of such payments are so intricate and often so incapable of measurement, whilst other economic influences are at work at the same time, that it is impossible to draw an accurate conclusion as to the net advantage or disadvantage of indemnities to the state which levies them. but the point to be borne in mind is that the addition of a great debt to the already large burden of an unsuccessful war reacts upon all countries with which the defeated state enters into business relations. the losses due to this cause will not necessarily be counterbalanced by gains from increased trade with the country receiving the indemnity; and even if they were, the latter trade might be of a different character. in any case, countries not parties to the indemnity will be affected by it in some way or other; war indemnities, like wars, do not pass by neutral countries and leave them untouched. [footnote 1: see norman angell, _the great illusion_, part i. chap. vi.] it is important to remember that, though modern warfare is much more costly and more exhausting than in the past, there is another side to the matter. society has also gained remarkably in its powers of recuperation. the blight of war is not as terrible as might be expected. the accumulated knowledge, the vastly increased productivity of industry, and the high organising ability, which have made the modern industrial and commercial world, will not be obliterated by the war. and though there will be difficulties in the way of their full operation when peace returns, they will aid powerfully in shortening the period of recovery. the forces which have transformed mediaeval into modern cities in a few short years will still exist. though they can hardly be expected to overcome all the many factors likely to restrain economic activity, they may be relied on to stimulate the revival of normal economic life. indeed, the knowledge of science and the faculty of organisation are likely to be applied more extensively than in the past to productive processes. after the war, when the states of europe begin to tread the paths of peace again, one of the first things to be done will be to repair as far as possible the damage done by the war. take belgium as an extreme example; leaving aside the irreparable destruction of historic buildings and priceless treasures, there are many million pounds' worth of houses and farm buildings, shops, warehouses, factories, public buildings, ships, railway stations, and bridges to be replaced. this work will take precedence over other kinds of production. sugar, motor cars, glass, etc., will still be manufactured, but chiefly in order to buy the requisite raw materials and finished goods for the replacement of the wealth destroyed by the ravages of the war. speaking generally, belgium will probably consume less food than ordinarily, wear less clothes, and consume less luxuries. savings, which would normally have been devoted to new industrial developments, will be needed to make good the losses in existing industrial establishments. it is clear, therefore, that the economic growth of belgium will be retarded in a great degree.[1] the same holds good of germany, though probably not to the same extent unless the theatre of war is extended to cover a considerable part of the empire. in the case of our own country, provided it remains free from invasion, there will not be such a large replacement of lost wealth and capital destroyed by the war, except in the case of shipping; but in common with other states there will be the war to pay for, and certain obligations to meet regarding the maimed and the relatives of the slain. taxation will be heavy, and therefore, on this ground alone the accumulation of new capital will be retarded. industrial organisation, having been re-arranged and modified to meet the requirements of the war period, will not resume its old form without a good deal of creaking and jolting. and even if it could, it will not be able to face the new conditions arising out of the war at all rapidly. there is every prospect, therefore, of a time of great difficulty after the war is over, before the normal course of industrial and commercial activity is fully resumed. in all likelihood, we shall find that the relative importance of our various industries will have altered to some extent, and that the nature of our trade will have been modified also. then also the relative positions of our home and foreign trade may shift; in other words, if the war lasts sufficiently long for new industries to develop and become efficient, they may survive the competition of foreign goods after the war; in which case, the goods which have hitherto been produced to buy the foreign goods will not now be required for foreign trade. it may be that on the return of peace, some european states, in order to give their industries an opportunity to recover from the effects of the war, will inaugurate new tariffs; there is, indeed, a strong possibility that on these grounds, and because of the dependence of the united kingdom on the products of germany, the tariff reform movement here may be electrified into life. [footnote 1: if germany be required to compensate belgium for the damage done, these effects will in large part disappear; though the burden would still remain. the difference would be that it would be more widely distributed.] 2. _possible industrial developments_.--but industrial changes will not be confined to the direction and form which economic activity will take. as has been suggested above, there may be far-reaching changes in the methods of production. it has been said that "there is only one way by which the wealth of the world will be quickly replaced after the war and that is by work. the country whose workers show the greatest capacity for productiveness will be the country which will most rapidly recuperate."[1] the question goes deeper than the replacement of wealth. the position after the war will be that production will be retarded because of the diminution in the rate of accumulation of new capital since the beginning of the war; there will be a certain amount of leeway to make up. consequently, there will be every incentive towards the greatest possible efficiency in production. it is here that the workers are likely to be affected. has labour reached its maximum efficiency? it has been shown by the application of what is called "scientific management," that the output of labour can be increased to a remarkable extent. for instance, instead of shovelling 16 tons a day, a man can shovel 59 tons; a man loading pig-iron increased his total load per day from 12-1/2 to 47-1/2 tons; the day's tale of bricks laid has been raised from 1000 to 2700. the list could be extended to cover operatives working at machines. in the endeavour to screw up industry to a maximum of production, it is not likely that the expedients of "scientific management" will long remain untried. already the system is making considerable headway in the united states, and it is not altogether unknown in this country. it is not possible to enter into a full explanation of the methods of "scientific management." briefly, by a process of scientific selection it puts each worker in the job for which he is best fitted, and teaches him exactly how to use the most efficient tools with which he would be provided. the method of teaching may be illustrated from mr. f.w. taylor's own example: "schmidt started to work, and all day long and at regular intervals, was told by the man who stood over him with a watch, 'now, pick up a pig and walk. now sit down and rest. now walk--now rest,' etc. he worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at half-past five in the afternoon had his 47-1/2 tons loaded on the car."[2] by elaborate experiments the exact shape and size of a shovel is determined; by long observation useless and awkward movements of a workman are eliminated or replaced by the correct movements giving the maximum return for the minimum of effort. in this way, and by a bonus on wages, a largely increased output is obtained. it is clear that the adoption of such methods gives the "scientific manager" great power; it also seems inevitable that the workman should degenerate into an automaton; it is obvious that in the hands of employers ignorant of the principles underlying it, and seeing merely a new and highly profitable method of exploitation, it will be open to serious abuse, as experience has already shown in america. [footnote 1: _round table_, sept. 1914, p. 708.] [footnote 2: _scientific management_, by f.w. taylor, p. 47.] so far the tremendous significance of "scientific management" has not been fully recognised. properly understood, it is the complement to the industrial revolution, which by the more extensive use of machinery, etc., increased the efficiency of capital. the present movement aims at a similar increase in the efficiency of labour as an agent of production. the new revolution in industry has as yet merely begun, because employers, in spite of the motive of self-interest, are conservative; but it will receive an enormous impetus from the conditions arising out of the war. like the introduction of machinery and factory industry a century and a half ago and onward, it may be accompanied by widespread evils and cruel exploitation. indeed, there is every likelihood that the methods will be distorted and misused. by their careful application there is no doubt that the output of the labourer can be increased without the expenditure of greater effort than before, but even then there would be the tendency towards becoming de-humanised. this, however, might be overcome by shorter hours and higher wages, which would raise the standard of comfort and widen the worker's interests. unwisely used, "scientific management" will become an instrument for shackling the worker, and increasing at a great rate the wealth of the capitalist. it will be freely admitted that anything that will increase the productivity of the labourer, and therefore the wealth of the community, is advantageous, provided there is an equitable distribution of the product, and that the effects on the working members of the state are not socially injurious. but the hidden evils that may manifest themselves are very real, and it is important that not only the workers, but the state should be prepared to save the good and prevent the evil. there will, however, be large numbers of employers of labour who will not avail themselves of the new-fangled methods, and who will endeavour to increase production by the old policy of "driving." and even without driving, wage-earning labour under present conditions may be carried on under circumstances unfavourable to industrial efficiency, and for hours inimical to the welfare of the community and actually injurious to industrial productivity. in the future the state will be more closely concerned with industry and commerce than hitherto; there will probably be a more clearly defined state policy aimed at the encouragement of production. its view will be wider than that of the individual employer, and we may expect therefore, providing there is no serious reaction after the strain of the war, that the state will impose working conditions which will favour maximum production in the long run. it will be to the interest of the community to maximise the efficiency of the industrial system; and enlightened statesmanship will overhaul our existing code of industrial laws to achieve this object as far as possible, as well as to guard the community against the evils inherent in a misapplication of the principles of "scientific management."