for the conquest, first, of the means to live, and, second, of a preferred economic position in the world.
Such is the business of war, and it is the oldest business in the world. It is aided by patriotism, prejudice, uncharitableness and a whole calendar of ugly tribal virtues, which enjoin us to love the means by which we get and hate the men from whom we take. It is aided by racial scorn, a thing as deep as life, yet subject on the whole to that more impelling factor, economic motive. The history of war and peace is a history of the overriding of sentimental considerations by imperious economic needs. During the Revolutionary War, no love was lost between the rigid, race-conscious Englishman and the despised red-skin, yet both joined hands to scalp Americans in the lonely settlements along our frontier. To-day German and Turk, Italian and Russian, Frenchman and Senegambian, Briton and Japanese, love each other at least temporarily because pursuing like interests. Not that the influence of race and nationality upon those mutual repulsions which lead to war can be brushed aside in a paragraph. They are potent, modifying factors, with a certain independence of action, and serving, with regard to economic motives, as accelerators, intensifiers or, to change the illustrations, as containers. Yet it is no great exaggeration to say that no racial antagonism can wholly sunder allies joined by a vital economic bond, and no racial sympathy firmly unite nations who want one indivisible thing. The "Anglo-Saxon cousins" now live in concord, but not solely because they are Anglo-Saxons. As for religious differences, which have in the past so often exacerbated the war spirit, this influence is less than appears. Even the godly live on bread and butter. The Protestant princes of the Reformation hated the Scarlet Woman because of the Real Presence, but they also hated her because of the golden stream that flowed from Germany to Rome. The English Reformation had less to do with Mistress Anne Boleyn than with the wealth of the monasteries. Especially among modern industrial nations, with their increasing theological apathy, are religious differences of relatively small importance in determining wars. It is the economic motive which tells.2
Considering all these facts of history, so hastily reviewed, considering that in practically all countries and at all times economic impulses have tended to push men into war, is the conclusion forced upon us that we shall have war so long as we have economic desires, and that in the future mankind will continue to drag itself along a blood-stained path? Can we change in human nature that desire for material things, which has always been the great survival virtue of the race?
To many men the answer points to perpetual war. They believe that nations will fight so long as they are hungry, and they will always be hungry. War and birth are the twin immortals; there will always be more babies than can be fed and there will always be war. As well preach against death as against war, since the peaceful, abstaining nations are doomed to extinction and the war-like nations survive and determine the character of humanity. The meek nations do not inherit the earth. They go down in the ceaseless struggle between the living and the dying peoples.
During the last one hundred and fifty years, however, a more optimistic conviction has struggled for expression. The Industrial Revolution has enormously increased the wealth of the world, and has enabled over-populated industrial countries to secure their food from agricultural lands thousands of miles away. There has grown up a vast complementary trade between old and new countries, and even competing manufacturing nations find it profitable to trade with one other. The hope has therefore arisen that perhaps this war-breeding, economic motive may hereafter lead to peace and away from war. Admitted that peoples once had to fight, may it not in this New World of industry be "good business" to live and let live, to agree with your competitor, to trade amicably? May not the industrial transformations, undreamed of in past centuries, permit a world-population to live off its labour, immune from the necessity of killing? Have we not here an alternative to war?
The doctrine is that of laissez-faire, untrammelled competition, free trade. From Adam Smith down to the present day, it has been preached to us that each man's enlightened selfishness, unguided and unimpeded, will work out to the welfare of each society and to peace between all societies. The interests of nations in trade is held to be reciprocal. Buyer and seller both gain, so that England cannot prosper unless Germany prospers, and England cannot suffer without Germany suffering. You need not fight for commerce. Trade does not follow the flag but the line of greatest mutual advantage, as was shown, it is claimed, when Britain after losing political control of America doubled her commerce with America. It does not pay to fight for colonies, since colonials if left alone will buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. With nothing to fight for, peace and prosperity will come with free trade, which the nations will adopt as soon as they perceive their own interests. There is no economic reason for warfare, which like other superstitions will vanish as men emerge from the darkness of ignorance.
It is a pacifying theory, and yet something seems wrong with it. The optimistic forecasts have been belied; the nations have not acclaimed free trade, but rear tariff walls higher than ever. Nor do the nations abjure colonial expansion, but fight for colonies and "spheres of influence" and lands for "peaceful penetration," as tribes once fought for pastures, and cities for trade-routes. The national spirit, instead of succumbing to an era of peaceful individualism and cosmopolitanism, is stronger and more embittered than ever. Armaments pile up. Colonial disputes become more acrid, international jealousies more acute, until in the end we are cast into the pit of the long-dreaded World War. We do not know that this is the last World War. We are not sure that the same inveterate, millennium-old struggle for food, the same bitter "business" which has always meant war, is yet finished and done for.
Even if war does not cease, however, may we not at least be exempt from the scourge on this safe side of the broad Atlantic? Though it rains outside, may we not keep dry beneath our big umbrella? We Americans are accustomed to think of ourselves as a peace-loving, unaggressive people, envying no nation its dominion or wealth, and incurring the enmity of no nation. Let the peoples of Europe destroy themselves in ceaseless, insane conflicts, but let us, by keeping to our side of the ocean, save ourselves from slaughter as Lot was saved from the fate of Gomorrah.
It is not a noble caution that thus disregards the fate of the world and seeks only the national safety. Nor is it in truth a wise caution. Those who are too circumspect incur the greatest danger, and those who trust to their own unoffending reckon on a doubtful factor. Why should we alone, among the nations be exempt from economic forces, which drive peace-loving nations into war? Have we by our rapid expansion, to say nothing of our Monroe declaration and other pretensions, failed to give offence in a world, in which mere having is aggression and mere growing a menace? Has our peace in the past been due to our own meekness and unaggressiveness, or has it been the gift of a fortunate economic condition, which may pass? Before we rely upon the continuance of a peace of mere isolation, we shall do well to inquire into the economic conditions which so long gave us peace.
CHAPTER III
PEACE WITHOUT EFFORT
To the average American of a few years ago the maintenance of peace seemed as natural and easy as breathing. Except for our brief and episodical conflict with Spain we had had no war with a European Power for a hundred years and we saw no reason why we should go to war in any of the coming centuries. Peace was merely an abstention from war, a not doing something, which we had no desire to do. We had no reason to provoke war, no foreign nation had a legitimate grievance against us. In any case we were inherently different from Europe. We were peaceful while Europe was war-like. So long as we tended to our own affairs–and that was our intention—peace was assured.
Believing thus in our intrinsic peacefulness, it was in no spirit of humility that we met the outbreak of the Great War. We did not put ourselves in the place of the fighting nations, and acknowledge that in their circumstances we too might have been struggling in the dust. Rather we boasted of our restraining democracy, and of our perfect co-operative union, which protected us from the European anarchy. We, a people unassailed, talked loudly of our superior merit, and, as we looked over the broad oceans and saw no enemy, thanked God that He had not made us as other nations. Our compassion for the peoples of Europe was tinged
For a sketch of the economic influences bearing upon war, see the brilliant essay of Prof. Edward Van Dyke Robinson, "War and Economics in History and Theory,"
