PEACE AND NEUTRALITY

Considered simply on the face of the tangible material interests involved, the choice of the common man in these premises should seem very much of a foregone conclusion, if he could persuade himself to a sane and perspicuous consideration of these statistically apparent merits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be presumed that he has nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look for some slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb, consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partial disestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion of use and wont in economic concerns.

But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, and particularly as touches the springs of action among that common run that do not habitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended and grammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose impulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive consistencies of set speech, as touches the common run, particularly, it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that the material means of life are, after all, means only; and that when the question of what things are worth while is brought to the final test, it is not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, that are seen to serve as the decisive criterion; but always it is some ulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of which these material means find their ulterior ground of valuation. Neither the overt testimony nor the circumstantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal; but seen in due perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the springs of concerted action as shown in any massive movement of this common run of mankind, there is, after all, little room to question that the things which commend themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things of the human spirit.

These ideals, aspirations, aims, ends of endeavour, are by no means of a uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities, still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a spiritual, immaterial nature.

The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, that this characterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not of the nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extension than that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to apply as touches the conduct of the common run; what modification of it might be required to make it at all confidently applicable to the case of one and another of those classes into whose scheme of life creature comforts enter with more pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. But since it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, of the common run that are here in question, the case of their betters in this respect may conveniently be left on one side.

The question in hand touches the behavior of the common man, taken in the aggregate, in face of the quandary into which circumstances have led him; since the question of what these modern peoples will do is after all a question of what the common man in the aggregate will do, of his own motion or by persuasion. His betters may be in a position to guide, persuade, cajole, mislead, and victimise him; for among the many singular conceits that beset the common man is the persuasion that his betters are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. But the course that may so be chosen, with or without guidance or persuasion from the superior classes, as well as the persistence and energy with which this course is pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of the common run.

Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression of these ideal aspirations that move the common run is a matter of habitual preconceptions; and habits of thought vary from one people to another according to the diversity of experience to which they have been exposed. Among the Western nations the national prestige has come to seem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps beyond all else that is comprised in the secular scheme of things desirable to be had or to be achieved. And in the apprehension of such of them as have best preserved the habits of thought induced by a long experience in feudal subjection, the service of the sovereign or the dynasty still stands over as the substantial core of the cultural scheme, upon which sentiment and endeavour converge. In the past ages of the democratic peoples, as well as in the present-day use and wont among subjects of the dynastic States as e.g., Japan or Germany men are known to have resolutely risked, and lost, their life for the sake of the sovereign’s renown, or even to save the sovereign’s life; whereas, of course, even the slightest and most nebulous reflection would make it manifest that in point of net material utility the sovereign’s decease is an idle matter as compared with the loss of an able-bodied workman. The sovereign may always be replaced, with some prospect of public advantage, or failing that, it should be remarked that a regency or inter-regnum will commonly be a season of relatively economical administration. Again, religious enthusiasm, and the furtherance of religious propaganda, may come to serve the same general purpose as these secular ideals, and will perhaps serve it just as well. Certain “principles,” of personal liberty and of opportunity for creative self-direction and an intellectually worthy life, perhaps may also become the idols of the people, for which they will then be willing to risk their material fortune; and where this has happened, as among the democratic peoples of Christendom, it is not selfishly for their own personal opportunity to live untroubled under the light of these high principles that these opinionated men are ready to contend, but rather impersonally for the human right which under these principles is the due of all mankind, and particularly of the incoming and of later generations.

On these and the like intangible ends the common man is set with such inveterate predilection that he will, on provocation, stick at nothing to put the project through. For such like ends the common man will lay down his life; at least, so they say. There may always be something of rhetorical affectation in it all; but, after all, there is sufficient evidence to hand of such substance and tenacity in the common man’s hold on these ideal aspirations, on these idols of his human spirit, as to warrant the assertion that he is, rather commonly, prepared to go to greater lengths in the furtherance of these immaterial gains that are to inure to someone else than for any personal end of his own, in the way of creature comforts or even of personal renown.

For such ends the common man, in democratic Christendom is, on provocation, willing to die; or again, the patient and perhaps more far-seeing common man of pagan China is willing to live for these idols of an inveterate fancy, through endless contumely and hard usage. The conventional Chinese preconceptions, in the way of things that are worth while in their own right, appear to differ from those current in the Occident in such a way that the preconceived ideal is not to be realised except by way of continued life. The common man’s accountability to the cause of humanity, in China, is of so intimately personal a character that he can meet it only by tenaciously holding his place in the sequence of generations; whereas among the peoples of Christendom there has arisen out of their contentious past a preconception to the effect that this human duty to mankind is of the nature of a debt, which can be cancelled by bankruptcy proceedings, so that the man who unprofitably dies fighting for the cause has thereby constructively paid the reckoning in full.

Evidently, if the common man of these modern nations that are prospectively to be brought under tutelage of the Imperial government could be brought to the frame of mind that is habitual with his Chinese counterpart, there should be a fair hope that pacific counsels would prevail and that Christendom would so come in for a regime of peace by submission under this Imperial tutelage. But there are always these preconceptions of self-will and insubordination to be counted with among these nations, and there is the ancient habit of a contentious national solidarity in defense of the nation’s prestige, more urgent among these peoples than any sentiment of solidarity with mankind at large, or any ulterior gain in civilisation that might come of continued discipline in the virtues of patience and diligence under distasteful circumstances.

The occidental conception of manhood is in some considerable measure drawn in negative terms. So much so that whenever a question of the manly virtues comes under controversy it presently appears that at least the indispensable minimum, and indeed the ordinary marginal modicum, of what is requisite to a worthy manner of life is habitually formulated in terms of what not. This appearance is doubtless misleading if taken without the universally understood postulate on the basis of which negative demands are formulated. There is a good deal of what would be called historical accident in all this. The indispensable demands of this modern manhood take the form of refusal to obey extraneous authority on compulsion; of exemption from coercive direction and subservience; of insubordination, in short. But it is always understood as a matter of course that this insubordination is a refusal to submit to irresponsible or autocratic rule. Stated from the positive side it would be freedom from restraint by or obedience to any authority not constituted by express advice and consent of the governed. And as near as it may be formulated, when reduced to the irreducible minimum of concrete proviso, this is the final substance of things which neither shame nor honour will permit the modern civilised man to yield. To no arrangement for the abrogation of this minimum of free initiative and self-direction will he consent to be a party, whether it touches the conditions of life for his own people who are to come after, or as touches the fortunes of such aliens as are of a like mind on this head and are unable to make head against invasion of these human rights from outside.

As has just been remarked, the negative form so often taken by these demands is something of an historical accident, due to the fact that these modern peoples came into their highly esteemed system of Natural Liberty out of an earlier system of positive checks on self-direction and initiative; a system, in effect, very much after the fashion of that Imperial jurisdiction that still prevails in the dynastic States as, e.g., Germany or Japan whose projected dominion is now the immediate object of apprehension and repugnance. How naively the negative formulation gained acceptance, and at the same time how intrinsic to the new dispensation was the aspiration for free initiative, appears in the confident assertion of its most genial spokesman, that when these positive checks are taken away, “The simple and obvious system of Natural Liberty establishes itself of its own accord.”

The common man, in these modern communities, shows a brittle temper when any overt move is made against this heritage of civil liberty. He may not be altogether well advised in respect of what liberties he will defend and what he will submit to; but the fact is to be counted with in any projected peace, that there is always this refractory residue of terms not open to negotiation or compromise. Now it also happens, also by historical accident, that these residual principles of civil liberty have come to blend and coalesce with a stubborn preconception of national integrity and national prestige. So that in the workday apprehension of the common man, not given to analytic excursions, any infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom. The fact may be patent on reflection that the common man’s substantial interest in the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common sense the national prestige has something less than a neutral value to him; but this state of the substantially pertinent facts is not greatly of the essence of the case, since his preconceptions in these premises do not run to that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast a texture to suffer any serious abatement within such a space of time as can come in question here and now.

The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world’s peace on a plan of unconditional surrender to the projected Imperial dominion seems unpromisingly dubious, in view of the stubborn temper shown by these modern peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and honest living appear to be in jeopardy; and the expediency of entering into any negotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed to serve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must therefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is even doubtful if any allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples to a more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would come to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divest themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudice against an autocratic regime of the kind spoken for. At least for the present any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive. What may be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course still more obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affords does not point to a substantially different outcome in the calculable future.