[1] [footnote 1: see an article on "next steps in factory and workshop reform," by arthur greenwood, in the _political quarterly_ for september 1914.] after the war, unemployment is likely to increase. the work of new production will be put into operation only gradually; there will be every inducement to economise the use of labour as far as possible; wages during the depression will most probably fall; there will be disaffection in the ranks of the trade unionists; the possible consolidation of industries into the hands of fewer employers will increase the strength of the masters; the funds of the trade unions will be depleted by the heavy strain on their resources, and subject to a further drain after the war. the outlook of the trade union movement is, therefore, far from bright. it will be generally agreed that the bankruptcy or serious impoverishment of the unions of this country would be nothing less than a national disaster; but unless action of some kind is taken, they will become greatly weakened and almost impotent, and one great bulwark against unjust encroachments upon the rights of labour will be removed. it is not improbable, however, that the community will indirectly assist the trade unions by the steps taken to mitigate the evils which the war will leave in its train. the army instead of being immediately disbanded may be gradually dismissed over a period of, say, five years; the widows and dependants of soldiers and sailors, and those who have returned maimed and crippled from the war, may be adequately provided for, and, together with children of twelve and thirteen, kept off the labour market; the larger schemes of the development commission may be put into operation; the legal minimum wage may be extended to all low-paid trades. in these and other ways the community may deal comprehensively with the problems it has to face. the difficulties of the aftermath period will call for both clear-sighted action and public spirit; and if it is to be bridged over successfully, the transition from a war to a peace footing must be gradual; the community must continue its state of mobilisation in order to meet the enemy within the gates. provided the united wisdom of the nation is thrown into the task, the evil after-effects of the war may be, if not altogether avoided, restricted within narrow limits. at the bottom, therefore, the future course of events depends upon the temper and spirit of the people at the close of the war. 3. _social effects and the new outlook_.--the european conflict will probably exercise a strong sobering influence upon the minds of the people. the gravity of the crisis, whatever victories may crown our arms, will be reflected in the gravity of the people. a new dignity, a greater self-respect, a deeper earnestness may arise among the mass of the people, to which the conduct of our soldiers in the field will contribute. high qualities of leadership win their admiration; but for them they claim no credit. the army is officered for the most part by people of a higher social standing, whose qualities they will willingly admit; but the social gulf debars them from gaining inspiration from their achievements. in the case of the rank and file, largely drawn from their own class, the effect is different. the tommy is flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood. the qualities he displays reflect credit upon his class. the working man is not unmindful of the high opinion in which the british private has been held by a line of continental soldiers from napoleon to bernhardi. the exploits of his fellows in the field have given the lie to stories of deterioration; and working people are experiencing a sense of pride in their class which may have no inconsiderable effect on their attitude regarding social developments in the future. already the national temper has not submitted without protest to the disgraceful sweating of our troops merely because their patriotism has led them to sacrifice their lives, which are beyond all money payment. but the feeling in favour of the war and the spirit of trust in the government has, up to the present, overridden serious criticism. the result has been that the government has often remained inactive when action was needed and has acted unwisely and ignorantly at times; for example, in the case of the local government board circular, stating that the army council are prepared to issue allowances through the soldiers' and sailors' families association or the local representation committees. it has been said that "the whole system is an outrage on democratic principles. the state sweats its servants and then compels them to take the niggardly wages it allows them from a charitable society[1]." this type of action may pass muster during a time of stress, but whether the spirit of the people will accept it after the war is over and there are the dependants of the slain to be maintained and the permanently crippled to be provided for is a different matter. not merely justice, but the new pride of the people will rebel against it. these are but phases of the larger social problem. there is the question of poverty in all its ramifications. for the moment, economic injustices and social evils have fallen into the back of people's minds, and the new and abnormal causes of destitution are calling forth special measures of assistance. after the war, the ever-present deep-seated poverty will reassert its presence, and in the hearts of many people the question will arise as to whether the community which courageously and whole-heartedly fought the enemy without the gates will turn with equal courage and determination when the time comes to fight the enemy within the gates. the experiences of the war time, the willingness to embark on great projects in face of a national crisis, will not be forgotten, but will inspire in social reformers the hope that the country may also face the internal national peril in a similar spirit. the national--as opposed to the individual--poverty which the war will cause may itself be a force making for good. as mr. lloyd george well said, "a great flood of luxury and of sloth which had submerged the land is receding and a new britain is appearing. we can see for the first time the fundamental things that matter in life, and that have been obscured from our vision by the tropical growth of prosperity."[2] there seems a prospect of an era of social growth and regeneration following the war. in other european countries there may be equally important developments. it may well be that in the event of german defeat the democratic movements of that country will gain a great impetus from the blow given to the prussian hegemony. in russia there is an expectation of a new freedom. at the first meeting of the duma after the opening of hostilities the labour party declared its opinion that "through the agony of the battlefield the brotherhood of the russian people will be strengthened and a common desire created to free the land from its terrible internal troubles." [footnote 1: _the nation,_ sept. 19, 1914.] [footnote 2: speech at the queen's hall, london, sept. 19, 1914.] it must be admitted, on the other hand, that there is a possibility of a period of reaction and torpor after the strain of the war; the country will be seriously impoverished, and there will be a heavy burden of taxation in spite of some probable relief from the burden of armaments. still, social evils and injustices will be more obvious than ever. there will be many new national and imperial problems clamouring to be faced. the intellectual ferment which has had its source in the war will remain at work to widen the mental outlook and deepen the social consciousness. on the whole, it will probably be true to say that, though circumstances may postpone it, there will sooner or later arise a great movement pledged to cleanse our national life of those features which bar the way to human freedom and happiness. it also seems undeniable that the deep interest taken by large numbers of people in the war will rouse them to a sense of the importance of problems of government and of foreign policy. the working men's committees on foreign affairs of half a century ago, which have left no trace behind them, may be revived in a new form, and the differentiation of economic and social questions from political and foreign problems may be obliterated. the importance of the gradually widening area of vision among the more thoughtful section of the people can hardly be exaggerated. in no respect is the broadening of outlook more discernible than in the sphere of imperial affairs. hitherto the empire to the working man has been regarded as almost mythical. in so far as it did exist, it was conceived as a happy hunting ground for the capitalist exploiter. the spontaneous assistance given to the mother country by the colonies and dependencies has convinced him of the reality of the empire, and vaguely inspired him with a vision of its possibilities as a federation of free commonwealths. in other words, the british empire, contrasted with that of germany, is gradually being recognised as standing for democracy, however imperfect its achievements may be up to the present. consequently, the return of peace will see a deeper interest in imperial questions; indeed, it is not too much to say that there will be an imperial renaissance, born of a new patriotism, "clad in glittering white." the change of heart which is taking place in the people of this country, through the opening of the flood-gates of feeling and thought by the unsuspecting warrior in shining armour, may bring a new age comparable in its influence on civilisation with the great epochs of the past. to-day is seed-time. but the harvest will not be gathered without sweat and toil. the times are pregnant with great possibilities, but their realisation depends upon the united wisdom of the people. books in order to understand the machinery of international trade, reference should be made to hartiey withers' _money changing_ (5s.), or clare's _a.b.c. of the foreign exchanges_ (3s.); an outline of the subject will be found in any good general text-book on economics. on the financial situation, see articles on "lombard street in war" and "the war and financial exhaustion" (_round table,_ september and december 1914); "war and the financial system, august 1914," by j.m. keynes (_economic journal_, september 1914); and articles in the _new statesman_ on "why a moratorium?" (august 15,1914), and "the restoration of the remittance market" (august 29, 1914). norman angell's _the great illusion_ (2s. 6d.) should be consulted for an examination of the relations between war and trade. the most accessible book dealing with the foreign trade of the european countries is the _statesman's year-book_, published annually at 10s. 6d. the chapters reprinted from the _encyclopaedia britannica_ are also useful. a valuable article on "the economic relations of the british and german empires," by e. crammond, appeared in the _journal of the royal statistical society_, july 1914. the same writer published an article on "the economic aspects of the war" in _the quarterly review_ for october 1914 (6s.). a grasp of the economic development of germany may be obtained from w.h. dawson's _evolution of modern germany_ (5s.) and the same writer's _industrial germany_ (nation's library, 1s.). mr. f.w. taylor's _scientific management_ (5s.) and miss j. goldmark's _fatigue and efficiency_ (8s.) explain scientific management. a short account is also given in layton's _capital and labour_ (nation's library, 1s.). the course of unemployment in this country may be traced from the returns published each month in the _board of trade labour gazette_ (monthly, 1d.). proposals for dealing with possible and existing distress during the war are to be found in a pamphlet on _the war and the workers,_ by sidney webb (fabian society, 1d.). for the possible use of trade unions as a channel for the distribution of public assistance, see an article in _the nation_ for september 5, 1914, and mr. g.d.h. cole's article on "how to help the cotton operative" in _the nation_ for november 7, 1914. the same paper published two suggestive articles on "relief or maintenance?" (september 19 and october 3). the situation which has arisen in the woollen and worsted industries owing to the large demand for cloth for the troops is dealt with in an article on "the government and khaki," by arthur greenwood in _the nation_ for november 28, 1914. reference may be made to the official white paper on distress; other official documents of note are the following: "separation allowances to the wives and children of seamen, marines, and reservists." cd. 7619. 1914. 1/2d. "increased rates of separation allowance for the wives and children of soldiers." cd. 7255. 1914. 1/2d. "return of papers relating to the assistance rendered by the treasury to banks and discount houses since the outbreak of war on august 4, 1914, and to the questions of the advisability of continuing or ending the moratorium and of the nature of the banking facilities now available." h.c. 457 of 1914. 