CHAPTER IV
PEACE WITHOUT HONOUR
The argument therefore turns back to a choice between the two alternatives
alluded to: peace in submission to the rule of the German dynastic
establishment (and to Japan), or peace through elimination of these
enterprising Powers. The former alternative, no doubt, is sufficiently
unattractive, but it is not therefore to be put aside without a hearing.
As goes without saying, it is repugnant to the patriotic sentiments
of those peoples whom the Imperial German establishment have elected
for submission. But if this unreflecting patriotic revulsion can once
be made amenable to reason, there is always something to be said in
favor of such a plan of peaceable submission, or at least in extenuation
of it; and if it is kept in mind that the ulterior necessity of such
submission must always remain in perspective as a condition precedent
to a peaceful settlement, so long as one or both of these enterprising
Powers remains intact, it will be seen that a sane appraisal of the
merits of such a régime of peace is by no means uncalled for.
For neither of these two Powers is there a conclusive issue of endeavour
short of paramount dominion.
There should also be some gain of insight and sobriety in recalling
that the Intellectuals of the Fatherland, who have doubtless pondered
this matter longer and more
(119) dispassionately than all other men, have spoken very highly of
the merits of such a plan of universal submission to the rule of this
German dynastic establishment. They had, no doubt, been considering
the question both long and earnestly, as to what would, in the light
of reason, eventually be to the best interest of those peoples whose
manifest destiny was eventual tutelage under the Imperial crown; and
there need also be no doubt that in that time (two years past) they
therefore spoke advisedly and out of the fulness of the heart on this
head. The pronouncements that came out of the community of Intellectuals
in that season of unembarrassed elation and artless avowal are doubtless
to be taken as an outcome of much thoughtful canvassing of what had
best be done, not as an enforced compromise with untoward necessities
but as the salutary course freely to be pursued with an eye single to
the best good of all concerned.
It is true, the captious have been led to speak slightingly of the
many utterances of this tenor coming out of the community of Intellectuals,
as, e. g., the lay sermons of Professor Ostwald dating back to that
season; but no unprejudiced reader can well escape the persuasion
that these, as well as the very considerable volume of similar pronouncements
by many other men of eminent scholarship and notable for benevolent
sentiments, are faithfully to be accepted as the expressions of a
profound conviction and a consciously generous spirit. In s0 speakingof
the advantages to he derived by any subject people from submission
to the German Imperial rule, these Intellectuals are not to be construed
as formulating the drift of vulgar patriotic sentiment among their
compatriots at large, but rather as giving out the deliverances of
their own more sensitive spirit and maturer delibera-
(120) -tion, as men who are in a position to see human affairs and interests
in a larger perspective. Such, no doubt, would be their own sense of
the matter.
Reflection on the analogous case of the tutelage exercised by the
American government over the subject Philippinos may contribute to
a just and temperate view of what is intended in the regime of tutelage
and submission so spoken for by the German Intellectuals,-and, it
may be added, found good by the Imperial statesmen. There would, of
course, be the difference, as against the case of the Philippinos,
that whereas the American government is after all answerable, in the
last resort and in a somewhat random fashion, to a popular opinion
that runs on democratic preconceptions, the German Imperial establishment
on the other hand is answerable to no one, except it be to God, who
is conceived to stand in somewhat the relation of a silent partner,
or a minority stock, holder in this dynastic enterprise.
Yet it should not be overlooked that any presumptive hard usage which
the vassal peoples might look for at the hands of the German dynasty
would necessarily be tempered with considerations of expediency as
dictated by the exigencies of usufruct. The Imperial establishment
has shown itself to be wise, indeed more wise than amiable, but wise
at least in its intentions, in the use which it has made of subject
peoples hitherto. It is true, a somewhat accentuated eagerness on
the part of the Imperial establishment to get the maximum service
in a minimum of time and at a minimum cost from these subject populations,-as,
e. g., in Silesia and Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine,
or in its African and Oceanic possessions,-has at times led to practices
altogether dubious on humanitarian grounds, at the same
(121) time that in point of thrifty management they have gone beyond
"what the traffic will bear." Yet it is not to be overlooked-and in
this connection it is a point of some weight-that, so far as the predatory
traditions of its statecraft will permit, the Imperial establishment
has in all these matters been guided by a singularly unreserved attention
to its own material advantage. Where its management in these premises
has yielded a less profitable usufruct than the circumstances would
reasonably admit, the failure has been due to an excess of cupidity
rather than the reverse.
The circumstantial evidence converges to the effect that the Imperial
establishment may confidently be counted on to manage the affairs
of its subject peoples with an eye single to its own material gain,
and it may with equal confidence be counted on that in the long run
no unadvised excesses will be practised. Of course, an excessive adventure
in atrocity and predation, due to such human infirmity in its agents
or in its directorate as has been shown in various recent episodes,
is to be looked for now and again; but these phenomena would come
in by way of fluctuating variations from the authentic routine, rather
than as systematic features of it.
That superfluity of naughtiness that has given character to the current
German Imperial policy in Belgium, e. g., or that similarly, has characterised
the dealings of Imperial Japan in Korea during the late "benevolent
assimilation" of that people into Japanese-Imperial usufruct, is not
fairly to be taken to indicate what such an Imperial establishment
may be expected to do with a subject people on a footing of settled
and long-term exploitation. At the outset, in both instances, the
policy of frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view to
(122) economy of effort in reducing the subject people to an abject
state of intimidation, according to the art of war as set forth in the
manuals; whereas latterly the somewhat profligate excesses of the government
of occupation-decently covered with diplomatic parables on benevolence
and legality-have been dictated by military convenience, particularly
by the need of forced labor and the desirability of a reduced population
in the acquired territory. So also the "personally conducted" dealings
with the Armenians by use of the Turks should probably also best be
explained as an endeavour to reduce the numbers of an undesirable population
beforehand, without incurring unnecessary blame. All these things are,
at the most, misleading indications of what the Imperial policy would
be like under settled conditions and in the absence of insubordination.
By way of contrast, such as may serve to bring the specific traits
of this prospective Imperial tutelage of nations into a better light,
the Ottoman usufruct of the peoples of the Turkish dominions offers
an instructive instance. The Ottoman tutelage is today spoken of by
its apologists in terms substantially identical with the sketches
of the future presented by hopeful German patriots in the early months
of the current war. But as is so frequently the case in such circumstances,
these expressions of the officers have to be understood in a diplomatic
sense; not as touching the facts in any other than a formal way. It
is sufficiently evident that the Ottoman management of its usufruct
has throughout been ill-advised enough persisently to charge more
than the traffic would bear, probably due in great part to lack of
control over its agents or ramifications, by the central office. The
Ottoman establishment has not observed, or
(123) enforced, the plain rules of economy in its utilisation of the
subject peoples, and finds itself today bankrupt in consequence. What
may afford more of a parallel to the prospective German tutelage of
the nations is the procedure of the Japanese establishment in Korea,
Manchuria, or China; which is also duly covered with an ostensibly decent
screen of diplomatic parables, but the nature and purpose of which is
overt enough in all respects but the the nomenclature. It is not unlikely
that even this Japanese usufruct and tutelage runs on somewhat less
humane and complaisant lines than a well-advised economy of resources
would dictate for the prospective German usufruct of the Western nations.
There is the essential difference between the two cases that while
Japan is over-populated, so that it becomes the part of a wise government
to find additional lands for occupancy, and that so it is constrained
by its imperial ambitions to displace much of the population in its
subject territories, the Fatherland on the other hand is under-populated-notoriously,
though not according to the letter of the diplomatic parables on this
head-and for the calculable future must continue to be under-populated;
provided that the state of the industrial arts continues subject to
change in the same general direction as hitherto, and provided that
no radical change affects the German birth-rate. So, since the Imperial
government has no need of new lands for occupancy by its home population,
it will presumably be under no inducement to take measures looking
to the partial depopulation of its subject territories.
The case of Belgium and the measures looking to a reduction of its
population may raise a doubt, but probably not a well taken doubt.
It is rather that since it has
(124) become evident that the territory can not be held, it is thought
desirable to enrich the Fatherland with whatever property can be removed,
and to consume the accumulated man-power of the Belgian people in the
service of the war. It would appear that it is a war-measure, designed
to make use of the enemy's resources for his defeat. Indeed, under conditions
of settled occupation or subjection, any degree of such depopulation
would entail an economic loss, and any well-considered administrative
policy would therefore look to the maintenance of the inhabitants of
the acquired territories in undiminished numbers and unimpaired serviceability.
The resulting scheme of Imperial usufruct should accordingly be of
a considerate, not to say in effect humane, character,-always provided
that the requisite degree of submission and subservience ("law and
order") can be enforced by a system of coercion so humane as not to
reduce the number of the inhabitants or materially to lower their
physical powers. Such would, by reasonable expectation, be the character
of this projected Imperial tutelage and usufruct of the nations of
Christendom. In its working-out this German project should accordingly
differ very appreciably from the policy which its imperial ambitions
have constrained the Japanese establishment to pursue in its dealings
with the life and fortunes of its recently, and currently, acquired
subject peoples.
The better to appreciate in Borne concrete fashion what should, by
reasonable expectation, be the terms on which life might so be carried
on sub pace germanica, attention may be invited to certain
typical instances of such peace by abnegation among contemporary peoples.
