Why Men Fight

In spite of the fact that most nations at most times, are at peace, war is one of the permanent institutions of all free communities, just as Parliament is one of our permanent institutions in spite of the fact that it is not always sitting. It is war as a permanent institution that I wish to consider: why men tolerate it; why they ought not to tolerate it; what hope there is of their coming not to tolerate it; and how they could abolish it if they wished to do so. War is a conflict between two groups, each of which attempts to kill and maim as many as possible of the other group in order to achieve some object which it desires. The object is generally either power or wealth. It is a pleasure to exercise authority over other men, and it is a pleasure to live on the produce of other men’s labor. The victor in war can enjoy more of these delights than the vanquished.80 But war, like all other natural activities, is not so much prompted by the end which it has in view as by an impulse to the activity itself. Very often men desire an end, not on its own account, but because their nature demands the actions which will lead to the end. And so it is in this case: the ends to be achieved by war appear in prospect far more important than they will appear when they are realized, because war itself is a fulfilment of one side of our nature. If men’s actions sprang from desires for what would in fact bring happiness, the purely rational arguments against war would have long ago put an end to it. What makes war difficult to suppress is that it springs from an impulse, rather than from a calculation of the advantages to be derived from war. War differs from the employment of force by the police through the fact that the actions of the police are ordered by a neutral authority, whereas in war it is the parties to the dispute themselves who set force in motion. This distinction is not absolute, since the State is not always wholly neutral in internal disturbances. When strikers are shot down, the State is taking the side of the rich. When opinions adverse to the existing State are punished, the81 State is obviously one of the parties to the dispute. And from the suppression of individual opinion up to civil war all gradations are possible. But broadly speaking, force employed according to laws previously laid down by the community as a whole may be distinguished from force employed by one community against another on occasions of which the one community is the sole judge. I have dwelt upon this difference because I do not think the use of force by the police can be wholly eliminated, and I think a similar use of force in international affairs is the best hope of permanent peace. At present, international affairs are regulated by the principle that a nation must not intervene unless its interests are involved: diplomatic usage forbids intervention for the mere maintenance of international law. America may protest when American citizens are drowned by German submarines, but must not protest when no American citizens are involved. The case would be analogous in internal affairs if the police would only interfere with murder when it happened that a policeman had been killed. So long as this principle prevails in the relations of States, the power of neutrals cannot be effectively employed to prevent war. 82 In every civilized country two forces coöperate to produce war. In ordinary times some men—usually a small proportion of the population—are bellicose: they predict war, and obviously are not unhappy in the prospect. So long as war is not imminent, the bulk of the population pay little attention to these men, and do not actively either support or oppose them. But when war begins to seem very near, a war fever seizes hold of people, and those who were already bellicose find themselves enthusiastically supported by all but an insignificant minority. The impulses which inspire war fever are rather different from those which make some men bellicose in ordinary times. Only educated men are likely to be warlike at ordinary times, since they alone are vividly aware of other countries or of the part which their own nation might play in the affairs of the world. But it is only their knowledge, not their nature, that distinguishes them from their more ignorant compatriots. To take the most obvious example, German policy, in recent years before the war, was not averse from war, and not friendly to England. It is worth while to try to understand the state of mind from which this policy sprang. 83 The men who direct German policy are, to begin with, patriotic to an extent which is almost unknown in France and England. The interests of Germany appear to them unquestionably the only interests they need take into account. What injury may, in pursuing those interests, be done to other nations, what destruction may be brought upon populations and cities, what irreparable damage may result to civilization, it is not for them to consider. If they can confer what they regard as benefits upon Germany, everything else is of no account. The second noteworthy point about German policy is that its conception of national welfare is mainly competitive. It is not the intrinsic wealth of Germany, whether materially or mentally, that the rulers of Germany consider important: it is the comparative wealth in the competition with other civilized countries. For this reason the destruction of good things abroad appears to them almost as desirable as the creation of good things in Germany. In most parts of the world the French are regarded as the most civilized of nations: their art and their literature and their way of life have an attraction for foreigners which those of Germany do not have. The English have84 