For the immediate future say, within the life-time of the oncoming generation the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in this international quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change as to seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie of the land in this respect. Preconceptions are a work of habit impinging on a given temperamental bent; and where, as in these premises, the preconceptions have taken on an institutionalised form, have become conventionalised and commonly accepted, and so have been woven into the texture of popular common sense, they must needs be a work of protracted and comprehensive habituation impinging on a popular temperamental bent of so general a prevalence that it may be called congenital to the community at large. A heritable bent pervading the group within which inheritance runs, does not change, so long as the racial complexion of the group remains passably intact; a conventionalised, commonly established habit of mind will change only slowly, commonly not without the passing of at least one generation, and only by grace of a sufficiently searching and comprehensive discipline of experience. For good or ill, the current situation is to be counted on not to lose character over night or with a revolution of the seasons, so far as concerns these spiritual factors that make or mar the fortunes of nations.

At the same time these spiritual assets, being of the nature of habit, are also bound to change character more or less radically, by insensible shifting of ground, but incontinently, provided only that the conditions of life, and therefore the discipline of experience, undergo any substantial change. So the immediate interest shifts to the presumptive rate and character of those changes that are in prospect, due to the unremitting change of circumstances under which these modern peoples live and to the discipline of which they are unavoidably exposed. For the present and for the immediate future the current state of things is a sufficiently stable basis of argument; but assurance as to the sufficiency of the premises afforded by the current state of things thins out in proportion as the perspective of the argument runs out into the succeeding years. The bearing of it all is two-fold, of course. This progressive, cumulative habituation under changing circumstances affects the case both of those democratic peoples whose fortunes are in the hazard, and also of those dynastic States by whom the projected enterprise in dominion is to be carried into effect.

The case of the two formidable dynastic States whose names have been coupled together in what has already been said is perhaps the more immediately interesting in the present connection. As matters stand, and in the measure in which they continue so to stand, the case of these is in no degree equivocal. The two dynastic establishments seek dominion, and indeed they seek nothing else, except incidentally to and in furtherance of the main quest. As has been remarked before, it lies in the nature of a dynastic State to seek dominion, that being the whole of its nature in so far as it runs true to form. But a dynastic State, like any other settled, institutionalised community of men, rests on and draws its effectual driving force from the habit of mind of its underlying community, the common man in the aggregate, his preconceptions and ideals as to what things are worth while. Without a suitable spiritual ground of this kind such a dynastic State passes out of the category of formidable Powers and into that of precarious despotism.

In both of the two States here in question the dynastic establishment and its bodyguard of officials and gentlefolk may be counted on to persevere in the faith that now animates them, until an uneasy displacement of sentiment among the underlying populace may in time induce them judiciously to shift their footing. Like the ruling classes elsewhere, they are of a conservative temper and may be counted on so to continue. They are also not greatly exposed to the discipline of experience that makes for adaptive change in habits of life, and therefore in the correlated habits of thought. It is always the common man that is effectually reached by any exacting or wide-reaching change in the conditions of life. He is relatively unsheltered from any forces that make for adaptive change, as contrasted with the case of his betters; and however sluggish and reluctant may be his response to such discipline as makes for a displacement of outworn preconceptions, yet it is always out of the mass of this common humanity that those movements of disaffection and protest arise, which lead, on occasion, to any material realignment of the institutional fabric or to any substantial shift in the line of policy to be pursued under the guidance of their betters.

The common mass of humanity, it may be said in parenthesis, is of course not a homogeneous body. Uncommon men, in point of native gifts of intelligence, sensibility, or personal force, will occur as frequently, in proportion to the aggregate numbers, among the common mass as among their betters. Since in any one of these nations of Christendom, with their all-inclusive hybridisation, the range, frequency and amplitude of variations in hereditary endowment is the same throughout all classes. Class differentiation is a matter of habit and convention; and in distinction from his betters the common man is common only in point of numbers and in point of the more general and more exacting conditions to which he is exposed. He is in a position to be more hardly ridden by the discipline of experience, and is at the same time held more consistently to such a body of preconceptions, and to such changes only in this body of preconceptions, as fall in with the drift of things in a larger mass of humanity. But all the while it is the discipline which impinges on the sensibilities of this common mass that shapes the spiritual attitude and temper of the community and so defines what may and what may not be undertaken by the constituted leaders. So that, in a way, these dynastic States are at the mercy of that popular sentiment whose creatures they are, and are subject to undesired changes of direction and efficiency in their endeavors, contingent on changes in the popular temper; over which they have only a partial, and on the whole a superficial control.

A relatively powerful control and energetic direction of the popular temper is and has been exercised by these dynastic establishments, with a view to its utilisation in the pursuit of the dynastic enterprise; and much has visibly been accomplished in that way; chiefly, perhaps, by military discipline in subordination to personal authority, and also by an unsparing surveillance of popular education, with a view to fortify the preconceptions handed down from the passing order as well as to eliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the well-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperial system in this direction, e.g., there has been evidence of an obscurely growing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass. So much so that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached the inference that one of the immediate contributory causes that led to the present war was the need of a heroic remedy to correct this untoward drift of sentiment.

For the German people the government of the present dynastic incumbent has done all that could (humanly speaking) be expected in the way of endeavoring to conserve the passing order and to hold the popular imagination to the received feudalistic ideals of loyal service. And yet the peoples of the Empire are already caught in the net of that newer order which they are now endeavoring to break by force of arms. They are inextricably implicated in the cultural complex of Christendom; and within this Western culture those peoples to whom it fell to lead the exodus out of the Egypt of feudalism have come quite naturally to set the pace in all the larger conformities of civilised life. Within the confines of Christendom today, for good or ill, whatever usage or customary rule of conduct falls visibly short of the precedent set by these cultural pioneers is felt to fall beneath the prescriptive commonplace level of civilisation. Failure to adopt and make use of those tried institutional expedients on which these peoples of the advance guard have set their mark of authentication is today presumptively a mistake and an advantage foregone; and a people who are denied the benefit of these latterday ways and means of civic life are uneasy with a sense of grievance at the hands of their rulers. Besides which, the fashion in articles of institutional equipage so set by the authentic pioneers of culture has also come to be mandatory, as a punctilio of the governmental proprieties; so that no national establishment which aspires to a decorous appearance in the eyes of the civilised world can longer afford to be seen without them. The forms at least must be observed. Hence the “representative” and pseudo-representative institutions of these dynastic States.

These dynastic States among the rest have partly followed the dictates of civilised fashion, partly yielded to the, more or less intelligent, solicitations of their subjects, or the spokesmen of their subjects, and have installed institutional apparatus of this modern pattern more in point of form than of substance, perhaps. Yet in time the adoption of the forms is likely to have an effect, if changing circumstances favor their taking effect. Such has on the whole been the experience of those peoples who have gone before along this trail of political advance. As instance the growth of discretionary powers under the hands of parliamentary representatives in those cases where the movement has gone on longest and farthest; and these instances should not be considered idle, as intimations of what may presumptively be looked for under the Imperial establishments of Germany or Japan. It may be true that hitherto, along with the really considerable volume of imitative gestures of discretionary deliberation delegated to these parliamentary bodies, they have as regards all graver matters brought to their notice only been charged with a (limited) power to talk. It may be true that, for the present, on critical or weighty measures the parliamentary discretion extends no farther than respectfully to say: “Ja wohl!” But then, Ja wohl is also something; and there is no telling where it may all lead to in the long course of years. One has a vague apprehension that this “Ja wohl!” may some day come to be a customarily necessary form of authentication, so that with-holding it (Behuet’ es Gott!) may even come to count as an effectual veto on measures so pointedly neglected. More particularly will the formalities of representation and self-government be likely to draw the substance of such like “free institutions” into the effectual conduct of public affairs if it turns out that the workday experiences of these people takes a turn more conducive to habits of insubordination than has been the case hitherto.

Indications are, again, not wanting, that even in the Empire the discipline of workday experience is already diverging from that line that once trained the German subjects into the most loyal and unrepining subservience to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under the shattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clamour, the workday spirit of insubordination and critical scrutiny is gone out of sight and out of hearing.