Perhaps at the top of the list stands India, with its many and varied
(125) native peoples, subject to British tutelage, but, the British
apologists say, not subject to British usufruct. The margin of tolerance
in this instance is fairly wide, but its limits are sharply drawn. India
is wanted and held, not for tribute or revenue to be paid into the Imperial
treasury, nor even for exclusive trade privileges or preferences, but
mainly as a preserve to provide official occupation and emoluments for
British gentlemen not otherwise occupied or provided for; and secondarily
as a means of safeguarding lucrative British investments, that is to
say, investments by British capitalists of high and low degree. The
current British professions on the subject of this occupation of India,
and at times the shamefaced apology for it, is that the people of India
suffer no hardship by this means; the resulting governmental establishment
being no more onerous and no more expensive to them than any equally,
or even any less, competent government of their own would necessarily
be. The fact, however, remains, that India affords a much needed and
very considerable net revenue to the class of British gentlemen, in
the shape of official salaries and pensions, which the British gentry
at large can on no account forego. Narrowed to these proportions it
is readily conceivable that the British usufruct of India should rest
with no extraordinary weight on the Indian people at large, however
burdensome it may at times become to those classes who aspire to take
over the usufruct in case the British establishment can be dislodged.
This case evidently differs very appreciably from the projected German
usufruct of neighboring countries in Europe.
A case that may be more nearly in point would be that of any one
of the countries subject to the Turkish rule in recent times; although
these instances scarcely show just
(126) what to expect under the projected German régime. The Turkish
rule has been notably inefficient, considered as a working system of
dynastic usufruct; whereas it is confidently expected that the corresponding
German system would show quite an exceptional degree of efficiency for
the purpose. This Turkish inefficiency has had a two-fold effect, which
should not appear in the German case. Through administrative abuses
intended to serve the personal advantage of the irresponsible officials,
the underlying peoples have suffered a progressive exhaustion and dilapidation;
whereby the central authority, the dynastic establishment, has also
grown progressively, cumulatively weaker and therefore less able to
control its agents; and, in the second place, on the same grounds, in
the pursuit of personal gain, and prompted by personal animosities,
these irresponsible agents have persistently carried their measures
of extortion beyond reasonable bounds,-that is to say beyond the bounds
which a well considered plan of permanent usufruct would countenance.
All this would be otherwise and more sensibly arranged under German
Imperial auspices.
One of the nations that have fallen under Turkish rule -and Turkish
peace-affords a valuable illustration of a secondary point that is
to be considered in connection with any plan of peace by submission.
The Armenian people have in later time come partly under Russian dominion,
and so have been exposed to the Russian system of bureaucratic exploitation;
and the difference between Russian and Turkish Armenia is instructive.
According to all credible-that is unofficial-accounts, conditions
are perceptibly more tolerable in Russian Armenia. Well informed persons
relate that the cause for this more lenient, or less extreme, administration
of affairs under
(127) Russian officials is a selective death rate among them, such that
a local official who persistently exceeds a certain ill-defined limit
of tolerance is removed by what would under other circumstances be called
an untimely death. No adequate remedy has been found, within the large
limits which Russian bureaucratic administration habitually allows itself
in questions of coercion. The Turk, on the other hand, less deterred
by considerations of long-term expediency, and, it may be, less easily
influenced by outside opinion on any point of humanity, has found a
remedy in the systematic extirpation of any village in which an illicit
death occurs. One will incline to presume that on this head the German
Imperial procedure would be more after the Russian than after the Turkish
pattern; although latterday circumstantial evidence will throw some
sinister doubt on the reasonableness of such an expectation.
It is plain, however, that the Turkish remedy for this form of insubordination
is a wasteful means of keeping the peace. Plainly, to the home office,
the High Command, the extinction of a village with its population
is a more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of one of
its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mind
that such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligate
excesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable
to the central authority. It may be left an open question how far
a corrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable,
in case of need, under the projected German Imperial usufruct.
It may, I apprehend, be said without offense that there is no depth
of depravity below the ordinary reach of the Russian bureaucracy;
but this organisation finds itself
(128) constrained, after all, to use circumspection and set some limits
on individual excursions beyond the bounds of decency and humanity,
so soon as these excesses touch the common or joint interest of the
organisation. Any excess of atrocity, beyond a certain margin of tolerance,
on the part of any one of its members is likely to work pecuniary mischief
to the rest; and then, the bureaucratic conduct of affairs is also,
after all, in an uncertain degree subject to some surveillance by popular
sentiment at home or abroad. The like appears not to hold true of the
Turkish official organisation. The difference may be due to a less provident
spirit among the latter, as already indicated. But a different tradition,
perhaps an outgrowth of this lack of providence and of the consequent
growth of a policy of "frightfulness," may also come in for a share
in the outcome; and there is also a characteristic difference in point
of religious convictions, which may go some way in the same direction.
The followers of Islam appear on the whole to take the tenets of their
faith at their face value -servile, intolerant and fanatic-whereas the
Russian official class may perhaps without undue reproach be considered
to have on the whole outlived the superstitious conceits to which they
yield an expedient pro forma observance. So that when worse comes to
worst, and the Turk finds himself at length with his back against the
last consolations of the faith that makes all things straight, he has
the assured knowledge that he is in the right as against the unbelievers;
whereas the Russian bureaucrat in a like case only knows that he is
in the wrong. The last extremity is a less conclusive argument to the
man in whose apprehension it is not the last extremity. Again, there
is some shadow of doubt falls on the question as to which of these is
more nearly in the German Imperial spirit. (129)
On the whole, the case of China is more to the point. By and large,
the people of China, more particularly the people of the coastal-plains
region, have for long habitually lived under a régime of peace
by non-resistance. The peace has been broken transiently from time
to time, and local disturbances have not been infrequent; but, taken
by and large, the situation has habitually been of the peaceful order,
on a ground of non-resisting submission. But this submission has not
commonly been of a whole-hearted kind, and it has also commonly been
associated with a degree of persistent sabotage j which has clogged
and retarded the administration of governmental law and order, and
has also been conducive to a large measure of irresponsible official
corruption. The habitual scheme of things Chinese in this bearing
may fairly be described as a peace of non-resistance tempered with
sabotage and assassination. Such was the late Manchu régime,
and there is no reason in China for expecting a substantially different
outcome from the Japanese invasion that is now under way. The nature
of this Japanese incursion should be sufficiently plain. It is an
enterprise in statecraft after the order of Macchiavelli, Metternich,
and Bismarck. Of course, the conciliatory fables given out by the
diplomatic service, and by the other apologists, are to be taken at
the normal discount of one-hundred percent. The relatively large current
output of such fables may afford a hint as to the magnitude of the
designs which the fables are intended to cover.
The Chinese people have had a more extended experience in peace of
this order than all others, and their case should accordingly be instructive
beyond all others. Not that a European peace by non-resistance need
be expected to run very closely on the Chinese lines, but there
(130) should be a reasonable expectation that the large course of things
would be somewhat on the same order in both cases. Neither the European
traditions and habitual temperament nor the modern state of the industrial
arts will permit one to look for anything like a close parallel in detail;
but it remains true, when all is said, that the Chinese experience of
peace under submission to alien masters affords the most instructive
illustration of such a régime, as touches its practicability,
its methods, its cultural value, and its effect on the fortunes of the
subject peoples and of their masters.
Now, it may be said by way of preliminary generalisation that the
life-history of the Chinese people and their culture is altogether
the most imposing achievement which the records of mankind have to
show; whereas the history of their successive alien establishments
of mastery and usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibily shameful
episodes,-always beginning in unbounded power and vainglory, running
by way of misrule, waste and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in
abject corruption and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation,
industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chinese, and always
have their alien masters contributed nothing to the outcome but misrule,
waste, corruption and decay. And yet in the long run, with all this
handicap and misrule, the Chinese people have held their place and
made headway in those things to which men look with affection and
esteem when they come to take stock of what things are worth while.
It would be. a hopeless task to count up how many dynasties of masterful
barbarians, here and there, have meanwhile come up and played their
ephemeral role of vainglorious nuisance and gone under
(131) in shame and confusion, and dismissed with the invariable verdict
of "Good Riddance!"
It may at first sight seem a singular conjuncture of circumstances,
but it is doubtless a consequence of the same conjuncture, that the
Chinese people have also kept their hold through all history on the
Chinese lands. They have lived and multiplied and continued to occupy
the land, while their successive alien masters have come and gone. So
that today, as the outcome of conquest, and of what would be rated as
defeat, the people continue to be Chinese, with an unbroken pedigree
as well as an unbroken line of home-bred culture running through all
the ages of history. In the biological respect the Chinese plan of nonresistance
has proved eminently successful.
And, by the way, much the same, though not in the same degree, is
true for the Armenian people; who have continued to hold their hill
country through good days and evil, apparently without serious or
enduring reduction of their numbers and without visible lapse into
barbarism, while the successive disconnected dynasties of their conquering
rulers have come and gone, leaving nothing but an ill name. "This
fable teaches" that a diligent attention to the growing of crops and
children is the sure and appointed way to the maintenance of a people
and its culture even under the most adverse conditions, and that eventual
death and shameful destruction inexorably wait on any "ruling race."
Hitherto the rule has not failed. The rule, indeed, is grounded in
the heritable traits of human nature, from which there is no escape.
For its long-term biological success, as well as for the continued
integrity of a people's culture, a peace of nonresistance, under good
or evil auspices, is more to be desired than imperial dominion. But
these things are not
(132) all that modern peoples live for, perhaps it is safe to say that
in no case are these chief among the things for which civilised Europeans
are willing to live. They urgently need also freedom to live their own
life in their own way, or rather to live within the bonds of convention
which they have come in for by use and wont, or at least they believe
that such freedom is essential to any life that shall be quite worth
while. So also they have a felt need of security from arbitrary interference
in their pursuit of a livelihood and in the free control of their own
pecuniary concerns. And they want a discretionary voice in the management
of their joint interests, whether as a nation or in a minor civil group.
In short, they want personal, pecuniary and political liberty, free
from all direction or inhibition from without. They are also much concerned
to maintain favorable economic conditions for themselves and their children.
And last, but chiefly rather than least, they commonly are hide-bound
patriots inspired with an intractable felt need of national prestige.
