THE “PARTICULARISTIC” VIEW OF GROUP CONFLICT—WAR AS REVEALER—PREHISTORIC TRIBAL CONFLICT—ITS CONTINUATION IN NATIONAL WARS—LARGER CHARACTER OF THE MODERN PROCESS—TREND TOWARD CONTROL—TREND TOWARD DEMOCRACY AND HUMANISM—DIFFERENTIATION OF PERSONALITY FROM THE GROUP—GROUP OPPOSITION TENDS TO BECOME IMPERSONAL—NUCLEATION IN GROUPS AND PERSONS—THE PERSISTENCE OF PATRIOTISM—RELIGIOUS SYNTHESIS

The process of life is an organic whole every part of which is interdependent with every other part. And it is all a struggle of some sort—with climate and soil, between persons, nations, or other groups, or among opposing ideas and institutions. In this strenuous whole, group conflict plays a great part, but it is by no means the whole process, nor can the latter be understood from this point of view alone.

There is a wide-spread doctrine, a sort of simplified and misunderstood Darwinism, which unduly exalts conflict and makes the “struggle for existence” between groups almost the sole principle of human life. In the form of what may be called state-conflict particularism this idea has had a considerable influence on recent history, through influencing, largely, the policy of the German Empire, and leading up to the Great War.

The evolution or progress of nations, according to this teaching, takes place through a struggle for existence among the contending states, in which the strongest and best survive, and impose their institutions on others. This makes for the general good of mankind, because it is the only way by which better forms of life can supplant the inferior. Might is based on right and is the proof of it, since there is no kind of virtue that does not count in the supreme test of war.

Thus the theory singles out the conflict of states from the rest of the process, saying: “Here is the one thing needful; let us put our whole energy into this; nothing else really counts.” Everything is bent toward national power in the form of armaments and of militant industry and trade—institutions, literature, art, research, education, family life, the every-day thought and sentiment of the people, all are enlisted and drilled.

It follows, moreover, that all morality is secondary to that success of the state which is the supreme good. Where this is concerned scruples are but weakness, and any method is right that gets results. Weak nations cumber the earth and ought to succumb to strong ones. Their ruin is painful, but salutary, even to themselves in the long run, for the conquerors will make amends by incorporating them into their own better system.

Under this creed a formidable organism is built up which may win in war and peace, and thrive for generations, but is doomed to fail sooner or later because it is adapted to only a part of life, and not to the whole process. It neglects the dependence of nations upon one another, and upon civilization as a whole. Its trend to force and to national egoism presently alienates other states and prepares a hostile combination. The outraged principle of moral unity reacts by imposing moral isolation, with the external antagonism and inward degeneration which that involves. The community of nations being aroused to assert itself against the disloyal member, the theory proves misleading and action upon it disastrous.

And yet we must use special points of view, and that of group conflict has an advantage in the way it illumines the general situation. War is not the whole of the drama, but, in the past at least, it has been the crisis, the test that brought everything into action and showed what the previous development had been. Growth goes on for generations and peaceful struggles of many sorts take place—industrial rivalry, competition of classes and parties, conflict of ideas and sentiments—all having important results, which, however, remain for the most part obscure. But let a war break out between rival groups and they summon every element of power to the test, so that we soon learn where, as regards the development of total force, we have arrived. It is a partial view, but revealing, and even the moral elements are more fully displayed than at other times.

The test of war is one that from the dawn of human life down to the present hour every kind of society, from time to time, has had to meet. For untold millenniums of prehistoric development the conflict of tribal groups was a recurring condition for all types of men and forms of organization, and those which were unsuited to it tended to be destroyed or discredited. In every part of the inhabited world archæologists find evidence that forgotten peoples have fought the ground over, and succeeded one another in its occupation.

Although we cannot reproduce the process in detail, it is instructive to ask ourselves what sort of men and of social structures might be expected to hold their own through these millenniums, and so to emerge into recorded history. We may perceive a variety of requirements, according as we regard the conditions with reference to the individuals, considered severally, the family, or the group as a whole.

Individually man must have developed personal prowess—strength, courage, enterprise, endurance, cunning, and the like, since a tribe lacking in any of these traits would be in that degree inferior and liable to be destroyed or enslaved. And the family group must become such as to insure the fecundity of the tribe and the early care of its children; which means good mothers, at least, and perhaps also some measure of constancy and affection in the fathers.

For the social system as a whole, the great thing is to achieve effectual team-work. It must inculcate discipline, loyalty, and industrial and social intelligence in the members, must embrace an adequate system of communication for organizing and developing the social mind, and also a body of special traditions and customs to meet the exigencies to which the tribe is liable. Stability is a prime necessity, and needs to be fortified by a conviction of the sanctity of what comes down from the past; and yet the system must not be so rigid as to be incapable of meeting new situations. The “folkways” must become such as assist, or at least do not greatly hinder, in the struggles of life. And of course the whole thing hangs together, individuals, family and social system being inseparable aspects of an integral whole.

The ideas which make up the social order are impressed upon the member mainly by sheer suggestion; they form the environment in which he lives. In case of opposition, however, they must be reinforced by the pressure of public opinion, by emulation, praise and blame. Mores are set up and the individual is made to feel that the great thing in life is to conform to them. Disloyalty to them is universally abhorred. Thus virtue is determined by what the mind of the group approves, which rests, in great part, upon what has been found to work in the struggles of the group, and especially in war.

In these respects the requirements of primitive conflict were not essentially different from those of to-day. Life was simpler, cruder, and on a smaller scale, but the main elements were much the same—biological and social continuity, adaptive growth, individual exertion, and institutional discipline. There was no riot of irresponsible brute force, but then as now the man fit to survive was a moral man, a “good” man in his relation to the life of the group—devoted, law-abiding, and kindly, as well as strong and bold.

