Riddle Of The Future

( Originally Published 1920 )

BY DEAN INGE

" HUMANITY," said General Smuts in his great speech on the League of Nations, " has struck its tents, and is once more on the march." Humanity is always on the march ; but, like the patriarch Abraham, and unlike troops led by General Smuts, it marches " not knowing whither it goeth "; and it usually describes what logicians call a vicious circle. This fact may be disconcerting to the professional optimist, a foolish, amiable creature who would buy from a Jew and sell to a Scot and expect to make a profit ; but it is reassuring to those who watch the foundations of social life crumbling before their eyes, and wonder whether anything of value will be left standing. It was said by a wise man long ago : " Things refuse to be badly administered for long." All institutions carry with them the seeds of their own decay, but all revolutions quickly devour their own children. Two things alone remain unchanged—human nature and inhuman nature, the laws of the world we live in. 'When one or the other is altered, we shall get the new world about which we prate, but not till then.

The late war was made by the guardians of the then existing order in Central Europe. They made it chiefly because they saw that that order was being undermined by what is euphemistically called " social unrest." It was a gambler's throw, and the result was the worst that could have happened for them, and perhaps for us, too. For the conflicting forces were so evenly balanced that the struggle went on until the old order, to preserve which it was begun, was entirely wrecked, just as the long continuance of the Wars of the Roses ruined the social order of the Middle Ages in England. Broadly speaking, all who in 1914 had anything to lose have lost it or are losing it. That this statement is not too strong may be proved by comparing the price of good securities in 1914 with the price of the same stocks now, and by comparing the purchasing power of the interest on debentures in 1914 with its purchasing power now after deducting income tax and super-tax. The working man, in partnership with a small class of profiteers, is at present engaged in looting what the war left of the old wealth. His prosperity cannot last, for in many trades he is not even trying to earn his pay. He is " waxing fat and kicking " on the accumulations of a hundred years of peace and industry, and these will soon have disappeared. We have to look forward to a long period of acute distress, from which we shall emerge sadder but wiser men. Then the real period of reconstruction will begin. What the Government calls " reconstruction " is simply the completion of the work of destruction which the war left unfinished. The wisdom of the Cabinet may be gauged by their precious scheme of encouraging the bricklayer to do about two and a half hours' work a day, and paying him exorbitant wages out of the rates.

So much for the economic situation, which must dominate all other problems. There cannot be any more great wars in our generation, for no Government can borrow any more money, and no army would consent to fight. The Russians are a sinister exception ; they have lost everything, and are transformed into a pack of wolves. Bolshevism is nearing its end; but Russia is ready for an ambitious general to play the part of Napoleon. The Moscow terrorists are afraid to recall their armies.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

I am not bold enough to prophesy about the League of Nations, the success of which I, of course, ardently desire. Every one wants peace ; but has there ever been a time when the large majority in every country has not wanted peace ? Lord Grey has recently said that the fruitful causes of international trouble are ignorance and misconception. I wish I could agree with him, for ignorance, though an intractable disease, is not absolutely incurable. If mankind could " let the ape and tiger die," they might ultimately succeed in suppressing the donkey. But I fear that peace has worse enemies than ignorance. I see more wisdom in what a great German publicist said to me about eight years ago : " International animosities do not matter much ; but where there is fear there is danger." Fear is one great cause of war : and another is the clash of irreconcilable ambitions. If two men want the same woman, they will not submit the case to arbitration; and no more will two nations, if they are convinced that they must either expand or starve. If we look at the names of the chief supporters of the League of Nations, we shall find among them many pure idealists ; but we shall also find many who have no love of peace and goodwill in their hearts, and who only wish to clear the ground for a civil war of classes. And what will be the attitude of these men, who represent very powerful interests, when the Asiatics claim their rights, as they certainly will, to equal treatment under the League of Nations ? There is probably no country in which the Asiatic, if he were allowed to settle in it, would not prove himself economically a better man than the white. He is at present kept out of the new countries, half empty though they are, by force that is to say, in the last resort, by knocking him on the head. Is the white man prepared to surrender the " methods of barbarism," in which alone he is the superior, and to establish a reign of universal peace and fair play, which may lead to his own supersession and disappearance ? A public meeting in America or Australia would not leave us in much doubt about the answer. But as long as the claim to race privilege is maintained, the League of Nations could exist only as a monstrously unjust alliance of the rich countries against the poor. The Chinese, for example, would be excluded from the American and Australian continents because they are addicted to the vices of industry and plain living. Such an alliance would lack the strength of any moral sanction ; it would be as un-Christian as the sophistries of those who quoted " Cursed be Canaan " in justification of negro slavery. Additional obstacles in the way of the League have been interposed by the old game of grab, as played at Versailles. Germans and Americans, unfairly but not unnaturally, compare us to a gambler who, having won a big stake, proposes that the party shall play for love during the rest of the evening. We cannot seriously expect Germany and Austria to accept the peace which we have imposed upon them as a final and irrevocable settlement.

SPIRITUAL FORCES

These considerations are bound to be irritating, because they are both true and unpleasant. I fear that an ecclesiastic will not allay the irritation by insisting that the cause of the evil predicament is moral, and that if the world would give the Gospel of Christ a fair trial all would yet be well. He will be reminded that in practical life we must take human nature as it is, and that human nature is, unfortunately, unconverted. Some, by way of reprisals, may add that the world in its agony has got very little help from organised religion, and that the official Church of England, in particular, is not of much use except as a rather creaking political weathercock. I can only say in reply that the spiritual forces which might regenerate society are alive among us, and that though they seem sadly impotent at present, they are more likely to make themselves felt when other props have manifestly failed, and other hopes have been manifestly disappointed. Such a time of disillusion is, in my opinion, coming very soon upon the people of this country. The economic bankruptcy with which we are threatened will be also a political and a moral bankruptcy. It will be brought home to us that we have adopted a wrong standard of values, by which a nation cannot live. When this time comes, we may be surprised to find how much real Christianity there is among us, even though at the moment we can discern no clear signs of a spiritual awakening. We are, perhaps, turning our eyes too much to the outwardly religious ; much real Christianity at the present time is very unconventional and not at all inclined to advertise itself. But there must be a fund of lofty idealism and calm heroism among our people ; it would be absurd to suppose that our best men were all killed in the war. Eight hundred thousand of them have been killed ; but if " the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church " we may be confident that those who gave their lives for England will not be found to have died in vain.