Peace Theories and the Balkan War | Page 3

an end, we who do not
believe in force and conquest rejoice in their action, and believe it will
achieve immense benefits. But if instead of using their victory to
eliminate force, they in their turn pin their faith to it, continue to use it
the one against the other, exploiting by its means the populations they
rule, and become not the organisers of social co-operation among the
Balkan populations, but merely, like the Turks, their conquerors and
"owners," then they in their turn will share the fate of the Turk.
(6) The fundamental causes of this war are economic in the narrower,
as well as in the larger sense of the term; in the first because conquest
was the Turk's only trade--he desired to live out of taxes wrung from a
conquered people, to exploit them as a means of livelihood, and this
conception was at the bottom of most of Turkish misgovernment. And
in the larger sense its cause is economic because in the Balkans, remote
geographically from the main drift of European economic development,
there has not grown up that interdependent social life, the innumerable
contacts which in the rest of Europe have done so much to attenuate
primitive religious and racial hatreds.
(7) A better understanding by the Turk of the real nature of civilised
government, of the economic futility of conquest of the fact that a
means of livelihood (an economic system), based upon having more
force than someone else and using it ruthlessly against him, is an
impossible form of human relationship bound to break down, would
have kept the peace.

(8) If European statecraft had not been animated by false conceptions,
largely economic in origin, based upon a belief in the necessary rivalry
of states, the advantages of preponderant force and conquest, the
Western nations could have composed their quarrels and ended the
abominations of the Balkan peninsula long ago--even in the opinion of
the Times. And it is our own false statecraft--that of Great
Britain--which has a large part of the responsibility for this failure of
European civilisation. It has caused us to sustain the Turk in Europe, to
fight a great and popular war with that aim, and led us into treaties
which had they been kept, would have obliged us to fight to-day on the
side of the Turk against the Balkan States.
(9) If by "theories" and "logic" is meant the discussion of and interest
in principles, the ideas that govern human relationship, they are the
only things that can prevent future wars, just as they were the only
things that brought religious wars to an end--a preponderant power
"imposing" peace playing no role therein. Just as it was false religious
theories which made the religious wars, so it is false political theories
which make the political wars.
(10) War is only inevitable in the sense that other forms of error and
passion--religious persecution for instance--are inevitable; they cease
with better understanding, as the attempt to impose religious belief by
force has ceased in Europe.
(11) We should not prepare for war; we should prepare to prevent war;
and though that preparation may include battleships and conscription,
those elements will quite obviously make the tension and danger
greater unless there is also a better European opinion.
These summarised replies need a little expansion.
CHAPTER II.
"PEACE" AND "WAR" IN THE BALKANS.
"Peace" in the Balkans under the Turkish System--The inadequacy of
our terms--The repulsion of the Turkish invasion--The Christian effort

to bring the reign of force and conquest to an end--The difference
between action designed to settle relationship on force and counter
action designed to prevent such settlement--The force of the policeman
and the force of the brigand--The failure of conquest as exemplified by
the Turk--Will the Balkan peoples prove Pacifist or Bellicist; adopt the
Turkish or the Christian System?
Had we thrashed out the question of war and peace as we must finally,
it would hardly be necessary to explain that the apparent paradox in
Answer No. 4 (that war is futile, and that this war will have immense
benefits) is due to the inadequacy of our language, which compels us to
use the same word for two opposed purposes, not to any real
contradiction of fact.
We called the condition of the Balkan peninsula "Peace" until the other
day, merely because the respective Ambassadors still happened to be
resident in the capitals to which they were accredited.
Let us see what "Peace" under Turkish rule really meant, and who is
the real invader in this war. Here is a very friendly and impartial
witness--Sir Charles Elliot--who paints for us the character of the Turk
as an "administrator":--
"The Turk in Europe has an overweening sense of his superiority, and
remains a nation apart, mixing little with the conquered populations,