Something of this inchoate insubordination has showed itself repeatedly during the present reign, sufficient to provoke many shrewd protective measures on the side of the dynastic establishment, both by way of political strategy and by arbitrary control. Disregarding many minor and inconsequential divisions of opinion and counsel among the German people during this eventful reign, the political situation has been moving on the play of three, incipiently divergent, strains of interest and sentiment: (a) the dynasty (together with the Agrarians, of whom in a sense the dynasty is a part); (b) the businessmen, or commercial interest (including investors); and (c) the industrial workmen. Doubtless it would be easier to overstate than to indicate with any nice precision what has been the nature, and especially the degree, of this alienation of sentiment and divergence of conscious interest among these several elements. It is not that there has at any point been a perceptible faltering in respect of loyalty to the crown as such. But since the crown belongs, by origin, tradition, interest and spiritual identity, in the camp of the Agrarians, the situation has been such as would inevitably take on a character of disaffection toward the dynastic establishment, in the conceivable absence of that strong surviving sentiment of dynastic loyalty that still animates all classes and conditions of men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be an overstatement to say that the crown has been standing precariously at the apex of a political triangle, the other two corners of which are occupied by these two divided and potentially recalcitrant elements of the body politic, held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniary interest, and held in check by divided counsels; but something after that fashion is what would have resulted under similar conditions of strain in any community where the modern spirit of insubordination has taken effect in any large measure.

Both of these elements of incipient disturbance in the dynastic economy, the modern commercial and working classes, are creatures of the new era; and they are systematically out of line with the received dynastic tradition of fealty, both in respect of their pecuniary interests and in respect of that discipline of experience to which their workday employment subjects them. They are substantially the same two classes or groupings that came forward in the modernisation of the British community, with a gradual segregation of interest and a consequent induced solidarity of class sentiment and class animosities. But with the difference that in the British case the movement of changing circumstances was slow enough to allow a fair degree of habituation to the altered economic conditions; whereas in the German case the move into modern economic conditions has been made so precipitately as to have carried the mediaeval frame of mind over virtually intact into this era of large business and machine industry. In the Fatherland the commercial and industrial classes have been called on to play their part without time to learn their lines.

The case of the English-speaking peoples, who have gone over this course of experience in more consecutive fashion than any others, teaches that in the long run, if these modern economic conditions persist, one or the other or both of these creatures of the modern era must prevail, and must put the dynastic establishment out of commission; although the sequel has not yet been seen in this British case, and there is no ground afforded for inference as to which of the two will have the fortune to survive and be invested with the hegemony. Meantime the opportunity of the Imperial establishment to push its enterprise in dominion lies in the interval of time so required for the discipline of experience under modern conditions to work out through the growth of modern habits of thought into such modern (i.e. civilised) institutional forms and such settled principles of personal insubordination as will put any effectual dynastic establishment out of commission. The same interval of time, that must so be allowed for the decay of the dynastic spirit among the German people under the discipline of life by the methods of modern trade and industry, marks the period during which no peace compact will be practicable, except with the elimination of the Imperial establishment as a possible warlike power. All this, of course, applies to the case of Japan as well, with the difference that while the Japanese people are farther in arrears, they are also a smaller, less formidable body, more exposed to outside forces, and their mediaevalism is of a more archaic and therefore more precarious type.

What length of time will be required for this decay of the dynastic spirit among the people of the Empire is, of course, impossible to say. The factors of the case are not of a character to admit anything like calculation of the rate of movement; but in the nature of the factors involved it is also contained that something of a movement in this direction is unavoidable, under Providence. As a preliminary consideration, these peoples of the Empire and its allies, as well as their enemies in the great war, will necessarily come out of their warlike experience in a more patriotic and more vindictive frame of mind than that in which they entered on this adventure. Fighting makes for malevolence. The war is itself to be counted as a set-back. A very large proportion of those who have lived through it will necessarily carry a warlike bent through life. By that much, whatever it may count for, the decay of the dynastic spirit or the growth of tolerance and equity in national sentiment, if one chooses to put it that way will be retarded from beforehand. So also the Imperial establishment, or whatever is left of it, may be counted on to do everything in its power to preserve the popular spirit of loyalty and national animosity, by all means at its disposal; since the Imperial establishment finally rests on the effectual body of national animosity. What hindrance will come in from this agency of retardation can at least vaguely be guessed at, in the light of what has been accomplished in that way under the strenuously reactionary rule of the present reign.

Again, there is the chance, as there always is a chance of human folly, that the neighboring peoples will undertake, whether jointly or severally, to restrict or prohibit trade relations between the people of the Empire and their enemies in the present war; thereby fomenting international animosity, as well as contributing directly to the economic readiness for war both on their own part and on that of the Empire. This is also, and in an eminent degree, an unknown factor in the case, on which not even a reasonable guess can be made beforehand. These are, all and several, reactionary agencies, factors of retardation, making for continuation of the current international situation of animosity, distrust, chicane, trade rivalry, competitive armament, and eventual warlike enterprise.

To offset these agencies of conservatism there is nothing much that can be counted on but that slow, random, and essentially insidious working of habituation that tends to the obsolescence of the received preconceptions; partly by supplanting them with something new, but more effectually by their falling into disuse and decay. There is, it will have to be admitted, little of a positive character that can be done toward the installation of a regime of peace and good-will. The endeavours of the pacifists should suffice to convince any dispassionate observer of the substantial futility of creative efforts looking to such an end. Much can doubtless be done in the way of precautionary measures, mostly of a negative character, in the way especially of removing sources of infection and (possibly) of so sterilising the apparatus of national life that its working shall neither maintain animosities and interests at variance with the conditions of peace nor contribute to their spread and growth.

There is necessarily little hope or prospect that any national establishment will contribute materially or in any direct way to the obsolescence of warlike sentiments and ambitions; since such establishments are designed for the making of war by keeping national jealousies intact, and their accepted place in affairs is that of preparation for eventual hostilities, defensive or offensive. Except for the contingency of eventual hostilities, no national establishment could be kept in countenance. They would all fall into the decay of desuetude, just as has happened to the dynastic establishments among those peoples who have (passably) lost the spirit of dynastic aggression.

The modern industrial occupations, the modern technology, and that modern empirical science that runs so close to the frontiers of technology, all work at cross purposes with the received preconceptions of the nationalist order; and in a more pronounced degree they are at cross purposes with that dynastic order of preconceptions that converges on Imperial dominion. The like is true, with a difference, of the ways, means and routine of business enterprise as it is conducted in the commercialised communities of today. The working of these agencies runs to this effect not by way of deliberate and destructive antagonism, but almost wholly by force of systematic, though unintended and incidental, neglect of those values, standards, verities, and grounds of discrimination and conviction that make up the working realities of the national spirit and of dynastic ambition. The working concepts of this new, essentially mechanistic, order of human interests, do not necessarily clash with those of the old order, essentially the order of personages and personalities; the two are incommensurable, and they are incompatible only in the sense and degree implied in that state of the case. The profoundest and most meritorious truths of dynastic politics can on no provocation and by no sleight of hand be brought within the logic of that system of knowledge and appraisal of values by which the mechanistic technology proceeds. Within the premises of this modern mechanistic industry and science all the best values and verities of the dynastic order are simply “incompetent, irrelevant and impertinent.”

There is accordingly no unavoidable clash and no necessary friction between the two schemes of knowledge or the two habits of mind that characterise the two contrasted cultural eras. It is only that a given individual call him the common man will not be occupied with both of these incommensurable systems of logic and appreciation at the same time or bearing on the same point; and further that in proportion as his waking hours and his mental energy are fully occupied within the lines of one of these systems of knowledge, design and employment, in much the same measure he will necessarily neglect the other, and in time he will lose proficiency and interest in its pursuits and its conclusions. The man who is so held by his daily employment and his life-long attention within the range of habits of thought that are valid in the mechanistic technology, will, on an average and in the long run, lose his grip on the spiritual virtues of national prestige and dynastic primacy; “for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system of knowledge and design may not also be very good patriots and devoted servants of the dynasty. The artless and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynastic avidity displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow craftsmen in the neutral countries by the most eminent scientists of the Fatherland during the early months of the war should be sufficient warning that the archaic preconceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when the habits of thought of the mechanistic order come in at the door. But with the passage of time, pervasively, by imperceptible displacement, by the decay of habitual disuse, as well as by habitual occupation with these other and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, dynastic loyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of religion and magic pass out of the field of attention and fall insensibly into the category of the lost arts. Particularly will this be true of the common man, who lives, somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the present, and whose waking hours are somewhat fully occupied with what he has to do.

