The War and Democracy Part 20

--1. _The Two Issues._--The War of 1914 is not simply a war between the Dual Alliance and the Triple Entente: it is, for Great Britain and Germany especially, a war of ideas--a conflict between two different and irreconcilable conceptions of government, society, and progress. An attempt will be made in this chapter to make clear what these conceptions are, and to discuss the issue between them as impartially as possible, from the point of view, not of either of the combatant Powers, but of human civilisation as a whole.

There are really two great controversies being fought out between Great Britain and Germany: one about the ends of national policy, and another about the means to be adopted towards those or any other ends. The latter is the issue raised by the German Chancellor's plea--not so unfamiliar on the lips of our own countrymen as we are now tempted to believe--that "Necessity knows no law." It is the issue of Law and "sc.r.a.ps of paper"

against Force, against what some apologists have called "the Philosophy of Violence," but which, in its latest form, the French Amba.s.sador has more aptly christened "the Pedantry of Barbarism." That issue has lately been brought home, in its full reality, to the British public from the course of events in Belgium and elsewhere, and need not here be elaborated. Further words would be wasted. A Power which recognises no obligation but force, and no law but the sword, which marks the path of its advance by organised terrorism and devastation, is the public enemy of the civilised world.

But it is a remarkable and significant fact that the policy in which this ruthless theory is embodied commands the enthusiastic and united support of the German nation. How can this be explained?

It must be remembered in the first place that the German public does not see the facts of the situation as we do. On the question of Belgian neutrality and the events which precipitated the British ultimatum, what we know to be a false version of the facts is current in Germany, as is evident from the published statements of the leaders of German thought and opinion, and it may be many years before its currency is displaced.

This difficulty should serve to remind us how defective the machinery of civilisation still is. One of the chief functions of law is, not merely to settle disputes and to enforce its decisions, but to ascertain the true facts on which alone a settlement can be based. The fact that no tribunal exists for ascertaining the true facts in disputes between sovereign governments shows how far mankind still is from an established "rule of law" in international affairs. Not only is the Hague powerless to give and, still more, to enforce its decision on the questions at issue between the European Powers. It has not even the machinery for ascertaining the facts of the case and bringing them to the notice of neutral governments and peoples in the name of civilisation as a whole.

But apart from divergent beliefs as to the facts, it is remarkable that thinking Germany should be in sympathy with the spirit and tone of German policy, which led, as it appears to us, by an inexorable logic to the violation of Belgian neutrality and the collision with Great Britain.

But the fact, we are told, admits of easy explanation. Thinking Germany has fallen a victim to the teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche--Treitschke with his Macchiavellian doctrine that "Power is the end-all and be-all of a State," Nietzsche with his contempt for pity and the gentler virtues, his admiration for "valour," and his disdain for Christianity.

This explanation is too simple to fit the facts. It may satisfy those who know no more of Treitschke's brilliant and careful work than the extracts culled from his occasional writings by General von Bernhardi and the late Professor Cramb. It may gratify those who, with so many young German students, forget that Nietzsche, like many other prophets, wrote in allegory, and that when he spoke of valour he was thinking, not of "shining armour," but of spiritual conflicts. But careful enquirers, who would disdain to condemn Macaulay on pa.s.sages selected by undiscriminating admirers from his _Essays_, or Carlyle for his frank admiration of Thor and Odin and the virtues of Valhalla, will ask for a more satisfying explanation. Even if all that were said about Treitschke and Nietzsche were true, it would still remain an unsolved question why they and their ideas should have taken intellectual Germany by storm. But it is not true. What is true, and what is far more serious, both for Great Britain and for Europe, is that men like Harnack, Eucken, and Wilamowitz, who would repudiate all intellectual kinship with Macchiavelli and Nietzsche--men who are leaders of European thought, and with whom and whose ideas we shall have to go on living in Europe--publicly support and encourage the policy and standpoint of a Government which, according to British ideas, has acted with criminal wickedness and folly, and so totally misunderstood the conduct and att.i.tude of Great Britain as honestly to regard us as hypocritically treacherous to the highest interests of civilisation.

