We have here, at present in merely embryonic form, a group of motives otherwise opposed, but meeting and agreeing upon one point: the organization of society on other than territorial and national divisions. When motives of such breadth as these give force to a tendency, it may be said that the very stars in their courses are working to the same end.
Part III
The Practical Outcome
I
The Relation of Defence to Aggression
Necessity for defence arises from the existence of a motive for attack—Platitudes that everyone overlooks—To attenuate the motive for aggression is to undertake a work of defence.
The general proposition embodied in this book—that the world has passed out of that stage of development in which it is possible for one civilized group to advance its well-being by the military domination of another—is either broadly true or broadly false. If it is false, it can, of course, have no bearing upon the actual problems of our time, and can have no practical outcome; huge armaments tempered by warfare are the logical and natural condition.
But the commonest criticism this book has had to meet is that, though its central proposition is in essence sound, it has, nevertheless, no practical value, because—
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Armaments are for defence, not for aggression.
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However true these principles may be, the world does not recognize them and never will, because men are not guided by reason.
As to the first point. It is probable that, if we really understood truths which we are apt to dismiss as platitudes, many of our problems would disappear.
To say, “We must take measures for defence” is equivalent to saying, “Someone is likely to attack us,” which is equivalent to saying, “Someone has a motive for attacking us.” In other words, the basic fact from which arises the necessity for armaments, the ultimate explanation of European militarism, is the force of the motive making for aggression. (And in the word “aggression,” of course, I include the imposition of superior force by the threat, or implied threat, of its use, as well as by its actual use.)
That motive may be material or moral; it may arise from real conflict of interest, or a purely imaginary one; but with the disappearance of prospective aggression disappears also the need for defence.
The reader deems these platitudes beside the mark?
I will take a few sample criticisms directed at this book. Here is the London Daily Mail:
The bigger nations are armed, not so much because they look for the spoils of war, as because they wish to prevent the horrors of it; arms are for defence.111
And here is the London Times:
No doubt the victor suffers, but who suffers most, he or the vanquished?”112
The criticism of the Daily Mail was made within three months of a “raging and tearing” big navy campaign, all of it based on the assumption that Germany was “looking for the spoils of war,” the English naval increase being thus a direct outcome of such motives. Without it, the question of English increase would not have arisen.113 The only justification for the clamor for increase was that England was liable to attack; every nation in Europe justifies its armaments in the same way; every nation consequently believes in the universal existence of this motive for attack.
The Times has been hardly less insistent than the Mail as to the danger from German aggression; but its criticism would imply that the motive behind that prospective aggression is not a desire for any political advantage or gain of any sort. Germany apparently recognizes aggression to be, not merely barren of any useful result whatsoever, but burdensome and costly into the bargain; she is, nevertheless, determined to enter upon it in order that though she suffer, someone else will suffer more!114
In common with the London Daily Mail and the London Times, Admiral Mahan fails to understand this “platitude,” which underlies the relation of defence to aggression.
Thus in his criticism of this book, he cites the position of Great Britain during the Napoleonic era as proof that commercial advantage goes with the possession of preponderant military power in the following passage:
Great Britain owed her commercial superiority then to the armed control of the sea, which had sheltered her commerce and industrial fabric from molestation by the enemy.
Ergo, military force has commercial value, a result which is arrived at by this method: in deciding a case made up of two parties you ignore one.
England’s superiority was not due to the employment of military force, but to the fact that she was able to prevent the employment of military force against her; and the necessity for so doing arose from Napoleon’s motive in threatening her. But for the existence of this motive to aggression—moral or material, just or mistaken—Great Britain, without any force whatsoever, would have been more secure and more prosperous than she was; she would not have been spending a third of her income in war, and her peasantry would not have been starving.
Of a like character to the remark of the Times is the criticism of the Spectator, as follows:
Mr. Angell’s main point is that the advantages customarily associated with national independence and security have no existence outside the popular imagination. … He holds that Englishmen would be equally happy if they were under German rule, and that Germans would be equally happy if they were under English rule. It is irrational, therefore, to take any measures for perpetuating the existing European order, since only a sentimentalist can set any value on its maintenance. … Probably in private life Mr. Angell is less consistent and less inclined to preach the burglar’s gospel that to the wise man meum and tuum are but two names for the same thing. If he is anxious to make converts, he will do well to apply his reasoning to
