The Great Illusion Part 1

The Great Illusion.

by Norman Angell.

PREFACE.

If this, the fourth American edition, is bulkier than its predecessors, it is chiefly because the events of the last two years throw an interesting light upon the bearing of the book's main thesis on actual world problems. I have, therefore, added an appendix dealing with certain criticisms based upon the nature of the first Balkan War, in the course of which I attempt to show just how the principles elaborated here have been working out in European politics.

That American interest in the problems here discussed is hardly less vital than that of Europe I am even more persuaded than when the first American edition of this book was issued in 1910. It is certain that opinion in America will not be equipped for dealing with her own problems arising out of her relations with the Spanish American states, with j.a.pan, with the Philippines, unless it has some fair understanding of the principles with which this book deals. Its general interest even goes farther than this: no great community like that of modern America can remain indifferent to the drift of general opinion throughout the world on matters wrapped up with issues so important as those of war and peace.

That the tangible commercial and business interests of America are involved in these European events is obvious from the very factors of financial and commercial interdependence which form the basis of the argument.

That the interests of Americans are inextricably, if indirectly, bound up with those of Europe, has become increasingly clear as can be proved by the barest investigation of the trend of political thought in this country.

The thesis on its economic side is discussed in terms of the gravest problem which now faces European statesmanship, but these terms are also the living symbols of a principle of universal application, as true with reference to American conditions as to European. If I have not "localized" the discussion by using ill.u.s.trations drawn from purely American cases, it is because these problems have not at present, in the United States, reached the acute stage that they have in Europe, and ill.u.s.trations drawn from the conditions of an actual and pressing problem give to any discussion a reality which to some extent it might lose if discussed on the basis of more supposit.i.tious cases.

It so happens, however, that in the more abstract section of the discussion embraced in the second part, which I have termed the "Human Nature of the Case," I have gone mainly to American authors for the statement of cases based on those illusions with which the book deals.

For this edition I have thought it worth while thoroughly to revise the whole of the book and to re-write the chapter on the payment of the French Indemnity, in order to clear up a misunderstanding to which in its first form it gave rise. Part III has also been re-written, in order to meet the changed form of criticism which has resulted from the discussion of this subject during the last year or two.

It is with very great regret that I have seen this book grow in bulk; but as it const.i.tutes the statement of a thesis still revolutionary, it has to cover the whole ground of the discussion, sometimes in great detail. I have, however, adopted an arrangement and method of presentation by which, I trust, the increase in bulk will not render it less clear. The general arrangement is as follows:

The Synopsis is a very brief indication of the scope of the whole argument, which is not that war is impossible, but that it is futile--useless, even when completely victorious, as a means of securing those moral or material ends which represent the needs of modern civilized peoples; and that on a general realization of this truth depends the solution of the problem of armaments and warfare.

The general economic argument is summarized in Chapter III., Part I.

The moral, psychological, and biological argument is summarized in Chapter II., Part II.

The practical outcome--what should be our policy with reference to defence, why progress depends upon the improvement of public opinion and the best general methods of securing that--is discussed in Part III.

This method of treatment has involved some small repet.i.tion of fact and ill.u.s.tration, but the repet.i.tion is trifling in bulk--it does not amount in all to the value of more than three or four pages--and I have been more concerned to make the matter in hand clear to the reader than to observe all the literary canons. I may add that, apart from this, the process of condensation has been carried to its extreme limit for the character of data dealt with, and that those who desire to understand thoroughly the significance of the thesis with which the book deals--it is worth understanding--had really better read every line of it!

One personal word may perhaps be excused as explaining certain phraseology, which would seem to indicate that the author is of English nationality. He happens to be of English birth, but to have pa.s.sed his youth and early manhood in the United States, having acquired American citizenship there. This I hope ent.i.tles him to use the collective "we"

on both sides of the Atlantic. I may add that the last fifteen years have been pa.s.sed mainly in Europe studying at first hand the problems here dealt with.

N.A.

LONDON, October, 1913.

PREFACE

The present volume is the outcome of a large pamphlet published in Europe at the end of last year ent.i.tled _Europe's Optical Illusion_. The interest that the pamphlet created and the character of the discussion provoked throughout Europe persuaded me that its subject-matter was worth fuller and more detailed treatment than then given it. Herewith the result of that conviction. The thesis on its economic side is discussed in the terms of the gravest problem which now faces European statesmanship, but these terms are also the living symbols of a principle of universal application, as true with reference to American conditions as to European. If I have not "localized" the discussion by using ill.u.s.trations drawn from purely American cases, it is because these problems have not at present in the United States reached the acute stage that they have in Europe, and ill.u.s.trations drawn from the conditions of an actual and pressing problem give to any discussion a reality which to some extent it might lose if discussed on the basis of more suppositious cases.