1d. "report, dated april 30, 1914, of a sub-committee of the committee of imperial defence on the insurance of british shipping in time of war, to devise a scheme to ensure that, in case of war, british steamships should not be generally laid up, and that oversea commerce should not be interrupted by reason of inability to cover war risks of ships and cargoes by insurance, and which would also secure that the insurance rates should not be so high as to cause an excessive rise in prices." cd. 7560. 1914. 2 1/2d. the government has issued a _manual of emergency legislation_ (3s. 6d.) containing the statutes, proclamations, orders in council, rules, regulations, and notifications used in consequence of the war; the appendices contain other documents (the declarations of paris and of london, the hague convention, etc.). chapter ix german culture and the british commonwealth "peace cannot become a law of human society, except by passing through the struggle which will ground life and association on foundations of justice and liberty, on the wreck of every power which exists not for a principle but for a dynastic interest."--mazzini in 1867. "the greatest triumph of our time, a triumph in a region loftier than that of electricity or steam, will be the enthronement of this idea of public right as the governing idea of european policy; as the common and precious inheritance of all lands, but superior to the passing opinion of any. the foremost among the nations will be that one which, by its conduct, shall gradually engender in the minds of the others a fixed belief that it is just."--gladstone. â§1. _the two issues._--the war of 1914 is not simply a war between the dual alliance and the triple entente: it is, for great britain and germany especially, a war of ideas--a conflict between two different and irreconcilable conceptions of government, society, and progress. an attempt will be made in this chapter to make clear what these conceptions are, and to discuss the issue between them as impartially as possible, from the point of view, not of either of the combatant powers, but of human civilisation as a whole. there are really two great controversies being fought out between great britain and germany: one about the ends of national policy, and another about the means to be adopted towards those or any other ends. the latter is the issue raised by the german chancellor's plea--not so unfamiliar on the lips of our own countrymen as we are now tempted to believe--that "necessity knows no law." it is the issue of law and "scraps of paper" against force, against what some apologists have called "the philosophy of violence," but which, in its latest form, the french ambassador has more aptly christened "the pedantry of barbarism." that issue has lately been brought home, in its full reality, to the british public from the course of events in belgium and elsewhere, and need not here be elaborated. further words would be wasted. a power which recognises no obligation but force, and no law but the sword, which marks the path of its advance by organised terrorism and devastation, is the public enemy of the civilised world. but it is a remarkable and significant fact that the policy in which this ruthless theory is embodied commands the enthusiastic and united support of the german nation. how can this be explained? it must be remembered in the first place that the german public does not see the facts of the situation as we do. on the question of belgian neutrality and the events which precipitated the british ultimatum, what we know to be a false version of the facts is current in germany, as is evident from the published statements of the leaders of german thought and opinion, and it may be many years before its currency is displaced. this difficulty should serve to remind us how defective the machinery of civilisation still is. one of the chief functions of law is, not merely to settle disputes and to enforce its decisions, but to ascertain the true facts on which alone a settlement can be based. the fact that no tribunal exists for ascertaining the true facts in disputes between sovereign governments shows how far mankind still is from an established "rule of law" in international affairs. not only is the hague powerless to give and, still more, to enforce its decision on the questions at issue between the european powers. it has not even the machinery for ascertaining the facts of the case and bringing them to the notice of neutral governments and peoples in the name of civilisation as a whole. but apart from divergent beliefs as to the facts, it is remarkable that thinking germany should be in sympathy with the spirit and tone of german policy, which led, as it appears to us, by an inexorable logic to the violation of belgian neutrality and the collision with great britain. but the fact, we are told, admits of easy explanation. thinking germany has fallen a victim to the teachings of treitschke and nietzsche--treitschke with his macchiavellian doctrine that "power is the end-all and be-all of a state," nietzsche with his contempt for pity and the gentler virtues, his admiration for "valour," and his disdain for christianity. this explanation is too simple to fit the facts. it may satisfy those who know no more of treitschke's brilliant and careful work than the extracts culled from his occasional writings by general von bernhardi and the late professor cramb. it may gratify those who, with so many young german students, forget that nietzsche, like many other prophets, wrote in allegory, and that when he spoke of valour he was thinking, not of "shining armour," but of spiritual conflicts. but careful enquirers, who would disdain to condemn macaulay on passages selected by undiscriminating admirers from his _essays_, or carlyle for his frank admiration of thor and odin and the virtues of valhalla, will ask for a more satisfying explanation. even if all that were said about treitschke and nietzsche were true, it would still remain an unsolved question why they and their ideas should have taken intellectual germany by storm. but it is not true. what is true, and what is far more serious, both for great britain and for europe, is that men like harnack, eucken, and wilamowitz, who would repudiate all intellectual kinship with macchiavelli and nietzsche--men who are leaders of european thought, and with whom and whose ideas we shall have to go on living in europe--publicly support and encourage the policy and standpoint of a government which, according to british ideas, has acted with criminal wickedness and folly, and so totally misunderstood the conduct and attitude of great britain as honestly to regard us as hypocritically treacherous to the highest interests of civilisation. that is the real problem; and it is a far more complex and difficult one than if we had to do with a people which had consciously abandoned the christian virtues or consciously embarked on a conspiracy against belgium or great britain. the utter failure of even the most eminent germans to grasp british politics, british institutions, and the british point of view points to a fundamental misunderstanding, a fundamental divergence of outlook, between the political ideals of the two countries. it is the conflict between these ideals which forms the second great issue between germany and great britain; and on its outcome depends the future of human civilisation. â§2. _culture_.--what is the german ideal? what do german thinkers regard as germany's contribution to human progress? the answer comes back with a monotonous reiteration which has already sickened us of the word. it is _kultur_, or, as we translate it, culture. germany's contribution to progress consists in the spread of her culture. _kultur_ is a difficult word to interpret. it means "culture" and a great deal more besides. its primary meaning, like that of "culture," is intellectual and aesthetic: when a german speaks of "kultur" he is thinking of such things as language, literature, philosophy, education, art, science, and the like. children in german schools are taught a subject called _kulturgeschichte_ (culture-history), and under that heading they are told about german literature, german philosophy and religion, german painting, german music and so on. so far, the english and the german uses of the word roughly correspond. we should probably be surprised if we heard it said that shakespeare had made a contribution to english "culture": but, on consideration, we should admit that he had, though we should not have chosen that way of speaking about him. but there is a further meaning in the word _kultur_, which explains why it is so often on german lips. it means, not only the product of the intellect or imagination, but the product of the disciplined intellect and the disciplined imagination. _kultur_ has in it an element of order, of organisation, of civilisation. that is why the germans regard the study of the "culture" of a country as part of the study of its history. english school children are beginning to be taught social and industrial history in addition to the kings and queens and battles and constitutions which used to form the staple of history lessons. they are being taught, that is, to see the history of their country, and of its civilisation, in the light of the life and livelihood of its common people. the german outlook is different. they look at their history in the light of the achievements of its great minds, which are regarded as being at once the proof and the justification of its civilisation. to the question, "what right have you to call yourselves a civilised country?" an englishman would reply, "look at the sort of people we are, and at the things we have done," and would point perhaps to the extracts from the letters of private soldiers printed in the newspapers, or to the story of the growth of the british empire; a german would reply (as germans are indeed replying now), "look at our achievements in scholarship and science, at our universities, at our systems of education, at our literature, our music, and our painting; at our great men of thought and imagination: at luther, dã¼rer, goethe, beethoven, kant." _kultur_ then means more than "culture": it means _culture considered as the most important element in civilisation._ it implies the disciplined education which alone, in the german view, makes the difference between the savage and the civilised man. it implies the heritage of intellectual possessions which, thanks to ordered institutions, a nation is able to hand down from generation to generation. we are now beginning to see where the british and german attitudes towards society and civilisation diverge. broadly, we may say that the first difference is that germany thinks of civilisation in terms of intellect while we think of it in terms of character. germany asks, "what do you know?" "what have you learnt?" and regards our prisoners as uncivilised because they cannot speak german, and great britain as a traitor to civilisation because she is allied with russia, a people of ignorant peasants. we ask, "what have you done?" "what can you do?" and tend to undervalue the importance of systematic knowledge and intellectual application. but we have found no reason as yet for a conflict of ideals. many english writers, such as matthew arnold, have emphasised the importance of culture as against character; yet matthew arnold's views were widely different from those of the german professors of to-day. if their sense of the importance of culture stopped short at this point, we should have much to learn from germany, as indeed we have, and no reason to oppose her. what is there then in the german admiration for culture which involves her in a conflict with british ideals? â§3. _culture as a state product._--the conflict arises out of the alliance between german culture and the german government. what british public opinion resents, in the german attitude, is not culture in itself, about which it is little concerned, but what we feel to be its unnatural alliance with military power. it seems to us wicked and hypocritical for a government which proclaims the doctrine of the "mailed fist" and, like the ancient spartans, glories in the perfecting of the machinery of war, to be at the same time protesting its devotion to culture, and posing as a patron of the peaceful arts. it is the kaiser's speeches and the behaviour of the german government which have put all of us out of heart with german talk about culture. this brings us to a fundamental point of difference between the two peoples. the close association between culture and militarism, between the best minds of the nation and the mind of the government, does not seem unnatural to