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THE FORUM

FOR OCTOBER 1914

THE WAR

CHARLES VALE

America alone, of the great Powers of the world, is in a position to exercise free and calm reflection and to form a free and just judgment. The value of her decision has already been made manifest, through the efforts of every country involved in the war to influence American sentiment and gain American good will. A peculiar responsibility therefore rests upon us to avoid the banalities of the various special pleaders, and to form our judgment soberly and in good faith, nothing extenuating, and setting down naught in malice. And one of the first thoughts that should occur to us, one of the most significant and pregnant thoughts, is that which I have expressed in my first paragraph. Europe is a house divided against itself: but each nation in Europe has proclaimed the sanctity of its cause; each nation conceives that it has, or is entitled to have, the special protection of Providence; each nation is sending its men to death and claiming patient sacrifice from its women.

What does this mean? Is there such little sense of logic in the world that it is impossible to distinguish right from wrong, so that nation may rise against nation, each convinced of its own probity, and each unable to attribute anything but evil motives to its adversaries? Can self-delusion be carried so far that black and white exchange values according to the chances of birth and environment? Have Christianity and civilization achieved this remarkable result, that the peoples of the world are like quarrelsome children in a disorderly nursery?

It is very clear that the world's sense of logic must rank with the world's sense of humor, when presumably learned professors, unchecked and unridiculed, take nationalism and egoism as the premises of their argument and from them deduce, with great skill, obvious nonsense. The lesson of incompetence and shallowness is driven home when baseless rumors from one half of Europe are countered with fantastic inventions fabricated by our alien patriots for the purpose of influencing public opinion. It is the old appeal of ignorance and stupidity to ignorance and stupidity, and the American public will not greatly appreciate the poor compliment that has been paid to it.

As an aid to impartiality and quiet thinking, let us first retrace the immediate and superficial causes of the war. Austria, dismayed and incensed by the murder of the heir to the throne at Serajevo on June 28, and considering the murder as the culmination of long-continued Servian scheming and enmity, delivered to Servia an ultimatum so framed that no nation, however small in territory or in courage, could possibly have accepted it without reservations. The Servian reply went to the extreme limits of concession, and an understanding should easily have been reached on that basis. Austria, however, was apparently resolved upon Servia's abject submission, or upon war. She refused to accept the reply as in any way satisfactory, and opened hostilities.

It is clear, then, that Austria was primarily responsible for the actual commencement of the conflagration. Undoubtedly she had provocation, of the kind that stirs tremendously the sentiment of the nation involved, but is less easily understood in its full intensity by those at a distance. But the point that should be particularly noticed is that a country which was temporarily excited beyond all self-control should have been able to take the initiative and plunge Europe into war. And it should be remembered that Austria's resentment toward Servia was scarcely greater than the resentment of the Serbs toward the nation that had violated the Treaty of Berlin and permanently appropriated Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yet, in rebuttal, Austria might well assert that she had a vested interest in the provinces to which, in a score or so of years, she had given prosperity unsurpassed in southeastern Europe, in place of the anarchy and ruin entailed by four centuries of misrule, and civil and religious faction-conflicts.

The first step taken, the next was assured. Austria knew perfectly well that Russia, the protagonist in that drama of Pan-Slavism of which several scenes have already been presented, would take immediate steps in accordance with her r?le, and repeat her lines so sonorously that they would echo throughout the continent. But the Dual Monarchy, wounded and embittered, did not care: she could see before her, at the worst, no harsher fate than she would have to face, without external war, in a few years, or perhaps months. Only war, it seemed, could save the dynasty from destruction and the aggregation of races from dissolution. Relying upon the immediate help of Germany, and the ultimate assistance of Italy , she refused to draw back or to temporise.