That is the real problem; and it is a far more complex and difficult one than if we had to do with a people which had consciously abandoned the Christian virtues or consciously embarked on a conspiracy against Belgium or Great Britain. The utter failure of even the most eminent Germans to grasp British politics, British inst.i.tutions, and the British point of view points to a fundamental misunderstanding, a fundamental divergence of outlook, between the political ideals of the two countries. It is the conflict between these ideals which forms the second great issue between Germany and Great Britain; and on its outcome depends the future of human civilisation.

--2. _Culture_.--What is the German ideal? What do German thinkers regard as Germany's contribution to human progress? The answer comes back with a monotonous reiteration which has already sickened us of the word. It is _Kultur_, or, as we translate it, culture. Germany's contribution to progress consists in the spread of her culture.

_Kultur_ is a difficult word to interpret. It means "culture" and a great deal more besides. Its primary meaning, like that of "culture," is intellectual and aesthetic: when a German speaks of "Kultur" he is thinking of such things as language, literature, philosophy, education, art, science, and the like. Children in German schools are taught a subject called _Kulturgeschichte_ (culture-history), and under that heading they are told about German literature, German philosophy and religion, German painting, German music and so on.

So far, the English and the German uses of the word roughly correspond. We should probably be surprised if we heard it said that Shakespeare had made a contribution to English "culture": but, on consideration, we should admit that he had, though we should not have chosen that way of speaking about him. But there is a further meaning in the word _Kultur_, which explains why it is so often on German lips. It means, not only the product of the intellect or imagination, but the product of the disciplined intellect and the disciplined imagination. _Kultur_ has in it an element of order, of organisation, of civilisation. That is why the Germans regard the study of the "culture" of a country as part of the study of its history. English school children are beginning to be taught social and industrial history in addition to the kings and queens and battles and const.i.tutions which used to form the staple of history lessons. They are being taught, that is, to see the history of their country, and of its civilisation, in the light of the life and livelihood of its common people. The German outlook is different. They look at their history in the light of the achievements of its great minds, which are regarded as being at once the proof and the justification of its civilisation. To the question, "What right have you to call yourselves a civilised country?" an Englishman would reply, "Look at the sort of people we are, and at the things we have done," and would point perhaps to the extracts from the letters of private soldiers printed in the newspapers, or to the story of the growth of the British Empire; a German would reply (as Germans are indeed replying now), "Look at our achievements in scholarship and science, at our universities, at our systems of education, at our literature, our music, and our painting; at our great men of thought and imagination: at Luther, Durer, Goethe, Beethoven, Kant."

_Kultur_ then means more than "culture": it means _culture considered as the most important element in civilisation._ It implies the disciplined education which alone, in the German view, makes the difference between the savage and the civilised man. It implies the heritage of intellectual possessions which, thanks to ordered inst.i.tutions, a nation is able to hand down from generation to generation.

We are now beginning to see where the British and German att.i.tudes towards society and civilisation diverge. Broadly, we may say that the first difference is that Germany thinks of civilisation in terms of intellect while we think of it in terms of character. Germany asks, "What do you know?" "What have you learnt?" and regards our prisoners as uncivilised because they cannot speak German, and Great Britain as a traitor to civilisation because she is allied with Russia, a people of ignorant peasants. We ask, "What have you done?" "What can you do?" and tend to undervalue the importance of systematic knowledge and intellectual application.

But we have found no reason as yet for a conflict of ideals. Many English writers, such as Matthew Arnold, have emphasised the importance of culture as against character; yet Matthew Arnold's views were widely different from those of the German professors of to-day. If their sense of the importance of culture stopped short at this point, we should have much to learn from Germany, as indeed we have, and no reason to oppose her. What is there then in the German admiration for culture which involves her in a conflict with British ideals?

--3. _Culture as a State Product._--The conflict arises out of the alliance between German culture and the German Government. What British public opinion resents, in the German att.i.tude, is not culture in itself, about which it is little concerned, but what we feel to be its unnatural alliance with military power. It seems to us wicked and hypocritical for a government which proclaims the doctrine of the "mailed fist" and, like the ancient Spartans, glories in the perfecting of the machinery of war, to be at the same time protesting its devotion to culture, and posing as a patron of the peaceful arts. It is the Kaiser's speeches and the behaviour of the German Government which have put all of us out of heart with German talk about culture.

