Thus far we have considered the motives of war mainly from the
psychological point of view, discovering its main movement and
development in the world to be a product of the psychic forces in the
social order. This method, however, did not exclude the objective
facts, and did not ignore the practical motives. We found that war is
a manifestation of many tendencies, and in fact is related to all the
deep movements in the life of society and of the individual. War comes
out of the whole of life in a way to preclude the interpretation of it
in terms of any single principle, or at least to prevent our finding a
single cause of war. We ought to try to see now how such a
psychological view of war stands in relation to certain more objective
views of it, which in a very general way may be said to be centered in
two closely related views. One is that war is almost exclusively an
economic phenomenon, and the other that war is the work of
individuals. One is the economic interpretation of history, and the
other is the great man view of history.
We still see a lingering theory that war is a result of the ancient
migratory or expansion impulse--that over-population and the pressure
of various economic conditions are the source of the impulses that
lead to war. We have seen reasons for believing, however, that war,
even in the beginning, has not been a wholly practical matter. Hunger,
pressure of population, migratory movements because of economic
conditions, will not explain the origin and the persistence of wars.
Wars are not simple as these views would imply, at any stage. That at
the present time economic advantage, whether or not it be the motive
of war, is in general not gained seems to be very clearly indicated.
The taking of colonies and other lands may be a detriment rather than
a gain to the conquering nation. The industry and the finance, of all
concerned in war, are likely to suffer disaster. Peace is the great
producer of wealth. War is a terrible destroyer of it.
Ross says that
as industry progresses, wars become continually more expensive and
less profitable, that the drain is not upon man power so much as upon
economic power; nations bleed the treasure of one another until some
one of them is exhausted and must yield.
The theory that war is caused by the pressure of population,
especially as applied to the recent war, now appears to have been very
naïve. It was maintained that Germany needed more room for her growing
population, that Germany must have more land at home and more
colonies. Claes (46), among several writers, shows that this is not
true. Germany had no pressing need of more land, except for political
purposes, or such land as provided the raw materials for her military
industries. Bourdon (67) maintains that it is not true that Germany's
population was becoming excessive. Le Bon (42) says that this theory
of over-population is a myth. Still others have shown that in a
country that is rapidly becoming industrial, as was Germany, where
population is becoming massed in the great cities, emigration ceases;
and that actually, in Germany's case, labor was imported every year,
and that there are great tracts of arable land in Germany still but
sparsely populated. Nicolai (79) also attacks the theory that war is
sought for economic gain and says that an economic war among the
European states is an absurdity.
The need of colonies is often put forward as a real and also a
legitimate motive for war. Colonies must be provided, they say, for
the overflow of population from the homeland; colonies are the
foundation of the trade of nations--trade follows the flag. They think
of colonies as the offspring of nations, and nations without colonies
seem sterile and destined to extinction. We know that Germany's desire
for colonies is one of the causes of the European crisis, and that the
colonial question has been a fertile cause of trouble in Europe for
many years. And yet we have evidence that in the present economic
stage of the world, colonies do not perform to any great extent either
of the functions that are claimed for them. Trade does not in general
follow the flag; industrial nations do not need colonies either to
provide for over-population or for commercial reasons.
The acquisition
of colonies does not as such benefit the great industrial and
financial interests. Why, then, do nations so ardently desire
colonies; and why, without colonies, do they feel themselves inferior
and at a disadvantage? Why, in a stage of industry, in which it is
presumably more to their advantage to conduct aggressive campaigns in
countries already densely populated, are nations so willing even to
fight to obtain colonies? Powers (75) says that the desire for
colonies comes from the idealistic tendencies of nations. This appears
to be true. Correspondingly we find that colonies are of more interest
to general staffs and admiralties than to captains of industry.
Colonies are wanted for military reasons, more than for trade reasons.