It is an assemblage of peoples in such a frame of mind to whom the
pacifists are proposing, in effect, a plan for eventual submission
to an alien dynasty, under the form of a neutral peace compact to
include the warlike Powers. There is little likelihood of such a scheme
being found acceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does
in the countries concerned. And yet, if the brittle temper in which
any such proposal is rejected by popular opinion in these countries
today could be made to yield sufficiently to reflection and deliberate
appraisal, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that its acceptance
would not be the best way out of a critical situation. The cost of
disabling and eliminating the warlike Power whose dominion is
(133) feared, or even of staving off the day of surrender, is evidently
serious enough. The merits of the alternative should be open to argument,
and should, indeed, be allowed due consideration. And any endeavor to
present them without heat should presumably find a hearing. It appears
to have been much of the fault of the pacifists who speak for the Peace
League that they have failed or refused to recognise these ulterior
consequences of the plan which they advocate; so that they appear either
not to know what they are talking about, or to avoid talking about what
they know.
It will be evident from beforehand that the grave difficulty to be
met in any advocacy of peace on terms of non-resistant subjection
to an alien dynastic rule-"peace at any price"-is a difficulty of
the psychological order. Whatever may be conceived to hold true for
the Chinese people, such submission is repugnant to the sentiments
of the Western peoples. Which in turn evidently is due to the prevalence
of certain habitual preconceptions among modern civilised men,-certain
acquired traits of temper and bias, of the nature of fixed ideas.
That something in the way of a reasonably contented and useful life
is possible under such a régime as is held in prospect, and
even some tolerable degree of well-being, is made evident in the Chinese
case. But the Chinese tolerance of such a régime goes to argue
that they are charged with fewer preconceptions at variance with the
exigencies of life under these conditions. So, it is commonly accepted,
and presumably to be accepted, that the Chinese people at large have
little if any effectual sense of nationality; their patriotism appears
to be nearly a negligible quantity. This would appear to an outsider
to have been their besetting weakness, to which their successful subjection
by various and
(134) sundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also to have
been the infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to
learn the ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive
their alien masters, all and sundry, and to occupy the land and save
the uncontaminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation.
Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of patriotism
that is held of so great account among Western nations has already
been set out in an earlier passage. One or two points in the case,
that bear on the argument here, may profitably be recalled. The patriotic
spirit, or the tie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit,
whatever proclivity to the formation of such a habit may be native
to mankind. More particularly is it a matter of habit-it might even
be called a matter of fortuitous habit-what particular national establishment
a given human subject will become attached to on reaching what is
called "years of discretion" and so becoming a patriotic citizen.
The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it may at least
serve to suggest what may be the share played by habituation in the
matter of national attachment. The young clam, after having passed
the free-swimming phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment
to the person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bottom and attaches
himself loosely in the place and station in life to which he has been
led, and he loyally sticks to his particular patch of oose and sand
through good fortune and evil. It is, under Providence, something
of a fortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a resting place
for the sole of his foot, but it is also, after all. "his own. his
native land" etc. It lies in the
(135) nature of a clam to attach himself after this fashion, loosely,
to the bottom where he finds a living, and he would not be a "good clam
and true" if he failed to do so; but the particular spot for which he
forms this attachment is not of the essence of the case. At least, so
they say.
It may be, as good men appear to believe or know, that all men of
sound, or at least those of average, mind will necessarily be of a
patriotic temper and be attached by ties of loyalty to some particular
national establishment, ordinarily the particular establishment which
is formally identified with the land in which they live; although
it is always possible that a given individual may be an alien in the
land, and so may owe allegiance to and be ruled by a patriotic attachment
to another national establishment, to which the conventionalities
governing his special case have assigned him as his own proper nation.
The analogy of the clam evidently does not cover the case. The patriotic
citizen is attached to his own proper nationality not altogether by
the accident of domicile, but rather by the conventions, legal or
customary, which assign him to this or that national establishment
according to certain principles of use and wont.
Mere legal citizenship or allegiance does not decide the matter either;
at least not by any means unavoidably; as appears in the case of the
Chinese subject under Manchu or Japanese rule; and as appears perhaps
more perspicuously in the case of the "hyphenate" American citizen,
whose formal allegiance is to the nation in whose land he prefers
to live, all the while that his patriotic affection centers on his
spiritual Fatherland in whose fortunes he has none but a non-resident
interest. Indeed, the particular national tie that will bind the affections
(136) that is to say the effectual patriotic attachment-of any given
individual may turn out on closer scrutiny to be neither that of domicile
or of formal legal allegiance, nor that of putative origin or pedigree,
but only a reflex of certain national animosities; which may also turn
out on examination to rest on putative grounds-as illustrated by a subsidiary
class of hyphenate American citizens whose affections have come to be
bound up in the national fortunes of one foreign Power for the simple,
but sufficient, reason that, on conventional grounds, they bear malice
against another equally foreign Power.
Evidently there is much sophistication, not to say conventionalised
affectation, in all this national attachment and allegiance. It will
perhaps not do to say that it is altogether a matter of sophistication.
Yet it may not exceed the premises to say that the particular choice,
the concrete incidence, of this national attachment is in any given
case a matter of sophistication, largely tempered with fortuity. One
is born into a given nationality-or, in case of dynastic allegiance,
into service and devotion to a (fortuitously) given sovereign-or at
least so it is commonly believed. Still one can without blame, and
without excessive shame, shift one's allegiance on occasion. What
is not countenanced among civilised men is to shift out of allegiance
to any given nationality, or dynasty without shifting into the like
complication of gainless obligations somewhere else. Such a shifting
of national or dynastic base is not quite reputable though it is also
not precisely disreputable. The difficulty in the case appears to
be a moral difficulty, not a mental or a pecuniary one, and assuredly
not a physical difficulty, since the relation in question is not a
physical relation. It would appear to be of the moral order of things,
in that sense of the term in which
(137) conventional proprieties are spoken of as moral. That is to say,
it is a question of conforming to current expectations under a code
of conventional proprieties. Like much of the conventional code of behavior
this patriotic attachment has the benefit of standardised decorum, and
its outward manifestations are enjoined by law. All of which goes to
show how very seriously the whole matter is regarded.
And yet it is also a matter of common notoriety that large aggregates
of men, not to speak of sporadic individuals, will on occasion shift
their allegiance with the most felicitous effect and with no sensible
loss of self-respect or of their good name. Such a shift is to be
seen in multiple in the German nation within the past half-century,
when, for instance, the Hanoverians, the Saxons, and even the Holsteiners
in very appreciable numbers, not to mention the subjects of minuscular
principalities whose names have been forgotten in the shuffle, all
became good and loyal subjects of the Empire and of the Imperial dynasty,
good and loyal without reservation, as has abundantly appeared. So
likewise within a similar period the inhabitants of the Southern States
repudiated their allegiance to the Union, putting in its place an
equivalent loyalty to their new-made country; and then, when the new
national establishment slipped out from under their feet they returned
as whole-heartedly as need be to their earlier allegiance. In each
of these moves, taken with deliberation, it is not to be doubted that
this body of citizens have beers moved by all unimpeachable spirit
of patriotic honor. No one who is in any degree conversant with the
facts is likely to question the declaration that it would be a perversion,
not to say an inversion, of fact to rate their patriotic devotion
to the Union today lower
(138) than that of any other section of the country or any other class
or condition of men.
But there is more, and in a sense worse, to be found along the same
general line of evidence touching this sublimated sentiment of group
solidarity that is called nationalism. The nation, of course, is large;
the larger the better, it is believed. It is so large, indeed, that
considered as a group or community of men living together it has no
sensible degree of homogeneity in any of their material circumstances
or interests; nor is anything more that any inconsiderable fraction
of the aggregate population, territory, industry, or daily life known
to any one of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly
dubious hearsay. The one secure point on which there is a (constructive)
uniformity is the matter of national allegiance; which grows stronger
and more confident with every increase in aggregate mass and volume.
It is also not doubtful, e. g., that if the people of the British
Dominions in North America should choose to throw in their national
lot with the Union, all sections and classes, except those whose pecuniary
interest in a protective tariff might be conceived to suffer, would
presently welcome them; nor is it doubtful that American nationality
would cover the new and larger aggregate as readily as the old. Much
the same will hold true with respect to the other countries colonised
under British auspices. And there is no conclusive reason for drawing
the limit of admissible national extension at that point.
So much, however, is fairly within the possibilities of the calculable
future; its realisation would turn in great measure on the discontinuance
of certain outworn or disserviceable institutional arrangements; as,
e. g., the remnants of a decayed monarchy, and the legally protected
(139) vested interests of certain business enterprises and of certain
office-holding classes. What more and farther might practicably be undertaken
in this way, in the absence of marplot office-holders, office-seekers,
sovereigns, priests and monopolistic business concerns sheltered under
national animosities and restraints of trade, would be something not
easy to assign a limit to. All the minor neutrals, that cluster about
the North Sea, could unquestionably be drawn into such a composite nationality,
in the absence, or with due disregard, of those classes, families and
individuals whose pecuniary or invidious gain is dependent on or furthered
by the existing division of these peoples.
The projected defensive league of neutrals is, in effect, an inchoate
coalescence of the kind. Its purpose is the safeguarding of the common
peace and freedom, which is also the avowed purpose and justification
of all those modern nations that have outlived the régime of
dynastic ambition and so of enterprise in dominion for dominion's
sake, and have passed into the neutral phase of nationality; or it
should perhaps rather be said that such is the end of endeavor and
the warrant of existence and power for these modern national establishments
in so far as they have outlived and repudiated such ambitions of a
dynastic or a quasi-dynastic order, and so have taken their place
as intrinsically neutral commonwealths.
It is only in the common defense (or in the defense of the like conditions
of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens of such a
commonwealth cart without shame entertain or put in evidence a spirit
of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious and sophistical
appeal to the national honor-a conceit surviving out of the dynastic
past-that the populace of such a commonwealth can be stirred to anything
beyond a defense of
(140) their own proper liberties or the liberties of like-minded men
elsewhere, in so far as they are not still imbued with something of
the dynastic animus and the chauvinistic animosities which they have
formally repudiated in repudiating the feudalistic principles of the
dynastic State.
