"Polite and good-natured people think it rude to say 'Balkans' if a Pacifist be present. Yet I never understood why, and I understand now less than ever. It carries the implication that because war has broken out that fact disposes of all objection to it. The armies are at grips, therefore peace is a mistake. Passion reigns in the Balkans, therefore passion is preferable to reason. "I suppose cannibalism and infanticide, polygamy, judicial torture, religious persecution, witchcraft, during all the years we did these 'inevitable' things, were defended in the same way, and those who resented all criticism of them pointed in triumph to the cannibal feast, the dead child, the maimed witness, the slain heretic, or the burned witch. But the fact did not prove the wisdom of those habits, still less their inevitability; for we have them no more. "We are all agreed as to the fundamental cause of the Balkan trouble: the hate born of religious, racial, national, and linguistic differences; the attempt of an alien conqueror to live parasitically upon the conquered, and the desire of conqueror and conquered alike to satisfy in massacre and bloodshed the rancor of fanaticism and hatred. "Well, in these islands, not so very long ago, those things were causes of bloodshed; indeed, they were a common feature of European life. But if they are inevitable in human relationship, how comes it that Adana is no longer duplicated by St. Bartholomew; the Bulgarian bands by the vendetta of the Highlander and the Lowlander; the struggle of the Slav and Turk, Serb and Bulgar, by that of Scots and English, and English and Welsh? The fanaticism of the Moslem to-day is no more intense than that of Catholic and heretic in Rome, Madrid, Paris, and Geneva at a time which is only separated from us by the lives of three or four elderly men. The heretic or infidel was then in Europe also a thing unclean and horrifying, exciting in the mind of the orthodox a sincere and honest hatred and a (very largely satisfied) desire to kill. The Catholic of the 16th century was apt to tell you that he could not sit at table with a heretic because the latter carried with him a distinctive and overpoweringly repulsive odor. If you would measure the distance Europe has travelled, think what this means: all the nations of Christendom united in a war lasting 200 years for the capture of the Holy Sepulchre; and yet, when in our day their representatives, seated round a table, could have had it for the asking, they did not deem it worth the asking, so little of the ancient passion was there left. The very nature of man seemed to be transformed. For, wonderful though it be that orthodox should cease killing heretic, infinitely more wonderful still is it that he should cease wanting to kill him. "Just as most of us are certain that the underlying causes of this conflict are 'inevitable' and 'inherent in unchanging human nature,' so are we certain that so *un*-human a thing as economics can have no bearing on it. "Well, I will suggest that the transformation of the heretic-hating and heretic-killing European is due mainly to economic forces; that it is because the drift of those forces has to so great a degree left the Balkans, where until yesterday the people lived a life little different from that which they lived in the time of Abraham, unaffected that war is now raging; that economic factors of a more immediate kind form a large part of the provoking cause of that war; and that a better comprehension by great nations of Europe of certain economic facts of their international relationship is essential before much progress towards solution can be made. "But then by 'economics' of course I mean, not a merchant's profit or a money-lender's interest, but the method by which men earn their bread, which must also mean the kind of life they lead. "We generally think of the primitive life of man—that of the herdsman or the tent liver—as something idyllic. The picture is as far as possible from the truth. Those into whose lives economics do not enter, or enter very little—that is to say, those who, like the Congo cannibal, or the Red Indian, or the Bedouin, do not cultivate, or divide their labor, or trade, or save, or look to the future, have shed little of the primitive passions of other animals of prey, the tigers and the wolves, who have no economics at all, and have no need to check an impulse or a hate. But industry, even of the more primitive kind, means that men must divide their labor, which means that they must put some sort of reliance upon one another; the thing of prey becomes a partner, and the attitude towards it changes. And as this life becomes more complex, as the daily needs and desires push men to trade and barter, that means building up a social organization, rules and codes and courts to enforce them; as the interdependence widens and deepens it necessarily means the cessation of certain hostilities. If the neighboring tribe wants to trade with you it must not kill you; if you want the services of the heretic you must not kill him, you must keep your obligation towards him, and mutual good faith is death to long-sustained hatreds. "You cannot separate the moral from the social and economic development of a people. The great service of a complex social and industrial organization, which is built up by the desire of men for better material conditions, is not that it 'pays,' but that it makes a more interdependent human society, and that it leads men to recognize what is the best relationship among them. The fact of recognizing that some act of aggression is causing stocks to fall is not important because it may save Oppenheim's or Solomon's money but because it is a demonstration that we are dependent upon some community on the other side of the world, that their damage is our damage, and that we have an interest in preventing it. It teaches us, as only some such simple and mechanical means can teach, the lesson of human fellowship. "It is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some measure, within its respective political frontiers, learned that lesson. Each nation has learned, within its own confines at least, that wealth is made by work, not robbery; that, indeed, general