ABSTRACT
This war is a war for principle, and those who are in doubt about its justice or its necessity are chiefly those who are unable to discern the principle which underlies it, and in consequence naturally regard it as a dogfight between nations, the outcome of no higher impulses than envy or ambition, or ‘because something angers them in each other’s smell’. The principle which is at stake is [ … ] whether Europe is to develop along the lines of the free commonwealth or under the lowering domination of an overweening militarist State. [ … ] A Commonwealth is a society of human beings living in one territory
united by a common obedience to laws the purpose of which is the enlargement of liberty. It is not an abstract personality, like the Prussian State, claiming unquestioning obedience from its citizens. Nor is it a voluntary association of people temporarily united by bonds of interest or contract. It is a community the members of which are individually dedicated to promote one another’s liberty and welfare, in obedience to the principles of justice and truth which they embody in their laws. It is, indeed, a misnomer to speak of the commonwealth at all. It is nearer
the truth to speak of the people or the nations of the commonwealth, for it is the people who are the commonwealth, and what unites them is not loyalty to
a government, but loyalty to one another and to the principles which inspire their constitution and their laws. The constitution of the commonwealth is based upon love for and trust in the individual; for the excellence of the community is taken to consist in the prosperity, happiness and good conduct of its members, and in nothing else. Accordingly the qualities which it seeks to develop in the citizen are not docility or obedience, but character – that is self-reliance, self-respect, a high sense of duty towards others, grasp of and fidelity to principle and right. Its institutions do this in two ways: first, by ensuring that liberty and opportunity without which the individual cannot freely follow truth and justice, and do the best work for others; and, secondly, by throwing upon all those citizens who are sufficiently educated and sufficiently civilized to be able to subordinate their own interests and desires to the general welfare the responsibility for the laws by which they are governed. Liberty, indeed, is the life blood of the commonwealth, because only in freedom can a man serve his neighbour as he should. But liberty is inseparably yoked with responsibility. Hence democracy, in the sense that public policy and the law which governs social relations should be determined by the free votes of all qualified citizens, who thereby become solely responsible for the conditions under which they live, is an invariable characteristic of the true commonwealth. [ … ] In their external relations the people of a commonwealth are necessarily
peaceful and humane. Because their institutions and their laws are primarily concerned with the welfare and the liberty of the individual, and with securing the best and fullest conditions of life for all, they set up no barrier between themselves and their fellow-men. While they have a prior and special obligation to their own members, and are primarily concerned with the development of their own institutions and civilisation, they recognise that, in essence, mankind is one community and that all the lesser communities into which it is at present subdivided, ought to co-operate in making the world a better place for all to live in. While, however, they have no desire to interfere with others, to impose upon them their own customs or ideas, or to rule over them, they cannot be totally indifferent to conditions outside. They cannot divest themselves altogether, in the spirit of Cain, of all responsibility for the welfare of the rest of mankind. Their external policy, therefore, tends to fall into two natural halves. First, to co-operate with other civilised peoples in defining the law which should govern the relations of States towards one another and prescribe their mutual rights and duties. Second, to uphold the treaties and declarations which secure the reign of law in the international sphere against those backward or selfish peoples who would upset them in their own interest. And this may mean the assumption, as trustees for civilisation, of the task of education and government among those races who have proved unable to resist for themselves the corrupting influences of civilisation, in order to restore those conditions of liberty and opportunity for the individual in which the people can learn to govern themselves. Thus the attitude of the people of a commonwealth to external affairs is a responsible solicitude that
others should enjoy the same benefits of freedom and the rule of law as they themselves enjoy, and a resolute determination to protect and, if possible, improve the safeguards for liberty and justice which exist throughout the world. [ … ] As against these ideals, Prussia has set up another set of values. The root
principle of Prussianism is worship of the ‘State-idea’. The State is not the citizens. It is something above and beyond them. It is not even a paternal institution watching over the welfare of its people. It is rather the creator of the nation, for it is only in being organised into his proper niche in the vast mechanism of the State that the individual acquires his highest character and development. The State is thus an abstract personality possessed of ‘divine right’, whose authority it is impious to question. And the primary function of the citizen is to serve the State to which he belongs, and to obey its commands, with absolute and unquestioning obedience, whatever they may be. [ … ] In its external policy the Prussian State is necessarily militarist and ruthless.
The State is an end in itself. It is utterly self-centred. It is above morality. Its interests are supreme, and to them not only must its own subjects sacrifice themselves, but its neighbours must be sacrificed also. This conception sets up a barrier between the members of one State and another. Their common humanity is hidden in the fact that they are seeking to promote the ends of institutions which, by their nature, are rivals. The world, therefore, instead of being conceived as a single family of human beings, all of the same blood and nature, but grouped into communities, united in friendly co-operation under the reign of law, is regarded as a number of States, whose interests are always competitive, and at times inevitably in violent conflict. [ … ] It is no use to expect too much at the end of this war. But there is the whole
difference in the world between aiming at the creation of an international system based upon the principle of law – law which is recognised to limit the sovereign independence of all States – and acquiescing in a return to an international system which is based upon the balance of forces. The one leads on to an ever closer association between the great nations, and the ever increasing application of justice to human affairs. The other leads back inexorably to Armageddon. [ … ] The creation, therefore, of a treaty system guaranteed by all the chief civi-
lised Powers, and establishing that ‘international system which will secure the principle of equal rights for all civilised States’ of which Mr. Asquith spoke a few weeks ago, is the second and the greater half of the settlement at which we must aim at the end of the war. It is an end in itself. It is also the best security against any new attempt by Germany, or any other Power, to upset the settlement or to attack the liberties of their neighbours. Prussian militarism in the full sense of the word can only be destroyed by the people themselves. It rests upon the worship of the State and of racial ascendancy, and the docility and failure of character, which makes the vast majority of Germans so ‘organisable’, so invariably compliant with the commands of authority
whatever they may be. These characteristics cannot be changed by the sword. They must follow a change of mind and of heart, and the birth of moral courage in the people, which will hearten them to overthrow the absolutism of their rulers and take charge of the conduct of their own affairs. But the foundations on which they rest will be destroyed when all hope of achieving their purpose has disappeared. With the promises of Kultur and of the ruling caste wholly unfulfilled, with only some millions of killed and maimed, a mountainous debt, and the execration of the civilised world, to show for their attempt at world dominion, with no chance of repeating the attempt, because the peoples they have repressed and used are free, yet with their own national liberty not only untouched by the victors but guaranteed under international law, it is inevitable that the German people should have their eyes opened to the iniquity of the doctrines by which they have been betrayed, and begin to build up a democratic commonwealth for themselves. [ … ]