a modern german at all. on the contrary, it seems the most natural thing in the world. it is the bedrock of the german system of national education. culture to a german is not only a national possession; it is also, to a degree difficult for us to appreciate, a state product. it is a national possession deliberately handed on by the state from generation to generation, hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the use of its citizens. when we use the word "culture" we speak of it as an attribute of individual men and women. germans, on the other hand, think of it as belonging to nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of national education. that is why they are so sure that all germans possess culture. they have all had it at school. and it is all the same brand of culture, because no other is taught. it is the culture with which the government wishes its citizens to be equipped. that is why all germans tend, not only to know the same facts (and a great many facts too), but to have a similar outlook on life and similar opinions about goethe, shakespeare and the german navy. culture, like military service, is a part of the state machinery. here we come upon the connecting link between culture and militarism. both are parts of the great german system of state education. "side by side with the influences of german education," wrote dr. sadler in 1901,[1] "are to be traced the influences of german military service. the two sets of influence interact on one another and intermingle. german education impregnates the german army with science. the german army predisposes german education to ideas of organisation and discipline. military and educational discipline go hand in hand.... both are preserved and fortified by law and custom, and by administrative arrangements skilfully devised to attain that end. but behind all the forms of organisation (which would quickly crumble away unless upheld by and expressing some spiritual force), behind both military and educational discipline, lies the fundamental principle adopted by scharnhorst's committee on military organisation in prussia in 1807: 'all the inhabitants of the state are its defenders by birth.'" [footnote 1: _board of education special reports,_ vol. ix. p. 43.] at last we have reached the root of the matter. it is not german culture which is the source and centre of the ideas to which great britain is opposed: nor yet is it german militarism. our real opponent is the system of training and education, out of which both german culture and german militarism spring. it is the organisation of german public life, and the "spiritual force" of which that organisation is the outward and visible expression. â§4. _german and british ideals of education._--let us look at the german ideal more closely, for it is worthy of careful study. it is perhaps best expressed in words written in 1830 by coleridge, who, like other well-known englishmen of his day (and our own) was much under the influence of german ideas. coleridge, in words quoted by dr. sadler, defines the purpose of national education as "to form and train up the people of the country to obedient, free, useful, and organisable subjects, citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the state and prepared to die in its defence." in accordance with this conception prussia was the first of the larger states in europe to adopt a universal compulsory system of state education, and the first also to establish a universal system of military service for its young men. the rest of europe perforce followed suit. nearly every state in europe has or professes to have a universal system of education, and every state except england has a system of universal military service. the europe of schools and camps which we have known during the last half century is the most striking of all the victories of german "culture." discipline, efficiency, duty, obedience, public service; these are qualities that excite admiration everywhere--in the classroom, in the camp, and in the wider field of life. there is something almost monumentally impressive to the outsider in the german alliance of school and army in the service of the state. since the days of sparta and rome, there has been no such wonderful governmental disciplinary machine. it is not surprising that "german organisation" and "german methods" should have stimulated interest and emulation throughout the civilised world. discipline seems to many to be just the one quality of which our drifting world is in need. "if this war had been postponed a hundred or even fifty years," writes a philosophic english observer in a private letter, "prussia would have become our rome, worshipping shakespeare and byron as pompey or tiberius worshipped greek literature, and disciplining us. hasn't it ever struck you what a close parallel there is between germany and rome?" (here follows a list of bad qualities which is better omitted.) ... "the good side of it is the discipline; and the modern world, not having any power external to itself which it acknowledges, and no men (in masses) having yet succeeded in being a law to themselves, needs discipline above everything. i don't see where you will get it under these conditions unless you find some one with an abstract love of discipline for itself. and where will you find him except in prussia? after all, it is a testimony to her that, unlovely as she is, she gives the law to germany, and that the south german, though he dislikes her, accepts the law as good for him." and to show that he appreciates the full consequences of his words he adds: "if i had to live under ramsay macdonald (provided that he acted as he talks), or under lieutenant von fã¶rstner" (the hero of zabern), "odious as the latter is, for my soul's good i would choose him: for i think that in the end, i should be less likely to be irretrievably ruined." here is the prussian point of view, expressed by a thoughtful englishman with a wide experience of education, and a deep concern for the moral welfare of the nation. what have we, on the british side, to set up against his arguments? in the first place we must draw attention to the writer's candour in admitting that a nation cannot adopt prussianism piecemeal. it must take it as a whole, its lieutenants included, or not at all. lieutenant von fã¶rstner is as typical a product of the prussian system as the london policeman is of our own; and if we adopt prussian or spartan methods, we must run the risk of being ruled by him. "no other nation," says dr. sadler, "by imitating a little bit of german organisation can hope thus to achieve a true reproduction of the spirit of german institutions. the fabric of its organisation practically forms one whole. that is its merit and its danger. it must be taken all in all or else left unimitated. and it is not a mere matter of external organisation.... national institutions must grow out of the needs and character (and not least out of the weakness) of the nation which possesses them." but, taking the system as a whole, there are, it seems to me, three great flaws in it--flaws so serious and vital as to make the word "education" as applied to it almost a misnomer. the prussian system is unsatisfactory, firstly, because it confuses external discipline with self-control; secondly, because it confuses regimentation with corporate spirit; thirdly, because it conceives the nation's duty in terms of "culture" rather than of character. let us take these three points in detail. the first object of national education is--not anything national at all, but simply education. it is the training of individual young people. it is the gradual leading-out (e-ducation), unfolding, expanding, of their mental and bodily powers, the helping of them to become, not soldiers, or missionaries of culture, or pioneers of empire, or even british citizens, but simply human personalities. "the purpose of the public elementary school," say the opening words of our english code, "is to form and strengthen the character and to develop the intelligence of the children entrusted to it." in the performance of this task external discipline is no doubt necessary. obedience and consideration for others are not learnt in a day. but the object of external discipline is to form habits of self-control which will enable their possessor to become an independent and self-respecting human being--and incidentally, a good citizen. "if i had to _live under_ ramsay macdonald, or the prussian lieutenant," says our writer, "i would choose the latter, for my soul's good." but our british system of education does not proceed on the assumption that its pupils are destined to "live under" any one. our ideal is that of the free man, trained in the exercise of his powers and in the command and control of his faculties, who, like wordsworth's "happy warrior" (a poem which embodies the best british educational tradition): ... through the heat of conflict, keeps the law in calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. neglect for the claims of human personality both amongst pupils and teachers is the chief danger of a state system of education. the state is always tempted to put its own claims first and those of its citizens second--to regard the citizen as existing for the state, instead of the state for its citizens. it is one of the ironies of history that no man was more alive to this danger than wilhelm von humboldt, the gifted creator of the prussian system of education. as the motto of one of his writings he adopted the words, "_against the governmental mania, the most fatal disease of modern governments_," and when, contrary to his own early principles, he undertook the organisation of prussian education he insisted that "headmasters should be left as free a hand as possible in all matters of teaching and organisation." but the prussian system was too strong for him and his successors, and his excellent principles now survive as no more than pious opinions. the fact is that in an undemocratic and feudal state such as germany then was, and still largely is, respect for the personality of the individual is confined to the upper ranks of society. "i do not know how it is in foreign countries," says one of goethe's heroes,[1] "but in germany it is only the nobleman who can secure a certain amount of universal or, if i may say so, _personal_ education. an ordinary citizen can learn to earn his living and, at the most, train his intellect; but, do what he will, he loses his personality.... he is not asked, 'what are you?' but only, 'what have you? what attainments, what knowledge, what capacities, what fortune?' ... the nobleman is to act and to achieve. the common citizen is to carry out orders. he is to develop individual faculties, in order to become useful, and it is a fundamental assumption that there is no harmony in his being, nor indeed is any permissible, because, in order to make himself serviceable in one way, he is forced to neglect everything else. the blame for this distinction is not to be attributed to the adaptability of the nobleman or the weakness of the common citizen. it is due to the constitution of society itself." much has changed in germany since goethe wrote these words, but they still ring true. and they have not been entirely without their echo in great britain itself.