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Title: The World in Chains
Some Aspects of War and Trade
Author: John Mavrogordato
Release Date: January 24, 2007 [EBook #20435]
Language: English
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THE WORLD IN CHAINS
* * * * *
But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the Chained Titan's woeful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood....
* * * * *
THE WORLD
IN CHAINS
SOME ASPECTS OF WAR AND TRADE
BY JOHN MAVROGORDATO
M.A.
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
_First Published 1917_
* * * * *
IN MEMORIAM AMICORUM
_R. F. C. GELDERD SOMERVELL
IVAR CAMPBELL: T. R. A. H.
NOYES: J. W. BAILEY_
QVI ANTE DIEM PERIERVNT
* * * * *
Note
_There may be some exaggeration in this book. I firmly believe that
England and her Allies entered this War with the noblest intentions. If
I have done less than justice to these, it is because my chief purpose
in this essay has been to express my equally firm belief that all these
fine emotions have been and are being exploited by the basest forms of
Imperialism and Capitalism._
_J. M._
_January 1st, 1917._
Contents
CHAPTER I
THE MASSACRE OF COLLEAGUES, 3
THE WIDENING SPHERE OF MORALITY, 4
THE RECEDING GOD, 6
THE PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT SOCIETY, 8
HOMO HOMINI LUPUS, 8
TRIBE AGAINST TRIBE, 10
THE CITY STATE, 12
THE NATIONS OF EUROPE "FERAE NATURAE," 14
THE CONVENIENCE OF DIPLOMACY, 15
A NOTE ON DEMOCRACY, 18
DIPLOMACY NOT BAD IN ITSELF, 19
MANNERS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MORALS, 21
WAR A MORAL ANACHRONISM, 21
CHAPTER II
THE ARMAMENT RING, 27
EUGENICS? 29
PATRIOTISM, 31
THE MORAL TEST, 36
TRADE, 39
TRADE IN TIME OF PEACE, 42
DUTIES OF COMMERCE TO THE STATE, 44
RESTRICTED SPHERE OF GOVERNMENT CORRESPONDING TO
RESTRICTED SPHERE OF MORALITY, 51
CHAPTER III
TRADE DURING THE WAR, 57
TRADE LIVES ON INCREASING DEMAND, 65
WAR A FORM OF DESTRUCTION, 66
WAR STANDS TO BENEFIT NEUTRAL AS WELL AS BELLIGERENT
NATIONS BUT NOT TO THE SAME EXTENT, 69
THE GREATER THE CAPITAL, THE GREATER THE WAR
PROFIT, 71
THE BLESSINGS OF INVASION, 72
THE LUXURY TRADES DON'T DO SO BADLY, 74
TRADE PROFITS IN WAR NOT SHARED BY THE NATION
BUT CONFINED TO EMPLOYERS, 77
TRADE PROFIT AND NATIONAL LOSS, 82
APPENDIX: SOME TYPICAL WAR PROFITS, 125
CHAPTER IV
DIALECTICS ROUND THE DEATH-BED, 89
GERMAN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR, 90
THE VALUE OF GERMAN CULTURE, 95
THE MANUFACTURE OF HATRED, 102
IMPERIALISM THE ENEMY, 107
POSSIBLE OBJECTS OF WAR, 112
PHYSICAL FORCE IN A MORAL WORLD, 118
IMPERIALISM AND CAPITALISM THROUGH WAR AND TRADE
THE ENEMIES: SOCIALISM TO THE RESCUE, 122
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
[Greek: môros de thnêtôn ostis ekporthôn poleis
naous de tumbous th, iera tôn kekmêktôn,
erêmiadous autos ôleth usteron.]
Euripides: Tro. 95.
§1
The Massacre of Colleagues
The existence of war in the modern world is primarily a question for the
moral philosopher. It may be of interest to the anthropologist to
consider war as a gallant survival with an impressive ritual and a code
of honour curiously detached from the social environment, like the Hindu
suttee; or with a procedure euphemistically disguised, like some
chthonic liturgy of ancient Athens. But it is a problem too broad for
the anthropologist when we consider that we have reached a stage of
civilisation which regards murder as the most detestable of crimes and
deprives the murderer of all civil rights and often even of the natural
right to live: while in the same community the organised massacre of our
colleagues in civilisation is not only tolerated but assumed to be
necessary by the principal expositors of law and religion, is the
scientific occupation of the most honoured profession in the State, and
constitutes the real sanction of all international intercourse.
§2
The Widening Sphere of Morality
The existence of war stimulates the astonished watcher in the tower of
ivory to examine the development, if any, of human morality; and to
formulate some law of the process whereby political man has been
differentiated from the savage.
Morality being a relation between two or more contracting parties, he
will notice that the history of mankind is marked by a consistent
tendency to extend this relation, to include in the system of
relationships more numerous and more distant objects, so that the moral
agent is surrounded by a continually widening sphere of obligations.
This system of relationship, which may be called the moral sphere, has
grown up under a variety of influences, expediency, custom, religious
emotion and political action; but the moral agents included in it at any
given time are always bound to each other by a theoretical contract
involving both rights and duties, and leading each to expect and to
apply in all his dealings with the others a certain standard of conduct
which is approximately fixed by the enlightened opinion of the majority
for the benefit of the totality.
The moral sphere then is a contractual unit of two or more persons who
agree to moderate their individual conduct for their common good: and
the State itself is only a stage in the growth of this moral unit from
its emergence out of primitive savagery to its superannuation in
ultimate anarchy, commonly called the Millennium. The State indeed is a
moral sphere, a moral unit, which has long been outgrown by enlightened
opinion; and the trouble is that we are now in a transition stage in
which the boundaries of the State survive as a limitation instead of
setting an ideal of moral conduct.[1]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: This conception of the gradually extending and still to be
extended sphere of morality, or from another aspect of law, was implied,
I think, by Lord Haldane in his Address on Higher Nationality. (_The
Conduct of Life, and Other Addresses_, p. 99.)
In this address Lord Haldane distinguished in the State three sanctions
of conduct.
1. Law.
2. The Moral Sanction, Kant's Categorical Imperative "that rules
the private and individual conscience, but that alone."
3. The force of social habit or _sittlichkeit_, "less than legal
and more than merely moral, and sufficient in the vast majority of
the events of daily life, to secure observance of general standards
of conduct without any question of resort to force." The Lord
Chancellor adds, "If this is so within a nation, can it be so as
between nations?"
But although Lord Haldane distinguishes three sanctions of conduct, the
resultant line of conduct is one. And it seems to me unimportant to
analyse the sanctions if we can only estimate the sum of their
obligations. It is this totality of obligations, the whole
systematisation of conduct in human life, that in my adumbrated analysis
I call the moral sphere.
Curiously enough Lord Haldane was hounded from the Government on the
paradoxical ground that he knew too much about the enemy against whom we
are fighting. It is certainly true that he has a better understanding
than any other statesman of the Prussian perversion of aristocracy and
of the true function of science in the State. But it is too much to hope
that philosophers should remain Ministers of a State in which
journalists are become dictators.]
§3
The Receding God
I don't know that it is necessary to drag God into the argument. But if
you like to regard God as the sanction and source of morality, or if you
like to call the moral drift in human affairs God, it is possible to
consider this "Sphere of Morality" from His point of view. His "point of
view" is precisely what, in an instructive fable, we may present as the
determining factor in morality. When He walked in the garden or lurked
hardly distinguishable among the sticks and stones of the forest,
morality was just an understanding between a man and his neighbour, a
temporary agreement entered on by any two hunting savages whom He might
happen to espy between the tree-trunks. When He dwelt among the peaks of
Sinai or Olympus, the sphere of morality had extended to the whole tribe
that occupied the subjacent valley. It came to include the nation, all
the subjects of each sovereign state, by the time He had receded to some
heavenly throne above the dark blue sky. And it is to be hoped that He
may yet take a broader view, so that His survey will embrace the whole
of mankind, if only we can banish Him to a remoter altitude in the
frozen depths of space, whence He can contemplate human affairs without
being near enough to interfere.
The moral of this little myth of the Receding God may be that the Sphere
of Morality is extended in inverse proportion to the intensity of
theological interference. Not that theology necessarily or always
deliberately limits the domain of morality: but because the extension of
moral relations and the relegation of anthropomorphic theology are
co-ordinate steps in human advancement.
§ 4
The Philosopher looks at Society
The philosopher is apt to explain the growth and interrelation of ideas
by tabulating them in an historical form, which may not be narrowly,
chronologically, or "historically" true. The notion of the Social
Contract may be philosophically true, though we are not to imagine the
citizens of Rousseau's State coming together on a certain day to vote by
show of hands, like the members of the Bognor Urban District Council. So
we may illustrate a theory of moral or social evolution by a sort of
historical pageant, which will not be journalistically exact, but will
give a true picture of an ideal development, every scene of which can be
paralleled by some actually known or inferred form of human life.
§ 5
Homo Homini Lupus
Our imagination, working subconsciously on a number of laboriously
accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished stones, the sifted
debris of Swiss palafittes, a few pithecoid jawbones, some painted rocks
from Salamanca, produces a fairly definite picture of the earliest
essentially human being on earth: and we recognise a man not unlike one
of ourselves; with a similar industry interrupted from time to time by
the arbitrary stirrings of a similar artistic impulse; so close to us
indeed that some of his habits still survive among us. Some of us at
least have made a recreation of his necessity, and still go hunting wild
or hypothetically wild animals for food. But when this primeval hunter
emerged from his lair in the forest or his valley-cave, he was prepared
to attack at sight any man he happened to meet: and he thought himself a
fine fellow if he succeeded in cracking the skull of a possible rival in
love or venery. This was the age of preventive aggression with a
vengeance. We still feel a certain satisfaction in a prompt and crushing
blow, and in the simplicity of violence. But we no longer attack our
neighbour in the street, as dogs fight over a bone or over nothing at
all: though some of us reserve the right to snarl.
§ 6
Tribe against Tribe
But this fighter's paradise was too exciting to last long; and indeed it
is hard to visualise steadily the feral solitary man who lived without
any social organisation at all.[2] Consideration like an angel came and
did not indeed drive the offending devil out of him but taught him to
guide it into more profitable channels, by co-operating with his
neighbour. When a man first made peace with the hunter in the next cave
in order to go out with him against the bear at the head of the valley,
or even to have his assistance in carrying off a couple of women from
the family down by the lake, on that day the social and moral unit was
constituted, the sphere of morality, destined, who knows how soon, to
include the whole of mankind in one beneficent alliance, began with what
Professor McDougal has called "the replacement of individual by
collective pugnacity." The first clear stage in this progress is the
tribe or clan, the smallest organised community, sometimes no larger
than the self-contained village or camp, which can still be found in the
wild parts of the earth. Tribe against tribe is the formula of this
order of civilisation. Within the limits of the community man inhibits
his natural impulses and settles his personal disputes according to the
rules laid down by the headman or chief. But once outside the stockade
he can kill and plunder at will, though owing to the similarly strong
organisation of the next village he will usually reserve his predatory
exploits for the official and collective raids of village against
village and tribe against tribe.
Of course the family is a step leading up to the tribal stage of
morality, and it may be that the idea of incest marks the social stage
in which the moral sphere was conterminous with the family,
corresponding to the institution of exogamy in the moral system of the
tribe.
It may be added that even in the modern family the feeling which unites
the members often consists less, very much less, of affection than of a
sort of obligation to hang together for mutual defence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Cf. Plato's myth of Protagoras (_Prot_. 322 B ff.).]
§ 7
The City State
The City State, self-contained, self-supporting, truly democratic, is
marked by a similar pugnacity. Only full citizenship conferred full
moral rights, and any ferocity could be justified in war against another
city. Athens wore herself out in the long struggle with Sparta, and
Greece was lured to destruction by the devil of Imperialism, whose stock
argument is to suggest that a State can extend its rights without
extending its obligations. But the limitation of the moral sphere by the
boundaries of the city is less apparent in the Greek States, because in
the historical period at least they were already in transition to a
larger view, and enlightened opinion certainly believed in a moral
system which should include all Greek States, to the exclusion of course
of all "barbarians": but this larger view was even more definitely
limited, and the demarcation of those within from those outside the
moral sphere was never more sharply conceived, than in the difference
commonly held to exist between Greeks and Barbarians. Yet even so Greece
can maintain her pre-eminence in thought; for Plato and Euripides at
least glimpsed the conception, by which we do not yet consent to be
guided, of the moral equality of all mankind.[3]
For all these reasons the City State as a limited moral sphere is better
seen perhaps in Mediæval Italy, where, I imagine, a Florentine might
kill a native of Pisa whenever he liked; whereas if he killed a fellow
Florentine he risked at least the necessity of putting himself outside
the moral sphere, of having that is to leave Florence and stay in Pisa
till the incident was forgotten.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: Even Aristotle probably had some suspicion of it; so in his
anxiety to justify the institution of slavery he had to make out that
slaves were not men at all but only machines.]
[Footnote 4: Duelling might be classified theoretically as a survival of
the wolfish condition sketched in § 5. But the persistent institution of
single combat should not be regarded as in itself a survival, but rather
as an outlet for the surviving instinct, a concession justified by
political or social considerations that vary from age to age. Even Plato
in his _Republic_ (465 A) agreed that the citizen might in certain
circumstances take the law into his own hands, probably regarding such
action as a sort of equity, what Aristotle calls [Greek: epanorthôma
nomou êlleipei dia ton katholou], a rectification of certain special
cases not covered by law.
In modern states again, e.g. in Austria and Germany, duelling is not so
much a survival as a corollary of militarism, which involves a
fetichistic veneration of the military uniform or of military "honour."]
§ 8
The Nations of Europe _ferae naturae_
In the next and latest stage in the expansion of the moral system we
find it again conterminous with the frontiers of the State. But it is
now no longer the small city state of Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy,
but the large political unit, roughly and hypothetically national,[5]
which constitutes the modern State, whether Kingdom, Republic, or
Empire. I have called this the latest stage in the extension of the
sphere of morality because it is the one which actually prevails and
limits our national conduct. For the paradox of legal murder and
massacre in the modern world is resolved as soon as we realise that war
is a conflict between two or more isolated moral systems, each of which
only regards violence as a crime to be suppressed within the limits of
its own validity. International warfare in its crudest form is only a
manifestation of the original wolfish state of man, the "state of
nature" which exists between two moral agents who have no moral
obligation to each other (but only to themselves). The fact that the
primitive savage was an individual moral agent having no moral
obligation to anyone but himself, while the modern fighting nation is a
moral agent of who knows how many millions, does not alter the essential
character of the conflict.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: See below, Chapter IV, § 4. _Nationalism True and False_.]
§ 9
The Convenience of Diplomacy
As a matter of fact this original wolfish attitude of nations is already
obsolete, if it ever existed. The expansion and growth of political and
moral relations is a gradual process, and the fact that for the sake of
brevity and clearness we fix and describe certain arbitrary points in
that process must not be taken to imply that it is discontinuous. Anyhow
there is no doubt that the specifically wolfish attitude of one nation
to another can hardly be found in its pure state, being already tempered
and mitigated by the practice and custom of diplomacy: and this
diplomatic mitigation, however superficial, does something to break down
that windowless isolation which is the essential cause of violence
between two independent moral entities. Pacificists of the democratic
school sometimes present a fallacious view of international diplomacy,
and almost imply that the present war was made inevitable by the fact
that Viscount Grey was educated at Harrow, or that peace could have
been preserved with Germany if only Sir Edward Goschen had begun life as
a coal heaver, or had at least been elected by the National Union of
Boilermakers. Their panacea they vaguely call the democratic control of
Foreign Affairs, though it is not clear why we should expect twenty
million still ignorant voters to be more enlightened than one educated
representative who is, as a matter of fact, usually so much oppressed by
a due sense of his responsibility that he is in danger of bungling only
from excessive timidity. The experience of the Law Courts shows that
twelve men, be they never so good and true, cannot _at present_ be
trusted to weigh and discriminate as nicely as one[6]; and the fact that
the _Daily Mail_ has the largest circulation of any morning paper is a
sufficient mark of the present capacity and inclination of the majority
to control public affairs more directly than they do. It is said that
the secrecy of diplomatic affairs breeds an atmosphere of suspicion; and
it might be said with equal truth that all secrecy of every kind is
always and everywhere the most unnecessary thing in the world.[7] But
the fundamental fallacy of all these arguments is that they treat
diplomacy as an essential of international relations, whereas it is only
an accident, a trapping, a convenience, or a common form. Its defects
are the result and the reflection of national opinion. Diplomatists are
no more responsible for the defects of international relationship than
seconds are responsible for the practice of duelling: and we may note
incidentally that duels are if anything more frequent when the place of
the seconds in estimating their necessity is taken by a democratic court
of honour.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: The duties of a jury are, of course, very carefully limited
by law. But even in this reduced sphere they are remarkable chiefly for
their incompetence, prejudice, inattention, and stupidity. See
particularly André Gide's _Souvenirs de la Cour d'Assises_, all the
implied criticisms in which apply, _mutatis quibusdam mutandis_, with
equal force to English and indeed to all juries.]
[Footnote 7: It is possible to argue, though of course impossible to
prove, that if every diplomatic document of recent years had been
immediately made public, the relations between the Powers would have
remained very much what they are with "secret diplomacy"; that "public
diplomacy" would if anything have intensified the existing jealousy and
distrust. As a matter of fact anyone who takes the trouble can
approximately discover the diplomatic situation existing at a particular
moment between any two Powers, even if he cannot know the verbal text of
a particular treaty. And if the supporters of "public diplomacy"
reasonably point out that "publicity" is desired only as a means to
ensure the democratic control of Foreign policy, the answer is that the
only way to ensure the democratic control of diplomats or any other
public servants is to educate the people.]
§ 10
A Note on Democracy
The outcry for "democratic" control demands, I think, a note, if not a
volume,[8] on the limitations of democracy. We are all, I suppose,
agreed nowadays that the government of the future must be democratic, in
the sense that every adult has a _right_ to full citizenship, and every
citizen can claim a vote. But it is obviously impossible for a modern
State to be governed directly by the voices of say fifty or a hundred
million citizens: there must always be a small legislative and a still
smaller executive body; and these bodies should obviously be composed of
the finest and most capable citizens. If then Aristocracy means, as it
does mean, a government of the whole by the best elements, it follows
that we are all equally agreed that the government of the future must be
aristocratic. The solution of this antinomy is of course that democracy
is not an end in itself, but only a means for the selection and sanction
of aristocracy.[9] The best elements in the population can only come to
the top if every man has an opportunity of using his voice and his
intelligence. We may note in passing that a common objection, raised by
writers like Emile Faguet, to the effect that democracy puts a premium
on incompetence by choosing its officials almost fortuitously from the
mob, is the exact opposite of the truth. It is our present regime that
leaves the selection of our rulers to the chances of birth or wealth or
forensic success. Real democracy will stimulate the selection of the
best, just as trade union standardisation of wages encourages the
employment of the better workmen.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Such a volume or something very much like it has actually
made its appearance, since these lines were written, in Professor Robert
Michels' _Political Parties_ (Jarrold, 1916).]
[Footnote 9: Cf. Bernard Shaw, in Pease, _History of the Fabian
Society_, p. 268: "Sooner or later, unless democracy is to be discarded
in a reaction of disgust such as killed it in ancient Athens, democracy
itself will demand that only such men should be presented to its choice
as have proved themselves qualified for more serious and disinterested
work than 'stoking up' election meetings to momentary and foolish
excitement. Without qualified rulers a Socialist State is impossible."]
§ 11
Diplomacy not bad in itself
The real importance of diplomacy, as I have said, is in the fact that it
is a mitigation of primary ferocity, a symptom of readiness to
negotiate, a recognition of the fact that disputes need not be settled
by immediate violence: and as such it points to a time when war may be
superseded, as personal combat has been superseded by litigation. The
man who puts a quarrel with his neighbour into the hands of a legal
representative is a stage higher in social civilisation than the man who
fights it out at sight. Diplomats are the legal representatives of
nations--only there is no supernational court before which they can
state their case.
Of course, it is perfectly true that the ultimate sanction of diplomacy
is always force, that international negotiations may always be resolved
into a series of polite threats, and that the envoy of the small and
weak nation rarely has any influence. Indeed there are few less enviable
situations than that of the minister of a very small State at the court
of a very large one. But the mere fact that force is their sanction does
not _ipso facto_ dispose of diplomatic and arbitrational methods. We all
know that the force at the disposal of the Sovereign is the ultimate
sanction of Law. But that force never has to be fully exerted because
there is a common consent to respect the Law and its officers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: Cf. Webb, _Industrial Democracy_, p. 718.]
§ 12
Manners no Substitute for Morals
The real difference between legal methods and the methods of diplomacy
(in which I here include international conversations of every sort) is
that the latter take place, as it were, in a vacuum. There is no
Sovereign, no common denominator, no unifying system in which both
parties are related by their common obligations. They exist and act in
two separate moral spheres, and no real intercourse is possible between
them. For all their ambassadors and diplomatic conferences the nations
of Europe are only wolves with good manners. And manners, as we all
know, are no substitute for morals.
§ 13
War a Moral Anachronism
Thus we come back to our thesis that war is not only possible but
inevitable so long as the extent of the moral sphere is conterminous
with the frontiers of the State. But merely to explain laboriously that
all this organised killing is not really a paradox but the natural
accompaniment of a certain stage of moral development, and to leave it
at that, would be rather to exaggerate our philosophic detachment. The
point is that we are long past the stage of regarding any but our
fellow-subjects as moral outlaws. For some years, to say the least, it
has been generally received that the sphere of morality is co-extensive
with mankind. In spite of certain lingering exceptions, it is to-day a
commonplace of thought that every human being on the earth is our
colleague in civilisation; is a member that is of the human race, which
finding itself on this earth has got somehow to make the best of it; is
a shareholder in the human asset of self-consciousness which we are
called upon to exploit. It would certainly be hard to find a man of what
we have called enlightened opinions who would not profess, whatever his
private feelings, that it is as great a crime to kill a Hottentot or a
Jew as to kill an Englishman. With certain lingering exceptions then we
already regard the foreigner as a member of our own moral system. The
moral sphere has already extended or is at least in course of extension
to its ultimate limits: and war is a survival from the penultimate stage
of morality. War, to put it mildly, is a moral anachronism. War between
European nations is civil war. Logically all war should be recognised at
once, at any rate by enlightened opinion, as the crime, the disaster,
the ultimate disgrace that it obviously is. Why then do we cling to the
implications of a system that we have grown out of? Why do we affect the
limitation of boundaries that have been already extended? Or is our
prison so lovely that though the walls fall down we refuse to walk out
into the air?
