The Next War: An Appeal to Common Sense/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE DRAMATIC MOMENT
Now is the appointed time to begin action, and we are the appointed people. The lesson of the last war is still fresh in mind; and unto us, by luck rather than our own foresight, has been given the dominating position in the world of the next quarter-century. The course which the United States chooses will largely be the course of the other nations.
It is the appointed time for still another reason, less obvious, no less compelling. All old, imperfect human institutions have their uses in their period; then that usefulness passes and we must rid ourselves of them. Monarchy in its absolute form served the development of humanity. The half-civilized man could not grasp conceptions so abstract as his relation and his duty toward other men in his group or clan or nation. He needed a visible, personal representation of power. So was built up loyalty; from loyalty grew the fine sentiment of patriotism; from patriotism the sense of team-work in society. Then monarchy was outworn. We sloughed it off, at first in its absolute form, then faster and faster in any form at all. Slavery may have been necessary to build up the habit of steady work among tribes and nations. Races learned the habit of steady work, and sloughed off slavery.
War on the whole was long useful to humanity—expensive, but the best way we had. I have previously quoted Wells to show how it drew races into the circle of progress. Long before there was history even in popular ballad, some genius in some tribe of the Asiatic steppes invented the wheel. His tribe went to war and won or lost—that does not matter. Before the war was over, the enemy had seen the wheel, learned its usefulness, was making wheels of his own. But for war, outlying tribes on the fringe of humanity might have skidded their heavy burdens along the ground for centuries and æons. At the end of the Stone Age, some savage discovered that tin and copper, thrown into the fire, melted, blended, produced a substance which could be hammered to a fine, sharp edge—a tool much better than any chipped stone. He used his bronze knife in war; the enemy felt its edge, admired, penetrated the secret, passed it on by war to tribes still further outlying. So we progressed from the Stone Age to the age of metals.
War, too, worked with monarchism to develop what scholars call the group-consciousness. It stirred up in men a fine, high, human emotion for the humanity outside themselves. The average man in all times and all nations up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led an extremely limited life. Of his own motion, he seldom stirred from his own domain or farm or village. War alone drew him out to teach him that there was a world beyond his horizon, that there were other men with other ideas not only among his own people but among stranger clans. War made a tremendous contribution to human experience, to collective human consciousness. That was its use, its larger reason for being.
Now, modern invention has changed all that. We no longer need a process so essentially wasteful to transmit the results of progress. When Wright proved to Europe that a man can fly through the air, the news was flashed that very night to every corner of the globe; three-quarters of the civilized world read it next morning. Within a month, such remote points as Shanghai, Cape Town and Buenos Aires had European publications with technical reports; any good mechanic who wished could go about building an aeroplane. The remote parts of the globe were by now coming fast into the circle of communication. Before the Great War, all the inaccessible places had been explored—even Thibet and the two poles. The world had no more secrets and mysteries. From end to end of Africa, the infant continent, ran a railroad; Africa was spotted with European settlements, in touch with civilization by telegraph-lines. The printing-press, the railroad, the automobile, the electric telegraph have all given their part toward the intensity of modern war; yet at the same time they have removed one of its supreme necessities for being. As for its other use—instilling into men the sense of a duty toward his country or his group—that work also is done. In fact, when one considers the conceited, excessive, Jingo patriotism of most races and nations, it becomes a question whether it is not too well done.
We cannot say at what precise moment in history monarchism and slavery proved themselves outworn, past their usefulness; became not benevolent organs but dangerous rudiments—like a vermiform appendix—in the body politic. But war, always picturesque, died its spiritual death dramatically. We may say with certainty I think that it proved itself outworn during that little moment of history between 1914–18. It was of no more use in spreading progress, of little more use in building up the sense of collective duty. And in itself it suddenly became dangerous, sordid, disturbing beyond the imagination of devils.
Two great tasks lie before humanity in the rest of the twentieth century. One is to put under control of true morals and of democracy the great power of human production which came in the nineteenth century. The other is to check, to limit and finally to eliminate the institution of war. This last is the more important. We may stagger on, and make progress even, though the industrial and financial structure remains as it is—we were doing very well, on the whole, before 1914. But if war goes on unchecked, following its present tendencies, it means the elimination of whole races—always the best races—and the downfall of civilization.