This brings us to a fundamental point of difference between the two peoples. The close a.s.sociation between culture and militarism, between the best minds of the nation and the mind of the Government, does not seem unnatural to a modern German at all. On the contrary, it seems the most natural thing in the world. It is the bedrock of the German system of national education. Culture to a German is not only a national possession; it is also, to a degree difficult for us to appreciate, a State product.

It is a national possession deliberately handed on by the State from generation to generation, hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the use of its citizens. When we use the word "culture" we speak of it as an attribute of individual men and women. Germans, on the other hand, think of it as belonging to nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of national education. That is why they are so sure that all Germans possess culture. They have all had it at school. And it is all the same brand of culture, because no other is taught. It is the culture with which the Government wishes its citizens to be equipped. That is why all Germans tend, not only to know the same facts (and a great many facts too), but to have a similar outlook on life and similar opinions about Goethe, Shakespeare and the German Navy. Culture, like military service, is a part of the State machinery.

Here we come upon the connecting link between culture and militarism. Both are parts of the great German system of State education. "Side by side with the influences of German education," wrote Dr. Sadler in 1901,[1] "are to be traced the influences of German military service. The two sets of influence interact on one another and intermingle. German education impregnates the German army with science. The German army predisposes German education to ideas of organisation and discipline. Military and educational discipline go hand in hand.... Both are preserved and fortified by law and custom, and by administrative arrangements skilfully devised to attain that end. But behind all the forms of organisation (which would quickly crumble away unless upheld by and expressing some spiritual force), behind both military and educational discipline, lies the fundamental principle adopted by Scharnhorst's Committee on Military organisation in Prussia in 1807: 'All the inhabitants of the State are its defenders by birth.'"

[Footnote 1: _Board of Education Special Reports,_ vol. ix. p. 43.]

At last we have reached the root of the matter. It is not German culture which is the source and centre of the ideas to which Great Britain is opposed: nor yet is it German militarism. Our real opponent is the system of training and education, out of which both German culture and German militarism spring. It is the organisation of German public life, and the "spiritual force" of which that organisation is the outward and visible expression.

--4. _German and British Ideals of Education._--Let us look at the German ideal more closely, for it is worthy of careful study. It is perhaps best expressed in words written in 1830 by Coleridge, who, like other well-known Englishmen of his day (and our own) was much under the influence of German ideas. Coleridge, in words quoted by Dr. Sadler, defines the purpose of national education as "to form and train up the people of the country to obedient, free, useful, and organisable subjects, citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the State and prepared to die in its defence." In accordance with this conception Prussia was the first of the larger States in Europe to adopt a universal compulsory system of State education, and the first also to establish a universal system of military service for its young men. The rest of Europe perforce followed suit. Nearly every State in Europe has or professes to have a universal system of education, and every State except England has a system of universal military service. The Europe of schools and camps which we have known during the last half century is the most striking of all the victories of German "culture."

Discipline, efficiency, duty, obedience, public service; these are qualities that excite admiration everywhere--in the cla.s.sroom, in the camp, and in the wider field of life. There is something almost monumentally impressive to the outsider in the German alliance of School and Army in the service of the State. Since the days of Sparta and Rome, there has been no such wonderful governmental disciplinary machine. It is not surprising that "German organisation" and "German methods" should have stimulated interest and emulation throughout the civilised world. Discipline seems to many to be just the one quality of which our drifting world is in need. "If this war had been postponed a hundred or even fifty years," writes a philosophic English observer in a private letter, "Prussia would have become our Rome, worshipping Shakespeare and Byron as Pompey or Tiberius worshipped Greek literature, and disciplining us. Hasn't it ever struck you what a close parallel there is between Germany and Rome?" (Here follows a list of bad qualities which is better omitted.) ... "The good side of it is the discipline; and the modern world, not having any power external to itself which it acknowledges, and no men (in ma.s.ses) having yet succeeded in being a law to themselves, needs discipline above everything. I don't see where you will get it under these conditions unless you find some one with an abstract love of discipline for itself. And where will you find him except in Prussia? After all, it is a testimony to her that, unlovely as she is, she gives the law to Germany, and that the South German, though he dislikes her, accepts the law as good for him." And to show that he appreciates the full consequences of his words he adds: "If I had to live under Ramsay MacDonald (provided that he acted as he talks), or under Lieutenant von Forstner" (the hero of Zabern), "odious as the latter is, for my soul's good I would choose him: for I think that in the end, I should be less likely to be irretrievably ruined."