CHAPTER II
A sociologist wrote to the Vali of Aleppo, asking: What are the
imports of Aleppo? What is the nature of the water-supply? What is
the birth-rate, and the death-rate?
The Vali replied: It is impossible for anyone to number the camels
that kneel in the markets of Aleppo. The water is sufficient; no
one ever dies of thirst in Aleppo. How many children shall be born
in this great city is known only to Allah the compassionate, the
merciful. And who would venture to inquire the tale of the dead?
For it is revealed only to the Angels of death who shall be taken
and who shall be left. O idle Frank, cease from your presumptuous
questioning, and know that these things are not revealed to the
children of men.
The _Bustan of Mahmud Aga el-Arnauty_.
§ 1
The Armament Ring
What, in short, are the forces that make for the anachronistic survival
of war--apart of course from the defect that it is always with us, the
habit of inertia, sometimes called Conservatism?
The obvious answer is not, I think, the correct one. At least it is
correct as far as it goes, but leaves us very far from a complete
explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the
interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's
trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is
the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell
ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe
alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin
merchant and the procurer,[12] into the wildest part of the earth; so
absurd on the face of it is the practice of allowing the manufacture of
armaments to remain in the hands of private companies; that it is very
tempting to see in the great Armament Firms the principal if not the
only cause of modern war. Examiners of German militarism, most of them
stupid enough to quote Nietzsche, may be pardoned for emphasising the
political influence of Krupp; and since every great Power has a more or
less efficiently organised Krupp of its own, it would be permissible to
suggest that war would be already obsolete but for the intensive
cultivation it receives for the benefit of Krupp, Creusot, Elswick and
the rest. But it would be wrong; our syllogism would have a badly
undistributed middle. It is true that Krupp in particular, who is the
actual owner of more than one popular German newspaper, and other
armament firms in a smaller degree, exercise an enormous influence on
national opinion, create their own markets by the threat of war, and
would go bankrupt if wars should cease. You may also say that their
shareholders live by prostituting the patriotism of their
fellow-citizens: in short, you may denounce them with the most expensive
rhetoric to be had without doing them any injustice. But the fact
remains that their position with regard to war is exactly analogous to
that of the great breweries with regard to drunkenness. They live by
taking advantage of human weakness. It is quite accurate, therefore, to
describe their earnings as immoral, but they are no more the cause of
the immorality they exploit and undoubtedly encourage, than makers of
seismological instruments are responsible for the occurrence of
earthquakes. The interests of one trade alone, however powerful in
itself, would never be strong enough to plunge a nation into war. They
are, of course, accessories to the crime; but the militarism they are
guilty of fostering has other primary explanations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Several books have been published giving details of the
Armament Ring and international "Kruppism." I don't think that the
language here used does any injustice to the facts.]
[Footnote 12: See below, § 7.]
§ 2
Eugenics?
In this brief investigation of the possible causes of war, it must be
understood that what we want to find is what is called a "sufficient
reason" for its continued existence. The armament trades may supply the
means, the occasion, the stimulant, but their relation to it is not
essentially causal. Many writers of another school have attempted to
prove that the sufficient reason of war is a beneficent function of
which they believe it to be capable. This imaginary function is none
other than that of improving the race, and we may admit at once that, if
there were the slightest scientific basis for such a belief, the
bloodiest war would be morally justified, and it would be the religious
duty of every individual to kill as many as possible of his fellows for
the benefit of their descendants. But of course modern warfare so far
from improving the race must sensibly exhaust it. In ancient Sparta, and
generally whenever the conditions of warfare approximated to those of
personal combat, courage and the allied characteristics of mental as
well as of physical nobility must have had a survival value; whereas in
modern warfare which makes for the indiscriminate extermination of all
combatants, the result is exactly reversed. Our semi-scientific
militarists forget that the "survival of the fittest"[13] is in nature
essentially a process of selective elimination; and modern war is a
process of inverted selection which eliminates the brave, the
adventurous and the healthy; precisely those members of the community
who are best fitted to survive, that is to propagate their kind, in the
ordinary environment of political life. Conscription, indeed, spreading
a wider net than the voluntary system, may be described as an
institution for exposing the best citizens of a state to abnormal risks
of annihilation. As a matter of historic fact we are told, though I
don't know on what authority, that the Napoleonic wars, how much less
deadly than our own, reduced by an inch the average height of the French
nation.
So much, in brief, for the "scientific" justification of war. It is
evident that by the eugenic argument war could be defended only if we
agreed to send into battle precisely those men whom our recruiting
officers disqualify. A good deal might be said, from the sociologist's
point of view, in favour of a system of cathartic conscription which
would rejuvenate England with a watchword of "The Unfit to the
Trenches."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: They usually add to their mental confusion the elementary
blunder of using the word "fittest" in a moral instead of in its
biological sense.]
§ 3
Patriotism
If again there were any evidence to show that war and war alone kept
alive the spirit of true patriotism, it would be less easy to denounce
its manifold wickedness. For true patriotism, although like all
passionate emotion it involves a certain mental distortion, a slight
disturbance of the rational orbit, is yet one of those happy diseases
which relieve the colourlessness of strict normality. It is a magic, a
glamour, of the nature of personal affection, which only great poetry
can fully express, and volumes of bad poetry cannot quite destroy. It
has besides a real political value, binding the State together, and
giving it a stronger moral coherence than can be attained by any legal
or constitutional authority; a fact that is illustrated by those
distressful countries in which its limits are not conterminous with the
political boundaries of the State. I am inclined to think that just
because true patriotism is of the nature of a personal affection, it is
an emotion that cannot be inspired by an empire, any more than personal
affection can be inspired by a corporation or a joint-stock company.[14]
Certainly Imperialism more often gives rise to a sentimental worship of
force and a certain promiscuous lust for mere extension of territory
which are quite alien to the steady devotion of the patriot to the land
he knows.[15]
Unless one be a poet, it is difficult, as may perhaps be gathered from
the preceding paragraph, sufficiently to praise genuine patriotism
without falling into vague rhetoric. But I submit that there is nothing
to show that this political emotion is created, stimulated, or even
discovered by war. Actually it seems that the reverse is the case, if
one may judge by the fact that war is invariably accompanied by an
overwhelming outbreak of every spurious form of patriotism that was ever
invented by the devil to make an honest man ashamed of his country. True
patriotism is a calm and lovely orientation of the spirit towards the
vital beauty of England. It has no noisy manifestations and consequently
one may not be able to find it among the crowds who shout most loudly
for war.
One finds instead a sort of violent fever and calenture which not merely
deflects, as any emotion may, but totally inhibits the rational
operations of the mind. The newspapers supply a legion of witnesses.
Thus the _Evening Standard_ perorates against some pacificist lecturer
(who had attempted to clear his views from all sorts of
misrepresentations) with the magnificent comment that he had not
"repudiated his remarks as to the pleasure which the tune of the
Austrian National Anthem gave him."[16] But I should weary you were I
to transcribe a tithe of the stupid remarks made by persons in authority
under the influence of war. The record, I believe, in England is held at
present by Mr. Bodkin, K.C.
It may be said of course that men, and newspapers, are equally stupid in
time of peace; and I fear that fundamentally this is true. War does not
change their nature, but only brings to the bubbling surface the dregs
and vileness and scum. War does not change any one's nature; and that is
why it is vain to expect that under its influence those crowds will love
their country who never loved anything before. But if war cannot create
it may at least be supposed to discover and test the existent patriotism
of the nation. And this supposition is corroborated at first sight by
the realisation that hundreds of thousands, that actually millions of
previously ordinary young men have implied by enlisting their
willingness to die for England. One might, of course, reason that no
individual recruit really believes he is going to be killed, that each
boy thinks he will be one of the lucky ones who escape all the bullets
unhurt to enjoy an honoured return, that recruiting would have failed
entirely if the barracks were explicitly a grave and enlistment the
certainty of violent death or mutilation. But somehow I don't think that
would be a fair argument. It is more pertinent if less easy to remember
that a readiness to die for one's country is not the highest form of
political virtue. If it be, as it is, a solemn and wonderful thing to be
willing to die for the salvation (_ex hypothesi_) of England, it must be
much more wonderful and solemn to be willing to die in order slightly to
increase the income of one's family. And every schoolboy knows that the
Chinaman of the old regime was willing to have his head cut off for the
payment of a few dollars to his next of kin. Let no one ever deny our
soldiers the honour of their courage and nobility; but the fact remains
that the readiness to die for England is a less adequate test of
patriotism than a readiness to live for England; and if the readiness to
live for the State rather than for private interests had been for a
hundred years a social virtue whose votaries could be numbered by the
million, then indeed England would be to-day a nation worth dying for.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: If anyone were to suggest that this is disproved by the
unparalleled nobility of Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and
Indians in the present campaign, I should reply that they are actuated
by devotion not to the Empire but to England, not to the Company but to
the Chairman of the Company. This may be a quibble, but I think the
distinction is real. Anyhow, I leave it at that, as the point has no
primary relevance.]
[Footnote 15: See below, Chapter IV, § 5.]
[Footnote 16: The paragraph is worth preserving in its entirety: "Mr. W.
N. Ewer, who lectured at Finchley for the Union of Democratic Control,
has explained that the report which we published of his speech is
unfair, and that he is really in substantial agreement with Mr. Asquith.
This is disingenuous, and Mr. Ewer knows it is. He has not repudiated
the correctness of the report, which stated that he dilated on the
danger of British navalism, and declared that we must give up singing
'Rule Britannia!' nor has he repudiated his remarks as to the pleasure
which the tune of the Austrian National Anthem gave him. Does he think
that Mr. Asquith would substantially agree with that? Or the
country?"--_The Evening Standard_, July 26, 1915.]
§ 4
The "Moral Test"
The theory that war is beneficial as a moral test, a furnace in which
character is proved--_ut fulvum spectatur in ignibus aurum_--is that
generally adopted by the Christian Churches, who may be said without
disrespect to have taken every advantage of their founder's unique
reference to the sword. I cannot help thinking that there is something
fundamental in this ecclesiastical advocacy of war; that some
psychological theory could be outlined to correlate this almost uniform
advocacy with the facts that such religious men as Tennyson and Ruskin
were among the loudest in their support of the Crimean War, that such a
militarist as Rudyard Kipling in his best work (in _Kim_, in _Puck of
Pook's Hill_ and the intercalated poems, in the most successful of his
short stories) shows himself to be at heart a deeply religious mystic;
and that in France the very active Clerical party, one consequence of a
disestablished Church, is always closely supported by the Chauvinists.
In many cases, however, I have no doubt that the pious Christian,
finding himself confronted with war, and not having the moral courage or
the political detachment to condemn it, only applies automatically to
its justification the arguments which he habitually uses to explain the
existence of evil and pain. It is certain at least that the theories of
war as a Moral Test or a School of Character bear a strong resemblance
to the commonplaces of religious consolation which almost any good
Christian will offer to the bereaved and afflicted. Any one who has seen
an innocent friend slowly tortured to death by some vile disease will
know the futility of the Christian defence (for these religious
consolations amount theologically to a defence) that pain ennobles the
character and "proves" the moral courage of the sufferer.[17] The
leading fallacy of the defence that war, or pain, is valuable as a
moral test is akin to the common misunderstanding of the word "prove" in
the saying that "the exception proves the rule"; the truth being that a
strong and noble character, one of whose corollary qualities is a
capacity to bear pain, is not less strong and noble if it is never
called upon to exercise that capacity. The San Francisco earthquake was
not a blessing in disguise because it happened to "test" and "prove" the
strength and flexibility of modern American architecture.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: I cannot help reproducing here a letter which originally
appeared in the _Manchester Guardian_ at the time of the Boer War, and
is quoted by Mr. Norman Angell in _The Great Illusion_, p. 281.
"SIR,--I see that 'The Church's Duty in Regard to War' is to be
discussed at the Church Congress. This is right. For a year the heads of
our Church have been telling us what war is and does--that it is a
school of character; that it sobers men, cleans them, strengthens them,
knits their hearts; makes them brave, patient, humble, tender, prone to
self-sacrifice. Watered by 'war's red rain,' one Bishop tells us, virtue
grows; a cannonade, he points out, is an 'oratorio'--almost a form of
worship. True; and to the Church men look for help to save their souls
from starving for lack of this good school, this kindly rain, this
sacred music. Congresses are apt to lose themselves in wastes of words.
This one must not, surely cannot, so straight is the way to the goal. It
has simply to draft and submit a new Collect for war in our time, and to
call for the reverent but firm emendation, in the spirit of the best
modern thought, of those passages in Bible and Prayer Book by which even
the truest of Christians and the best of men have at times been blinded
to the duty of seeking war and ensuing it. Still, man's moral nature
cannot, I admit, live by war alone; nor do I say with some that peace is
wholly bad. Even amid the horrors of peace you will find little shoots
of character fed by the gentle and timely rains of plague and famine,
tempest and fire; simple lessons of patience and courage conned in the
schools of typhus, gout, and stone; not oratorios, perhaps, but homely
anthems and rude hymns played on knife and probe in the long winter
nights. Far from me to 'sin our mercies,' or to call mere twilight dark.
Yet dark it may become; for remember that even these poor makeshift
schools of character, these second-bests, these halting substitutes for
war--remember that the efficiency of every one of them, be it hunger,
accident, ignorance, sickness, or pain, is menaced by the intolerable
strain of its struggles with secular doctors, plumbers, inventors,
schoolmasters, and policemen. Every year thousands who would once have
been braced and steeled by manly tussles with small-pox or diphtheria
are robbed of that blessing by the great changes made in our drains.
Every year thousands of women and children must go their way bereft of
the rich spiritual experience of the widow and the orphan."]
§ 5
Trade
I shall never forget the tones of hoarse satisfaction with which a
vendor of the _Evening News_ disturbed the twilight of a May evening in
London, triumphantly proclaiming a "Great Troop Train Disaster." I had
often noticed with what apparent joy the newspapers announced the
sinking of a British cruiser; with what entirely neutral delight they
welcomed or invented the report of Terrible Slaughter on either side.
But somehow that hoarse and rufous man with the loose lip remained in my
memory and became for me a type of one element in the population to
which war was not unwelcome; the journalistic element that lives by
exploiting the sadistic curiosity, the craving for mean excitements, and
all the gladiatorial instinct of the modern world.[18] It soon became
clear that the newspapers were not alone in the commercial exploitation
of war. They were not even the worst offenders. The publishers were
hurriedly producing volume after volume of faked memoirs badly written
by imaginary governesses. The production of spurious memoirs and
"autobiographies," even if they are skilfully composed, is always
grossly immoral; and of the specimens occasioned by this war one may say
that if they had been genuine it would have been possible to attribute
the low morality of some Germanic princes to the literary style of the
English governesses who had had a share in their education. The
catchpenny manoeuvres of publishers are really only a branch of
journalism,[19] and such trivial offences were not, after all,
unexpected, because the very profession of journalism is to take
advantage. But the journalist is a man of straw who shows which way the
wind blows, and his raucous exultation over disaster was the manifest
symbol of a commercial exploitation of war by tradesmen and speculators
which soon became sensible from one end of belligerent Europe to the
other. Like the Vali of Aleppo, I am not good at statistics. It is well
known however without the assistance of a mathematician that in England
during the winter of 1915, when the cost of living had already risen by
nearly 50 per cent, wholesale dealers often kept provisions of all sorts
rotting in their stores rather than break the artificial scarcity they
had created; farmers would not sell fresh eggs when the price was
twopence-halfpenny, because they knew that in a week or two the price
for the same eggs would have risen to threepence. Here is a cartoon from
a Hungarian paper[20] showing the bloated profiteer of The Sugar Trust
laughing at the women who feebly attack his barricade of sugar loaves. I
mention it here because it is sufficiently remote from English affairs,
and because it happens to come to hand, and because it is a good
fragment of evidence, there being no reason why sugar should be scarce
in Hungary as an immediate result of the war. And from every country
between England and Hungary, from every country in Europe, can be heard
the same complaint, unmistakable but how much too feeble, the cry of the
people who discover that one of the horrors of war is Trade.[21]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: Cf. the present writer's introduction to Whyte-Melville's
_Gladiators_ in _Everyman's Library_, 1911.]
[Footnote 19: It was certainly, for example, the Headline Instinct which
caused Mr. John Lane, a publisher of some repute, to impose on Mr. Ford
Madox Hueffer's novel _The Saddest Story_, one of the most remarkable
novels of the century, such an absurdly irrelevant title as _The Good
Soldier_. _The Good Soldier_ was published in April, 1915. The evidence
that the publisher must have changed the title just before publication
is that an instalment of it had appeared serially as _The Saddest Story_
in the summer of 1914, and that as _The Saddest Story_ it actually
figured in Mr. John Lane's catalogue at the end of the book.]
[Footnote 20: _Matyas Diak_ of Budapest.]
§ 6
Trade in Time of Peace
It would not however be correct to infer that the sacrifice of national
welfare to commercial manoeuvres is a condition peculiar to war.
Modern commerce is essentially an art; the art of making people pay more
than they are worth for things which they do not require. And it is with
all the selfishness of the artist that it performs its usual operations.
Among all the unpublished detail of modern life hardly any class of
facts is more disquieting than that of commercial procedure and
achievement. The subject is too large to be reviewed in less than a
volume; and I can do no more here than suggest a few instances that
might be acquired by anyone who devotes his time to not reading the
daily papers.
The distribution and exchange of commodities are necessary to the
existence of the State; so necessary that it might be supposed that
their regulation would be one of the primary functions of government.
Proper systems of distribution and exchange correspond to the digestive
processes of the body, on which depend the proper nutrition of all the
parts and the real prosperity of the State as a whole; yet any
comprehensive plan for their control is still regarded as the most
unattainable dream of Utopia, and they are left to carry on as best they
can in the interstices of private acquisitiveness. National well-being
is not to be measured by mere volume of trade, which is the means and
not the essence of prosperity;[22] and prosperity can certainly never
exist when equitable distribution is hindered by a sort of fatty
degeneration of capitalism. But trade in itself is a necessary aliment
of the State, and its abuses ought not to be beyond remedy.
A few of these abuses are fairly obvious without a full inquiry, and
may be illustrated here because their existence in time of peace may
throw light on the operations of trade in belligerent states, and
indirectly, by suggesting a few of the results of war, may lead us to
some of its motives and occasions. Such abuses may be most easily
identified in opposition to the national rights which they infringe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: So in Germany the fixing of maximum prices for pigs and
potatoes was immediately followed by an almost complete withdrawal from
the market of potatoes and pigs--the German farmers refused to sell
except at their own inflated prices. Cf. quotations from the German
Press in _The New Statesman_ of January 29, 1916.]
[Footnote 22: "Ces choses sont plutôt des moyens que l'on emploie pour
travailler à faire prospérer l'Etat qu'ils ne sont l'essence de sa
prospérité."--Rousseau, _Political Writings_, I, 345 (C. E. Vaughan's
edition).]
§ 7
Duties of Commerce to the State
The State has a primary right to be fairly served. Prices should not be
arbitrarily raised by any wholesale merchant who happens to be in a
position to do so, or by any cartel of dealers in league for that
purpose. Prices should be regulated by the cost of production, and
should not be an indication of demand; they should rise beyond the cost
of production augmented by a fair profit only when the supply is
insufficient (production not being artificially restrained) to meet some
abnormal demand, and only as a means of checking and regulating the
excessive demand. We find instead that any dealer or group of dealers
will raise their prices almost absent-mindedly as soon as they are in a
position to meet a demand which cannot be postponed. Thus it is that
governments are habitually overcharged in all their contracts and
purchases; because governments have neither the time nor the opportunity
for casual dealings, and because they do not undertake such transactions
at all unless their absolute necessity has already been decided.[23] So
at the beginning of the war English warehouses were full of all sorts of
commodities required by the governments of the Allies; but the urgency
of war prevented any sort of bargaining; and the private merchants took
advantage of the situation to the amount of about two hundred per cent.
At present however I am dealing with trade in time of peace and I must
not flavour the ordinary facts with any consideration of War Office
contracts. It is enough to state the fact that in ordinary times the
private tradesman regards a special demand as an opportunity for raising
prices rather than as the stimulus of supply; a rule which is most
easily detected in the experience of Government departments.
The State, through its individual citizens, has a primary right to
obtain the particular commodity which it happens to prefer, without
restrictions imposed for the benefit of any particular tradesman. We
find instead that the ordinary purchaser no longer has any effective, or
selective, demand. He has to buy what he is given. The informal
organisation of the Trust system, primarily a financial operation,[24]
has involved the whole market in a network of interdependent industries.
The sale of the finished product is controlled and restricted by the
vendors of the raw material. Corn is imported by shipbuilders; ships are
built by iron merchants; iron furnaces are controlled by coal owners,
and coal mines are secured by money-lenders.
The system of the tied house, originally an indigenous corruption of the
liquor trade, is being extended to every industry in the land. We can no
longer buy the bread we like, but have to eat whatever by-product least
interferes with the miller's profits.
The consumer's loss of any power of effective demand would not
necessarily be of national importance, if at least there were any
guarantee that the unique commodity offered by the average trust system
were genuine and of good quality. One of the State's most elementary
rights is that of ensuring to its citizens a pure supply of elementary
commodities. Yet Commerce has taken no steps, even in its own
interests, to suppress the horrid arts of adulteration, in which the
motives of the thief usurp the methods of the poisoner, with results
which may be inferred from the meagre chronicles of the analyst.[25]
Education is the life of the State.[26] It is therefore of the gravest
importance that Commerce should in no circumstances whatever be allowed
to interfere with the education of the future citizens. Yet, before the
war, in spite of the legislation of the last fifty years,[27] no less
than a quarter of a million children of school age were exempted from
school attendance for employment in various occupations.[28] Even apart
from such improper exemptions the "School Age" fixed by law in itself
gives quite insufficient protection. The brain of a girl hardly begins
to wake up, or take any natural interest in the acquisition of general
ideas, before she comes to puberty. But all over London girls of
thirteen or fourteen leave school and are sent by their mothers to earn
half a crown a week matching patterns or sewing on sequins.
