An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its PerpetuationVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation
Veblen, Thorstein
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
The last named of these advantages is the one on which stress is apt to
fall in the argument of all those who advocate an unfolding of national
power, as being a matter of vital material benefit to the common man.
The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection,
are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The common
man--that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation's
common men--has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist,
trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security of
person or property under circumstances that raise any remotest question
of the national prowess or the national prestige; nor does he seek or
aspire to trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or otherwise,
or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, or to exploit
concessions or take orders, for acceptance or delivery; nor, indeed,
does he at all commonly come into even that degree of contact with
abroad that is implied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtually
the sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world beyond the
frontier is when, and if, he goes away from home as an emigrant, and so
ceases to enjoy the tutelage of the nation's constituted authorities.
But the common man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, who
touches foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers only at
the second or third remove, if at all, in the occasional purchase of
foreign products, or in the sale of goods that may find their way abroad
after he has lost sight of them. The exception to this general rule
would be found in the case of those under-sized nations that are too
small to contain the traffic in which their commonplace population are
engaged, and that have neither national prowess nor national prestige to
fall back on in a conceivable case of need,--and whose citizens,
individually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their workday
foreign relations, without a background of prowess and prestige, as the
citizens of the great powers who are most abundantly provided in these
respects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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