It so happens, however, that in the more abstract section of the discussion embraced in the second part, which I have termed the "Human Nature of the Case," I have gone mainly to American authors for the statement of cases based on those illusions with which the book deals.

N.A.

PARIS, August, 1910.

SYNOPSIS

What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?

They are based on the universal a.s.sumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others (German naval compet.i.tion is a.s.sumed to be the expression of the growing need of an expanding population for a larger place in the world, a need which will find a realization in the conquest of English Colonies or trade, unless these are defended); it is a.s.sumed, therefore, that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.

The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have pa.s.sed; that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another--to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that, in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which peoples strive.

He establishes this apparent paradox, in so far as the economic problem is concerned, by showing that wealth in the economically civilized world is founded upon credit and commercial contract (these being the outgrowth of an economic interdependence due to the increasing division of labor and greatly developed communication). If credit and commercial contract are tampered with in an attempt at confiscation, the credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must respect the enemy's property, in which case it becomes economically futile. Thus the wealth of conquered territory remains in the hands of the population of such territory. When Germany annexed Alsatia, no individual German secured a single mark's worth of Alsatian property as the spoils of war. Conquest in the modern world is a process of multiplying by _x_, and then obtaining the original figure by dividing by _x_. For a modern nation to add to its territory no more adds to the wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the wealth of Londoners if the City of London were to annex the county of Hertford.

The author also shows that international finance has become so interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that the intangibility of an enemy's property extends to his trade. It results that political and military power can in reality do nothing for trade; the individual merchants and manufacturers of small nations, exercising no such power, compete successfully with those of the great. Swiss and Belgian merchants drive English from the British Colonial market; Norway has, relatively to population, a greater mercantile marine than Great Britain; the public credit (as a rough-and-ready indication, among others, of security and wealth) of small States possessing no political power often stands higher than that of the Great Powers of Europe, Belgian Three per Cents. standing at 96, and German at 82; Norwegian Three and a Half per Cents. at 102, and Russian Three and a Half per Cents. at 81.

The forces which have brought about the economic futility of military power have also rendered it futile as a means of enforcing a nation's moral ideals or imposing social inst.i.tutions upon a conquered people.

Germany could not turn Canada or Australia into German colonies--_i.e._, stamp out their language, law, literature, traditions, etc.--by "capturing" them. The necessary security in their material possessions enjoyed by the inhabitants of such conquered provinces, quick inter-communication by a cheap press, widely-read literature, enable even small communities to become articulate and effectively to defend their special social or moral possessions, even when military conquest has been complete. The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and intersect the political frontiers.

There is no modern State which is completely Catholic or Protestant, or liberal or autocratic, or aristocratic or democratic, or socialist or individualist; the moral and spiritual struggles of the modern world go on between citizens of the same State in unconscious intellectual co-operation with corresponding groups in other States, not between the public powers of rival States.

This cla.s.sification by strata involves necessarily a redirection of human pugnacity, based rather on the rivalry of cla.s.ses and interests than on State divisions. War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the biological a.n.a.logy.

The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element. The diminishing role of physical force in all spheres of human activity carries with it profound psychological modifications.

These tendencies, mainly the outcome of purely modern conditions (_e.g._ rapidity of communication), have rendered the problems of modern international politics profoundly and essentially different from the ancient; yet our ideas are still dominated by the principles and axioms, images and terminology of the bygone days.

The author urges that these little-recognized facts may be utilized for the solution of the armament difficulty on at present untried lines--by such modification of opinion in Europe that much of the present motive to aggression will cease to be operative, and by thus diminishing the risk of attack, diminishing to the same extent the need for defence. He shows how such a political reformation is within the scope of practical politics, and the methods which should be employed to bring it about.

PART I

THE ECONOMICS OF THE CASE

CHAPTER I

STATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR WAR

Where can the Anglo-German rivalry of armaments end?--Why peace advocacy fails--Why it deserves to fail--The att.i.tude of the peace advocate--The presumption that the prosperity of nations depends upon their political power, and consequent necessity of protection against aggression of other nations who would diminish our power to their advantage--These the universal axioms of international politics.