The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National AdvantageAngell, Norman
History
The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage
Angell, Norman
Commercial policy; Disarmament; Imperialism; War; War, Cost of
In that case, what, in the name of all that is muddleheaded, becomes of
the "unchanging tendency towards warfare"? What is all this curious
rhetoric of Homer Lea's (and I have dealt with him at some length,
because his principles if not his language are those which characterize
much similar literature in England, France, Germany, and the continent
of Europe generally) but an admission that the whole tendency is not, as
he would have us believe, towards war, but away from it? Here is an
author who tells us that war is to be forever inevitable, and in the
same breath that men are rapidly conceiving not only a "slothful
indifference" to fighting, but a profound antipathy to the military
ideal.
Of course, Homer Lea implies that this tendency is peculiar to the
American Republic, and is for that reason dangerous to his country; but,
as a matter of fact, Homer Lea's book might be a free translation of
much nationalist literature of either France or Germany.[63] I cannot
recall a single author of either of the four great countries who,
treating of the inevitability of war, does not bewail the falling away
of his own country from the military ideal, or, at least, the tendency
so to fall away. Thus the English journalist reviewing in the _Daily
Mail_ Homer Lea's book cannot refrain from saying:
Is it necessary to point out that there is a moral in all this
for us as well as for the American? Surely almost all that Mr.
Lea says applies to Great Britain as forcibly as to the United
States. We too have lain dreaming. We have let our ideals
tarnish. We have grown gluttonous, also.... Shame and folly are
upon us as well as upon our brethren. Let us hasten with all
our energy to cleanse ourselves of them, that we can look the
future in the face without fear.
Exactly the same note dominates the literature of an English protagonist
like Mr. Blatchford, the militarist socialist. He talks of the "fatal
apathy" of the British people. "The people," he says, breaking out in
anger at the small disposition they show to kill other people, "are
conceited, self-indulgent, decadent, and greedy. They will shout for the
Empire, but they will not fight for it."[64] A glance at such
publications as _Blackwood's_, the _National Review_, the London
_Spectator_, the London _World_, will reveal precisely similar
outbursts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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