[2] [footnote 1: wilhelm meister's _lehrjahre_, book v. chapter iii.] [footnote 2: the contrast which has been drawn in the preceding pages, as working-class readers in particular will understand, is between the _aims_, not the achievements, of german and british education. the german aims are far more perfectly achieved in practice than the british. neither the law nor the administration of british education can be acquitted of "neglect for the claims of human personality." the opening words of the english code, quoted on p. 359 above, are, alas! not a statement of fact but an aspiration. we have hardly yet begun in england to realise the possibilities of educational development along the lines of the british ideal, both as regards young people and adults. if we learn the lesson of the present crisis aright, the war, so far from being a set-back to educational progress, should provide a new stimulus for effort and development.] but man cannot live for himself alone. he is a corporate being; and, personality or no personality, he has to fit into a world of fellow-men with similar human claims. the second charge against the german system is that it ignores the value of human fellowship. it regards the citizens of a country as "useful and organisable subjects" rather than as fellow-members of a democracy, bound together by all the various social ties of comradeship and intercourse. the prussian system, with its elaborate control and direction from above, dislikes the free play of human groupings, and discourages all spontaneous or unauthorised associations. schoolboy "societies," for instance, are in germany an evil to be deplored and extirpated, not, as with us, a symptom of health and vigour, to be sympathetically watched and encouraged. instead, there is a direct inculcation of patriotism, a strenuous and methodical training of each unit for his place in the great state machine. we do not so read human nature. our british tendency is to develop habits of service and responsibility through a devotion to smaller and more intimate associations, to build on a foundation of lesser loyalties and duties. we do not conceive it to be the function of the school to _teach_ patriotism or to _teach_ fellowship. rather we hold that good education _is_ fellowship, _is_ citizenship, in the deepest meaning of those words; that to discover and to exercise the responsibilities of membership in a smaller body is the best training for a larger citizenship. a school, a ship, a club, a trade union, any free association of englishmen, is all england in miniature. "to be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society," said burke long ago, "is the first principle, the germ, as it were, of public affections. it is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind.... we begin our public affections in our families. no cold relation is a zealous citizen. we pass on to our neighbourhoods, to our habitual provincial connections. these are inns and resting-places... so many images of the great country, in which the heart found something which it could fill."[1] [footnote 1: _reflections on the french revolution_, pp. 292, 494 (of vol. iii. of _collected works_, ed. 1899).] there is one fairly safe test for a system of education: what do its victims think of it? "in prussia," says dr. sadler, "a schoolboy seems to regard his school as he might regard a railway station--a convenient and necessary establishment, generally ugly to look at, but also, for its purpose efficient." the illustration is an apt one: for a prussian school is too often, like a railway station, simply a point of departure, something to be got away from as soon as possible. "in england a boy who is at a good secondary school cares for it as an officer cares for his regiment or as a sailor cares for his ship," or, we may add, as a boy scout cares for his troop.[1] [footnote 1: _special reports_, ix. p. 113. dr. sadler's article deals with secondary schools only. unfortunately, no one can claim that the idea of fellowship is as prominent in english elementary schools, or even in all secondary schools, as the quotation might suggest.] democracy and discipline, fellowship and freedom, are in fact not incompatible at all. they are complementary: and each can only be at its best when it is sustained by the other. only a disciplined and self-controlled people can be free to rule itself, and only a free people can know the full meaning and happiness of fellowship. â§5. _german and british ideals of civilisation._--lastly, the german system regards national "culture" rather than national character as the chief element in civilisation and the justification of its claim to a dominant place in the world. this view is so strange to those who are used to present-day british institutions that it is hard to make clear what it means. civilisation is a word which, with us, is often misused and often misunderstood. sometimes we lightly identify it with motor cars and gramophones and other western contrivances with which individual traders and travellers dazzle and bewilder the untutored savage. yet we are seldom tempted to identify it, like the germans, with anything narrowly national; and in our serious moments we recognise that it is too universal a force to be the appanage of either nations or individuals. for to us, when we ask ourselves its real meaning, civilisation stands for neither language nor culture nor anything intellectual at all. it stands for something moral and social and political. it means, in the first place, the establishment and enforcement of the rule of law, as against anarchy on the one hand and tyranny on the other; and, secondly, on the basis of order and justice, the task of making men fit for free institutions, the work of guiding and training them to recognise the obligations of citizenship, to subordinate their own personal interests or inclinations to the common welfare, the "commonwealth." that is what is meant when it is claimed that great britain has done a "civilising" work both in india and in backward africa. the germans reproach and despise us, we are told,[1] for our failure to spread "english culture" in india. that has not been the purpose of british rule, and englishmen have been foolish in so far as they have presumed to attempt it: england has to learn from indian culture as india from ours. but to have laid for india the foundations on which alone a stable society could rest, to have given her peace from foes without and security within, to have taught her, by example, the kinship of power and responsibility, to have awakened the social conscience and claimed the public services of indians in the village, the district, the province, the nation, towards the community of which they feel themselves to be members, to have found india a continent, a chaos of tribes and castes, and to have helped her to become a nation--that is not a task of english culture: it is a task of civilisation. [footnote 1: for evidence of this see cramb's _germany and england_, p. 25.] law, justice, responsibility, liberty, citizenship--the words are abstractions, philosophers' phrases, destitute, it might seem, of living meaning and reality. there is no such thing as english justice, english liberty, english responsibility. the qualities that go to the making of free and ordered institutions are not national but universal. they are no monopoly of great britain. they are free to be the attributes of any race or any nation. they belong to civilised humanity as a whole. they are part of the higher life of the human race. as such the germans, if they recognised them at all, probably regarded them. they could not see in them the binding power to keep a great community of nations together. they could not realise that justice and responsibility, if they rightly typify the character of british rule, must also typify the character of british rulers; and that community of character expressed in their institutions and worked into the fibre of their life may be a stronger bond between nations than any mere considerations of interest. educated indians would find it hard to explain exactly why, on the outbreak of the war, they found themselves eager to help to defend british rule. but it seems clear that what stirred them most was not any consideration of english as against german culture, or any merely material calculations, but a sudden realisation of the character of that new india which the union between great britain and india, between western civilisation and eastern culture, is bringing into being, and a sense of the indispensable need for the continuance of that partnership.[1] [footnote 1: the reader will again understand that it is british aims rather than british achievements which are spoken of. that british rule is indispensable to indian civilisation is indeed a literal fact to which indian opinion bears testimony; and it is the conduct and character of generations of british administrators which have helped to bring this sense of partnership about. but individual englishmen in india are often far from understanding, or realising in practice, the purpose of british rule. similarly, the growth of a sense of indian nationality, particularly in the last few years, is a striking and important fact. but it would be unwise to underestimate the gigantic difficulties with which this growing national consciousness has to contend. the greatest of these is the prevalence of caste-divisions, rendering impossible the free fellowship and social intercourse which alone can be the foundation of a sense of common citizenship. apart from this there are, according to the census, forty-three races in india, and twenty-three languages in ordinary use.] it is just this intimate union between different nations for the furtherance of the tasks of civilisation which it seems so difficult for the german mind to understand. "culture," with all its intimate associations, its appeal to language, to national history and traditions, and to instinctive patriotism, is so much simpler and warmer a conception: it seems so much easier to fight for germany than to fight for justice in the abstract, or for justice embodied in the british commonwealth. that is why even serious german thinkers, blinded by the idea of culture, expected the break-up of the british empire. they could imagine indians giving their lives for india, boers for a dutch south africa, irishmen for ireland or ulstermen for ulster; but the deeper moral appeal which has thrilled through the whole empire, down to its remotest island dependency, lay beyond their ken. let us look a little more closely at the german idea of national culture rather than national character as the chief element in civilisation. we shall see that it is directly contrary to the ideals which inspire and sustain the british commonwealth, and practically prohibits that association of races and peoples at varying levels of social progress which is its peculiar task. "culture," in the german idea, is the justification of a nation's existence. nationality has no other claim. goethe, luther, kant, and beethoven are germany's title-deeds. a nation without a culture has no right to a "place in the sun." "history," says wilamowitz in a lecture delivered in 1898, "knows nothing of any right to exist on the part of a people or a language without a culture. if a people becomes dependent on a foreign culture" (_i.e._ in the german idea, on a foreign civilisation) "it matters little if its lower classes speak a different language: they, too ... must eventually go over to the dominant language.... wisely to further this necessary organic process is a blessing to all parties; violent haste will only curb it and cause reactions. importunate insistence on nationality has never anywhere brought true vitality into being, and often destroyed vitality; but the superior culture which, sure of its inner strength, throws her doors wide open, can win men's hearts."[1] in the light of a passage like this, from the most distinguished representative of german humanism, it is easier to grasp the failure of educated germany to understand the sequel of the south african war, or the aspirations of the slav peoples, or to stigmatise the folly of their statesmen in poland, denmark, alsace-lorraine, and belgium. "importunate insistence on nationality"--the words come home to us now with a new meaning when we learn that in belgium, now perforce "dependent on a foreign culture," babies are registered under german names and newspapers printed in "the dominant language," and that already "forty newspaper vendors in brussels have been sentenced to long terms of hard labour in german prisons for selling english, french, and belgian newspapers."