The Philosophy of War

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,--In human affairs none, save perhaps the most simple, springs from a single cause. To determine the real causes of such an extraordinary complex occurrence as the present war may well seem almost if not quite impossible. Many facts are still unknown, others are beclouded by misleading concomitants, no few cannot appear in their true significance from national prejudice and predilection. Nowhere else as in war can be found all the idola in such full vigour-the idola tribes, idols of the tribe, fallacies common to humanity in general; the idola specus, idols of the cave, misapprehensions due to the peculiar bodily or mental constitution of the individual; the idola fori, idols of the market-place, errors due to influence of mere words or phrases; the idola theatri, errors due to imperfect presentation--all are abroad, and it requires the utmost clearness of thought and intellectual honesty to escape, even in part, from their harmful control.

I distinctly and emphatically disclaim ability to free my mind wholly from noxious gas fallacy. I cannot pretend to be quite impartial; but I shall endeavour to state my views as well as I can, uninfluenced by anything but the truth as best I can discover the truth.

We commonly say that the war between Germany and Britain was caused by the invasion of Belgium. That this infamous assault upon an innocent, honourable, and unoffending nation precipitated the conflict is most true. That it consolidated public opinion as nothing else but an attack upon Britain herself could have done is also true. Without it we have the best authority for saying the cabinet would have been hopelessly divided on the question of war. Without it, had Britain declared war when she did, she would have gone into the war with some of her strongest statesmen determinedly opposed, and public opinion in a most dangerous state of indecision and helplessness. As it was, the cabinet was almost one. Only the aged Morley, Burns, who had in great measure outlived his usefulness, and another of even less importance, resigned, and of these it is understood that at least one, and probably two, would gladly have gone back.

Public opinion was practically unanimous, due in no slight degree to the sturdy patriotism of the opposition leaders. A few like Keir Hardie, who is never so happy as when girding at British ideals, and stirring up strife if not sedition;, the labour fire-brand Larkin, who endeavoured to win back some of the favour with which he had once been considered, but which he had lost through the stern discountenance of labour's true leaders; Sir Roger Casement and his like, open traitors and Germanophiles--these stood apart and threw sand into the machinery which they could not control. The great heart of the nation was one, and continues to be one-these are negligible. But the war was in any case inevitable-human nature, British nature, and Prussian nature being what they are. Nay, more, unless human nature British or Prussian should undergo such a metamorphosis as is unthinkable, circumstances were certain to occur which would consolidate the nation as thoroughly as is at present the case--and far more thoroughly than it was in the time of the war in South Africa.

This war, and much as it is, with Britain unanimous and determined as she is, was inevitable in the very nature of things, and did not depend upon an incident here and there, a detail trivial and avoidable. Rivulos consectari, fontes rerum non videre.

The real and efficient cause of the war, the actual foes et origo belli, is to be found in the ideals of the Prussian governing class, and the irreconcilable conflict between these and the modern spirit.

Much has been said not too much-of Treitschke and Bernhardi. Treitschke, however, can be credited or debited only with making the Prussian ideal known and popular in the rest of Germany; Bernhardi with pitilessly applying Prussian principles to the existing world and the near future. The ideal was there, living, active, growing, energising, long before these, and had they never existed would have found other agencies.

In essence the predominant conception of the Prussian is and always has been that it is God's will and plan that one man shall rule, that he shall be but little lower than the Almighty himself, and shall be the Vicegerent on earth in temporal matters of the Almighty, and shall be chosen by Him alone.

To the Prussian, the proposition that kings should owe their power to the people is wholly repugnant. The predecessor of the present King of Prussia refused to become Emperor of Germany by the will of the people, he preferred to be King of Prussia by the grace of God rather than Emperor of Germany by the grace of the people. Vox populi was not vox Dei in his conception. Any such sovereignty as is gloried in by our own King, " broad, based upon the people's will," is wholly repugnant to those who hold the doctrine of right divine to govern wrong.

This view of the power of the King was a favourite of the Tudors and the Stewarts, but the tragedy of Whitehall and the Revolution of 1688 made for it an eternal quietus in our system. Its recrudescence under the third Guelph and later was possible only in remote colonies across the seas, and there the cannon and rifle in one part of the Empire and in the motherland persistent constitutional agitation, and a sense of decent fair play and ordinary justice, put an end to it despite the efforts of the Bourbon element on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Prussian King, the German Emperor, is an anachronism, a survival of a former evil condition of the body politic.

In that system it follows of necessity that the state is everything, the subject but a subject fit for nothing but to support the state, and whose wants, desires, all must be in subjection to the assumed needs of the state the state is an end in itself, the individual exists but for the state. Let no one imagine that this is a pose, an affectation. The Kaiser most honestly believes in his heaven-sent mission, he has no qualms of doubt as to the constant attendance of the Divine, whom he looks upon almost as an ally. His people are equally convinced-that is, that part of them who have any share in administering the affairs of the nation.

In an American periodical has recently appeared an article by the American wife of a German noble. She tells of the sermons of the pastor of their church not being wholly satisfactory to the commander of the troops in that district; they were not patriotic enough; and the colonel went to see him. Before this the Kaiser was represented as the main agent in the hands of God, but thereafter it was hard to distinguish the Kaiser from God Himself.

But all this was honest and thoroughly heartfelt. It has always been the case that the assumption of vice-regency for God on the earth or in any part of it, however small, leads to arrogance. This imparts its like into those in contact with it; the insufferable arrogance of the Prussian is proverbial.