With the commercial interests the Imperial establishment can probably make such terms as to induce their support of the dynastic enterprise, since they can apparently always be made to believe that an extension of the Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased opportunities of trade. It is doubtless a mistake, but it is commonly believed by the interested parties, which is just as good for the purpose as if it were true. And it should be added that in this, as in other instances of the quest of larger markets, the costs are to be paid by someone else than the presumed commercial beneficiaries; which brings the matter under the dearest principle known to businessmen: that of getting something for nothing. It will not be equally easy to keep the affections of the common man loyal to the dynastic enterprise when he begins to lose his grip on the archaic faith in dynastic dominion and comes to realise that he has also individually and in the mass no material interest even in the defense of the Fatherland, much less in the further extension of Imperial rule.

But the time when this process of disillusionment and decay of ideals shall have gone far enough among the common run to afford no secure footing in popular sentiment for the contemplated Imperial enterprise, this time is doubtless far in the future, as compared with the interval of preparation required for a new onset. Habituation takes time, particularly such habituation as can be counted on to derange the habitual bent of a great population in respect of their dearest preconceptions. It will take a very appreciable space of time even in the case of a populace so accessible to new habits of thought as the German people are by virtue of their slight percentage of illiteracy, the very large proportion engaged in those modern industries that constantly require some intelligent insight into mechanistic facts, the density of population and the adequate means of communication, and the extent to which the whole population is caught in the web of mechanically standardised processes that condition their daily life at every turn. As regards their technological situation, and their exposure to the discipline of industrial life, no other population of nearly the same volume is placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirement of the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other people comparable with the population of the Fatherland has so large and well-knit a body of archaic preconceptions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course, is the Japanese nation.

In all this there is, of course, no inclination to cast a slur on the German people. In point of racial characteristics there is no difference between them and their neighbours. And there is no reason to question their good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no people is more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. It is only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right and meritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected into the civilised world as it stands today. And by no fault of theirs. Nor is it meant to be intimated that their rate of approach to the accepted Occidental standard of institutional maturity will be unduly slow or unduly reluctant, so soon as the pertinent facts of modern life begin effectively to shape their habits of thought. It is only that, human nature and human second nature being what it always has been, the rate of approach of the German people to a passably neutral complexion in matters of international animosity and aggression must necessarily be slow enough to allow ample time for the renewed preparation of a more unsparing and redoubtable endeavour on the part of the Imperial establishment.

What makes this German Imperial establishment redoubtable, beyond comparison, is the very simple but also very grave combination of circumstances whereby the German people have acquired the use of the modern industrial arts in the highest state of efficiency, at the same time that they have retained unabated the fanatical loyalty of feudal barbarism. So long, and in so far, as this conjunction of forces holds there is no outlook for peace except on the elimination of Germany as a power capable of disturbing the peace.

It may seem invidious to speak so recurrently of the German Imperial establishment as the sole potential disturber of the peace in Europe. The reason for so singling out the Empire for this invidious distinction of merit or demerit, as one may incline to take it is that the facts run that way. There is, of course, other human material, and no small volume of it in the aggregate, that is of much the same character, and serviceable for the same purposes as the resources and man-power of the Empire. But this other material can come effectually into bearing as a means of disturbance only in so far as it clusters about the Imperial dynasty and marches under his banners. In so speaking of the Imperial establishment as the sole enemy of a European peace, therefore, these outlying others are taken for granted, very much as one takes the nimbus for granted in speaking of one of the greater saints of God.

So the argument returns to the alternative: Peace by unconditional surrender and submission, or peace by elimination of Imperial Germany (and Japan). There is no middle course apparent. The old-fashioned that is to say nineteenth-century plan of competitive defensive armament and a balance of powers has been tried, and it has not proved to be a success, even so early in the twentieth century. This plan offers a substitute (Ersatz) for peace; but even as such it has become impracticable. The modern, or rather the current late-modern, state of the industrial arts does not tolerate it. Technological knowledge has thrown the advantage in military affairs definitively to the offensive, particularly to the offensive that is prepared beforehand with the suitable appliances and with men ready matured in that rigorous and protracted training by which alone they can become competent to make warlike use of these suitable appliances provided by the modern technology. At the same time, and by grace of the same advance in technology, any well-designed offensive can effectually reach any given community, in spite of distance or of other natural obstacles. The era of defensive armaments and diplomatic equilibration, as a substitute for peace, has been definitively closed by the modern state of the industrial arts.

Of the two alternatives spoken of above, the former peace by submission under an alien dynasty is presumably not a practicable solution, as has appeared in the course of the foregoing argument.

The modern nations are not spiritually ripe for it. Whether they have reached even that stage of national sobriety, or neutrality, that would enable them to live at peace among themselves after elimination of the Imperial Powers is still open to an uneasy doubt. It would be by a precarious margin that they can be counted on so to keep the peace in the absence of provocation from without the pale. Their predilection for peace goes to no greater lengths than is implied in the formula: Peace with Honour; which assuredly does not cover a peace of non-resistance, and which, in effect, leaves the distinction between an offensive and a defensive war somewhat at loose ends. The national prestige is still a live asset in the mind of these peoples; and the limit of tolerance in respect of this patriotic animosity appears to be drawn appreciably closer than the formula cited above would necessarily presume. They will fight on provocation, and the degree of provocation required to upset the serenity of these sportsmanlike modern peoples is a point on which the shrewdest guesses may diverge. Still, opinion runs more and more consistently to the effect that if these modern say the French and the English-speaking peoples were left to their own devices the peace might fairly be counted on to be kept between them indefinitely, barring unforeseen contingencies.

Experience teaches that warlike enterprise on a moderate scale and as a side interest is by no means incompatible with such a degree of neutral animus as these peoples have yet acquired, e.g., the Spanish-American war, which was made in America, or the Boer war, which was made in England. But these wars, in spite of the dimensions which they presently took on, were after all of the nature of episodes, the one chiefly an extension of sportsmanship, which engaged the best attention of only the more sportsmanlike elements, the other chiefly engineered by certain business interests with a callous view to getting something for nothing. Both episodes came to be serious enough, both in their immediate incidence and in their consequences; but neither commanded the deliberate and cordial support of the community at large. There is a meretricious air over both; and there is apparent a popular inclination to condone rather than to take pride in these faits accomplis. The one excursion was a product of sportsmanlike bravado, fed on boyish exuberance, fomented for mercenary objects by certain business interests and place-hunting politicians, and incited by meretricious newspapers with a view to increase their circulation. The other was set afoot by interested businessmen, backed by politicians, seconded by newspapers, and borne by the community at large, in great part under misapprehension and stung by wounded pride.

Opinions will diverge widely as to the chances of peace in a community of nations among whom episodes of this character, and of such dimensions, have been somewhat more than tolerated in the immediate past. But the consensus of opinion in these same countries appears to be setting with fair consistency to the persuasion that the popular spirit shown in these and in analogous conjunctures in the recent past gives warrant that peace is deliberately desired and is likely to be maintained, barring unforeseen contingencies.

In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation of peace, and necessary to be taken, are simple and obvious; and they are largely of a negative character, exploits of omission and neglect. Under modern conditions, and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept by avoiding the breaking of it. It does not break of itself, in the absence of such national establishments as are organised with the sole ulterior view of warlike enterprise. A policy of peace is obviously a policy of avoidance, avoidance of offense and of occasion for annoyance.

What is required to insure the maintenance of peace among pacific nations is the neutralisation of all those human relations out of which international grievances are wont to arise. And what is necessary to assure a reasonable expectation of continued peace is the neutralisation of so much of these relations as the patriotic self-conceit and credulity of these peoples will permit. These two formulations are by no means identical; indeed, the disparity between what could advantageously be dispensed with in the way of national rights and pretensions, and what the common run of modern patriots could be induced to relinquish, is probably much larger than any sanguine person would like to believe. It should be plain on slight reflection that the greater part, indeed substantially the whole, of those material interests and demands that now engage the policy of the nations, and that serve on occasion to set them at variance, might be neutralised or relinquished out of hand, without detriment to any one of the peoples concerned.