developed political liberty, and the art of maintaining an Empire with a minimum of coercion, in a way for which Germany, hitherto, has shown no aptitude. These are grounds for envy, and envy wishes to destroy what is good in other countries. German militarists, quite rightly, judged that what was best in France and England would probably be destroyed by a great war, even if France and England were not in the end defeated in the actual fighting. I have seen a list of young French writers killed on the battlefield; probably the German authorities have also seen it, and have reflected with joy that another year of such losses will destroy French literature for a generation—perhaps, through loss of tradition, for ever. Every outburst against liberty in our more bellicose newspapers, every incitement to persecution of defenseless Germans, every mark of growing ferocity in our attitude, must be read with delight by German patriots, as proving their success in robbing us of our best, and in forcing us to imitate whatever is worst in Prussia. But what the rulers of Germany have envied us most was power and wealth—the power derived from command of the seas and the straits,85 the wealth derived from a century of industrial supremacy. In both these respects they feel that their deserts are higher than ours. They have devoted far more thought and skill to military and industrial organization. Their average of intelligence and knowledge is far superior; their capacity for pursuing an attainable end, unitedly and with forethought, is infinitely greater. Yet we, merely (as they think) because we had a start in the race, have achieved a vastly larger Empire than they have, and an enormously greater control of capital. All this is unbearable; yet nothing but a great war can alter it. Besides all these feelings, there is in many Germans, especially in those who know us best, a hot hatred of us on account of our pride. Farinata degli Uberti surveyed Hell “come avesse lo Inferno in gran dispitto.” Just so, by German accounts, English officer prisoners look round them among their captors—holding aloof, as though the enemy were noxious, unclean creatures, toads or slugs or centipedes, which a man does not touch willingly, and shakes off with loathing if he is forced to touch them for a moment. It is easy to imagine how the devils hated Farinata, and inflicted greater86 pains upon him than upon his neighbors, hoping to win recognition by some slight wincing on his part, driven to frenzy by his continuing to behave as if they did not exist. In just the same way the Germans are maddened by our spiritual immobility. At bottom we have regarded the Germans as one regards flies on a hot day: they are a nuisance, one has to brush them off, but it would not occur to one to be turned aside by them. Now that the initial certainty of victory has faded, we begin to be affected inwardly by the Germans. In time, if we continue to fail in our military enterprises, we shall realize that they are human beings, not just a tiresome circumstance. Then perhaps we shall hate them with a hatred which they will have no reason to resent. And from such a hatred it will be only a short journey to a genuine rapprochement. The problem which must be solved, if the future of the world is to be less terrible than its present, is the problem of preventing nations from getting into the moods of England and Germany at the outbreak of the war. These two nations as they were at that moment might be taken as almost mythical representatives of pride and envy—cold pride and hot envy. Germany87 declaimed passionately: “You, England, swollen and decrepit, you overshadow my whole growth—your rotting branches keep the sun from shining upon me and the rain from nourishing me. Your spreading foliage must be lopped, your symmetrical beauty must be destroyed, that I too may have freedom to grow, that my young vigor may no longer be impeded by your decaying mass.” England, bored and aloof, unconscious of the claims of outside forces, attempted absent-mindedly to sweep away the upstart disturber of meditation; but the upstart was not swept away, and remains so far with every prospect of making good his claim. The claim and the resistance to it are alike folly. Germany had no good ground for envy; we had no good ground for resisting whatever in Germany’s demands was compatible with our continued existence. Is there any method of averting such reciprocal folly in the future? I think if either the English or the Germans were capable of thinking in terms of individual welfare rather than national pride, they would have seen that, at every moment during the war the wisest course would have been to conclude peace at once, on the best terms that could have88 been obtained. This course, I am convinced, would have been the wisest for each separate nation, as well as for civilization in general. The utmost evil that the enemy could inflict through an unfavorable peace would be a trifle compared to the evil which all the nations inflict upon themselves by continuing to fight. What blinds us to this obvious fact is pride, the pride which makes the acknowledgment of defeat intolerable, and clothes itself in the garb of reason by suggesting all kinds of evils which are supposed to result from admitting defeat. But the only real evil of defeat is humiliation, and humiliation is subjective; we shall not feel humiliated if we become persuaded that it was a mistake to engage in the war, and that it is better to pursue other tasks not dependent upon world-dominion. If either the English or the Germans could admit this inwardly, any peace which did not destroy national independence could be accepted without real loss in the self-respect which is essential to