Here is the Prussian point of view, expressed by a thoughtful Englishman with a wide experience of education, and a deep concern for the moral welfare of the nation. What have we, on the British side, to set up against his arguments?

In the first place we must draw attention to the writer's candour in admitting that a nation cannot adopt Prussianism piecemeal. It must take it as a whole, its lieutenants included, or not at all. Lieutenant von Forstner is as typical a product of the Prussian system as the London policeman is of our own; and if we adopt Prussian or Spartan methods, we must run the risk of being ruled by him. "No other nation," says Dr.

Sadler, "by imitating a little bit of German organisation can hope thus to achieve a true reproduction of the spirit of German inst.i.tutions. The fabric of its organisation practically forms one whole. That is its merit and its danger. It must be taken all in all or else left unimitated. And it is not a mere matter of external organisation.... National inst.i.tutions must grow out of the needs and character (and not least out of the weakness) of the nation which possesses them."

But, taking the system as a whole, there are, it seems to me, three great flaws in it--flaws so serious and vital as to make the word "education" as applied to it almost a misnomer. The Prussian system is unsatisfactory, firstly, because it confuses external discipline with self-control; secondly, because it confuses regimentation with corporate spirit; thirdly, because it conceives the nation's duty in terms of "culture" rather than of character.

Let us take these three points in detail.

The first object of national education is--not anything national at all, but simply education. It is the training of individual young people. It is the gradual leading-out (e-ducation), unfolding, expanding, of their mental and bodily powers, the helping of them to become, not soldiers, or missionaries of culture, or pioneers of Empire, or even British citizens, but simply human personalities. "The purpose of the Public Elementary School," say the opening words of our English code, "is to form and strengthen the character and to develop the intelligence of the children entrusted to it." In the performance of this task external discipline is no doubt necessary. Obedience and consideration for others are not learnt in a day. But the object of external discipline is to form habits of self-control which will enable their possessor to become an independent and self-respecting human being--and incidentally, a good citizen. "If I had to _live under_ Ramsay MacDonald, or the Prussian Lieutenant," says our writer, "I would choose the latter, for my soul's good." But our British system of education does not proceed on the a.s.sumption that its pupils are destined to "live under" any one. Our ideal is that of the free man, trained in the exercise of his powers and in the command and control of his faculties, who, like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior" (a poem which embodies the best British educational tradition):

... Through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.

Neglect for the claims of human personality both amongst pupils and teachers is the chief danger of a State system of education. The State is always tempted to put its own claims first and those of its citizens second--to regard the citizen as existing for the State, instead of the State for its citizens. It is one of the ironies of history that no man was more alive to this danger than Wilhelm von Humboldt, the gifted creator of the Prussian system of education. As the motto of one of his writings he adopted the words, "_Against the governmental mania, the most fatal disease of modern governments_," and when, contrary to his own early principles, he undertook the organisation of Prussian education he insisted that "headmasters should be left as free a hand as possible in all matters of teaching and organisation." But the Prussian system was too strong for him and his successors, and his excellent principles now survive as no more than pious opinions. The fact is that in an undemocratic and feudal State such as Germany then was, and still largely is, respect for the personality of the individual is confined to the upper ranks of society.

"I do not know how it is in foreign countries," says one of Goethe's heroes,[1] "but in Germany it is only the n.o.bleman who can secure a certain amount of universal or, if I may say so, _personal_ education. An ordinary citizen can learn to earn his living and, at the most, train his intellect; but, do what he will, he loses his personality.... He is not asked, 'What are you?' but only, 'What have you? what attainments, what knowledge, what capacities, what fortune?' ... The n.o.bleman is to act and to achieve.

