The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife

See note infra on "Commercial Prosperity," p. 167. (Chapter XI below)

11

It is said that Russia took some steps towards mobilization as early as the 25th. If she did, that would seem quite natural under the circumstances.

12

There may possibly be found another explanation of these excesses—namely, in the galling strictness of the Prussian military regime. After years and years of monotonously regulated and official lives, it may be that to both officers and men, in their different ways, orgies of one kind or another came as an almost inevitable reaction.

13

"A German," he said, "could not live long in the atmosphere of England—an atmosphere of sham, prudery, conventionality, and hollowness"! See article on "Treitschke," by W.H. Dawson, in the Nineteenth Century for January 1915.

14

The influence, however, of Bernhardi in his own country has been somewhat exaggerated in England.

15

It seems that the same remark is made about the Germans in the U.S.A., that they take little interest in politics there.

16

This attitude is exactly corroborated by Herr Maximilian Harden's manifesto, originally published in Die Zukunft, and lately reprinted in the New York Times.

17

Though this is only, perhaps, true of their State colonies. In their individual and missionary colonizing groups, and as pioneer settlers, they seem to have succeeded well.

18

Reprinted by permission from the English Review for January, 1915.

19

Lord Bryce in the Daily Chronicle, October, 1914.

20

In a letter to the Times, September 18, 1914.

21

There is no reason in itself why Commercialism should be false. Commerce and interchange of goods is of course a perfectly natural and healthy function of social life. Indeed, it is a function which should have a most beneficent influence in binding nations together. It is when that function is perverted to private gain that it becomes false. But of course without this perversion there would be no distinctively commercial class with interests opposed to those of the community.

22

In Servia, for instance, which many folk doubtless regard as a benighted country, more than four-fifths of the people are peasant farmers and cultivate lands belonging to their own families. "These holdings cannot be sold or mortgaged entire; the law forbids the alienation for debt of a peasant's cottage, his garden or courtyard, his plough, the last few acres of his land, and the cattle necessary for working his farm." [Encycl. Brit.] In 1910 there were altogether five hundred agricultural co-operative societies in Servia.

23

When these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men return home after the war is over, do we expect them to go meekly back to the idiotic slavery of dingy offices and dirty workshops? If we do I trust that we shall be disappointed. These men who have fought so nobly for their land, and who have tasted, even under the most trying conditions, something of the largeness and gladness of a free open-air life, will, I hope, refuse to knuckle down again to the old commercialism. Now at last arises the opportunity for our outworn Civilization to make a fresh start. Now comes the chance to establish great self-supporting Colonies in our own countrysides and co-operative concerns where real Goods may be manufactured and Agriculture carried on in free and glad and healthy industry.

24

See p. 50 above.

25

H.M. Tomlinson, in the Daily News.

26

Militating also against the idea of over-population is the fact that so much of our agricultural land is obviously uncared for and neglected.

27

And even the hundred and one humane Associations of to-day derive a great part of their enthusiasm and vitality from fighting each other!

28

Put into English by Lady Gregory. (John Murray, 6s. net.)

29

From T.P.'s Weekly, November 7, 1914.

30

See "A War-Note for Democrats," by H.M. Tomlinson (English Review, December, 1914). "This war was bound to come, and we've got to finish it proper. No more of this bloody rot for the kids, an' chance it."

31

My Life, vol ii, p. 288.

32

G. Lowes Dickinson, Civilizations of India, China, and Japan, p.43. See also Eugene Simon, La Cité Chinoise, passim.