There are two ways of regarding war. One way is to hold that it has always been and will always be necessary. It may be an evil, but it is a necessary evil. The other way is to deny altogether its necessity. Perhaps it need never have been; now, at any rate, it need not be, and it need never be again. We shall first of all see what is to be said for the belief that war is inevitable.
The supporters of the doctrine that wars are inevitable may be divided into those who hold that war is an evil, though one that cannot be avoided, and those who, like General von Bernhardi and some writers and preachers in this country, do not want to abolish war. Such persons as the latter must not be confused with those who hold that in certain circumstances war is desirable. Most of us might agree to that but deplore the circumstances which called for war. General von Bernhardi thinks that it would be a catastrophe to mankind if war were abolished; he believes that the natural relations of nations to one another are enmity and competition, which, unlike the envy and competition of individuals, have no higher power to control them, and thinks that such enmity and competition are good in themselves.
1. The question whether war is in itself a good thing need hardly be discussed. It has plausibility only when war is identified with any kind of competition or struggle and justified on biological grounds. A moment’s consideration will show that the growth of civilization and peace has not eliminated struggle and competition, but changed their nature. Progress consists largely in raising the terms on which competition is carried on and the qualities in which men compete, and in the higher forms of competition co-operation plays a greater and greater part, and the success of one competitor means less and less the death or ruin of the other. We think it a good thing that there should be rivalry between German and. French and English culture, and that the best should prevail; but we think that it ought to prevail because it is the best culture, not because those who have made it happen to be more ruthless in war or less scrupulous about treaties than are others.
Now though there may be much that is ignoble as well as much that is noble in the rivalry and competition of peace, no one would deny that the life of a modern nation at peace is better than it would be in a state of internecine strife. No one can disagree with Hobbes’s famous description of a time of war where every man’s hand is against his neighbour’s: “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
The most inspiriting facts in modern war, the common devotion and patriotism of a whole nation, are possible only because that nation has been at peace with itself. If it fights to defend its culture, that culture is possible only through peace; for in war, as Thucydides said, we lose that “margin of everyday life” in which culture can flourish. There is no sense in defending war as a good thing in itself. Even General von Bernhardi does not desire war between the component parts of Germany. All Germans would agree that the united Germany of the end of the nineteenth century is preferable to the Germany of the Thirty Years’ War.
A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive, and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorising this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in regard to Nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The “fittest” does not mean the strongest.” The causes of survival under Natural Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive in the struggle, because of their modesty and suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away, and the mighty perish by hunger. [Note: Ray Lankester, The Kingdom of Man, 7.]
The struggle for existence neither in the human nor in the animal kingdom has anything to do with war. When it is said that a certain species was victorious in the struggle for existence, this does not at all mean that it had overcome any enemies in direct encounters or real battles. It simply means that sufficient adaptation to external environment enabled the species in question to survive and to multiply—which all do not equally succeed in doing. In the struggle for existence mammoths in Siberia disappeared and martens were victorious. But this does not mean, of course, that martens were braver than mammoths and exterminated the latter in open fight with the help of their teeth and paws. In a similar way the Jewish nation, which is comparatively small and was disarmed long ago, has proved to be unconquerable in the struggle for existence, whilst many centuries of military successes did not save from downfall the huge Roman Empire, as well as other warlike states that had preceded it. [Note: V. Solovyof, The Justification of the Good, 388]
2. For the most part men admit that war is an evil, yet they hold that it is a necessity.
(1) To begin with the most fundamental argument: War is inevitable because man is a fighting animal. The state of war is natural to him. Ancient nations were more often at war than at peace. The Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, lived in an almost uninterrupted state of warfare; and probably every former condition of mankind, even the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century, the first fifteen years of this (not to speak of civil strife), would in this respect appear intolerable to us. In all ages and countries, almost up to our own day, such has been the history of mankind.
That within the human breast there has always lived and still lives the spirit of battle is best shown by the powerful appeal Art made and still makes to man, whether through the effect of “trumpets loud and clarions” or the sight of Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire,” or the splendour of Milton’s language describing the desperate struggle of the Arch-foe with Michael and his legions. Sculptors, painters, poets and musicians have derived their finest inspirations from the subject of war. The fine battle-reliefs of Bertoldo di Giovanni and Michael Angelo fascinate our eyes as much as the paintings by Stanfield and Caton Woodville, by Meissonier, Chantilly and Vernet; Tschaikowsky’s “1812,” the quaint music of a passing military band playing “The Campbells are Coming,” throw over us a magic spell more powerful than that of the sirens. Even “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary” had its charms.
But more than all the other artists together have the poets and writers given expression to the fact that the very essence of life and existence is contest and strife. Next to Love, War has been their favourite theme.
According to the poets, war was in the beginning, and war was with gods and with men. Uranus, the first ruler of the world, was defeated and deposed by his sons, the mighty Titans They raised Cronus to the throne. He and the ruling Titans, however, were in turn crushed, after a fierce contest that lasted ten years, by his son Zeus, assisted by the Cyclopes. Nor was the reign of Zeus to be a peaceful one. There arose against him Prometheus who said:
“I know naught poorer
Under the sun, than ye gods
Ye nourish painfully,
With sacrifices
And votive prayers
Your majesty ;
Ye would e’en starve
If children and beggars
Were not trusting fools.
