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Title: International Thought
Author: John Galsworthy
Release Date: December 19, 2021 [eBook #66973]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT ***
INTERNATIONAL
THOUGHT
BY
JOHN GALSWORTHY
CAMBRIDGE
W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.
1923
_All profit from the sale of this pamphlet will be given to
the League of Nations Union_.――J.G.
_PRICE SIXPENCE NET._
INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT.
“The exchange of international thought is the only
possible salvation of the world.”
To those who, until 1914, believed in civil behaviour between man and
man, the war and its ensuing peace brought disenchantment. Preoccupied
with the humaner pursuits, and generally unfamiliar with the real
struggle for existence, they were caught napping. The rest of mankind
have experienced no particular astonishment――the doing-down of man by
man was part of daily life, and when it was done collectively they
felt no spiritual change. It was dreadful but――in a word――natural.
This may not be a popular view of human life in the mass, but it is
true. Average life is a long fight; this man’s success is that man’s
failure; co-operation and justice are only the palliatives of a basic,
and ruthless, competition. The disenchantment of the few would not have
mattered so much but for the fact that they were the nerves and voice
of the community. Their histories, poems, novels, plays, pictures,
treatises, sermons, were the expression of what we call civilisation.
And disenchanted philosophers, though by so much the nearer to the
truths of existence, are by that much, perhaps, the less useful to
human nature. We need scant reminder of a truth always with us, we need
rather perpetual assertion that the truth might with advantage be, and
may possibly with effort become, not quite so unpleasant. Though we
ought to look things in the face, a fine afflatus is the essence of
ethical philosophy.
It is a pity, then, that philosophy is, or has been, draggle-tailing――art
avoiding life, taking to contraptions of form and colour signifying
nothing; literature driven in on itself, or running riot; science more
hopeful of perfecting poison gas than of abating coal-smoke or curing
cancer; that religion should incline to tuck its head under the wing of
spiritualism; that there should be, in fact, a kind of tacit abandonment
of the belief in life. Sport, which still keeps a flag of idealism
flying, is perhaps the most saving grace in the world at the moment,
with its spirit of rules kept, and regard for the adversary, whether the
fight is going for or against. When, if ever, the fair-play spirit of
sport reigns over international affairs, the cat force which rules there
now will slink away and human life emerge for the first time from
jungle.
Looking the world in the face, we see what may be called a precious
mess. Under a thin veneer――sometimes no veneer――of regard for
civilisation, each country, great and small, is pursuing its own ends,
struggling to rebuild its own house in the burnt village. The dread
of confusion-worse-confounded, of death recrowned, and pestilence
revivified, alone keeps the nations to the compromise of peace. What
chance has a better spirit?
“The exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation
of the world,” are the words of Thomas Hardy, and so true that it may
be well to cast an eye over such mediums as we have for the exchange
of international thought. “The Permanent Court of International
Justice”; “The League of Nations”; “The Pan-American Congress”; certain
sectional associations of this nation with that nation, tarred somewhat
with the brush of self-interest; sporadic international conferences
concerned with sectional interests; and the recently founded P.E.N.
Club, an international association of writers with friendly aims,
but no political intentions. These are about all, and they are taken
none too seriously by the peoples of the earth. The salvation of a
world in which we all live, however, would seem to have a certain
importance. Why, then, is not more attention paid to the only existing
means of salvation? The argument for neglect is much as follows: Force
has always ruled human life――and always will. Competition is basic.
Co-operation and justice succeed, indeed, in definite communities
so far as to minimise the grosser forms of crime, but only because
general opinion within the ring fence of a definite community gives
them an underlying force which the individual offender cannot
withstand. There is no such ring-fence round nations, therefore no
general opinion, and no underlying force to ensure the abstention of
individual nations from crime――if, indeed, transgression of laws which
are not fixed can be called crime.