The "nation," without the bond of dynastic loyalty, is after all
a make-shift idea, an episodic half-way station in the sequence, and
loyalty, in any proper sense, to the nation as such is so much of
a make-believe, that in the absence of a common defense to be safeguarded
any such patriotic conceit must loose popular assurance and, with
the passing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance as an archaic
affectation. The pressure of danger from without is necessary to keep
the national spirit alert and stubborn, in case the pressure from
within, that comes of dynastic usufruct working for dominion, has
been withdrawn. With further extension of the national boundaries,
such that the danger of gratuitous infraction from without grows constantly
less menacing, while the traditional régime of international
animosities falls more and more remotely into the background, the
spirit of nationalism is fairly on the way to obsolescence through
disuse. In other words, the nation, as a commonwealth, being a partisan
organisation for a defensive purpose, becomes functa officio
in respect of its nationalism and its patriotic ties in somewhat the
same measure as the national coalition grows to such a size that partisanship
is displaced by a cosmopolitan security.
Doubtless the falling into abeyance through disuse of so pleasing
a virtue as patriotic devotion will seem an impossibly distasteful
consummation; and about tastes there is no disputing, but tastes are
mainly creations of habit. Except for the disquieting name of the
thing, there
(142) is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order of human
intercourse unobtrusively displacing national allegiance; except for
vested interests in national offices and international discriminations,
and except for those peoples among whom national life still is sufficiently
bound up with dynastic ambition.
In an earlier passage the patriotic spirit has been defined as a
sense of partisan solidarity in point of prestige, and sufficient
argument has been spent in confirming the definition and showing its
implications. With the passing of all occasion for a partisan spirit
as touches the common good, through coalescence of the parts between
which partisan discrepancies have hitherto been kept up, there would
also have passed all legitimate occasion for or provocation to an
intoxication of invidious prestige on national lines,-and there is
no prestige that is not of an invidious nature, that being, indeed,
the whole of its nature. He would have to be a person of praeternatural
patriotic sensibilities who could fall into an emotional state by
reason of the national prestige of such a coalition commonwealth as
would be made up, e. g., of the French and English-speaking peoples,
together with those other neutrally and peaceably inclined European
communities that are of a sufficiently mature order to have abjured
dynastic ambitions of dominion, and perhaps including the Chinese
people as well. Such a coalition may now fairly be said to be within
speaking distance, acid with its consummation, even iii the inchoate
shape of a defensive league of neutrals, the eventual abeyance of
that national allegiance and national honor that bulks so large in
the repertory of current eloquence would also come in prospect.
(142)
All this is by no means saying that love of country, and of use and
wont as it runs in one's home area and among one's own people, would
suffer decay, or even abatement. The provocation to nostalgia would
presumably be as good as ever. It is even conceivable that under such
a (contemplated) régime of unconditional security, attachment
to one's own habitat and social circumstances might grow to something
more than is commonly seen in the precarious situation in which the
chances of a quiet life are placed today. But nostalgia is not a bellicose
distemper, nor does it make for gratuitous disturbance of peaceable
alien peoples; neither is it the spirit in which men lend themselves
to warlike enterprise looking to profitless dominion abroad. Men make
patriotic sacrifices of life and substance in spite of home-sickness
rather than by virtue of it.
The aim of this long digression has been to show that patriotism,
of that bellicose kind that seeks satisfaction in inflicting damage
and discomfort on the people of other nations, is not of the essence
of human life; that it is of the nature of habit, induced by circumstances
in the past and handed on by tradition and institutional arrangements
into the present; and that men can, without mutilation, divest themselves
of it, or perhaps rather be divested of it by force of circumstances
which will set the current of habituation the contrary way.
The change of habituation necessary to bring about such a decay of
the bellicose national spirit would appear to be of a negative order,
at least in the main. It would be an habituation to unconditional
peace and security; in other words, to the absence of provocation,
rather than a coercive training away from the bellicose temper. This
bellicose temper, as it affects men collectively, appears to
(143) be an acquired trait; and it should logically disappear in time
in the absence of those conditions by impact of which it has been acquired.
Such obsolescence of patriotism, however, would not therefore come about
abruptly or swiftly, since the patriotic spirit has by past use and
wont, and by past indoctrination, been so thoroughly worked into the
texture of the institutional fabric and into the commonsense taste and
morality, that its effectual obsolescence will involve a somewhat comprehensive
displacement and mutation throughout the range of institutions and popular
conceits that have been handed down. And institutional changes take
time, being creations of habit. Yet, again, there is the qualification
to this last, that since the change in question appears to be a matter,
not of acquiring a habit and confirming it in the shape of an article
of general use and wont, but of forgetting what once was learned, the
time and experience to be allowed for its decay need logically not equal
that required for its acquirement, either in point of duration or in
point of the strictness of discipline necessary to inculcate it.
While the spirit of nationalism is such an acquired trait, and while
it should therefore follow that the chief agency in divesting men
of it must be disuse of the discipline out of which it has arisen,
yet a positive, and even something of a drastic discipline to the
contrary effect need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about
its obsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to argue something
of the sort. Nut that the Chinese are simply and neutrally unpatriotic;
they appear also to be well charged with disloyalty to their alien
rulers. But along with a sense of being on the defensive in their
common concerns, there is also the fact that they appear not to be
appreciably patriotic in the proper sense; they
(144) are not greatly moved by a spirit of nationality. And this failure
of the national spirit among them can scarcely be set down to a neutral
disuse of that discipline which has on the other hand induced a militant
nationalism in the peoples of Christendom; it should seem more probable,
at least, that this relative absence of a national ambition is traceable
in good part to its having been positively bred out of them by the stern
repression of all such aspirations under the autocratic rule of their
alien masters.
Peace on terms of submission and non-resistance to the ordinary exactions
and rulings of those Imperial authorities to whom such submission may
become necessary, then, will be contingent on the virtual abeyance of
the spirit of national pride in the peoples who so are to come under
Imperial rule. A sufficient, by no means necessarily a total, elimination
or decadence of this proclivity will be the condition precedent of any
practicable scheme for a general peace on this footing. How large an
allowance of such animus these prospectively subject peoples might still
carry, without thereby assuring the defeat of any such plan, would in
great measure depend on the degree of clemency or rigor with which the
superior authority might enforce its rule. It is not that a peace plan
of this nature need precisely be considered to fall outside the limits
of possibility, on account of this necessary condition, but it is at
the best a manifestly doubtful matter. Advocates of a negotiated peace
should not fail to keep in mind and make public that the plan which
they advocate carries with it, as a sequel or secondary phase, such
an unconditional surrender and a consequent régime of non-resistance,
and that there still is grave doubt whether the peoples of these Western
nations are at pres- (145) -ent in a sufficiently tolerant frame of
mind, or can in the calculable future come in for such a tolerantly
neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submit in any passable
fashion to any alien Imperial rule.
If the spiritual difficulty presented by this prevalent spirit of
national pride-sufficiently stubborn still, however inane a conceit
it may seem on sober reflection-if this animus of factional insubordination
could be overcome or in some passable measure be conciliated or abated,
there is much to be said in favor of such a plan of peaceable submission
to an extraneous and arbitrary authority, and therefore also for that
plan of negotiated peace by means of which events would be put in
train for its realisation.
Any passably dispassionate consideration of the projected régime
will come unavoidably to the conclusion that the prospectively subject
peoples should have no legitimate apprehension of loss or disadvantage
in the material respect. It is, of course, easy for an unreflecting
person to jump to the conclusion that subjection to an alien power
must bring grievous burdens, in the way of taxes and similar impositions.
But reflection will immediately show that no appreciable increase,
over the economic burdens already carried by the populace under their
several national establishments, could come of such a move.
As bearing on this question it is well to call to mind that the contemplated
imperial dominion is designed to be very wide reaching and with very
ample powers. Its nearest historical analogue, of course, is the Roman
imperial dominion-in the days of the Antonines-and that the nearest
analogue to the projected German peace is the Roman peace, in the
days of its best security. There is every warrant for the presumption
that the contem-
(146) -plated Imperial dominion is to be substantially all-inclusive.
Indeed there is no stopping place for the projected enterprise short
of an all-inclusive dominion. And there will consequently be no really
menacing outside power to be provided against. Consequently there will
be but little provision necessary for the common defense, as compared,
e. g., with the aggregate of such provision found necessary for self-defense
on part of the existing nations acting in severalty and each jealously
guarding its own national integrity. Indeed, compared with the burden
of competitive armaments, to which the peoples of Europe have been accustomed,
the need of any armed force under the new regime should be an inconsiderable
matter, even when there is added to the necessary modicum of defensive
preparation the more imperative and weightier provision of force with
which to keep the peace at home.
Into the composition of this necessary modicum of armed force slight
if any contingents of men would be drawn from the subject peoples,
for the reason that no great numbers would be needed; as also because
no devoted loyalty to the dynasty could reasonably be looked for among
them, even if no positive insecurity were felt to be involved in their
employment. On this head the projected scheme unambiguously commends
itself as a measure of economy, both in respect of the pecuniary burdens
demanded and as regards the personal annoyance of military service.
As a further count, it is to be presumed that the burden of the Imperial
government and its bureaucratic administration-what would be called
the cost of maintenance and repairs of the dynastic establishment
and its apparatus of control-would be borne by the subject peoples.
Here again one is warranted in looking for a sub-
(147) -stantial economy to be effected by such a centralised authority,
and a consequent lighter aggregate burden on the subjects. Doubtless,
the "overhead charges" would not be reduced to their practicable minimum.