The common citizen is to carry out orders. He is to develop individual faculties, in order to become useful, and it is a fundamental a.s.sumption that there is no harmony in his being, nor indeed is any permissible, because, in order to make himself serviceable in one way, he is forced to neglect everything else. The blame for this distinction is not to be attributed to the adaptability of the n.o.bleman or the weakness of the common citizen. It is due to the const.i.tution of society itself." Much has changed in Germany since Goethe wrote these words, but they still ring true. And they have not been entirely without their echo in Great Britain itself.[2]

[Footnote 1: Wilhelm Meister's _Lehrjahre_, Book v. chapter iii.]

[Footnote 2: The contrast which has been drawn in the preceding pages, as working-cla.s.s readers in particular will understand, is between the _aims_, not the achievements, of German and British education. The German aims are far more perfectly achieved in practice than the British. Neither the law nor the administration of British education can be acquitted of "neglect for the claims of human personality." The opening words of the English code, quoted on p. 359 above, are, alas! not a statement of fact but an aspiration. We have hardly yet begun in England to realise the possibilities of educational development along the lines of the British ideal, both as regards young people and adults. If we learn the lesson of the present crisis aright, the war, so far from being a set-back to educational progress, should provide a new stimulus for effort and development.]

But man cannot live for himself alone. He is a corporate being; and, personality or no personality, he has to fit into a world of fellow-men with similar human claims. The second charge against the German system is that it ignores the value of human fellowship. It regards the citizens of a country as "useful and organisable subjects" rather than as fellow-members of a democracy, bound together by all the various social ties of comradeship and intercourse.

The Prussian system, with its elaborate control and direction from above, dislikes the free play of human groupings, and discourages all spontaneous or unauthorised a.s.sociations. Schoolboy "societies," for instance, are in Germany an evil to be deplored and extirpated, not, as with us, a symptom of health and vigour, to be sympathetically watched and encouraged.

Instead, there is a direct inculcation of patriotism, a strenuous and methodical training of each unit for his place in the great State machine.

We do not so read human nature. Our British tendency is to develop habits of service and responsibility through a devotion to smaller and more intimate a.s.sociations, to build on a foundation of lesser loyalties and duties. We do not conceive it to be the function of the school to _teach_ patriotism or to _teach_ fellowship. Rather we hold that good education _is_ fellowship, _is_ citizenship, in the deepest meaning of those words; that to discover and to exercise the responsibilities of membership in a smaller body is the best training for a larger citizenship. A school, a ship, a club, a Trade Union, any free a.s.sociation of Englishmen, is all England in miniature. "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke long ago, "is the first principle, the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind.... We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pa.s.s on to our neighbourhoods, to our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places... so many images of the great country, in which the heart found something which it could fill."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Reflections on the French Revolution_, pp. 292, 494 (of vol.

iii. of _Collected Works_, ed. 1899).]

There is one fairly safe test for a system of education: What do its victims think of it? "In Prussia," says Dr. Sadler, "a schoolboy seems to regard his school as he might regard a railway station--a convenient and necessary establishment, generally ugly to look at, but also, for its purpose efficient." The ill.u.s.tration is an apt one: for a Prussian school is too often, like a railway station, simply a point of departure, something to be got away from as soon as possible. "In England a boy who is at a good secondary school cares for it as an officer cares for his regiment or as a sailor cares for his ship," or, we may add, as a Boy Scout cares for his Troop.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Special Reports_, ix. p. 113. Dr. Sadler's article deals with secondary schools only. Unfortunately, no one can claim that the idea of fellowship is as prominent in English elementary schools, or even in all secondary schools, as the quotation might suggest.]

Democracy and discipline, fellowship and freedom, are in fact not incompatible at all. They are complementary: and each can only be at its best when it is sustained by the other. Only a disciplined and self-controlled people can be free to rule itself, and only a free people can know the full meaning and happiness of fellowship.