More generally, the State is entitled to demand from Commerce that it
should co-operate sincerely with the other elements in the State in
pursuing the real objects of civilisation, inspired by an altruistic
regard for the whole of which it is a part, that is by what is really
"enlightened self-interest"; by what Plato has called Temperance[29] and
Mr. H. G. Wells "a sense of the State."[30] We find instead that the
trader has "day and night held on indignantly" in his disastrous hunt
for markets, destroying by accident or design whatever amenity in the
world does not contribute to his "one aim, one business, one desire."
After all, in our present pre-occupation with the horrors of war, we
must not exaggerate their extent. War at its maddest rivals but cannot,
at present, surpass the mortality caused by tuberculosis, alcoholism and
syphilis, which peaceful Commerce, hand in hand with Christianity,
carries into the remotest parts of the earth. Some reader may have
noticed by this time that I am not a collector of statistics, but gather
my illustrations as I go from any scrap of paper that comes to hand. It
is a lazy trick; but at any rate one escapes the fallacy of
over-elaborated evidence, by calling as witness the man who happens to
be in the street at the moment. So at this point I happen to notice in
the _Manchester Guardian_ an extract from the report of the Resident
Commissioner in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate. This is
what it says of the natives:--
The cotton smock for women and the cotton trousers and shirts for
men, which in the mind of the people seem now so indispensable to
professed Christianity, while reducing the endurance of the skin,
render it the more susceptible to the chills which wet clothing
engenders. The result is colds, pneumonia, influenza--eventually
tuberculosis.
We may notice a not unexpected coincidence which the Resident
Commissioner apparently omits to mention. It is that "professed
Christianity," by insisting on the propriety of cotton garments for the
islanders hitherto well clad in a film of coco-nut oil and a "_riri_ or
kilt of finely worked leaves," is conferring a very appreciable benefit
on the Manchester trade in "cotton goods." "Our colonial markets have
steadily grown," says the Encyclopædia, "and will yearly become of
greater value." ...
On the same day as the issue of the _Manchester Guardian_ just quoted
there appeared in the _Times Literary Supplement_ a review of Canon C.
H. Robinson's _History of Christian Missions_, "a very sound
introduction to a vast and fascinating study." From this I gather that
there are few stories more romantic than the founding of the Uganda
Christian Church in British East Africa. At first progress was very
slow, and ... in 1890 there were scarcely 200 baptized Christians
in the country; yet by 1913 those associated with the Christian
Churches were little short of half a million.
So before Europe has shown many signs of convalescence, Africa is
already virulently infected. And "our markets will yearly become of
greater value."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 23: See, for instance, the Report of the Committee of Public
Accounts (commenting on the extravagance of Admiralty and War
Contracts), summarised in _The Times_ of August 19, 1916.]
[Footnote 24: See Orage, _National Guilds_, p. 170 ff.]
[Footnote 25: Unfortunately I can find no authority for the amusing
report that the annual export of "wine" from Paris is _greater_ than the
annual import.]
[Footnote 26: That is, of course, of the modern or democratic state.
Democracy and education are interdependent.]
[Footnote 27: As a matter of fact, no serious attempt to protect
children was made before the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878.]
[Footnote 28: Since the war there have been the most determined attempts
to destroy all the social legislation so painfully acquired. See G. D.
H. Cole, _Labour in War Time_, pp. 254-274.]
[Footnote 29: _Republic_; 432 A. [Greek: armouia tiui ê sôphrosunê
ômiôtai, k.t.l.]]
[Footnote 30: See _The Future in America_, and _New Worlds for Old,
passim_.]
§ 8
Restricted Sphere of Government corresponding to Restricted Sphere of
Morality
But to return to our sheep, or rather to those who fleece them,--there
is one cardinal proof that trade, in so far as it depends on private
enterprise, is a danger to the State, and is recognised as such. It is
that as soon as war comes, the nation in danger instinctively adopts
whatever measure of Socialism can be introduced during the temporary
inhibition of capitalistic methods. The actual coming of war induces a
brief panic in the marketplace, and during this momentary paralysis of
private acquisitors the State makes a desperate attempt to subdue their
activities to its own needs. By the mere instinct of self-preservation
it clutches at some rudiment of Socialism, and makes a diffident gesture
in the direction of nationalisation--(of the railways, for instance).
But the capitalists of England can point with pride to the fact that
they very soon pulled themselves together. I hope to show in the
following chapter that by the time the war was in full swing they had
made it their own, and had banished every trace of socialism, with the
relics of sanity and truth, to the confines of the Labour press.[31]
But still the danger was for the moment realised, and the attempt was
made, the desperate and unsuccessful attempt to pull and squeeze and
bind the institutions of capitalism into an organised system of
political obligations. It failed because the very abuses and
intemperances of our commercial system are a sign that the sphere of
government has not expanded with the growing complications of the modern
community. Nevertheless the attempt was made: but no corresponding
effort is being made to extend the system of moral obligations in which
we live.
For it is just as the sphere of morality is unduly restricted and fails
to correspond to the needs of humanity, that, on the political plane,
the unduly restricted sphere of government has never been extended to
include all the interrelations of industrial citizenship. Capitalism is
a survival of the penultimate stage of political development, as war is
a survival of the penultimate stage of morality.
The attempts both spasmodic and continuous to extend the sphere of
government, which now begin to affect nearly all serious legislation,
must remain incomplete without an analogous and indeed corollary
expansion of the moral system which will involve the obsolescence of
war.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: This seems to apply to all belligerent states. Certainly
very little sanity finds its way into Germany except through the pages
of _Vorwaerts_. It is therefore humiliating to be told that _Vorwaerts_
has a much larger circulation than any socialist paper in England.]
CHAPTER III
Hinc usura uorax auidumque in tempora fenus et concussa fides et
MULTIS UTILE BELLUM.
Lucan, I, 181.
Individuals are constantly trying to decrease supply for their own
advantage.--_Fabian Essays_, 1889, p. 17.
§ 1
Trade during the War
Trade during the war seems to have had a remarkably good time. In the
first year of warfare I began to collect a few facts in support of what
then seemed the paradoxical view that war was, in essence if not in
origin, a very profitable capitalistic manoeuvre; a view deduced from
the opinion I had formed _a priori_ of the nature of all modern
warfare.[32] Instead of a few corroborating voices I found testimony
abundant in every paper I picked up, besides the live evidence received
in private letters and conversations. This pamphlet being rather
philosophic than statistical, I have taken the easy course of printing a
selection of these testimonies, crude and undigested, in an appendix--a
cold storage of facts and figures that allows me to repeat with a quiet
conscience that trade is booming. The greater the war, apparently, the
greater the profits. In the words of the _Manchester Guardian_:--
The first full calendar year of war has been a period of
unparalleled industrial activity and, generally speaking,
prosperity in this country. Heavy losses and bad times have been
encountered in a few important industries, but these are balanced
by unprecedented profits made by a large variety of industries,
whether directly or indirectly affected by the war.[33] ... But it
would be a mistake to suppose that, while war manufactures
prospered, all other
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 32: See, for instance, my article "A Footnote to the Balkan
War," published in the _Asiatic Review_ for July 1, 1914. This opinion
is there expressed in the following words which I still think
substantially true, though one or two phrases are rhetorically
exaggerated.
"England and the rest of Western Europe have outgrown by about three
hundred years the time in the development of nations when fighting is
natural and even necessary. England, of course, continues to contemplate
war, and to be bluffed by the threat of war in the circumlocutions of
diplomacy. But her national welfare no longer requires war; and, if she
ever undertakes it, it will be at the bidding of merchants and usurers,
who do not represent even the baser instincts of the specifically
national spirit, but are wholly foreign and parasitic. On that occasion
the _Daily Mail_ and the Foreign Office will no doubt assure the British
people that the war in question involves the whole honour and welfare of
the State; and the people will believe it. But it will not be true. For
England is happily not, or not yet, a nation of shopkeepers; and it will
be only the shopkeepers whose welfare is concerned."]
industry languished and decayed. To prove the contrary and show
that only here and there were there heavy losses, we may quote some
figures compiled by the _Economist_....
And so forth.[34]
To this I will add only two typical paragraphs as a text for my
subsequent remarks, as I believe they suggest the general economic
process which enriches the particular industries to which they refer.
The first is taken from _the Sunday Pictorial_, of all papers.[35]
Immense increases in the profits of two shipping companies are, as
a result of the ceaseless rise in freights, disclosed in the
reports of two Newcastle lines published yesterday. The high cost
of freights is largely responsible for the dearness of food, coal,
and other necessities of life. The gross profits of the Cairn Line
of Steamships, Ltd., amounted to £292,108, and the net profits,
after deducting the special war taxation and other items, were
£162,689. A dividend of 10 per cent, with bonus of 4s. per share,
is recommended. This makes a total of 30 per cent, free of income
tax, as against 10 per cent last year, when the total profits
amounted to £97,335. Less than half of this company's capital is
paid up, the total authorised being £600,000; there are also
debentures of about £150,000.
The next quotation is from the _New Statesman_:--[36]
Glasgow is exceedingly prosperous, and iron and steel manufacturers
tell me that the next three or four years, peace or war, must mean
a period of prosperity for them. Government orders now absorb so
large a proportion of output that outside requirements are simply
not being met. Owing to the scarcity of shipping this deficiency is
not being filled by imports from America (the only other possible
source of supply), so that unfilled orders are accumulating. A
waggon manufacturer told me he had sufficient work in sight to keep
him going for five years. It must be remembered that part of the
cost of the war is being met temporarily by depreciation--railway
tracks, rolling stock, locomotives, etc., _to mention only one
industry_,[37] not being replaced as they wear out, or being
maintained to the minimum degree necessary. This means that,
although less obvious than the reconstruction of ruined parts of
Belgium, France, Poland, and Eastern Prussia, repairs and
replacements aggregating many millions sterling in cost will have
to be carried out after the war in countries that have not been
invaded. A peace boom in the iron and steel and shipbuilding trades
appears certain.
Here, before passing on to more general considerations, we may notice
incidentally--it is brought out in the first quotation--that the
taxation of war profits reduces them proportionately but can never annul
or quite overtake them. That is sufficiently obvious; but the fact must
be preliminarily emphasised because it is quite commonly assumed that
the mere imposition of a tax of 50 or 60 or 75 per cent automatically
solves the problem of war profits. As a matter of fact, taxation so far
from solving the problem leaves it essentially unchanged, and really
connives at and recognises the practice. The problem remains, in spite
of taxation, that one section of the nation is enriched by a process
which necessitates the misery and death of other sections. We may
therefore in a broad discussion of the problem leave out of account the
proposed and adopted palliatives of taxation.
Secondly, we may notice--this is brought out in the second
quotation--that profits directly produced by the war are not limited to
the period of the war. This again is really axiomatic, being only
another form of the platitude that it takes longer to construct than to
destroy: but it means that even a short war of sufficient intensity will
ensure a long period of profits, and therefore it noticeably aggravates
the conclusions to which I hope to lead.
A fundamental point is that the profit on freights, excused immediately
by the destruction of shipping,[38] leads indirectly to profits on such
other commodities as food and coal, not only on account of the actual
scarcity resulting, but also because any reason for increasing prices is
made a pretext for increasing profits.
But the scarcity of all general commodities is caused not only
indirectly by the primary scarcity of ships, but also directly by the
same conditions of warfare as those which affect shipping. That is to
say, just as the intensified activity of the nation at war creates a
livelier demand for ships, so it also creates a greater demand for all
the ordinary commodities of living: and just as war by destroying ships
reduces the available supply, so by its general destructiveness it
reduces the supply of other commodities: and just as war by destroying
ships makes extraordinary profits for shipowners, so by destroying
tables and teacups it makes unusual profits for the makers of tables and
teacups. In short, destruction creates demand, and demand gives occasion
for profit.
This is a disquieting statement; because though one might hesitate to
deduce from it that any particular merchant must be in his commercial
capacity a conscious advocate of war for the sake of gain, it certainly
suggests that the body of trade must automatically and by a sort of
instinct of self-preservation be an element in the nation that makes for
war.
That is the kernel of my thesis;[39] and it is certainly a happy
coincidence that the possibility of its truth seems at last to be
dawning on another writer, and one more expert than myself in the
handling of commercial theory. On the very morning after the last few
sentences were written the following paragraph occurred in Mr. Emil
Davies' "City" article in the _New Statesman_:--[40]
It is only as the reports and accounts for 1915 come out that a
correct idea can be formed of the benefit this catastrophic war has
been to the majority of our large industrial concerns. The
following is a list of companies whose reports and accounts have
appeared during the past few days. The difference between the
profits for the two years shown is even greater than appears, for
in practically every case the 1915 profit is stated after allowing
for the excess profits tax, additional depreciation or extra
reserves, most companies now adopting these and other devices to
render less conspicuous their war-time prosperity.
1914 1915
£ £
Smithfield and Argentine Meat Co. 25,732 142,055
Waring and Gillow 35,217 100,885
Projectile Co. 30,739 194,136
Lanarkshire Steel 28,144 45,985
Frederick Leyland Steamship 337,188 1,196,683
Sutherland Steamship 94,600 295,200
Waring and Gillow's sudden prosperity is not due to any better
business in the ordinary furniture trade, but to war contracts. The
Projectile Company figures are astonishing even for an armament
company; after applying £47,500 in satisfying the balance of the
prior claims of the Debentures, the Ordinary Shares receive their
first dividend--one of 50 per cent. No sane man would accuse
leaders of these great industrial concerns of doing anything to
bring about an outbreak of war; many of them have, indeed, paid a
heavy price for their prosperity in the shape of the loss of sons
or near relatives; but when all is said and done, the fact that a
war should put many half-bankrupt concerns on their legs, and make
fairly prosperous companies three or four times more prosperous
than before the war, is an influence in an undesirable direction.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: Moreover, as I hope to suggest later, even these losses to
a few individual _industries_ do not necessarily imply losses to the
_capital_ involved, which in some cases has been diverted or adapted to
other industries more appropriate to the times. For a review of Trade
profits in 1916 see the _Manchester Guardian_, January 1, 1917.]
[Footnote 34: See Appendix I.]
[Footnote 35: Quoted in the _New Age_, March 16, 1916.]
[Footnote 36: April 8, 1916, from the "City" article by Emil Davies.]
[Footnote 37: My italics.]
[Footnote 38: The rise in freights is a good example of the way in which
abnormal profits are extorted from the public as soon as any scarcity
puts them at the mercy of the trader. (See above, p. 45.) The rise in
freights is unalloyed profit, for the shipping companies have no
increased risk, since the Insurance Companies are guaranteed by the
State.]
[Footnote 39: Which was first drafted in a letter to _The Garton
Foundation_ more than a year ago.]
[Footnote 40: April 29, 1916. One might also mention for its
verisimilitude the situation described at the end of Mr. F. Brett
Young's novel _The Iron Age_ (Secker, 1916), in which the insolvent
ironworks of Mawne are saved in the nick of time by the declaration of
war.]
§ 2
Trade lives on Increasing Demand
All war, whatever temporary dislocation of business it may involve, must
ultimately, as a principal form of destruction, assist the intensive
cultivation of demand which constitutes nearly the whole of modern
trade. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century with all its
labour-saving machines was originally an economy of necessary
production; by the middle of the century it overshot its mark, and
hastened the world to the brink of the opposite disaster of
over-production. In the present commercial era we are still suspended
over that dreadful brink. Nothing can stop the accelerated flux of
mechanical production; and we are saved from falling into the abyss only
by the unnatural increase of ordinary consumption. The consumption of
the ordinary markets, even when stimulated by the most violent tonics of
advertisement, is strictly limited, and the limits have long been
overtaken. The accelerated consumption could only be maintained by the
discovery of new markets, which was undertaken by means of the political
catch-words of Imperialism and Colonial Expansion;[41] or else by the
wholesale destruction of existing supplies. As the number of new markets
and their capacity for consuming things they don't want is ultimately
just as limited as the number and capacity of home markets (for
obviously the time must come when all the Chinamen and Koutso-Vlachs and
South Sea Islanders have already been supplied with ready-made brown
boots and tinned salmon), only one method remained by which Commerce and
Industry might escape, or at least postpone, the penalty of half a
century of over-production. This was by the partial destruction of the
world's existing supplies. If this could be arranged, there might be a
genuine demand for them to be replaced.
§ 3
War a form of Destruction
Now as a form of destruction war is easily first. Quite apart from the
obvious destruction of commodities that takes place when a country is
ravaged and invaded, as in the case of Belgium and Northern France, it
should be remembered that the methods of supplying an army in the field
involve the sheer waste or destruction of very nearly half the food and
equipment provided.[42] This is not necessarily the result, as might be
expected, of official incompetence. It may on the contrary be the result
of official foresight, which must allow in warfare for all the changes
and chances of communication, and knows that it is better to waste a
million tons of beef than to risk the starvation of a single regiment.
Such waste, in other words, is a condition of warfare. Add to this the
preventive destruction of stores and baggage which takes place whenever
troops are compelled to retreat: in this way about a million pounds'
worth of stores were carefully burned before the evacuation of
Gallipoli; and not a hundred yards of trench is ever abandoned without
the jettison of about a hundred pounds' worth of equipment. Add to this
the fact that every shot fired, from the mere rifle bullet to the
largest shell, does a proportionate amount of material damage when it
finds its billet: the bursting of a six-inch shell will do, I suppose,
on an average, as much damage in half a second as an ordinary fire can
do in twenty-four hours. Add to this again the fact that the very force
which propels every bullet and every shell is released by destroying by
instantaneous combustion a certain amount of valuable chemical products.
Then, besides all this direct destruction of commodities which must
ultimately be replaced, or which at least some kind contractor may
plausibly offer to replace, consider for a moment the increased wear and
tear of every sort of equipment both civil and military, from
steam-rollers and rolling-stock to boots and bandages and
walking-sticks, which a state of war must involve. Or consider again
that the mere mobilisation of an army implies that several hundred
thousand men, whose annual income before was less than £100 a year, are
now living at the rate of £400 a year.[43]
Anyone who cares to examine in detail all these forms of waste and
destruction, and all these forms of unnatural and feverish consumption,
will begin to understand to what an extent war stimulates the demand by
which alone Trade can survive.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 41: Also, of course, by the campaign for Preferential Tariffs,
which, it was hoped, would have increased consumption by excluding a few
foreign competitors from colonial markets.]
[Footnote 42: Cf. the many stories of beef and other rations being
supplied to troops in such quantities that the units responsible for
their consumption were obliged to bury them. These stories come mostly
from Flanders. At home the same superabundance may have been the undoing
of many a Quartermaster-Sergeant, who, not knowing what to do with such
a plethora of beef, and having a proper superstition against throwing
away good food, was tempted to sell it for about a penny a pound to the
local butcher.]
[Footnote 43: And the fact that they are doing so at the public expense
is, of course, only an additional advantage to the traders who supply
their needs; as they do not risk losing any of their money through bad
debts.]
§ 4
War stands to benefit Neutral as well as Belligerent Nations but not to
the same extent
In Western Europe at least all markets are practically open markets. No
tariff however scientifically graduated will really divert the natural
flow of trade to any considerable extent.[44] Consequently it might
appear that all nations stand to benefit in the same way, but in varying
degrees, from the intense local demand set up in the nation at war. Thus
British Trade was exhorted in a sincerely rapacious article by Captain
Dixon-Johnson[45] to snatch the opportunity presented by the Balkan War;
and the unparalleled boom in American trade during the present war is
another obvious example. This suggests at once that the benefit
occasioned by war is not a national benefit, diffused vertically through
every class of the belligerent nation; but a class benefit diffused as
it were horizontally through the commercial strata of all nations within
supplying distance of the centre of disturbance. On the other hand, of
course, the immediate local demand is stronger than the demand
communicated to remoter markets and more easily supplied; in other words
the commercial class of the belligerent nation are more immediately and
more intensely benefited by the state of war than the same classes of
neighbouring nations, although in war as in peace the commercial classes
of every nation are one.[46] Also the outbreak of war, even if it does
not entirely sever a country from foreign sources of supply, is bound to
cause a certain dislocation; if communications are not altogether
interrupted they are more difficult and uncertain than in normal times;
so that the trade of the belligerent country is always given a greater
impetus than that of its neutral neighbours, and in such cases a
particular industry which has been threatened by the competition of
foreign imports may be actually rescued from extinction. Even the
temporary dislocation of trade is a benefit to trade in the nation at
war; for it enables existing stocks to be sold at exaggerated
prices.[47]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: From this it follows incidentally that a high tariff is of
no advantage to the community as a whole, but only to a particular
section of the community. For the idea that it will benefit the whole
community is based on the assumption that it is possible to divert a
particular sort of foreign import; actually the tariff will not exclude
the import if there is a natural demand for it, but it will provide an
excuse for every dealer wholesale or retail to increase his profit on
the article taxed by about double the amount of the tax; i.e. if an
imported article pays a duty of sixpence, the price to the consumer of
all such articles whether imported or home-made will be raised a
shilling.]
[Footnote 45: In the July, 1914, issue of the _Asiatic Review_, to which
I have already referred.]
[Footnote 46: I need hardly say that in speaking of the commercial class
I do not include its instrument the workers. The international Socialist
movement has not yet succeeded in uniting _them_; but the exhortation
addressed to them by Marx has been obeyed instead by the capitalists.]
§ 5
The greater the Capital, the greater the War Profit?
The over-production in modern industrial states, from which Trade can
only be saved by some such catastrophic remedy as war, may be attributed
not only to the tyranny of machines, but also to the financial jugglery
known as over-capitalisation. If it could be shown that
over-capitalisation were a consequence of national wealth it would
follow that the richer nations would enjoy a greater benefit from war
than their poorer neighbours. But this will only be true if we do not
measure national wealth by the average wealth of every citizen; if we
speak in this case of national wealth quite apart from any question of
its equitable distribution, and are careful to distinguish it from
national welfare; a wealthy nation in this case would have to mean a
nation blessed with a class of wealthy capitalists, or supporting a
large parasitic colony of the persons described as financiers; and such
a nation would have as a corollary to be blessed with a class of workers
disproportionately large and disproportionately poor. For if industrial
conditions are fair over-production is impossible.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 47: Here, for instance, is an illuminating sentence from a
private report on Greek trade during the Balkan Wars: "I commercianti
Greci hanno guadagnato molto durante la guerra, perchè hanno venduto
tutte le merci che avevano in deposito a prezzi molto piu alti, che la
gente era obbligata di comperare a cagione che non potevano importare
merci straniere."]