The influence of group conflict, actual or anticipated, upon social development has continued in full vigor throughout history and down to the present time. The growth of states in size and internal structure, as civilization progresses, is natural on other grounds, but has been immensely stimulated and directed by military requirements. France, England, Germany—all the great modern nations, including the United States—were consolidated largely in this way. It is a commonplace of history. And the case is much the same with internal structure. On the continent of Europe, where war has always been imminent if not present, there are few institutions which do not bear its stamp. Even general education arose for its military value as much as for any other reason.

The German Empire went beyond other states in adopting the ideal of national power, attained through an all-embracing militant organization, as the dominating conception of life. When the Great War broke out this conception was so largely justified by military results that the more “individualistic” nations—at first Great Britain and later the United States—were forced to adopt it, at least in part and for the time being, in order to hold their own; and we saw, accordingly, a growth of centralized and partly compulsory organization that would have been impossible in peace. At the same time the weak side of the state-conflict idea was revealed by Germany’s moral isolation. We are still in the midst of these changes and cannot be sure of their outcome, but it is certain that war has illumined the whole situation and opened a fresh cycle of growth.

The difference between tribal society and the modern system of life lies mainly in the large-scale organic character of our whole social process. Formerly we lived in many small societies the relations among which were comparatively external and mechanical; now we live in one great society the parts of which are vitally and consciously united. The instances of this are familiar—the world-wide traffic, travel, and interchange of thought; the universal fashions, the international markets, the co-operation in science and in humanitarian movements. This is that modern solidarity, so wonderfully increased within the memory of living men, which makes the understanding of our life a new problem.

The process is still one of struggle—we have no reason to expect anything else—but the forms of struggle take on a scale commensurate with the new system of life, and are conditioned and limited by the closer interdependence that has come to exist. The competitions of trade are for world-markets; races are unloosed from their ancient seats and encounter one another in all parts of the earth; and if a war comes the solidarity of life tends to draw many nations into it, and to make it in all respects more calamitous than war could have been at an earlier period.

But along with this growth in the scale of conflict we have a complication which makes it something essentially different from a mere enlargement of the struggles of primitive tribes. Groups have become multiform and intersecting, so that the national competition which succeeds to the tribal is only one of a vast system of interactions. There are groups of every size, from two or three persons up to millions; their purposes are countless, their methods equally so. We can no longer see mankind as broken up into distinct wholes struggling for similar ends in a similar manner; we see many systems of struggle which interpenetrate one another, the same men taking part in various systems, so that the lines of alliance and opposition are inextricably entangled. Modern life, even when viewed as conflict, is an organic whole which it is impossible to break up into fragments.

Group struggle has, on the whole, tended to rise to higher levels of intelligence and moral control in accordance with the increasing mental and moral unification of life. History shows a general growth of rational organization; and this means, for one thing, a general situation in which intelligence and the control of the part in the interest of the whole more and more condition every kind of success. International struggles are affected by this trend, as are all other kinds. Special associations which cross national lines, such as those of commerce, labor, science and philanthropy, increase, and so also do the informal bonds of literature, art and public sentiment. It is more and more apparent that the national bond is only one, though in some respects the most important one, in a growing network of relations.

It is the nature of solidarity to react upon and control destructive forms of activity. In so far as life is organic a harm done to the part comes to be a harm done to the whole, and to be felt as such. If it is true that common interests of some kind unite every sort of men with every other, then it is no longer possible to divide man into separate and merely hostile wholes. There was never before so much to lose by an outbreak of violence, and we have seen how a modern war can become a world-calamity, arousing a universal determination to prevent its repetition. And although this may prove ineffectual and war may recur, it must be true, if man has power over his own destiny, that it is, on the whole, obsolescent. The principle applies also to international or interracial bad faith or ill will. It is not too much to say that the whole world is becoming one body, so that evil appearing in one part is felt as a menace to all the others.

Intimately bound up with the growth of rational control is the trend toward democracy, in the sense of an active participation of the common people in the social process. Our modern communication, with its implications of popular discussion and education, is essentially democratic; it means that the people are in reality participating, whether formally so or not. I cannot affirm with any confidence that all peoples are to have deliberative self-government, as that is understood in England or America; democracy will be different for different races and traditions. But everywhere, I conceive, there is coming to be a public mind, a vital psychic whole, and the government, whatever its precise methods, will be essentially the expression of this.

This emergence of the popular mind involves also a tendency to humanism, in the sense of bringing all forms of life under the control of humane ideals springing from the family and community groups in which the people are nurtured. These primary ideals have been kept under in the past by the need of harsh forms of control, the prevalence of war, the domination of classes and the severity of economic conditions; but all signs indicate that they are to have an increasing part in the future.

This modern enlargement and complication imply a kind of differentiation of the person from the group. In primitive society membership is intimate and inclusive, the individual putting his whole personality into it. But as groups become numerous and complex there comes to be a kind of parcelling out of personal activities into somewhat impersonal functions, with special associates in each function. A person, while as much dependent as ever upon the group system as a whole, grows less and less identified with any one group. His relations become selective, each man working out for himself a system of life different from that of any other man, and not embraced in any one set of connections. Personality becomes more and more an organization by itself, distinct from that of any group, and forming itself by a special choice of influences. You cannot sum up the social environment and mental outlook of a man of to-day by saying that he is a farmer, or an artisan, or a priest, as you might have done in the Middle Ages. He may be a farmer and also many other things; a member of learned societies, an investor in remote enterprises, a socialist, a poet; in short, a complex and unique personality.

We are coming more and more to base our social order upon this selective association. In accordance with the ideal of “equal opportunity,” we try to facilitate special personal development in every possible way, holding that it not only does the most for the individual, but enables him to do the most for society. In this way modern society recognizes and fosters individuality as the earlier epochs never thought of doing.