Colonies are desired as bases of operation in the game of empire
building by conquest. There is still another reason. The race for
colonies perpetuates an ideal which has grown out of an earlier stage
of the life of nations. Colonies were once actually the means of the
greatness of nations. The longing for colonial possessions, for the
extension of commerce, the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples
in regard to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their
commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and conditions, hark
back to an old romance of the sea. The waterways of the world, the
islands and new continents have a traditional appeal, which comes down
to us from the days when the small countries of Europe, one after
another--Portugal, Holland, Spain, England--became great in wealth,
and grew to be world powers, by their commerce and their colonial
possessions. In those days the expansion of nations was not at all due
to economic pressure at home. The landowners, the rules, the
privileged class in general were interested in colonies, because in
that direction stretched the path to fabulous wealth, and because over
the seas were the lands of adventure. The seeking of colonies was both
the business and the pleasure of the nations. To-day the gaining of
colonies may be only a loss to nations economically, but they satisfy
the craving for visible empire, and also a longing that is deep and
intense because tradition and romance are deeply embedded in it.
Probably no one now believes that war among modern nations is due to a
pure predatory instinct or to a migratory instinct which is supposed
to have led primitive hordes to seek new habitats and to prey upon
other peoples. Hunger does not now drive people in companies from
their homes and pour them into other lands, although it is true that
any threat which excites the old hunger-fear tends to arouse the war
spirit and to stir the migratory impulse; and a deep sensitiveness to
climatic conditions and a claustrophobia of peoples have remained long
after the need of land urged as the main cause of war, and we hear war
justified on the ground that crowded peoples require more land. This
_land hunger_ is an old motive and it still remains deep in the
consciousness of peoples long after its economic significance has
ceased. Just as we say the threat of hunger is often imagined, and the
fear of hunger and a deep and persistent fear of peoples and the sense
of danger of being engulfed and destroyed by other peoples linger in
consciousness, so the consciousness of the old struggle for land
remains as one of the most powerful of traditions, and any threat,
near or remote, to a nation's land arouses all the forces of the war
spirit, and the thought of aggression as a means of conquest of land
is always alluring.
Land was once the main possession and the main need. To-day it is the
chief symbol of the power of a nation. The possession of it is desired
when it gives nothing in return, certainly when there are no valid
economic reasons for taking it. This land hunger becomes the excuse of
nations for their sins of aggression. A differentiated society, so
organized that only the few, if any at all, can by any possibility
profit by the taking of lands still hungers for this primitive
possession. To a great extent land as a national possession has an
ideal rather than a practical value. It was one of the original
sources of prestige and distinction, having become the main material
interest of man as soon as he came to have fixed abode.
The whole
historic period of the world has been a story of a struggle for land.
It is the memory of this land struggle, which is one of the deep
motives of war, which often determines the strategy of war, and the
policies of nations.
Precisely how the system of great land ownership originated is
obscure. Sumner (70) says that the belief that nobles have always held
lands, and are noble by reason of this possession, is false. Nobles
have in one way and another enriched themselves and bought land; or
rather having acquired land they have succeeded in acquiring titles of
nobility, and establishing their lines. In all nations which have
retained any traces of the feudalistic form, and to some extent
everywhere, land continues to be the basis of wealth, and also of
power, and the land-owning classes are still mainly the ruling
classes. This land-owning class is still dominated by the old
traditions of the landed aristocracy. It is the fighting class, and
supplies great numbers of officers for the armies. It upholds the idea
of national honor in its ancient forms as related to private honor;
it provides the great number of diplomatic and decorative officers.
Japan, Russia, Germany and to some extent England, at least up to the
time of the war, have retained feudalistic institutions, and the land
interest still remains as a motive of war. In all these nations,
certainly in those which have remained feudalistic in fact, it is the
aristocratic and owning class that usually represents the war
interest. It both rules and owns. It sends out the peasant and the
worker to extend the state. It is the protected class.
Laws and
constitutions favor it. Taxes fall lightly upon it.
Originally this
was the class that received all the benefits of war. To-day it suffers
less from war than do other classes. Even when it does not gain by war
in a material way, it is likely to gain in power (100).
We have seen this system of class rule at work in very recent times,
and it is a question whether the old ideal of land possession did not
work to the ruin of Germany economically, and indirectly antagonize
the industrial interests of the nation. German politics had been
trying to serve two masters, who were not entirely in agreement.
Germany was still a country of landed proprietors, and these
proprietors always have thrown their weight to the side of war. They
were by no means dominated by a motive of pure greed, and they did not
seek war entirely for their own advantage, but because, we might say,
they are ruled through and through by motives that can be satisfied
only in a militaristic state of society. Their gain from a successful
war is mainly a gain in prestige and distinction. An unsuccessful war,
as we have seen, threatens their extinction as a class.
