AMERICA AND THE NEW EPOCH

I

ERAS IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY

WHILE this is being written the world's war is entering its third year, and no end to the catastrophe is yet in sight. All attempts to explain the cause of the dis­aster have failed: the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince, the violation of Bel­gium's neutrality. Slavish expansion, Prussian militarism, British greed alike do not explain. The assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince may have justified a punitive expedition against Serbia, but not that Russia, England, and France come to the assistance of the assassins.

The violation of the neutrality of Belgium does not appear acceptable to an American as explanation of England's entrance into the war. It would imply that the American's moral sense is so inferior to that of the Englishman that the latter went to war for a moral issue, while beyond mere academic condemnation not a single voice was raised in America for war in defense of Belgium; nay, such obligation was expressly disclaimed.

The battle lines between Slav and German have been wavering to and fro in the East for over fifteen centuries without kindling a world's war, and while the old fight for the ground, be­tween Slav and German, would flare up with renewed intensity as incident of a world's war, it cannot be the cause.

Prussian militarism and British greed—or, in the language of the neutral mind, German or­ganization and England's financial interests—as causes of the war explain nothing, but leave the questions: What created Germany's powerful centralized organization? Why were England's financial interests threatened by Germany?

With the failure of finding a satisfactory cause for the war we are forced to realize that we stand before one of those inevitable catas­trophes in the history of the human race, that we are passing through one of those historical epochs which have changed the organization of human society, an epoch like that which, begin­ning in the August night of 1789, with the declaration of the rights of man, liberté égal­ité fraternité and ending on the battle-field of Waterloo, changed the world from feudalism to industrial capitalism, or that earlier epoch of the migration of the German tribes, which buried the classic civilization of ancient times under the ruins of the Roman Empire and es­tablished the feudal society of the Middle Ages, or that still earlier epoch before the dawn of history when the Aryan migration ended the neolithic age and laid the foundation of the classic civilization.

We know nothing about the social condition before the Aryan migration. When the Aryans came they came as conquerors, the conquered autochthons became rightless slaves, Helots, la­boring for the conqueror-citizens as masters, and so all ancient civilization, Egypt and Baby­lon, Hellas and the Macedonian empires, and finally their culmination in the Roman Empire, were based on slavery—a rightless class of slaves doing all the work, a citizen class sup­ported by slave labor and thus having its time free for war, administration, or art, whatever the national character and inclination, and a class of free men without rights and power, de­spised alike by slave and slave-owner, but con­sidering themselves vastly above the slaves, and serving the masters as slave-drivers, managers, etc. (perioikoi—libertini—the "poor white trash" of our own classic civilization of the South).

In the classic era art rose to heights never approached since, and in the Roman Empire was accomplished what the world has never experienced since—universal peace for several centuries.

But the classic era finally came to an end, not by overthrow, but by internal decay: the Roman Empire, based on the labor of the conquered nations, failed to conserve the source of its strength, the people which it exploited. So nation after nation was exhausted, while race suicide destroyed the ruling classes. So the purple passed from Italy to France; Spain, the Balkan nations, Africa, and Asia, even far­away England supplied emperors; but hardly any of the later Roman emperors was of Roman descent.

In the second great epoch of human history, when the "barbarians" finally destroyed the Roman Empire and founded their own nations, it was an empty shell which they destroyed—the life of the ancient civilization had long gone out.

The state of the barbarians which overran the Roman Empire was the tribal organization, an aristocratic democracy; that is, a nation of free and equal citizens, composed of families differing more or less in social standing, by their history, their prowess, influence, etc., and led,when leadership appeared necessary, by some prominent male member of the most influential leading family, but accepting the leadership vol­untarily, without recognizing any right to rule.

Such was the foundation on which later feu­dalism was built.

When these tribes overran the Roman Em­pire, their relations to the conquered "Romans" necessarily were very different from those of the Aryans to their predecessors. There could be no question of slavery. The German bar­barians had for so many generations obeyed the orders of the Roman Empire, as servants, aux­iliaries, and mercenaries, had lived so long under the glamour of the Roman Empire, that when the relations reversed, and the barbarians

became the masters, it was inconceivable for them to make slaves out of their former masters, but these gradually merged into and modified the barbarian tribal organization; the masses became the tillers of the soil, the educated classes acquired a position within and still out­side of the tribal organization, as the "clergy," and so the feudal society of the Middle Ages was born, by the amalgamation of the con­quered nations with the conquering German barbarians.

Feudalism inherently recognized no slavery, but all people had some rights, though different according to their occupation, their station in society, from the tiller of the land, who was bound to the soil, to the lord of the manor, who was supported by the tribute—the "tenth"—of the former, but who in his turn had to pro­tect the former from enemies, and had to do service to his overlord.

A permanent classification of society was thus established, with the three main classes: the common people, or tillers of the soil and artisans; the nobility, or warrior class; and the clergy, or educated class. Each class was sub­divided again into numerous grades, from the county squire to the duke and king, and the classes of feudal society never were "castes," as to-day in India, but there was always the possibility of rising from one class into a higher one, however difficult this may have been some time in the later Middle Ages, and there was always the danger of dropping down into a lower class.