These conditions involve another of great practical interest, namely, that the division of groups in modern life is, for the most part, not a division of persons. I mean that although you may classify the population, for example, as Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, and Socialists, there are no separate groups of whole persons corresponding to these distinctions. Although A may be a Republican and B a Democrat, and their differences in this field may be quite irreconcilable, they may yet belong to the same church, club, stock company, even to the same family. Only a small part of them is separable on the political line, and so with any other group line. To put it otherwise, there is no such specialization of life into narrow classes as you might infer from the large number of special groups, since these are not groups of whole persons, but of interests, activities, opinions, or what-not, many of which meet in a single person. The whole system is more intricately unified, as well as more intricately specialized, than was formerly the case.

The inclusive, essentially personal, groups persist to some extent, the chief example being the family. But I need hardly point out that even the family is far less an inclusive group than it used to be; that it no longer absorbs the individual’s political status in its own, that it does not control the marriages of its children or transmit occupations, that it has abandoned many of its economic and educational functions, and has become, in short, a comparatively specialized group whose main functions are sociability and the nurture of young children. Nowhere more clearly than in the family can we see the disintegrating effect of the modern order upon any form of association which conflicts with selective personal development.

In view of all this we see that the group struggles of modern life must be more and more impersonal, conflicts of ideas rather than of people. Perhaps the way to test the matter is to ask ourselves how many of the group struggles in which we are concerned are of a nature to make us feel that the men in the opposing groups are our enemies. Even in war we do not always have this feeling: we have become conscious of too many bonds of sympathy with the people of other countries. And in every-day life we contend a great deal, but for the most part impersonally. If we hate anybody it is more likely to be a matter of natural antipathy than of social opposition.

And yet personality must be put into special enterprises in some way, or they will fail. They require for success a kind of interest and devotion that can come only from persons who do identify themselves with the group. I may buy stock in a company and draw dividends without putting myself into the work, but I could not do this unless others did put themselves into it.

The result of this requirement, working alongside of the depersonalizing tendency just mentioned, has been to make the characteristic form of modern organization what I may call the nucleated group, a group, that is, composed of a large number of members who put very little of themselves into it, along with a few, or perhaps only one, who enlist the main part of their personality. This gives a happy union of breadth and concentration, and if one will reflect upon the associations to which he belongs he will find, I imagine, that nearly all are conducted in this way. It is the only way to meet the demand for multifarious co-operation and specialization which modern life makes.

It is worth noting that the individual is nucleated as well as the group. That is, he spreads his life out over many groups, but yet concentrates his central personality upon two or three. A teacher, for example, may own stock in several companies and belong to a number of scientific, philanthropic and recreative associations, but after all he lives mainly in his teaching and his family.

This concentration is agreeable to human nature, which craves devotion to a cause. Life is energized by men throwing themselves into some one of its innumerable purposes, making themselves the blazing head of that particular comet while the rest of us gleam palely in the tail. In this way scientific theories, educational reforms, and business “propositions” are promoted with a personal ardor which reacts with antagonism to whatever opposes its object.

It might seem that patriotism must play a diminishing part in modern life, under the principle that personality is less and less embraced in any one group, even though that group be the nation. There is reason to think, however, that the need of devotion to a whole and of self-abandonment, at times, to some sort of mass enthusiasm, is a trait of human nature too strong to be overcome by the growing complexity of life. Like the love of the sexes, it is something elemental, without which life is felt to be baffled and incomplete. There is a deep need to merge the “I” in a “We,” some vast “We,” on which one may float as on a flood of larger life. The ordinary ambitions and specialties do not satisfy this need, which is certainly a large part of the real religion of mankind.

Collective emotion of this sort is always smouldering within us, and may at any time break forth and melt into some kind of a whole the differentiations of which our life appears to consist. It evidently does so in times of warlike excitement, and may well give rise to other forms of enthusiasm which we cannot now foresee. It produced the Crusades in the past, and may produce future movements equally remote from our recent experience.

The modern world makes distracting claims upon us. Shall we go with our family and class, or break away in pursuit of a larger humanitarian ideal? Is it better to “mind our own business” and go in for technical excellence, or to try for culture? Shall we follow the morals of our church or those of our profession? Shall we be national patriots or international socialists?

There is no way out but to strive for a synthesis of these ideas in an organic whole, in some supreme and inclusive allegiance, perhaps in some conception of a God to whom one may look for leadership above the divisions of nation, race, and sect. So long as we are conscious only of our country, our family, our class, or our business, we may make a kind of god of that, but conflicting ideals force us to seek a larger unity. In the heat of war we may be all one flame of patriotism; but after a while the rest of life asserts itself, and we ask what we are fighting for, demanding that it be something for the good of all mankind.

RECENT GROWTH IN ORGANIZATION; COMMUNICATION, NATIONALISM—DEMOCRACY, DIFFUSION OF ORGANIZING CAPACITY—LESSONS OF THE WAR—WILL NATIONS BEHAVE LIKE PERSONS?—NATIONS AS MEMBERS OF A GROUP ARE SOCIAL AND MAY BECOME MORAL—NATIONAL HONOR IN THE PAST—AN ORGANIC INTERNATIONAL LIFE—ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SUCH A LIFE; FORCE

What ground have we for hoping that a society of nations has become possible in our time, when all previous history shows failure to attain it? Mankind has always cherished this aspiration, and if it is at last to be realized, there must be some general change in conditions, making practicable what has heretofore been merely visionary. I wish, therefore, to recall certain developments in the social situation which have taken place during the past century and seem to me to justify our belief that the problem of international order may be not far from solution. They are in the nature of a general growth in that organization of human life of which international order is but one phase.

I may note first that there has been a revolutionary change in the social mechanism. The means of communication have been transformed, enlarging and animating social relations and making possible, so far as mechanism is concerned, any degree or kind of unity that we may be able to achieve. In this respect alone we have a new world since the failure of Prince Metternich’s scheme of pacification after the Napoleonic Wars.

The second change is the growth, and what appears to be the establishment of nationality as the principle animating those members of which a world-organism must be composed. This change is bound up with the preceding, since nations are masses of men united by language, literature, tradition, and local associations, and it is through the growth of communication that they have come to feel their unity more and more and to demand expression for it in a political whole.