Here sit I, framing mortals
After my image ;
A race resembling me,
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy, to be glad,
And thee to scorn
As I!”
The literature of Greece and Rome is one vast storehouse of evidence that to live means to fight. Is not the Iliad just one big record of magnificent battles? Are not Achilles and Hector the idols of our youth? All Olympus joyfully participates in the struggle; men hurl the spears but the gods direct the blows, and Homer is the first poet who tells us: “A glorious death is his who for his country falls!” Never was a poet so highly honoured as Tyrtaeus who, more than two thousand five hundred years ago, stimulated the courage of the Spartans in their conflict with the Messenians when he sang:
“On him shall fame, shall endless glory wait,
Him future ages crown with just applause,
Who boldly daring in the field of fate
Falls a pure victim in his country’s cause.” [Note: M. A. Mugge, The Parliament of Man, 41.]
I had the opportunity, in crossing the Atlantic in the spring of 1910, of securing a personal impression of Lord Kitchener, who was at the time on his way to London after an absence from England of seven years. The General gave me one evening the benefit of a talk all to myself on the essential importance and value of war for the development and maintenance of character and manliness in the individual and in the community. He could conceive of no power or factor that could replace war as an influence to preserve man from degeneracy. He did not lose sight of the miseries and the suffering resulting from war, but he believed that the loss to mankind would be far greater from the “rottenness” of a long peace. Speaking from recent experience, he pointed out that the princes and “gentle” classes of India who considered war as the only possible occupation (with the exception of hunting) for gentlemen, found their chief grievance against British rule in the fact that it prevented fighting throughout the Peninsula. Kitchener agreed with the Indian princes in the belief that they and their noble subjects were decaying in character under the enforced idleness of the pax Britannica, and he sympathized keenly with their princely ‘grievance. I suggested to the General that during the periods in which Europe had accepted most thoroughly the domination of the soldier class and the influence of the military ideal, as for instance during the Thirty Years’ War, there had been no satisfactory development of nobility of character. He admitted this objection as pertinent, but contended that war could be carried on with methods and with standards that would preserve it as an instrument of civilization. I asked whether it would be a good thing for India if the British force, once every ten years or so, should establish a “ring fence” within which the princes might, for the purpose of keeping themselves in condition, carry on a little fighting with their own followers, a kind of twentieth-century tournament. “I could hardly take the responsibility, Major,” he replied, “of formally recommending such a plan, but I am convinced that it would have many advantages.” [Note: G. H. Putnam, Memories of a Publisher, 271.]
Man is a fighting animal, ‘tis said,
And war an instinct planted in his soul ;
Cupidity and lust in him are bred,
And passion that can never brook control :
But is he so irrational a thing?
So mere a brute, so void of sense and thought?
Then, Nature! to an end his story bring,
And let no trace remain of all he wrought !
Let the brute meet the fortune of the brute,
And perish by the hunter’s vengeful hand,
If man must still in man seek his pursuit
And prey, and glory in the murderer’s brand:
Who knows not how his passions to control
Is brute in nature, with a devil’s soul! [Note: Bertram Dobell.]
(2) Nations must work their own destiny, and in doing so come inevitably into conflict. States are like living organisms. They grow and expand. And since there is not room for them all to expand indefinitely, they necessarily come into antagonism and war. This kind of fatalism is the stock-in-trade of the champion of war. Here is a characteristic example from Germany: “So long as England exists as a World Power, she will and must see in a strong Germany her foe to death. . . . The war between her and us is not confined to such narrow geographical limits as the war between France and Germany. It turns upon the mastery of the seas, and the priceless values bound up with that, and a co-existence of the two States, of which many Utopians dream, is ruled out as definitely as was the co-existence of Rome and Carthage. The antagonism between England and Germany will therefore remain until one of them is finally brought to the ground.”
This talk about national destiny is usually nonsense. It implies that nations have no intelligent control over their actions. It is commonly only a hypocritical way of excusing actions for which there is no decent excuse. It is true that the outcome of national actions depends upon the joint effect of a large number of factors, which cannot all be known to the statesman who commits the nation to action, and that therefore a statesman has much less power of anticipating accurately the outcome of actions than has a man who is acting for himself in ordinary life. That, however, does not acquit him or the nation which follows him of responsibility for his deliberate actions: rather it increases that responsibility.
There can be no sense in saying that men must make war on each other, as though that were a fundamental element in their nature. For as we look back in history we can see how within the area now occupied by any of the great nations, continual internecine strife has given place to settled and orderly government. It is true that we have not made civil war absolutely impossible.
Orderly and constitutional government demands of a people a certain mutual forbearance and respect for mutual rights in which under stress of circumstances they may fail. Nevertheless no one would say that if we determined so to act that our children should never suffer the horrors of civil war, we were following an illusory ideal. Rather we feel that, thanks to the political good sense of our ancestors, that ideal is already practically realized and we are the children who are benefiting by it.