§ 6
The Blessings of Invasion
If war is regarded primarily as a commercial stimulant, we might carry
the argument farther and conclude that invasion and even ravage are
actually beneficial to the trade of a country that suffers them; for
ultimately they must make way for a direct demand on the spot for the
primary commodities of life. Houses, fences, roads, factories will all
have to be replaced. It is obvious that the war will have to be followed
by a time of rebuilding.[48] It might be urged that such a phase of
convalescence would be retarded or altogether prevented by the lack of
private capital for such an enormous enterprise. But private capital,
thanks to the credit system, is practically inexhaustible so long as it
is required for a genuinely productive purpose: and even if it failed in
this case to come forward, the money required would certainly be
advanced out of the indemnity which will have to be provided for the
invaded provinces, or would be guaranteed in some other way by the
Government concerned. In which case Trade, even after the conclusion of
peace, would rejoice in another period of Government contracts. If it be
admitted, however, that we have not sufficient data to make this
suggestion more than probable, we can at any rate be certain of the
effect produced by the mere numbers of an invading army or a defensive
garrison. The Jewish traders of Salonica enjoyed a time of unexampled
prosperity in 1912 and 1913, owing to the mere presence of the Turkish,
the Greek and the Bulgarian armies, to whom they sold out at their own
prices.[49] They are now repeating the process with the English and
French armies; and in the interval they were kept busy restocking the
Macedonian villages depleted or destroyed during the campaign of 1912.
As for the small shopkeepers of Flanders any member of the British
Expeditionary Force will tell you that they are at present so prosperous
that even a German bombardment will hardly drive them from their
counters.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 48: Since this chapter was written I have seen a pamphlet with
the following title: "The Chance for British Firms in the Rebuilding of
Belgium, by a Belgian Contractor. London, Technical Journals, Limited,
27-29 Tothill Street, Westminster."]
§ 7
The Luxury Trades don't do so badly
The most obvious if not the only exception to our tale of war profits is
to be found in the case of the parasitic industries which specialise in
the production of the unnecessary. It is not easy rigidly to define the
luxury trade, for the luxury of one generation is the necessity of the
next; but it is enough to suggest a broad idea of the industries that
fall under this heading. "The income-tax assessments show," says _The
Times_,[50] speaking of Berlin after nine months of war, "that among the
trades which have suffered most are fruiterers, breweries,
public-houses, bars, cafés, chemists and perfumers, goldsmiths and
silversmiths, jewellers, milliners, furniture and piano dealers, and
music and booksellers. Landowners, land speculators, builders and the
carrying trade have also suffered." We may also notice that in the early
months of the war Florence, the great market of the shoddy "souvenir"
and the "tourist's delight," suffered a good deal more than London,
although Italy still remained neutral. In London itself a good example
of the parasitic industry are the firms which make ingeniously useless
silver toys for rich people to give each other at Christmas.[51]
Many such industries may indeed have suffered in England, although many
of the trades mentioned in the Berlin list have not been affected in
London, and at least two of them have made conspicuous profits. But in
any case it is probable that they suffered if at all only during the
first period of the war, when the general feeling of strangeness and
insecurity was strong enough to inhibit the shopping instinct of the
wealthier classes. As soon as these became accustomed to the state of
war they reverted with even greater energy to their old pastime of
spending money: and meanwhile the luxury trades had acquired an entirely
new set of customers, for a large part of the profits accumulated in
other trades were now being spent by a newly enriched class who were
unaccustomed to save, for the simple reason that they had never before
been in a position to do so. Consequently the luxury trades after a year
of war had not only recouped their temporary losses but were doing a
bigger business than ever. The natural adaptability of the trades which
pander to fashion must also be taken into account. A number of them
after the first panic recaptured the failing demand by advertising very
simple modifications of their ordinary supply. Some, for instance,
turned to the manufacture of equally plausible superfluities of military
equipment--such as silver and gold identity disks and watches with
luminous dials and queer little hieroglyphs in place of the ordinary
figures. Trades already so well organised for exploitation could easily
defeat any general attempt at social economy. Thus for women of the
upper middle class the most obvious form of war economy was to carry on
with only a slight alteration of last year's dresses; and such was their
declared intention when their hands were forced by the Dressmakers'
revolutionary change in the fashion which substituted the full skirt for
the tight skirt of 1913-14. The extraordinary ingenuity of this move
was, not only that it thwarted any good intention of not buying a new
dress this year, it being manifestly impossible to "alter" a tight skirt
into a crinoline, but also that the extra cloth required for the
unusually full skirts more than compensated the trade for the continued
abstention of a few unfashionable obstinates, as well as for the extra
cost of labour.[52]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 49: One Jewish contractor supplied corn and fodder to all
three armies. As soon as his Turkish customers had capitulated, he
tendered for the supply of the victorious Greeks, and he still had
enough to spare for the Bulgarians when they entered the town.]
[Footnote 50: May 17, 1915.]
[Footnote 51: Such "labour-saving devices," for instance, as "poached
egg servers."]
§ 8
Trade Profits in war not shared by the Nation but confined to Employers
The trade profits which are thus directly stimulated by the conditions
of war, do not imply the prosperity of the Trade as a whole, if a Trade
is understood to mean a certain section of the nation including in a
sort of guild or hierarchy representatives of every class engaged in a
particular Trade. They do imply the prosperity of a particular class,
for they are all employers' profits, profits on the capital involved.
Unfortunately the profits of the Capitalists do not involve the profits
of the Labourers, and cannot therefore be tested by statistics of
unemployment. But of course the fluctuations of unemployment do very
materially affect the opportunities of Trade, and it might reasonably be
argued that the apparent profits created by War are really modified by
the conditions of the Labour market or otherwise equitably distributed
among the general population. Unfortunately it is quite easy to show
that the one policy of employers during the present war has been to
maintain their profits without any concern for the general population,
and that the effect of war has been to increase the profits of Capital
not only by increasing the demand but also by making the Employers
increasingly independent of the labourers' claims.
At the beginning of War the Employer, on the grounds of general
insecurity and "not knowing what was going to happen next," cut down
wages and raised the cry of "Business as Usual"; which meant that
business was so much better than usual that he was afraid it could not
possibly last. So he cut down wages, laughed at buyers who offered him
the usual prices, and charged £48 a ton for hides and 6s. 10d. for a
yard of cloth that usually cost half a crown. If the private buyer would
not pay his prices the Government would. It was indeed too good to last,
for such prosperity became impossible to conceal:[53] it also reduced
the margin of unemployment on which he had always depended, and he soon
found himself obliged to return to the normal rate of wages which he had
paid before the war. He was disappointed to find that "Business as
Usual" meant wages as usual, but he struggled on, imploring the
assistance of the Government in order to "capture Germany's Trade."
Worse was to follow: after nine months of war recruiting for the army
had begun in earnest, and "there was on the whole less unemployment in
Great Britain than at any previous moment in the present century."[54]
But he was determined to "carry on," and for the sake of the Government
introduced child labour into his workshops.[55] Meanwhile, however, the
cost of living was steadily rising, and after a year of war, and of
profits, the labourers' demand for an increase of wages could not be
altogether ignored. The employer decided to carry the war into the
enemy's country. The nation must hang together, he said, and all work
was practically national work. So he boldly accused his workmen of lack
of patriotism, and roundly declared that "but for the trade unions the
war would probably have been over by this time, with a victory for the
Allies.... Organised labour is the rotten limb of the body politic,
which must be cut off if health is to be restored to the system."[56] It
was hard work, but in spite of the shortage of labour and in spite of
the rise in the cost of living, he managed to hold wages down by
repeating that any demand for a rise in wages was unpatriotic.[57] One
by one, on the plea of urgent Government work, he obtained the
suspension of all Trade Union rules and thus deprived his workmen of
even the natural rights of negotiation; and when after fifteen months of
war they again ventured to raise their voices on the Clyde, he openly
accused them of being paid by German agitators.[58] On the whole
therefore he has been extraordinarily successful in keeping his profits
to himself, and as the present demand is likely to continue for some
time after the war, his chief anxiety at present is to maintain after
the war the compulsory relaxation of Trade Union rules which nothing
less than war could accomplish. The slight danger that a prolonged war
may kill off a considerable part of his margin of unemployment is more
than balanced by his successful introduction of women's labour: and he
means that War, in addition to the actual profits of his Trade, shall
give him the enormous potential advantage of having broken the Trade
Unions.[59]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 52: As a matter of fact, nearly all the luxury trades cut down
their scale of wages during the first year of the war; and many of these
ostentatiously gave to some War Charity a fraction of the sum thus
extracted from their employees. I suppose it would be libellous to give
examples.]
[Footnote 53: Though frantic attempts to conceal it have been made since
the Tax on War Profits was introduced.]
[Footnote 54: The _New Statesman_, May 22, 1915.]
[Footnote 55: See above, p. 47, note 4. Some illuminating details are
given in the _Nation_, May 22, 1915, concerning the unscrupulous plea of
Government work in order to excuse the employment of children.]
[Footnote 56: The _Saturday Review_, September 18, 1915.]
[Footnote 57: "The shortage" too was a permanent excuse just as good for
holding prices up as for holding wages down. Cf. a correspondent in _The
Times_, May 17, 1916: "This position of affairs makes one doubt if the
shortage in these articles (bottles, jars, tins, boxes, etc.) is as
stated, or that the shortage pays better and the various trades do not
wish the tension to be in any way relieved."]
[Footnote 58: I hope it will not soon be forgotten that _Punch_ was not
ashamed to endorse this charge.]
[Footnote 59: Cf. Mr. Emil Davies in the _New Statesman_, April 8, 1916:
"My impression is that the annoyance of Clyde manufacturers at the
present labour troubles is not wholly free from a certain grim
satisfaction. They are not anxious to see carried out the pledge that
shop conditions should go back to the pre-war basis, and, they argue, if
the men are discredited with the public, it will be all to the good of
the employers in the big industrial struggle they look upon as
inevitable after the war. They regard this struggle without anxiety and
are accumulating funds; some of them talk of special funds being created
for the purpose by the employers in association. These are the
impressions gained from conversations with prominent members of the
Glasgow business world."]
§ 9
Trade Profit and National Loss
It need not therefore be supposed that the War Profits, of which there
is such abundant evidence, conflict at all with Mr. Norman Angell's
contention[60] that all modern war, even if the military operations end
in a military success, is futile and unprofitable from the national
point of view. The general truth seems to be that War, whether it be
apparently victorious or apparently unsuccessful, is always profitable
for a small commercial class in each belligerent nation.[61]
Unfortunately the profits thus earned by the economic effects of war are
not diffused vertically throughout the whole nation from top to bottom,
but rather horizontally along a shallow commercial stratum in every
nation. In every nation war diminishes the national wealth, but
concentrates the residue with greater inequality in one particular
class. The representative of this class, commonly called the Capitalist,
is the real cosmopolitan, because his interests in each belligerent
nation are identical, and the war, successful or not, contributes to his
financial advantage. It is an illuminating coincidence that the classes
in every nation which most enthusiastically demand the violent
prosecution of the war seem to be proportionately anxious to annul the
hardly-won privileges of democracy. Thus the _Saturday Review_, in a
passage already quoted, solemnly, openly and unforgettably declares the
secret wishes of the militarists; and we may be surprised to consider
how many safeguards of democracy, how many rights of free thought and
free speech, how many of the precarious limitations of sweating and
child-labour and wage-slavery have been quietly suppressed since the
beginning of the war. But if war is ultimately unprofitable for the
nation as a whole, it might be argued that Trade itself must ultimately
be involved in the national loss. The answer is that even if the
Trader's interests were identical with those of the nation and were
ultimately bound to suffer with the nation as a whole, he would
undoubtedly ignore the possibility of a loss so much remoter than his
immediate and obvious profits; especially as he is certainly ignorant of
the economic fact that in modern times military victory and military
defeat are equally unprofitable, and if he ever did pause to consider
the results for the whole nation he would certainly, perhaps in good
faith, identify the national interest with his own, and assume, for
psychological rather than economic reasons, that his own interests
demanded a military victory; real ignorance and emotional excitement
sufficing to explain his apparently hypocritical professions of
patriotism. As a matter of fact however his private interests are not
dependent on those of the whole nation; for commercial wealth is not the
same as national wealth, and prosperous Trade is quite consistent with
national unhappiness. The average citizen of Switzerland is more
contented than the average citizen of any of the great commercial powers
of the world; and some of the causes that make for commercial
prosperity, causes of which War is not the least effective, actually
decrease the civic efficiency of the greater number of the population,
and reduce their chances of happiness. "If an expanding trade," writes
Mr. R. B. Cunninghame Graham,[62] "is the sure sign of national
happiness clearly the four countries, the figures of whose trade are
tabulated (Chile, Peru, Brazil and Argentine) should be amongst the
happiest in the world. Yet still a doubt creeps in whether expanding
Trade is the sure test of happiness; for recently I have revisited some
of the countries of the River Plate that I knew thirty years ago, and it
appears to me that they were happier then. True, they were not so
rich.... Wealth has increased, but so has poverty...."
War is an artificial process for accelerating that concentration of
wealth in the hands of a small class which distinguishes the present
unholy stage of political development.[63]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 60: _The Great Illusion, passim_.]
[Footnote 61: This is not necessarily inconsistent with H. N.
Brailsford's similar remark (_The War of Steel and Gold_, p. 163): "War
is a folly from the standpoint of national self-interest; it may none
the less be perfectly rational from the standpoint of a small but
powerful governing class."]
[Footnote 62: Reviewing a work on South America in _The Nation_,
November 6, 1915.]
[Footnote 63: This process is further accelerated by the fact that the
War is being paid for very largely by means of Loans, subscribed
naturally by the richer classes; in future the richer classes will be
receiving the interest on these loans. But in order to pay this interest
the State will have to resort to taxation, some part of which will fall
presumably on the poor. See Professor Pigou's _Economy and Finance of
the War_.]
CHAPTER IV
Candide était étendu dans la rue et couvert de débris. Il disait à
Pangloss: Hélas! procure-moi un pen de vin et d'huile; je me meurs.
Ce tremblement de terre n'est pas une chose nouvelle, répondit
Pangloss; la ville de Lima éprouva les mêmes secousses en Amérique
l'année passée; mêmes causes, mêmes effets: il y a certainement une
traînée de souphre sous terre depuis Lima jusqu'à Lisbonne. Rien
n'est plus probable, dit Candide; mais, pour Dieu, un peu d'huile
et de vin. Comment, probable? répliqua le philosophe; je soutiens
que la chose est démontrée.
Candide perdit connaissance, ... et Pangloss lui apporta un peu
d'eau d'une fontaine voisine.
VOLTAIRE, _Candide_.
§ 1
Dialectics round the Death-bed
Philosophical aloofness is all very well in its way, but while we argue
about economic causes and attempt to induce a philosophy of earthquakes,
our bright young democracy lies bleeding under the ruins. The urgent
necessity is a little first aid, a little cessation of the killing. I
don't know how many young men in different parts of the world have been
deliberately and scientifically murdered during the writing of this
protest. England alone, who has been criticised for her delay in
exposing her youth to the slaughter, is having about half a million of
her best citizens stabbed or pierced or crushed or mutilated or poisoned
or torn to pieces in one year[64] of modern warfare. And life is not the
only instrument of vital progress that is being thrown away. Britannia
has beaten her trident into a shovel, and with it is shovelling gold;
and not only gold, but youth and love and happiness into the deep sea.
The belligerent nations are frantically engaged in destroying two
thousand years of education and all the accumulated capital of humanity.
Only the enemies of civilisation, the sellers of arms and the sowers of
hatred, are growing rich on its ruins. It is impossible to deny that the
longer the war continues the greater will be the subsequent sufferings,
spiritual and material, of every nation engaged. It is impossible to
maintain that any nation or class or individual will be any better in
any respect for the Great War, with the single exception of that
parasitic class who, as a class, and therefore perhaps not consciously,
are chiefly responsible for its inception. We must have Peace first and
congresses afterwards. The survivors of civilisation cannot discuss a
lasting settlement while they are still under fire.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 64: The total British casualties from the beginning of the war
till July 18, 1915, were given as 321,889, of whom 61,384 were killed.]
§ 2
German Responsibility for the War
Nor is it necessary to continue the slaughter while we argue about which
belligerent must bear the chief responsibility for the outbreak. The
dialectical exercises of the German Chancellor and Mr. Asquith are so
futile that they remind us only of two naughty children who drag out
their squabble with stubborn outcries of "He began it." The first
consideration is to stop fighting. Such academic discussions are
necessarily endless, for the simple reason that every nation has its
faults, to which criminal motives can always be attached: every nation
has its fools, whom its enemies can describe as typical representatives.
The question of responsibility for the Great War must be left to the
historians of the future. I am quite confident (though even Viscount
Grey or Professor Gilbert Murray cannot prove) that they will hold
Germany responsible: but I am equally confident that the blame they
throw on the nation responsible for the war will be less pronounced than
the praise they will reserve for the nation which first has the courage
to speak of peace. My belief in Germany's responsibility is based
largely on German apologetics and strengthened by the evidence of
commercial conditions in Germany before the outbreak. Professor
Millioud, for instance, has shown that "German industry was built up on
a top-heavy system of credit, unable to keep solvent without expansion,
and unable to expand sufficiently without war."[65] Or if a good
working test of German responsibility were needed it would be sufficient
to point out that no nation innocent of aggressive intentions would have
drafted such an ultimatum as that which Austria, with German connivance,
sent to Serbia; and that no nation anxious for war would have drafted
such a conciliatory reply as that which Serbia returned to Austria by
Russia's instructions. It is in fact clear that as long ago as 1913
Austria had determined to crush Serbia, and that in 1913 that
determination was only postponed; and postponed not, as we thought at
the time, by the tact of Lord Grey at the Conference of London, but only
by Italy's refusal to join in the adventure, as we now know from the
revelations of San Giuliano and Salandra. Similarly, knowing as we do
that England is no exception to the rule that no imperial nation can be
wholly compact of righteousness, we might hesitate to accept _The
Times'_ version of British innocence, and we might hesitate to accept
Lord Bryce's report on the German atrocities in Belgium, knowing as we
do that it is based almost entirely on the hearsay evidence of refugees
who would be anxious to distinguish themselves as witnesses from the
general ruck of destitution; but it happens that the general charges of
German aggressiveness and German brutality are fully corroborated by
German literature.[66] Unfortunately these distinctions between brutal
and chevaleresque methods of warfare remain only questions of method;
they concern manners rather than morals, and are as irrelevant to our
hopes for the abolition of war as the questions of diplomatic method
already mentioned.[67] Equally irrelevant, in any discussion of the
possibility of substituting "compulsory arbitration" for war, is the
attempt to distinguish between aggressive and defensive war, or to
throw all the blame of aggression on either of the two belligerents; for
the simple reason that each belligerent will perhaps never believe and
will quite certainly never admit that his own intentions were anything
but defensive or altruistic.[68] The _locus classicus_ for such
protestations of innocence occurs in the Italian Green Book, where
Austrian diplomats may be found declaring, _with every appearance of
sincerity_, that the invasion of Serbia was a purely defensive measure.
And in a sense, in such a well-armed continent, every aggression is
indeed a fore-arming against the future. It might also be suggested that
the crime of aggression is an offence not against an individual but
against the peace of the community: and until the European community is
constituted the guilt of such a crime cannot be brought home to either
of the belligerents.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 65: _The Ruling Caste and Frenzied Trade in Germany_, by
Maurice Millioud, Professor of Sociology in the University of Lausanne.
(1915.) Reviewed in the _Manchester Guardian_ by R. C. K. E.]
[Footnote 66: All that we need know, for instance, of German military
conduct in Belgium is contained in the following communication made to
the _Kölnische Zeitung_ by Captain Walter Brum, adjutant to the
Governor-General of Belgium, who may be presumed to know the inner
history of these appalling transactions:--
"The principle according to which the whole community must be punished
for the fault of a single individual is justified by the theory of
_terrorisation_. The innocent must suffer with the guilty; if the latter
are unknown the innocent must even be punished in their place, and note
that the punishment is applied not _because_ a misdeed has been
committed, but _in order that_ no more shall be committed. To burn a
neighbourhood, shoot hostages, decimate a population which has taken up
arms against the army--all this is far less a reprisal than the sounding
of a _note of warning_ for the territory not yet occupied. Do not doubt
it; it was as a note of warning that Baltin, Herve, Louvain, and Dinant
were burned. The burnings and bloodshed at the opening of the war showed
the great cities of Belgium how perilous it was for them ..." etc.]
[Footnote 67: Chapter I, §§ 9-11.]
[Footnote 68: See below, note on p. 113; and compare Brailsford, _The
War of Steel and Gold_, p. 22, on "preparations which are always
supposed to be defensive," and p. 264, on the methods used to support
the plea that large navies are purely "defensive."]
§ 3
The Value of German Culture
The question whether Germany is actually attempting or would be
justified in attempting to impose her culture on the rest of Europe; or
whether England has good reasons for the limitation or suppression of
German culture, is another side-issue. German culture (in Matthew
Arnold's correct use of the word, meaning, that is, the average of
intellectual and social civilisation), has not on a general inspection
much to be proud of. The modern literature of Germany is largely a
transcription of Russian, French and English authors, and it is
significant that among foreign authors the widest success is reserved
for purveyors of _le faux bon_, writers whose work is distinguished by
its spirited failure quite to attain the first-class.[69] The most
promising of modern authors writing in the German language, Schnitzler,
is an Austrian Jew. Hauptmann, the most distinguished and original of
German dramatists, has for thirty years been writing plays which would
pass for imitations of Mr. John Galsworthy's failures. Sudermann's style
reminds one of a snail crawling over the Indian lilies which he
describes.... Germany, it is true, has reason to be proud of her
theatres, but that is a matter of State enterprise, rather than an
indication of national culture. The German State has been efficient
enough to perceive that good theatres are a fundamental necessity of
national education, and that good theatres, owing to the excessive rents
they have to pay, can never be kept going without a State subsidy. But
these admirable theatres can hardly be called the vehicles of a high
native culture. Their famous Reinhardts are more efficient only because
more acquisitive than our own Jewish impresarios. The ideas they have
acquired are chiefly Russian or English: and they have profited by the
ideas of Granville Barker and Gordon Craig in order to produce the plays
of Shakespeare and Shaw--(just as industrial Germany profited by the
ideas of Bessemer[70] and Perkins). Germany's claim to artistic
vitality, to genuinely original culture, can be supported only by a
certain distinct excellence in sculpture and caricature, two arts which
often seem to go hand in hand, perhaps because both are based on a
precise simplification of form. But for the activity of a small band of
sculptors and caricaturists centred for the most part in Munich,[71] we
might be content to regard Germany not as a fount of culture but rather
as one of the world's workshops, a well-organised _ergastulum_ for
dealing with the drudgery of modern civilisation, for manipulating
secondary products and extracting derivatives, a large factory for the
production of dictionaries, drugs and electrical machinery.[72]
The extraordinary efficiency of Germany, _as a workshop_, is not due to
any intellectual pre-eminence of the nation as a whole. It is most
clearly and emphatically due to the fact that the German autocracy,
whatever its political iniquity, has had the intelligence and the
national solidarity to choose its business men from among the brains of
the community. In Germany any man of conspicuous intellectual capacity
may be picked out, roughly speaking, and assigned to the direction of a
particular industry. In England we achieve inefficiency by the contrary
process, and are only willing to regard a man as capable and revere him
as an "expert" if he happens to have been occupied exclusively for a
certain number of years in the narrow routine of a particular subject.