I know there are some who hold that the national spirit is hostile to world-organization, and who picture the present state of things as a struggle between nationalism, on the one hand, and a higher principle, such as internationalism, fraternalism, or socialism, on the other. It seems, however, that, although the national spirit must be chastened and regenerated before it is fit for the larger order, there is no possibility of dispensing with it. Sound theory calls for a type of organism intermediate between the individual or the family and the world-whole which we hope to see arise.

A ripe nationality is favorable to international order for the same reason that a ripe individuality is favorable to order in a small group. It means that we have coherent, self-conscious, and more or less self-controlled elements out of which to build our system. To destroy nationality because it causes wars would be like killing people to get rid of their selfishness. Our selves are poor things, but they are all we have, and so with nations in the larger whole. So far as the world is nationalized it is organized up to the point where supernationalism must begin. Having achieved the substructure, we are ready to add the upper stories. We seek a synthesis, and anything synthetic already achieved and not hopelessly unavailable is so much gain. It is only too obvious that, on account of their incoherence, those regions where a national consciousness has not yet developed are a peril to any system we may erect. The national state, supported by patriotism, is our central disciplinary institution, the backbone of historical structure, which could decay only at the cost of a vast collapse and disintegration involving the degradation of human character. Even intermittent war would be better than this.

And just as it takes ambitious and self-assertive persons to make a vigorous group, so we need national emulation and struggle in a greater society. A world-life that was altogether supernational, without aggressive differentiation, would, I believe, be enervating, and I agree with the militarists in so far as to find this an unsatisfying ideal. We sometimes think of the Commonwealth of Man as likely to resemble the United States on a greater scale; but it would not be well to have the nations of the world so much alike, or even so harmonious, as our States; nor is it likely that they will be. We need a more energetic difference.

Another favoring change is the rise of democracy. This has been contemporaneous with the rise of nationalism, and is likewise based upon the new communication and education that have made it possible to organize social consciousness on a great scale. Indeed nationalism and democracy, although they may at times conflict, are phases of the same development. In both the individual gets a congenial sphere of expression. The people, awakened by the new intercourse, are no longer inert and indifferent to the larger relations of life, but live more in these relations and aspire to feel themselves members of great sympathetic wholes. They find these in democratic groups united by the spiritual bonds of language, ideal, and tradition; and strive, accordingly, to make the actual organization correspond to such groups.

The view that democracy will insure international peace is, in my opinion, not so certainly true as many think. It is not impossible that a whole nation may become possessed by military ideals and passions, as has at times been measurably true of France. And democracy affords no guarantee that an energetic militant faction, even though a minority, may not grasp the lead and rush a nation into war. Something of this kind took place in the Southern States at the outbreak of the rebellion. Would the world-war have been impossible if Germany had been as democratically organized as France? I do not see that it would, though it must, no doubt, have come on in a different way. The conflict of ideas and ambitions would still have been there, with no adequate way to settle it.

Yet there are practical reasons for thinking that democracy, on the whole, will be pacific. It gives power to the masses, who are the chief sufferers from war and normally the most kindly in sentiment. Homely and friendly ideals of life have always had their stronghold among the common people, and war has been fostered mainly by rulers and upper classes, not merely for aggrandizement, but as a kind of sport to which they were addicted for its own sake. It may safely be assumed that modern democracy will not share this taste, but, although still subject to martial excitement, will pursue, in the main, ideals more likely to promote every-day happiness.

Another reason why democracy tends to international peace is that under modern conditions it is necessary for content and equilibrium within a nation. One of the main causes of recent wars has been the need of sovereigns and ruling classes to forestall internal revolution by the pressure of external conflict. Napoleon III, not only once but several times, sought war in the hope of supporting his power by the prestige of victory, and there is reason to believe that Russia, Germany, and Austria were all influenced by this motive in the year 1914. Extending radicalism was threatening to split these countries, and it was felt that conflict without would close the rift within. We all know how true, for the time at least, this proved to be.

As a fourth of these general changes favorable to the prospect of enduring peace, I would reckon the diffusion of organizing capacity among the people, not only by education and political democracy, but quite as much through economic experience. The administration of business in its innumerable branches and the participation in labor-unions and other economic groups have developed on a great scale that power of the individual to understand and create social machinery which is essential to any well-knit organization. The industrial nations, at least, are equipped with all kinds and degrees of organizing ability, and if they do not organize peace it will be because they do not want to.

The changes I have mentioned may all be summed up in the statement that the world has been taking on a larger and higher organization, which now demands expression in the international sphere. There is no doubt of the preparation, and the time seems fully ripe for achievement.

And, finally, we have the lessons of the Great War. I am far from presuming to expound these, but it is certain that there is scarcely anything in the way of social ideas and institutions that has not been tested and developed. We know the extent and disaster of modern war as we could not before, and a fierce light has been cast upon all its antecedents.

We hold that the war must establish at least one great principle, fundamental to any tolerable plan of peace, namely, that no nation, however powerful, can hope to thrive by power alone, without the good-will of its neighbors. From this point of view the main purpose of the war is to vindicate the moral unity of mankind against self-assertion. We are resolved that it shall register the defeat of self-sufficiency and domination, and so point the way to an international group within which national struggle can go on under general control.

Assuming that the general conditions have become favorable, I wish further to inquire whether it is reasonable to expect that a society of nations may be formed upon the same principles that we rely upon in the association of individuals. How far is a group of nations like a group of persons? Can we anticipate that the members will be guided, for better or worse, by the ordinary impulses of human nature, or must we have a new psychology for them?

Whether the behavior of a social whole will be personal or not depends upon whether the members identify themselves heartily with it. If they do, then, in times of aroused feeling, those sentiments and passions which are similar in all men and are easily communicated will inflame the whole group and be expressed in its behavior. It will act personally in the sense that it is ruled by the live impulses of human nature and not by mere routine or special interest. Most groups are far from answering to this description, which, as a rule, applies only to those that are small and intimate, like the family. But the case of the nation is peculiar, since it is known to evoke the emotion of patriotism, which has a special power to draw into itself the whole force of personality.

