HANOVER BROWSING
DANTE, IN THE passage at the end of his political essay, De Monarchia, an essay expressive of the intense desire of the poet for unity in a welter of warring interests, exclaims: "O Race of Mankind! What storms must toss thee, what shipwrecks must buffet thee, as long as thou, a beast of many heads, strivest after contrary things." If such was the conviction of the gray poet in his turbulent century, I wonder what would he have said if he lived today. Mankind is still a beast of many heads, and more than ever strives after contrary things. Perchance if he walked the earth today he might not have included a "Paradiso" in the Divine Comedy. It would undoubtedly include an "Inferno" and mayhap a "Purgatorio." But a "Paradiso" —I wonder?
I am writing this article just before the fifteenth anniversary of the armistice, and appropriately enough my thoughts turn to the dynamic forces and interests and loyalties which were so vital a part of the prewar period. My reading this month was limited to books on nationalism and internationalism, pacifism and war. In these fields the striving after contrary things is as perturbing a part of the human scene as ever. I have no desire to exaggerate the influence of nationalism, imperialism, and competitive capitalism as factors in the causation of the Great War. They belong to the group of the more remote causes of that catastrophe. Nevertheless, they were disturbing forces in that pre-war world. And today they are as active as ever. The resurgence of aggressive nationalism in all the countries and the temporary eclipse of internationalism everywhere do not promise peace-lovers very much hope. Last month I wrote about the situation in Germany, and at the end of the article I referred to Strachey's The Menace ofFascism. Therein he argues that war will be the outcome of the spread of Fascism in Europe. At the same time he hoped that the forces of revolutionary labor would be prepared to take advantage of such a war and seize control as the communists did in 1917 in Russia.
One would think, however, that Europe has had more than enough of war. But we cannot be too confident. The atmosphere is again ominous. Not that I believe there is any immediate danger. Some of the nations are not too well prepared for a new test of arms. Moreover, it is possible that European statesmanship—if not Asiatic—is intelligent enough to postpone another calamitous war for a few years at least. When I reflect on war the story of Pat and the negro comes to my mind. They could not get along together. So they decided to fight it out. They agreed that when one or the other had had enough he was to say "sufficient." The fight started and went on fiercely. They tore into each other and bludgeoned each other with abandon. At long last Pat whispered disgustingly "suffi- cient." No sooner had he uttered the word than the negro more than half dead said "Darn it all, that's the word I have been trying to say for the last half hour."
A sensible man would think that all the bellicose nations of the world would be in a mood to shout out "sufficient." However this does not seem to be the case.
AMONG THE best of the numerous new „ books on nationalism, pacifism and war are the following: GROUP A. BOOKS ON NATIONALISM.I. Mazzini; Prophet of Modern Europe. Gwilym O. Griffith. Harcourt Brace and Co. 1933.
This new biography of the most passionate prophet of nationalism in the nineteenth century contains some new material, and is an improvement on Bolton King's study. Mazzini's idealistic interpretation of nationalism had many noble elements, and despite his intense national passion he was clear-sighted enough to see that a sound national life could be built up only on an ethical and democratic basis, and that the primary concern of a nation is not with its egoistic rights but with its social duties towards mankind. Here he revealed the insight of the true prophet. And if his conception of nationalism had been followed by the nations of the world nationalism would have been more of a blessing than it has sometimes been in the last fifty years. "Never deny your sister nations" was a part of the teaching of Mazzini, and many of the evils of nationalism arise from ignoring this basic principle.
2. The Historical Evolution of ModernNationalism. Carlton J. H. Hayes. Richard R. Smith, Inc. 1931.
This is a better book than the same author's Essays on Nationalism. It discusses and criticises the various forms nationalism has taken in theory and partly in practice in the last two centuries. Well worth reading by those who want to understand nationalism in its many different aspects.
3. The Conquest of a Continent. Madison Grant. Scribner's Sons. 1933.
In this provocative book Grant aims to give us a racial history of the United States. He is an uncompromising champion o£ the Nordic race and culture. Hitler's emphasis on the Aryan race finds an American counterpart (only in a racial sense) in this recent study of the author of "The Passing of a Great Race." He rejects the term Aryan as a linguistic term. The proper racial designation is Nordic. Viewing things p.s they are today, he concludes that "the Nordic race, that has built up, protected, and preserved Western civilization, needs to realize the necessity of its own solidarity and close co-operation. Upon this mutual understanding rest the peace of the world and the preservation of its civilization." He gives a broad interpretation to Nordic as is seen by his statement that "America today is 70% Nordic and 80% Protestant." This is very probably an exaggeration.
