First World War CentennialFirst World War Centennial

Lecture2: A new mind for the new age

LECTURE II

THE NEW AGE: ITS PERILS

LECTURE II

THE NEW AGE: ITS PERILS

IF we have, then, to reckon in some real sense with a new age—with days critic­ally significant for all civilization and for the vital interests of all men, we need clearly to see both the perils and the values of this new age, and to withstand those perils and to carry on and fulfill those values. For, speaking only for our own country, it must be frankly said that America is in far more danger of essential failure now in these after-the-war responsibili­ties than in the time of war.

First of all, what are the chief perils that men confront in these days following upon the greatest revolution the world has ever seen, days that ought to be days of vision, of con­structive imagination, of girded wills, and of high and world-wide accomplishment?

As has already been intimated, all the perils of this critical time may be summed up in one—the peril of letting slip what is probably the largest single opportunity that the race has ever had for a great advance. But this inclusive peril would itself be the result of certain spe­cific dangers now threatening the world's life—the perils of an inevitable inheritance of evil from the war; of disillusionment; of reaction; of destructive revolution.

The Perils of the Inevitable Inheritance of Evil from the War

1. First of all, in the evil inheritance, this most terrible of wars was marked by frightful destructiveness in every sphere. Just because it was, as we saw, no ordinary war, there was such a massing of all destructive agencies as left no realm of good unharmed, whether property, or human life, or constructive enter­prise of civilization, or beauty or friendly rela­tions. This destruction and wasting bank­ruptcy threaten to lay a heavy burden on generations yet unborn and become a direct handicap on every good cause.

2. Indeed, the direct toll of the war was so intolerable as to bring all decent civilization to the verge of collapse. Count Okuma deliber­ately declared during the war that the Orient was seeing nothing less than the death of Euro­pean civilization. And in multitudes of situa­tions the condition of things is distinctly worse now than at the time of the armistice. Pro­fessor lessor Ward hardly overstates the case when he says: "Whatever any war may have done for progress in the past, it is almost practically certain that the universal war of modern times, both in its extent and in its nature, is humanity committing suicide." [The New Social Order, p. 377.] It may be doubted if civilization could outlive even one more such war. So real are the perils.

3. Another evil inheritance from this war is the infectious spread of the intoxication of power. The use of force by the Central Powers on the most stupendous scale the world had ever seen, drove the Allied Powers to a like dependence on force. Nations became drunk with power. For it is not only true that tyrants use power, but that unlimited power breeds tyrants. Such tremendous and irre­sponsible power as this war made possible cre­ates the appetite for more power, and like a drug undermines character in man and nation. The curse of this intoxication of power is likely to rest like a spell upon the nations for years to come.

4. This intoxication of power, moreover, is only part of that Prussianising of the nations—even the Allies—that was almost inevitably involved in the conflict with Prussia. If, as the philosophers contend, there is a certain well-nigh unavoidable approximation to that against which we fight, a part of the victory of the Teutons will be that even in defeat they communicated to the Allies the fever that was in themselves.

5. But one of the worst elements in our evil inheritance from the war is the wide­spread tendency to carry over into times of peace the moods and methods of war—to apply war measures to peace conditions. America has witnessed since the armistice increasing violation of fundamental liberties, such as, it would seem, should call forth protest from every true friend of democracy and freedom. As Mr. Devine puts it: "Freedom of speech, of press and of assembly is denied to those to whom we do not wish to be just, and the denial comes not from revolutionists but from fright­ened conservatives." There has been an all too ready appeal to force, to raiding, to injunc­tions, to illegal deportations. Compulsions, hardly justified in a free country even in war time, have been used without compunction to deal with problems of peace. It is refreshing to have Judge Bourquin, a Federal Judge of Montana, in a trial of an alien arrested without warrant and ordered deported, speak out in no uncertain tones to the whole country on the issues involved:

The alien who advocates the doctrines revealed in the case, is a far less danger to this country than are the parties who in violation of law and order, of humanity and justice, have brought him to deportation. They are the spirit of intolerance incarnate, and the most alarming manifestation in America to-day. Thoughtful men who love this country and its institutions see more danger in them and in their practices, and the govern­ment by hysteria that they stimulate, than in the miserable, baited "Reds" that are the ostensible occasion of them all. [The New Republic, March 31, 1920.]

In the language of Judge Anderson of the United States District Court of Boston, "It is no light thing to deprive men of their liberty."

