Which of these two elements in our population will secure the ascendency and dictate our foreign policy, or which will contribute more largely to the decision, will be determined chiefly by the course of our internal evolution and especially by our economic development. Whether we are to go into international affairs to get all we can—concessions, monopolies, profits—will depend upon how great is the internal economic strain pressing us outward, upon whether our conditions are such that the gains from a selfish national aggrandisement will outweigh the large, slow gains of international co-operation. Ideals will also count, as will tradition and precedent. Even chance enters into the decision. If, for example, by some change in the internal affairs of Germany we are thrown into an alliance with England, France and Russia, a direction will be given to our international policy which it may take years to change. The accident which found Admiral Dewey in Asiatic waters on a certain day in April, 1898, has not been without its influence upon the ensuing foreign policy of the United States.
For those who wish to use our armed forces to secure special advantages (trade, monopolies, fields for investment), the road is broad and clearly marked. They have only to do what other aggressive and imperialistic nations have done—prepare the means of fighting and threaten to fight either alone or with allies whenever a favouring opportunity offers. But for those of us who desire to make America an agency in the creation of international peace the problem is infinitely more difficult. Peace and internationalism cannot be secured by fervent wishes or piety but only by persistent effort and measureless patience. That for which men have sought in vain during so many centuries will not fall like ripe fruit into our laps.
Towards this goal of internationalism all that is best in America aspires. The American tradition points towards internationalism. Our early settlers, as also many of our later immigrants, came to these shores to escape political and religious warfare, and brought with them a broad humanitarian ideal, an ideal of peace, internationalism, freedom and equality. They also brought an antipathy towards those monarchical and aristocratic institutions, with which in America we still associate conceptions of imperialism and war. The simplicity and inherent equality of our frontier life, its self-government and its local independence, tended to reinforce our leaning towards a peaceful internationalism. Our large spaces, our ease of movement, our freedom from the militaristic and excessively nationalistic traditions of the European Continent influenced us in a like direction, as did also the merging of many peoples into one nation. We were not disillusioned by any conflict with harder-pressed nations, desiring what we had or having what we desired. We believed vaguely in an inevitable beneficent internationalism, which would bring all nations into harmony and banish war from the world.
Actually our pacifists and internationalists have accomplished little, if anything, towards a realisation of this ideal. What has hampered them, apart from the overwhelming difficulty of the problem, has been the fact that they did not realise how distant was the goal towards which they were marching. Their approach to the problem was not realistic. They conceived of the World as a group of nations in all fundamentals like America and of peace as a process by which these other nations would approximate to the United States. The great solvents of war were democracy, education and industrialism. Democracy would take from the ruling classes the right to declare wars; education would destroy in the people the last vestiges of bellicosity and international prejudice, while industrialism would in the end overcome militarism, and turn battleships and howitzers into steam-ploughs and electric cranes. The triumphant progress throughout the world of democracy, education and industrialism would speedily bring about peace and a firm internationalism.
Unfortunately the problem of imperialism and war is far more intricate than this popular theory assumes. All these forces tend perhaps in the general direction of peace but they do not bring about peace automatically and in many cases actually intensify and augment the impulse towards war. Our present age of advancing democracy, education and industrialism has been, above all other periods, the age of imperialism, of exaggerated nationalism and of colonial wars. Democratic peoples have not been cured of nationalistic ambition, and education, in many countries at least, has aided in the creation of an imperialistic and militaristic spirit. Even our unguided industrialism has not ended wars or brought their end perceptibly nearer. There is no easy road to internationalism and peace, and those who strive for these ends without understanding the genesis and deep lying causes of war are striving in vain.
If in America therefore, we are to contribute to the promotion of internationalism and peace, we must recognise that war is not a mere accident or vagary but a living thing growing out of the deepest roots of our economic life. It is not caused alone by human unreason, by the pride of individuals, the greed of social classes, the prejudices of races and nationalities, but is closely intertwined with those economic ideals upon which the best as well as the worst in our civilisation is reared. We had believed that industrialism and militarism were mutually opposed and that the factory would automatically destroy the army. To-day we see how each of these has entered into the spirit of the other and how each helps the other. The army is industrialised and the national industry is put upon a military, fighting basis. The same forces that impel a nation to develop its trade, increase its output, improve its industrial technique, also impel it to raise large armies and to fight for the things for which men work. To divorce economic ambition from the national aggression that leads to war will not be easy. It is a sobering task which faces those who wish to use America's influence in the cause of peace.
Whatever our course of action, however, whether we strive for an American imperialism or for internationalism, one thing is certain: it cannot be instinctive, fluctuating, undirected. We cannot revolutionise our international relations with each new administration or with each change of the moon. Nor can we stay at home and, ignorant of the causes of war, content ourselves with a long-distance preaching of peace to the menaced nations of Europe. Each of the two courses open to us involves self-direction, valour and strength. If we are to enter upon a struggle for place, power and profits, we must prepare for a dangerous contest: if we are to labour for a new international harmony, for peace and good-will and the delicate adjustments without which these are but words, we shall also need courage—and infinite patience. Without knowledge we shall accomplish nothing. To enter upon an international career without a sense of the conditions underlying peace and war, is to walk in darkness along a dangerous path.
CHAPTER II
THE SKELETON OF WAR
To ascribe world events to the action of a single individual is a naïve yet persistent manner of thought. All over Europe men blamed the war upon a wicked Kaiser, a swaggering, immature Crown Prince, a weak-fisted Von Berchtold, a sinister Tisza, a childish Poincaré, an unscrupulous Sir Edward Grey, an abysmally astute Sasonof. We in America blamed everything on Von Tirpitz and the irrepressible Reventlow. In all countries, millions of men drifted helplessly toward a war, which they believed was due to the evil machinations of a man.
So long as the belief holds that one man can set the world on fire, there can be no reasonable theory of war or peace. It is a conception which makes world destiny a plaything, unmotived in any large sense, accidental and incalculable. On the other hand, those who regard war as merely irrational, a general human idiocy, are equally far from any true approach to the problem. We are being deluged to-day with books and newspaper articles describing war as a reversion of mankind to a lower type, a betrayal of reason, a futile, revolting struggle, creating no rights, settling no problems and serving no useful purpose except, in Lord Salisbury's phrase, "to teach people geography." Let us be rational and adult, cry these authors, adjuring an insane world to return to its sanity.
No wonder that there is prejudice against this particular variety of abstract pacifism. It is a negative doctrine, anæmic and thin-haired, with a touch of gentle intolerance and a patient disregard of facts. It does not recognise the real motives to war, upon which alone a theory of peace may be based. It defeats itself because ultra-rationalistic. For if war, though irrational, has always been, would it not follow that man himself is irrational, that the fighting instinct is deeper than reason, and that to-morrow, as to-day, men will fight for the joy of killing? If this were true, pacifism might as well resign. In truth, this interpretation