Feudalism was fairly satisfactory as long as it remained a commensal organism—that is, all classes gave and received; the tiller of the soil received protection from the feudal lord in ex­change for his tribute of a part of his harvest, the feudal lord gave protection to the tiller of the soil in exchange for the tribute received, and gave military service to his overlord in exchange for protection against his enemies; the clergy took charge of the intellectual and religious life, etc.

But feudalism was an organization adapted to an essentially agricultural society, and there was no place within it for industry, manufac­ture, and commerce, and when, in the later Middle Ages, arts and industries developed in the cities, when the crusades and later on the African, Indian, and American discoveries de­veloped commerce, conditions arose with which the feudal organization of society could not cope.

Thus in the industrial cities of central Europe, of Italy, and later England, the development proceeded away from feudalism, toward a form of society very much akin to that of the later individualistic era after the French Revolution. The feudal city governments—the patrician families—were overthrown by the industrial organization of artisans and merchants, the guilds, and democratic industrial governments established. Powerful free cities and feder­ations of free cities, as the Hansa, arose, broke away from feudalism—especially when the mention of gunpowder made the armored knight helpless—and started a new era.

In England, protected by the ocean, this re­organization of society, although starting much later than on the Continent, survived and grad­ually merged by evolution into the individual­istic age.

This is England's strength, as well as her weak­ness. Derived by gradual evolution through centuries, the individualistic industrial age is far deeper rooted in the national character than in nations which have more recently emerged from feudalism. But, on the other hand, nu­merous remnants of feudalism have survived, such as the respect for lords, the reverence for titles, etc., which have been swept away in nations where the transition has been of more revolutionary character.

On the Continent, feudalism once more tri­umphed over the industrial city.

With increasing subdivision and specializa­tion of classes, feudalism finally reached its last development in the absolute monarchy. The "retainers" of the lord of the manor became the army of mercenaries of the duke or king. The king thus became independent of the vol­untary service of the feudal lords, the noblemen. Against the army of mercenaries, maintained by the ruler, the individual lord or the indus­trial city had little chance, and were reduced to submission.

In the perpetual wars between the merce­nary armies maintained by the more powerful rulers, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, central Europe was laid waste, the beginning of the new industrial era wiped out with the de­struction of the prosperity of the cities, and the absolute feudal monarchy emerged, as exem­plified in the "grand monarch," Louis XIV. of France; the monarch was the state—L'état c'est moi—but beneath him there was an infi­nite graduation from the highest to the lowest nobility, parallel thereto the clergy, and far beneath the rightless toiling masses.

But in this development of the absolute mon­archy based on mercenary armies, feudalism had ceased to be commensal, and therewith for­feited its right of existence. The armies of mercenaries had made the ruler independent of the good-will of his subjects. The enormous cost of the large armies of mercenaries required in the perpetual wars, the cost of maintaining the estate of the "grand monarch," the need of attaching the nobility to the court by sharing the spoils with them, all this meant continu­ously increasing exploitation of the people, and for the masses it was no more, as in the early days of feudalism, exchange of protection for a part of the product of their work, but it was exploitation by everybody, ceaseless toil and no hope, and to the masses the feudal society of the "grand monarch" offered nothing. There­fore they had no interest in the maintenance of this society, their lot could not become worse by any overthrow of society, and all their inter­ests thus were against society, and became rev­olutionary.

When incompetent and weak rulers followed the "grand monarch," the storm broke, and in the great revolution feudalism was submerged and France gave the world a new era, that of individualism, or industrial capitalism, as we may call it by its present-day characteristics.

Other developments contributed to the catas­trophic change in the epoch of the French Rev­olution, which overthrew feudalism.

The individualism of the industrial cities had been vanquished in the wars of the mercenary armies, but not entirely extinguished, and from the cities gradually permeated all society.

The steadily deteriorating condition of the masses, and parallel thereto the degeneration of the ruling classes, created an increasing disgust with the existing form of society among the better elements of the privileged classes; we must realize that in the declaration of the rights of man, which started the revolution, the nobil­ity and clergy voluntarily gave up their privi­leges over the tiers Hat.

The invention of the steam-engine had come and had begun to revolutionize society; com­merce and trade rose to increasing power; Eng­land had solved the problem of feudalism by be­heading one king and giving the walking-papers to the next one who had started to play the "grand monarch," and had brought a king from abroad, with the implied understanding that he would follow his predecessor if he took him­self too seriously; and England was gradually beginning to emerge as an industrial nation.

The American colonies had revolted and set up a democracy, declaiming that "all men are born free and equal."

Prussia, under Frederic II., had established compulsory education, had educated all her subjects, and then had withheld political rights from them.

The philosophy of Voltaire and his contem­poraries had with destructive logic attacked all accepted standards, from royalty to religion, and shattered the self-confidence of the defend­ers of established order, and the renaissance of literature had spread the modern ideas through wide circles.