Such a governmental establishment, with its bureaucratic personnel,
its "civil list" and its privileged classes, would not be conducted
on anything like a parsimonious footing. There is no reason to apprehend
any touch of modesty in the exactions of such a dynastic establishment
for itself or in behalf of its underlying hierarchy of gentlefolk.
There is also to be counted in, in the concrete instance on which
the argument here turns, a more or less considerable burden of contributions
toward the maintenance and augmentation of that culture that has been
the topic of so many encomiums. At this point it should be recalled
that it is the pattern of Periclean Athens that is continually in
mind in these encomiums. Which brings up, in this immediate connection,
the dealings of Periclean Athens with the funds of the League, and
the source as well as the destination of these surplus funds. Out
of it all came the works on the Acropolis, together with much else
of intellectual and artistic life that converged upon and radiated
from this Athenian center of culture. The vista of Denkmaler that
so opens to the vision of a courageous fancy is in itself such a substance
of things hoped for as should stir the heart of all humane persons.[1]
The cost of this subvention of Culture would doubtless be appreciable,
but those grave men who have spent most thought on this prospective
cultural gain to be had from the projected Imperial rule appear to
entertain no doubt as to its being worth all that it would cost.
(148)
Any one who is inclined to rate the prospective pecuniary costs and
losses high would doubtless be able to find various and sundry items
of minor importance to add to this short list of general categories
on the side of cost; but such additional items, not fairly to be included
under these general captions, would after all be of minor importance,
in the aggregate or in detail, and would not appreciably affect the
grand balance of pecuniary profit and loss to be taken account of
in any appraisal of the projected Imperial régime. There should
evidently be little ground to apprehend that its installation would
entail a net loss or a net increase of pecuniary burdens. There is,
of course, the ill-defined and scarcely definable item of expenditure
under the general head of Gentility, Dignity, Distinction, Magnificence,
or whatever term may seem suitable to designate that consumption of
goods and services that goes to maintain the high repute of the Court
and to keep the underlying gentlefolk in countenance. In its pecuniary
incidence this line of (necessary) expenditure belongs under the rubric
of Conspicuous Waste; and one will always have to face the disquieting
flexibility of this item of expenditure. The consumptive demand of
this kind is in an eminent degree "indefinitely extensible," as the
phrasing of the economists would have it, and as various historical
instances of courtly splendor and fashionable magnificence will abundantly
substantiate. There is a constant proclivity to advance this conventional
"standard of living" to the limit set by the available means; and
yet these conventional necessities will ordinarily not, in the aggregate,
take up all the available means; although now and again, as under
the Ancien Régime, and perhaps in Imperial Rome, the
standard of splendid living may also exceed the current means in
(149) hand and lead to impoverishment of the underlying community.
An analysis of the circumstances governing this flexibility of the
conventional standard of living and of pecuniary magnificence can
not be gone into here. In the case under consideration it will have
to be left as an indeterminate but considerable item in the burden
of cost which the projected Imperial rule may be counted on to impose
on the underlying peoples. The cost of the Imperial court, nobility,
and civil service, therefore, would be a matter of estimate, on which
no close agreement would be expected; and yet, here as in an earlier
connection, it seems a reasonable expectation that sufficient dignity
and magnificence could be put in evidence by such a large-scale establishment
at a lower aggregate cost than the aggregate of expenditures previously
incurred for the like ends by various nations working in severalty
and at cross purposes.
Doubtless it would be altogether a mistaken view of this production
of dignity by means of a lavish expenditure on superfluities, to believe
that the same principle of economy should apply here as was found
applicable in the matter of armament for defense. With the installation
of a collective national establishment, to include substantially all
the previously competing nations, the need of defensive armament should
in all reason decline to something very inconsiderable indeed. But
it would be hasty to conclude that with the coalescence of these nations
under one paramount control the need of creating notoriety and prestige
for this resulting central establishment by the consumption of decorative
superfluities would likewise decline. The need of such dignity and
magnificence is only in part, perhaps a minor part, of a defensive
character. For the
(150) greater part, no doubt, the motive to this conspicuously wasteful
consumption is personal vanity, in Imperial policy as well as in the
private life of fashion,-or perhaps one should more deferentially
say that it is a certain range of considerations which would be identified
as personal vanity in case they were met with among men beneath the
Imperial level. And so far as the creation of this form of "good-will"
by this manner of advertising is traceable to such, or equivalent,
motives of a personal incidence, the provocation to economy along
this line would presumably not be a notable factor in the case. And
one returns perforce to the principle already spoken of above, that
the consumptive need of superfluities is indefinitely extensible,
with the resulting inference that nothing conclusive is to be said
as to the prospective magnitude of this item in the Imperial bill
of expense, or of the consequent pecuniary burdens which it would
impose on the underlying peoples.
So far the argument has run on the pecuniary incidence of this projected
Imperial dominion as it falls on the underlying community as a whole,
with no attempt to discriminate between the divergent interests of
the different classes and conditions of men that go to make up any
modern community. The question in hand is a question of pecuniary
burdens, and therefore of the pecuniary interests of these several
distinguishable classes or conditions of men. In all these modern
nations that now stand in the article of decision between peace by
submission or a doubtful and melancholy alternative,-in all of them
men are by statute and custom inviolably equal before the law, of
course; they are ungraded and masterless men before the law. But these
same peoples are also alike (151) in the respect that pecuniary duties
and obligations among
them are similarly sacred and inviolable under the dispassionate
findings of the law. This pecuniary equality is, in effect, an impersonal
equality between pecuniary magnitudes ; from which it follows that
these citizens of the advanced nations are not ungraded men in the
pecuniary respect, nor are they masterless, in so far as a greater
pecuniaryforce will always, under this impersonal equality of the
law, stand in a relation of mastery toward a lesser one.
Class distinctions, except pecuniary distinctions, have fallen away.
But all these modern nations are made up of pecuniary classes, differing
from one another by minute gradations in the marginal cases, but falling,
after all, and in the large, into two broadly and securely distinguishable
pecuniary categories: those who have more and those who have less.
Statisticians have been at pains to ascertain that a relatively very
small numerical minority of the citizens in these modern nations own
all but a relatively very small proportion of the aggregate wealth
in the country. So that it appears quite safe to say that in such
a country as America, e. g., something less than ten percent of the
inhabitants own something more than ninety percent of the country's
wealth. It would scarcely be a wild overstraining of its practical
meaning to say that this population is made up of two classes: those
who own the country's wealth, and those who do not. In strict accuracy,
as before the law, this characterisation will not hold ; whereas in
practical effect, it is a sufficiently close approximation. This latter
class, who have substantially no other than a fancied pecuniary interest
in the nation's material fortunes, are the category often spoken of
as The Common Man. It is not necessary, nor is it desired,
(152) to find a corresponding designation for the other category, those
who own.
The articulate recognition of this division into contrasted pecuniary
classes or conditions, with correspondingly (at least potentially) divergent
pecuniary interests, need imply no degree of approval or disapproval
of the arrangement which is so recognised. The recognition of it is
necessary to a perspicuous control of the argument, as bears on the
possible systematic and inherent discrepancy among these men in respect
of their material interests under the projected Imperial rule. Substantially,
it is a distinction between those who have and those who have not, and
in a question of prospective pecuniary loss the man who has nothing
to lose is differently placed from the one who has. It would perhaps
seem flippant, and possibly lacking in the courtesy due one's prospective
lord paramount to say with the poet, Cantabit vacuus corum latrone
viator.
But the whole case is not so simple. It is only so long as the projected
pecuniary inroad is conceived as a simple sequestration of wealth
in hand, that such a characterisation can be made to serve. The Imperial
aim is not a passing act of pillage, but a perpetual usufruct; and
the whole question takes on a different and more complex shape when
it touches the enduring conditions of life and livelihood. The citizen
who has nothing, or who has no capitalisable source of unearned income,
yet has a pecuniary interest in a livelihood to be gained from day
to day, and he is yet vulnerable in the pecuniary respect in that
his livelihood may with the utmost facility be laid under contribution
by various and sundry well-tried contrivances. Indeed; the common
man who depends for his livelihood on his daily earnings is in a more
immediately
(153) precarious position than those who have something appreciable
laid up against a rainy day, in the shape of a capitalised source of
income. Only that it is still doubtful if his position is precarious
in such a fashion as to lay him open to a notable increase of hardship,
or to loss of the amenities of life, in the same relative degree as
his well-to-do neighbour.
In point of fact it may well be doubted if this common man has anything
to apprehend in the way of added hardship or loss of creature comforts
under the contemplated régime of Imperial tutelage.. He would
presumably find himself in a precarious case under the arbitrary and
irresponsible authority of an alien master working through an alien
master class. The doubt which presents itself is as to whether this
common man would be more precariously placed, or would come in for
a larger and surer sum of hard usage and scant living, under this
projected order of things, than what he already is exposed to in his
pecuniary relations with his well-to-do compatriots under the current
system of law and order.
Under this current régime of law and order, according to the
equitable principles of Natural Rights, the man without means has
no pecuniary rights which his well-to-do pecuniary master is bound
to respect. This may have been an unintended, as it doubtless was
an unforeseen, outcome of the move out of feudalism and prescriptive
rights and immunities, into the system of individual liberty- and
manhood franchise; but as commonly happens in case of any substantial
change in the scheme of institutional arrangements, unforeseen consequences
come in along with those that have been intended. In that period of
history when Western Europe was gathering that experience out of which
the current habitual scheme
(154) of law and order has come, the right of property and free contract
was a complement and safeguard to that individual initiative and masterless
equality of men for which the spokesmen of the new era contended. That
it is no longer so at every turn, or even in the main, in later time,
is in great part due to changes of the pecuniary order, that have come
on since then, and that seem not to have cast their shadow before.
