Put it another way. You do not believe that force should determine the transfer of property or conformity to a creed, and I say to you: “Hand me your purse and conform to my creed or I kill you.” You say: “Because I do not believe that force should settle these matters, I shall try to prevent it settling them; therefore if you attack I shall resist; if I did not I should be allowing force to settle them.” I attack; you resist and disarm me and say: “My force having neutralized yours and, the equilibrium being now established, I will hear any reasons you may have to urge for my paying you money or any argument in favor of your creed. Reason, understanding, adjustment shall settle it.” You would be a Pacifist. Or, if you deem that that word connotes nonresistance, though to the immense bulk of Pacifists it does not, you would be an Anti-bellicist, to use a dreadful word coined by M. Emile Faguet in the discussion of this matter. If however you said: “Having disarmed you and established the equilibrium, I shall now upset it in my favor by taking your weapon and using it against you unless you hand me your purse and subscribe to my creed. I do this because force alone can determine issues and because it is a law of life that the strong should eat up the weak,” you would then be a Bellicist.
In the same way, when we prevent the brigand from carrying on his trade—taking wealth by force—it is not because we believe in force as a means of livelihood, but precisely because we do not. And if, in preventing the brigand from knocking out brains, we are compelled to knock out his brains, is it because we believe in knocking out people’s brains? Or would we urge that to do so is the way to carry on a trade or to govern a nation or that it could be the basis of human relationship?
In every civilized country, the basis of the relationship on which the community rests is this: no individual is allowed to settle his differences with another by force. But does this mean that if one threatens to take my purse, I am not allowed to use force to prevent it? That if he threatens to kill me, I am not to defend myself, because “the individual citizens are not allowed to settle their differences by force”? It is because of that, because the act of self-defence is an attempt to prevent the settlement of a difference by force, that the law justifies it.123
But the law would not justify me if, having disarmed my opponent, having neutralized his force by my own and reestablished the social equilibrium, I immediately proceeded to upset it by asking him for his purse on pain of murder. I should then be settling the matter by force—I should then have ceased to be a Pacifist and have become a Bellicist.
For that is the difference between the two conceptions; the Bellicist says: “Force alone can settle these matters; it is the final appeal, therefore fight it out; let the best man win. When you have preponderant strength, impose your view; force the other man to your will; not because it is right, but because you are able to do so.” It is the “excellent policy” which Lord Roberts attributes to Germany and approves.
We Anti-bellicists take an exactly contrary view. We say: “To fight it out settles nothing, since it is not a question of who is stronger, but of whose view is best and, as that is not always easy to establish, it is of the utmost importance in the interest of all parties, in the long run, to keep force out of it.”
The former is the policy of the Turks. They have been obsessed with the idea that, if only they had enough of physical force ruthlessly exercised, they could solve the whole question of government, of existence for that matter, without troubling about social adjustment, understanding, equity, law, commerce; that “blood and iron” were all that was needed. The success of that policy can now be judged.
Good or evil will come of the present war according as the Balkan States are on the whole guided by the Bellicist or by the opposed principle. If, having now momentarily eliminated force as between themselves, they reintroduce it; if the strongest, presumably Bulgaria,124 adopts Lord Roberts’s “excellent policy” of striking because she has the preponderant force, enters upon a career of conquest of other members of the Balkan League and of the populations of the conquered territories and uses them for exploitation by military force—why then there will be no settlement and this war will have accomplished nothing save futile waste and slaughter. For they will have taken under a new flag, the pathway of the Turk to savagery, degeneration, death.
If on the other hand they are guided more by the Pacifist principle, if they believe that cooperation among States is better than conflict, if they believe that the common interest of all in good Government is greater than the special interest of anyone in conquest, that the understanding of human relationships, the capacity for the organization of society are the means by which men progress and not the imposition of force by one man or group upon another, why, they will have taken the pathway to better civilization. But then they will have disregarded Lord Roberts’s advice.
This distinction between the two systems, far from being a matter of abstract theory of metaphysics or logic-chopping, is just the difference which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from the Turk, which distinguishes America from Turkey. The Turk has as much physical vigor as the American, is as virile, manly, and military. The Turk has the same raw materials of Nature, soil, and water. There is no difference in the