4. Emotional Currents in American History. J. H. Denison. Scribners. 1932.
This is not a bad book to read as a salutary corrective to Grant's racial interpietation. It is dangerous to emphasize racial differences as if they could be correlated scientifically with cultural differences. Racial comparisons and judgments are apt to engender ugly emotional reactions in other races. Some of the dangers likely to ensue from the racial policies suggested by Grant may be glimpsed by reading such a book as this of Denison.
5. Nationalism: Man's Other Religion. Edward Shillito. Student Christian Movement Press. London. 1933.
A simple, somewhat rhetorical attack on nationalism conceived as the religion of modern patriots. I am not fond of comparisons of this sort. To compare nationalism or communism with religion is to misunderstand religion as well as nationalism and communism. At best, analogies of this nature are too artificial.
6. Nationalism in the Soviet Union. Hans Kohn. George Routledge and Sons. London. 1933.
Another brief book analyzing and interpreting the attitudes and policies of the communists in Russia towards nationality and the national Republics federated in the Soviet Union. In theory they are committed to internationalism or even cosmopolitanism on a classless basis. But both their theory and practice must be interpreted in the light of the philosophy of communism. I doubt very much whether in practice the rulers of Soviet Russia would allow any of the federated republics to secede from the union. The decision to secede would be interpreted, and rightly, as a counter-revolutionary movement. A decision of this nature would not be made by the communist party in the seceding Republic itself. However this little book of Kohn is worth reading. I can commend also his two more substantial studies of Nationalism in the Orient.
7. The Interdependent World and ItsProblems. Ramsay Muir. Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 1933.
A splendid and a fair-minded discussion of the place and limitations of nationalism in a world which in some ways is growing more and more interdependent in its relationships and activities. The logic of this interdependence demands a larger measure of economic and political co-operation. Nationalism must therefore be made to fit into the contemporary world of interlocking, international relationships. Muir represents the liberal English point of view at its best.
GROUP B. BOOKS ON INTERNATIONALISM ANDPACIFICISM.
i. International Politics. F. L. Schuman. McGraw Hill Co. 1933.
This is a very lengthy book, but readable and challenging in parts. The last half of the book dealing with the dynamic forces at work in the Modern State System of the west deserves careful perusal. I like the cultural approach of the author, and his commendable (but difficult) efforts to interpret international politics in the light of the conflicts of the dominant power groups and vested interests concerned.
2. The Intelligent Man's Review ofEurope Today. G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole. Victor Gollanz, Ltd. 1933-
Another very satisfying volume by this very energetic husband and wife combination. England seems to specialize in this sort of combination with its Webbs and its Hammonds and its Russells and its Coles. What about that for a peerless foursome of husband-wife combinations! Needless to say, this review is written from the socialistic point of view. But the socialism of the authors does not unduly color the review. In my opinion this is the best book of this kind for the general reader. It contains excellent chapters on the slump in Europe both in its industrial and monetary phases. The key to the critical sections is found in the sentence "The coming of the age of plenty demands a new way of organizing the communities of the world."
3. The Shape of Things To Come. H. G, Wells. Macmillan Co. 1933.
Here again Wells returns to the attack on the contemporary world of sovereign national states. The book ostensibly gives us a history of the future, at least a hundred years of the future. By then Wells believes that a World State will be a working reality. In many parts of the book Wells is at his best, and at his best he is very incisive. The short word pictures of Wilson, Ford, Ramsay Macdonald, Roosevelt are interesting. The early section dealing with Today and Tomorrow, or with the Age of Frustration, is first rate. A goodly number of wars and other tragedies find room in this Wellsian history of the future. Some of them are rather fantastic, but not ipossible. His account of the Polish wars of the Forties is written with the exuberant gusto usually found in his war descriptions. The controlling idea,of the volume is the emergence into the thinking of the modern mind of the idea of a World State and its slow but triumphant translation into practicality. As in some of his other books his main emphasis is on the necessity of a World Government if modern civilization is to avert a collapse. The major ideas in the philosophy of Wells come out in all these books. His faith in intelligence and in science. His conviction that right thinking can save the world, and his insistence that we need a world education to furnish us with a common culture and a unified philosophy. And even this is not enough unless we can work out a constructive plan to give direction and unity to our efforts. We have no planfulness either in our understanding of the objectives of civilization or in our choice of means to realize those objectives. We have no clear picture of the future we want to reach, and we even lack a true understanding of our past cultural history. That is why the nations drift into wars and crises and revolutions. In this book again Wells states his belief that nationalism and patriotism block the road to peace and world co-operation. "The existence of independent sovereign states is war," he says, "and only an elaborate miseducation blinds the world to this elementary fact." One cannot but admire the crusading courage of Wells on behalf of cosmopolitanism. His extraordinarily active mind is consumed wholly by the idea of a world state. Huxley used to say that Spencer's conception of a tragedy was a fact going slick through a great generalization. I have a feeling that Wells' idea of a tragedy is a national leader whose vision is unable to see beyond the national idea.