In all good faith, and with none but inconsequential reservations,
the material fortunes of modern civilised men-together with much else-have
so been placed on a pecuniary footing, with little to safeguard them
at any point except the inalienable right of pecuniary self-direction
and initiative, in an environment where virtually all the indispensable
means of pecuniary self-direction and initiative are in the hands
of that contrasted category of owners spoken of above. A numerical
minority-under ten percent of the population-constitutes a conclusive
pecuniary majority--over ninety percent of the meansunder a system
of law and order that turns on the inalienable right of owners to
dispose of the means in hand as may suit their convenience and profit,-always
barring recourse to illegal force or fraud. There is, however, a very
appreciable margin of legal recourse to force and of legally protected
fraud available in case of need. Of course the expedients here referred
to as legally available force and fraud in the defense of pecuniary
rights and the pursuit of pecuniary gain are not force anti fraud
de jure but only de facto. They are further, and well known,
illustrations of how the ulterior consequences of given institutional
arrangements and given conventionalised principles (habits of thought)
of conduct may in time come to run at cross purposes with the initial
purpose
(155) that led to the acceptance of these institutions and to the confirmation
and standardisation of these habitual norms of conduct. For the time
being, however, they are "fundamentally and eternally right and good."
Being a pecuniary majority-what may be called a majority of the corporate
stock-of the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternally right and
good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the material means
of life should rule unabated in all those matters of public policy that
touch on the material fortunes of the community at large. Barring a
slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this arrangement has also
the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic
nations. One need only recall the paramount importance which is popularly
attached to the maintenance and extension of the nation's trade-for
the use of the investors -or the perpetuation of a protective tariff-for
the use of the protected business concerns-or, again, the scrupulous
regard with which such a body of public servants as the Interstate Commerce
Commission will safeguard the legitimate claim of the railway companies
to a "reasonable" rate of earnings on the capitalised value of the presumed
earning-capacity of their property.
Again, in view of the unaccustomed freedom with which it is here
necessary to speak of these delicate matters, it may be in place to
disclaim all intention to criticise the established arrangements on
their merits as details of public policy. All that comes in question
here, touching these and the like features of the established law
and order, is the bearing of all this on the material fortunes of
the common man under the current régime, as contrasted with
what he would reasonably have to look for
(156) under the projected régime of Imperial tutelage that would
come in, consequent upon this national surrender to Imperial dominion.
In these democratic countries public policy is guided primarily by considerations
of business expediency, and the administration, as well as the legislative
power, is in the hands of businessmen, chosen avowedly on the ground
of their businesslike principles and ability. There is no power in such
a community that can over-rule the exigencies of business, nor would
popular sentiment countenance any exercise of power that should traverse
these exigencies, or that would act to restrain trade or discourage
the pursuit of gain. An apparent exception to the rule occurs in wartime,
when military exigencies may over-rule the current demands of business
traffic; but the exception is in great part only apparent, in that the
warlike operations are undertaken in whole or in part with a view to
the protection or extension of business traffic.
National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in these
countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democratic
order of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature
of interference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation's
mercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulations
and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groups
or classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies.
In all this national management of pecuniary affairs, under modern
democratic principles, the common man comes into the case only as
raw material of business traffic,-as consumer or as laborer. He is
one of the industrial agencies by use of which the businessman who
employs him supplies himself with
(157) goods for the market, or he is one of the units of consumptive
demand that make up this market in which the business man sells his
goods, and so "realises" on his investment. He is, of course, free,
under modern principles of the democratic order, to deal or not to deal
with this business community, whether as laborer or as consumer, or
as small-scale producer engaged in purveying materials or services on
terms defined by the community of business interests engaged on so large
a scale as to count in their determination. That is to say, he is free
de jure to take or leave the terms offered. De facto he
is only free to take them-with inconsequential exceptions-the alternative
being obsolescence by disuse, not to choose a harsher name for a distasteful
eventuality.
The general ground on which the business system, as it works under
the over-ruling exigencies of the so-called "big business," so defines
the terms of life for the common man, who works and buys, is the ground
afforded by the principle of "charging what the traffic will bear;"
that is to say, fixing the terms of hiring, buying and selling at
such a figure as will yield the largest net return to the business
concerns in whom, collectively or in severalty, the discretion vests.
Discretion in these premises does not vest in any business concern
that does not articulate with the system of "big business," or that
does not dispose of resources sufficient to make it a formidable member
of the system. Whether these concerns act in severalty or by collusion
and conspiracy, in so defining the pecuniary terms of life for the
community at large, is substantially an idle question, so far as bears
on the material interest of the common man. The base-line is still
what the traffic will bear, and it is still adhered to, so nearly
as the human infirmity of the discretionary captains of industry will
(158) admit, whether the due approximation to this base-line is reached
by a process of competitive bidding or by collusive advisement.
The generalisation so offered, touching the material conditions of
life for the common man under the modern rule of big business, may
seem unwarrantably broad. It may be worth while to take note of more
than one point in qualification of it, chiefly to avoid the appearance
of having overlooked any of the material circumstances of the case.
The "system" of large business, working its material consequences
through the system of large-scale industry, but more particularly
by way of the large-scale and wide-reaching business of trade in the
proper sense, draws into the net of its control all parts of the community
and all its inhabitants, in some degree of dependence. But there is
always,. hitherto, an appreciable fraction of the inhabitants-as,
e. g., outlying agricultural sections that are in a "backward" state-who
are by no means closely bound in the orderly system of business, or
closely dependent on the markets. They may be said to enjoy a degree
of independence, by virtue of their foregoing as much as may be of
the advantages offered by modern industrial specialisation. So also
there are the minor and interstitial trades that are still carried
on by handicraft methods; these, too, are still somewhat loosely held
in the fabric of the business system. There is one thing and another
in this way to be taken account of in any exhaustive survey, but the
accounting for them will after all amount to nothing better than a
gleaning of remnants and partial exceptions, such as will in no material
degree derange the general proposition in hand.
Again, there runs through the length and breadth of this business
community a certain measure of incom-
(159) -petence or inefficiency of management, as seen from the point
of view of the conceivable perfcct working of the system as a whole.
It may be due to a slack attention here and there; or to the exigencies
of business strategy which may constrain given business concerns to
an occasional attitude of "watchful waiting" in the hope of catching
a rival off his guard; or to a lack of perfect mutual understanding
among the discretionary businessmen, due sometimes to an over-careful
guarding of trade secrets or advance information; or, as also happens,
and quite excusably, to a lack of perfect mutual confidence among these
businessmen, as to one another's entire good faith or good-will. The
system is after all a competitive one, in the sense that each of the
discretionary directors of business is working for his own pecuniary
gain, whether in cooperation with his fellows or not. "An honest man
will bear watching." As in other collusive organisations for gain, confederates
are apt to fall out when it comes to a division of what is in hand.
In one way and another the system is beset with inherent infirmities,
which hinder its perfect work; and in so far it will fall short of the
full realisation of that rule of business that inculcates charging what
the traffic will bear, and also in so far the pressure which the modern
system of business management brings to bear on the common man will
also fall short of the last straw-perhaps even of the next-to-the-last.
Again it turns out to be a question not of the failure of the general
proposition as formulated, but rather as to the closeness of approximation
to its theoretically perfect work. It may be remarked by the way that
vigilant and impartial surveillance of this system of business enterprise
by an external authority interested only in aggregate results, rather
than in the differential gains (160) of the interested individuals,
might hopefully be counted on to correct some of these short-comings
which the system shows when running loose under the guidance of its
own multifarious incentives.
On the opposite side of the account, it is also worth noting that,
while modern business management may now and again fall short of what
the traffic will bear, it happens more commonly that its exactions
will exceed that limit. This will particularly be true in businessmen's
dealings with hired labor, as also and perhaps with equally far-reaching
consequences in an excessive recourse to sophistications and adulterants
and an excessively parsimonious provision for the safety, health or
comfort of their customers-as, e. g., in passenger traffic by rail,
water or tramway. The discrepancy to which attention is invited here
is due to a discrepancy between business expediency, that is expediency
for the purpose of gain by a given businessman, on the one hand, and
serviceability to the common good, on the other hand. The business
concern's interest in the traffic in which it engages is a short-term
interest, or an interest in the short-term returns, as contrasted
with the long-term or enduring interest which the community at large
has in the public service over which any such given business concern
disposes. The business incentive is that afforded by the prospective
net pecuniary gain from the traffic, substantially an interest in
profitable sales; while the community at large, or the common man
that goes to make up such a community, has a material interest in
this traffic only as regards the services rendered and the enduring
effects that follow from it.
The businessman has not, or at least is commonly not influenced by,
any interest in the ulterior consequences
(161) of the transactions in which he is immediately engaged. This appears
to hold true in an accentuated degree in the domain of that large-scale
business that draws its gains from the large-scale modern industry and
is managed on the modern footing of corporation finance. This modern
fashion of business organisation and management apparently has led to
a substantial shortening of the term over which any given investor maintains
an effective interest in any given corporate enterprise, in which his
investments may be placed for the time being. With the current practice
of organising industrial and mercantile enterprises on a basis of vendible
securities, and with the nearly complete exemption from personal responsibility
and enduring personal attachment to any one corporate enterprise which
this financial expedient has brought, it has come about that in the
common run of cases the investor, as well as the directorate, in any
given enterprise, has an interest only for the time being. The average
term over which it is (pecuniarily) incumbent on the modern businessman
to take account of the working of any given enterprise has shortened
so far that the old-fashioned accountability, that once was depended
on to dictate a sane and considerate management with a view to permanent
good-will, has in great measure become inoperative.
By and large, it seems unavoidable that the pecuniary interests of
the businessmen on the one hand and the material interests of the
community on the other hand are diverging in a more and more pronounced
degree, due to institutional circumstances over which no prompt control
can be had without immediate violation of that scheme of personal
rights in which the constitution of modern democratic society is grounded.