This pernicious fallacy of the "Expert" is actually preached in England
as a means to the very Efficiency which in fact it almost invariably
excludes. It is commonly assumed that no man can write a good play
unless he has been a bad actor, or that a retired admiral, quite
incapable of grasping any general idea that was not popular in the Navy
twenty years ago or in the smoking-room of his club, would be better
able to direct the affairs of the Navy than Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr.
Balfour.[73] There is a similar outcry for a government of "Business
Men," although anyone who happens to have heard a couple of average
business men discuss a problem of their own business in one of their own
offices will hardly be able to deny that a capable poet and a capable
painter would have settled the question in a quarter of the time.
Instead of superstitiously believing that only "Business Men" can be
efficient, Germany picks out her business men (and her bureaucrats) for
their general efficiency. She has attained efficiency by abandoning the
fallacy of the Expert in favour of the maxim of Confucius--"the Higher
type of man is not like a vessel which is designed for some special
use."[74]
But from the fact that German industry and German theatres are better
managed than our own it does not follow that there is any natural or
national antagonism between England and Germany. The real hatred of
Germany if it exists in England at all should be found among what it is
becoming the fashion to call "the intelligentsia." Such a purely
intellectual hatred of the sentimental melodrama of _Faust_ and of the
semitic luxuriance of Wagner and Reinhardt is not likely to become a
democratic motive in England. Here brains are always unpopular, and Park
Lane will never be stormed by the mob until it is inhabited by the
Bernard Shaws, the Lowes Dickinsons and the Bertrand Russells, instead
of by German financiers.
There is no national hatred between England and Germany. The two peoples
are natural friends. Even the men in the trenches (or perhaps I should
say particularly the men in the trenches), fraternise with their
opponents whenever they get the chance.[75] Even now a press campaign of
a few months would suffice to make Germany popular in England; and if
that were ever to happen, which is not improbable, only the
"intellectuals," who are most strongly opposed to this war, would still
find much to dislike, but not to fight about, in the national culture
produced by the German character.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 69: E.g. Oscar Wilde and Artzibashev.]
[Footnote 70: "The whole industrial expansion of Germany dates from the
introduction of the Bessemer process in 1879, by which its supplies of
iron became possible to work at a profit."--_Bertrand Russell_.]
[Footnote 71: It is unnecessary to refer at length to the world-famous
caricaturists of _Simplicissimus_, although it may be noted that the
best of them, Gulbrannson, is a Norwegian, while his chief rival, Heine,
is a Jew. Munich sculptors whose names might be mentioned are
Hildebrand, Taschner, Hahn, and Wrba.]
[Footnote 72: Even such scientific achievements as those of Ehrlich and
Ostwald should be regarded as results of regulated industry and diligent
experiment.]
[Footnote 73: Another instance of the fallacy is the quite unjustified
prejudice in the Army in favour of "Regular" officers.]
[Footnote 74: The foundation of German business efficiency not on the
practical science of the specialist but on theoretic and general mental
exercise is further illustrated by the great and increasing prevalence
of Latin and Greek in German education ... while again our own "Business
Experts" are reversing the process. The passages that follow are quoted
from a letter of Dr. Rice Holmes in _The Times_ of August 11, 1916.
"In German schools not only are classics taught more systematically and
more thoroughly than in all but a few of our own, but they are learned
by a greater proportion of the population; and, moreover, the hours
devoted to natural science in those schools in which it is taught are
fewer than in our public schools.... Since 1903 the number of German
boys receiving a classical education has steadily increased. In 1904
there were 196,175 pupils in schools (_Gymnasien_ and _Realgymnasien_)
where Latin is compulsory, of whom 153,680 belonged to the classical
schools (_Gymnasien_), and therefore learned Greek as well (W. Lexis,
_Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich_, ii. 218); in 1911, as Mr. R. W.
Livingstone has shown (_The Times Educational Supplement_, April 4, p.
49, col. 2), the corresponding figures were 240,000 and 170,000; and in
1908, 'out of a total of 31,622 students entering 18 out of 21 German
universities (Munich, Erlangen, and Wurzburg not reporting), ... only
7-1/2 per cent entered without Latin or Greek' (Professor Francis W.
Kelsey, _Latin and Greek in American Education_, 1911, p. 43). "Möge das
Studium der griechischen und römischen Literatur immerfort die Basis der
höheren Bildung bleiben." So wrote the greatest of the Germans; and the
countrymen of Goethe, whose genius was scientific as well as poetical,
have not forgotten his words. On the other hand, in the modern schools
(_Realgymnasien_ and _Oberrealschulen_) only a small fraction of the
time-table--from two hours a week (out of twenty-five) to six (out of
thirty-one)--is devoted to natural science. To anyone who has read
Matthew Arnold's _Higher Schools and Universities in Germany_, or Dr. M.
E. Sadler's _The Realschulen in Berlin_, or who is acquainted with the
opinions expressed by Helmholtz, A. W. Hofmann, Bauer, and other
'eminent scientific professors,' it will not appear paradoxical that the
object of thus restricting the hours devoted to the teaching of natural
science in schools is to promote the scientific efficiency of the German
nation. It was with this object that by the regulations published in
1901 the time devoted to Latin in the _Realgymnasien_ was increased. And
those who do not learn natural science learn what for the nation is
equally important--the value of scientific method."]
[Footnote 75: The Daily News, October 20, 1915:--
"A pathetic story is told in the _Vorwärts_ by Herr Adolf Köster (who
acts as war correspondent for the German Socialist Press) in connection
with the recent fighting at Hooge. A German soldier told him of a young
Scotsman whom he had killed with a hand-grenade in whose pocket he had
found a little pocket-book:--
"'We looked through the booklet. It contained postcards from the front,
from home, from a sister and from a sweetheart--photographs from the
battlefields of brave soldiers and from home. There was also a small
amateur photograph, rather badly made, of a young girl sitting at a
typewriter. She had blonde hair and on the back of the photo she had
written: "Look at the waves of my hair and note also how very diligent I
am" (English in the original). One of us asked the soldier to give him
this photograph. But he replied: "You can take the whole book, photos,
postcards, etc. But this picture I will keep in memory of my friend." By
"his friend" he meant the Scotsman whom he had killed by his
hand-grenade.'"]
§ 4
The Manufacture of Hatred
But if there is no natural hatred between the two belligerent
protagonists, there is a feverish production of the artificial variety.
Indeed this diligent manufacture of hatred is probably the most
demoralising result of warfare, particularly disastrous in its ethical
effect on the individual. It proceeds by the ordinary methods of deceit,
suppression of the true and suggestion of the untrue, and by means of
the newspapers this process of moral degeneration is sometimes actively
directed, sometimes only permitted or encouraged by the Governments
concerned. The London press is always ready to swallow the pathetic
fabrications of unscrupulous refugees, and publishes with joy any
Rotterdam rumour about German bestiality; but refuses to print any
report however authentic which ventures to suggest that the Germans are
as human as ourselves. There was, for instance, a Canadian woman, Dr.
Scarlett-Synge, who under the aegis of her medical diploma, returned
from Serbia through Germany, and discovered that some of the German
internment camps are not as bad as they are commonly believed to be.
Whatever her qualifications and opportunities for forming a correct
opinion, and they happen to have been particularly good, there is no
doubt that this woman's report was of the highest interest. Yet not a
single daily paper in England would consider its publication, on the
ground presumably that it might reduce the national inflammation and
thereby "prejudice recruiting." As if true patriotism, sane and lovely,
had anything to do with the pathological condition of hatred.
"Recruiting be damned," says the patriotic philosopher, "_odium nunquam
potest esse bonum_."[76] The method of distortion is also abundantly
used by journalists of both parties. German hatred of England has often
been stoked up by isolated mistranslations of sentences from _The
Times_, and English and French journalists have not been slow in
following the German example. It is said that after the fall of Antwerp
the _Koelnische Zeitung_ announced that "as soon as the fall of Antwerp
was known the church bells in Germany were rung," a harmless message
which was successively distorted by the _Matin_, the _Daily Mail_, and
the _Corriere della Sera_, until it finally reappeared in the _Matin_ in
the following form: "According to the information of the _Corriere della
Sera_ from London and Cologne it is confirmed that the barbaric
conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their
heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living
clappers to the bells with their heads downwards."[77]
The Manufacture of Hatred is unfortunately become a part of the
Nationalist Movement in nearly all modern European States. The spurious
Nationalism which is the result not of race but of education, depends
for its existence almost entirely on so-called ethnological propaganda
and continues to thrive by the cultivation of two propositions, neither
of which is true: that all the members of one national group are
racially different from all the members of the neighbouring group; and
that this racial difference naturally and necessarily and properly
implies the mutual hatred of the two nations. They proclaim, in fact,
that certain nations are the "natural enemies " of certain others, by
hating which they are only fulfilling the national function of
self-realisation. By such arguments, which have no genuine ethnological
foundation, the false prophets of nationalism are filling Europe with
the racial prejudice of artificial Kelts, artificial Poles, and
artificial Teutons. Of course race hatred between Slav and Teuton is no
more "natural" than family hatred between Jones and Robinson; and even
if it were, even that is if the cultures of two neighbouring races were
mutually exclusive, it could still be argued--as it must in any case be
argued--that no nation is racially pure. The last "Pole" I met proudly
professed that the hatred of Russia was _in his blood_. Yet he was born
in Bessarabia, and it was therefore not surprising that his facial type
was distinctly Roumanian; he came, that is, if race means anything at
all, of a Græco-Latin stock, and his hatred of Russia, which seemed to
be the beginning and the end of his programme of "Polish nationalism,"
was the result of a few years of neglected education. Half the
conflicting "Nationalisms" of Europe are programmes of artificial
hatred, the propagandists of which may actually be of the same blood as
their opponents; a single generation suffices for the manufacture of the
racial enthusiast, which is often completed by a modification of the
family name. Even Greeks and Bulgars are frequently of common descent.
When a Macedonian village changes hands the Greek Karagiozes has been
known to develop into the Bulgarian Karagiozoff; and a Mazarakis will
boast a racial incompatibility with his second cousin Madjarieff. The
same process for the manufacture of nationalism may be detected at the
other end of Europe: at Mons of glorious memory there was a Walloon with
the good old Walloon name of Le Grand, whose grandfather had been an
equally enthusiastic Fleming with the good old Flemish name of De
Groodt.
True nationalism may indeed be differentiated by the absence of this
artificial element of ethnological hatred. True nationalism is simply
the feeling for the small independent community, a movement for the
autonomy of the local group. No true manifestation of the nationalist
movement in Europe is ever opposed to other nationalisms; but all alike
are involved in a desperate political conflict with their common enemy
Imperialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 76: Spinoza, _Ethica_, IV, 45.]
[Footnote 77: _Labour Leader_, March 30, 1916, quoting an address by Mr.
Arthur Ponsonby, M.P.--I have not been able to verify these references,
so I give the story only as an example of the method of progressive
distortion, and not as one that actually occurred, though it may have
done so.]
§ 5
Imperialism the Enemy
Imperialism, on the other hand, is the feeling for large dominions and
is very often only an unreasoning lust for the possession of
territory:[78] surviving perhaps from the time when the land of the
community was regarded as the reserved hunting-ground of the tribal
chief, or at least as the private estate of the national monarch. But in
so far as this passionate desire for extending the superficial territory
under the central government is a reasoning desire, in so far that is as
attempts have been made to justify by retrospective theories the almost
instinctive achievements of painting the map red, it is fairly clear
(although the issues have been confused by altruistic and Kiplingesque
but not by any means unfounded views about the White Man's Burden) that
Imperialism is based on the insatiable claims of over-productive
commerce. Commerce at any rate is the _ex post facto_ excuse for the
foundation of the British Empire, and if it can no longer be pleaded as
a reason for the maintenance of the British Empire, it is simply because
the British Empire is no longer an empire, but for the most part a
federation of autonomous states.[79] But Imperialism has only been
scotched by the unconscious wisdom of English political development. It
still unhappily survives not only in the intermittent demand for the
acquisition of fresh colonial territory, but also, in its crudest form,
without even the shadow of an excuse commercial or altruistic, in the
continued subjection of Ireland to English rule. We must not be
surprised if the imperialistic elements of the State receive after the
war a new lease of life from the mutual encouragement of commerce and
militarism.
The commercial classes of course support Imperialism because, with an
obtuseness permitted only to our "business men," they believe that the
acquisition of more colonies still means the discovery of new
markets.[80] They have not yet realised that nowadays all markets are
practically open markets, and that no tariff can effectively exclude
goods for which there is any demand, for the simple reason that an
effective demand cheerfully pays an increased price. All nations in fact
stand to share fairly the commercial advantage of each other's colonial
markets: and it might even be shown by a little simple book-keeping that
the particular balance any nation gains from trading with a colony of
its own must be debited with the expense of governing that colony. In
short, the commercial excuse for Imperialism is actually obsolete. Yet
commerce continues to support Imperialism, and although the original
reason for this support is no longer valid, it is still, unconsciously
perhaps but very methodically, serving its own interests by this
support, in so far as Imperialism involves militarism (or "navalism")
and so leads to the probability of war. But even if the commercial
reasons which constitute the only possible excuse for Imperialism were
still valid, it would still remain equally valid and much more important
that Imperialism is bad in itself, the enemy of liberty and the begetter
of arrogance.
Imperialism is bad on general grounds because it implies a
centralisation of authority which violates the natural rights of
nationalities. A nationality, as has already been suggested, means not
necessarily a pure racial enclave, but simply a small local group, in
the formation of which similarity of "race," religion, and culture will
not be ignored but will naturally be considered as modifications of
primarily geographical boundaries. The right of nationalities to local
autonomy, to deal again only with the simplest general reason, is based
on the idea of democracy, the exercise of a political voice being
regarded as a natural and inalienable right of the free citizen.
Democracy means representative government, and representative government
simply does not work in a large and mixed community of more than twenty
millions.[81] Hence the right of nationalities to local autonomy is
fundamental, and is inconsistent with Imperialism as such.
Imperialism is bad because it is based on conquest, implies a "subject
race," and sooner or later will have to be maintained by war. It breeds
a conquering and commercial spirit, which is never satisfied unless it
is carrying some one else's burden (at a high freight). The imperialist
plutocracy will then find itself so much occupied with other people's
affairs that it will be neglecting domestic politics altogether: and
this neglect will be the more disastrous in so far as poverty and
servitude will have increased at the same rate as luxury. The citizens
of an Imperialist state will be unable to control their commercial
masters, and, as Rousseau said of the English, will soon find themselves
a nation of slaves[82]: and that not only because a policy of conquest
is incompatible with democracy; but also because the lust of conquest
and the arrogance of
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 78: H. N. Brailsford (_The War of Steel and Gold_, p. 125)
speaks of an "indifferent democracy." Unhappily our democracy is not
indifferent to Imperialism, for it is misled to believe that mere
expansion is somehow grand and good; the only geography it learns at
school is miscalled "patriotic" because it is designed to encourage this
belief.]
[Footnote 79: I.e. as a real "Empire," the British Empire was a failure,
as all Empires must be. It has been a success since it ceased to be an
Empire about a hundred years ago. Cf. Professor H. E. Egerton's
remark:--
"The British Colonial Empire of to-day is not the Empire which was the
outcome of seventeenth-century methods. So far as the colonists
themselves were concerned, English colonisation (in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries) was a complete success, but from the point of view
of the mother country it was a failure, and the rock on which it
foundered was the same rock which lost America to Spain and caused
Canada to acquiesce in separation from France."]
[Footnote 80: I am ashamed to say that when I wrote these chapters I had
not read Mr. H. N. Brailsford's _War of Steel and Gold_. But Mr.
Brailsford's brilliant examination of the connection between War and
Finance is quite consistent with my supplementary theory of War and
Trade. "Trade supplies no explanation of Imperialism," says Mr.
Brailsford (p. 75). It does, in so far as Traders support Imperialism
because they think it is good for Trade: while financiers, as Mr.
Brailsford shows, support Imperialism because they know it is good for
investments.]
[Footnote 81: "What is vital to any real Democracy in a densely-peopled,
economically-complicated modern State, is that the Government should not
be one. The very concentration of authority which is essential in war
is, in peace, fatally destructive not of freedom alone, but also of that
maximum individual development which is the very end and purpose for
which society exists."--Sidney Webb, _Towards Social Democracy?_,
1916.]
militarism acquire strength with each fresh licence until the community
as a whole is quite unable to control its own baser passions--a
condition which more than any other merits the name of servitude.[83]
Imperialism is a form of political corruption in which a nation is
consoled for its own slavery by the pride of enslaving its neighbours.
The attainment of permanent peace connotes the abandonment of
Imperialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 82: "Les Anglais veulent être conquérants; donc ils ne
tarderont pas d'être esclaves."--_Political Writings_, C. E. Vaughan, I,
373.]
§ 6
Possible Objects of War
If the nations are prepared to abandon the claims of Imperialism there
will be very little else left to fight about. An examination of the
documents connected with any war of the last century shows that the
object of a belligerent in prolonging the agony is usually expressed in
vague language that can be dissolved by a little analysis. Sometimes a
government will propose, in the interests of peace and good government,
to crush the enemy's aggressiveness by a purely defensive aggression, an
excuse for bloodshed which only the most fanatical pacifist could
confuse with Mr. Asquith's blunt watchword of "crushing German
militarism." The logical fallacy of such an excuse which is almost
invariably pleaded by powerful belligerents,[84] a fallacy of which no
one could wish to accuse Mr. Asquith's solid intellect, lies (quite
apart from any question of the priority of aggression) in the fact that
any attempt to crush by force the Will to Conquer inevitably breeds
more militarism. The tag about taking a lesson from the enemy, _fas est
et ab hoste doceri_, is only one half of the unhappy truth that the
fighter is fatally bound to acquire his enemy's worst characteristics.
The object undertaken apparently in the interests of democracy can only
be accomplished by the wholesale suppression of democratic rights, and
involves an organised manufacture of imperialistic emotion which ends by
delegating the authority of the State to a reactionary triumvirate of
bureaucracy, jingoism and vulgarity (or Tory, Landowner and Journalist).
The guarantees of democracy, the rights of free thought and free speech,
every sort of civil liberty and every defence against the servile state,
will all have to be suppressed in the interests of the nation at war. It
is the old story of the conversion of Thais by Paphnutius: the preacher
snatches lovely Thais from the burning, but himself is damned--"si
hideux qu'en passant la main sur son visage, il sentit sa laideur." A is
white and finds it necessary to whitewash B, who is black: after several
years of hopeless grey, A finds that he has indeed put some very
satisfactory daubs of whitewash all over B, but that his own coat has
been blackened in the course of the struggle. It is as if a gardener,
having heard of the cannibalistic habit of earwigs, proposed to
exterminate the earwig in his rose-garden by importing a special army of
five million earwigs collected at great expense from the surrounding
country.
Other belligerent governments will raise the plea of checking the spread
of a hostile and dangerous culture; a plausible because apparently
philosophical justification of war as the only means of extirpating a
heresy that might pervert the whole future of European civilisation.
Unfortunately such a moral effect, such a "conversion by shock," could
only be accomplished by a very sudden, complete and shattering victory;
and it is now beginning to be recognised that spectacular triumphs are
not to be expected in modern warfare. But even if it were as possible by
violence as it might conceivably be desirable to extirpate or even to
limit the propagation of a particular form of mental culture, the
achievement would certainly not be worth the cost to the unhappy
survivors and their posterity. It would indeed be a crime against
humanity to eliminate the better part of the younger generation, the
flower of human brains, in the monstrous pedantry of attempting to
correct an intellectual error. For the risks of modern warfare are not
ordinary. It is not sufficiently realised that in six months of
offensive tactics under modern conditions no man in the front line has
more than one chance in a million of escaping death or mutilation.
There may remain the plea that a prolonged campaign is necessary in
order by exhaustion to compel the enemy to evacuate some territory that
he may have wrongfully occupied. The inevitable answer to such a plea
would be that if a war had arrived at a stage in which there was a clear
possibility of coercing the enemy by a process of exhaustion, that
possibility, if it were well-founded, would certainly not have escaped
the intelligence of the enemy, who would consequently be prepared to
save his face by coming to terms. The evacuation of the occupied
territory, or whatever it is that was to be achieved by the coercive
exhaustion of another year or two of battle, might then be obtained by
negotiation at once, and at the cost of a certain amount of paper and
ink, instead of being forced on a revengeful and embittered opponent by
the expensive process of killing young men, a process which has the
disadvantage of working both ways.
The conclusion of these general considerations seems to be that all the
arguments that are likely to be put forward in the course of a war in
order to excuse and ensure its continuation, are only excuses to gain
time, put forward in hope that the chances of a further campaign may
enable the government concerned to retrieve some apparent advantage out
of the disastrous muddle through which they drifted into the first
declaration of war. Having drawn the sword in a moment of embarrassment,
they have now jolly well got to pretend that it was the right thing to
do, and are not going to sheathe it till they see a chance of proving
that they are glad they drew it. In short, there comes a point in all
modern wars in which the belligerents are fighting for nothing at all,
except for a more or less advantageous position from which to discuss a
way to stop fighting.[85]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 83: Spinoza, _Ethica_, IV, _praefat. ad init._ Humanam
impotentiam in moderandis et coercendis affectibus servitutem voco.]