4. Man's Mortality. Michael Arlen. Doubleday-Doran. 1933.
This has one or two things in common with Wells. In this novel fantasy of the future we catch the author of the Ladywith the Green Hat and other excessively sentimental sophisticated trifles in a much more serious mood. Perhaps the future will see an Air Transport Dictatorship keeping international concord.
5. Cry Havoc. Beverley Nichols. Doubleday- Doran and Co. 1933.
Here we have a-scathing indictment of war and a passionate defence of pacifism. He thinks that war now and in the future is nothing more than a "mass murder of civilians." Viewed in this light war to him is intolerable. I am not a pacifist and I am unable to subscribe to some of the ideas of the author. But if anybody wants a thoroughgoing indictment of war—here it is.
GROUP C. BOOKS ON WAR.I. War Memoirs of David Lloyd George. Little, Brown and Co. 1933.
This is the first volume of the memoirs of the British War Prime Minister. The second volume is also out, but it has not yet come to hand. This first volume is limited to 1914-1915. The story told in its pages is well known in a general way to most students of the Great War. The story of the relations between Great Britain and Germany from 1904 to 1914 is reviewed briefly, and the commitments of Sir Edward Grey to France with the withholding of the exact nature of these from the majority of the members of the Cabinet are scored in a telling manner. The early financial and military difficulties of England are treated with refreshing candor and in a highly admirable non-partisan spirit. The valuable work which Lloyd George did in relation to organizing the munition industries so as to provide the British troops with a more adequate supply of guns and shells is rightly emphasized. There is a very frank and, in my opinion, a penetrating appraisal of the strength and weaknesses of Sir Edward Grey in one of the chapters. However, to me the most interesting feature is Lloyd George's criticism of how the British blundered in that first year of the war. The ineptitude and the tactical conservatism of the War Office and the military leaders are disclosed again and again. I personally think that a great deal can be said in favor of his views as to how Britain could have effectively helped Russia and Serbia. He favored the Eastern Front group of strategists. Of course one may say that a certain amount of this criticism is wisdom after the event. But it would be beside the point in the case of Lloyd George. His statements in this connection are adequately documented. At the same time the argument is dependent partly on a number of hypothetical ifs and buts and such like contingencies.
The picture which emerges out of this volume is of a man who at bottom was a lover of peace. After the war started the same man became a surprisingly adaptable and audacious war leader—a big man animated genuinely by a love of his country. For a completer appraisal of the man and his work I must wait until the other volumes come to hand. The book is composed in a simple, direct, and effective style. I have heard Lloyd George speak on numerous occasions. He can move the masses by his speech. But he writes even better than he speaks.
2. The Testament of Youth. Vera Brittain. Macmillan Co. 1933.
In Cry Havoc, Beverley Nichols says that "the discussion of war should begin with the personal agony of the soldier and should end with the political and economic factors which result in that agony." If this is what is wanted here is the book. It is a sad book as all war books are to me. For modern war is a sad affair. What Miss Brittain has succeeded in doing in this very poignant history of war is to reveal in a blindingly luminous manner what it meant to the personal lives of the men and women of the war generation. In doing so she supplies us with a severe indictment of the ideas and institutions of the civilization of that period. The captivating story of her childhood and adolescence, her admission as a student to Somerville College, Oxford, the break in her college career by the outbreak of the World War; her experiences as a voluntary war nurse in England, Malta and France, the cruel ways in which the war affected her and her family, the death in battle of her lover followed by that of her other male friends and finally by that of her brother on the Italian front in 1918, and the bitter aftermath of the war and her sensitive reactions to these disenchanting experiences. What a sorrowful story it is. We have had a number of war novels and records revealing intimately what the war did to the men taking part in it—the story of the lost generation of Remarque and Blunden—but this testament of Vera Brittain is the best personal picture of the whole period. It is especially effective in showing how the war affected the women who took part in it, and what it meant to the families of the men and women drawn into it. Read it by all means.
3. The Martyr. Liam O'Flaherty. Mac millan Co. N. Y. 1933.
This is the most recent novel of this prolific and disconcertingly honest critic of the nationalistic romanticism of modern Ireland. O'Flaherty has a unique and individual flavor to his vision of life. The plot of the novel is somewhat fantastic. But his descriptions of the characters in the guerilla warfare between the Irish Republican Army and the Free State Army a few years ago show him at his best.
4. The Dragon's Teeth. Major General J. F. C. Fuller. Constable and Co. London. 1932.
Some sections of this book appealed to me, but the Major-General has a cloudy style. He writes about war rationally and not emotionally. He has no illusions about war or peace or even people. He writes about them as they are and not as we think they ought to be. His own position is seen in a passage like this: "and surely it is far more likely that warlike inventions rather than peaceful sentiments will one day be able to whisper into the ear of this troubled world-Pax vobiscum." He contends that advances in science and technology as related to war will in the future make the game of war not worth the candle. He is a supporter of a well-trained and completely mechanized army more so than in a large conscript force. He has sensible things to say in this connection.