If towns and districts which once lived in a state of war with one another can, without giving up their local individuality, unite to form one nation under orderly and peaceable government, why cannot nations in turn give up war among themselves? Why should the relations between men of different nations be different from those between the men who now form one nation? These are the questions which those who disbelieve in the possibility of putting an end to war have got to answer. [Note: A. D. Lindsay, in Oxford Pamphlets.]
(3) One argument more may be mentioned. It is best expressed by Professor Cramb: “If we were to examine the motives, impulses, or ideals embodied in the great conflicts of world-history, the question whether war be a necessary evil, an infliction to which humanity must resign itself, would be seen to emerge in another shape—whether war be an evil at all; whether in the life-history of a State it be not an attestation of the self-devotion of that State to the supreme end of its being, even of its power of consecration to the Highest Good?
“Every great war known to history resolves itself ultimately into the conflict of two ideals. The Cavalier fights in triumph or defeat in a cause not less exalted than that of the Puritan, and Salamis acquires a profounder significance when considered, not from the standpoint of Athens and Themistocles merely, but from the camp of Xerxes, and the ruins of the mighty designs of Cyrus and Hystaspes, an incident which AEschylus found tragic enough to form a theme for one of his loftiest trilogies. The wars against Pisa and Venice light with intermittent gleams the else sordid annals of Genoa; and through the grandeur and ferocity of a century of war Rome moves to world-empire, and Carthage to a death which throws a lustre over her history, making its least details memorable, investing its merchants with an interest beyond that of princes, and bequeathing to mankind the names of Hamilcar and Hannibal as a strong argument of man’s greatness if all other records were to perish. Qui habet terram habet bellum is but a half-truth. No war was ever waged for material ends only. Territory is a trophy of battle, but the origin of war is rooted in the character, the political genius, the imagination of the race.” [Note: J. A. Cramb, Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain, 113.]
This is called by Mr. F. R. Barry “the mystical beauty of War for its own sake.” He says: “The loathsomeness of the present experience has cured us of that. The best-known English exponent was the late Professor Cramb.”
(4) There is one thing more. It is not an argument; it is a sentiment, and it is all the more powerful on that account. The word “glory” has not yet lost its glamour.
For over four months the Germans fought with their full available strength to capture Verdun. In the first rush they seized Fort Douaumont—a hill; after three more months of ferocious fighting, every inch of the ground being contested, they managed to cross the four hundred yards which separated them from Fort Vaux and entered it—today they lie in or behind the marshland to the north-east again, and the fort is cheerily occupied by a few French soldiers. And now from every French soldier there irradiates the sense of a national glory. Even that tattered, magnificent, and rather ridiculous relic of human courage makes the blood rush quicker through the veins; for that, men fought as perhaps never before in history, for that crumbled piece of masonry and concrete which represented, and today is, the heart of France. It lives. Today it is the emblem of France, he pride, they will tell you, her justification. Why? On ne sait pas. The soldiers laugh, but they adore every stone of it. They touch it with the fingers of a caress. Close by, the Germans watch it, shell it, and no doubt daily curse it. All around it the dead in their thousands sleep. At times the enemy fire furiously upon the ruin. You approach it by night, for the crest is exposed to fire by day. “Voila,” the guide explains, “that is Vaux, which we took back from the Germans.”
There is a valley in the North-east of Italy walled in by great towering mountain ranges, whose peaks are often hidden in the soft fleecy clouds that seem to fall from heaven like waves of eiderdown. The peasants call it the path of blood. It is the road where once the mighty trod in the mad march in search of fame, the fame that is won by the butcher’s steel in the shambles of the world. Along that thread of space, history lies graven in characters that will live as long as man endures. There Alaric and his yellow-haired Goths had stormed along with steel—dripping blades glued in their scabbards, and dinted shields slung at their backs, with rape, pillage and murder blazoned on their uncouth banners. That little ribbon of a road upon which I gaze down as an eagle gazes from its eyrie had trembled to the thunder of their tread, and Alaric’s name had rung from bearded lips until the mountains all around me had flung the echo of his dreaded name afar, whilst ravished matrons and deflowered damsels, crouching in misery by dead men’s bodies amid the ashes of what had once been homes, sobbed curses on the name the echoes flaunted forth so proudly. Well may the peasants call it the path of blood, for every stone and sod and hoary shingle along its length could tell of slayings by the myriad, had the inanimate things been given tongues. Along that accursed highway Hannibal in all his power and pomp and pride had rolled like thunder, to sow the fairest fields of Europe with human skulls, and leave red ruin and smoking cities and fair fields trampled flat as the monuments of his march. As I gaze down from my high place and note how rampart on rampart the great mountains wall that valley in, I seem to see the ghosts of armies of outraged women and shambled children and famine-destroyed peasants and artisans, thronging every inch of space between the rock-ribbed ramparts, and the winds that sob and sigh from cleft to crag are filled with wailings and cursings and gnashing of teeth against the bloody fetich which men call glorious war. Glorious war—hell never coined a fouler phrase, nor devils mouthed it. [Note: A. G. Halos, Where Angels Fear to Tread, 51.]