This is the average hard-headed view at the moment. If it is to remain
dominant, there is no salvation in store for the world. “Why not?”
replies the hard-head: “It always has been the view, and the world has
gone on?” Quite true! But the last few years have brought a startling
change in the conditions of existence――a change that has not yet
been fully realised. _Destructive science has gone ahead out of all
proportion._ It is developing so fast that each irresponsible assertion
of national rights or interests brings the world appreciably nearer to
ruin. Without any doubt whatever, the powers of destruction are gaining
fast on the powers of creation and construction. In old days a thirty
years’ war was needed to exhaust a nation; it will soon be (if it is
not already) possible to exhaust a nation in a week by the destruction
of its big towns from the air. The conquest of the air, so jubilantly
hailed by the unthinking, may turn out the most sinister event that
ever befell us, simply because _it came before we were fit for it_――fit
to act reasonably under the temptation of its fearful possibilities.
The use made of it in the last war showed that; and the sheep-like
refusal of the startled nations to face the new situation, and
unanimously ban chemical warfare and the use of flying for destructive
purposes, shows it still more clearly. No one denies that the conquest
of the air was a great――a wonderful――achievement; no one denies that it
could be a beneficent achievement if the nations would let it be. But
mankind has not yet, apparently, reached a pitch of decency sufficient
to be trusted with such an inviting and terribly destructive weapon.
We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and
there will be no war. And we none of us believe in it. The last war
disproved it utterly. Competition in armaments has already begun,
among men who think, to mean competition in the air. Nothing else will
count in a few years’ time. We have made by our science a monster
that will devour us yet, unless by exchanging international thought,
we can create a general opinion against the new powers of destruction
so strong and so unanimous that no nation will care to face the force
which underlies it.
A well-known advocate of the League of Nations said the other day: “I
do not believe it necessary that the League should have a definite
force at its disposal. It could not maintain a force that would keep
any first-rate power from breaking the peace. Its strength lies in the
use of publicity; in its being able to voice universal disapproval with
all the latent potentiality of universal action.”
Certainly, the genuine publication of all military movements and
developments throughout the world, the unfathoming and broadcasting
of destructive inventions and devices, would bring us nearer to
salvation than any covenant can do. If the world’s chemists and the
world’s engineers would hold annual meetings in a friendly spirit,
for the salvation of mankind! If they could agree together that to
exercise their ingenuity on the perfecting of destructive agents for
the use of governments was a crime; to take money for it a betrayal
of their species! If we could have such exchange of international
thought as that, then indeed we might hear the rustle of salvation’s
wings. And――after all――why not? The answer to the question: Is there
to be happiness or misery, growth or ruin for the human species, does
not now lie with governments. Governments are competitive trustees
for competitive sections of mankind. Put destruction in their hands
and they will use it to further the interests of those for whom they
are trustees; just as they will use and even inspire the spiritual
poison gas of pressmen. The real key to the future is in the hands of
those who provide the means of destruction. Are scientists (chemists,
inventors, engineers) to be Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans,
Japanese, Russians, before they are men, in this matter of the making
of destruction? Are they to be more concerned with the interests of
their own countries, or with the interests of the human species? That
has become the question they have to answer now that they have for the
first time the future of the human race within their grasp. Modern
invention has taken such a vast stride forward that the incidence of
responsibility is changed. It rests on Science as it never did before;
on Science, and on――Finance. There again the exchange of international
thought has become terrifically important. The financiers of the world,
for instance, in the light of their knowledge, under the pressure of
their difficulties, out of the motive of mutual aid, could certainly
devise some real and lasting economic betterment of the present
ruination, if only they would set to work steadily, not spasmodically,
to exchange international thought.
The hard-head’s answer to such suggestions is: “Nonsense! Inventors,
chemists, engineers, financiers, all have to make their living, and
are just as disposed to believe in their own countries as other men.
Their pockets and the countries who guarantee those pockets, have first
call on them.” Well! That has become the point. If neither Science nor
Finance will agree to think internationally, there is probably nothing
for it but to kennel-up in disenchantment, and wait for an end which
can’t be very long in coming――not a complete end, of course, say――a
general condition of affairs similar to that in the famine provinces of
Russia.
It is easy to be pessimistic, and easy to indulge in cheap optimism;
to steer between the two is hard. We still have a chance of saving
and improving such civilisation as we have; but this chance depends
on how far we succeed in exchanging international thought in the next
few years. To some the word international has a socialistic, even
communistic, significance. But, as here used, it has nothing whatever
to do with economic theories, class divisions, or political aims. The
exchange of international thought which alone can save us, is the
exchange of thought between _craftsmen_――between the statesmen of the
different countries; the lawyers of the different countries; the
scientists, the financiers, the writers of the different countries.