The quandary in which these communities find themselves, as an out-
(162) -come of their entrance upon "the simple and obvious system of
Natural Liberty," is shown in a large and instructive way by what is
called "labor trouble," and in a more recondite but no less convincing
fashion by the fortunes of the individual workman under the modern system.
The cost of production of a modern workman has constantly increased,
with the advance of the industrial arts. The period of preparation,
of education and training, necessary to turn out competent workmen,
has been increasing; and the period of full workmanlike efficiency
has been shortening, in those industries that employ the delicate
and exacting processes of the modern technology. The shortening of
this working-life of the workman is due both to a lengthening of the
necessary period of preparation, and to the demand of these processes
for so full a use of the workman's forces that even the beginning
of senescence will count as a serious disability, -in many occupations
as a fatal disability. It is also a well ascertained fact that effectual
old age will be brought on at an earlier period by overwork; overwork
shortens the working life-time of the workman. Thorough speeding-up
("Scientific Management"?) will unduly shorten this working life-time,
and so it may, somewhat readily, result in an uneconomical consumption
of the community's man-power, by consuming the workmen at a higher
rate of speed, a higher pressure, with a more rapid rate of deterioration,
than would gibe the largest net output of product per unit of man-power
available, or per unit of cost of production of such man-power.
On this head the guiding incentives of the businessman and the material
interest of the community at large-not to speak of the selfish interest
of the individual workman
(163) --are systematically at variance. The cost of production of workmen
does not fall on the business concern which employs them, at least not
in such definite fashion as to make it appear that the given business
concern or businessman has a material interest in the economical consumption
of the man power embodied in this given body of employees. Some slight
and exceptional qualification of this statement is to be noted, in those
cases where the processes in use are such as to require special training,
not to be had except by a working habituation to these processes in
the particular industrial plant in question. So far as such special
training, to be had only as employees of the given concern, is a necessary
part of the workman's equipment for this particular work, so far the
given employer bears a share and an interest in the cost of production
of the workmen employed; and so far, therefore, the employer has also
a pecuniary interest in the economical use of his employees; which usually
shows itself in the way of some special precautions being taken to prevent
the departure of these workmen so long as there is a clear pecuniary
loss involved in replacing them with men who have not yet had the special
training required. Evidently this qualifying consideration covers no
great proportion of the aggregate man-power consumed in industrial enterprises
under business management. And apart from the instances, essentially
exceptional, where such a special consideration comes in, the businessmen
in charge will, finite excusably as things go, endeavour to consume
the man-power of which they dispose in the persons of their employees,
not at the rate that would be most economical to the community at large,
in view of the cost of their replacement, nor at such a rate as would
best suit the taste or the viability of the (164) particular workman,
but at such a rate as will yield the largest net pecuniary gain to the
employer.
There is on record an illustrative, and indeed an illustrious, instance
of such canny productive consumption of man-power carried out systematically
and with consistently profitable effect in one of the staple industries
of the country. In this typical, though exceptionally thoroughgoing
and lucrative enterprise, the set rule of the management was, to employ
none but select workmen, in each respective line of work; to procure
such select workmen and retain them by offering wages slightly over
the ordinary standard; to work them at the highest pace and pressure
attainable with such a picked body; and to discharge them on the first
appearance of aging or of failing powers. In the rules of the management
was also included the negative proviso that the concern assumed no
responsibility for the subsequent fortunes of discharged workmen,
in the way of pension, insurance or the like.
This enterprise was highly successful and exceedingly profitable,
even beyond the high average of profits among enterprises in the same
line of business. Out of it came one of the greater and more illustrious
fortunes that have been accumulated during the past century; a fortune
which has enabled one of the most impressive and most gracious of
this generation's many impressive philanthropists, never weary in
well-doing; but who, through this cannily gainful consumption of man-power,
has been placed in the singular position of being unable, in spite
of avowedly unremitting endeavour, to push his continued disbursements
in the service of humanity up to the figure of his current income.
The case in question is one of the most meritorious known to the records
of
(165) modern business, and while it will conveniently serve to illustrate
many an other, and perhaps more consequential truth come to realisation
in the march of Triumphant Democracy, it will also serve to show the
gainfulness of an unreservedly canny consumption of man-power with an
eye single to one's own net gain in terms of money.
Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the modern economic
system where a sufficiently ruthless outside authority, not actuated
by a primary regard for the pecuniary interests of the employers,
might conceivably with good effect enforce a more economical consumption
of the country's man-power. It is not a matter on which one prefers
to dwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once
in a way that these several national establishments of the democratic
order, as they are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly
and pervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of
a class, so far as may plausibly be done. They are controlled by and
administered in behalf of those elements of the population that, for
the purpose in hand, make up a single loose-knit class,-the class
that lives by income rather than by work. It may be called the class
of the business interests, or of capital, or of gentlemen. It all
comes to much the same, for the purpose in hand.
The point in speaking of this contingent whose place in the economy
of human affairs it is to consume, or to own, or to pursue a margin
of profit, is simply that of contrasting this composite human contingent
with the common man; whose numbers account for some nine-tenths or
more of the community, while his class accounts for something less
than one-tenth of the invested wealth,
(166) and appreciably less than that proportion of the discretionary
national establishment,-the government, national or local, courts, attorneys,
civil service, diplomatic and consular, military and naval. The arrangement
may be called a gentlemen's government, if one would rather have it
that way; but a gentleman is necessarily one who lives on free income
from invested wealth-without such a source of free, that is to say unearned,
income he becomes a decayed gentleman. Again, pushing the phrasing back
a step farther toward the ground facts, there are those who would speak
of the current establishments as "capitalistic;" but this term is out
of line in that it fails to touch the human element in the case, and
institutions, such as governmental establishments and their functioning,
are after all nothing but the accustomed ways and means of human behavior;
so that "capitalistic" becomes a synonym for "businessmen's" government
so soon as it is designated in terms of the driving incentives and the
personnel. It is an organisation had with a view to the needs of business
(i. e. pecuniary) enterprise, and is made tip of businessmen and gentlemen,
which comes to much the same, since a gentleman is only a businessman
in the second or some later generation. Except for the slightly odious
suggestion carried by the phrase, one might aptly say that the gentleman,
in this bearing, is only a businessman gone to seed.
By and large, and taking the matter naively at the simple face value
of the material gain or loss involved, it should seem something of an
idle question to the common man whether his collective affairs are to
be managed by a home-bred line of businessmen and their successive filial
generations of gentlemen, with a view to accelerate the velocity and
increase the volume of com- (167) -petitive gain and competitive spending,
on the one hand, or by an alien line of officials, equally aloof from
his common interests, and managing affairs with a view to the usufruct
of his productive powers in furtherance of the Imperial dominion.
Not that the good faith or the generous intentions of these governments
of gentlemen is questioned or is in any degree questionable; what
is here spoken of is only the practical effect of the policies which
they pursue, doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placed
complacency. In effect, things being as they are today in the civilised
world's industry and trade, it happens, as in some sort an unintended
but all-inclusive accident, that the guidance of affairs by business
principles works at cross purposes with the material interests of
the common man.
So ungraceful a view of the sacred core of this modern democratic
organisation will need whatever evidence can be cited to keep it in
countenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count
in this distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional
scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what
may be called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate
a wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by peaceable,
and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its present application,
particularly, there is no design to let the term denote or insinuate
a rccourse to any- expedients or any line of conduct that is in any
degree legally dubious, or that is even of questionable legitimacy.
Sabotage so understood, as not comprising recourse to force or fraud,
is a necessary and staple expedient of business management, and its
employment is grounded in
(168) the elementary and indefeasible rights of ownership. It is simply
that the businessman, like any other owner, is vested with the right
freely to use or not to use his property for any given purpose. His
decision, for reasons of his own, not to employ the property at his
disposal in a particular way at a particular time, is well and blamelessly
within his legitimate discretion, under the rights of property as universally
accepted and defended by modern nations. In the particular instance
of the American nation he is protected in this right by a constitutional
provision that he must not be deprived of his property without due process
of law. When the property at his disposal is in the shape of industrial
plant or industrial material, means of transportation or stock of goods
awaiting distribution, then his decision not to employ this property,
or to limit its use to something less than full capacity, in the way
for which it is adapted, becomes sabotage, normally and with negligible
exceptions. In so doing he hinders, retards or obstructs the working
of the country's industrial forces by so much. It is a matter of course
and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary
businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to
limit or to withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation.
Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means
by which to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity
reduces itself in the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage.
Under modern conditions of large business, particularly, the relation
of the discretionary businessman to industry is that of authoritative
permission and of authoritative limitation or stoppage, and on his shrewd
use of this authority depends the gainfulness of his enterprise. (169)
If this authority were exercised with an eye single to the largest
and most serviceable output of goods and services, or to the most
economical use of the country's material resources and man-power,
regardless of pecuniary consequences, the course of management so
carried out would be not sabotage but industrial strategy. But business
is carried on for pecuniary gain, not with an unreserved view to the
largest and most serviceable output or to the economical use of resources.
. The volume and serviceability of the output must wait unreservedly
on the very particular pecuniary question of what quantity and what
degree of serviceability will yield the largest net return in terms
of price. Uneconomical use of equipment, labor and resources is necessarily
an everyday matter under these circumstances, as in the duplication
of plant and processes between rival concerns, and in the wasteful
use of all resources that do not involve expenditure on the part of
the given concern.
It has been the traditional dogma among economists and publicists
in these modern communities that free competition between the businessmen
in charge will indefeasibly act to bring the productiveness of industry
to the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most unreserved
and vigilant endeavour to serve the community's material needs at
all points. The reasons for the failure of this genial expectation,
particularly under latterday business management, might be shown in
some detail, if that were needed to enforce the argument as it runs
in the present connection. But a summary indication of the commoner
varieties and effects of sabotage as it is systematically applied
in the businesslike conduct of industry will serve the purpose as
well and with less waste of words and patience.