In discussing the attitude of Germany, and the action of the Kaiser, it is necessary to make full allowance for the strength and sincerity of the German foreboding, for many a year, that the clash between Slav and Teuton was bound to come sooner or later. The Russian forces were being massed ostensibly to prevent Austria from coercing Servia. As Austria had provoked the outbreak of hostilities, should she have been left to take the consequences? Would Russia, after eliminating Franz Josef's heterogeneous empire, have resisted the temptation to claim France's help in the congenial task of humbling Germany? The situation was not without its subtleties, after Austria had made the first decisive move. But under what circumstances did Austria make that move? Was she encouraged by the assurance of German co?peration?

Carefully leaving the horns of this dilemma for the self-impalement of any too-ardent enthusiast who may wish to run without reading, we pass on to France, compelled, by the terms of her understanding with Russia, to take her place in the firing line. Without entering into the ultra-refinements of politics and discussing the question whether France, or any other country, would have paid for present neutrality and the violation of solemn engagements by subsequently being devoured in detail, or reduced to vassalage, by a victory-swollen Germany, we may point out that an alliance entered into primarily to safeguard the peace of Europe and the balance of power has been the means of dragging France into a war with which she had no direct concern. Such is the irony of protective diplomacy!

Great Britain has rested her case on the publication, without comment, of the whole of the diplomatic exchanges that preceded her own intervention after the violation of the neutrality of Belgium. Her claim that she exerted her influence until the final moment in the interests of peace is sustained beyond cavil: but the point to be remembered particularly is whether a more decisive and uncompromising attitude at an earlier stage would not have been preferable. Germany would then have had no doubt as to Great Britain's final alignment, and with a kindly word from Italy that neutrality was the best that could be expected from her, a reconsideration of the whole position might have been forced before the final, fatal moments had passed, and were irrevocable.

It is unnecessary to prolong this cursory review of immediate causes and conditions, nor does it greatly matter how the positions of the different countries have been stated. The mood of a moment may add or subtract a little coloring, without changing the fundamental facts. But is it possible for any man, however impartial he may desire to be, to state those facts now, accurately, clearly, and in such relation and sequence that only one inevitable conclusion can be drawn?

It may be possible, though it would be difficult: but it would not be worth while. For the war has not been due to, and does not depend upon, recent events; and however those events may be viewed or summarized, the only fact of importance is the one already emphasized: that every nation which has been drawn into the conflict counts its cause just and its conscience clear.

In the first place, that much-quoted and entirely despicable confession of faith, "My country, right or wrong, first, last and all the time," may well be relegated,--first, last and for whatever time may remain before a kindly Providence blots out this incredible little world of seething passions and ceaseless pain and cruelty,--to the limbo of antique curiosities. Nothing can be sillier, and more contemptible, than such pseudo-patriotism, based on utter selfishness, utter ignorance, and abysmal stupidity. The country which commits a crime, or makes a grave mistake, is in the position of an individual who commits a crime or makes a grave mistake; and no fanfare of trumpets or hypnotism of marching automata, helmeted and plumed, should confuse the issue and vitiate judgment. Mere nationalism, unregulated by intelligence, is simply one of the most irritating and blatant forms of egoism. Nationality itself depends upon so many complex conditions that the ordinary semi-intelligent man can scarcely unravel the niceties of history and discover to whom his heartfelt allegiance is really due. He therefore accepts the untutored sentiment of his immediate environment. He is essentially provincial, not patriotic. Alsace and Lorraine, with their various vicissitudes, may profitably be studied by the curious, in this connection.

Until provincialism, of the type which has been so prominent in recent controversies, can be eliminated or controlled, the settlement of the more tragic issues of the time must be undertaken boldly by those who have indubitably grown up, forsaking leading strings and the nursery, the toys of childhood and the irresponsibility of childhood. All the Governments of Europe, in which a few brilliant men are undoubtedly enrolled, have failed now, as they have failed repeatedly before, to perform their elementary duties and save their countries from the horrors of unnecessary war. Generation after generation, the peoples of Europe have been carefully led by their Governments into successive orgies of slaughter, in which the allies of one campaign have been the enemies of the next. The whole course of European history during the last hundred years has been indeed a subject for Olympian laughter. What has been achieved by the unending succession of wars, with all their attendant miseries and deadly consequences? Merely the necessity for increased armaments, constant watchfulness, perpetual strain--and more war. Could there be a clearer proof of the futility of war?