According to the impartial and dispassionate testimony of the investigators of the Social Service Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, during the steel strike in Pennsyl­vania, the most elementary freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, even where there was no violence, were interfered with. In the same strike, the press was so manipulated that it is the simple truth to say that the people were not allowed to have the facts necessary to a correct judgment. For example, the report of the Senate Committee upon the strike was so presented in the great body of the daily press as to seem much more unfavourable to the strikers than in fact it was. Only a few of the more independent weekly journals gave both sides of the controversy. To strike thus at the sources of knowledge in the press—it is not to be forgotten—is to imperil all demo­cratic government.

Moreover the expulsion of the five Socialists from the New York Assembly and the sequel in the abominable Lusk bills, with their pro­posals to dictate opinions to citizens, are so hideous an invasion of rights in a representa­tive government as to make one feel that our national humiliation at home is to be made to match our humiliation abroad. For the action of the New York Assembly means nothing less than that—in another's vigorous language—"it has denied to a large group of American citizens the exercise of the right of political representation because it does not agree with their political and economic opinions. In so far as its action prevails, the State of New York has ceased to be a democracy." [New Republic, April 14, p. 200.] No wonder that Mr. Hughes and the New York Bar Associa­tion protested! The standing committee of the Association on the character of proposed legis­lation, it is also to be noted, speaks out in no uncertain terms upon the Lusk bills. And this testimony from lawyers upon this point is par­ticularly significant, for as a body lawyers are likely to be pretty conservative.

6. As a part of the inheritance of evil from the war must be reckoned also the inescapable reaction from the stress and strain and excite­ment of war. It was to be expected. All men feel it in some form. Each class is inclined to think that it itself has earned and now de­serves special consideration. There is wide­spread distaste for common peaceful work and for moderate profits. Habits of industry and thrift have been broken down. Passionate pursuit of pleasure and of uncontrolled self-indulgence has become epidemic, as even our comic papers point out. These are only a few particulars in the natural general demoraliza­tion of life which comes through war. This demoralization is an omnipresent peril to be overcome.

7. Nor in our joy over the way in which the great cause of war called forth a ringing response from soldiers and nation alike may we shut our eyes to the perils which the war had for the inner life of the soldier—not only the more obvious coarser temptations of im­purity, obscenity and profanity; but the subtler temptations of distance from home, of loneliness, of the abnormal absence of the so­ciety of good women, of facing at some points the quite different standards of another people, of much idleness, of intolerable monotony, of dishonesty through the breaking down of the sense of private property, of the reduced neces­sity for the man's own initiative, of the moral and religious shock that comes from familiar­ity with the inevitable brutalities of war. Some of these conditions have deeply marked many men, and made more difficult their ad­justment to these days of peace. Such abnor­mal conditions as war produces can hardly fail often to work abnormal results.

8. And when one turns to note the wider harvest of evil from the war, he may accept the careful judgment of one of the ablest of American correspondents abroad writing soon after the armistice:

The spectacle of European ruin is simply ap­palling. Nineteenth century civilization has broken down. . . . There is a collapse of human moral energy, a revival of the primitive barbaric instincts and the fierce endeavour to have one's little private will by force. . . . Up through the European chaos is surely creeping the menace not of socialism but of Bolshevism, which is the revengeful shadow of reckless modern materialism.

And one of the most thoughtful of our American editors adds in comment: In spite, that is, of the victory over Germany, and as a direct consequence of the use of war on such a destructive scale in the interest of civiliza­tion, the very tissue of civilization is suffering from corruption and disease.

This American judgment is confirmed from an English point of view, when, in terms per­haps too pessimistic, Mr. Churchill feels com­pelled to say that the state of the world at the present time in no way betokens the endurance of peace, except from the point of view that the fighters are very much exhausted.

People talk about the world on the morrow of the Great War as if somehow or other we had all been transported into a higher sphere. We have been transformed into a sphere which is definitely lower from almost every point of view than that which we had attained in the days be­fore Armageddon. . . . There never was a time when more complete callousness and indif­ference to human life and suffering were ex­hibited by the great communities all over the world. On the expanse of Europe an insidious seething scene of misery has formed—a malevo­lence which is not for the moment dangerous, be­cause it proceds only on the basis of exhaustion of a kind that the world has never before recorded.

And the casual way in which three or four premiers—ignoring the great bulk of the na­tions—are now parcelling out the spoils and determining the fate of the world, gives small ground for expectation of just and permanent settlements from the war.

These are some of the perils involved in our inheritance of evil from the war. With all possible qualifications, one can hardly fail to recognize the gravity of the perils which the war has left us.

II

The Perils of Disillusionment

To this direct inheritance of evil from the war must be added, in the second place, the perils of disillusionment, sapping courage and faith. For this direct inheritance of evil tended at once to counteract hoped-for gains, and so to lead to disillusionment and depres­sion, if not to cynicism.