(170)
It is usual to notice, and not unusual to deplore the duplication
of plant and appliances in many lines of industry, due to competitive
management, as in factories engaged in the same class of manufacture,
in parallel or otherwise competing railways and boat lines, in retail
merchandising, and in some degree also in the wholesale trade. The
result, of course, is sabotage; in the sense that this volume of appliances,
materials and workmen are not employed to the best advantage for the
community. One effect of the arrangement is an increased necessary
cost of the goods and services supplied by these means. The reason
for it is competition for gain to be got from the traffic. That all
this is an untoward state of things is recognised on all hands; but
no lively regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is commonly
recognised that under the circumstances there is no help for it except
at the cost of a more untoward remedy.
The competitive system having been tried and found good-or at least
so it is assumed-it is felt that the system will have to be accepted
with the defects of its qualities. Its characteristic qualities are
held to be good, acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits
of thought have been standardised in its terms; and it would be only
reluctantly and by tardy concession that these modern men could bring
themselves to give up that scheme of "Natural Liberty" within the
framework of which rusts this competitive system of business management
and its wasteful manifolding of half-idle equipment and nugatory work.
The common man, at the worst, comforts himself and his neighbour with
the sage reflection that "It might have been worse." The businessmen,
on the other hand, have also begun to take note of this
(171) systematic waste by duplication and consequent incompetence, and
have taken counsel how to intercept the waste and divert it to their
own profit. The businessmen's remedy is consolidation of competing concerns,
and monopoly control.
To the common man, with his preconceptions on the head of "restraint
of trade," the proposed remedy seems more vicious than the evil it
is designed to cure. The fault of the remedy plainly is not that the
mismanagement of affairs due to competitive business can not be corrected
by recourse to monopoly, but only that the community, it is presumed,
would still suffer all the burdens and discomforts of the régime
of competition and sabotage, with, possibly, further inconveniences
and impositions at the hands of the businesslike monopoly; which,
men are agreed, may fairly be depended on to use its advantage unsparingly
under the business principle of charging what the traffic will bear.
There is also this other singular phenomenon in this modern industrial
world, that something not very far short of one-half the industrial
equipment systematically lies idle for something approaching one-half
the time, or is worked only to one-half its capacity half the time;
not because of competition between these several industrial concerns,
but because business conditions will not allow its continued productive
use; because the volume of product that would be turned out if the
equipment were working uninterruptedly at its full capacity could
not be sold at remunerative prices. From time to time one establishment
and another will shut down during a period of slack times, for the
same reason.
This state of things is singular only as seen from the point of view
of the community's material interest, not
(172) that it is in any degree unfamiliar or that any serious fault
is found with the captains of industry for so shutting off the industrial
process and letting the industrial equipment lie waste. As all men know,
the exigencies of business will not tolerate production to supply the
community's needs under these circumstances; although, as is equally
notorious, these slack times, when production of goods is unadvisable
on grounds of business expediency, are commonly times of wide-spread
privation, "hard times," in the community at large, when the failure
of the supply is keenly felt.
It is not that the captains of industry are at fault in so failing,
or refusing, to supply the needs of the community under these circumstances,
but only that they are helpless under the exigencies of business.
They can not supply the goods except for a price, indeed not except
for a remunerative price, a price which will add something to the
capital values which they are venturing in their various enterprises.
So long as the exigencies of price and of pecuniary gain rule the
case, there is manifestly no escaping this enforced idleness of the
country's productive forces.
It may not be out of place also to remark, by way of parenthesis,
that this highly productive state of the industrial arts, which is
embodied in the industrial plant and processes that so are systematically
and advisedly retarded or arrested under the rule of business, is
at the same time the particular pride of civilised men and the most
tangible achievement of the civilised world.
A conservative estimate of this one item of capitalistic sabotage
could scarcely appraise it at less than a twentyfive percent reduction
from the normally possible productive capacity of the community, at
an average over
(173) any considerable period; and a somewhat thorough review of the
pertinent facts would probably persuade any impartial observer that,
one year with another, such businesslike enforced idleness of plant
and personnel lowers the actual output of the country's industry by
something nearer fifty percent of its ordinary capacity when fully employed.
To many, such an assertion may seem extravagant, but with further reflection
on the wellknown facts in the case it will seem less so in proportion
as the unfamiliarity of it wears off.
However, the point of attention in the case is not the precise, nor
the approximate, percentages of this arrest and retardation, this
partial neutralisation of modern improvements in the industrial arts;
it is only the notorious fact that such arrest occurs, systematically
and advisedly, under the rule of business exigencies, and that there
is no corrective to be found for it that will comport with those fundamental
articles of the democratic faith on which the businessmen necessarily
proceed. Any effectual corrective would break the framework of democratic
law and order, since it would have to traverse the inalienable right
of men who are born free and equal, each freely -to deal or not _
to deal in any pecuniary conjuncture that arises.
But it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger
sense untoward, discrepancy between productive capacity and current
productive output can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree
at least, by any sufficient authority that shall undertake to control
the country's industrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit
and loss. Any authority competent to take over the control and regulate
the conduct of the community's industry with a view to maximum output
as counted by
(174) weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price-income over
price-cost, can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectual
productive capacity; but it can be done only by violating that democratic
order of things within which business enterprise runs. The several belligerent
nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, that the sabotage
of business enterprise can be put aside by sufficiently heroic measures.
And they are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been
aware, that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent
to bring the largest practicable output of goods and services; incompetent
to such a degree, indeed, as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate
need, when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces,
equipment and man-power, regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals.
Now, the projected Imperial dominion is a power of the character
required to bring a sufficient corrective to bear, in case of need,
on this democratic situation in which the businessmen in charge necessarily
manage the country's industry at cross purposes with the community's
-- that is the common man's-material interest. It is an extraneous
power; to whom the continued pecuniary gain of these nations' businessmen
is a minor consideration, a negligible consideration in case it shall
appear that the Imperial usufruct of the underlying nation's productive
forces is in any degree impaired by the businessmen's management of
it for their own net gain. It is difficult to see on what grounds
of self-interest such an Imperial government could consent to tolerate
the continued management of these underlying nations' industries on
business principles, that is to say on the principle of the
(175) maximum pecuniary gain to the businesslike managers; and recent
experience seems to teach that no excessive, that is to say no inconvenient,
degree of consideration for vested rights, and the like, would long
embarrass the Imperial government in its administration of its usufruct.
It should be a reasonable expectation that, without malice and with
an unprejudiced view to its own usufruct of these underlying countries,
the Imperial establishment would take due care that no systematically,
and in its view gratuitously, uneconomical methods should continue in
the ordinary conduct of their industry. Among other considerations of
weight in this connection is the fact that a contented, well-fed, and
not wantonly over-worked populace is a valuable asset in such a case.
Similarly, by contraries, as an asset in usufruct to such an alien power,
a large, wealthy, spendthrift, body of gentlefolk, held in high esteem
by the common people, would have but a slight value, conceivably- even
a negative value, in such a case. A wise administration would presumably
look to their abatement, rather than otherwise. At this point the material
interest of the common man would seem to coincide with that of the Imperial
establishment. Still, his preconceived notions of the wisdom and beneficence
of his gentlefolk would presumably hinder his seeing the matter in that
reasonable light.
Under the paramount surveillance of such an alien power, guided solely
by its own interest in the usufruct of the country and its population,
it is to be presumed that class privileges and discrimination would
be greatly abated if not altogether discontinued. The point is in
some doubt, partly because this alien establishment whose dominion
is in question is itself grounded in class prerogatives and discrimination,
and so, not improbably, (176) it would carry over into its supervision
of the underlying nations something of a bias in favor of class privileges.
And a similar order of things might also result by choice of a class-system
as a convenient means of control and exploitation. The latter consideration
is presumably the more cogent, since the Imperial establishment in
question is already, by ancient habit, familiar with the method of
control by class and privilege; and, indeed, unfamiliar with any other
method. Such a government, which governs without effectual advice
or formal consent of the governed, will almost necessarily rest its
control of the country on an interested class, of sufficient strength
and bound by sufficiently grave interest to abet the Imperial establishment
effectually in all its adventures and enterprises.
But such a privileged order, that is to be counted in to share dynastic
usufruct and liabilities, in good days and evil, will be of a feudalistic
complexion rather than something after the fashion of a modern business
community doing business by investment and pecuniary finesse. It would
still be a reasonable expectation that discrimination between pecuniary
classes should fall away under this projected alien tutelage; more
particularly all such discrimination as is designed to benefit any
given class or interest at the cost of the whole, as, e. g., protective
tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engrossing of particular
lines of material resources, and the like.
The character of the economic policy to be pursued should not be
difcult of apprehension, if only these underlying peoples are conceived
as an estate in tail within the dynastic line of descent. The Imperial
establishment which so is prospectively to take over the surveillance
of these modern peoples under this projected enterprise
(177) in dominion, may all the more readily be conceived as handling
its new and larger resources somewhat unreservedly as an estate to
be administered with a shrewd eye to the main chance, since such has
always been its relation to the peoples and territories whose usufruct
it already enjoys. It is only that the circumstances of the case will
admit a freer and more sagacious application of those principles of
usufruct that lie at the root of the ancient Culture of the Fatherland.
This excessively long, and yet incomplete, review of the presumptive
material advantages to accrue to the common man under a régime
of peace by unconditional surrender to an alien dynasty, brings the
argument apparently to the conclusion that such an eventuality might
be fortunate rather than the reverse; or at least that it has its
compensations, even if it is not something to be desired. Such should
particularly appear to be the presumption in case one is at all inclined
to make much of the cultural gains to be brought in under the new
régime. And more particularily should a policy of nonresistant
submission to the projected new order seem expedient in view of the
exceedingly high, not to say prohibitive, cost of resistance, or even
of materially retarding its fulfillment.
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Endnotes
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