194 



The Review of Reviews. 



PACIFICISM AND MILITARISM. 



THE NEW PACIFICISM UNDER 

 FIRE. 



The Quarterly Review for Jul)- discusses Mr. Norman 

 Angell's " Great Illusion " as the arrival of a new 

 pacificism. The writer says : — 



Pacificism has passed through two phases : the appeal to the 

 soul — "war is wrong"; and the appeal to fear — "war is 

 dant;eroiis." Now Mr. Angell ushers in the last phase with 

 the final appeal to the pocket — "war is expensive, since whether 

 you win or lose there is no money in it." . . . The general 

 consensus of opinion would seem to be that tlie appeal to the 

 pocket may succeed where the appeals to fear and lo altruism 

 are acknowledged to have failed ; and that love of money will 

 in the end bring about that change in the attitude of mankind 

 to war which could not be effected by such motives as love of 

 right and love of life. 



" THE MORAL STI.MULUS OF SUCCESSFUL WAR." 



The writer holds that Mr. Angell has committed 

 the initial error of endeavouring to disengage the moral 

 and economic aspects of war. lie leaves out of account 

 " the moral stimulus of successful war." Notably is 

 this the case in his survey of the Franco-German war 

 of 1871. The writer asks :— 



Is it of no moment that we find in German industry and 

 commerce after the war of 1870 characteristics of self-reliance 

 and enterprise which we fail to observe during the years of 

 peace between .Waterloo and Bismarck's wars, years which, on 

 Mr. Angell's thesis, should have been the fat and prosperous 

 years of German industrialism ? 



WARS WITHOUT ECONOMIC MOTIVE. 



The writer strongly dissents from the position that 

 economic causes have led to recent wars, and asks : — 



Where is the economic issue which led France to Magenta 

 and Solferino, and so drove her to make of Italy a nation ? 

 Was it economics alone which spurred Garibaldi to his great 

 effort for the freedom of his country ? And in the wars waged 

 to make United Germany, can we conceive that any aphorism 

 that "war does not pay" would have led Bismarck to liold his 

 hand, even were he convinced of its fundamental truth ? He 

 would have replied that Prussia was not fighting for money, 

 but to make of dismembered, contemned, politically insignifi- 

 cant Germany a united and powerful nation owning no master 

 and brooking no alien interference. The greatest war of our 

 time, the Civil War in the United .States, was fought because 

 2I,ooo,CXX) of white men refused to acquiesce in the shame 

 brought upon them by 5,000,000 of their fellows wdio saw no 

 harm in the ownership ol slaves. 



Similarly, of the reasons that led Japan to go to 

 war with Russia : — " By battle, and lay battle alone, 

 she knew she could raise men of her colour to an 

 equality with the white races ; and she has been justi- 

 fied in her decision." 



" SOULLESS CLASS-SELFISHNESS." 



The writer dismisses Mr. Angell by saying : — 

 The vision Mr. Angell welcomes is one in which the material 

 well-being of working men is to be the prime concern of some 

 soulless administration called into being by a renunciation of 

 all that the nations have stood for through the centuries of 

 strife in which civilisation came into being. It is a world in 

 which the lowest form of class-selfishness is to take the place 

 of patriotism ; it is one in which no man with a spark of man- 

 hood in him would tolerate existence. 



CAN WE AFFORi:) MORE ON 

 NAVAL ARMAMENTS? 



Yes : Twenty Millions a Year ! 



So Mr. Edgar Crammond insists, writing in the 

 Nineteenth Century, with a profusion of statistical 

 evidence. He thus sums up his case : — 



* Exclusive of cost of b:itlle-cruiser presented to home Government, 

 f Or latest figures available. 



The British Empire is in every respect the most important 

 and wealthy Confederation in the world. It has an area of 

 11,306,000 square miles and a population of 4l6,cxx),ooo. 

 Its foreign or external trade during 1910 was valued at 

 j^i, 776,888, 000, practically the whole of which was sea- 

 borne. The national wealth of the Empire is approximately 

 ^25,000,000,000, its national income ;^3, 332, 000,000, and its 

 expenditure on defence ,,^102,000,000 per annum. 



In point of wealth the British Empire greatly exceeds that 

 of any other Confederation, its nearest rival being the United 

 States with an estimated national-wealth of ;f2:, 000, 000,000, 

 while the national wealth of France cannot exceed 

 ^12,000,000,000. The comparative smallness of the expendi- 

 ture of the British Empire on defence will be appreciated when 

 it is realised that it represents only £'^ in respect of every .j^loo 

 of annual income. As a matter of fact, Germany and Fiance, 

 Avhose combined national wealth is largely exceeded by that of 

 the British Empire, now spend .about ^110,000,000 per annum 

 on defence, and their overseas possessions are inconsiderable in 

 relation to those of the British Empire. There cannot be the 

 slightest doubt that the Empire could bear with the greatest 

 ease an additional expenditure on naval defence of ;if 20,000,000 

 per annum. All the great sell-governing communities h.ad a 

 surplus last year : in the case of Great Britain it w.as;^6, 545,000, 

 Canada ^'7,800,000, and Australia /'s, 196,000. 



But if the Empire is to be a unit in defence, it must 

 be a unit in the direction of defence. Mr. Crammond 

 suggests the transformation of the Committee of 

 Imperial Defence into a representative and executive 

 Imperial Federal Council of Defence. He would 

 allow one representative or one vote to each million 

 of white population and one to each million spent on 

 defence. The scheme works out at a total membership 

 of 174 ! Defend us from a defence directed by such a 

 mob I 