The Governments of Europe have failed because each, in greater or less degree, has embodied the provincialism of its own section of the armed and suspicious world. There have been a few notable exceptions to the general rule of conventional mediocrity: but where have we found the statesman who could break away altogether from the old stupid methods, and by the sheer force of character and principle inaugurate a new era of civilized diplomacy, as Bismarck inaugurated a new era of veneered barbarism? In America, we are beginning to see the value and the fruits of government based on fairness to all nations and justice to all individuals: but neither here, nor in Europe, has the significance of the new statesmanship yet been fully recognized. Europe, indeed, still regards us with more than a little suspicion, contempt, and imperfectly concealed condescension: it has heard and seen Roosevelt, unfortunately, and the lingering impressions of crudity have not been weakened. Will it listen to us now, and realize that the New World has in verity something to offer to the Old in its time of special tribulation? For Wilson, not Roosevelt, stands for the spirit of America, the voice of America, and her chosen contribution to the civilization of the Twentieth Century.

It seems strange, perhaps, to talk of civilization in these dark days, when primitive passions and primitive methods have flung an ineradicable stain of blood across a whole continent. Yet only the coward will bend to temporary defeat, or ridicule, or pessimism. It is the task of the strong to turn disaster into triumph, and to frame a new international polity built on sure foundations. The diplomacy based on national antipathies must be made impossible by the new understanding of the criminal folly of provincialism, the new comprehension of nation by nation. For the true causes of the present war cannot be discovered in mere incidents of July and August. They go further back, and are rooted in ignorance, misconception, prejudice, selfishness.

Recrimination is so useless now. We have to face the future: we cannot undo the past. We have learnt our lesson, surely, once for all: shall the spectre of militarism again loom devilishly through such a nightmare as Europe has endured for the last decade? Animosities and jealousies may die out: France has forgotten Fashoda, England has forgiven Russia for the blunder of the Dogger Bank. But the expectation of war, the preparation for war, the whole habit and incidence of militarism, must lead sooner or later to the clash. If the guns were not ready, if the nations had to be drilled and armed before they could be hurled at each others' throats, there would be time for reflection, for the subsidence of passions, for the revival of dignity and decency. Militarism damns both the menacer and the menaced. All the nations have suffered from that curse, Germany, perhaps, the worst of all. The world has not yet forgotten Bismarck's gospel of blood and iron, so relentlessly preached and practised. The inevitable results of the blood-and-iron doctrine, modernized as the dogma of the "mailed fist," can be seen to-day in the cataclysm that has swept Europe. The pity of it, and the shame of it, that all the skill of all the statesmen of the great Powers could produce no better result than a continent divided into two armed camps, waiting for the slaughter that was bound to come!

As for Russia, and the assumed Slavonic menace, one must tread somewhat diffidently where George Bernard Shaw has rushed in with characteristic Shavian impetuosity. The world owes to Mr. Shaw the discovery of a new nationality--himself; and it is impossible for any citizen of the world to ignore the obligation. But even if Russia achieves her never-forgotten dream of Constantinople and a purified St. Sophia, Europe and civilization will not necessarily stand aghast, trembling at each rumor of Cossack brutalities. Tennyson, who foresaw the a?rial navies "grappling in the central blue," indeed proclaimed, in one of the most execrable of his sonnets, that--

"... The heart of Poland hath not ceased To quiver, though her sacred blood doth drown The fields, and out of every smouldering town Cries to Thee, lest brute power be increased Till that o'ergrown barbarian in the East Transgress his ample bounds to some new crown: Cries to Thee, 'Lord, how long shall these things be, How long this icy-hearted Muscovite Oppress the region?'..."

