Those causes have been, in the religious field, of a twofold nature, both having direct bearing on the problem with which we are dealing. The first cause is that at which I have already hinted, the general shifting of the ideals from sterile aims to those concerned with the improvement of society; the second one being that development of communication which has destroyed the spiritual homogeneity of States.
A given movement of religious opinion is not confined to one State, transforming it completely, while another current of opinion transforms completely in another sense another State; but it goes on piecemeal, pari passu, in the various States. Very early in the religious development of Europe there ceased to be such a thing as a purely Catholic or a purely Protestant State: the religious struggle went on inside the political frontiers—between the people of the same State. The struggle of political and social ideas must take a like course. Those struggles of ideas will be carried out, not between States, but between different groups in the same State, those groups acting in intellectual cooperation with corresponding groups in other States. This intellectual cooperation across frontiers is a necessary outcome of the similar economic cooperation athwart frontiers which the physical division of labor, owing to the development of communication, has set up. It has become impossible for the army of a State to embody the fight for an ideal, for the simple reason that the great moral questions of our time can no longer be postulated in national terms. What follows will make this plain.
There remains a final moral claim for war: that it is a needed moral discipline for nations, the supreme test for the survival of the fittest.
In the first chapter of this section, I have pointed out the importance of this plea in determining the general character of European public opinion, on which alone depends the survival or the disappearance of the militarist regimen. Yet in strict logic there is no need to rebut this claim in detail at all, for only a small fraction of those who believe in it have the courage of their convictions.
The defender of large armaments always justifies his position on the ground that such armaments ensure peace. Si vis pacem, etc. As between war and peace he has made his choice, and he has chosen, as the definite object of his endeavors, peace. Having directed his efforts to secure peace, he must accept whatever disadvantages there may lie in that state. He is prepared to admit that, of the two states, peace is preferable, and it is peace towards which our efforts should be directed. Having decided on that aim, what utility is there in showing that it is an undesirable one?
We must, as a matter of fact, be honest for our opponent. We must assume that in an alternative, where his action would determine the issue of war or peace, he will allow that action to be influenced by the general consideration that war might make for the moral advantage of his country. More important even than this consideration is that of the general national temper, to which his philosophy, however little in keeping with his professed policy and desire, necessarily gives rise. For these reasons it is worth while to consider in detail the biological case which he presents.
The illusion underlying that case arises from the indiscriminate application of scientific formulae.
Struggle is the law of survival with man, as elsewhere, but it is the struggle of man with the universe, not man with man. Dog does not eat dog—even tigers do not live on one another. Both dogs and tigers live upon their prey.
It is true that as against this it is argued that dogs struggle with one another for the same prey—if the supply of food runs short the weakest dog, or the weakest tiger, starves. But an analogy between this state and one in which cooperation is a direct means of increasing the supply of food, obviously breaks down. If dogs and tigers were groups, organized on the basis of the division of labor, even the weak dogs and tigers could, conceivably, perform functions which would increase the food supply of the group as a whole, and, conceivably, their existence would render the security of that supply greater than would their elimination. If today a territory like England supports in comfort, a population of 45,000,000, where in other times rival groups, numbering at most two or three millions, found themselves struggling with one another for a bare subsistence, the greater quantity of food and the greater security of the supply is not due to any process of elimination of Wessex men by Northumbrian men, but is due precisely to the fact that this rivalry has been replaced by common action against their prey, the forces of nature. The obvious facts of the development of communities show that there is a progressive replacement of rivalry by cooperation, and that the vitality of the social organism increases in direct ratio to the efficiency of the cooperation, and to the abandonment of the rivalry, between its parts.52
All crude analogies between the processes of plant and animal survival and social survival are vitiated, therefore, by disregarding the dynamic element of conscious cooperation.
That mankind as a whole represents the organism and the planet the environment, to which he is more and more adapting himself, is the only conclusion that consorts with the facts. If struggle between men is the true reading of the law of life, those facts are absolutely inexplicable, for he is drifting away from conflict, from the use of physical force, and towards cooperation. This much is unchallengeable, as the facts which follow will show.
But
