Towards the Great Peace | Page 4

land-holding
peasantry of England--and it is here that the revolution was
accomplished--had been largely dispossessed and pauperized under
Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, while the development of the

wool-growing industry had restricted the arable land to a point where it
no longer gave employment to the mass of field labourers. The first
blast of factory production threw out of work the whole body of cottage
weavers, smiths, craftsmen; and the result was a great mass of men,
women, and children without defense, void of all rights, and given the
alternative of submission to the dominance of the exploiters, or
starvation.
Without capital the new industry could neither begin nor continue. The
exploits of the "joint-stock companies" invented and perfected in the
eighteenth century, showed how this capital could easily be obtained,
while the paralyzing and dismemberment of the Church during the
Reformation had resulted in the abrogation of the old ecclesiastical
inhibition against usury. The necessary capital was forthcoming, and
the foundations were laid for the great system of finance which was one
of the triumphant achievements of the last century.
The question of markets was more difficult. It was clear that, through
machinery, the exploitation of labour, and the manipulations of finance,
the product would be enormously greater than the local or national
demand. Until they themselves developed their own industrial system,
the other nations of Europe were available, but as this process
proceeded other markets had to be found; the result was achieved
through advertising, i.e., the stimulating in the minds of the general
public of a covetousness for something they had not known of and did
not need, and the exploiting of barbarous or undeveloped races in Asia,
Africa, Oceanica. This last task was easily achieved through "peaceful
penetration" and the preëmpting of "spheres of influence." In the end
(i.e., A.D. 1914), the whole world had so been divided, the stimulated
markets showed signs of repletion, and since exaggerated profits meant
increasing capital demanding investment, and the improvement in
"labour-saving" devices continued unchecked, the contest for others'
markets became acute, and world-politic was concentrated on the vital
problem of markets, lines of communication, and tariffs.
As for the finding or development of competent organizers and
directors, the history of the world since the end of medievalism had
curiously provided for this after a fashion that seemed almost
miraculous. The type required was different from anything that had
been developed before. Whenever the qualitative standard had been

operative, it was necessary that the leaders in any form of creative
action should be men of highly developed intellect, fine sensibility,
wide and penetrating vision, nobility of instinct, passion for
righteousness, and a consciousness of the eternal force of charity,
honour, and service. During the imperial or decadent stages, courage,
dynamic force, the passion for adventure, unscrupulousness in the
matter of method, took the place of the qualities that marked the earlier
periods. In the first instance the result was the great law-givers,
philosophers, prophets, religious leaders, and artists of every sort; in
the second, the great conquerors. Something quite different was now
demanded--men who possessed some of the qualities needed for the
development of imperialism, but who were unhampered by the
restrictive influences of those who had sought perfection. To organize
and administer the new industrial-financial-commercial régime, the
leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick-skinned,
unscrupulous, hard-headed, and avaricious; yet daring, dominating, and
gifted with keen prevision and vivid imagination. These qualities had
not been bred under any of the Mediterranean civilizations, or that of
Central Europe in the Middle Ages, which had inherited so much
therefrom. The pursuit of perfection always implies a definite
aristocracy, which is as much a goal of effort as a noble philosophy, an
august civil polity or a great art. This aristocracy was an accepted and
indispensable part of society, and it was always more or less the same
in principle, and always the centre and source of leadership, without
which society cannot endure. It is true that at the hands of Christianity
it acquired a new quality, that of service as contingent on privilege--one
might almost say of privilege as contingent on service--and the ideals
of honour, chivalry, compassion were established as its object and
method of operation even though these were not always achieved, but
the result was not a new creation; it was an institution as old as society,
regenerated and transformed and playing a greater and a nobler part
than ever before.
Between the years 1455 and 1795 this old aristocracy was largely
exterminated. The Wars of the Roses, the massacres of the Reformation,
and the Civil Wars in England; the Thirty Years' War in Germany; the
Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, and the Revolution in
France had decimated the families old in honour, preserving the

tradition of culture,