robbery is fatal to prosperity; that government consists not merely in having the power of the sword but in organizing society—in 'knowing how,' which means the development of ideas; in maintaining courts; in making it possible to run railways, post-offices, and all the contrivances of a complex society. "Now rulers did not create these things; it was the daily activities of the people, born of their desires and made possible by the circumstances in which they lived, by the trading and the mining and the shipping which they carried on, that made them. But the Balkans have been geographically outside the influence of European industrial and commercial life. The Turk has hardly felt it at all. He has learned none of the social and moral lessons which interdependence and improved communications have taught the Western European, and it is because he had not learned these lessons, because he is a soldier and a conqueror to an extent and completeness that other nations of Europe lost a generation or two since, that the Balkanese are fighting and that war is raging. "Not merely in this larger sense, but in the more immediate, narrower sense, are the fundamental causes of this war economic. "This war arises, as the past wars against the Turkish conqueror have arisen, from the desire of the Christian peoples on whom he lives to shake off this burden. "To live upon their subjects is the Turks' only means of livelihood," says one authority. The Turk is an economic parasite and the healthy economic organism must end by rejecting him. "The management of society, simple and primitive even as that of the Balkan mountains, needs some effort and work and capacity for administration; otherwise even rudimentary economic life cannot be carried on. The Turkish system, founded on the sword and nothing else ('the finest soldier in Europe'), cannot give that small modicum of energy or administrative capacity. The one thing he knows is brute force; but it is not by the strength of his muscles that an engineer runs a machine, but by knowing how. The Turk cannot build a road or make a bridge or administer a post-office or found a court of law. And these things are necessary. He will not let them be done by the Christian, who, because he did not belong to the conquering class, has had to work and has consequently come to possess whatever capacity for work and administration the country can show, because to do so would be to threaten the Turk's only trade. In the Turk granted the Christians equal political rights they would inevitably 'run the country.' And yet the Turk himself cannot do it; and he will not let others do it, because to do so would be to threaten his supremacy. "The more the use of force fails, the more, of course, does he resort to it and that is why many of us who do not believe in force and desire to see it disappear from the relationship not merely of religious but of political groups, might conceivably welcome this war of the Balkan Christians, in so far as it is an attempt to resist the use of force in those relationships. Of course, I do not try to estimate the 'balance of criminality.' Right is not all on one side—it never is. But the broad issue is clear and plain. And only those concerned with the name rather than the thing, with nominal and verbal consistency rather than realities, will see anything paradoxical or contradictory in Pacifist approval of Christian resistance to the use of Turkish force. "One fact stands out incontrovertibly from the whole weary muddle. It is quite clear that the inability to act in concert arises from the fact that in the international sphere the European is still dominated by illusions which he has dropped when he deals with home politics. The political faith of the Turk, which he would never think of applying at home as among the individuals of his nation, he applies pure and unalloyed when he comes to deal with foreigners as nations. The economic conception—using the term in that wider sense which I have indicated earlier in this article—which guides his individual conduct is the antithesis of that which guides his national conduct. "While the Christian does not believe in robbery inside the frontier, he does without; while within the State he realizes that it is better for each to observe the general code, so that civilized society can exist, than for each to disregard it, so that society goes to pieces; while within the State he realizes that government is a matter of administration, not the seizure of property; that one town does not add to its wealth by 'capturing' another, that indeed one community cannot 'own' another—while, I say, he believes all these things in his daily life at home, he disregards them all when he comes to the field of international relationship, *la haute politique*. To annex some province by a cynical breach of treaty obligation (Austria in Bosnia, Italy in Tripoli) is regarded as better politics than to act loyally with the community of nations to enforce their common interest in order and good government. In fact, we do not believe that there can be a community of nations, because, in fact, we do not believe that their interests are common, but rival; like the Turk, we believe that if you do not exercise force upon your 'rival' he will exercise it upon you; that nations live upon one another, not by co-operation with one another—and it is for this reason presumably that you must 'own' as much of your neighbors as possible. It is the Turkish conception from beginning to end. "It is because these false beliefs prevent the nations of Christendom acting loyally the one to the other, because each is playing for its own hand, that the Turk, with hint of some sordid bribe, has been able to play off each against the other. "This is the crux of the matter. When Europe can honestly act in common on behalf of common interests some solution can be found. And the capacity of Europe to act in harmony will not be found as long as the accepted doctrines of European statecraft remain unchanged, as long as they are dominated by existing illusions."
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APPENDIX ON RECENT EVENTS IN EUROPE
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