--5. _German and British Ideals of Civilisation._--Lastly, the German system regards national "culture" rather than national character as the chief element in civilisation and the justification of its claim to a dominant place in the world. This view is so strange to those who are used to present-day British inst.i.tutions that it is hard to make clear what it means. Civilisation is a word which, with us, is often misused and often misunderstood. Sometimes we lightly identify it with motor cars and gramophones and other Western contrivances with which individual traders and travellers dazzle and bewilder the untutored savage. Yet we are seldom tempted to identify it, like the Germans, with anything narrowly national; and in our serious moments we recognise that it is too universal a force to be the appanage of either nations or individuals. For to us, when we ask ourselves its real meaning, civilisation stands for neither language nor culture nor anything intellectual at all. It stands for something moral and social and political. It means, in the first place, the establishment and enforcement of the Rule of Law, as against anarchy on the one hand and tyranny on the other; and, secondly, on the basis of order and justice, the task of making men fit for free inst.i.tutions, the work of guiding and training them to recognise the obligations of citizenship, to subordinate their own personal interests or inclinations to the common welfare, the "commonwealth." That is what is meant when it is claimed that Great Britain has done a "civilising" work both in India and in backward Africa. The Germans reproach and despise us, we are told,[1] for our failure to spread "English culture" in India. That has not been the purpose of British rule, and Englishmen have been foolish in so far as they have presumed to attempt it: England has to learn from Indian culture as India from ours. But to have laid for India the foundations on which alone a stable society could rest, to have given her peace from foes without and security within, to have taught her, by example, the kinship of Power and Responsibility, to have awakened the social conscience and claimed the public services of Indians in the village, the district, the province, the nation, towards the community of which they feel themselves to be members, to have found India a continent, a chaos of tribes and castes, and to have helped her to become a nation--that is not a task of English culture: it is a task of civilisation.

[Footnote 1: For evidence of this see Cramb's _Germany and England_, p.

25.]

Law, Justice, Responsibility, Liberty, Citizenship--the words are abstractions, philosophers' phrases, dest.i.tute, it might seem, of living meaning and reality. There is no such thing as English Justice, English Liberty, English Responsibility. The qualities that go to the making of free and ordered inst.i.tutions are not national but universal. They are no monopoly of Great Britain. They are free to be the attributes of any race or any nation. They belong to civilised humanity as a whole. They are part of the higher life of the human race.

As such the Germans, if they recognised them at all, probably regarded them. They could not see in them the binding power to keep a great community of nations together. They could not realise that Justice and Responsibility, if they rightly typify the character of British rule, must also typify the character of British rulers; and that community of character expressed in their inst.i.tutions and worked into the fibre of their life may be a stronger bond between nations than any mere considerations of interest. Educated Indians would find it hard to explain exactly why, on the outbreak of the war, they found themselves eager to help to defend British rule. But it seems clear that what stirred them most was not any consideration of English as against German culture, or any merely material calculations, but a sudden realisation of the character of that new India which the union between Great Britain and India, between Western civilisation and Eastern culture, is bringing into being, and a sense of the indispensable need for the continuance of that partnership.[1]

[Footnote 1: The reader will again understand that it is British aims rather than British achievements which are spoken of. That British rule is indispensable to Indian civilisation is indeed a literal fact to which Indian opinion bears testimony; and it is the conduct and character of generations of British administrators which have helped to bring this sense of partnership about. But individual Englishmen in India are often far from understanding, or realising in practice, the purpose of British rule.

Similarly, the growth of a sense of Indian nationality, particularly in the last few years, is a striking and important fact. But it would be unwise to underestimate the gigantic difficulties with which this growing national consciousness has to contend. The greatest of these is the prevalence of caste-divisions, rendering impossible the free fellowship and social intercourse which alone can be the foundation of a sense of common citizenship. Apart from this there are, according to the census, forty-three races in India, and twenty-three languages in ordinary use.]

It is just this intimate union between different nations for the furtherance of the tasks of civilisation which it seems so difficult for the German mind to understand. "Culture," with all its intimate a.s.sociations, its appeal to language, to national history and traditions, and to instinctive patriotism, is so much simpler and warmer a conception: it seems so much easier to fight for Germany than to fight for Justice in the abstract, or for Justice embodied in the British Commonwealth. That is why even serious German thinkers, blinded by the idea of culture, expected the break-up of the British Empire. They could imagine Indians giving their lives for India, Boers for a Dutch South Africa, Irishmen for Ireland or Ulstermen for Ulster; but the deeper moral appeal which has thrilled through the whole Empire, down to its remotest island dependency, lay beyond their ken.