are his compatriots or not.6
The pacifist argument on the economic futility of national ambitions will commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedly as need be that national ambition and all its works belong of right under that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put out of the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. So with the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, rather than to be exorcised.
As has been remarked above, in the course of time and change the advance of the industrial arts and of the institutions of ownership have taken such a turn that the working system of industry and business no longer runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of national frontiers,—except in so far as the national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings of trade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient working of the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is therefore detrimental to the material interests of the common citizen. But the case is not the same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is a competitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the traders engaged in any given line of business to extend their own markets and to exclude competing traders. Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly is necessarily the aim of every trader. And the national organisation is of service to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far as it furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as against their competitors, whether at home or abroad. The gain that so comes to the nation's traders from any preferential advantage afforded them by national regulations, or from any discrimination against traders of foreign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It is of no benefit to any of their compatriots; since there is no community of usufruct that touches these gains of the traders. So far as concerns his material advantage, it is an idle matter to the common citizen whether he deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens; both alike will aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will charge him "what the traffic will bear." Nor does it matter to him whether the gains of this trade go to aliens or to his compatriots; in either case equally they immediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally removed from any touch of joint interest on his part. Being private property, under modern law and custom he has no use of them, whether a national frontier does or does not intervene between his domicile and that of their owner.
These are facts that every man of sound mind knows and acts on without doubt or hesitation in his own workday affairs. He would scarcely even find amusement in so futile a proposal as that his neighbor should share his business profits with him for no better reason than that he is a compatriot. But when the matter is presented as a proposition in national policy and embroidered with an invocation of his patriotic loyalty the common citizen will commonly be found credulous enough to accept the sophistry without abatement. His archaic sense of group solidarity will still lead him at his own cost to favor his trading compatriots by the imposition of onerous trade regulations for their private advantage, and to interpose obstacles in the way of alien traders. All this ingenious policy of self-defeat is greatly helped out by the patriotic conceit of the citizens; who persuade themselves to see in it an accession to the power and prestige of their own nation and a disadvantage to rival nationalities. It is, indeed, more than doubtful if such a policy of self-defeat as is embodied in current international trade discriminations could be insinuated into the legislation of any civilized nation if the popular intelligence were not so clouded with patriotic animosity as to let a prospective detriment to their foreign neighbors count as a gain to themselves.
So that the chief material use of the patriotic bent in modern populations, therefore, appears to be its use to a limited class of persons engaged in foreign trade, or in business that comes in competition with foreign industry. It serves their private gain by lending effectual countenance to such restraint of international trade as would not be tolerated within the national domain. In so doing it has also the secondary and more sinister effect of dividing the nations on lines of rivalry and setting up irreconcilable claims and ambitions, of no material value but of far-reaching effect in the way of provocation to further international estrangement and eventual breach of the peace.
How all this falls in with the schemes of militant statesmen, and further reacts on the freedom and personal fortunes of the common man, is an extensive and intricate topic, though not an obscure one; and it has already been spoken of above, perhaps as fully as need be.
CHAPTER III
On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace
The considerations set out in earlier chapters have made it appear that the patriotic spirit of modern peoples is the abiding source of contention among nations. Except for their patriotism a breach of the peace among modern peoples could not well be had. So much will doubtless be assented to as a matter of course. It is also a commonplace of current aphoristic wisdom that both parties to a warlike adventure in modern times stand to lose, materially; whatever nominal—that is to say political—gains may be made by one or the other. It has also appeared from these considerations recited in earlier passages that this patriotic spirit prevails throughout, among all civilised peoples, and that it pervades one nation about as ubiquitously as another. Nor is there much evidence of a weakening of this sinister proclivity with the passage of time or the continued advance in the arts of life. The only civilized nations that can be counted on as habitually peaceable are those who are so feeble or are so placed as to be cut off from hope of gain through contention. Vainglorious arrogance may run at a higher tension among the more backward and boorish nations; but it is not evident that the advance guard among the civilised peoples are imbued with a less complete national self-complacency. If the peace is to be kept, therefore, it will have to be kept by and between peoples made up, in effect, of complete patriots; which comes near being a contradiction in terms. Patriotism is useful for breaking the peace, not for keeping it. It makes for national pretensions and international jealously and distrust, with warlike enterprise always in perspective; as a way to national gain or a recourse in case of need. And there is commonly no settled demarkation between these two contrasted needs that urge a patriotic people forever to keep one eye on the chance of a recourse to arms.
Therefore any calculus of the Chances of Peace appears to become a reckoning of the forces which may be counted on to keep a patriotic nation in an unstable equilibrium of peace for the time being. As has just been remarked above, among civilised peoples only those nations can be counted on consistently to keep the peace who are so feeble or otherwise so placed as to be cut off from hope of national gain. And these can apparently be so counted on only as regards aggression, not as regards the national defense, and only in so far as they are not drawn into warlike enterprise, collectively, by their more competent neighbors. Even the feeblest and most futile of them feels in honour bound to take up arms in defense of such national pretensions as they still may harbour; and all of them harbour such pretensions. In certain extreme cases, which it might seem invidious to specify more explicitly, it is not easy to discover any specific reasons for the maintenance of a national establishment, apart from the vindication of certain national pretensions which would quietly lapse in the absence of a national establishment on whom their vindication is incumbent.
Of the rest, the greater nations that are spoken of as Powers no such general statement will hold. These are the peoples who stand, in matters of national concern, on their own initiative; and the question of peace and war at large is in effect, a question of peace and war among these Powers. They are not so numerous that they can be sifted into distinct classes, and yet they differ among themselves in such a way that they may, for the purpose in hand, fairly be ranged under two distinguishable if not contrasted heads: those which may safely be counted on spontaneously to take the offensive, and those which will fight on provocation. Typically of the former description are Germany and Japan. Of the latter are the French and British, and less confidently the American republic. In any summary statement of this kind Russia will have to be left on one side as a doubtful case, for reasons to
All this, which should be plain without demonstration, has been repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace advocates, typically by Mr. Angell.
