Peace Theories and the Balkan War

and being killed" as the best method of settling differences-Its application to Civil Conflicts-As in Spanish-America-The

iter remarked, on it be

iving back the Turks: "T

e of England and Prus

rk

as quite unfit to be made into warriors; whom they regarded much as some Europeans regard the Jews. It is the Christian populations of the Balkans who were the traders and workers-those brought most under economic influences; it was the Turks who escaped those influences. A few years since, I wrote: "If the conqueror profits much by his conquest, as the Romans in one sense did, it is the conqueror who is threatened by the enervatin

se, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination of India and half of the New World? That is surely a superficial reading of history. It was, rather, that the methods and processes of Spain, Portugal, and France were military, while those of the Anglo-Saxon world were commercial and peaceful. Is it not a commonplace that i

an, the Frank, the Saxon, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Bourbon, the Napoleonic? In all and every one of them we may see the same process, which is this:

nd being killed" as the best way to determine the settlement of differences, and a society which drifts from these ideals as on the high road to

Cecil Che

l's query is: "Shoul

usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr. Angell anticipates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers to fight is very probable. That such a nation would not fight, or, if it did, would be exceedingly badly beaten, is certain. But that only serves to raise the further question of whether it is to the ultimate advantage of a nation to repose upon usury; and whether the breaking of

hances of commercial profit from the war. It is that if Mr. Angell had succeeded to the fullest extent in convincing them that there was not a quarter per cent. to b

een done. The power of Parliament was pitted in battle against the power of the Crown, and won. As a result, for good or evil, Parliament really is stronger than the Crown to-day. The power of the mass of the people to control Parliament has been

only an astonishing expansion, industrial as well as political of Germany, but has (most disastrously, as I think) infected Europe with German ideas, especially with the idea that you make a nation strong by making its people behave like cattle. God send that

Hague Tribunal had then been in existence, armed with coercive powers. The dispute between Austria and Sardinia must have been referred to that tribunal. That tribunal must have been guided by existing treaties. The Treaty of Vienna was perhaps the most authoritative ever entered into by European Powers. By that treaty, Venice and Lomba

ed as f

e question which I have raised is

and there is nothing in the article which he criticises, nor in any other statement

go to war, and the peoples pay, and the whole question is whether they should go on making war and payin

mily affection, fuller and completer lives generally-is not secured by fighting one another, but by co-operation and labour, by a better organisation of society, by improved human relationship, which, of course, can only come of bett

exact and precise terms that I have employed to deal with it-the term's of the market-place. But to imply that the conditions that there obtain are the affair merely of bankers and financiers, to imply that these things do not touch the lives of the mass, is simply to talk a

are concerned (so large an element of usury), almost solely the outcome of war. And if the peoples go on piling up debt, as they must if they are to go on piling up armaments (as Mr. Chesterton wants them to), giving the best of their attention and emotion to sheer physical conflict, instead of

lled, instead of by the cowardly, pacifist methods current in Europe. The result gives us the really military civilisations of Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. And, although the English system may have many defects-I think it has-those defects exist in a still greater degree where force "settles" the matters in dispute, where the bullet replaces the ballot, and where bayonets are resorted to instead of brains. For Devonshire is better than Nicaragua. Really it is. And it would get us out of none of our troubles for one group to impose its views simply by preponderant physical force, for Mr. Asquith, for instance, in the true Castro or Zuyala manner, to announce that henceforth all critics of the Insurance Act are to be shot, and that the present Cabinet will hold offi

better word, we call civilisation. Not only was it the basis of all such institutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such communities as the Vikings, th

ay well be. But as we grow up (which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is not the best way to establish the ownership of cargoes, any more than the

t her. To withhold such force is the basis of the relationship of these five nations; and, given a corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis of the relationship of fifteen-about all the nations of the world who could possibly fight. The difficulties Mr. Chesterton imagines-an international tribunal deciding in favour of Austria concerning the recession of Venice and Lombardy, and summoning the forces of United Europe to coerce Italy into submission-are, of course, based on the assumption that a United Europe, having arrived at such understanding as to be able to sink its differences, would be the same kind of Europe that it is now, or was a generation ago.

he Turk, who has adopted that principle during four hundred years, not the Christians, who want to bring that method to an end and adopt another. And I

fight." "The history of the Turks," says Sir Charles Elliott, "is almost exclusively a catalogue of battles." He has lived (for the most gloriously uneconomic person has to live, to follow a trade of some sort, even if it be that

ust fail; that to base your prosperity or means of livelihood, your economic system, in short, upon having more force than someone else, and exercising it against him, is

ful one-to bring this reign of force and conquest to an end, and t

t this means the approval of war. It does not; it merely means the choice of the less evil of two forms of war. War has be

n nations is determined to impose its own especial point of view, to refuse all settlement by co-operation and understanding, where it can resort to force-why, in that case, the strongest (presumably Bulgaria) will start conquering the rest, start imposing government by force, and will listen to no discussion or argument; will simply, in short, take the place of the Turk in the matter, and the old weary contest will begin afresh, and we shall have the Turkish system under a new name, until that in its turn is destroyed, and the whole process begun again da capo. And if Mr

whose Editor I am indebted for