All democratic
movements tend toward land division, or is indeed in part precisely
this process. Aristocracy without land cannot maintain itself.
The economic theory of war comes to its own in the view that industry
now controls the world, that industry is the power behind politics,
and that industrial needs are the real energies that make wars. We
live in an industrial age, they say, and industry rules.
Plainly to
find the whole truth about this relation of industry to war is no
simple matter. There are at least three more or less separate
questions involved in it. We need to know whether an industrial state
of society, or the industrial stage of economic development, is
especially prone to cause wars, as distinguished from more general
political and economic interests. We need to know whether wars, in an
industrial stage, do really serve either the interests of industry or
countries as a whole. Finally, there is the question whether those who
control industry and finance do actually create wars.
In the industrial and financial stages of economic development new
conditions arise which certainly must be taken into account in any
theory of war. There are deep changes in national life.
The moods of
the city become a new force or a new factor in national life.
Socialistic ideas and new aspects of nationalism and patriotism
appear. There is a spirit of unrest; both pessimistic and optimistic
tendencies in society are increased; the motive of power takes new
forms, and there is a deep stirring of fundamental feelings and
impulses. The crowd instincts, the old hunger motives, are felt
beneath the surface of life. This is the effect of industrialism upon
the psychic forces of peoples in their collective aspects. Nations
also become as wholes more specialized in the industrial life; they
are dependent upon one another as never before. All the ancient
motives of commerce are stimulated, and the minds of nations revert to
the old fears and the old romance connected with the thought of the
seas. The growing interdependence of nations produces a peculiar and
paradoxical condition. Competition in regard to markets arises, with
all the complications and strains that we have seen in recent years.
There are new motives of aggression, but at the same time the need and
motives for peace are increased. Industries in general thrive best in
an era of assured peace. They live upon the wealth and prosperity
they themselves create. Intrigue, not force, is their proper weapon.
Le Bon (42) says, that the desire to create markets was not the cause
of the great war, because expansion went on very well in the time of
peace. Germany had no aggressive designs except commercial designs we
are told. Mach (95) tells us Germany's whole future, the success of
her carefully laid plans for industrial development and supremacy,
depended upon continued peace.
That such views of the relation of industry to war are in the main
correct can hardly be doubted. Industrial relations create strains
among nations, but when as a result of these strains war occurs it
must be regarded as a disaster from the point of view of the
industrial interests. Industry we say thrives upon the wealth that it
creates. A war which destroys half the wealth of the world must be a
calamity for all great industries except at the most a very few having
peculiar relations to the activities of war.
But there is another aspect of the relations of industry to war.
Industrialism as a great institution and movement of modern life
becomes in itself a political power. Howe (100) says that with the end
of Bismarck's wars personal wars and nationalistic wars came to an
end. The old aristocracy of the land merged with the new aristocracy
of wealth and this wealth has become the great political power in the
world. But this is only a half truth. Industry has become a factor in
the foreign relations of nations, and has become a power in politics,
but the motives and powers we call political are exceedingly complex,
and the interests of business, industry and finance are by no means
the whole of or coincident with political interests.
There are of
course certain industries and financial interests which may even
instigate wars, and some writers give them a high place among the
causes of war. Especially the makers of munitions and armaments are
credited with a baneful influence in the world. With their
international understandings, their influence in legislative bodies,
their control of newspapers, they are open to the charge of
manipulating public sentiment, and bringing influence to bear upon
governments. They are accused of equipping small countries and setting
them against one another, of deliberately encouraging the race for
military and naval supremacy. No one can doubt that their
opportunities for trouble-making are many and enticing, but to think
of these influences as anything more than the incidental and secondary
causes of war seems to be a curious way of understanding history
(100).
The inside history of the great financiering projects would no doubt
give us some of the main clews to the present diplomatic relations of
nations to one another. If we take into account the various intrigues
in connection with the building of the Bagdad route, the financing of
the Balkan States in their wars, the bargaining of the Powers in
Turkey for financial concessions, the great business interests
involved in the Russo-Japanese war, the loans to China and all the
rest of the financial history of a few decades we should have in hand
materials that no one could deny the importance of for an
understanding of current history. Diplomacy has had added to its
already complex duties the art of securing financial advantages. In
general the art of this diplomacy is to secure these advantages
without war, but there can be no doubt that financial relations have
multiplied the points of contact and strain among peoples, and that
these financial relations have become the main occasional causes of
wars. Howe (100) thinks that surplus capital is to blame for a great
many of the great disasters of modern times--that it destroyed
Egyptian independence, led France into Morocco, Germany into Turkey,
and into the farther East, embroiled the Balkan States; and that the
great war has been a conflict over conflicting interests of Russia,
England and Germany in Turkey. Under the guise of expansion of trade
this invisible wealth has been exploiting the most vital interests of
foreign countries. Veblen would go so far as to say that wars are
government-made, that patriotism is exploited by governments in
advance of pre-arranged hostilities to produce the spirit of war (97).