The greater part of these material interests over which the various national establishments keep watch and hold pretensions are, in point of historical derivation, a legacy from the princely politics of what is called the “Mercantilist” period; and they are uniformly of the nature of gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citizens of the given nation and outsiders. Except (doubtfully) in the English case, where mercantilist policies are commonly believed to have been adopted directly for the benefit of the commercial interest, measures of this nature are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the crown and its officers to strengthen the finances of the prince and give him an advantage in warlike enterprise. They are kept up essentially for the same eventual end of preparation for war. So, e.g., protective tariffs, and the like discrimination in shipping, are still advocated as a means of making the nation self-supporting, self-contained, self-sufficient; with a view to readiness in the event of hostilities.

A nation is in no degree better off in time of peace for being self-sufficient. In point of patent fact no nation can be industrially self-sufficient except at the cost of foregoing some of the economic advantages of that specialisation of industry which the modern state of the industrial arts enforces. In time of peace there is no benefit comes to the community at large from such restraint of trade with the outside world, or to any class or section of the community except those commercial concerns that are favored by the discrimination; and these invariably gain their special advantage at the cost of their compatriots. Discrimination in trade export, import or shipping has no more beneficial effect when carried out publicly by the national authorities than when effected surreptitiously and illegally by a private conspiracy in restraint of trade within a group of interested business concerns.

Hitherto the common man has found it difficult to divest himself of an habitual delusion on this head, handed down out of the past and inculcated by interested politicians, to the effect that in some mysterious way he stands to gain by limiting his own opportunities. But the neutralisation of international trade, or the abrogation of all discrimination in trade, is the beginning of wisdom as touches the perpetuation of peace. The first effect of such a neutral policy would be wider and more intricately interlocking trade relations, coupled with a further specialisation and mutual dependence of industry between the several countries concerned; which would mean, in terms of international comity, a lessened readiness for warlike operations all around.

It used to be an argument of the free-traders that the growth of international commercial relations under a free-trade policy would greatly conduce to a spirit of mutual understanding and forbearance between the nations. There may or may not be something appreciable in the contention; it has been doubted, and there is no considerable evidence to be had in support of it. But what is more to the point is the tangible fact that such specialisation of industry and consequent industrial interdependence would leave all parties to this relation less capable, materially and spiritually, to break off amicable relations. So again, in time of peace and except with a view to eventual hostilities, it would involve no loss, and presumably little pecuniary gain, to any country, locality, town or class, if all merchant shipping were registered indiscriminately under neutral colors and sailed under the neutral no-man’s flag, responsible indiscriminately to the courts where they touched or where their business was transacted.

Neither producers, shippers, merchants nor consumers have any slightest interest in the national allegiance of the carriers of their freight, except such as may artificially be induced by discriminatory shipping regulations. In all but the name in time of peace the world’s merchant shipping already comes near being so neutralised, and the slight further simplification required to leave it on a neutral peace footing would be little else than a neglect of such vexatious discrimination as is still in force. If no nation could claim the allegiance, and therefore the usufruct, of any given item of merchant shipping in case of eventual hostilities, on account of the domicile of the owners or the port of registry, that would create a further handicap on eventual warlike enterprise and add so much to the margin of tolerance. At the same time, in the event of hostilities, shipping sailing under the neutral no-man’s flag and subject to no national allegiance would enjoy such immunities as still inure to neutral shipping. It is true, neutrality has not carried many immunities lately.

Cumulatively effective usage and the exigencies of a large, varied, shifting and extensive maritime trade have in the course of time brought merchant shipping to something approaching a neutral footing. For most, one might venture to say for virtually all, routine purposes of business and legal liability the merchant shipping comes under the jurisdiction of the local courts, without reservation. It is true, there still are formalities and reservations which enable questions arising out of incidents in the shipping trade to become subject of international conference and adjustment, but they are after all not such as would warrant the erection of national apparatus to take care of them in case they were not already covered by usage to that effect. The visible drift of usage toward neutralisation in merchant shipping, in maritime trade, and in international commercial transactions, together with the similarly visible feasibility of a closer approach to unreserved neutralisation of this whole range of traffic, suggests that much the same line of considerations should apply as regards the personal and pecuniary rights of citizens traveling or residing abroad. The extreme, or, as seen from the present point of view, the ultimate term in the relinquishment of national pretensions along this line would of course be the neutralisation of citizenship.

This is not so sweeping a move as a patriotically-minded person might imagine on the first alarm, so far as touches the practical status of the ordinary citizen in his ordinary relations, and particularly among the English-speaking peoples. As an illustrative instance, citizenship has sat somewhat lightly on the denizens of the American republic, and with no evident damage to the community at large or to the inhabitants in detail. Naturalisation has been easy, and has been sought with no more eagerness, on the whole, than the notably low terms of its acquirement would indicate. Without loss or discomfort many law-abiding aliens have settled in this country and spent the greater part of a life-time under its laws without becoming citizens, and no one the worse or the wiser for it. Not infrequently the decisive inducement to naturalisation on the part of immigrant aliens has been, and is, the desirability of divesting themselves of their rights of citizenship in the country of their origin. Not that the privilege and dignity of citizenship, in this or in any other country, is to be held of little account. It is rather that under modern civilised conditions, and among a people governed by sentiments of humanity and equity, the stranger within our gates suffers no obloquy and no despiteful usage for being a stranger. It may be admitted that of late, with the fomentation of a more accentuated nationalism by politicians seeking a raison d’etre, additional difficulties have been created in the way of naturalisation and the like incidents. Still, when all is told of the average American citizen, qua citizen, there is not much to tell. The like is true throughout the English-speaking peoples, with inconsequential allowance for local color. A definitive neutralisation of citizenship within the range of these English-speaking countries would scarcely ripple the surface of things as they are in time of peace.

All of which has not touched the sore and sacred spot in the received scheme of citizenship and its rights and liabilities. It is in the event of hostilities that the liabilities of the citizen at home come into the foreground, and it is as a source of patriotic grievance looking to warlike retaliation that the rights of the citizen abroad chiefly come into the case.

If, as was once, almost inaudibly, hinted by a well-regarded statesman, the national establishment should refuse to jeopardise the public peace for the safeguarding of the person and property of citizens who go out in partes infidelium on their own private concerns, and should so leave them under the uncurbed jurisdiction of the authorities in those countries into which they have intruded, the result might in many cases be hardship to such individuals. This would, of course, be true almost exclusively of such instances only as occur in such localities as are, temporarily or permanently, outside the pale of modern law and order. And, it may be in place to remark, instances of such hardship, with the accompanying hazard of national complications, would, no doubt, greatly diminish in frequency consequent upon the promulgation of such a disclaimer of national responsibility for the continued well-being of citizens who so expatriate themselves in the pursuit of their own advantage or amusement. Meantime, let it not seem inconsiderate to recall that to the community at large the deplorable case of such expatriates under hardship involves no loss or gain in the material respect; and that, except for the fortuitous circumstance of his being a compatriot, the given individual’s personal or pecuniary fortune in foreign parts has no special claim on his compatriots’ sympathy or assistance; from which it follows also that with the definitive neutralisation of citizenship as touches expatriates, the sympathy which is now somewhat unintelligently confined to such cases, on what may without offense be called extraneous grounds, would somewhat more impartially and humanely extend to fellowmen in distress, regardless of nativity or naturalisation.

What is mainly to the point here, however, is the fact that if citizenship were so neutralised within the range of neutral countries here contemplated, one further source of provocation to international jealousy and distrust would drop out of the situation. And it is not easy to detect any element of material loss involved in such a move. In the material respect no individual would be any the worse off, with the doubtful and dubious exception of the expatriate fortune-hunter, who aims to fish safely in troubled waters at his compatriots’ expense. But the case stands otherwise as regards the balance of immaterial assets. The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and the world of poetry and pageantry particularly that of the tawdrier and more vendible poetry and pageantry would be poorer by so much. The Man Without a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, or would at any rate lose much of it. It may be, of course, that in the sequel there would result no net loss even in respect of these immaterial assets of sentimental animation and patriotic self-complacency, but it is after all fairly certain that something would be lost, and it is by no means clear what if anything would come in to fill its place.