. But, in spite of anti-Semitic atrocities , and in spite of the blunders of a rigid bureaucracy, the Russian nation is not necessarily a menace to civilization: it has within it the elements of a wonderful idealism, and whether autocracy may remain, or may not remain, as the outward and visible form of government, the spirit of democracy is leavening the people, and "Holy Russia" has in truth already been sanctified by the blood of her innumerable martyrs--sometimes, perhaps, misguided and mistaken; but offering to the world an example of idealism and self-sacrifice that should surely dispel the nightmare of Russian brutishness.

Others may be throneless before final peace comes to the different warring nations. They have sowed in their various ways, and will reap the ripened harvests. But how long shall the childish quarrel of country with country be permitted and encouraged by those who should have learnt a little wisdom, in this twentieth century of perpetual miracles? Let us have done, once for all, with petty jealousies and absurd misunderstandings. Let us blot out, without regret and without the least compassion, the evil records and results of insincerity and manufactured hatred. Let us extinguish, finally and irresuscitably, those fires of malice and flagrant nonsense that have been fed assiduously by the fools and knaves of the world.

Nowhere will you find a decent man, emancipated from the leading-strings of prejudice and unafraid of the bludgeonings of militarist authority, who does not condemn the present war, and all wars, as useless, damnable, anachronistic and inexcusable. We have learnt so much, in these later years; we have adventured in strange ways, and silently borne strange reproaches. We have come very near to God, and talked with Him by wireless, remedying the inconsistencies of the prophets and filling in the gaps left blank by the poets. And shall we still be bound by the gibes and gyves of the mediaevalists? The Middle Ages served their purpose: but why extend them to the confusion of modern chronology? We have seen God, as no generation before has seen Him. Let us then live, and not die, until the grave be digged, and the night overshadow us at last.

SEEN THROUGH MOHAMMEDAN SPECTACLES

ACHMED ABDULLAH

Although my father was a Muslim of the old Central-Asian school, a Hegirist, of mixed Arab and Moghul blood, he had sent me to England and the Continent for my school and university education. But boys are much more broad-minded than grown-up men, and so my schoolmates and I never worried about the fact that we had different customs, religion, civilization, and atavistic tendencies.

It was only after my return to the borderland of Afghanistan and India, and after I had assumed once more native garb and speech, that I began to feel myself an alien among those Europeans and Anglo-Indians with whom I was brought into contact.

For the first time in my life I felt the ghastly meaning of the words "Racial Prejudice," that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the European and the American the world over, that terrible blight which modern Christianity has forced on the world. And it chilled me to the bone and I wondered....

In Europe I had known many Asiatics who visited the universities there. And we were the equals of the Europeans, the Christians, in intellect and culture, and decidedly their superiors, being Muslim, in cleanliness and courage. We were not only familiar with the European classics which were the basis of their culture, but we were also thoroughly versed in the literature and history of India and Central Asia, things of which they knew less than an average Egyptian donkey-boy. We were polyglots: we had mastered half a dozen European languages, while even a smattering of Arabic or Turki or Chinese was a rare exception amongst them. We all of us knew at least three Asian languages to perfection. And finally we had a practical knowledge of English, French and German political ideals and systems, while to them the name of even such great Asian reformers as Asoka and Akbar and Aurangzeb were absolutely unknown.

In physical strength, virility, power of endurance and recuperation we were immeasurably their superiors. And we were not picked men, but plain, average Asian gentlemen.

And yet, when I returned to my own land, there was that superior smile, that nasty, patronizing attitude, that insufferable "Holier than Thou" atmosphere about all of them whom I happened to meet.

They made me feel that I was of the East and they of the West; and they tried to make me feel--with no success--that they were the salt of the earth, while the men of my faith and race were but the lowly dung.

Not even the bridge of personal friendship seemed able to span this gulf, this abyss which I could feel more than I could define it; and so I folded my tent and travelled; I studied India from South to North, I visited Siberia, Egypt, Malta, Algeria, Turkey, Tunis, and the Haussa country, wandering in all the lands where East and West rub elbows, and I investigated calmly, I compared without too much bias.

