The War and Democracy | Page 7

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 the region of politics, and of purification and conversion in the region of the spirit. "For the finer spirits of Europe," says the great French writer, Romain Rolland, who is none the less a patriot because he is also a lover of Germany, "there are two dwelling-places: our earthly fatherland, and that other, the City of God. Of the one we are the guests, of the other the builders. To the one let us give our lives and our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor fatherland, nor aught that we love has power over the spirit which