The historical situation at Paris after the armistice brought this disillusionment to a cli­max, certainly for many of the most thought­ful Americans.

In the first place, there had been no mistak­ing the rare idealism with which America came into the war. For America made her decision on high ideal, and essentially Christian grounds. Not for territorial or commercial gains; abjuring all idea of later indemnities; practically unmoved, it must be stated, by thoughts even of self-defense; after every righteous effort to preserve peaceful relations with Germany had been exhausted; when the greatness of the issues had become plain; in the face of fixed American traditions; in mar­vellously unified fashion; and across three thousand miles of sea; America threw her whole self, with her every resource, into this struggle, for the sake of righteousness, of hu­manity, of civilization. It was a singularly impressive moral movement. No wonder that the distinguished litterateur, Hughes le Rout, voiced his conviction, in an address at the American Military Headquarters in France, that history had never seen a great nation moved to war by so completely unselfish and idealistic motives.

In the second place, from the time America entered the war up to the armistice, President Wilson was recognized and welcomed as inter­preter and protagonist of the cause of the Allies. He was in truth the liberal leader of the world. The influence of the fourteen points upon the armistice and in the Near East was immense, as the inquiries of the Commis­sion on Mandates in Turkey made certain, and far greater than it is now the fashion to admit. Class and party and national selfishness—in the appalling strain of the Great War—were in abeyance, and men were glad to accept Presi­dent Wilson as their spokesman because he made them believe that there was in the holo­caust of war something greatly worth fighting for.

In the third place, President Wilson's influ­ence and his generally idealistic attitude con­tinued to prevail in large degree in the Peace Conference through the time of the adoption of the Covenant of the League of Nations; and forward-looking men could still believe that the foundations for a great new world-order were being laid, and could rejoice that they had lived to see the day when so noble a document could be made the practical outcome of a world war.

But when the nations turned to the actual making of treaties—the immense difficulties of which should not be forgotten—it became rap­idly clear that the selfish scramble among the nations had set in. The Allies were glad to use Mr. Wilson as an instrument for the ac­complishment of their war aims. But they found it singularly easy to forget him and his principles when the war was over. Even in the course of the war, selfish unjustifiable se­cret treaties had been made. And now men witnessed, for example, the Japanese treatment of Shantung; Italy's attitude toward the Jugo­slavs; the excessive demands of the French; Britain's absorption of Egypt and Persia, and her general insatiable appetite for more terri­tory; the utter ignoring by both the British and the French of the solemn promises to the Arabs in the Anglo-French Declaration of Novem­ber 9, 1918; and the mistaken provincial selfish patriotism of the American Senate in the at­tempt to return to America's old isolation, to repudiate the rare idealism with which America came into the war, and basely to shirk her world responsibilities.

Because of all this, disillusionment, depres­sion and almost cynicism spread like a plague among many of the best of America's repre­sentatives abroad. One could feel it in the very air of Paris. Men asked themselves in amazement: Is all this not simply the spirit and methods of the old condemned diplomacy? Is there any real difference in fundamental ideals? Are these the aims for which America fought? Have any of us, indeed, sufficiently taken into account what this disillusionment meant to our young soldiers, so that many of them almost inevitably felt betrayed, and thus have become embittered? There followed, naturally enough, something like an utter breakdown of faith in the Allies, and among the Allies in one an­other. And this general breakdown of faith in one another, in the dealing of the nations with one another, is in itself a national and world calamity—a moral world panic and the gravest peril of our time. For where trust has vanished, great cooperative goals for humanity are made impossible. And so faith and cour­age fail.

These are the perils of disillusionment.