[Footnote 84: See above, § 2, on "defensive" war, and compare a passage
from Mr. C. Grant Robertson's letter in _The Times_ of August 15,
1916:--
"Bismarck repeatedly and explicitly in the Reichstag justified the wars
of 1864, 1866, and 1870 as 'defensive'--i.e. as not 'willed' by Prussia.
On the contrary, they were wars 'forced' on a peace-loving State denied
its 'rights' by Denmark, Austria, and France. The argument, briefly, on
Bismarckian principles is this. Prussia's policy is an
'_Interessenpolitik_'--a policy of 'interests.' An 'interest' confers a
'right.' The satisfaction of 'national interest' is therefore the
achievement of 'national rights.' If these 'rights' can be achieved by a
compromise--i.e. by the complete surrender of Prussia's opponents to the
demands based on these 'rights'--that is a proof of her peace-loving
nature. But if her opponents refuse, then the war by which the 'rights'
are secured is a war 'forced' on Prussia. She has not 'willed' it. It is
a 'defensive' war to prevent the robbery of her 'rights' by others;
Bismarck, not without difficulty, converted his Sovereign to this
argument. In each case--1864, 1866, 1870--William I was ultimately
convinced that Denmark, Austria, and France were resisting the 'rights'
of Prussia, and that war to secure them was 'defensive,' 'forced' on the
King, and just. The successful issues confirmed William's conscience and
proved that Bismarckian principles had the Divine sanction."]
[Footnote 85: This attitude is well illustrated by the history of the
Crimean War. In January, 1855, "peace seemed impossible until some of
the disgrace was wiped away, and the pacificists, Cobden and Bright,
were burned in effigy.... The prolongation of the war called out no
protest from the public." Yet "the popular war produced an unpopular
peace." When after another year of fighting our French allies finally
insisted on peace, "'there was no indication,' said a Frenchman, 'as to
which was the victor and which the vanquished.' Reviews and
illuminations could not obscure the truth; Britain had sacrificed lives
and treasure and obtained little in return."--Alice Green's Epilogue to
J. R. Green's _Short History of the English People_.]
§ 7
Physical Force in a Moral World
The explanation of all this seems to lie in the simple fact that it is
for ever impossible to solve questions of moral or political principle
by the expenditure of physical force. Anyone at all conversant with
philosophical thought, if I may adopt a simile used by Mr. H. G. Wells,
"would as soon think of trying to kill the square root of 2 with a rook
rifle." Physical violence can only solve purely physical problems. But
as man no longer exists, if he ever did exist, in the completely
unsocial "state of nature,"[86] the relations of one individual with
another are no longer purely physical: their position as members of one
society has given them a moral relation, questions affecting which can
only be settled by reference to the judgment of the society as a whole.
Within the limits of the State this fact is already clearly recognised
by the common voice of public opinion. If Smith quarrels with his
neighbour Robinson, because Smith's old English sheep-dog is suspected
of having scratched up Robinson's lawn, and Smith says the poor dog
would never do such a thing, and anyhow Robinson had no business to
leave his back gate open, while Robinson declares that that brute is
becoming a damned nuisance, and so provokes Smith to express a hope that
now perhaps that grass of Robinson's won't want so much godless mowing
on Sunday morning: if two neighbours, in short, have a difference of
opinion they both know perfectly well that the rights of the argument
can never be decided by a free fight in the middle of the road, even if
one of them happens to be a heavy-weight champion. Moreover, if they do
come to blows it is perfectly certain that the opinion of the whole road
will be against them, and that the Law, to which they might have
appealed in the first instance, will intervene as the embodiment of that
opinion. The street fight is clearly recognised as not only futile but
immoral; it not only settles no questions of principle but it
constitutes a breach of the moral relation between two members of one
community; it is become merely a rather sordid exhibition of irrelevant
physical facts. The average citizen of England or Germany would never
think of encouraging a fight between two sides of a street: why does he
not recognise with equal directness the futility and immorality of a
fight between two sides of a continent?[87] It is only because public
opinion has not yet effectively realised that the moral sphere includes
not only the citizens of one city and the cities of one nation, but the
nations of a continent and the continents of the world. But it is a fact
that the moral sphere does include the whole of humanity, who are
colleagues in the task of civilisation, inspired by the
twentieth-century corollary of gloomy nineteenth-century religious
agnosticism, the cheerful corollary that it is Man's duty rather than
God's to improve the habitable earth. The truth of this fact is already
recognised by the better thought of all the nations concerned, and there
is no reason why it should be withheld any longer from the people who
suffer most by its suppression. As soon as public opinion is allowed to
grasp this truth--and it is only too willing to clutch at any
generalisation that is emotionally encouraged by its governors--there
need be no difficulty at all in embodying that opinion in some form of
international government: for, as Rousseau might have said, where
there's a General Will, there's a way. As a matter of fact the way has
already been admirably mapped by several parties of surveyors.[88]
On the constitution of an International Authority, even on the general
aspiration of Europe towards some form of supernational judicature, war
will cease to have any more attraction or justification than the street
brawl. For war is actually in the community of nations what the street
fight is between individual citizens. War is futile, because it can
settle no questions of principle; it is immoral, because it is an
offence against the membership of a moral community. There is abundant
evidence in Blue Books and in the overt acts of Germany that war
releases and encourages the elementary brutality of the individual which
is normally inhibited by the consciousness of social relations. I have
tried to show in a former chapter that war serves the lowest interests
of a parasitic commercial class at the expense of the better part of the
community. War fosters at the same time the basest elements in the
individual, and the basest individuals in the community. War is a crime
against the peace of the people.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 86: _Supra_, I, § 5.]
[Footnote 87: Mr. Gilbert Cannan has noted somewhere that "a 'straight'
fight between Great Britain and Germany will be like a fight between two
drunken women in a slum."]
[Footnote 88: See, for example, the quite definite and complete report
on _International Government_, published by the Fabian Society (1916):
and compare Mr. J. A. Hobson's book _Towards International Government_,
and Mr. H. G. Wells' _The World Set Free_.]
§ 8
Imperialism and Capitalism through War and Trade the Enemies: Socialism
to the Rescue
It is the most remarkable fact in political bibliography that all the
Utopias worth mentioning have been written by Socialists. The fact is
not surprising to anyone who has considered that the Socialists are the
only political party in the State who ever attempt to look more than a
dozen years ahead. The ordinary politician steers the ship by keeping a
look-out for rocks and squalls, and does not trouble to make for any
distant landmark. Only the Socialist looks ahead to a harbour attainable
perhaps in a hundred years, from which a happier voyage may be begun.
Only the Socialist seems to realise that in the world conceived, as
modern thought must conceive it, as a continuous process, Government
rather than Trade, Science and Art rather than Industry are the chief
activities of the citizen. Government is nothing less than the
organisation of the State to take its place among the other States of
the world. It includes of course education, being itself a form of
education: for the State must be educated to fulfil its duty to other
States, just as the citizen must be (and more or less is) educated in
duty towards his neighbour. The first task of education is naturally to
eliminate violence, to inhibit, by inducing in the young citizen the
recognition of mutual rights, those acts of ferocity by which primitive
man instinctively expresses his solipsistic passions.
But where, it may well be asked, is the authority which is to begin the
neglected education of the nations of Europe? Where is what Mr. Boon (or
Mr. Bliss) would call "the Mind of the Race"? At present the only body
of doctrine with any conception of the nature of government for the
collective benefit of humanity is International Socialism. It is the
International Socialists who must lead the attack on War, if only
because the only instigators of war themselves form an international
body in so far as the only occasions for war are contrived by the
Imperialists and Capitalists who are to be found in every nation. To
Socialism belongs the duty of educating Europe against Imperialism, as
it has begun to educate the nation against Capitalism; for Imperialism
is only an allotropic form of Capitalism, manifesting itself in the
exploitation of fellow-nations instead of in the exploitation of
fellow-citizens. The first step in that education must be the fight not
only against "private" or profiteering Trade, but against "private" or
profiteering War: and "private war" is every war that is not authorised
by an International Authority and waged by an International army.
I seem to have heard it said before that there is only one way to break
the chains that bind us: and that Amalgamation is the mother of Liberty.
The need for the education of Europe is a call to the Trade Unionists
and Fabians and Collectivists and Guildsmen of every Nation:
SOCIALISTS OF THE WORLD
UNITE.
* * * * *
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III
SOME TYPICAL WAR PROFITS
I. _The Manchester Guardian_, January 3, 1916:
BRITISH INDUSTRY IN WAR
The first full calendar year of war has been a period of unparalleled
industrial activity and, generally speaking, prosperity in this country.
Heavy losses and bad times have been encountered in a few important
industries, but these are balanced by unprecedented profits made by a
large variety of industries, whether directly or indirectly affected by
the war. One frequently finds that the neutral visitor carries away with
him an impression of industrial England as one great living arsenal.
That is not surprising, as since July last the Munitions Ministry has
erected (or improvised) and started a large number (it is not
permissible to say how many) of State munitions works, and it has also
mobilised the whole engineering resources of the nation to such an
extent that in the first week of December no fewer than 2026
manufacturing establishments had been declared "controlled firms."
But it would be a mistake to suppose that, while war manufactures
prospered, all other industry languished and decayed. To prove the
contrary and show that only here and there were there heavy losses, we
may quote some figures compiled by the _Economist_, which show that 720
industrial concerns publishing their reports during the first nine
months of 1915, and having a capital of £531,678,701, made profits
amounting to £52,881,300, or under 2-1/4 millions less than in the
previous year (which in the case of almost all the reports was a year
before the war).
Dissecting these figures, we find that not only iron, coal, steel, and
shipping companies report enormous profits, but that increased earnings
were shown by breweries, gas, rubber, oil, and trust companies, and
others. The large exceptions which depressed the total profits were
textile companies (other than those engaged on war contracts), catering,
and cement companies. Shipping leads the van of prosperity owing to
phenomenal freight rates, while iron and steel and shipbuilding, as
direct and established purveyors of armaments, are close behind. As
showing the industrial tendency of the year, one may quote the remarks
of a trust company chairman at a recent meeting. Of 150 home investments
possessed by his company, he remarked that a hundred had since the war
yielded the same as in the year before war, while thirty had paid less
and twenty more.
Into the circle of munition producers have been drawn cycle and motor,
machinery, electrical, and many other branches of manufacture. Of other
industries driven to fever heat by the war may be mentioned woollen and
leather factories. Secondary effects of the war also produced a boom in
several unexpected quarters. For instance, the high wages earned by war
workers, and too generously spent in a vast number of cases, led to a
strong demand for cheap furniture, pianos and many types of household
goods which in normal times are usually out of reach of the purse of
most wage-earners. But one trouble has beset all industries in common--a
shortage of labour, which cannot but grow with every increase to the
numbers of men drafted from the ranks of productive industry into the
army or the munitions works. From all quarters comes the tale of orders,
both from home and from abroad, that cannot be accepted. In the case of
foreign orders that have to be refused, the labour shortage has what one
fears may be lasting consequences. For custom once diverted to America
or elsewhere is not easily regained.
2. _The Manchester Guardian_, March 3, 1916:
MORE GREAT PROFITS
HOLT LINE'S ENORMOUS SURPLUS
The China Mutual Steam Navigation Company (Holt Line) has had a greater
year than ever. It has been supposed that regular liners were getting
little benefit from the boom in freights, but a profit of £591,005, as
against about £294,000 in 1914 and £386,418 in 1913, can only be
explained by a very large participation in special war-time gains. The
dividend and bonus on the ordinary shares make 106 per cent for the
fourth year in succession, and a still larger sum is being kept in hand,
£200,000 being put to the reserve, as against £50,000 for 1914 and
£100,000 for each of two years before that, and the balance forward is
raised from £81,014 to £201,367. Most of the Company's capital, however,
only bears 6 per cent interest. The ordinary shares (which we believe
are held privately) only amount to a little over £83,000.
3. _Pall Mall Gazette_, September 24, 1915:
WAR PROFITS
The other taxes are accepted by the public and traders alike as
inevitable, but special interest is being taken in the excess war
profits tax. That Mr. McKenna is likely to find his estimate of
£30,000,000 largely exceeded is admitted. The _Daily Chronicle_
publishes a table in which the City Editor compares the last profits
announced by some of our greatest undertakings, covering a
considerable portion of the war period in most and some portion of it in
all cases, with the average of the previous three years. It will be seen
that in every instance the war has brought greatly increased prosperity.
Last Average
Profit. Previous Increase.
3 years.
£ £ £
ARMSTRONG WHITWORTH 802,000 624,000 178,000
(Engineering, Shipb., etc.)
WM. BEARDMORE 219,000 185,000 34,000
(Engineering, Shipb., etc.)
JOHN BROWN 586,000 347,000 239,000
(Engineers, Shipbuilders, etc.)
BEYER PEACOCK 83,000 35,000 48,000
(Locomotive Builders)
BRUNNER MOND 824,000 770,000 54,000
(Alkali Manufacturers)
CAMMELL, LAIRD 238,000 147,000 91,000
(Iron, Steel, and Shipb.)
HAWTHORN LESLIE 202,000 102,000 100,000
(Sh'b. & Marine Engin'ring)
KYNOCH'S 153,000 114,000 39,000
(Explosives)
LAMBERT BROS. 142,000 84,000 58,000
(Coal Exporters, etc.)
POWELL DUFFRYN 422,000 279,000 143,000
(Collieries)
SAMUEL FOX 66,000 39,000 27,000
(Engineers)
SPILLERS & BAKERS 367,000 140,000 227,000
(Millers)
VICKERS, LTD. 1,019,000 809,000 210,000
(Eng. and Shipbuilding)
This table indicates that the Chancellor may expect to receive far more
than the sum he estimated from the war profits tax.
4. _The Manchester Guardian_, Feb. 28, 1916:
COAL PROFITS NEARLY DOUBLED
The tale of colliery war profits is continued by the report of North's
Navigation Collieries (Glamorganshire). The output for 1915 was actually
less by 87,810 tons (1,141,900 tons against 1,229,710), but the profit
was nearly doubled--£130,071 against £65,578. With the £10,496 brought
into the account the directors had their biggest total in recent years
available for distribution. The ordinary shareholders get 10 per cent
and a bonus of 2-1/2 per cent, which is the best payment since the 15
per cent paid for 1907. Advantage is taken of a prosperous year to place
£35,000 to the reserve fund, which has been rather overlooked recently,
only one allocation of £20,000 having been made in four years. It now
stands at £155,000, against £650,000 of share capital. For depreciation,
with regard to which item substantial provision is made each year,
£15,000 is written off. This leaves £10,567 to be carried forward. The
Company has the reputation of being well managed, and its coal
properties are regarded as being very valuable. The recently opened St.
John's pits are being developed satisfactorily, it appears, a further
increase in output being shown.
Despite a decrease in output of nearly 400,000 tons, the Powell Duffryn
Steam Coal Company is enabled to show a profit for 1915 of £438,799, as
compared with £422,204 for 1914 and £364,421 for 1913. The usual 20 per
cent is distributed on the ordinary shares, free of income tax, and last
year's allocation of £50,000 to the reserve fund is repeated. In
addition, the reserve for income tax benefits to the extent of £50,052,
and there remains £120,236 to carry forward. The decrease in output, it
should be noted, is due to the enlistment of the miners, and its
restoration to the normal and probable increase after the war should
balance the decline in profit that may be expected to attend the
decreased demand.
5. The Times, May 19, 1916:
SOAPMAKERS' "RECORD" PROFITS
Presiding yesterday at the annual meeting of Joseph Watson and Sons
(Limited), soapmakers, Leeds, Mr. Joseph Watson said that the company's
profits for the year amounted to £122,000, or £19,000 in excess of any
previous year's profits. Their turnover had largely increased because
they were now supplying soap to France, Belgium, Scandinavia, and a
small amount to Spain and Italy. It was not a question to-day of getting
orders; it was a question of refusing them. They had at the present time
three months' orders on the books.
6. _The New Witness_:
THE SCANDAL OF WAR PROFITS
It is a sinister and deplorable fact--one of the most ironical with
which the continuance of the War has yet confronted us--that there has
grown up in Great Britain a number of firms and businesses to whom a
successful prosecution of the campaign would mean ruin, and who have an
actual vested interest in the indecisive continuance of hostilities.
This is due entirely to the lack of grip and resolution which the
Government have displayed in dealing with the ugly phenomenon of War
Profits. We know, of course, what happens to those profits at present.
Half is taken by the State: half passes to the firms who are getting
"rich quick" out of its necessities. In theory, it is an anomalous
arrangement, indefensible in logic, and opposed to every canon alike of
justice and of taxation. In practice it works out in the way we have
indicated: that certain privileged firms and individuals are amassing
huge fortunes out of the gravest crisis through which the nation has
passed, and which will pinch us all before it is over.
Let us give some examples of the mammoth profits that some of these
concerns are making. There is first of all the famous old English firm
of Levinstein--Messrs. Levinstein of Manchester--to be considered. This
"all-British" concern has not done badly out of the terrible situation
through which we are slowly toiling. While mere vulgar English Tommies
have been dying in the trenches or have returned incapacitated to
England--to find that their country cannot afford them a
pension--Levinsteins have been pocketing several thousands of that
country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made a
profit of £80,000 _on a capital of_ £90,000: a profit large enough to
make the mouth of the deceased usurer Kirkwood dry with envy. But, while
our legislature passed laws to restrain the usurer in his exactions, the
"war profiteer" has no restriction placed on him. His workmen can, in
certain cases, be fined or sent to prison if they absent themselves from
work, and hundreds have been proceeded against under the Defence of the
Realm Act. But the profiteer himself is immune! It is childish to say
that the State can recover half of the profit he has wrung from the
country's necessity. What right has he to the other half? In the case of
Levinstein, this £80,000 profit enables the company to pay 14-1/2
years' preference dividend, to distribute a dividend of 30 per cent on
its ordinary shares, and to write off £21,000 for depreciation! It is
merely fatuous to pretend, or to endeavour to pretend, that the
appropriation of half these profits squares matters between the
community and the British firm in question.
As with Levinstein, so with other firms. Messrs. Cammell, Laird & Co.
averaged profits of £146,000 for the three years before the war. Since
last year those profits have risen to £237,000. Those profits, of
course, are subject to war profits taxation. But most manifestly that
taxation is utterly inadequate. So it is in the case of Messrs. W.
Beardmore, whose profits rose from £184,000 (three years' pre-war
average) to £219,000; of the British Westinghouse Co., which rose from
£56,000 to £151,000; and of Beyer Peacock's, which increased from
£57,000 to £109,000.
In all these cases the deduction of 50 per cent by the Government is
entirely inadequate and utterly misleading. It is at once an admission
that the firm in question has no right to amass huge profits out of the
welter and tragedy of the European War, and that the State is content to
stultify itself by surrendering the other half.
Many of these profits have been made by covering rises in raw material
far in excess of the actual increases. Many have been wrung from the
poor and the needy, who are now being enjoined by the Government to eat
less meat. Messrs. Spillers & Baker, of South Wales, increased their
profits from an average of £140,000 (three years' pre-war average) to
£367,000 in 1914-15. We do not blame them. The rise in price was beyond
their control. They could hardly help benefiting. But it is mere madness
for the Government to leave them in possession of these vast accretions
of wealth. Firms that paid 8 per cent before the war, now paying 22-1/2
per cent (such as Messrs. Richard Dickeson & Co., the Army contractors)
are able to pocket tens of thousands that ought to go to strengthen the
resources of the nation. Others, like the Mercantile Steamship Co.,
increase their dividend from 20 per cent to 35 per cent; and some are
able to pay dividends actually larger than the capital of the company
itself!
It is ludicrous for the Government to allow this condition of affairs to
continue. Their course is quite clear. They should limit profits to the
average of three years before the war, and add at the most 5 per cent.
Anything short of this is a betrayal of the national interests to
private firms.
7. _The New Statesman_, March 25, 1916:
An innocent person might think that when a manufacturing company is
faced with an enormous rise in the cost of the principal commodity it
consumes, its profits would be diminished. Some law must be in operation
which has escaped the attention of economists, for so far from this
being the case, what appears to happen is that the profits of
manufacturers rise in a greater degree than the price of the raw
material. Thus, so far from being hit by the enormous rise in the price
of flour, Peek, Frean & Co., the well-known biscuit manufacturers, made
a net profit of £107,478 last year, as compared with £99,578 in 1914,
and £98,607 in 1913. After paying the usual 5 per cent on the £300,000
of preference shares no less than 25 per cent is paid on the £230,000 of
ordinary share capital, which has been issued. This company raised its
money very cheaply from the public, which paid 102 per cent for its 4
per cent debenture stock and par for the 5 per cent preference shares.
The investing public does not benefit by the big dividend on the
ordinary shares. These were never offered to the public, but are
privately held.
Another shipping company, sister to the Court Line, mentioned in these
notes last week, has issued its report. This is the Cressington
Steamship Company, which owns two modern tramp steamers of slightly over
7,000 tons each. The company was very fortunate in that one of these
vessels was delivered in February, 1915, it having been contracted for
at pre-war prices. The profits for the year amounted to £50,015, as
compared with £6,861 in 1914 (when only one vessel was trading). The
dividend for the year is 15 per cent, £7,072 is allocated to
depreciation, £22,000 for special war profits and income-tax, whilst
about £3,000 is being carried forward. The financial position of the
company is such that if its ships were sold at £2 15s. per ton,
shareholders would receive the return of their capital in full. On
present prices, however, they would probably fetch over £15 per ton. The
shares are now quoted at 28s.
The Bengal Iron and Steel Company, whose report has also been issued
during the week, has had an interesting career; it works large iron ore
and coalmining areas in Bengal. At first the company did well, but then
it went in for an unfortunate steel venture and fell into arrears with
its preference dividend. This was overcome, and during the past few
years the company has done well, particularly from its coal business.
The report for the year ended September 30th, 1915, shows a working
profit of £144,913, as compared with £79,200 during the previous year.
This considerable improvement enables the company, after writing off
various old items, to place to a general reserve £20,000, and to declare
a dividend payable quarterly of 24 per cent on the £224,850 of ordinary
shares, which compares with 12 per cent a year ago. By way of a change,
the report states that the trading results would have been even better
had war conditions not prevailed.