We have the mediums of exchange (however inadequately made use of)
for the statesmen and the lawyers; but the scientists (inventors,
chemists, engineers) and the financiers, the two sets of craftsmen
in whose hands the future of the world chiefly lies, at present lack
adequate machinery for the exchange of international thought, and
adequate conception of the extent to which world responsibility now
falls on them. If they could once realise the supreme nature of that
responsibility, the battle of salvation should be half won.
Coming to the exchange of international thought in my own craft, there
seem three ways in which writers, as such, can help to ease the future
of the world. They can be friendly and hospitable to the writers of
other countries――and for this purpose exists the international P.E.N.
Club, with its many and increasing branches. They can recognise and
maintain the principle that works of the imagination, indeed all works
of art, are the property of mankind at large, and not merely of the
country of their origin; that to discontinue (for example) during a
war with Germany the reading of German poetry, the listening to German
music, the looking at German pictures, was a harmful absurdity which
should never be repeated. Any real work of art, however individual and
racial in root and fibre, is impersonal and universal in its appeal.
Art is one of the great natural links (perhaps the only great natural
link) between the various breeds of men, and to scotch its gentling
influence in time of war is to confess ourselves still apes and tigers.
Only writers can spread this creed, only writers can keep the door open
for art during national feuds; and it is their plain duty to do this
service to mankind.
The third and greatest way in which the writer can ease the future is
simply stated in the words: Fair Play. The power of the Press is a good
third to the powers of Science and Finance. If the Press, as a whole,
never diverged from fair report; if it refused to give unmeasured
service to party or patriotic passion; if it played the game as Sport
plays it――what a clearance of the air! At present, with, of course,
many and distinguished exceptions, the Press in every country plays the
game according to rules of its own which have too little acquaintance
with those of sport.
The Press is manned by a great crew of writers, the vast majority of
whom have in private life a higher standard of fair play than that
followed by the Press ship they man. They would, I believe, be the
first to confess that. Improvement in Press standards of international
and political fair play can only come from the individual writers who
make up the Press. And such reform will not come until editors and
journalists acquire the habit of exchanging thought internationally,
of broadening their minds and hearts with other points of view, of
recognising that they must treat as they would themselves be treated.
Only, in short, when they do as they would, most of them, individually
choose to do, will a sort of word-miasma cease to breed international
agues and fever. We do not commonly hold, in private life, that ends
justify means. Why should they be held to justify means in Press
life――why should report so often be accepted without due examination
when it is favourable to one’s views; rejected without due examination
when it is unfavourable; why should the other side’s view so often be
burked; and so on, and so on? The Press has great power and professes
high ideals; it has much virtue; it does great service; but it does
greater harm when, for whatever reason, it diverges from truth, or from
the principles of fair play.
To sum up, Governments and Peoples are no longer in charge. Our fate is
really in the hands of the three great Powers――Science, Finance and the
Press. Underneath the showy political surface of things, those three
great Powers are secretly determining the march of the nations; and
there is little hope for the future unless they can mellow and develop
on international lines. In each of these departments of life there
must be men who feel this, as strongly as the writer of these words.
The world’s hope lies with them; in the possibility of their being
able to institute a sort of craftsman’s trusteeship for mankind――a
new triple alliance, of Science, Finance and the Press, in service
to a new idealism. Nations, in block, will never join hands, never
have much in common, never be able to see each others’ points of view.
The outstanding craftsmen of the nations have a far better chance of
seeing eye to eye; they have the common ground of their craft, and a
livelier vision. What divides them at present is a too narrow sense
of patriotism, and――to speak crudely――money. Inventors must exist;
financiers live; and papers pay. And, here, Irony smiles. Though
Science, Finance and the Press at present seem to doubt it, there is,
still, more money to be made out of the salvation of mankind than out
of its destruction; a better and a more enduring livelihood for these
three Estates. And yet without the free exchange of international
thought, we may be fairly certain that the present purely national
basis of their livelihoods will persist, and if it does the human race
will not, or at least so meagrely that it will be true to say of it, as
of Anatole France’s old woman: ‘It lives but so little!’
Printed by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., Cambridge, England.
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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