Finally I bent my steps Northward, to see with my own eyes and according to the limits of my own understanding the working of Christian civilization, and to study the dominant Western Faith in the lands where it rules supreme.

I was looking for a bridge with which to span the chasm, and I failed miserably. Christian hypocrisy, Christian intolerance, savage Christian ignorance frustrated me right and left.

But I learned one thing, perhaps two.

They spoke to me of Europe which they knew, and they spoke of India which they did not know. They were what the world calls educated, well-read people: and indeed they had read many books by eminent Christian travellers, savants, and historians about the great Peninsula. But the mirror of their souls reflected only distorted pictures. They had no conception of the vastness of my land, they had never heard of the great Asian conquerors and statesmen, they were entirely ignorant of our wonderful literature.

But still they spoke of India ... fluently, patronizingly.

They spoke of plague and cholera and famine and wretched sanitation and cruelties unspeakable. But they did not understand me when I told them that the teeming millions of Hindu peasantry somehow manage to enjoy their careless lives to the full, and are really much more satisfied than the European peasants or the small American farmers.

I did not argue: I simply stated facts. But I discovered that it is a titanic, heart-breaking task to prove the absurdity of anything which the Christians have made up their minds to accept as true. I found arrayed against me an iron phalanx of preconceived opinions and misconstrued lessons of history. I began to understand that even amongst educated people there can exist opinion without thought, and that my two arch-foes were the Pharisee intolerance which is the caste-mark and the blighting curse of the Christian the world over, and the other Aryan vice: an unconscious generalization of those ideas which have been adopted for the sake of convenience and self-flattery, and in strict and delightfully na?ve disregard of truth. The whole I found to be spiced with religious hypocrisy; and is there a lower form of hypocrisy than that which makes a man pretend for his own material or spiritual purposes that a thing is good which in his inmost heart he knows to be bad? The sincerity of such people is on a par with that of him who, being debarred by a doctor from constant drinking, proclaims that he is a reformed character and prates to his friends about the delights of temperance.

And then I made up my mind to attack that structure of ignorance and misunderstanding, that jumble of generalization and hyperdeduction, that idiotic racial self-confidence and national self-consciousness which breeds Pharisee intolerance, which destroys individual inquiry and unprejudiced opinion, and which sounds the death-knell of procreativeness.

The Hindu peasants say that it is a mistake to judge the quality of a whole field of rice by testing one grain only. But the Europeans, the Americans, who judge us have never even tested a solitary grain and only know about its quality from hearsay.

Not that they are afraid to voice what they miscall their opinions. Only instead of having the courage of their own convictions, they have the courage of somebody else's convictions, not knowing that the most obtuse ignorance is superior to dangerous, second-hand knowledge.

They are eternally quoting the words of some writer whom they think infallible. And there was chiefly one clever little jingle which was on the lips of everybody with whom I tried to discuss the relations between Orient and Occident. They used it as the final proof to settle the argument and to preclude all further appeal to the tribunal of common sense and common verity, and it ran as follows:

"East is East, and West is West, And never the twain shall meet."

I admire Kipling, chiefly because he is one of the few Europeans who have studied the East with both intelligence and sympathy. From my Oriental point of view I class his books with those of Max M?ller, Sir Alfred Lyall, Captain Sir Richard Burton, Pierre Loti, John Campbell Oman, Victoria de Bunsen, Colonel Malleson, W. D. Whitney, William Crooke, and two or three other Pandits.

But I became sick to death of that smooth little jingle about the East and the West. I found it everywhere, until it haunted me in my dreams.

I would buy the gaudy Sunday edition of an American newspaper and I would read the gruesome story of how a high-caste Mandchoo had beaten and tortured his beautiful French wife ... and, by the Prophet, the picturesque account would wind up with an appeal to the intelligent American reader not to wonder at the blue-beard Mandarin's cruelty, because the poet states that East is East and West is West.

Do you wonder that every night, in my dreams, I strangled Mr. Kipling slowly and deliciously with a thin silken cord? But of course you do not wonder; for I am an Afghan ... and ... well ...

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