An historical parallel may help to illustrate the point. In the movement out of what may be called the royal age of dynasties and chivalric service, those peoples who have moved out of that age and out of its spiritual atmosphere have lost much of the conscious magnanimity and conviction of merit that once characterised that order of things, as it still continues to characterise the prevalent habit of mind in the countries that still continue under the archaic order of dynastic mastery and service. But it is also to be noted that these peoples who so have moved out of the archaic order appear to be well content with this change of spiritual atmosphere, and they are even fairly well persuaded, in the common run, that the move has brought them some net gain in the way of human dignity and neighbourly tolerance, such as to offset any loss incurred on the heroic and invidious side of life. Such is the tempering force of habit. Whereas, e.g., on the other hand, the peoples of these surviving dynastic States, to which it is necessary continually to recur, who have not yet moved out of that realm of heroics, find themselves unable to see anything in such a prospective shift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve.

What is here tentatively projected under the phrase, “neutralization of citizenship,” is only something a little more and farther along the same general line of movement which these more modern peoples have been following in all that sequence of institutional changes that has given them their present distinctive character of commonwealths, as contrasted with the dynastic States of the mediaeval order. What may be in prospect if such a further move away from the mediaeval landmarks is to take effect may best be seen in the light of the later moves in the same direction hitherto, more particularly as regards the moral and aesthetic merits at large of such an institutional mutation. As touches this last previous shifting of ground along this line, just spoken of, the case stands in this singular but significant posture, in respect of the spiritual values and valuations involved: These peoples who have, even in a doubtful measure, made this transition from the archaic institutional scheme, of fealty and dynastic exploit and coercion, to the newer scheme of the ungraded commonwealth, are convinced, to the point of martyrdom, that anything like a return to the old order is morally impossible as well as insufferably shameful and irksome; whereas those people, of the retarded division of the race, who have had no experience of this new order, are equally convinced that it is all quite incompatible with a worthy life.

Evidently, there should be no disputing about tastes. Evidently, too, these retarded others will not move on into the later institutional phase, of the ungraded commonwealth, by preconceived choice; but only, if at all, by such schooling of experience as will bring them insensibly to that frame of mind out of which the ideal of the ungraded commonwealth emerges by easy generalisation of workday practice. Meantime, having not yet experienced that phase of sentiment and opinion on civic rights and immunities that is now occupied by their institutionally maturer neighbours, the subjects of the Imperial Fatherland, e.g., in spite of the most laudable intentions and the best endeavour, are, by failure of this experience, unable to comprehend either the ground of opposition to their well-meaning projects of dominion or the futility of trying to convert these their elder brothers to their own prescriptive acceptation of what is worth while. In time, and with experience, this retarded division of Christendom may come to the same perspective on matters of national usage and ideals as has been enforced on the more modern peoples by farther habituation. So, also, in time and with experience, if the drift of circumstance shall turn out to set that way, the further move away from mediaeval discriminations and constraint and into the unspectacular scheme of neutralisation may come to seem as right, good and beautiful as the democratic commonwealth now seems to the English-speaking peoples, or as the Hohenzollern Imperial State now seems to the subjects of the Fatherland. There is, in effect, no disputing about tastes.

There is little that is novel, and nothing that is to be rated as constructive innovation, in this sketch of what might not inaptly be called peace by neglect. The legal mind, which commonly takes the initiative in counsels on what to do, should scarcely be expected to look in that direction for a way out, or to see its way out in that direction in any case; so that it need occasion no surprise if the many current projects of pacification turn on ingenious and elaborate provisions of apparatus and procedure, rather than on that simpler line of expedients which the drift of circumstance, being not possessed of a legal mind, has employed in the sequence of institutional change hitherto. The legal mind that dominates in the current deliberations on peace is at home in exhaustive specifications and meticulous demarkations, and it is therefore prone to seek a remedy for the burden of supernumerary devices by recourse to further excesses of regulation.

This trait of the legal mind is not a bad fault at the worst, and the quality in which this defect inheres is of the greatest moment in any project of constructive engineering on the legal and political plane. But it is less to the purpose, indeed it is at cross purposes, in such a conjuncture as the present; when the nations are held up in their quest of peace chiefly by an accumulation of institutional apparatus that has out-stayed its usefulness. It is the fortune even of good institutions to become imbecile with the change of conditioning circumstances, and it then becomes a question of their disestablishment, not of their rehabilitation. If there is anywhere a safe negative conclusion, it is that an institution grown mischievous by obsolescence need not be replaced by a substitute.

Instances of such mischievous institutional arrangements, obsolete or in process of obsolescence, would be, e.g., the French monarchy of the ancient regime, the Spanish Inquisition, the British corn laws and the “rotten boroughs,” the Barbary pirates, the Turkish rule in Armenia, the British crown, the German Imperial Dynasty, the European balance of powers, the Monroe Doctrine. In some sense, at least in the sense and degree implied in their selective survival, these various articles of institutional furniture, and many like them, have once presumably been suitable to some end, in the days of their origin and vigorous growth; and they have at least in some passable fashion met some felt want; but if they ever had a place and use in the human economy they have in time grown imbecile and mischievous by force of changing circumstances, and the question is not how to replace them with something else to the same purpose after their purpose is outworn. A man who loses a wart off the end of his nose does not apply to the Ersatz bureau for a convenient substitute.

Now, a large proportion, perhaps even substantially the whole, of the existing apparatus of international rights, pretensions, discriminations, covenants and provisos, visibly fall in that class, in so far as concerns their material serviceability to the nation at large, and particularly as regards any other than a warlike purpose, offensive or defensive. Of course, the national dignity and diplomatic punctilio, and the like adjuncts and instrumentalities of the national honour, all have their prestige value; and they are not likely to be given up out of hand. In point of fact, however solicitous for a lasting peace these patriotically-minded modern peoples may be, it is doubtful if they could be persuaded to give up any appreciable share of these appurtenances of national jealousy even when their retention implies an imminent breach of the peace. Yet it is plain that the peace will be secure in direct proportion to the measure in which national discrimination and prestige are allowed to pass into nothingness and be forgot.

By so much as it might amount to, such neutralisation of outstanding interests between these pacific nations should bring on a degree of coalescence of these nationalities. In effect, they are now held apart in many respects by measures of precaution against their coming to a common plan of use and wont. The degree of coalescence would scarcely be extreme; more particularly it could not well become onerous, since it would rest on convenience, inclination and the neglect of artificial discrepancies. The more intimate institutions of modern life, that govern human conduct locally and in detail, need not be affected, or not greatly affected, for better or worse. Yet something appreciable in that way might also fairly be looked for in time.

The nature, reach and prescriptive force of this prospective coalescence through neutralisation may perhaps best be appreciated in the light of what has already come to pass, without design or mandatory guidance, in those lines of human interest where the national frontiers interpose no bar, or at least no decisive bar, whether by force of unconcern or through impotence. Fashions of dress, equipage and decorous usage, e.g., run with some uniformity throughout these modern nations, and indeed with some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of course, nothing mandatory, in the simpler sense, about all this; nor is the degree of conformity extreme or uniform throughout. But it is a ready-made generalisation that only those communities are incorporated in this cosmopolitan coalescence of usage that are moved by their own incitement, and only so far as they have an effectually felt need of conformity in these premises. It is true, a dispassionate outsider, if such there be, would perhaps be struck by the degree of such painstaking conformity to canons of conduct which it frequently must cost serious effort even to ascertain in such detail as the case calls for. Doubtless, or at least presumably, conformity under the jurisdiction of the fashions, and in related provinces of decorum, is obligatory in a degree that need not be looked for throughout the scheme of use and wont at large, even under the advisedly established non-interference of the authorities. Still, on a point on which the evidence hitherto is extremely scant it is the part of discretion to hold no settled opinion.

A more promising line of suggestion is probably that afforded by the current degree of contact and consistency among the modern nations in respect of science and scholarship, as also in the aesthetic or the industrial arts. Local color and local pride, with one thing and another in the way of special incitement or inhibition, may come in to vary the run of things, or to blur or hinder a common understanding and mutual furtherance and copartnery in these matters of taste and intellect. Yet it is scarcely misleading to speak of the peoples of Christendom as one community in these respects. The sciences and the arts are held as a joint stock among these peoples, in their elements, and measurably also in their working-out. It is true, these interests and achievements of the race are not cultivated with the same assiduity or with identical effect throughout; but it is equally true that no effectual bar could profitably be interposed, or would be tolerated in the long run in this field, where men have had occasion to learn that unlimited collusion is more to the purpose than a clannish discrimination.