Ex necessitate, the state can make no mistake: what it wants for its complete development it ought to take. No other party, state, or individual has any right which Germany is bound to respect; any opposing force should be, and must be, crushed. There is no such thing as morality to be observed in relation to other nations. Germany produces a surplus of babies every year; she must have a place to put her surplus population, and if the unoccupied land be in the possession of other nations, so much the worse for other nations.

Germany is desirous of being a great manufacturing people: if she is met in the markets of the world by the competition of Britain, so much the worse for Britain. If Britain is invulnerable except with a great fleet, a great fleet Germany will have.

If Belgium, whose neutrality has been guaranteed, affords the easiest and speediest routes by which Germany can smite those she desires to conquer, Belgium should give way and leave the way open. No thought is given to the position of Belgium if France should repulse the invader and herself require to follow him over the Low Country.

If the United States by selling arms furnishes the enemies of Germany with means to fight her, she is lengthening the war; regardless of the certainty that if Germany is to be beaten this will shorten the war.

Germany pleads for neutralisation of the narrow waters, ignoring the fact that the only narrow waters which require neutralisation are those of her ally, Turkey. She wants freedom of the sea, which has always been free to her till she wanted to dominate it.

With principles like these it was absolutely certain that Germany would at some time, no matter how or where war started, be guilty of acts as infamous as the invasion of Belgium, and thereby consolidate British public opinion, and make it practically unanimous as it is now.

It was therefore, to my mind, providential that she showed her hand so soon.

Britain is our motherland, and we are apt to look upon her with a partial eye; but no one will say that she is not a sincere and convinced lover of human freedom. She is therefore and equally a lover of democracy. She recognises that man is man and not merely a cog in the wheel of state, that the state exists for the individual, and fulfils its functions best when the happiness of the individual is best secured; the greatest good of the greatest number is her end and aim.

Having no undue illusion as to the source of power, the state is but a means to an end; it is bound by the same rules as the individual. The pledged word must be kept. Magna Charta was but a scrap of paper, so was the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act, and no Briton despises the scrap of paper. The epithet " Perfidious Albion " was invented by or for an emperor who aimed at the mastery of the world: long a cant phrase in France, France has learned its falsity. Never again will that Albion be called perfidious, which stood by harassed and threatened France at Agadir, which stood by France bewildered and well nigh destroyed at the Marne.

The eternal laws of God are binding on the nations; the laws of morality do not lose their validity at the border.

Two nations with such antagonistic principles may live in peace, but only if each keeps itself within its own sphere. Germany could never allow Britain to preach her anarchistic and blasphemous doctrines in Germany's land, and when Germany set about it to attain world-power, Britain must say nay; and if Germany attempts it by arms, by arms must Britain withstand her.

This is no war for a strip of territory, for the safety of a dynasty. This is a war of ideals: autocracy and democracy, divine right and the people's voice, the forced remaining content in that sphere of life to which it has pleased the authorities to call him and the free development of the individual along the lines his nature and tastes dictate.

Our keen-eyed neighbours to the south early recognised the significance of the conflict. With the exception of those of German descent, for whom all allowances should be made, a few professional Irishmen whose occupation is just about gone, a few wrong-headed such as are to be found in any community, that free and independent people are with us. The American poet voices the sentiments of that people:

AMERICA TO ENGLAND

" Oh, England, in the smoking trenches dying

For all the world,

We hold our breath, and watch your bright flag flying,

While ours is furled;

We who are neutral (yet each lip with fervour

The word abjures)

Oh, England, never name us the timeserver!

Our hearts are yours;

We that so glory in your high decision,

So trust your goal

All Europe in our blood, but yours our vision,

Our speech, our soul ! "

Contemporary opinion is said to indicate the decision of history. Not only the people of the United States, but those of all free countries are on our side. We need not fear the verdict.

In the broad realm of Britain, wherever the Union Jack flies, under its folds a British folk, there is only one voice

We are one. Writers like him whose play has been largely attended recently in our city may have thought to make their account by slighting references to our stand; but the assurance of even a Shaw had to lower its brazen front before the seriousness of a free people in deadly earnest. And our own men. Our hearts swell with pride when we think of their valour. I may be allowed to copy a few words of mine written in view of the glorious struggle of that splendid day in April:

" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori !-Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland. Never were these words more splendidly justified, never more heroically exemplified than in the terrible conflict by the Yser, which has made the name of Canada illustrious throughout the world.

" We knew our men were brave. As they went out from us we knew that, as in another war, no commanding officer would be forced to begin his despatch with ' I regret to report.' But perhaps few appreciated the utter depth of gallantry, unquenchable valour, grand self-forgetfulness and selfsacrifice which was in them all. They had an opportunity which comes to few, and seldom, to exhibit their all of bravery, skill, endurance; and magnificently did they seize it. The oakenhearted warriors of Marathon and Thermopylae, the heroes of Crecy and Poictiers, of Bannockburn and Stirling, of Ramilies and Malplaquet, of the Peninsula and Waterloo, of Lundy's Lane and Chateauguay, of Ladysmith and Paardeberg, acclaim them as very brethren. When shall their glory fade ? Every soldiery in the world may make it their boast: ' We fought like Canadians.'

" To those who are left behind, the great heart of the nation -aye of the Empire-goes out in sympathy; the anguished widow and weeping orphans must be our care. What Canada can do to make less felt the loss of those who gave their lives for her-and oh! how little that is must be Canada's first thought.

" To these glory is as naught, but as time goes by they too will say, ' My husband, my father, died as a man should, thinking only of duty and giving himself for his people.' They will join with us in honouring the dead. Wet-eyed widow, broken old mother, will at length recognise, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

Our boast has ever been Civis Britannicus sum, now we add with even greater pride, et Canadfnsis.