The psychological background of patriotism I take to be the need of human nature to escape from the limitations of individuality and to immerse the spirit in something felt to be larger, nobler, and more enduring. This need is expressed also in devotion to leaders, like Napoleon or Garibaldi; in the passion for causes, like socialism and the labor movement, and in many forms of religious service. Its main object in our time, however, is one’s country; and it is because of the wholeness with which men put themselves into it that a nation comes to have a collective self in which such sentiments as pride, resentment, and aspiration are fully alive. A self-conscious nation is a true socius, and consequently may unite with others in a social and moral group. The whole doctrine of international relations might well start from this point, that the units with which we deal are truly human and not mere corporations or sovereignties.

It is true that their relations have been mostly selfish or hostile in the past, but this is true also of persons except in so far as, by working together, they have acquired habits and sentiments of co-operation. And nations, even in their conflicts, confess their unity by seeking one another’s admiration. Each wants to distinguish itself in the eyes of the international audience, and war itself is waged largely from this motive. We wish our country to be glorious, to excel in the world-game; and the fact that the game is destructive does not destroy the social character of the impulse. If this were not present, we should not find our leaders instigating us by appeals to national honor, resentment, and pride. Perhaps there is no better proof of the personal nature of national feeling than the large part which “insults” play in arousing it. An entity that can be insulted is essentially human.

If the national spirit is truly human and social it should be capable of a moral development and of participating in a moral order similar to that which prevails in personal relations. And perhaps the surest proof that international social control is possible is that nations have shown themselves capable of feeling and acting upon a sympathetic indignation at aggression upon other nations, as in the case of Belgium. Such indignation is in all societies the most active impulse making for the enforcement of justice. There is an incredible doctrine taught by some writers that the national self can feel greed and hate, but cannot rise to justice, friendship, and magnanimity. Why should its human nature be so one-sided? Is it not quite conceivable that we might come to demand an even higher standard of honor and conduct from our country than we do from ourselves, because the idea of country, like the idea of God, is the symbol of a higher kind of life? The gods have been in the mud too, and as they have risen from it to an ethical plane we may hope the same of the nations.

If this view is sound, it follows that if we can change the ruling ideal so that nations come to admire one another for being righteous, magnanimous, and just, as well as strong and successful, we shall find them as eager to live up to this ideal as they now are to conform to a lower one. It is all a matter of the standards of the group.

If there is a nation that has deliberately set out to be unsocial by adopting a theory of national aggrandizement by Macht alone, that nation is believed to be Germany; but even here, however unlovely the resulting type of self may appear to be, there can be little doubt that it is a social self, ambitious to shine in the eyes of the world. Strange as we may think it, the self-conscious part of Germany felt that she was doing a glorious thing when in 1914 she assailed two great nations and defied a third; and she looked confidently to others for admiration. Perhaps we may expect that, having learned where she misjudged the sentiment of the group, she will in the future conduct herself in a manner more acceptable to it.

Nations, then, are normally moral agents, subject to control by the ruling opinion of the period as to what is honorable and praiseworthy. The trouble has been, in great part, that this ruling opinion has set barbaric standards and approved a style of conduct such as prevails among savage tribes or lawless frontiersmen in a new country. A nation was held to be great in proportion as it extended its possessions, its rule, and the dread of its arms. The expression “national honor” in the history of the nineteenth century will be found to mean chiefly warlike prestige, a reputation for valor and success, the power to punish enemies or reward friends. It was sullied by failure to take revenge, by declining a challenge or deserting an ally, but not by lawlessness, arrogance, or greed. The ideal from which honor took its meaning was national prowess, not the welfare of a group of nations; there was no reference to a general right springing from organic unity. It was the honor of Achilles or Rob Roy, not the team-work honor of a modern soldier.

Temporary peace was obtained by a balance of power, that is, not by any real unity, but by the clans being so nearly matched that each hesitated to start a fight. Such hesitation might be expedient, but it was not in itself honorable. Honor was to be won mainly by victorious conflict, on no matter what occasion, and by displaying the power which followed. Napoleon shone in this way and dazzled all Europe, including Goethe, who was in many things the wisest man of his time. His nephew tried to do the same and had no lack of honor so long as he seemed to succeed. Bismarck did succeed, and the German Empire became the standard-bearer of this type of honor, continuing to uphold it after it had been partly abandoned by other nations.

The organic unity of Europe, real as it had become, was slow to transform national idealism, and diplomacy as well as war remained a game for mutual injury and humiliation. England, which was in a position to lead the way, took some steps in a better path, but not enough to convince the world. The old ways were too strong upon her; she upheld Turkey and crushed the Boer republics, giving an indifferent example to Germany, whose imperialism is largely an imitation, however distorted, of that of England. The accepted ideal continued to be one which implied war, open or covert, as the road to honor and success.

It is clear that this ideal is no longer congruous, as it once was, with the general state of the world, but is a pernicious survival, unfit, unevolutionary, and ripe for elimination. The obstacles to this are institutional, not inherent in human nature, and if the momentum of custom and the glamour of honor can be transferred from the ways of war to those of peace, the hardest of the work will be done.

The logical outcome is an organic international life, in which each nation and each national patriotism will be united, but not lost, as individuals are united in an intimate group. Our national individuality will subsist, but will derive its guidance and meaning from its relation to the common whole, finding its ambition, emulation and honor in serving that, as a boy does in the play group or a soldier in his regiment. A spirit of team-work will be substituted, we may hope, for that of unchastened self-assertion. There will be rivalry, not always of the highest kind, and even war may be possible until we have worked out the rules of the game and the means of applying them, but the moral whole will assert itself with increasing power. The new system means bringing the national state under social discipline, making it a responsible member of a larger society. Its significance is not to diminish, but to become of a somewhat different kind, like that of a woman when she marries. Hitherto not Germany alone but all the nations have clung to an individualism incompatible with any permanent international order and with any discipline except force.