III

The Perils of Reaction

When face to face with the evil inheritance from the war, and with disillusionment as to anticipated gains, it is natural for men to seek to scuttle back to the old goods—to look long­ingly back to the flesh pots of Egypt, to the pre-war world with its frequent comfort, its openness everywhere to travel, and its fairly decent world relations. All this, men tend to set over against the present almost impossible economic conditions, and the present suspicion, fear, ill-will, and threat of Bolshevism and mob-rule. The thought of reaction, thus, the desire simply to bring back the old situation, rather than to venture on a world untried, is almost inevitable. We have the perils of reac­tion to reckon with. 1. This tendency to simple reaction affects us all, almost against our will. There is, to begin with, the natural reaction from the physical and moral strain of the war—a kind of pathological fatigue that catches us un­awares. There is, too, the lazy longing for the ease of the old ways, the old routine, the worn ruts, that makes us impatient of the per­sistent demands of any new regime. There is, also, the mental indolence of "old-fogyism," as James calls it, that besets all men—the un­willingness to face new issues, to see them as new, to call them by their right names, and to adjust to them—instead of clapping old labels upon them and putting them away in the old pigeon-holes, and leaving one's own mind un­disturbed. Everybody hates mental house­cleaning, and there is never a good time for it. To ask a whole generation—or at least the leaders—to undertake this repugnant task with energies already well-nigh spent, seems almost hopeless. Moreover the psychological mood in which men find themselves after this deso­lating war is unfavourable to any decisions—to say nothing of the trenchant and sweeping decisions now called for. The prevalent mood is rather that of seeking to evade all decisions and responsibilities, of substituting for action fatal facility in finding excuses for inaction. Nor is it only wearied or enfeebled will that tends to reaction. The world-situation is so complex, its evils so threatening, and its prob­lems and tasks so overwhelming, that men naturally distrust their own insights and fear new and untried ways. Who shall declare, for example, the real significance of the Russian revolution and the Bolshevist movement? Who shall lay the foundations in righteousness of a Balkan settlement? Who shall point the sure way to industrial righteousness and peace? Who, in short, knows the road to that diviner world for which we really fought this war? Not only our paralysis of will, but our igno­rance, too, thus tends to reaction—to a choice of familiar goods, of lesser value than of the greater goods of a new and unknown world.

2. Naturally this tendency to reaction which besets us all is much accentuated in those classes who had a privileged lot in the pre-war order. Many of those, thus privileged, are honestly blind to the realities of the situation. They have asked themselves no searching questions as to unearned special privileges. They truly believe that they are the most im­portant people, and best fitted to control, and that they constitute the bulwarks of civilization against the threatening tide of Bolshevism. Their reactionism is blind but honest and in­dignant. It is all the more dangerous on that account.

3. But reaction has its chief support in human selfishness—class selfishness, partisan selfishness, and national selfishness; though selfishness of another kind may also lead to revolution.

Class selfishness leads to reaction, when the class has especially benefited by the old order. It wants to retain its old position of privilege. It deliberately uses the fears of mob rule to maintain its own rule. It stands for no true democracy, and so does not hesitate in time of peace to violate the freedom of the people by measures essentially belonging to war and of doubtful warrant even then. Such class-selfish reactionaries inevitably sow the seed of the very revolution they profess to fear.

Partisan selfishness, too, is capable of great treacheries both to the nation and to the world. Few more shameful exhibitions of such selfish­ness have been seen than in America in recent months. The whole blame does not belong to any one party. Both parties have shown a willingness to sacrifice world interests unspeak­ably precious, rather than that the other party should share in the credit of large achievement. It is hardly open to doubt that vastly greater results, in line with America's aims in this war, could have been achieved in Paris, if our conferees could have had behind them a united nation. All too largely the party leaders have cared for nothing but their own control. Their general attitude, as reflected in the Senate, has been thoroughly reactionary. They have shown no willingness honestly to face the new issues raised by the war. They have been, rather, quite ready to make the gravest world-issues a football of party politics, and so basely to repudiate America's highest moral achieve­ment—the rare idealism with which she came into the war. For they put their country—that had won highest honour—to black shame in the eyes of all the nations by making selfish national interests supreme, by advocating self­ish and cowardly return to the old isolation, and by so shirking altogether its fair share in world responsibilities. Was America's politi­cal leadership ever more nearly bankrupt, or she herself more humiliated?

As to national selfishness, the discussion of the Paris situation should have already made clear how reactionary it is,—how inevitably it harks back to an old world of selfish intrigue, and stands square athwart the path to anything like a brotherhood of the nations. For the Allies were fighting in the war against aggres­sive ruthless selfishness in the Central Powers. It is moral stultification to fall into a like atti­tude themselves, even if the selfish greed is somewhat modified.

Moreover, there is no hope of the new and righteous world of our dreams by the way of national selfishness. That is a contradiction in terms. This war has made some demonstra­tions in the field of national morals, and one of them is the demonstration of the ultimate stu­pidity of national as well as of individual self­ishness. Contrast, for example, America's present immeasurable loss of prestige with its honour in coming into the war. And national selfishness not only betrays the individual na­tion which cherishes it; it betrays as well the whole brotherhood of nations. Only by un­selfish cooperation of the nations on a gigantic scale was civilization saved in this war. Are we to trust national selfishness now to pre­serve it?

IV

The Perils of Destructive Revolution

But selfishness may lead to destructive revo­lution, as well as to reaction, and we must reckon with the entirely possible perils of such revolution. Class selfishness on the part of the unprivileged may be as dangerous to hu­man progress through destructive revolution as class selfishness on the part of the privileged through sheer reaction.