If we hold that these economic causes are now the most important
causes of wars, it is easy to accept the conclusion that the most
fundamental, and even perhaps the sole cause of war is the evil
principle of ownership, as is actually maintained by many economists.
If men in cliques, and men as individuals did not own privately great
parts of the wealth of the world, these conflicts in which wealth and
its distribution are the most vital interests would not take place.
Many socialists, we know, hold these views, asserting that wars are
due solely to industrial competition among nations, and to the fact
that industrialism is based upon the wholly wrong principle of private
ownership. Hullquist, a socialist, says that wars are likely to become
more frequent and more violent as the capitalist system of production
approaches its climax. The working classes, the socialists say, who
have nothing permanent, are the natural enemies of war; the
capitalists, who have much and want more, are constantly placing peace
in jeopardy. The protective system of tariff also receives much abuse
from these writers. Novicow (71) places the tariff system high among
the causes of war. The belief that it is good to sell and bad to buy,
he says, is the great trouble maker in the world. This was also the
principle of Cobden the great English free-trader of the middle of the
last century. The Manchester school of which he was the leader would
do away with wars by making the world economically a unit.
Veblen (97) charges the price system with being a fundamental cause of
war, and says that it must now come up for radical examination and
perhaps modification. The theory of the rights of property and
contract which have been taken as axiomatic premises by economic
science may itself fail, or at least be thrown open to question.
Either the price system will go, or there will be wars between nations
in the future as there have been in the past, because of the need of
protection of ownership rights, and because of the nationalism these
rights create. To some extent these rights of property _have_ been
curtailed, Veblen remarks; the old feudalistic rights have in large
part been annulled, and the world is at least owned by more people
than was once the case. That these changes and readjustments of
property rights will be carried still further he thinks there can be
no doubt.
Stevens draws similar conclusions about the evil effects of property
rights. The great war and all wars, he asserts, are based upon
existing social conditions--upon the organization of the family, the
school, the state, the church, upon the institution of property, with
its corollaries of foreign markets and other industrial relations.
Protection of trade, which works in the interest of the owner classes,
indirect taxes which fall upon the consumer, the labor system by
which, at the present time, the laborer receives but a small share of
the profits, but must become when necessary the defender of the
interests in which he does not share--all these things we hear being
charged vigorously with being the causes of wars, including the recent
great conflict. This system is blamed not only for our great
international wars, but it is looked upon as the germ of wars to come,
internal wars, when international wars shall have ceased, or
temporarily have been abated. When, perhaps, the restrictions that
assume that the gain of one country is the loss of another have
satisfactorily been adjusted, the system that maintains that the
capitalist can prosper only at the expense of the laborer will come up
for final settlement (97).
All these views, from a psychological point of view, seem to be open
to the criticism that they tend to consider the world one-sidedly and
by a certain abstraction. They are dealing with a world governed only
by economic laws. It is easy to construct these ideal worlds. They are
simple and they lend themselves readily to the purposes of a political
calculus. Finding economic motives in individual life, in the social
life and in politics, and in history it is tempting both to explain
the past and plan the future in terms of the entities and principles
of economics. But after all it is only when we consider economic
motives in their relations to all the motives behind human conduct
that we are likely to see the economic motives in history in their
true light. Then we shall very much doubt whether property has been in
any real sense the cause of wars, or that the abrogation of property
rights will be the means of establishing perpetual peace. We shall see
that economic motives themselves are but aspects of deeper motives,
and involve desire for objectives that are not sought for their
material value, and also objectives that are not material at all. The
process of development of present human society, so far back as we can
see, and as far into the future as we can with any confidence predict,
seems to contain as a necessity some form and degree of human slavery.
This appears to be inherent in the fact itself of the existence of