Peace Theories and the Balkan War | Page 8

you that he could not sit at
table with a heretic because the latter carried with him a distinctive and
overpoweringly repulsive odour. If you would measure the distance
Europe has travelled, think what this means: all the nations of
Christendom united in a war lasting 200 years for the capture of the

Holy Sepulchre; and yet, when in our day the representatives, seated
round a table, could have had it for the asking, they did not deem it
worth the asking, so little of the ancient passion was there left. The
very nature of man seemed to be transformed. For, wonderful though it
be that orthodox should cease killing heretic, infinitely more wonderful
still is it that he should cease wanting to kill him.
And just as most of us are certain that the underlying causes of this
conflict are "inevitable" and "inherent in unchanging human nature," so
are we certain that so unhuman a thing as economics can have no
bearing on it.
Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating and
heretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it is
because the drift of those forces has in such large part left the Balkans,
where until yesterday the people lived the life not much different from
that which they lived in the time of Abraham, to one side that war is
now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kind form a
large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a better
understanding mainly of certain economic facts of their international
relationship on the part of the great nations of Europe is essential
before much progress towards solution can be made.
But then, by "economics," of course, I mean not a merchant's profit or a
moneylender's interest, but the method by which men earn their bread,
which must also mean the kind of life they lead.
We generally think of the primitive life of man--that of the herdsman or
the tent liver--as something idyllic. The picture is as far as possible
from the truth. Those into whose lives economics do not enter, or enter
very little--that is to say, those who, like the Congo cannibal, or the
Red Indian, or the Bedouin, do not cultivate, or divide their labour, or
trade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitive
passions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who have
no economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate.
But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men must
divide their labour, which means that they must put some sort of
reliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and the

attitude towards it changes. And as this life becomes more complex, as
the daily needs and desires push men to trade and barter, that means
building up a social organisation, rules and codes, and courts to enforce
them; as the interdependence widens and deepens it necessarily means
disregarding certain hostilities. If the neighbouring tribe wants to trade
with you they must not kill you; if you want the services of the heretic
you must not kill him, and you must keep your obligation towards him,
and mutual good faith is death to long-sustained hatreds.
You cannot separate the moral from the social and economic
development of a people, and the great service of a complex social and
industrial organisation, which is built up by the desire of men for better
material conditions, is not that it "pays" but that it makes a more
interdependent human society, and that it leads men to recognise what
is the best relationship between them. And the fact of recognising that
some act of aggression is causing stocks to fall is not important because
it may save Oppenheim's or Solomon's money but because it is a
demonstration that we are dependent upon some community on the
other side of the world, that their damage is our damage, and that we
have an interest in preventing it. It teaches us, as only some such
simple and mechanical means can teach, the lesson of human
fellowship.
And it is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some
measure, within its respective political frontiers, learnt that lesson.
Each has learnt, within the confines of the nation at least, that wealth is
made by work, not robbery; that, indeed, general robbery is fatal to
prosperity; that government consists not merely in having the power of
the sword but in organising society--in "knowing how"; which means
the development of ideas; in maintaining courts; in making it possible
to run railways, post offices, and all the contrivances of a complex
society.
Now rulers did not create these things; it was