The rule of no one class—privileged or un­privileged—is democracy. For such class rule is neither just to all the people, nor even good for the ruling class itself. Professor Rausch­enbusch points out in a striking passage the in­evitable tragedy of swollen fortunes: [Chris­tianising the Social Order, p. 309.]

The social order as it now is places its bene­ficiaries in a position where they cannot escape wrong and unhappiness. If they obey its laws, they enrich their own life, but at the expense of others, and in the end their apparent advantage turns out to be their own curse. They escape from the necessity of work, but in time idleness undoes either them or their descendants. Their wealth seems to promise large means of doing good, but they find their philanthropy a heavy burden on themselves and a questionable blessing for others. Their money gives them power, but that power is an intoxicant that undermines their sense of human values. It piles up their pleas­ures, but the more they surfeit, the less pleasure do they feel. It offers them free scope for their intellectual life, but it rusts the mainspring of their intellect. It holds out happiness for their families, and does its best to ruin them. It as­sures them of security, and makes them camp among enemies. It increases their sense of strength by surrounding them with inferiors, and thereby relaxes their virility. It forces leader­ship on them, and yet chills the love of the people which is the condition of all leadership. It seems to win all the powers of this world to their side, but it puts them on the wrong side in the final verdict of God, of humanity, and of their own souls. That is the tragedy of Dives.

If the privileged class have their "tragedy of Dives," which they cannot escape, we may be sure that the rule of the proletariat would have another tragedy of its own. For if there are any moral laws at all, selfishness, wherever found, carries in itself a seed of death. So that a purely class-selfish revolution would finally betray its own creators. But the way to its overthrow might be a long and bloody way.

The best and only final defense against a destructive revolution—it behooves us all to remember—is not force, never force, but thor­oughgoing justice to all men, with whatever radical changes in all our theories and systems that may be found ultimately to involve. We should all be getting ready for a far more radical democracy than the world has yet seen;—especially those of us who have been among the more favoured in our present social order. For, as Kidd long ago pointed out in his Social Evolution, two things make for social prog­ress in the history of the race: the growing power of the unprivileged classes to seize some juster share in the advantages of the commu­nity; and the growing conviction, on the part of the privileged, that they themselves are not justly entitled to the measure of privilege they have had. Both these causes are now at work, and the war has definitely increased both. We have to reckon with that situation.

In the first place, the war has demonstrated as never before the worth and the power of the common man of every race. In common jus­tice he has earned new rights. It is well for society not to forget these facts. As Professor Ward puts it:

The growing power of the working class is beyond dispute the outstanding fact in human relationships. The question now is whether this self-conscious, self-dependent working class is going to seek only freedom and power for itself, or whether it will seek the emancipation and development of all humanity.

In the second place, the war has forced many questions concerning the righteousness of our present social order upon the consciousness of many of us who are more or less favoured by that order. We may not feel ourselves very wise in the economic field, but we cannot per­suade ourselves of the decent justice of much that now is. The inequalities of every kind are too drastic. They mock us at every hand. Take, for example, the single fact that, before the war, more than one-half of the families of the United States had a yearly income of only $800, or less. It is not a question of individ­uals, but of a system in which we are all in­volved. One of our most thoughtful students of the social order thus expresses his own sense of the gravity of the situation at this point:

The capitalist order has yet to face the con­science of mankind when the common intelligence has fully grasped the significance of the fact that in every nation war profits far exceeded those of peace, that the war occasioned the greatest in­crease of private fortunes ever known. This fact fully reveals the moral nature of a system which makes profits even out of death and dishonour, which capitalizes the supreme tragedy of the world as it capitalizes its laughter and its joy, which proposes to draw interest forever on the millions of youth who now lie in the battle-fields of Europe when they might be helping to make a new world.

Along with this fact must be put another. Of the several forces which operated to defeat the hope of those who saw a new international order coming out of the war, not the least was the unconscious influence of the present financial system and the actual intrigues of its chief manip­ulators and beneficiaries. On the one hand was the predatory attitude of nations whose economic life is organized around the principle of aggres­sion, whose leaders were face to face with the necessity of answering to the common people for the promises they had made concerning the benefits to be derived from victory. On the other hand was the need of collecting the interest on international debts and maintaining the sanctity of the right of the money lender to have his pound of flesh. To these two necessities the interests of humanity were sacrificed. [Ward, The New Social Order, p. 367.]

The adequate solution here is not easy to find; but we can be perfectly certain that sim­ply going on in the age-long conventional way to add to the burdens of the masses of the people is no solution at all, and only invites revolution.