[2] "our fearless german warriors," writes the leading german dramatist, gerhart hauptmann,[3] "are _well aware of the reasons for which they have taken the field_. no illiterates will be found among them. many of them, besides shouldering their muskets, carry their goethe's _faust_, some work of schopenhauer, a bible, or a homer in their knapsacks." such is a serious german writer's idea of the way in which civilisation is diffused! [footnote 1: _speeches and lectures_, pp. 147-148 (1913 edition).] [footnote 2: daily papers, october 12, 1914 (exchange telegram from rotterdam).] [footnote 3: letter quoted in the _westminster gazette._] with such a philosophy of human progress as this, german thinkers and statesmen look out into the future and behold nothing but conflict--eternal conflict between rival national "cultures," each seeking to impose its domination. "in the struggle between nationalities," writes prince bã¼low,[1] in defence of his polish policy, putting into a cruder form the philosophy of wilamowitz, "one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the vanquished. it is a law of life and development in history that where two national civilisations meet they fight for supremacy." [footnote 1: _imperial germany_, p. 245 (1st ed.).] here we have the necessary and logical result of the philosophy of culture. in the struggle between cultures no collaboration, no compromise even, is possible. german is german: flemish is flemish: polish is polish: french is french. who is to decide which is the "more civilised," which is the fitter to survive? force alone can settle the issue. a luther and goethe may be the puppets pitted in a contest of culture against maeterlinck and victor hugo. but it is krupp and zeppelin and the war-lord that pull the strings. as wilamowitz reminds us, it was the roman legions, not virgil and horace, that stamped out the celtic languages and romanised western europe. it is the german army, two thousand years later, that is to germanise it. it is an old, old theory; prussia did not invent it, nor even rome. "you know as well as we do," said the athenians in 416 b.c. to the representatives of a small people of that day,[1] "that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"; and they went on, like the kaiser, to claim the favour of the gods, "neither our pretensions nor our conduct being in any way contrary to what men believe of the gods, or practise amongst themselves." there is, in fact, to be no law between nations but the rule of the stronger. [footnote 1: _thucydides_, book v. 89 and 105.] â§6. _the principle of the commonwealth_.--such seems to many the meaning of the present european situation--a stern conflict between nations and cultures, to be decided by force of arms. the bridges between the nations seem broken down, and no one can tell when they will be repaired. the hopes that had gathered round international movements, the cosmopolitan dreams of common action between the peoples across the barriers of states and governments, seem to have vanished into limbo; and the enthusiastic dreamers of yesterday are the disillusioned soldiers and spectators of to-day. nationality, that strange, inarticulate, unanalysable force that can call all men to her tents in the hour of crisis and danger, seems to have overthrown the international forces of to-day, the socialists, the pacifists, and, strongest of all, the capitalists, as it overthrew napoleon and his dreams of empire a hundred years ago. what law is there but force that can decide the issue between nation and nation? and, in the absence of a law, what becomes of all our hopes for international action, for the future of civilisation and the higher life of the human race? but in truth the disillusionment is as premature as the hopes that preceded it. we are still far off from the world-state and the world-law which formed the misty ideal of cosmopolitan thinkers. but only those who are blind to the true course of human progress can fail to see that the day of the nation-state is even now drawing to a close in the west. there is in fact at present working in the world a higher law and a better patriotism than that of single nations and cultures, a law and a patriotism that override and transcend the claims of nationality in a greater, a more compelling, and a more universal appeal. the great states or powers of to-day, great britain, the united states, france, and (if they had eyes to sec it) russia, germany and austria-hungary, are not nation-states but composite states--states compacted of many nationalities united together by a common citizenship and a common law. great britain, the united states, the german empire, and austria-hungary bear in their very names the reminder of the diverse elements of which they are composed; but france with her great african empire, and russia with her multitudinous populations, from poland to the pacific, from finland to the caucasus, are equally composite. in each of these great states nations have been united under a common law; and where the wisdom of the central government has not "broken the bruised reed or quenched the smoking flax" of national life, the nations have been not only willing but anxious to join in the work of their state. nations, like men, were made not to compete but to work together; and it is so easy, so simple, to win their good-hearted devotion. it takes all sorts of men, says the old proverb, to make a world. it takes all sorts of nations to make a modern state. "the combination of different nations in one state is as necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men in society. ... it is in the cauldron of the state that the fusion takes place by which the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity of one portion of mankind may be communicated to another.... if we take the establishment of liberty for the realisation of moral duties to be the end of civil society, we must conclude that those states are substantially the most perfect which, like the british and austrian empires, include various distinct nationalities without oppressing them." so wrote lord acton, the great catholic historian, fifty years ago, when the watchwords of nationality were on all men's lips, adding, in words that were prophetic of the failure of the austrian and the progress of the british commonwealth of nations: "the coexistence of several nations under the same state _is a test_ as well as the best security _of its freedom_. it is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and, as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism."[1] [footnote 1: essay on nationality, in _the history of freedom and other essays_, pp. 290, 298.] of the great powers which between them control the destinies of civilisation great britain is at once the freest, the largest, and the most various. if the state is a "cauldron" for mingling "the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity" of the portions of mankind--or if, to use an apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection consists in the very variety of the functions of its several members--there has never been on the earth a political organism like the british empire. its 433 million inhabitants, from great britain to polynesia, from india and egypt to central africa, are drawn from every division of the human race. cut a section through mankind, and in every layer there will be british citizens, living under the jurisdiction of british law. here is something to hearten those who have looked in vain to the hague. while international law has been brought to a standstill through the absence of a common will and a common executive, great britain has thrown a girdle of law around the globe. â§7. _the future of civilisation_.--what hopes dare we cherish, in this hour of conflict, for the future of civilisation? the great, the supreme task of human politics and statesmanship is to extend the sphere of law. let others labour to make men cultured or virtuous or happy. these are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and the common man. the statesman's task is simpler. it is to enfold them in a jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their souls' choice. the state, said the greek philosophers, is the foundation of the good life; but its crown rises far above mere citizenship. "there where the state ends," cries nietzsche,[1] echoing aristotle and the great tradition of civilised political thought, "there _men begin_. there, where the state ends, look thither, my brothers! do you not see the rainbow and the bridge to the overman?" ever since organised society began, the standards of the individual, the ideals of priest and teacher, the doctrines of religion and morality, have outstripped the practice of statesmanship. for the polestar of the statesman has not been love, but law. his not the task of exhorting men to love one another, but the simpler duty of enforcing the law, "thou shalt not kill." and in that simple, strenuous, necessary task statesmen and political thinkers have watched the slow extension of the power of law, from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the city, from the city to the nation, from the nation to the commonwealth. when will law take its next extension? when will warfare, which is murder between individuals and "rebellion" between groups of citizens, be equally preventable between nations by the common law of the world? [footnote 1: _also sprach zarathustra_, speech xi. (end).] the answer is simple. when the world has a common will, and has created a common government to express and enforce that will. in the sphere of science and invention, of industry and economics, as norman angell and others have taught us, the world is already one great society. for the merchant, the banker, and the stockbroker political frontiers have been broken down. trade and industry respond to the reactions of a single, world-wide, nervous system. shocks and panics pass as freely as airmen over borders and custom-houses. and not "big business" only, but the humblest citizen, in his search for a livelihood, finds himself caught in the meshes of the same world-wide network. "the widow who takes in washing," says graham wallas,[1] in his deep and searching analysis of our contemporary life, "fails or succeeds according to her skill in choosing starch or soda or a wringing machine under the influence of half a dozen competing world-schemes of advertisement.... the english factory girl who is urged to join her union, the tired old scotch gatekeeper with a few pounds to invest, the galician peasant when the emigration agent calls, the artisan in a french provincial town whose industry is threatened by a new invention, all know that unless they find their way among world-wide facts, which only reach them through misleading words, they will be crushed." the industrial revolution of the past century, steam-power and electricity, the railway and the telegraph, have knit mankind together, and made the world one place. [footnote 1: _the great society_ (1914), p. 4.] but this new great society is as yet formless and inarticulate. it is not only devoid of common leadership and a common government; it lacks even the beginnings of a common will, a common emotion, and a common consciousness. of the great society, consciously or unconsciously, we must all perforce be members; but of the great state, the great world-commonwealth, we do not yet discern the rudiments. the economic organisation of the world has outstripped the development of its citizenship and government: the economic man, with his farsighted vision and scientific control of the resources of the world, must sit by and see the work of his hands laid in ashes by contending governments and peoples. no man can say how many generations must pass before the platitudes of the market and the exchange pass into the current language of politics. â§8. _the two roads of advance: inter-state action and common citizenship_.