I do not look for any disappearance of national selfishness, even of the grosser kinds. Human nature has various moods, most of them unedifying, and the every-day grumbling, quarrelling routine of life will no doubt go on among nations as among individuals. But in spite of this we have idealism and a social order among persons, and we may expect that nations will have them also. We must organize both ideals and selfish interest, so that the former may work with as little friction on account of the latter as possible. Fundamentally both depend for their gratification upon a social order.

The unity of the international whole will be of a different quality from that of the nation. It will be less intimate and passionate and will lack the bond of emulation and conflict with other wholes like itself. There is a kind of conflict, however, which even an all-inclusive whole must undergo, namely, that with rebellious elements within itself, and this struggle for unity will enhance self-consciousness, as the Civil War did for the United States. The league of nations will not be merely utilitarian, though its utility will be immense, but will appeal more and more to the imagination by the grandeur of its ideal and the sacrifices necessary to attain it; and, as it achieves concrete existence in institutions, symbols, literature, and art, human thought and sentiment will find a home in it. And just as patriotism is akin to the more militant and evangelistic type of religion, so international consciousness corresponds to religious feeling of a quieter and more universal sort, to the idea of a God in whom all nations and sects find a various unity.

I realize something of the immense importance and difficulty of the economic and political problems involved with the question of an international social order, which I must leave to abler hands. We must do our best to provide equal economic opportunity for all nations, to establish at least the beginnings of an international constitution, with judicial, legislative, and executive branches, and also to provide a process of orderly change by which the world may assimilate new conditions and thus avoid fresh disaster. I think, however, that all these questions need to be dealt with in view of the more general social problem. We shall not have an international society unless we have political and economic justice; but neither can these endure except as the fruits of a real international solidarity.

We are likely to overestimate the part that force can play in keeping international order. It will, no doubt, be necessary, especially at first, to have a reserve of force to impress the less civilized nations, and possibly the more civilized at times of exceptional tension. But our discipline will fail, as it does in schools and families, unless we can get good-will to support it. Force cannot succeed except as the expression of general sentiment, and if we have that it will rarely be necessary. To exalt it by brandishing a club is to exalt an idea whose natural issue is war. A single powerful nation, whose heart remains hostile to the system, will probably be able to defeat it, and certainly will prevent its developing any spirit higher than that of a policeman. The Commonwealth of Man must have force, but must mainly be based on something higher; on tolerance, understanding, common ideals, common interests, and common work.

THE CLASS-CONFLICT THEORY CRITICISED—ECONOMIC SOLIDARITY OF CLASSES—THE OUTLOOK—RACE; HEREDITARY AND SOCIAL FACTORS—WHAT CONSTITUTES, PRACTICALLY, A RACE PROBLEM—RACE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS—MINGLING RACES; RACE CASTE

Class-conflict thinkers have conceived the social situation somewhat as follows: There are practically two classes, the privileged and the unprivileged. They are separate and irreconcilable and the rift between them is growing wider. So soon as they clearly grasp this situation the unprivileged, who are far more numerous and of equal natural ability, will overcome the privileged and bring about a revolution. This will obliterate the class line and permit the organization of a classless and purely democratic society.

It is more in accord with the facts, I think, to hold that these divisions, in American democracy at least, are subject to that principle of modern life which keeps the person from being absorbed in the group, insures his being a member of the organic whole as well as of a faction, and makes social classes more and more like parties rather than distinct organisms. Moreover, as parties, they probably have a permanent function, and are not likely to be obliterated.

The fact that we all live in a common stream of suggestion and discussion makes a total separation of classes impossible. Capitalists and hand-workers read, in great part, the same newspaper despatches and public speeches. There is a common general atmosphere which no man interested in his fellows can escape. Wars, calamities, adventures, athletic contests, heroic deeds, pathetic incidents, inventions, discoveries, and the like appeal to everybody, and make a common element into which class feeling enters very little. There are, of course, class publications which often emphasize to the utmost the class view of every occurrence; but few intelligent men are content with these alone. We all love the broad current and seek it in the press. It seems that this is more the case now than formerly; that men are less and less content with the committed organs of any sort of opinion, but demand a large and free view.

If the question of the moment happens to be a class question, the modern way of treating it is by open discussion, in which each side strives to understand the other’s point of view, if only to refute it. This inestimable good has democracy brought us, among others, that we dare not, cannot, ignore the other side; we must meet it in open discussion. This, again, is a growing condition. All who can remember twenty-five or thirty years back must be impressed with the tendency of everything to come into the open. Formerly the domination of the rich was a covert thing, very little being said about it because it was unobserved, or accepted as part of the natural order. And the like was true of a hundred other questionable or vicious conditions—political corruption, sexual vice, and the like. At present the interest and intelligence directed toward class questions is too great to permit of underhand or secretive methods. Wrongs are brought to light sooner or later and react against those who practise them. It would be hard to say whether labor has been most hurt by venality and intimidation on the part of some of its leaders, or capital by its corruption of politics and exploitation of the people. Public opinion regards both with deep resentment, and is determined to know the truth regarding them.

And when two parties are brought to discuss an issue before the public as arbiter, they are in great degree reconciled or united by the process. That is, they are brought to recognize and appeal to common principles of justice which the public accepts as binding on all. The airing of fundamental economic questions in our day is educative to all concerned. The tendency of it is to draw our ideas and practices out of the dimness of a class environment and show them in the white light of the public square, where every passer-by is a critic; so that we ourselves are led to take a universal view of them.

This would be true even if there were no authoritative expression of public opinion in government, but it is all the more true because there is such an expression. It is an excellent thing, as regards solidarity, that every faction must stand well with the public under peril of hostile regulation. This means, if only we can make the public mind penetrating and intelligent, that it will not pay to do the things that cannot bear the light.