EMIL DAVIES.
8. _The New Statesman_, May 27, 1916:
Markets have displayed unwonted cheerfulness during the past week, and
all sorts of peace rumours are in circulation. It is more than likely,
however, that it is the firmness of the market which is responsible for
the rumours, and not _vice versa_. There is a steady stream of orders
from the Midlands and the North, where people are making money, and
these have the effect of putting up prices in several of the markets.
The Brazilian Funding Loan, which was recommended here on the 29th April
at 74, has been noticeably firm, and is now 77-1/4. It still appears to
be the cheapest Government Loan. Brazilian securities are attracting
more attention, and Brazil Traction Common, which a year ago was below
50, now stands at 64. There has been a large business in Castner Kellner
on the working agreement between that chemical company and Brunner, Mond
& Co., the shares having jumped four or five shillings to their present
price of 69s. 6d. Precisely a year ago they were recommended in these
notes at 66s. 10-1/2d. Shipping shares have been exceptionally firm;
Court Lines have risen another few shillings to 34s., the large business
in them being probably due to the fact that they are one of the few
shipping shares which can be obtained. Rubber shares are equally firm.
Nobel's Explosive Company has just issued its report for last year,
showing a profit of £529,738 _after_ providing for excess profits duty.
The dividend is 15 per cent, free of income-tax, or 5 per cent more than
last year. This increase in the dividend came as a surprise to the
market, and the price of the shares (which are a favourite investment in
Glasgow) jumped from 31s. to 38s. 3d.
The profits of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the White Star
Line) for last year have attracted a good deal of attention. They were
stated as being £1,968,285, as compared with £887,548 in 1914 and
£1,121,268 in 1913, which was the Company's record year; but the figure
given for 1915 does not indicate the full profit, for it is arrived at
"after providing for excess profits taxation and contingent
liabilities." Replying to a question asked in the House of Commons by
Mr. W. C. Anderson, Captain Pretyman stated that the Company informed
him that the profit mentioned was before deduction of debenture interest
and depreciation. Captain Pretyman added that the sum divided as
dividend was £487,500, the same amount as in the year 1913 before the
war. Where people are protesting against large war profits it may, at
first sight, appear an adequate answer to point out that a Company is
not paying out more in dividends than it did in the year preceding the
war. As a statement of fact it is perfectly correct, but it has no
bearing upon the amount of profit that has been made, as the following
calculation will show. We now know that the 1915 profit shown in the
accounts is _after_ allowing for excess profits taxation, deferred
repairs, contingent liabilities, debenture interest and depreciation.
Since 1913 the Company has increased its debenture issue, and last year
had to pay in debenture interest £109,536, as compared with £65,211 in
1914. How much has been placed on one side for depreciation before
showing the profits can only be known to very few people, but the amount
the Company must have put on one side for excess profits taxation must
be at least half a million, and possibly a great deal more. The actual
profits for last year were therefore probably in the neighbourhood of
three millions, if not more. As indicated above, out of the £1,968,285
shown as profit, only £487,500 is paid out in dividends, the remainder
going to various reserves. The dividend works out at 65 per cent, but
all goes to the International Mercantile Marine Company, the
much-talked-of American shipping trust associated with the name of the
late J. Pierpont Morgan, which holds all the Ordinary Shares. The trust
was in a bankrupt condition prior to the war, but the present state of
affairs is radically altering its position. It must be annoying to the
American holders that a large slice of the profits of an American-owned
concern has to go to the British Government in the shape of war
taxation.
9. _The New Statesman_, June 24, 1916:
Another firm which has apparently benefited by the war is Ruston,
Proctor & Co., the well-known Lincoln manufacturers of agricultural
implements. A final dividend of 5-1/2 per cent is declared, plus a bonus
of 2 per cent, making 10 per cent for the year, which still allows the
Company to place £45,000 to reserve and to carry over £16,300. This
dividend is 3 per cent more than was paid last year, and is the highest
in the twenty-six years' history of the Company. Shipping shares remain
firm, and it is almost impossible to purchase any of the best shares. As
an illustration of the profits that are being made, the Nitrate
Producers' Steamship Company's accounts for the year ended April 30th
last show a gross profit of £404,022, as compared with £151,905 and
£135,986 in 1914 and 1913 respectively. The dividend is 25 per cent,
free of income tax, £100,000 is placed to reserve, £200,000 to a special
fund for excess profits tax, income tax, etc., £30,000 is added to the
insurance fund, and the carry forward is increased by some £7000. The
Company owned a fleet of ten steamers, which has, however, been reduced
to five by the sinking of one last September by an enemy submarine and
by the sale of four vessels. A new vessel is under construction, and
should be ready for delivery in August. The capital of the Company
consists of £200,000 in Ordinary Shares and £200,000 in 5 per cent
Cumulative Preference Shares.
10. _The New Witness_, June 15, 1916:
WAR PROFITS AND THE GOVERNMENT
It is essential that a determined effort should be made to rouse the
nation to a sense of the gross and scandalous injustice of the huge
profits that are at present being "earned" by certain firms piling up
wealth which is really amazing to contemplate. This is not mere empty
rhetoric; the figures support the description up to the hilt. Let us
take the case of five well-known companies, all engaged in "war work,"
and see to what account they have turned our soldiers' sacrifices:--
FIRMS. PROFITS.
1913 1914 1915
£ £ £
Cammell, Laird 171,700 235,500 301,500
Curtis & Harvey 48,100 77,800 143,800
Projectile 14,000 40,400 192,700
Webley & Scott 9,500 16,400 61,300
Thornycroft 13,000 107,640 267,333
(6 mos.)
These figures can only be described as staggering--staggering, that is,
to anyone who cherishes a faint, lingering belief that "equality of
sacrifice" is to be a reality and not merely a bitter jest. Look for a
moment at the tale that these profits show! The Projectile Company has
multiplied its 1913 profit _thirteen times over_! Five or six years ago
its affairs were in so parlous a state that 19s. had to be written off
as lost from each 20s. share. Now, as Mr. Charles Duguid reminds us, "it
is paying a first dividend of 50 per cent and is returning to the
shareholders 3s. 6d. out of the 19s. they regarded as lost." The return
on the shares, according to the same financial authority, is 400 per
cent!!!
Look at the case of Thornycrofts. The profits for the first half of 1915
are twenty times as big as the profit for the whole of 1913--an
increase, as Mr. Duguid reminds us, _of 3800 per cent upon the year_, a
year that will spell blank financial ruin, impoverishment and
destitution to the families of thousands and tens of thousands of our
fighting men!
Thornycrofts are by no means peculiarly fortunate; Nobels, for instance,
have managed to earn quite a tidy little profit. Their net profit for
1915 comes out, we learn, at over half a million sterling (£529,800),
exclusive of £213,900 brought forward out of the large profit of the
preceding year, and this makes the total amount available for
distribution as much as £743,700. Even after paying a dividend of 10 per
cent and a bonus of 5 per cent, making 15 per cent, all free of income
tax, the Company has still £424,700 unallocated. In its most prosperous
year, 1913-1914, the net profit of the Nobel Dynamite Trust did not
amount to more than £381,300. We have, we need hardly say, no feeling
against Nobels or Thornycrofts or the Projectile Company. We only want
fair play in this matter. If this aggregation of profits is not stopped
the wealth of England will be in the hands of men who will regard the
triumphant conclusion of the War as spelling ruin to themselves and who
will see in victory only the cessation of profits that in normal times
they have never dared to contemplate.
The remedy for this is simple. The Government have refused to the
workman the right to extort unearned increment out of the country in its
dire necessity. The workman may not strike or cease work or even change
employment without the permission of the State. Assuredly the State has
the right to exact that obedience from him. But it is essential that it
should, and at no distant date, lay its restraining hands also upon the
employers who are earning these huge dividends, otherwise we shall have
enacted in England the tragedy that we have seen in Ireland. We shall
have a Government without moral authority, a Government which will,
therefore, be perpetually embarrassed in the conduct of war.
11. _The New Witness_, June 15, 1916:
WILLIAM CORY & SON
This famous coal company has taken every advantage of the demand for
coal, and can show a record profit. After providing for excess profits,
the balance of profit is £453,136, or £237,808 more than last year. As I
have again and again pointed out, I do not think the Government should
allow such huge profits to be made in war time. The coal trade is in a
few hands, and firms like Corys may be said to control it. The directors
content themselves with raising the dividend 5 per cent to 15 per cent;
but they place £100,000 to reserves, making them £500,000; £30,000 goes
to staff pensions and £25,000 to a war fund for employees. The carry
forward is raised £30,740 to £88,969. The steamers, tugs and barges are
now to be formed as separate companies; and the French business is also
to be transferred to a subsidiary. The balance-sheet shows creditors up
£204,971, presumably to meet the excess profits liability. Debit
balances have increased £509,840, and now include Treasury bills. War
loans have been increased £280,652, and the total assets are up
£451,183, at £4,541,601, and have earned 10 per cent. When all creditors
have been paid the quick assets amount to £930,654, and amply protect
the debentures, £900,000 which are an admirable security. I do not
suppose the present Ministry will do anything to control the profits
made out of the War by those who run the coal trade; and, therefore, we
may expect that 1916-17 will be as good a year as that just ended. But I
am not in agreement with a policy of _laissez-faire_ in war time unless
the policy is carried out stringently.
HOLBROOKS
Apparently the sauce trade has not been seriously injured by the War,
for Holbrooks have increased their trading profit £4,694 to £35,170; but
income tax is higher, and £5,000 has been used as a special reserve for
investments, so the available profit is only £23,046, as against £25,055
in the previous year. The dividend remains at 20 per cent, but £3,072
more is carried forward than was brought in, and the Board say that the
unsettled state of the world justifies them in doing this. I suspect
that they are building up a reserve for the purpose of attacking the
Yankee trade which for so many years has been in the hands of Lea &
Perrins. The business is well managed by the two managing directors, who
have been in the firm since it was promoted. The alterations in the
balance-sheet are not of any moment. Quick assets total £151,557 when
liabilities have been met, and the assets have earned 7-1/2 per cent on
their book value--not a very splendid profit for a sauce.
JAMES HINKS & SON
This famous firm of lamp makers should benefit largely by the complete
absence of German competition all over the world, and the eleven months
show the satisfactory profit of £13,595. The dividend for the previous
thirteen months was only 6 per cent, but the report now issued declares
10 per cent and a bonus of 1s. 6d., or 17-1/2 per cent--a record
distribution. Also £2,250 is placed to reserve and the carry forward is
raised from £3,603 to £6,399. As long as the War lasts we may expect
this remarkable prosperity to continue. The reserves are now in excess
of the capital. The company has earned 7-1/2 per cent on the book value
of its assets, which, in spite of goodwill and patents having been
written off, looks as though they were fully valued at £179,765. The
shares are a fair industrial speculation.
12. _The Manchester Guardian_, June 19, 1916:
While everybody knows that the immense disbursements on the War have led
to a greater demand for labour than it is possible to meet at present
and that employers have done well, in spite of their difficulties, it is
perhaps not generally known how greatly the profits of nearly all the
public companies have increased during the last year. They have had to
pay higher wages in many cases, though not in all, their materials have
been much more costly, and their foreign trade has been hampered by
restrictions, in furtherance of the policy of preventing the enemy from
getting goods which he requires and which it is in our power to control.
Many, however, have done a large business for Allied Governments as well
as our own, especially in army equipment, and the demand for coal has
been greater than our power of supplying it. All our production has
commanded high prices, and profit margins have in most cases been very
large. It is a way that chairmen of companies have to take big profits
as being in the natural order of things, and dwell mostly on the
difficulties which have prevented them from showing even better results.
If this has obscured the real state of affairs it is desirable that the
other side of the picture should be clearly presented, for it is
impossible to understand the economic side of the War without a thorough
comprehension of its industrial effects.
We give below a tabular statement of profits which have been declared
this year, with the figures for two preceding years added so as to show
their true significance. Some are gross and others net profits, but in
this we have simply followed the methods adopted by the directors in
their reports, that being in practice the only way of showing how the
comparison stands. In some cases the capital has been increased during
the three years, but the extent to which that has occurred does not
affect the tables if they are regarded comprehensively. Some did very
badly in the first few months of the war, and the profits they declared
in 1915 look very small in comparison with those in the first column of
the tables. In those cases the third column will act as a corrective,
for in the main it shows the companies' normal earnings. It will be
noticed that some of these were very small. Here and there the company
was in the development stage, but as a rule it may be taken that the
concern was not a very profitable one in peace times. Possibly it was
over-capitalised, or over-weighted with debentures, or its plant was out
of date, or it could not get sufficient business to make full use of its
productive capacity. We shall not attempt the invidious task of singling
out which come in these categories, but we call attention to the cases
in which small pre-war profits have been converted into large ones since
because they are really the most instructive of the whole series.
For very large increases upon profits which were already good the most
notable are the shipping companies. Our list is typical rather than
exhaustive. Some of the small concerns, with only one ship, or up to
half a dozen, have done better relatively than several of the big lines,
as they were more at liberty to take advantage of the big freight-rates
which were going. We have not set these out, however, because it does
not appear to be necessary. The dividends in virtually all cases have
been substantial, and in some cases very large indeed. It would be
useless, however, to show these in tables, as some of the leading
companies use reserves greatly exceeding their nominal capital, and
quite a number have devoted a larger proportion of their profits to
strengthening their position than to the payment of dividends. In the
case of the Moor line we are unable to give the amount of the profit
reported last year, as the balance-sheets are not issued publicly,
although we have been favoured with them occasionally.
Coal, iron, engineering companies and shipbuilding companies are
bracketed together because so many of them are concerned in at least two
of those fields of industry. As our table shows, they have had a great
revival, many having been used by the Government, while all have felt
the effect of the great demand for munitions. The miscellaneous list
offers an interesting field of study, and the rubber and tea companies'
results are in some respects more striking still. We have only given a
selection of these, but they suffice to show that rubber and tea have
been very profitable since the War began. An appeal was made some time
ago with a view to the "young" rubber companies being relieved of the
excess profits tax, but our list shows how unnecessary it was to make
any special concession to the industry they represent. In the last two
months a great many of the companies have indicated that they were
setting some thousands of pounds aside for the tax.
Among the other concerns which have announced their appropriations to
meet the excess profits tax the most notable one that we recall is the
British Oil and Cake Mills Company, which expected to have to pay
£225,000. The Nitrate Producers' Steamship Company is putting £200,000
to a reserve for the excess profits duty and income tax. Most of the big
companies have provided for the tax before striking the profit balance,
and as this is strictly correct it would hardly be fair to say that they
have concealed part of their profits. The figures would have been more
striking, however, if the gross sums had been given. As we read the
White Star line's figures they indicate that the company has had to pay
much more than the British Oil and Cake Mills Company, but the Cunard
line has probably had to pay much less.
The amount payable in any given case is the excess over the pre-war
standard, which is fixed by taking the best two of the three immediately
preceding years. Speaking generally, the companies do not appear to have
hurried in their payment of the tax. For the year ended March last the
total yield was estimated at £6,000,000, but the actual sum received was
only £140,000, and the £6,000,000 has not been got yet, the yield from
April 1 to June 10 being only £3,556,000. A sharp increase is bound to
come, however, in the course of the financial year. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer expects to get £86,000,000 in excess profits tax and
munitions levies by the end of March next, and he cannot possibly have
made so enormous a mistake as the receipts to date would suggest if we
did not know that thousands of firms have still to pay very considerable
sums.
In the tables appended the years at the tops of columns are those in
which the profits mentioned were announced. A large proportion of the
results shown in the 1916 columns are for the year ended December last.
Some, however, are for years which have ended since then, while a few,
relating to companies which carry on business abroad, are for years
which began soon after the outbreak of the War:--
SHIPPING
1916 1915 1914
£ £ £
British and African 94,388 64,464 41,357
Booth Line 328,127 225,267 154,828
China Mutual 591,005 286,725 381,729
Court 137,446 25,034 23,890
Cunard 1,579,170 1,286,948 1,187,831
Cairn 152,152 85,988 102,318
Elder, Dempster 349,444 326,122 307,605
Eagle Oil Transport 325,928 302,897 92,866
Elder 66,266 55,305 38,975
Field 71,393 11,881 --
France, Fenwick 179,100 64,900 76,800
Gulf 188,093 39,436 65,014
Houlder Bros 118,802 95,587 102,893
Indo-China 109,089 16,020 45,364
India Gen 65,738 41,974 118,379
King 102,319 17,426 90,392
Leyland (Fredk.) 1,441,690 620,839 589,810
Lamport & Holt 332,897 149,108 200,691
London & Northern 586,299 118,419 135,541
Mercantile 259,159 93,391 129,946
Moor 335,349 -- 254,000
Neptune 146,718 73,310 112,563
Nitrate Producers 381,599 134,826 125,990
Pool 601,338 118,000 --
Pyman 165,078 72,504 62,413
Royal Mail 808,731 98,232 436,470
Redcroft 117,953 13,125 21,396
Sutherland 295,220 74,841 41,779
White Star 1,968,285 887,548 1,121,268
COAL, IRON AND ENGINEERING
Albion Steam Coal 44,536 36,820 24,094
Arrol (Sir W.) & Co 119,060 49,756 51,096
Brown, Bayley's Steel 32,017 1,578 29,758
Barrow Hematite 119,377 51,518 104,664
British Aluminium 180,057 156,066 154,488
Beyer, Peacock 54,177 109,783 87,843
British Westinghouse 176,752 151,627 106,494
Brit.Ins. & Helsby 295,131 277,428 247,351
Bell Bros 145,360 45,969 128,736
Bessemer (Hy.) 55,348 35,826 23,308
Cammell, Laird 303,841 237,899 174,126
Cory (W.) and Son 453,136 215,328 313,906
Cargo Fleet 162,276 131,142 124,219
Callender's Cable 113,266 98,692 91,861
Carlton M. Colliery 188,545 128,413 177,025
Clayton & Shuttleworth 72,787 44,643 53,496
Consolidated Cambrian 185,139 140,097 147,648
Crossley Bros 65,337 15,347 42,517
D. Davis 200,127 215,744 217,970
Dorman, Long 404,524 237,579 257,863
Edinburgh Collier's 64,807 17,420 63,969
Fife Coal 224,058 89,866 --
Gt. West. Colliery 137,008 111,821 158,420
Hadfields 265,403 139,301 109,513
Henley's Tel 153,224 112,898 106,380
Howard & Bullough 136,152 32,766 163,066
Jessop (W.) & Sons 103,726 60,354 87,343
Knowles (A.) & Sons 47,199 18,329 29,140
Leyland Motors 252,107 85,037 --
Lysaght (John) 414,764 313,707 330,576
Locket's Merthyr Colleries 45,635 6,229 22,238
Met'n Carriage 372,140 321,091 365,739
Newton, Chambers 60,669 4,182 89,523
N. B. Locomotive 174,241 160,644 140,889
North's Nav. Coal 130,071 65,578 100,144
Parkgate Iron 107,344 66,643 85,169
Projectile 194,136 30,739 18,880
Powell Duffryn 438,799 422,204 364,421
Pease & Partners 435,772 248,216 385,975
Rhymney Iron 127,733 52,488 131,901
S. Durham Steel 239,868 150,257 302,955
Shelton 109,554 63,465 81,185
Stewarts & Lloyds 256,308 233,420 246,065
Swan, Hunter, etc 305,083 217,498 264,124
United Collieries 216,065 57,600 100,503
Wigan Coal, etc 143,288 44,829 138,118
MISCELLANEOUS
Angus (Geo.) & Co 54,461 43,574 32,123
Burmah Oil 1,413,170 1,411,279 1,363,389
Bradford Dyers 568,623 387,923 430,081
Bleachers' Association 416,394 197,835 423,416
Bryant and May 115,159 101,616 90,158
Broxburn Oil 46,729 22,252 57,046
British Cotton and Wool
Dyers 93,524 42,297 9,290
Brunner, Mond 1,011,590 799,322 769,343
Bovril 168,796 137,584 119,813
Buttons 63,297 38,880 32,834
Borax Consolidated 205,825 195,449 235,285
Barlow & Jones 46,798 38,936 33,584
British Oil, etc., Mills 243,110 111,203 116,541
British and Argentine Meat 651,289 67,288 --
Curtis's & Harvey 143,830 77,754 48,117
Courtaulds 741,668 520,349 474,154[89]
Calico Prin. (half yr.) 176,521 -- 55,495
E. Velvet, etc., Dyers 70,833 61,161 72,467
Fore St. Warehouse 48,957 28,597 --
Forestal Land 900,947 234,065 383,362
Fine Spinners 535,854 391,057 613,415
Gas Light & Coke 604,314 449,510 522,710
Hollins (W.) & Co 105,639 65,786 65,986
Henry (A. and S.) 249,713 104,098 122,528
Imperial Tobacco 3,699,891 3,533,360 3,354,476
Lever Bros 1,265,933 1,152,107 988,238
Linen Thread 257,418 188,773 189,142
Lennards 41,300 34,457 30,377
Lister and Co 133,874 94,403 151,458
Lyons (J.) & Co 278,293 276,403 353,303
Maypole Dairy 528,274 488,026 489,643
Mandleberg (J.) 74,506 52,049 57,964
Pumpherston Oil 134,927 74,010 140,025
Rylands & Sons (half yr.) 120,032 55,179 --
Rotherham (Jer.) 104,925 74,638 59,692
Salt Union 140,524 89,443 82,791
Sears (J.) & Co 82,070 65,032 57,061
Stead & Simpson 59,898 32,762 30,357
Samnuggur Jute 299,829 44,307 86,574
Spillers & Bakers 217,416 367,866 89,351
United Alkali 341,986 217,081 193,604
Winterbottom Book Cloth 171,191 119,795 165,213
Webley & Scott 61,277 16,376 9,511
Whiteaway, Laidlaw 131,577 107,952 129,790
Watson (Joseph) 122,001 89,290 103,999
Young's Paraffin 47,953 24,139 80,152
RUBBER, &c.
