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
individual relationship: "I never noticed his collars were dirty till
he got in my way," said someone of a rival.
The second point of difference with Professor McDougal's savage is that
when we get to grips our conflict does not include the whole tribe; we
do not, in the Biblical fashion, exterminate men, women, children, and
cattle. Enough of the old Adam remains for us to detest the women and
children, so that an English poet could write of the "whelps and dams of
murderous foes"; but we no longer slaughter them.[107]
But there is a third fact which we must note--that Professor McDougal's
nation was made up of a single tribe entirely homogeneous. Even the fact
of living across a river was sufficient to turn another tribe into
foreigners and to involve a desire to kill them. The development from
that stage to the present has involved, in addition to the two factors
just enumerated, this: we now include as fellow-countrymen many who
would under the old conception necessarily be foreigners, and the
process of our development, economic and otherwise, has made of
foreigners, between whom, in Homer Lea's philosophy, there should exist
this "primordial hostility leading inevitably to war," one State from
which all conflict of interest has disappeared entirely. The modern
State of France includes what were, even in historical times, eighty
separate and warring States, since each of the old Gallic cities
represented a different State. In England people have come to regard as
fellow-citizens between whom there can be no sort of conflict of
interest scores of tribes that spent their time mutually throat-cutting
at no very distant period, as history goes. Anyone, particularly
Americans, can recognize, indeed, that profound national differences
like those which exist between the Welshman and the Englishman, or the
Scotsman and the Irishman, need involve not only no conflict of
interest, but even no separate political existence.
One has heard in recent times of the gradual revival of Nationalism, and
it is commonly argued that the principle of Nationality must stand in
the way of co-operation between States. But the facts do not justify
that conclusion for a moment. The formation of States has disregarded
national divisions altogether. If conflicts are to coincide with
national divisions, Wales should co-operate with Brittany and Ireland
against Normandy and England; Provence and Savoy with Sardinia
against--I do not know what French province, because in the final
rearrangement of European frontiers races and provinces have become so
inextricably mixed, and have paid so little regard to "natural" and
"inherent" divisions, that it is no longer possible to disentangle them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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