It is, no doubt, beyond reasonable hope that these democratic peoples could be brought forthwith to concerted action on the lines of such a plan of peace by neutralisation of all outstanding national pretensions. Both the French and the English-speaking peoples are too eagerly set on national aims and national prestige, to allow such a plan to come to a hearing, even if something of the kind should be spoken for by their most trusted leaders. By settled habit they are thinking in terms of nationality, and just now they are all under the handicap of an inflamed national pride. Advocacy of such a plan, of course, does not enter seriously into the purpose of this inquiry; which is concerned with the conditions under which peace is sought today, with the further conditions requisite to its perpetuation, and with the probable effects of such a peace on the fortunes of these peoples in case peace is established and effectually maintained.

It is a reasonable question, and one to which a provisional answer may be found, whether the drift of circumstances in the present and for the immediate future may be counted on to set in the direction of a progressive neutralisation of the character spoken of above, and therefore possibly toward a perpetuation of that peace that is to follow the present season of war. So also is it an open and interesting question whether the drift in that direction, if such is the set of it, can be counted on to prove sufficiently swift and massive, so as not to be overtaken and overborne by the push of agencies that make for dissension and warlike enterprise.

Anything like a categorical answer to these questions would have to be a work of vaticination or of effrontery, possibly as much to the point the one as the other. But there are certain conditions precedent to a lasting peace as the outcome of events now in train, and there are certain definable contingencies conditioned on such current facts as the existing state of the industrial arts and the state of popular sentiment, together with the conjuncture of circumstances under which these factors will come into action.

The state of the industrial arts, as it bears on the peace and its violation, has been spoken of above. It is of such a character that a judiciously prepared offensive launched by any Power of the first rank at an opportune time can reach and lay waste any given country of the habitable globe. The conclusive evidence of this is at hand, and it is the major premise underlying all current proposals and projects of peace, as well as the refusal of the nations now on the defensive to enter into negotiations looking to an “inconclusive peace.” This state of the case is not commonly recognised in so many words, but it is well enough understood. So that all peace projects that shall hope to find a hearing must make up their account with it, and must show cause why they should be judged competent to balk any attempted offensive. In an inarticulate or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less with ever-increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this state of the case is also coming to be an article of popular “knowledge and belief,” wherever much or little thought is spent on the outlook for peace. It has already had a visible effect in diminishing the exclusiveness of nationalities and turning the attention of the pacific peoples to the question of feasible ways and means of international cooperation in case of need; but it has not hitherto visibly lessened the militant spirit among these nations, nor has it lowered the tension of their national pride, at least not yet; rather the contrary, in fact.

The effect, upon the popular temper, of this inchoate realisation of the fatality that so lies in the modern state of the industrial arts, varies from one country to another, according to the varying position in which they are placed, or in which they conceive themselves to be placed. Among the belligerent nations it has put the spur of fear to their need of concerted action as well as to their efforts to strengthen the national defense. But the state of opinion and sentiment abroad in the nation in time of war is no secure indication of what it will be after the return to peace. The American people, the largest and most immediately concerned of the neutral nations, should afford more significant evidence of the changes in the popular attitude likely to follow from a growing realisation of this state of the case, that the advantage has passed definitively to any well prepared and resolute offensive, and that no precautions of diplomacy and no practicable measures of defensive armament will any longer give security, provided always that there is anywhere a national Power actuated by designs of imperial dominion.

It is, of course, only little by little that the American people and their spokesmen have come to realise their own case under this late-modern situation, and hitherto only in an imperfect degree. Their first response to the stimulus has been a display of patriotic self-sufficiency and a move to put the national defense on a war-footing, such as would be competent to beat off all aggression. Those elements of the population who least realise the gravity of the situation, and who are at the same time commercially interested in measures of armament or in military preferment, have not begun to shift forward beyond this position of magniloquence and resolution; nor is there as yet much intimation that they see beyond it, although there is an ever-recurring hint that they in a degree appreciate the practical difficulty of persuading a pacific people to make adequate preparation beforehand, in equipment and trained man-power, for such a plan of self-sufficient self-defense. But increasingly among those who are, by force of temperament or insight or by lack of the pecuniary and the placeman’s interest, less confident of an appeal to the nation’s prowess, there is coming forward an evident persuasion that warlike preparations “preparedness” alone and carried through by the Republic in isolation, will scarcely serve the turn.

There are at least two lines of argument, or of persuasion, running to the support of such a view; readiness for a warlike defense, by providing equipment and trained men, might prove a doubtfully effectual measure even when carried to the limit of tolerance that will always be reached presently in any democratic country; and then, too, there is hope of avoiding the necessity of such warlike preparation, at least in the same extreme degree, by means of some practicable working arrangement to be effected with other nations who are in the same case. Hitherto the farthest reach of these pacific schemes for maintaining the peace, or for the common defense, has taken the shape of a projected league of neutral nations to keep the peace by enforcement of specified international police regulations or by compulsory arbitration of international disputes. It is extremely doubtful how far, if at all, popular sentiment of any effectual force falls in with this line of precautionary measures. Yet it is evident that popular sentiment, and popular apprehension, has been stirred profoundly by the events of the past two years, and the resulting change that is already visible in the prevailing sentiment as regards the national defense would argue that more far-reaching changes in the same connection are fairly to be looked for within a reasonable allowance of time.

In this American case the balance of effectual public opinion hitherto is to all appearance quite in doubt, but it is also quite unsettled. The first response has been a display of patriotic emotion and national self-assertion. The further, later and presumably more deliberate, expressions of opinion carry a more obvious note of apprehension and less of stubborn or unreflecting national pride. It may be too early to anticipate a material shift of base, to a more neutral, or less exclusively national footing in matters of the common defense.

The national administration has been moving at an accelerated rate in the direction not of national isolation and self-reliance resting on a warlike equipment formidable enough to make or break the peace at will such as the more truculent and irresponsible among the politicians have spoken for but rather in the direction of moderating or curtailing all national pretensions that are not of undoubted material consequence, and of seeking a common understanding and concerted action with those nationalities whose effectual interests in the matters of peace and war coincide with the American. The administration has grown visibly more pacific in the course of its exacting experience, more resolutely, one might even say more aggressively pacific; but the point of chief attention in all this strategy of peace has also visibly been shifting somewhat from the maintenance of a running equilibrium between belligerents and a keeping of the peace from day to day, to the ulterior and altogether different question of what is best to be done toward a conclusive peace at the close of hostilities, and the ways and means of its subsequent perpetuation.

This latter is, in effect, an altogether different question from that of preserving neutrality and amicable relations in the midst of importunate belligerents, and it may even, conceivably, perhaps not unlikely, come to involve a precautionary breach of the current peace and a taking of sides in the war with an urgent view to a conclusive outcome. It would be going too far to impute to the administration, at the present stage, such an aggressive attitude in its pursuit of a lasting peace as could be called a policy of defensive offense; but it will shock no one’s sensibilities to say that such a policy, involving a taking of sides and a renouncing of national isolation, is visibly less remote from the counsels of the administration today than it has been at any earlier period.

In this pacific attitude, increasingly urgent and increasingly far-reaching and apprehensive, the administration appears to be speaking for the common man rather than for the special interests or the privileged classes. Such would appear, on the face of the returns, to be the meaning of the late election. It is all the more significant on that account, since in the long run it is after all the common man that will have to pass on the expediency of any settled line of policy and to bear the material burden of carrying it into effect.

It may seem rash to presume that a popularly accredited administration in a democratic country must approximately reflect the effectual changes of popular sentiment and desire. Especially would it seem rash to anyone looking on from the point of view of an undemocratic nation, and therefore prone to see the surface fluctuations of excitement and shifting clamor. But those who are within the democratic pale will know that any administration in such a country, where official tenure and continued incumbency of the party rest on a popular vote, any such administration is a political organisation and is guided by political expediency, in the tawdry sense of the phrase. Such a political situation has the defects of its qualities, as has been well and frequently expounded by its critics, but it has also the merits of its shortcomings. In a democracy of this modern order any incumbent of high office is necessarily something of a politician, quite indispensably so; and a politician at the same time necessarily is something of a demagogue. He yields to the popular drift, or to the set of opinion and demands among the effective majority on whom he leans; and he can not even appear to lead, though he may surreptitiously lead opinion in adroitly seeming to reflect it and obey it. Ostensible leadership, such as has been staged in this country from time to time, has turned out to be ostensible only. The politician must be adroit; but if he is also to be a statesman he must be something more. He is under the necessity of guessing accurately what the drift of events and opinion is going to be on the next reach ahead; and in taking coming events by the forelock he may be able to guide and shape the drift of opinion and sentiment somewhat to his own liking. But all the while he must keep within the lines of the long-term set of the current as it works out in the habits of thought of the common man.