5. The First World War. Laurence Stallings. Simon and Schuster. 1933. Those who like a photographic story of the World War will enjoy this volume.
6. What Would Be The Character of aNew War. An Enquiry Organized by the Interparliamentary Union. P. S. King and Son. 1931.
It is interesting to compare this with the war sections in Wells' The Shape of ThingsTo Come. The contributors are all experts in their respective'fields drawn from different European countries. They include military men, financiers, scientists, jurists, economists, psychologists, and demographers. In a book of this nature there is bound to be a certain discrepancy of outlook and predictive interpretation. Yet despite minor differences of opinion there is a fairly general agreement that the wars of the future are likely to see an intensification of many of the characteristics of the Great War. Civilian populations will be affected as well as the armies. The consensus of the experts is that war in the future will be more scientific and mechanized and destructive than was the World War. It will be waged by the use of chemical, bacteriological as well as by aerial and mechanical means. The book makes no attempt to stress unduly and sensationally the more frightful possibilities of future warfare. Neither is there any tendency to glorify war. Some express the hope that in the future war may become unnecessary as a method of settling disputes between nations.
ONE REALIZES after reading books o£ this kind how integral a part of the structure and traditions of irtodern life the war pattern seems to be. It is no wonder the Coles's say: "If we are successfully to prevent war we must remove the causes of war, which lie fundamentally in capitalist nationalism and capitalist imperialism. The vitality of nationalism and the complex of loyalties, sentiments, and ideas on which it rests are not easy to lay aside. And nowhere is Dante's striving after contrary things more in evidence than in the sphere of nationalism and war. It is difficult for us to know what should be our attitude towards pacifism and war. What should be one's attitude towards nationalism, and what measure of support one should give to the ideals of internationalism?
There is a woeful division of opinion among liberal thinkers regarding nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The principle of nationality is unreservedly denounced as a principle of disruption or aggression, a naked and irrational expression of the mass egoism and conceit of modern communities. Patriotic loyalties are also criticised by many modern critics. This of course is nothing new, for in the years preceding the War we find writers severely indicting patriotism. With Ruskin patriotism was conceived as "an absurd prejudice founded on an extended selfishness"; with Grant Allen as a "vulgar vice"; with Havelock Ellis as a "virtue among barbarians." And a liberal thinker like the late J. M. Robertson declares that "the principle of nationality stands in large part for an irrational instinct, if not for a possible hallucination," and that "the nation considered as a continuous and personalised organism is in large measure a metaphysical dream." This indictment of nationalism is echoed by Sidney Brooks with his passionate exclamation, "To those who believe in and dream of and work for a coming time of universal peace, I should say, Nationality, there is the enemy." Mr. H. G. Wells in book after book repeats the criticism and states that "we are on a sinking ship that only one thing can save. We have to oust these European patriotisms by some greater idea or perish."
Nationalism to all these thinkers seems to stand in the way of the advance of humanity towards stable peace and an efficient world co-operation. It blocks the road to Tennyson's "Parliament of man, and the Federation of the World." It holds back the human race from entering into a World State," and makes almost impossible a real liberal, democratic "League of Peoples." Nationality to them is a divisive or a disruptive or an imperialistic principle. It is a root of conflict, a breeder of war, a feeder of hate systems and fear systems. So it must be moved out of the way before it is possible to usher in a newer and better economic and political world-order. Nationalism and its narrow devotions and insensate loyalties is supposed to block the royal highway along which mankind must travel if it is to attain peace and world co-operation. So it must be swept to one side. But when one looks out over the modern world, one must be a stout optimist indeed to see any signs that nationalism is weakening in its hold over people.
A similar confusion is found in the attitudes of modern men towards pacifism and war. Pacifists fail to realize the strength of the emotions and ideas and loyalties which constitute nationalism. It does not appear to be good tactics to assault these directly. Wells is probably one of the chief critics of both nationalism and war. But his attack on these is relatively impotent. What the world needs now is to devise practical machinery and methods of solving conflicts without resorting to war. This is needed as much as the creation of sentiments favorable to international amity. One can only hope that Wells is right when he says that "In 1933, an observer might have been misled by the fact of the Fascist regime in Italy, by the tumult of the Nazi party in Germany, by similar national-socialist movements in other countries, and by the increase in tariff barriers and other restraints upon trade everywhere to conclude that the cosmopolitan idea was everywhere in retreat before the obsessions of race, creed and nationalism. Yet all the while the germs of the Modern State were growing, everywhere its votaries were learning and assembling forces."
