The War and Democracy | Page 7

So far we have been concerned--as we shall be concerned throughout
this book--with the political causes underlying the war. But it would
not be right to ignore the fact that there are other deeper causes,
unconnected with the actions of governments, for which we in this
country are jointly responsible with the rest of the civilised world.
This war is not simply a conflict between governments and nations for
the attainment of certain political ends, Freedom and Nationality on the
one side and Conquest and Tyranny on the other. It is also a great
outburst of pent-up feeling, breaking like lava through the thin crust of
European civilisation. On the political side, as we have said just now,
the war reveals the fact that civilisation is still incomplete and
ill-organised. But on the moral side it reveals the fact that modern
society has broken down, that the forces and passions that divide and
embitter mankind have proved stronger, at the moment of strain, than
those which bind them together in fellowship and co-operation. "What
we are suffering from," says one of the greatest of living democrats,[1]
"is something far more widespread than the German Empire. Is it not

the case that what we are in face of is nothing less than the breakdown
in a certain idea and hope of civilisation, which was associated with the
liberal and industrial movement of the last century? There was to be an
inevitable and glorious progress of humanity of which science,
commerce, and education were to be the main instruments, and which
was to be crowned with a universal peace. Older prophets like Thomas
Carlyle expressed their contempt for the shallowness of this prevailing
ideal, and during this century we have been becoming more and more
doubtful of its value. But we are now witnessing its downfall. Science,
commerce, and education have done, and can do, much for us. But they
cannot expel the human spirit from human nature. What is that? At
bottom, love of self, self-interest, selfishness individual and corporate.
As a theory, the philosophy of selfishness has often been exposed. But,
to an extent that is difficult to exaggerate, it has been the motive,
acknowledged and relied upon without shame or apology in commerce,
in politics and in practical life. Our civilisation has been based on
selfishness, our commerce on competition and the unrestricted love of
wealth, our education on the motive of self-advancement. And science
and knowledge, made the instrument of selfishness and competition,
have armed man against man, class against class, and nation against
nation, with tenfold the power of destruction which belonged to a less
educated and highly organised age."
[Footnote 1: _The War and the Church_, by Charles Gore (Oxford,
Mowbray, 1914).]
The civilised world has been shocked during the past months at the
spectacle of the open adoption by a great Power of this philosophy of
selfishness. Men had not realised that the methods and principles
underlying so much of our commercial and industrial life could be
transferred so completely to the field of politics or so ruthlessly pressed
home by military force. But it is well for us to remember that it is not
Prussia, even in the modern world, who invented the theory of Blood
and Iron or the philosophy of Force. The Iron Law of Wages is a
generation older than Bismarck: and "Business is Business" can be no
less odious a watchword than "War is War." Treitschke and Nietzsche
may have furnished Prussian ambitions with congenial ammunition; but

Bentham with his purely selfish interpretation of human nature and
Marx with his doctrine of the class-struggle--the high priest of
Individualism and the high priest of Socialism--cannot be acquitted of a
similar charge. If the appeal has been made in a less crude and brutal
form, and if the instrument of domination has been commercial and
industrial rather than military, it is because Militarism is not the
besetting sin of the English-speaking peoples. Let us beware, therefore,
at this moment, of anything savouring of self-righteousness.
"Some of us," says Bishop Gore, "see the chief security" against this
disease which has infected our civilisation "in the progress of
Democracy--the government of the people really by the people and for
the people. I am one of those who believe this and desire to serve
towards the realising of this end. But the answer does not satisfy me. I
do not know what evils we might find arising from a world of
materialistic democracies. But I am sure we shall not banish the evil
spirits which destroy human lives and nations and civilisations by any
mere change in the methods of government. Nothing can save
civilisation except a new spirit in the nations."
The task before Europe, then, is a double one--a task of development
and construction in