Such foresight and flexibility is necessary to continued survival, but flexibility of convictions alone does not meet the requirements. Indeed, it has been tried. It is only the minor politicians the most numerous and long-lived, it is true who can hold their place in the crevices of the party organisation, and get their livelihood from the business of party politics, without some power of vision and some hazard of forecast. It results from this state of the case that the drift of popular sentiment and the popular response to the stimulus of current events is reflected more faithfully and more promptly by the short-lived administrations of a democracy than by the stable and formally irresponsible governmental establishments of the older order. It should also be noted that these democratic administrations are in a less advantageous position for the purpose of guiding popular sentiment and shaping it to their own ends.

Now, it happens that at no period within the past half-century has the course of events moved with such celerity or with so grave a bearing on the common good and the prospective contingencies of national life as during the present administration. This apparent congruity of the administration’s policy with the drift of popular feeling and belief will incline anyone to put a high rating on the administration’s course of conduct, in international relations as well as in national measures that have a bearing on international relations, as indicating the course taken by sentiment and second thought in the community at large, for, in effect, whether or not in set form, the community at large reflects on any matters of such gravity and urgency as to force themselves upon the attention of the common man.

Two main lines of reflection have visibly been enforced on the administration by the course of events in the international field. There has been a growing apprehension, mounting in the later months to something like the rank of a settled conviction, that the Republic has been marked down for reduction to a vassal state by the dynastic Empire now engaged with its European adversaries. In so saying that the Republic has been marked down for subjection it is not intended to intimate that deliberate counsel has been had by the Imperial establishment on that prospective enterprise; still less that a resolution to such effect, with specification of ways and means, has been embodied in documentary form and deposited for future reference in the Imperial archives. All that is intended, and all that is necessary to imply, is that events are in train to such effect that the subjugation of the American republic will necessarily find its place in the sequence presently, provided that the present Imperial adventure is brought to a reasonably auspicious issue; though it does not follow that this particular enterprise need be counted on as the next large adventure in dominion to be undertaken when things again fall into promising shape. This latter point would, of course, depend on the conjuncture of circumstances, chief of which would have to be the exigencies of imperial dominion shaping the policy of the Empire’s natural and necessary ally in the Far East. All this has evidently been coming more and more urgently into the workday deliberations of the American administration. Of course, it is not spoken of in set terms to this effect in official utterances, perhaps not even within doors; that sort of thing is not done. But it can do no harm to use downright expressions in a scientific discussion of these phenomena, with a view to understanding the current drift of things in this field.

Beyond this is the similar apprehension, similarly though more slowly and reluctantly rising to the level of settled conviction, that the American commonwealth is not fit to take care of its own case single-handed. This apprehension is enforced more and more unmistakably with every month that passes on the theatre of war. And it is reenforced by the constantly more obvious reflection that the case of the American commonwealth in this matter is the same as that of the democratic countries of Europe, and of the other European colonies. It is not, or at least one may believe it is not yet, that in the patriotic apprehension of the common man, or of the administration which speaks for him, the resources of the country would be inadequate to meet any contingencies of the kind that might arise, whether in respect of industrial capacity or in point of man-power, if these resources were turned to this object with the same singleness of purpose and the same drastic procedure that marks the course of a national establishment guided by no considerations short of imperial dominion. The doubt presents itself rather as an apprehension that the cost would be extravagantly high, in all respects in which cost can be counted; which is presently seconded, on very slight reflection and review of experience, by recognition of the fact that a democracy is, in point of fact, not to be persuaded to stand under arms interminably in mere readiness for a contingency, however distasteful the contingency may be.

In point of fact, a democratic commonwealth is moved by other interests in the main, and the common defense is a secondary consideration, not a primary interest, unless in the exceptional case of a commonwealth so placed under the immediate threat of invasion as to have the common defense forced into the place of paramount consequence in its workday habits of thought. The American republic is not so placed. Anyone may satisfy himself by reasonable second thought that the people of this nation are not to be counted on to do their utmost in time of peace to prepare for war. They may be persuaded to do much more than has been their habit, and adventurous politicians may commit them to much more than the people at large would wish to undertake, but when all is done that can be counted on for a permanency, up to the limit of popular tolerance, it would be a bold guess that should place the result at more than one-half of what the country is capable of. Particularly would the people’s patience balk at the extensive military training requisite to put the country in an adequate position of defense against a sudden and well-prepared offensive. It is otherwise with a dynastic State, to the directorate of which all other interests are necessarily secondary, subsidiary, and mainly to be considered only in so far as they are contributory to the nation’s readiness for warlike enterprise.

America at the same time is placed in an extra-hazardous position, between the two seas beyond which to either side lie the two Imperial Powers whose place in the modern economy of nations it is to disturb the peace in an insatiable quest of dominion. This position is no longer defensible in isolation, under the later state of the industrial arts, and the policy of isolation that has guided the national policy hitherto is therefore falling out of date. The question is as to the manner of its renunciation, rather than the fact of it. It may end in a defensive copartnership with other nations who are placed on the defensive by the same threatening situation, or it may end in a bootless struggle for independence, but the choice scarcely extends beyond this alternative. It will be said, of course, that America is competent to take care of itself and its Monroe doctrine in the future as in the past. But that view, spoken for cogently by thoughtful men and by politicians looking for party advantage, overlooks the fact that the modern technology has definitively thrown the advantage to the offensive, and that intervening seas can no longer be counted on as a decisive obstacle. On this latter head, what was reasonably true fifteen years ago is doubtful today, and it is in all reasonable expectation invalid for the situation fifteen years hence.

The other peoples that are of a neutral temper may need the help of America sorely enough in their endeavours to keep the peace, but America’s need of cooperation is sorer still, for the Republic is coming into a more precarious place than any of the others. America is also, at least potentially, the most democratic of the greater Powers, and is handicapped with all the disabilities of a democratic commonwealth in the face of war. America is also for the present, and perhaps for the calculable future, the most powerful of these greater Powers, in point of conceivably available resources, though not in actually available fighting-power; and the entrance of America unreservedly into a neutral league would consequently be decisive both of the purposes of the league and of its efficiency for the purpose; particularly if the neutralisation of interests among the members of the league were carried so far as to make withdrawal and independent action disadvantageous.

On the establishment of such a neutral league, with such neutralisation of national interests as would assure concerted action in time of stress, the need of armament on the part of the American republic would disappear, at least to the extent that no increase of armed force would be advisable. The strength of the Republic lies in its large and varied resources and the unequalled industrial capacity of its population, a capacity which is today seriously hampered by untoward business interests and business methods sheltered under national discrimination, but which would come more nearly to its own so soon as these national discriminations were corrected or abrogated in the neutralisation of national pretensions. The neutrally-minded countries of Europe have been constrained to learn the art of modern war, as also to equip themselves with the necessary appliances, sufficient to meet all requirements for keeping the peace through such a period as can or need be taken into account, provided the peace that is to come on the conclusion of the present war shall be placed on so “conclusive” a footing as will make it anything substantially more than a season of recuperation for that warlike Power about whose enterprise in dominion the whole question turns. Provided that suitably “substantial guarantees” of a reasonable quiescence on the part of this Imperial Power are had, there need be no increase of the American armament. Any increased armament would in that case amount to nothing better than an idle duplication of plant and personnel already on hand and sufficient to meet the requirements.

To meet the contingencies had in view in its formation, such a league would have to be neutralised to the point that all pertinent national pretensions would fall into virtual abeyance, so that all the necessary resources at the disposal of the federated nations would automatically come under the control of the league’s appointed authorities without loss of time, whenever the need might arise. That is to say, national interests and pretensions would have to give way to a collective control sufficient to insure prompt and concerted action. In the face of such a neutral league Imperial Japan alone would be unable to make a really serious diversion or to entertain much hope of following up its quest of dominion. The Japanese Imperial establishment might even be persuaded peaceably to let its unoffending neighbours live their own life according to their own light. It is, indeed, possibly the apprehension of some such contingency that has hurried the rapacity of the Island Empire into the headlong indecencies of the past year or two.