Those who doubt our ability to control the capitalist class perhaps give too little weight to the moral elements in the situation. The privileged classes of the past have been strong because they were, or seemed to be, essential to social order and the maintenance of the higher traditions. If their function in this regard is diminishing, as there is reason to think, then the moral position of any class attempting to continue the old inequalities as against practicable reforms, will be extremely weak. No merely selfish interest, under modern conditions, can long make head against the general current of moral judgment.

It is true that class loyalty may, to some extent, enlist a spirit of group devotion and militant ardor; but it does not, for the majority offer the conditions needed to awake enthusiasm, and I do not see how it ever can. Social classes, make what you will of them, have not separate cultures, traditions, or currents of daily thought, and are not likely to have. The class spirit has not been successful in subordinating the spirit of nationality, even in time of peace; while in time of war, or in the case of nationalities struggling with oppression, like the Belgians, the Poles, or the Bohemians, class becomes quite a secondary matter.^[61]

The growing economic solidarity of classes tends in the same direction. We hear it said with equal confidence that the interests of capital and labor are opposed, and that they are the same. The solution, of course, is that both statements are true. The two have a common interest in the prosperity and stability of industry, and are mutually dependent upon each other’s efficiency and fair dealing. At the same time there is a real conflict of pecuniary interest as to the division of the product. In general the solidarity and interdependence increase as industries become more extensive and intricate, and require more intelligent and harmonious co-operation. It is also increased by the diffusion of investment, thrifty wage-earners becoming, to a large and increasing degree, small capitalists as well. The outcome is an organic whole which does not exclude opposition, but tends to limit it to what is functional, and to bring it under the control of rule.

Under such conditions the relation between economic classes—capital and labor, let us say, for simplicity—is that of two parties to a bargain so advantageous for both that neither can afford to throw it up, but whose precise terms are matter for controversy. Each side may have a motive for disputing, for feeling out the other’s position, even for temporarily refusing to trade, but not for going to extremes. Neither can afford to push the other to desperation. Capital could starve out labor, and labor could wreck the whole system, but in either case it would be suicidal to do so.

The orderly development of industrial life calls for an organization of process analogous to that of political democracy; that is, one providing regular methods for investigation, discussion, conflict, decision, and tentative advance on the chosen course. Disputes between capital and labor are normal, and it should be part of our system to arrange for their development and solution with the least possible misunderstanding, hostility, and economic waste. Small differences may be aired and adjusted before a permanent committee made up from both parties, while more serious differences, involving principles, after being formulated by each side, may be precisely and thoroughly investigated by a public agency in which both sides have confidence, in order that the situation may be clearly seen and agreement reached, if possible. And where struggle proves inevitable it should take place under public control and in accordance with rules expressing the paramount ideal of a common service. I understand something of this kind to be the programme of competent students of the labor problem; and there is the same need of regular process on all lines of growth.

There is every reason, in the United States at least, to anticipate not a class war but a continuance of the comparatively mild reconnoissances and skirmishes that have long marked industrial conflicts—whether they are carried into politics or remain purely industrial. The function of these light engagements is to determine approximately the strength of the parties in view of the whole economic, social, and moral situation, and so to establish a modus vivendi. Violent or reactionary methods, or any others not adapted to the general situation, will fail.

We may expect gradual but continuous progress in the direction of ideals of social justice. Such ideals, as they are diffused, tried out, and adapted, tend to become standards to which controversies are referred. They are neither purely humanitarian nor purely economic, but represent a working compromise between the two.

The total-cleavage theory of economic classes is taken most seriously in Europe, owing to the fact that European classes are largely castes, an inheritance from an older order, which actually do embrace almost the whole being of the member; and also to repressive methods and the comparative absence of democracy. It would be hard, I imagine, to find an American writer of equal weight who would assent to the assertion of the German economic historian, Karl Bücher, that “all modern industrial development tends in the direction of producing a permanent laboring class ... which in future will doubtless be as firmly attached to the factory as were the servile laborers of the mediæval manor to the glebe.”^[62] I think that the division into two classes is on the whole diminishing, and that while the society of the future will not be classless, its classes will be mainly functional groups, increasingly open to all through a democratic and selective system of education. Class consciousness, however, is desirable, within limits, as a means to the diminution of privilege, which still exists in great power and can scarcely be overcome except as it is understood.

The question of race differs from that of nationality or of social class in that it supposes a division among men springing not merely from differences in history, environment, and culture, but rooted in their biological nature.

Of such a hereditary division we have almost no definite knowledge, except as regards the somewhat superficial traits of color and physiognomy. It is even possible to doubt whether there is any important innate psychical difference among the several branches of mankind. It is certain that different spirits are to be found in different races, that there is a deep and ancient unlikeness in the whole inner life of the Japanese, for example, and of the English. But the same is true of peoples like the English and German, who are not of distinct races. In other words, a group soul, a special ethos or mores, is the sure result of historical causes acting for centuries in a social system; so that different souls will exist whether the race is different or not. And as race differences, when present, are always accompanied by historical differences, it is not possible to make out just how much is due to them alone.

Many of us, to be sure, feel that the judgment of common sense, however incapable of demonstration, shows us unlikenesses of temperament and capacity, between Negroes and whites, for example, that cannot altogether be accounted for by influences acting after birth. Admitting that color is unimportant, the divergence in cranial and facial type may reasonably be supposed to mean something, however unfair may be their interpretation by white people.

It would be strange, reasoning from general principles, if races which have been bred apart for thousands of years and, in some cases, have become so different physically, should remain just alike as to innate mental traits. Surely it is not in accordance with what we know of heredity to suppose that millenniums of growth and adaptation in different environments have no effect upon this most plastic part of the organism. Or why should races be presumed equal in mental and moral capacity when family stocks in the same race are so evidently unequal in these respects?

The next easiest thing to accepting the apparent as true is to declare it wholly false; and so in regard to races; if you have come to see that many of the differences supposed to be racial are due to environment, you will save yourself trouble by believing that all of them are of this nature. But I cannot think that a patient consideration of the facts justifies this conclusion.