1916 1915 1914
£ £ £
Anglo-Malay 121,224 76,931 104,583
Assam-Dooars 51,674 22,269 --
Amalgamated Tea 157,818 98,176 78,787
Batu Tiga 56,293 22,315 24,762
Bukit Sembawang 33,989 14,344 6,090
Consolidated Tea 479,815 289,262 247,633
Chersonese 59,602 35,019 29,081
Ceylon Tea 163,899 108,300 93,900
Damansara 48,680 30,580 29,081
Eastern Produce 126,406 71,724 69,004
Grand Central 248,201 132,019 87,554
Highlands & Lowlands 108,343 75,425 79,079
Jorehaut Tea, 64,508 43,204 34,088
Jhanzie Tea 35,881 17,286 15,113
Klanang 37,918 20,458 24,257
Kuala Selangor 47,748 42,013 32,798
Kanan Devan 208,612 120,119 106,909
Linggi 125,739 78,899 83,746
Lunuva 32,994 12,599 12,602
Malacca 252,006 144,224 131,156
Nuwara Eliya 49,915 21,921 --
Nordanal 39,658 36,686 49,344
Panawatte Tea 38,167 23,833 --
Rub. Est., Johore 42,703 22,541 10,931
Rani Travancore 63,791 35,349 32,259
Singlo Tea 68,857 36,166 31,449
Sungei Way 38,532 36,533 25,624
Straits 157,678 164,750 185,426
Sungei Kapar 59,966 39,426 42,364
Selangor 55,457 58,007 41,940
Seremban 43,410 24,198 22,471
Sunnygama 63,688 43,142 31,931
13. _The New Witness_, June 22, 1916:
The Tenth Ordinary General Meeting of the Forestal Land, Timber, and
Railways Co. (Ltd.) was held on Friday last, at Winchester House, E.C.,
Baron Emile B. d'Erlanger (chairman of the company), presiding.
The chairman said that the share capital remained unaltered, and the
debenture debt had only been decreased by the yearly amortisation. No
less than £143,600 had been added to the depreciation account, making it
£634,170. Credit balances had swollen by the sum of £175,589. The profit
on the year was £900,947, as against £234,064 last year. On the credit
side, properties stood at £4,405,917, and had increased by the new
properties acquired. The live stock stood at £34,000 less than last
year, due to a smaller stock of "Invernada" cattle. The stocks of
extract and felled timber had risen by £115,000, principally owing to a
larger stock of felled timber. Debit balances had risen to £156,000. In
the profit and loss account the trading profit was £1,281,299, as
compared with £614,879 last year, and, after deducting London charges,
debenture interest, depreciation, and legal reserve, there was left a
profit of £900,947.
14. _The Westminster Gazette_, July 15, 1916:
The accounts of the W. and C. T. Jones Steamship Company, Limited, of
Cardiff, for the year ended June 30, show that, with a fleet of thirteen
steamers, £524,855 profit has been earned, representing 187 per cent on
the capital of £280,000.
The previous year's earnings were £87,105.
A dividend of 15 per cent, making, with 10 per cent interim dividend, 25
per cent for the year, free of income tax, is declared.
15. _The New Statesman_, July 1, 1916:
The prolonged debate in the House of Commons on the Excess Profits Tax
ended on Monday in a vote which found Mr. McKenna's critics in a small
though substantial minority. The point actually at issue was not very
simple, and in spite of repeated explanations several of the most
persistent speakers never grasped it. The demand was that all
"controlled establishments" should be exempt from the excess profits tax
in consideration of the patriotic services they were rendering to their
country and of the "bargain" alleged to have been concluded with the
Ministry of Munitions whereby any profits they may make in excess of 20
per cent above their normal profits are in any event taken by the State.
This meant, of course, that a controlled firm which made a profit of
£50,000 in 1914, and of £60,000 (due to war contracts) in 1916, would
retain the whole of their excess profits without reduction. Mr. McKenna
argued that such firms, having the advantages of practically compulsory
labour and freedom from Trade Union restrictions, ought, at any rate,
not to be let off more lightly than uncontrolled firms. It is amazing
that such a proposition should have to be stated at all.
The point of view of the ordinary member of the public undoubtedly is
that excess profits on the making of munitions simply ought not to
exist. If engineering firms are permitted to maintain their old standard
of profit and dividend (with fair arrangements, of course, for new
capital and depreciation), they ought to be more than satisfied. Great
heat was developed on the debate by the representatives of various
capitalist interests, notably Sir Arthur Markham, Mr. J. M. Henderson,
Sir Croydon Marks, and Sir Alfred Mond; and some of them were not even
ashamed to hint that if their demands were not agreed to there might be
a diminution of output. At a moment when tens of thousands of men are
giving up their whole incomes as well as their savings, in order to
fight for their country, it is impossible to imagine any spectacle more
unedifying for the wage-earning class than that of these malcontent
capitalist legislators angrily fighting for their extra war-profits.
When one remembers that it was these same gentlemen who were so
enthusiastic for compelling younger and poorer men to sacrifice
everything they possess, it is hard to find words to say what ought to
be said of them. We hope, at all events, that the names of those who
voted against the Government on the division will not be allowed to be
forgotten in the constituencies.
16. _Pall Mall Gazette_, January 31, 1916:
_From Our Own Correspondent._
PARIS, _Saturday_.
The trouble that has been brewing for months past at the Central Markets
has now come to a head. A well-known dealer was suspended by the Prefect
of Police; the Home Office thought this insufficient and revoked his
licence; and there is now talk of a prosecution.
The Central Markets are not a place which the habitual Parisian cares to
venture into. Apart from its own peculiar and particularly pungent
odours, the markets are peopled with a class of stallkeeper who do not
exactly keep their tongue in their pocket, as the French say. They have,
in fact, a flow of language, and it requires a brave man to make a stand
against it--and all the brave men are at the front just now.
But the Central Markets not only have a language of their own; they have
ways and methods of dealing that require long years of acquaintance to
fathom, so only experts venture to make head or tail of them.
All this means that between the Central Markets, at the depository, and
most of all that Paris wants to eat, and the actual consumer as
represented by the ordinary housewife starting out on her daily round of
shopping, there move and live a host of intermediaries. Large as their
number is, they cannot compare with the middlemen who squeeze in between
the Central Markets and the actual grower, breeder, or producer.
With so many hands for produce to pass through, each one eager to grab
all that it can for itself before it passes the stuff along, it is small
wonder that prices grow, not taking into account the burden of taxes and
other charges the goods have to bear on their journey from the farm to
the household.
ARMY OF INSPECTORS
The police have an army of inspectors for watching and superintending
the work of the markets. The rules drawn up for their regulation would
more than fill an old-fashioned three-volume novel, and each one
provides for penalties severer and stricter than the other. Yet the
profitable game of rigging the market and everything connected with it
is in full swing, and no one is more fooled than the police, unless it
be the public.
Since the war broke out, the State, the city, and the public alike,
backed up by the small retail trader, have done their best to get even
with the Central Markets. The more they try to put things right the
worse they seem to get. Prices appear to ease for a brief space, but
they soon become inflated once more. Or, if they do not, the particular
commodity concerned simply disappears in some mysterious fashion until
the "powers that be" submit to the inevitable, and shut their eyes to
scheming they are helpless to prevent.
AS MUCH FOOD AS USUAL
The worst of it is that statistics can always be produced to show that
the rise in prices is purely and simply the outcome of a falling off in
supplies. Arrivals of fruits, vegetables, and fish in the last quarter
of the past year were exactly half the average supply of an ordinary
year; eggs were two-thirds below the proper figures, meat some 4,000
tons short, butter six tons, cheeses only a ton.
Of course, the population of the city has diminished also to a certain
extent, but not so much as might be expected considering that there is
practically no single family that has not one or more members at the
front.
They have been replaced by refugees, sick and wounded soldiers, huge war
administrations of one kind and another. Paris consequently wants almost
as much feeding as in ordinary times, not taking any account of the fact
that portions of both the British and French Armies still buy provisions
on the Paris markets.
Notwithstanding the legitimate reasons that can be put forward to
explain the upward trend of prices, the authorities know well enough
that all is not so innocent and above board as it appears. One or two
more glaring instances than usual of manipulation have put them on the
right track at last. Other steps may also be expected, for public
opinion has got to the point that either the "inside ring" must be
broken up or popular resentment will take a form that no Government can
afford to overlook or affect to ignore.
17. _The Daily News_, August 16, 1915:
A YEAR OF ECONOMIC WAR
The _Vorwaerts_, without boasting, as Dr. Helfferich has been doing, of
Germany's financial invincibility, yet sees cause for satisfaction in
the economic condition of the Empire after twelve months of war.
The upheaval of the first week of war was indeed serious, and the grim
spectre of unemployment was in the air. But it was soon laid.
The best results were obtained in the sphere of unemployment. At the
beginning of the war it was about 22-1/2 per cent, in October only 10·9
per cent, and in May it had further sunk to 2·9 per cent. The figures
for June were 2·6 per cent as against 2·5 per cent in the previous
June.... Similarly the daily output of coal of the Rhenish Westphalian
Coal Syndicate, which in July, 1914, reached 327,974 tons, sank in
August to 170,816 tons, in September rose again to 211,995, and in
October to 223,760, the figures for that month being 60 per cent of
those of the previous October.... In later months, in spite of the
calling up of more and more workers, it has only been 25 to 27 per cent
below the normal.
The writer tells the same story of the iron and textile industries, and
traces the good results to the fact that the supplies of raw materials
were far greater than had been thought. For instance, there were about
700,000 bales of cotton more than are needed in a normal year. Besides
which the stores of conquered countries were at the disposal of the
conquerors. The only trades which really suffered were those in
luxuries.
The article concludes thus:
The German trade has survived the shocks of the first year of war
better than the most convinced optimist could have hoped, and
better than the organisation of other belligerents. All fears of
immediate inevitable industrial collapse which haunted us at the
beginning of the war have been dissipated. Instead of this we meet
in all industrial circles with the consciousness [often much
exaggerated] that "We can endure."
The words in brackets are significant.
18. _Pall Mall Gazette_, November 10, 1916:
LIVING ON WAR
KRUPPS' PROFIT JUMPS FROM 1-1/2 MILLIONS TO 4-1/2
AMSTERDAM, _Tuesday Night_.
An Essen telegram states that the clear profit last year of Krupps
amounted to 86,400,000 marks (£4,320,000), as compared with a profit of
33,900,000 marks (£1,695,000) in the preceding year. A dividend of 12
per cent has been distributed.--Reuter.
_19. Pall Mall Gazette:_
GERMAN DIVIDENDS
ECONOMIC POSITION OF SOME OF HER COMPANIES
The 1914 dividends of over sixty limited companies, nearly all German,
and the remainder Austrian, show that in the case of sixteen companies
the dividends amounted to 20 per cent or over, the average being 25-3/16
per cent. These companies (says the _Morning Post_) are mainly engaged
in the production of leather, dynamite, explosives, india-rubber, arms,
ammunition, and powder. In one case, that of an explosives company in
Hamburg, the dividend attained 40 per cent.
Germany is still barring the Swiss frontier, and for the last five days
the German post arrived at Berne very late or not at all, thus pointing
to great activity in military matters beyond the German-Swiss frontier.
As further proof, if proof were needed, of the sufficiency of Germany's
food supplies, it is pointed out that she now offers to send to
Switzerland large quantities of potatoes.
20. _The Times_, July 5, 1916:
WAR PROFIT-MONGERS IN RUSSIA
_From our Correspondent._
PETROGRAD, _July 2_.
The clergy will to-morrow publicly anathematise the "freebooters of the
rear," who are amassing huge fortunes at the expense of the public.
21. _The Westminster Gazette_, Aug. 28, 1916:
GERMAN WAR SCANDALS
700 PER CENT PROFIT FOR EAST PRUSSIAN LANDOWNERS
ZURICH, _Sunday_.
Details of several recent corrupt affairs which have come to light in
Germany have reached Switzerland.
At Mainz a timber merchant was arrested for bribing army officers to
secure contracts for his firm. The official investigation revealed that
he had paid a total of £50,000 in bribes to army officers. Some of the
individual bribes were as high as £2,500. This timber merchant, who was
almost a poor man before the war, has accumulated in two years a fortune
which compelled him to pay income-tax on an income of £25,000 per annum.
Another scandalous affair was discovered in Herr von Batocki's new
Imperial Food Department. One of his officials, Bernot by name, was
bribed by numerous East Prussian landowners to have the crops from their
estates bought by the Government at exorbitant prices. Bernot pocketed
some £15,000, and the landowners in question sold their wheat at a
profit of 700 per cent.--Wireless Press.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 89: Net loss of £276,560 in first half 1914-15.]
* * * * *
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THE CHASTE WIFE. _Each Cr. 8vo. 6s._
TAYLOR, G. R. STIRLING
_Mary Wollstonecraft._ Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d._
TAYLOR, UNA
MAETERLINCK: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d._
THOMAS EDWARD
SWINBURNE: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d._
PATER: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d._
THE TENTH MUSE. _F'cap 8vo. 2s. 6d._
VAUGHAN, H. M.
MELEAGER. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
THE DIAL OF AHAZ. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
AN AUSTRALASIAN WANDER-YEAR. _Dy. 8vo. 10s. 6d._
WALPOLE, HUGH
FORTITUDE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
THE DUCHESS OF WREXE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
THE DARK FOREST. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
WEST, JULIUS
CHESTERTON: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d._
WILLIAMS, ORLO
VIE DE BOHÈME. _Demy 8vo. 15s._
MEREDITH: A CRITICAL STUDY. _Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d._
THE ESSAY (_The Art and Craft of Letters_). _1s._
YOUNG, FILSON
NEW LEAVES. _Wide Crown 8vo. 5s._
A CHRISTMAS CARD. _Demy 16mo. 1s._
YOUNG, FRANCIS BRETT
DEEP SEA. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
THE DARK TOWER. _Crown 8vo. 6s._
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PART TWO: CLASSIFIED INDEX OF TITLES
_General Literature_
ART OF BALLET, THE. _By Mark E. Perugini._
ART OF SILHOUETTE, THE. _By Desmond Coke._
BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, THE. _By D. C. Boulger._
BEHIND THE RANGES, _By F. G. Aflalo._
BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _By F. G. Aflalo._
CAMILLE DESMOULINS. _By Violet Methley._
CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _By Ralph Straus._
CHRISTMAS CARD, A. _By Filson Young._
CUMBERLAND LETTERS, THE. _By Clementina Black._
DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _By P. P. Howe._
ENGLISH SONNET, THE. _By T. W. H. Crosland._
GEORGIAN POETS. _By J. C. Squire._
GOLD TREE, THE. _By J. C. Squire._
GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _By Michael Barrington._
HIEROGLYPHICS. _By Arthur Machen._
HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE, THE. _By M. Sand._
LETTERS FROM GREECE. _By John Mavrogordato._
LINLEYS OF BATH, THE. _By Clementina Black._
MAHOMET. _By G. M. Draycott._
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _By G. R. Stirling Taylor._
NEW LEAVES. _By Filson Young._
PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _By R. A. Scott-James._
REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _By F. G. Aflalo._
SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING, THE. _By G. L. Apperson._
SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _By Lewis Melville._
SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
STUPOR MUNDI. _By Lionel Allshorn._
TENTH MUSE, THE. _By Edward Thomas._
TRICKS OF THE TRADE. _By J. C Squire._
THOSE UNITED STATES. _By Arnold Bennett._
VIE DE BOHÈME. _By Orlo Williams._
WORLD IN CHAINS, THE. _By J. Mavrogordato._
_Verse_
BOOK OF ENGLISH SONNETS, THE.
CARMINA VARIA. _By C. Kennett Burrow._
COLLECTED POEMS OF T. W. H. CROSLAND.
COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER.
COLLECTED POEMS OF F. M. HUEFFER.
CORONAL, A. A NEW ANTHOLOGY. _By L. M. Lamont._
CROWNING PURPOSE, THE. _By Evelyn Simms._
FIVE DEGREES SOUTH. _By F. Brett Young._
GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, THE. _By J. E. Flecker._
KENSINGTON RHYMES. _By Compton Mackenzie._
VISION OF CONSOLATION, A. _By Evelyn Simms._
WAR POEMS BY 'X.'
_Drama_
DRAMATIC WORKS OF ST. JOHN HANKIN. _3 vols._
DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN. _6 vols._
CASSANDRA IN TROY. _By John Mavrogordato._
MAGIC. _By G. K. Chesterton._
MODERN DRAMA, THE. _By L. Lewisohn._
PEER GYNT. _Translated by R. Ellis Roberts._
REPERTORY THEATRE, THE. _By P. P. Howe._
THOMPSON. _By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon._
_Travel_
AUSTRALASIAN WANDER-YEAR, AN. _By H. M. Vaughan._
EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. _By Rene Francis._
FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _By Norman Douglas._
NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. _By Allan Fea._
OLD CALABRIA. _By Norman Douglas._
OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _By Allan Fea._
PERFUMES OF ARABY. _By Harold Jacob._
_Martin Secker's Series of
Critical Studies_
ROBERT BRIDGES. _By F. & E. Brett Young._
SAMUEL BUTLER. _By Gilbert Cannan._
G. K. CHESTERTON. _By Julius West._
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY. _By J. Middleton Murry._
GEORGE GISSING. _By Frank Swinnerton._
THOMAS HARDY. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
HENRIK IBSEN. _By R. Ellis Roberts._
HENRY JAMES. _By Ford Madox Hueffer._
RUDYARD KIPLING. _By Cyril Falls._
MAURICE MAETERLINCK. _By Una Taylor._
GEORGE MEREDITH. _By Orlo Williams._
WILLIAM MORRIS. _By John Drinkwater._
WALTER PATER. _By Edward Thomas._
D. G. ROSSETTI. _By John Drinkwater._
BERNARD SHAW. _By P. P. Howe._
R. L. STEVENSON. _By Frank Swinnerton._
A. C. SWINBURNE. _By Edward Thomas._
J. M. SYNGE. _By P. P. Howe._
WALT WHITMAN. _By Basil de Selincourt._
W. B. YEATS. _By Forrest Reid._
_The Art and Craft of Letters_
BALLAD, THE. _By Frank Sidgwick._
COMEDY. _By John Palmer._
CRITICISM. _By P. P. Howe._
EPIC, THE. _By Lascelles Abercrombie._
ESSAY, THE. _By Orlo Williams._
HISTORY. _By R. H. Gretton._
LYRIC, THE. _By John Drinkwater._
PARODY. _By Christopher Stone._
SATIRE. _By Gilbert Cannan._
SHORT STORY, THE. _By Barry Pain._
_The Tales of Henry James_
ALTAR OF THE DEAD, THE.
ASPERN PAPERS, THE.
BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, THE.
COXON FUND, THE.
DAISY MILLER.
DEATH OF THE LION, THE.
FIGURE IN THE CARPET, THE.
GLASSES.
LESSON OF THE MASTER, THE.
PUPIL, THE.
REVERBERATOR, THE.
TURN OF THE SCREW, THE.
_Martin Secker's Series of
Two-Shilling Novels_
CARNIVAL. _By Compton Mackenzie._
SINISTER STREET: VOL. I. _By Compton Mackenzie._
THE PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT. _By Compton Mackenzie._
THE SEA-HAWK. _By Rafael Sabatini._
SANINE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
FORTITUDE. _By Hugh Walpole._
THE LION'S SKIN. _By Rafael Sabatini._
WIDDERSHINS. _By Oliver Onions._
ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _By Barry Pain._
_Fiction_
BANKRUPT, THE. _By Horace Horsnell._
BANNER OF THE BULL, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
BATTLES OF LIFE. _By Austin Philips._
BREAKING-POINT. _By Michael Artzibashef._
BURNT HOUSE, THE. _By Christopher Stone._
CARNIVAL. _By Compton Mackenzie._
CASUALS OF THE SEA. _By William McFee._
CHASTE WIFE, THE. _By Frank Swinnerton._
COLLECTED TALES: VOL. I. _By Barry Pain._
COLLECTED TALES: VOL. II. _By Barry Pain._
COLUMBINE. _By Viola Meynell._
COMPLETE GENTLEMAN, THE. _By Bohun Lynch._
CREATED LEGEND, THE. _By Feodor Sologub._
DARK FOREST, THE. _By Hugh Walpole._
DARK TOWER, THE. _By F. Brett Young._
DEBIT ACCOUNT, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
DEEP SEA. _By F. Brett Young._
DIAL OF AHAZ, THE. _By H. M. Vaughan._
DUCHESS OF WREXE, THE. _By Hugh Walpole._
FOOL'S TRAGEDY, THE. _By A. Scott Craven._
FORTITUDE. _By Hugh Walpole._
GOLIGHTLYS, THE. _By Laurence North._
GUY AND PAULINE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _By Laurence North._
IMPERFECT BRANCH, THE. _By Richard Lluellyn._
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _By O. Onions._
INTRODUCING WILLIAM ALLISON. _By William Hewlett._
IRON AGE, THE. _By F. Brett Young._
KING'S MEN, THE. _By John Palmer._
LION'S SKIN, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
LITTLE DEMON, THE. _By Feodor Sologub._
LOT BARROW. _By Viola Meynell._
MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE, THE. _By Donald Armstrong._
MAKING MONEY. _By Owen Johnson._
MELEAGER. _By H. M. Vaughan._
MILLIONAIRE, THE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
MODERN LOVERS. _By Viola Meynell._
NARCISSUS. _By Viola Meynell._
NOCTURNE. _By Frank Swinnerton._
OLD HOUSE, THE. _By Feodor Sologub._
ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _By Barry Pain._
PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT, THE. _By Compton Mackenzie._
PETER PARAGON. _By John Palmer._
QUESTING BEAST, THE. _By Ivy Low._
RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE, THE. _By Anna Preston._
SALAMANDER, THE. _By Owen Johnson._
SANINE. _By Michael Artzibashef._
SEA HAWK, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
SECURITY. _By Ivor Brown._
SINISTER STREET. I. _By Compton Mackenzie._
SINISTER STREET. II. _By Compton Mackenzie._
SNARE, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini._
SOUTH WIND. _By Norman Douglas._
STORY OF LOUIE, THE. _By Oliver Onions._
TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _By M. Artzibashef._
TELLING THE TRUTH. _By William Hewlett._
TRUE DIMENSION, THE. _By Warrington Dawson._
UNCLE'S ADVICE. _By William Hewlett._
UNDERGROWTH. _By F. & E. Brett Young._
UNOFFICIAL. _By Bohun Lynch._
WIDDERSHINS. _By Oliver Onions._
YEARS OF PLENTY. _By Ivor Brown._
PRINTED BY
WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND.
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