--in the great work which lies before the statesmen and peoples of the world for the extension of law and common citizenship and the prevention of war there are two parallel lines of advance. one road lies through the development of what is known as international, but should more properly be called _inter-state law_, through the revival, on a firmer and broader foundation, of the concert of europe conceived by the congress of vienna just a hundred years ago--itself a revival, on a secular basis, of the great mediaeval ideal of an international christendom, held together by christian law and christian ideals. that ideal faded away for ever at the reformation, which grouped europe into independent sovereign states ruled by men responsible to no one outside their own borders. it will never be revived on an ecclesiastical basis. can we hope for its revival on a basis of modern democracy, modern nationality, and modern educated public opinion? can inter-state law, hitherto a mere shadow of the majestic name it bears, almost a matter of convention and etiquette, with no permanent tribunal to interpret it, and no government to enforce it, be enthroned with the necessary powers to maintain justice between the peoples and governments of the world? such a law the statesmen of great britain and russia sought to impose on europe in 1815, to maintain a state of affairs which history has shown to have been intolerable to the european peoples. there are those who hope that the task can be resumed, on a better basis, at the next congress. "shall we try again," writes professor gilbert murray,[1] "to achieve castlereagh's and alexander's ideal of a permanent concert, pledged to make collective war upon the peace-breaker? surely we must. we must, at all costs and in spite of all difficulties, because the alternative means such unspeakable failure. we must learn to agree, we civilised nations of europe, or else we must perish. i believe that the chief council of wisdom here is to be sure to go far enough. we need a permanent concert, perhaps a permanent common council, in which every awkward problem can be dealt with before it has time to grow dangerous, and in which outvoted minorities must accustom themselves to giving way." [footnote 1: _hibbert journal,_ oct. 1914, p. 77.] other utterances by public men, such as mr. roosevelt and our own prime minister, might be cited in the same sense; but professor murray's has been chosen because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. in his words the true position is quite clearly set forth. if inter-state law is to become a reality we must "be sure to go far enough." there is no half-way house between law and no law, between government and no government, between responsibility and no responsibility. if the new concert is to be effective it must be able to compel the submission of all "awkward problems" and causes of quarrel to its permanent tribunal at the hague or elsewhere; and it must be able to enforce the decision of its tribunal, employing for the purpose, if necessary, the armed forces of the signatory powers as an international police. "out-voted minorities must accustom themselves to giving way." it is a bland and easy phrase; but it involves the whole question of world-government. "men must accustom themselves not to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the earliest law-givers might have said, when the state first intervened between individuals to make itself responsible for public order. peace between the powers, as between individuals, is, no doubt, a habit to which cantankerous powers "must accustom themselves." but they will be sure to do so if there is a law, armed with the force to be their schoolmaster towards peaceable habits. in other words, they will do so because they have surrendered one of the most vital elements in the independent life of a state--the right of conducting its own policy--to the jurisdiction of a higher power. an inter-state concert, with a judiciary of its own and an army and navy under its own orders, is, in fact, not an inter-state concert at all; it is a new state: it is, in fact, the world-state. there is no middle course between law and no law: and the essence of statehood, as we have seen, is a common law. will this new state have the other attributes of government--a common legislature and a common executive--as well as a common judiciary? let us go back to professor murray's words. he speaks of "outvoted minorities." let us suppose the refractory country to be great britain, outvoted on some question relating to sea-power. of whom will the outvoted minority consist? of the british members on the "common council" of the concert. but the question at once arises, what are the credentials of these british members? whom do they represent? to whom are they responsible? if they are the representatives of the british people and responsible to the democracy which sent them, how can they be expected to "accustom themselves to giving way"--perhaps to a majority composed of the representatives of undemocratic governments? their responsibility is, not to the concert, but to their own government and people. they are not the minority members of a democratically-elected council of their own fellow-citizens. they are the minority members of a heterogeneous council towards which they owe no allegiance and recognise no binding responsibility. there is no half-way house between citizenship and no citizenship, between responsibility and no responsibility. no man and no community can serve two masters. when the point of conflict arises men and nations have to make the choice where their duty lies. not the representatives of great britain on the international concert, but the people of great britain themselves would have to decide whether their real allegiance, as citizens, was due to the world-state or to their own commonwealth: they would find themselves at the same awful parting of the ways which confronted the people of the southern states in 1861. when at the outbreak of the civil war general lee was offered by lincoln the commandership of the northern armies and refused it, to become the commander-in-chief on the side of the south, he did so because "he believed," as he told congress after the war, "that the act of virginia in withdrawing herself from the united states carried him along with it as a citizen of virginia, and that _her_ laws and acts were binding on him." in other words, unless the proposed common council is to be made something more than a council of the delegates of sovereign states (as the southern states believed themselves to be till 1861), a deadlock sooner or later is almost inevitable, and the terrible and difficult question--so familiar to americans and recently to ourselves on the smaller stage of ulster--of the right of secession and the coercion of minorities will arise. but if the common council is framed in accordance with a constitution which binds its representatives to accept its decisions and obey its government, then the world-state, with a world-executive, will already have come into being. there will be no more war, but only rebellion and treason. such is the real meaning of proposals to give a binding sanction to the decisions of an inter-state concert. anything short of this--treaties and arbitration-agreements based upon inter-state arrangements without any executive to enforce them--may give relief for a time and pave the way for further progress, but can in itself provide no permanent security, no satisfactory justification for the neglect of defensive measures by the various sovereign governments on behalf of their peoples. mr. bryan, for the united states, has within the last eighteen months concluded twenty-six general arbitration treaties with different governments, and may yet succeed in his ambition of signing treaties with all the remainder. yet no one imagines that, when the immunity of the united states from attack is guaranteed by the promise of every government in the world, america will rely for her defence upon those promises alone. in discussing proposals for a european council, then, we must be quite sure to face all that it means. but let us not reject professor murray's suggestion off-hand because of its inherent difficulties: for that men should be discussing such schemes at all marks a significant advance in our political thought. only let us be quite clear as to what they presuppose. they presuppose the supremacy, in the collective mind of civilised mankind, of law over force, a definite supremacy of what may be called the civilian as against the military ideal, not in a majority of states, but in every state powerful enough to defy coercion. they presuppose a world map definitely settled on lines satisfactory to the national aspirations of the peoples. they presuppose a _status quo_ which is not simply maintained, like that after 1815, because it is a legal fact and its disturbance would be inconvenient to the existing rulers, but because it is inherently equitable.[1] they presuppose a similar democratic basis of citizenship and representation among the component states. they presuppose, lastly, an educated public opinion incomparably less selfish, less ignorant, less unsteady, less materialistic, and less narrowly national than has been prevalent hitherto. let us work and hope for these things: let us use our best efforts to remove misunderstandings and promote a sense of common responsibilities and common trusteeship for civilisation between the peoples of all the various sovereign states; but meanwhile let us work also, with better hopes of immediate if less ambitious successes, along the other parallel road of advance. [footnote 1: the same applies to proposals for ensuring permanent peace in the industrial sphere. neither capital nor labour will abide by "scraps of paper" if they do not feel the _status quo (i.e._ the conditions under which wage-contracts are made) to be equitable and inherently just.] the other road may seem, in this hour of dreams and disaster, of extremes of hope and disillusionment, a long and tedious track: it is the old slow high road of civilisation, not the short cut across the fields. it looks forward to abiding results, not through the mechanical co-operation of governments, but through the growth of an organic citizenship, through the education of the nations themselves to a sense of common duty and a common life. it looks forward, not to the definite establishment, in our day, of the world-state, but only to the definite refutation of the wicked theory of the mutual incompatibility of nations. it looks forward to the expression in the outward order of the world's government of what we may call "the principle of the commonwealth," of lord acton's great principle of the state composed of free nations, of the state as a living body which lives through the organic union and free activity of its several national members. and it finds its immediate field of action in the deepening and extension of the obligations of citizenship among the peoples of the great, free, just, peace-loving, supra-national commonwealths whose patriotism has been built up, not by precept and doctrine, but on a firm foundation of older loyalties. the principle of the commonwealth is not a european principle: it is a world-principle. it does not proceed upon the expectation of a united states of europe; for all the great powers of europe except austria-hungary (and some of the smaller, such as holland, belgium, and portugal) are extra-european powers also. indeed if we contract our view, with gladstone and bismarck and the statesmen of the last generation, to european issues alone, we shall be ignoring the chief political problem of our age--the contact of races and nations with wide varieties of social experience and at different levels of civilisation. it is this great and insistent problem (call it the problem of east and west, or the problem of the colour-line) in all its difficult ramifications, political, social, and, above all, economic, which makes the development of the principle of the commonwealth the most pressing political need of our age. for the problems arising out of the contact of races and nations can never be adjusted either by the wise action of individuals or by conflict and warfare; they can only be solved by fair and deliberate statesmanship within the bosom of a single state, through the recognition by both parties of a higher claim than their own sectional interest--the claim of a common citizenship and the interest of civilisation.