However, judgments of race capacity are very open to bias, and have proved so untrustworthy in the past that it is not surprising that some students regard them as altogether illusory. Fortunately, it is seldom necessary, in dealing with practical questions, to depend upon such judgments.

In practice we never have to deal with race as a separate factor, but always in intimate combination with social and historical conditions. The essential thing, for most purposes, is to understand the working of the combination as a whole. Accordingly, a race problem, as understood in practical politics and sociology, does not mean one based upon a strictly biological distinction, but one in which biological and social factors, working together, produce lasting differences sufficient to keep the groups apart. In Europe most of the cases where there is an acute race situation—as between Germans and Poles in northern Prussia, between Russians and Finns, Germans and Czechs, or English and Irish—are cases where the strictly biological difference is probably not very great; the question is mainly one of antagonistic traditions. In our own Negro problem natural differences in color and physiognomy certainly play a large part, if only by defining the race line and instigating psychological attitudes. What we have to deal with, in any case, is the total situation.

It follows from the importance of environment that differences which make a race problem in Europe do not necessarily do so when the peoples in question migrate to America and undergo in common the assimilating influences of a democratic civilization. Germans and Czechs, for example, do not form hostile groups here as they do in Bohemia. America has demonstrated the impermanence of many Old World divisions, while others seem to be as persistent here as anywhere. The only conclusive test is that of experience.

In so far as races remain separate in different nationalities, with no large or permanent intermigration, it is not apparent that their relations offer any race problem distinct from those that attend the contact of nations. Thus, as regards international questions, the Americans and Japanese are simply two nations, like the Americans and the French. There is no reason why their trade and diplomacy should be affected by the difference in physiognomy, and if they should go to war the issue will depend upon the energy, organization, and intelligence of the two peoples, precisely as in the case of closely kindred nations like the English and German. What may be the basis of the assumption of certain writers that the mere existence of two races, even with the Pacific between them, means war, it is not easy to understand. It would seem that the motives impelling to peace or war would be about the same as between nations of the same race; always excepting the possibility that through more intimate contact by migration racial feeling might be excited and might extend to the respective nations. I do not mean to suggest that this last is a very great or an unavoidable danger, but evidently it is one way, possibly the only way, in which international relations might take on a racial character.

Another prospect, often brought forward with confidence, is that if interracial migration is forbidden, the nation or nations representing the more prolific race will go to war in order to secure an outlet for their surplus population. But if they do this they will do it not as races but as nations; and would do it quite as readily, perhaps, if there were no difference in race. The nation, not the race, is the organized militant unit, eager to plant colonies and extend its power and prestige. The mere shedding of surplus racial population is not an object of ambition, and so not in itself likely to be a motive to war. In other words, it is not apparent why Japan and China, being peopled by a distinct race, are any more likely to attack Canada, in case the latter forbids immigration, than if they were peopled by Germans or Scandinavians.

Another matter whose importance in this connection is perhaps exaggerated is that of economy of subsistence. We are told regarding the Japanese that “he can underlive, and therefore he can outlive, any Occidental,” but I question whether the unique solidarity of his social system, intimate, ardent, adaptable, is not a more formidable element of power than his supposed ability to live on a cup of rice a day. If the latter is real and advantageous it is merely a factor in national efficiency, like others, with no peculiar and inevitable tendency to bring on conflict.

It would seem, then, that in order to have a true race problem the races must mingle in considerable numbers in the same political system. And in that case the ruling factor is not the precise amount of strictly racial difference, as distinct from social, but the actual attitude of the groups toward each other. If this is such as to keep them separate and perhaps hostile, it matters little, as regards the social situation, whether it is based on sound ethnology or not. In the United States the immigration of Europeans, even though they be of stocks considerably different from the older inhabitants, as Italians, Slavs and Jews, seems not to create a true race problem, experience indicating that assimilation will take place within a generation or two. On the other hand, the presence of the Negro in large numbers creates a race problem, because assimilation is generally held undesirable, and does not, in fact, take place. Whether the immigration of Orientals in large numbers to our Pacific coast would create an enduring race question is, perhaps, undetermined, but experience indicates that it would.

Permanent race groups in the same social system constitute race caste. It seems to me that this is beyond comparison the most urgent race question with which we have to deal; not only as regards its present aspects, but because it is likely to have a rapid growth. Many countries, including our own, already suffer from it, and the freedom of movement given by modern conditions, together with the persistence of race sentiment, tend to make it almost universal. That is, if the Chinese, for example, can compete successfully with other races in certain industrial functions, there is no reason, apart from legal restriction, why they should not form colonies in every country where those functions are in demand.

It is doubtful how far it may be possible to reconcile race caste with the democracy and solidarity which are coming to be the ideals of modern nations. In the Southern United States the caste feeling is not diminishing, and while we hope that it is taking on forms more favorable to the co-operation of the races on a plane of fair play and mutual respect, the issue is somewhat in doubt. Certainly the present condition is not in harmony with democratic ideals, and its defenders can hardly claim more for it than that it makes the best of a difficult situation. Much the same appears to be true of the contact of races in other parts of the world, in South Africa, Australia, India, and even in Eastern Europe.

As a matter of theory a society made up of race groups co-operating in equality and good-will is not clearly impossible. But at the best it would be more like an international federation than like a nation with a single soul. We can imagine a harmonious Austria-Hungary, but should not wish our own country to resemble it. And, as a matter of fact, it has always been the case, so far as I know, that where there were race castes under the same government one of them has domineered over the rest. It is a situation by all means to be avoided if possible.

There are, then, quite apart from any comparison of races as to superiority, excellent grounds of national policy for preventing their mingling in large numbers in the same state. So far as we can judge by experience, the race antagonism weakens that common spirit, that moral unity, that willing subordination of the part to the whole, that are requisite to a healthy national life. I see no reason why America and Australia should not avoid the rise of an unnecessary caste problem by restricting Oriental immigration, or why the Oriental nations should not, on the same ground, discourage Occidental colonies. Such measures would not imply anything derogatory to the other race, and, this being understood, should give no offense.