[1] it is here, in the union and collaboration of diverse races and peoples, that the principle of the commonwealth finds its peculiar field of operation. without this principle, and without its expression, however imperfect, in the british empire, the world would be in chaos to-day. [footnote 1: the most recent example of this is the settlement of the very difficult dispute between india and south africa.] we cannot predict the political development of the various great powers who between them control the destinies of civilisation. we cannot estimate the degree or the manner in which france, freed at last from nearer preoccupations, will seek to embody in her vast dominion the great civilising principles for which her republic stands. we cannot foretell the issue of the conflict of ideas which has swayed to and fro in russia between the british and the prussian method of dealing with the problem of nationality. germany, italy, japan--here, too, we are faced by enigmas. one other great commonwealth remains besides the british. upon the united states already lies the responsibility, voluntarily assumed and, except during a time of internal crisis,[1] successfully discharged, of securing peace from external foes for scores of millions of inhabitants of the american continent. yet with the progress of events her responsibilities must yearly enlarge: for both the immigrant nationalities within and the world-problems without her borders seem to summon her to a deeper education and to wider obligations. [footnote 1: french occupation of mexico, 1862, during the american civil war, when the monroe doctrine was temporarily in abeyance.] but upon the vast, ramifying, and inchoate commonwealth of great britain lies the heaviest responsibility. it is a task unequally shared between those of her citizens who are capable of discharging it. her task within the commonwealth is to maintain the common character and ideals and to adjust the mutual relations of one quarter of the human race. her task without is to throw her weight into the scales of peace, and to uphold and develop the standard and validity of inter-state agreements. it is a task which requires, even at this time of crisis, when, by the common sentiment of her citizens, the real nature and purpose of the commonwealth have become clear to us, the active thoughts of all political students. for to bring home to all within her borders who bear rule and responsibility, from the village headman in india and nigeria, the basutu chief and the south sea potentate, to the public opinion of great britain and the self-governing dominions, the nature of the british commonwealth, and the character of its citizenship and ideals, and to study how those ideals may be better expressed in its working institutions and executive government--that is a task to which the present crisis beckons the minds of british citizens, a task which britain owes not only to herself but to mankind. _note_.--a friendly critic who saw this chapter in ms. remarked: "i think the author has been very successful in ignoring some of the shady methods by which the british empire has been extended." the criticism is not strictly relevant to the subject of the chapter, but as it may occur to other readers it may be well to deal with it in a brief note. i would answer: (1) the "shady methods" of which he speaks were not the result of british imperialism, or of a desire for conquest on the part of the british state. they were the result, melancholy but inevitable, of the contact of individuals and races at different levels of development. this contact between the stronger and the weaker (which can be illustrated from what is said about the sandalwood traders in the new hebrides on p. 215 above) was the direct result of the explorations of the sixteenth century, which threw the seas of the world open to western pioneers and traders. the extension of the authority of western _governments_ (spanish, portuguese, dutch, french, and british), and the collisions between them, followed inevitably on the activities of their citizens, as has been pointed out on p. 216 above. all the western governments have made mistakes in dealing with this unfamiliar situation; but the wise course for democratic public opinion, instead of railing at "imperialism," would seem to be to familiarise itself with its problems and control its injurious tendencies. (2) in any case, the mistakes of the past do not entitle us to wash our hands of responsibilities in the present. this war has shown that the non-self-governing parts of the commonwealth are not, as our enemies supposed, a weakness to great britain in time of trouble, but a strength. in other words, whatever may have happened in the past, great britain has now won the consent of the ruled to the fact--not necessarily to the methods--of british rule. to use what is doubtless unduly constitutional language, we are now faced in india and elsewhere, not with a revolutionary movement, but with an opposition. that is a great incentive to further development. books the philosophy of violence bernhardi, _germany and the next war_ (2s.), has become familiar. but this is only one _application_ of a doctrine which has found expression in many spheres, as, for example, in the writings of the french syndicalists, who claim to be copying the _methods_ of capitalism, and the _principles_ of bergson's philosophy--with what justification must be left to the reader to determine. see g. sorel, _reflexions sur la violence_ (paris, marcel riviã¨re, 1910, 5 francs), and sorel's other writings. "bernhardi-ism" is, in fact, not a german product: it has been before the public for some years under the name of "militancy," in connection with various causes, though it has never been put into execution on so tremendous a scale as by the prussian government. nor is its philosophical basis to be found only, if at all, in nietzsche. kultur the insistence on "culture" as the main factor in the life and development of peoples is to be found in practically every german history, and in a great many non-german writers. it has received an additional vogue from the development of the study of _sociology_, which naturally seeks out, in tracing the development of societies in the past, the elements which lend themselves to measurement and description, and these are inevitably, from the nature of the evidence, rather "cultural" than moral. it would be invidious to mention instances. education for dr. sadler's articles see p. 119, above. see also paulsen, _german education: past and present._ 1908. 5s. net. the principle of the commonwealth the best philosophical book on the relations of advanced and backward races is _the basis of ascendancy: a discussion of certain principles of public policy involved in the development of the southern states,_ by edgar gardner murphy (a clergyman living at montgomery, alabama) (1909, 6s. net). though written with reference to the peculiar american problem, the book has a far wider significance. there is no good book which covers the ground either on india or the british empire. e.r. bevan's little volume on _indian nationalism_ (2s. 6d. net) may be mentioned. an article on _india and the empire_ in the _round table_ for september 1912 is also worth mention (and worth reprinting). the great society wallas, _the great society_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), and norman angell, _the great illusion_ (1910, 2s. 6d. net), are the standard works--the former as a psychologist and a philosopher, the latter as a pamphleteer with a very acute vision within a limited field. international law see lindsay, _the war against war_ (oxford pamphlets, 2d.), a model of clear argument, so far as it goes. also alison phillips, _the confederation of europe: a study of the european alliance, 1813-1823, as an experiment in the international organisation of peace,_ (1914, 7s. 6d. net), the best book on the congress of vienna and the problems connected with it, especially on the subject of an international tribunal and universal peace. the prime minister's speeches will be familiar. see also mr. roosevelt's pamphlet on the united states and the hague convention (newnes, 2d.). monroe doctrine see an article by l.s. rowe in the _political quarterly,_ october 1914. index accepting houses acton, lord adalia adrianople adriatic, serb access to aegean aehrenthal, count agadir crisis agram agriculture, german albania albion, perfidious alexander i., tsar alexander ii. alexander iii. alexander, king of serbia alexandretta alsace-lorraine american jews angell, mr. norman antivari arab movement armaments army, austro-hungarian arnold, matthew asia minor asquith, mr. athenians auffenberg, general australia austria, genesis of austrian note to serbia austrian question azev baden balance of power balkan league situation wars ballads, serb ballplatz banat of temesvã¡r bank of england baring, maurice bebel, august belgium belgrade berchtold, count berlin, congress of bernhardi, general bessarabia bethmann-hollveg bismarck bobrikoff, general bohemia bojana river bosnia bosnian annexation brandenburg britain, aims of britain and germany brunswick brussa bucarest, treaty of budapest bukovina bulgaria bã¼low, prince bund, jewish byzantium cabrinovic canadian trade carbonari carinthia carlyle carniola castlereagh catherine ii. catholic church cattaro cavour centre party cetinje charlemagne charles albert charles v. charles the bold charles, king of roumania cilicia civil war, american coalition, serbo-croat cobden coleridge colonies, german comenius committee of union and progress commonwealth, a european concert of europe conscription constantine, king constantinople constitution, german consular service cotton industry cramb, professor credit crimean war croatia culture cuvaj cyprus czechs dalmatia danzig dardanelles debreczen delegations democracy denmark diplomatic service disraeli dmowski, m. dobrudja dostoieffsky downing street draga, queen dual system duma dvorã¡k economic policy education enver pasha epirus eucken, rudolf eugene, prince europe, map of federalism in austria fã©nelon ferdinand, king of bulgaria fichte _finance, haute_ finland flemings flensburg florence foreign office foreign policy forgã¡ch, count fã¶rstner, lieutenant von francis ferdinand, archduke assassination, francis joseph frankfurt, diet of frederick iii. frederick the great _fremdenblatt_, article french revolution constitution friedjung trial galicia garibaldi german confederation germanisation german navy germans in austria goethe gogol gold reserve gore, bishop graham, stephen greece grey, sir edward grosswardein habsburg, house of haeckel hague congress conventions hanotaux, gabriel hanover hanseatic league harnack harvey, t.e. hauptmann, gerhart heine hermannstadt herzl, theodor hohenzollern, house of holland holy alliance synod humboldt, wilhelm von hungarian constitution electoral system hungary, kingdom of hurban, svetozar hus, john ibsen industry and war inter-state law ionian islands ipek ireland irredentism, italian islam istria, italian culture in dalmatia italy ivan the terrible izvolsky jena, battle of jerusalem jews joseph ii. jugoslavia junkers kara george karageorgevitch dynasty karlowitz kavala kennard, dr. khalifate kiel canal konieh kã¶niggrã¤tz kã¶nigsberg konrad von hoetzendorf kosovo, battle of kossuth kosziusko _landmarks_ lebanon legitimacy leipzig, battle of leopold i., emperor leopold ii leopold i. of belgium lessing lloyd george, mr. lodz louis xiv. luxemburg macara, sir charles macedonia magyarisation magyars maria theresa marienburg marx, karl masaryk, professor maximilian i mazurian lakes mazzini metkovic metternich metz michael, prince milan, king militarism military frontiers mill, _on liberty_ milosh obrenovitch mohã¡cs moltke monastir montenegro moscow murray, gilbert napoleon napoleon iii. napoleonic wars nationalities, hungarian law of nationality, idea of false conceptions of nazim pasha nemanja dynasty neusatz (novi sad) new guinea nicholas ii. nicholas, grand duke nietzsche nihilism norway novara obrenovitch dynasty orthodox church palermo palestine pan-germans panslavism peter the great peter, king of serbia petrograd piedmont pig war pius ix. plevna pobiedonostsev pola poland poles, austrian prussian police state polish partition ponsonby, mr. a. posen prague princip, murderer protestantism in germany prussia prussian education pushkin radicalism radkersburg ragusa ramsay macdonald, mr. reichstag, german relief fund, national revolution, french of 1848 russian reynolds, rothay rhodes rolland, romain roosevelt, president roumania roumanians of hungary rousseau russia and prussia russian church russification russo-japanese war ruthenes sadler, dr. salonica samoa sarajevo sarolea, dr. savoy, house of saxons in transylvania schleswig-holstein school strikes schurz, carl scotland scott serbia serbo-croat unity serb patriarchate sicilies, two silesia silistria slav and teuton slavophilism slavs of austria slovak academy slovaks slovenes smyrna social effects of war socialism, state socialists, german sombart, professor southern slavs state aid stephen dushan stock exchange stolypin sugar commission sweden swinburne switzerland sybel syria szekels teutonic knights tirol tisza, count tomanovic, dr. trade effects of war traders, south sea trade unions and war transylvania treitschke trentino trieste triple alliance entente tripoli tschirschky turkification turks ukraine ulster unemployment ungvã¡r uniate church universal suffrage valona vardar valley vatican venice victor emanuel ii. vienna congress of violence, philosophy of virginia vistula voltaire wallas, graham walloons warsaw, grand-duchy of weimar wells, h.g. westphalia wied, william of wilamowitz-moellendorff william i. william ii. william i. of holland w.e.a. world-policy, german wordsworth wã¼rtemberg young turks zabern zionism zollverein zvonomir the end 